Warning! Educational content ahead! And You’re A Moron to boot!
Seems like the trend here at 411 is to complain about W-2 problems, so who am I not to join in? I had three jobs during 2003. The W-2s from my first two jobs haven’t been forwarded to my current address yet. This sucks, because my tax situation is complicated enough that I want to get going on it ASAP (plus, I need the money). Combine that with the fact that I’m trying to do a semi-passive charge on the Damn Vaninator’s battery at this moment and I’m not a happy camper. Of course, there’s always things to help alleviate that, like watching John Billingsley get outacted by a dog on this week’s Enterprise* (for you wrestling fans, let me analogize: an episode of Enterprise concentrating on Phlox and Porthos is the equivalent pain-wise of watching the Bashams cutting promos on Cena and Angle with the latter two having their mouths shut with duct tape; it’s masochism at its most undiluted). If I want something perverse, I’ll just watch Meet the Feebles or read 120 Days Of Sodom, which I happen to have as a PDF on my system. I turn to the Divine Marquis for a little inspiration now and then.
* – I think that this series’ obsession with 20th Century film is getting a little out of hand. Not only did they try to do an Alien-like atmosphere with “Doctor’s Orders”, but they show a scene from the great Danny Kaye film The Court Jester and name-check The Exorcist. Guess that 22nd Century culture is pretty barren, huh? God knows that the Enterprise “creative team” is reflecting that barrenness pretty well. They already did this episode on Voyager with “One”, which had the benefit of the awake crewmember being Seven. I just wish that Jeri Ryan did a nude scene in that episode like Billingsley did in this one.
Let’s see if anything’s inspiring in this allocation, shall we?
THE PIMP SECTION
What can be better than Baxley waxing prosaic about anime and reviewing a six-year-old game that no one’s ever heard of, even though it’s by pre-Enix Square? Feel the LUV!
Jackson finally returns from the dead, and the topic with him, as usual, is a certain blue hedgehog.
Gamble is a very intelligent man. I’m not just saying that because he’s saying the same thing about the world title match at WM that I’ve been saying the past couple weeks.
Foist debuts with his coverage of WWE’s AAA farm team, and does a pretty good job at it.
Cocozza is starting to turn me into an adjective. Personally, I prefer being a verb, like “google”.
Trabold breaks things open with news of the latest reorganization of X-Men. I haven’t bought comics in years, but that Claremont/Davis book sorta stirs the old-school in me. And I would be remiss if I didn’t also pimp Stevens, who has stuff from the DC side of the aisle. Always trust Chaykin, my dear Stevens. He’s been doing it for decades now without fail. Just take a gander at American Century if you don’t believe me (idiotic forced ending aside).
PK is playing with dolls again. But it’s cool, because he’s at the Toy Fair, the top event for said pieces of extruded plastic, and has exclusive coverage for us on what’s new in that particular world.
And, lastly, congratulations to Pardon The Interruption on its 500th episode today. I remember watching their first episode in a bed-and-breakfast in Smithfield, Virginia (job interview the next day), wondering if something like this could ever work in the world of sports chatter. Its transfer of a sports-radio format to sports television, though, was absolutely perfect, thanks to Kornheiser’s and Wilbon’s undeniable talent for communication and willingness to go on the edge. In only a couple of years, they’ve turned things like Stat Boy and Heads On Sticks into icons (and as anyone who’s been watching Around the Horn lately can tell you, Stat Boy qualifies as “thing”). So, to My Boy Tony and My Homie Mike, may you have even greater success in the future.
