As according to custom, the president (LOL) has been invited to address Congress tomorrow on “the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” There are lots of ruminations and predictions going about as to what the speech will contain, what themes will be prevalent, and what initiatives will be unveiled. I predict that it’s going to be long, boring and utterly ineffectual. Arguably the greatest State of the Union address to date is President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 installment (he, uh, had a few), which is...
Continue reading...New York Times Columnist Line of the Day – 27 January 2014
If you’re one of the three people who remembers this here blog from its hay-day, you have once in a blue moon checked out the New York Times op-ed page. You probably recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today’s is from Roger “Copacabana” Cohen, who in his column today, “The Egyptian Disaster,” does his part to save the Egyptian economy: I...
Continue reading...New York Times Columnist Line of the Day – 24 January 2014
Ha, two years since I typed that headline and the muscle memory is still in severely good shape. Anyways… If you’re one of the three people who remembers this here blog from its hay-day, you have once in a blue moon checked out the New York Times op-ed page. You probably recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today’s is from Paul...
Continue reading...Iowa: What we learned
Well, so last night they had some caucuses. Mittens Romney won by a landslide of eight votes. Eight votes. Rick Santorum’s surge proved to have been at the exact right moment, as he finished just behind. Ron Paul’s surge was just a moment too soon and finished fourth. Everybody else sucked. Here’s some things we learned: – Not a goddamn one of the Republican pack can deliver a nationally-televised speech. – Corollary: Somebody give Michele Bachmann a teleprompter. – Corollary: I like Newt’s voice the best of them. – Corollary: Perry’s was the most heart-felt, although that...
Continue reading...Some people gonna be voting today
Holy shit—today’s the Iowa caucuses. At about 7:00 p.m. CST (8:00 p.m. EST because we’re east-coast-elite-centric here), at 1,774 precincts across the state of Iowa, Republicans (and, actually, Democrats too, but we already pretty much know who’ll win that one) will begin to select their choice for the Republican nomination for president. Polls in the past week have pretty much shown a three-way statistical tie between Mittens Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Santorum has surged very recently, the latest in the series of second/third-tier candidates. It’s pretty clear that about half the Republican constituency finds Romney...
Continue reading...It Gets Better
I’ve said this many times before, but here it is again: My pride and affection for the American experiment lies in its ability to improve itself, to get better. This morning, America got better. Finally, after decades of a terrible and ridiculous compromise that left thousands of American servicepeople as second-class citizens, the military policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” is dead. It lies in the graveyard of many other terrible mistakes in bigotry: Slavery, segregation, bans on miscegenation, the accepted social and workplace mistreatment of women, and, more recently, bans on sexual practices between people of...
Continue reading...John 14:27
I park the car behind the house, on the grass on the far side of the driveway. I come in through the back door. I’m expected. The back door leads directly to the kitchen, and nothing’s cooking. It’s only 11:15, so nothing would be. No one greets me. The long walk from the door through the kitchen takes years. I remember last week. I remember how frail she looked, how much frailer than the week before, and the week before that, and the month before that. My foot hits the threshold of the living room. It touches...
Continue reading...Things I Drink And So Should You: Ft. Snow and the French 75
I am not a winter person. I’m not. I hate it. Worse: I‘m one of those people who constantly reminds everyone around them that I hate winter and think it’s awful. If you are among the thousands of people I have accosted with my rantings against, of all things (really, of all things), weather, I apologize. I will do it again, and soon, but I am sorry for having done it. It is regrettable. I hate winter for so many reasons: all of the reasons. It’s dark all the time. It’s cold. It’s damned treacherous on occasion....
Continue reading...Things I Drink and So Should You, The Return: Ft. the Toronto
Pop and I have been friends since before the internet, or since before a lot of people knew the internet existed. We were friends when the Patriots were a joke, when Britney Spears was not, when Bill Clinton was President, when the years started with a 1. We were young and naive, sitting in small classrooms discussing political and social issues with an eye on changing the world, on being the force behind the change. Pop and I both turned 30 this year. Age got to me first, around mid-year, and then to Pop just as the...
Continue reading...Faking It
From the Department of Blindingly Obvious Scientific Findings: A hundred-plus page report, The National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, came out recently, documenting self-reported information about the sexual activity and behaviors of thousands of adults and teenagers. Among a myriad of results (some others are detailed here, there was this shocker: About 85 percent of men report that their partner had an orgasm at the most recent sexual event; this compares to the 64 percent of women who report having had an orgasm at their most recent sexual event. (A difference that is too large to...
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