Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Worldview Mid-Week Update

Newsies Still Getting It Wrong - Both CNN and Politico continue to report that Hillary "won" Texas, despite Obama getting 99 delegates to her 94. What's up with that? Maybe the Atlanta Braves "won" last night because they got more hits.

Best Comment on Hillary's "White Strategy" - If she had any character at all, she would reject the votes of bigots and say as John Edwards said, “If you’re planning to vote against Senator Obama because of his race, I don’t want your vote either”.
— Posted by sparky, in the NYT, 5/21/08, commenting on Timothy Egan's blog

Clinton Campaign Strategy Manual

GOP Election Expectations this Week - The Republicans head man in the House of Representatives, John Boner of Ohio, predicted last month that Republicans would gain Congressional seats this November. This week he has backed off that bold prediction, but said he still "hopes" that Republicans will win more seats. Boner is the House Minority Leader, but is best known for bursting into tears whenever a bill to fund the Iraq War comes up for debate. He is also a staunch suck-up to President Bush. Under his leadership, the Republicans have lost three interim elections in a row, so he'll probably be shit-canned from his leadership position fairly soon.


Rep. John Boner, R-Ohio


Privacy Rights Lost this Week - Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, famous for his verbal temper tantrums, whining about his paycheck, acting like a pompous jackass, and his pro-privacy jurisprudence, has a scaredy-cat son, Christopher, who's teaching creative writing at the University of Virginia these days. Well one of Christopher's students, doing his assigned homework, wrote a very scary story about murder and suicide. It was so scary that Christopher ran and told the Principal. Then they had that scary student expelled, and sent to an insane asylum for the weekend. I suppose it didn't occur to them to actually teach the student about what was apparently so wrong with his writing. He must be one hell of a good writer to scare people that much. Or Christopher must be one hell of a pathetic little pussy. Or perhaps both. There's a lesson in here somewhere about privacy rights, or censorship, or the state's misuse of mental health labels as punishment, or something, and I think the news is bad. Maybe Christopher should check out the crazy scary books by Stephen King, or James Patterson, or Thomas Harris, or Bret Easton Ellis, or . . . well, you get the idea. You can check out the WSJ story here.




News That Might Be True - Speaking of the WSJ, this clip of Rupert Murdoch was making the rounds a couple of weeks ago. I can't tell if it's real or not, but I hope it is. I can't imagine Michael Bloomberg using this kind of language. In case this upload doesn't work, CLICK HERE to link directly to it on Youtube.

Madman Murdoch

Odd Political Dream of the Week - Speaking of bored newsmen, imagine this: Hillary convinces the Super Delegates to give her the nomination. Obama says "Adios" and teams up with Michael Bloomberg for an independent third party run. That would be cool. Plus, Bloomie's white, and pro-business, and may even be Jewish! All groups that Obama could use some help with.



The New Dream Ticket


Odd Political Moment of the Week - A meeting of Russia's opposition party, The Other Russia, headed by Gary Kasparov, was briefly interrupted by this flying dildo. To my practiced eye, it appears to be a western dildo, as Russians tend not to go in for circumcision. However the copter is a Russian contra-rotating rotor design, not generally used in the US or Europe. So we may have here a unique marriage of the best of Eastern and Western technologies.



Flying Dildo - No known relation to Rep. Boner


Separated at Birth? -



Wally

Tommy

Oldie of the Week - Spill the Wine - by Eric Burden & War, 1970. I used to listed to this in a "fort" with my friends when I was 10 or 11 years old on a transistor radio I got for Christmas. It was our favorite song. We had no idea why we liked it so much. I still love it and I'm still not sure why. The rumor was that it's about taking heroin. Though now I think I detect a vaguely Christian theme that hadn't noticed before.

Lyrics

I was once out strolling one very hot summer's day
When I thought I'd lay myself down to rest in a big field of tall grass.
I lay there in the sun and felt it caressing my face.
As I fell asleep and dreamed,
I dreamed I was in a Hollywood movie,
And that I was the star of the movie.
This really blew my mind,
The fact that me, an overfed, long-haired, leaping gnome,
Should be the star of a Hollywood movie...

But there I was....
I was taken to a place, the hall of the mountain kings.
I stood high upon a mountain top, naked to the world,
In front of every kind of girl...
There was long ones, tall ones, short ones,
Brown ones, black ones, round ones, big ones, crazy ones...
Out of the middle, came a lady,
She whispered in my ear something crazy,
She said...

"Spill the wine and take that pearl,
Spill the wine and take that pearl,
Spill the wine and take that pearl,
Spill the wine and take that pearl,

"I thought to myself what could that mean?
Am I going crazy or is this just a dream?
Now, wait a minute,I know I'm lying in a field of grass somewhere,
So it's all in my head,
And then...
I heard her say one more time...

"Spill the wine and take that pearl,
Spill the wine and take that pearl,
Spill the wine and take that pearl,
Spill the wine and take that pearl,"

I could feel hot flames of fire roaring at my back,
As she disappeared, but soon she returned.
In her hand was a bottle of wine, in the other, a glass.
She poured some of the wine from the bottle into the glass,
And raised it to her lips,
And just before she drank it, she said...

"Spill the wine and take that pearl,
Spill the wine and take that pearl,
Spill the wine and take that pearl,
Spill the wine and take that pearl."

The Liberal Lion in Winter

Senator Edward Moore Kennedy has been Massachusett's Senator for over 45 years.

He has been a consistent bastion of liberal ideology and strength for all of those years, especially importantly during those years when it was very difficult to be a liberal in this country.

As a College Democrat, I was a very low level volunteer for his 1980 Presidential Campaign against Jimmy Carter, as well as his 1982 Senate re-election campaign. I first met him in person in 1982 when he did a train whistle stop speech at the antique Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts train station, where I had arranged for the Massachusetts Maritime Academy Band to play. He thanked me in his brief speech, which was thrilling for me, and then we all boarded the antique passenger train and met him personally while riding the rails to Hyannis. He was a very affable fellow, radiating a joyful affection for everyone there, with what appeared to be a tinge of nervousness at trying to speak with us individually without ignoring anyone. I liked him.

He's called Ted by most people, Teddy by his family, but his close supporters refer to him as "The Senator." He's been The Senator for as long as most of us have been alive, since 1962.

We'll pray for him here and wish him well in his fight with this terrible illness.