ON WISCONSIN
And so the Cheeseheads have spoken. And what they said was, “Sorry, Howard, but John Edwards is more acceptable than you are”. Edwards’ strong showing was no surprise to me; remember me mentioning that Wisconsin has a heavy percentage of activist-type voters, the people who, a few months ago, would have been Dean types but are now rallying around Edwards as the official “non-establishment” candidate? Those are the types of voters who have a disproportionate effect during primaries, but whose effect is diluted when it comes to general elections. Thus, Edwards may not be as strong as he appears. His appeal is concentrated right now among voters who aren’t completely convinced about Kerry but who will be when it comes to November. This provides a major quandary to the moneymen. They don’t like candidates like Edwards. They prefer someone with a less mercurial voting base. And the Edwards campaign is broke right now. He needs a money infusion. Will the big-bucks guys be convinced by his much-stronger-than-expected second in the Badger State? He has no real chances between now and Super Tuesday to prove anything (the Idaho and Hawaii caucuses and the Utah primary are all that’s left between now and then; that’s two states with heavy GOP brainwashing centers and Hawaii, which is irrelevant in terms of delegates and votes). Edwards’ money problems will be the big story of the next two weeks, and it’s something to watch. If he can’t get the dough, it’s over on Super Tuesday, period.
But the big news to come out of Wisconsin is that Howard Dean is out. The party’s over for him. He departed the battlefield with a lot of good grace, though, telling his rabid fanbase to stay involved, especially on the issue of electability. Does this mean that Dean voters will flock to Kerry on that basis, will they head to Edwards’ camp under the anti-establishment banner, or will they cast votes for Dean as protests in states where he’s already on the ballot? It’ll be interesting to find this out, because it’ll be a gauge of the Demo electorate’s stance on electability and message. Did Dean tap into a deep vein of discontent that can be channeled by a winnable candidate? Or was his popularity simply on the basis that he was perceived as an outsider? That’s a question yet to be answered, but it might prove critical in what’s going to be another close election.
Edwards is already capitalizing on what Dean had established. He’s discussing the issues of concern to most voters, and I think the Junta will be surprised to learn that terrorism and the Threat Level aren’t on top. No, that would be the economy, stupid. Edwards appealed to blue-collar voters in Wisconsin by citing his anti-NAFTA stand, which is a relatively new wrinkle this year, but it’s an effective message in areas of the country where the generally negative economic impact of the Junta has manifested itself into manufacturing job losses. The economy’s going to be the major focus of this campaign, and Governor Racicot had better figure that out if his charge stands a chance. The Junta doesn’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to this issue, and they know it. The biggest way that Iraq will impact the campaign is economically, namely that twelve-figure bill that’s being run up in the name of Freedom chargable to the American taxpayers.
The only way Dubbaya and the Junta wins this one is if they can bullshit the American public yet again and refocus this campaign on the dubious accomplishments and on the War Against Terrorism. And the American public is showing resistance to being bullshitted. They’re toast.
COM ARTISTS
A lot of people were surprised last week when I didn’t mention anything about Comcast’s attempted acquisition of Disney in a hostile takeover, considering that I’ve given a lot of press in the past to both companies. Well, there are simple reasons for doing so. The first reason is that I don’t like Comcast and don’t like talking about them ever since I became a former customer of them last year. The mere thought of Comcast owning a major studio, broadcast network, and myriad cable properties makes me sick to my stomach. Best ignore it, I thought, since I knew what would happen next…
Namely, that the Disney board would reject the offer, which they did. Yes, it’s a hostile takeover attempt, but there are ways to defeat that. This isn’t the 80s, you know. There aren’t going to be banks falling over themselves loaning Comcast money to do this, especially to take over a company that’s in complete and utter turmoil right now like Disney is. So the chances of it happening are nil. So we’d best focus on the Mouse’s internal traumas, which are far more entertaining, although there’s some connection between them and the takeover attempt, running straight through the presence of a certain Reality Distortion Field. It’s rumoured that Comcast was being put up to this by a certain Steve Jobs, which wouldn’t surprise me at all. This, of course, puts me in a bit of a bind. I’m on Roy Disney’s side on this, as is known, and Jobs is aligned with Roy, which makes him tolerable to me in this instance. However, if his little whisperings were behind Comcast’s efforts…well, I’ll write it off as just another Steve Connivance. He’s one of the supreme connivers of our time. He might have thought that getting Comcast in there would be easier than the stockholders’ fight that’s coming up next month, or he may have done it as a distraction. Either way, it’s Jobs being Jobs, and he’s helped Disney’s stock price, which makes Fleabag happy to no end. So, no harm, no foul.
But now Andre the Giant is trying to pull off some PR countermeasures to the “loss” of Pixar (which ceases to become a loss if he’s ousted and Roy comes back as Chairman; a deal between the Mouse and the Lamp gets struck within five seconds of that happening). Disney announced that they’re buying the Jim Henson Company’s most marketable products. Yes, the Frog and the Pig now work for the Mouse. This is an incredible piece of ammo to fire at the dissident stockholders. Eisner can now stand up and say “Yeah, we may be losing Pixar after their next two films, but we’ve got the Muppets!” In one stroke, Eisner’s made up for the marketing bucks of Pixar with a long-term, proven profitable product that can be exploited in ways that most Disney characters can’t. Three generations of Americans (and people worldwide) have grown up with the Muppets. This is a money bucket for Disney, and it comes at the best possible time for him and his group of supporters.
This fight has just become a lot more interesting. But who can’t be entertained by a major-league business battle being fought by proxy through cartoon characters and puppets? It’s sorta like Iraq with theme parks.
COLORADO, THE WORLD RAPE CAPITAL
I’ve also been actively ignoring the whole University of Colorado football rape scandal. Let’s face it, compared to what happened at Baylor last year, where a cover-up to murder was taking place, this situation is almost business-as-usual. But that changed yesterday due to the accusations of Kelly Hnida, the former backup kicker for Colorado. The first woman to ever score in an NCAA Division I football game, now safely ensconced at New Mexico, stated publicly that one of her own teammates at Colorado raped her, and that she endured other elements of sexual harassment during practices. However, her position on the team meant so much to her that she didn’t come forward. She also said that the harassment (but not the rape) was known to the coaching staff, who did nothing to stop it because they wanted her off the team (the walk-on offer was made by the previous coaching staff).
So, is Sports Illustrated’s revelation believable? What did Gary Barnett know and when did he know it?
He knew about all the rape allegations, and he knew at the time. The guy runs a kinky program, period. Chicago sports fans knew it about this guy when he was at Northwestern. You don’t take a program from perpetual laughingstock to the Rose Bowl in a couple of years without going through the slime. There are substantive allegations that the same sort of recruiting “parties” went on in Evanston as later went on at Colorado. And the way he treated Hnida was reprehensible. Essentially, his attitude gave the green light to his charges that harassment would be considered as tolerable behavior with no negative consequences. Combine that with the recruiting “parties”, and rape was almost inevitable.
Barnett is a slimeball. We in Chicago knew that before he pissed off to Colorado, and we were happy to see him leave. Now it’s clear that he abrogated any responsibility over the behavior of a hundred or so hormone-addled teenage macho morons away from home for the first time and given cushy treatment. The kind of atmosphere that surrounds a football program at a major university encourages misbehavior, and the coach, who is assumed to be acting in loco parentis, needs to retain control over these kids in order to lessen the chance of misbehavior occurring. Barnett failed, dramatically, and now he’s given not only his university, but the whole sport of college football, a black eye it will take years to recover from. The source of the latest allegation, especially given that Hnida ended up giving up the game for a couple years and nearly had a nervous breakdown due to her horrid treatment, magnifies the fact that Barnett must not only resign, he must be blackballed from ever coaching again at this or any higher level.
Staying with sports…
MEMO TO GREG MADDUX
So, let me get this straight. You’ve just signed a three-year, $24M contract to return to a supposed team that plays in Chicago but isn’t the White Sox. Isn’t this the same team, with the same ownership, who drove you out of town eleven years ago by treating you like complete dirt during contract negotiations? Didn’t they do this following a year in which you won the Cy Young? Weren’t you relieved at having to leave town for Atlanta? And now you’re willingly coming back to end your career there?
Are you f*cking nuts?
Nostalgia has a very strong pull on people. I understand that. Yes, your time was over in Atlanta. Your old buddies are all gone, the team’s moving on and getting younger as they try to maintain their legacy, next season will be struggle there, etc. Your move is understandable. But back to Chicago? To willingly accept a paycheck from the Tribune Company, one of the biggest low-lifes in baseball ownership these days? The same people who dissed you out of town the first time and raised the ire of the fans (if a team that doesn’t exist can have any fans) in doing so? What’s in it for you other than money?
Is it ego? I can sort of understand a “bite the hand that feeds you” thing, giving the alleged fans a taste of what they missed over the last eleven years. You can show them up from the inside instead of having fans watch from the outside? Yes, revenge is a dish best served cold, and if this alleged team can win the World Series for the first time in ninety-six years with you as the number three starter, that dish would be at absolute zero. But you’re supposedly more mature than that.
Are you afraid that your legacy would be incomplete? Shit, Greg, you’re already in the Hall of Fame no matter what. And you’re going in as a Brave. You don’t need to tutor the two supposed young superstars the alleged team has. You could retire right now and stroll into Cooperstown in five years as one of the greatest pitchers in history. You don’t need to play schoolmarm. Or do you think that you can skip the HoF ceremony and go straight to godhood if this alleged team wins the World Series? Being a god myself, I can understand the attraction of this possibility. But, unlike me, you supposedly don’t have an ego the size of Andromeda. It isn’t like you.
So what are you getting out of this? I’d like to know. I’m hoping it’s some press for the home town. Those Noo Yawk faggots have been glomming it up since Monday.
YOU’RE A MORON: YES, YOU ARE WASTING YOUR BREATH
A late entry came in as I was starting to finish up Mailbag! that took the booby prize. This letter was sent to me, Wids, Ashish, and Gamble (that’s weird to begin with), and perfectly reflects the stupid attitude that a lot of newer readers to the site have and, unfortunately, think they need to express. So, Jonathan Bennett, let’s let you open your yap, shall we?
Dear 411mania People,
Why does it seem like most of your staff are either, Democrats, Liberals or Canadian?
You mean like Monroe and Anderson? And what exactly do you mean by some of our staff being “either”?
Unfortunately all of these are bad things in my opinion.
How exactly is being Canadian “bad”? Because they’re really Americans who won’t admit it or something? I’d really like to see your demented reasoning on how being Democrat, liberal, Canadian, or “either” is “bad”. We all need a good laugh.
Why do I get images of Mister Mackey floating around in my head when I read this?
However I also believe that everyone has the right to voice their own opinions.
Yes, and I’m graciously giving you the right to express your opinion, idiotic as it may be.
Is the bulk of 411mania.com a forum in which you sound off your liberal agenda?
Well, for me it is. And for Monroe, it’s a place for him to sound off on his neocon agenda. And for Gamble, the Magic Christian, it’s a place to sound off on whatever he wants to sound off on…why the hell did you CC this to Gamble, for God’s sake? Me, I understand, but Gamble?
It’s supposed to be an informative place where the web surfer (me) can obtain information on movies, video games, and most importantly, wrestling.
No, it’s a place where talented writers all gather to show their genius and jerk off like a bunch of spider monkeys to show dominance in the writing field. The fact that you are educated, informed, and entertained is secondary to that. Trust me on that issue.
Wrestling is the reason why you all are together on this website
Not since March of 2003, it isn’t. Or haven’t you been here that long? Probably not.
but too often writters ont his site forget about that in their first two to three paragraphs of their supposed wrestling oriented columns.
That’s what’s called a “teaser” in the business, bitch. It draws people into reading the rest of the column. Even in “pure wrestling” columns, it helps to lead people in through a different direction. Look at Nute’s column this week. He spends the first couple paragraphs talking about physics. I just wish he would have asked me for a little help in that area.
Just talk about wrestling and leave your other view for black.
And these days, I usually do. However, I received a bunch of mail over the weekend from people telling me they were looking forward to seeing what I had to say about Monroe’s latest and, since the challenge was addressed directly to me, I decided to put in my response in Tuesday’s column rather than today’s. If I hadn’t, there would have been dozens of people writing me to ask me why I didn’t do it.
Look, dumbass, I’ve been putting politics into my columns since November 2000. People actually expect it and enjoy it, and they tell me so, even the people from the other side of the aisle that I piss off. So I will continue to do it, even after Kerry wins in November and I start ejaculating like one of the aforementioned spider monkeys in a paroxsym of “I told you so”s and “Huzzah!”s.
Not that the reader’s opinion mattered to any of the writters before
“the writters”? Oh, God…
No, the readers’ opinions never mattered to me. That’s why YAM was born, and it’s been a big audience draw for over two years now. Readers LOVE to see me insult other readers, like I’m doing to you now.
so I doubt the writters will reply
If you wanted that reaction, you should have never CCed me. Or don’t you know about YAM? Imbecile.
but I know the website owners will reply.
No, they won’t. I know WidShish. They’re going to ignore you like the buboe that you are and let me handle it. That’s what they’ve always done to idiots like you.
Thanks for reading.
And go f*ck yourself.
MAILBAG!
Regular Cabbageboy316 gets the God Slot this week with a cautionary tale of woe and misery:
Oh, man are you ever right about the Windows Update stuff. I first got a computer in Dec. 2000. I had never owned one before, just typed papers at school and that sort of thing. Or used a typewriter, heh. Suffice to say that when I got the computer I didn’t know jack shit about what to do, how to protect myself, get updates, defrag the computer, etc. Suffice to say that after about 3 years my computer had so much junk on it (viruses, a messed up IE, and so on) that it wouldn’t hardly run. I called the Indian genius dudes at Compaq, and tried a System Retore, then a Startup Disk, nothing was working. Finally I ended up having to buy new Quick Restore CDs, since I lost my old ones while moving. Thankfully I salvaged my important files and stuff like that, since the Quick Restore wiped EVERYTHING off the computer back to its original factory state.
Suffice to say I now am using an antivirus program and checking for these Windows Updates.
Never, ever use a System Restore CD. If you have broadband, pirate a copy of Windows XP and get the key generator that’s not only been floating around forever, but which still works. Keep it aside, and if you have to reinstall, use that instead. And if you’re running Windows, dear God, use Windows Update to keep up with patches and use antivirus and antispyware tools. I beg you. It’ll keep you from having to do a reinstall in the first place and prevent this type of situation from happening.
Ken Murphy, one of those Canadians the YAM winner this week warned you about, asks for a lesson, and I’m happy to give it to him:
Ok, being from Canada I have always just watched your political system from afar, not really understanding the intricacies but thinking that I had a pretty good read on the basics. Like, what makes a Republican, what makes a Democrat, how they get elected, etc. I always equated the standard Republican as being the bible-belt conservative and the traditionalist. However just recently I learned that the Republican party began with Abraham Lincoln and that kind of threw me since the values one would associate with Abe do not exactly fit within the accepted ideaology of the modern Republican. My question is, how did the party evolve to the point where it is today, where someone like Abe Lincoln – generally regarded as one of if not the finest President your country ever had – would likely be thrown out of the party, assuming that he wouldn’t have been the model Democrat from day one to begin with (Or at least my modern understanding of the word Democrat).
Okay, a thumbnail, not very concise history of the American political system…how do I get stuck with doing shit like this?
The Democratic Party grew out of the traditions of Thomas Jefferson, who advocated a looser form of central government and a more elitist ruling class, which sounds an awful lot like the current Republicans. However, under Andrew Jackson, the party evolved into advocating greater central government power over the states, which included the establishment of a working, functional, and mandatory Bank of the United States. During that time, the “other” party was the Federalists, which had John Adams, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton as its key founding figures. They advocated a strong central government and monetary policy, but had started to become more conservative as time went on in order to combat the Jeffersonian Democrats’ usurpation of their policies. The Democrats, though, didn’t veer too far, advocating limits over how much power the central government should have over the states. As the Federalists transmogrified into the Whigs during Jackson’s presidency, they moved more to the right.
The Whigs’ conservativism eventually killed them in the early 1850s as factions more interested in their own agendas started breaking away to form splinter parties like the Know-Nothings, which advocated what would be considered today to be a racist policy regarding immigration. At the same time, the Democrats’ states-rights policies were causing them problems as the issue of slavery became more and more important and divisive. They couldn’t come out and say that slavery should be banned because they believed that it was the decision of each individual state to do so, and the Democrats were the dominant party in the South (as they would be until the 1980 election).
It was in the early 1850s that the progressive wing of the Whigs coalesced under a new political banner: the Republican Party. They advocated a strong central government with a relatively conservative outlook like the Whigs did, but also took the Abolitionists under their wings and officially came out against slavery. It was under this progressive platform that Abraham Lincoln was elected as the country’s first Republican president in 1860, only four years after the party ran in its first presidential election. In fact, until the 1930s, the “progressive” movements would all emerge from the Republican side of the fence (Teddy Roosevelt and Robert LaFollette being the primary examples). That would change.
World War I was a major watershed for the parties as they realigned themselves into new poles of opposition. Woodrow Wilson’s internationalist faction had taken control of the Democratic Party and ended a long Republican reign in 1912. They broke from Teddy Roosevelt’s dictum of “speak softly and carry a big stick” toward measures of what today would be called “collective security”. This eventually evolved into Wilson’s proposal after the war for the establishment of the League of Nations (which the US would not end up joining). In response, the Republican Party became the place for people who wanted the status quo ante bellum of isolation to gather, and the isolationists became the dominant factor in the Republican Party as the war ended. This faction combined with a pro-business faction that was a backlash to Roosevelt’s “trust-busting” attitude that migrated out of the Republican Party and into the Roosevelt/LaFollette Progressive Party.
In 1920, the Republicans put up a vacuous tool of isolationists and business interests named Warren Harding as their candidate for president. He was a looker as well, which the Republicans felt could help them win due to the fact that this was the first presidential election in which women could vote, and their thought was “handsome plus uninformed female population equals vote appeal”. Unfortunately, they were right. By that time, Roosevelt was dead and Wilson was dying, so their influence started to wane quickly. The US refused to join the League of Nations and business interests started to become paramount in Washington, which led not only to Calvin Coolidge’s famous statement “the business of America is business” but also to situations like the Teapot Dome scandal, which involved the Harding Administration selling off federal oil reserves under the table to its cronies, who bribed their way into favor. The isolationists would remain a powerful force in the Republican Party until the 1950s.
In the meantime, the Democrats became a place not only for internationalists, but also for the growing element of social democrats, who felt that Socialists and Communists were too far out of touch with what America really stood for. In order to carve out a firm footing on the left to oppose the Republicans’ rightist views, the Democrats became a party that looked out for the interests of people rather than business. At this point, the modern stereotype of the two parties took shape. Unfortunately, this didn’t appeal to the public during the growth of the 1920s. However, when the market crashed in 1929, the Democrats were ready. When Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932, he advocated an expansion of government to provide a social safety net for a poverty-stricken nation. This became the New Deal, and provided Republicans with ammunition for their cause of keeping government out of business. The Democrat-big government/Republican small-government division was now firmly entrenched.
When Europe went to war again in 1939, the Wilsonian wing of the Democrats proved they were still alive and well, and Roosevelt was a Wilsonian through and through. However, American public opinion was against becoming involved yet again in a European war, until Pearl Harbor. At that time, political matters were put aside for the duration. The Republicans, however, stayed busy. When collective security and internationalism became an issue again during the war, the Republicans divided into two camps: the old isolationists and the “it’s necessary, but we really don’t approve” moderate group. The moderates became the dominant faction in the Republican Party after Tom Dewey put up two good fights in 1944 and 1948 and Bob Taft was Eisenhowered out of the nomination in 1952. In the meantime, Roosevelt Democrats remained dominant in their party, and the liberal traditions handed down from them are still the dominant characteristic of the Democrats today.
The Republicans, however, were still undergoing an evolution. The intellectual wing of the party gravitated toward traditional conservativism, exemplified by Barry Goldwater. Knowing that isolationism was a lost cause in the modern world, they emphasized a more traditional slant, especially in the pro-business area. Despite Goldwater’s candidacy in 1964, however, the moderates were still in control and would be until another philosophical refocusing took place. It would be moderate Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller and Richard Nixon (who was moderate in everything except his anti-communist stance, and he even ended up moderating that in time) who would dominate this period of the party’s history.
In the 1970s, a new wing of the Republican Party began to coalesce. It combined Goldwater conservativism (with its anti-social program slant, solidified during Lyndon Johnson’s establishment of the Great Society in the mid-60s, and its focus on anti-communism) with a religious connotation and a pro-business/anti-tax theory on economics. The Democrats had moved so far to the left that they had alienated a good deal of their core constituency, especially in the South, where the civil rights movement had left a wound that turned a good number of traditional Democrats against the party. This combination appealed to those alienated Democrats and found its spokesman in Ronald Reagan. This so-called “neo-conservative” wing wasn’t powerful enough to take over the Republican Party in 1976, when Watergate had left it weakened, but successfully did so in 1980, to all our detriments. They abandoned the traditional Republican stance against deficit spending (as long as it was for military purposes) and concentrated on “message” politics, knowing that strong appeals to the public on emotional topics could overshadow any substantive discussion of the issues. In 1994, the takeover was complete, as the so-called Reagan Democrats became full-fledged Republicans.
In the meantime, though, a new generation had taken over the Democratic Party. They had seen how far the party had drifted to the left and became advocates of less government spending and more moderate views on social issues and economics. They were veterans of the last truly leftist Democratic campaign in 1972 and knew that this wasn’t the way to try to get some of those Reagan Democrats back in the fold. They found their standard-bearer in Bill Clinton, and he was able to put some of their philosophies into practice. The result was the greatest economic boom in American history and an actual balanced budget for the first time since the 1960s.
Yes, it doesn’t go into excessive detail, but it’s a good thumbnail sketch. Basically, what you have today is four separate factions within the two parties fighting for control. On the Republican side, you have the Goldwater conservatives like John McCain battling with the neocons like Dubbaya. On the Democratic side, you have the Clinton Democrats (of which I am one) like…well, Hitlary and John Kerry fighting it out with the old-style liberals like Barbara Boxer. The Democrats, though, know they have to put aside their differences to get control of the government back, so they tend to work together (they’re also working from an older, more solid common tradition). The true conservative faction of the Republicans are in no position to battle the neocons because they’ve been marginalized.
Hope that helps.
Brian Stuart made a case that the old WWE logo, which I discussed yesterday in Wrestling, was immune to World Wildlife Fund legal pressure because it was covered under the previous agreements between Vince and the Panda People prior to the relationship souring to the point where the wrestling organization was found liable in court. That’s probably true, but that wouldn’t have stopped the World Wildlife Fund from claiming abrogation of those previous agreements and going after the logo. It would have been in Vince’s best interests to protect his trademarks in ways other than simply assigning them to WWFE, which he knew at the time he wanted to take public, plus there was always a chance of a breach with the World Wildlife Fund that would have made it imperative to have some of his intellectual property not under the WWFE umbrella. And I agree with you on the issue of the World Wildlife Fund deserving to win. They made a solid case that Vince had gone beyond the agreements that they initially forged, and they deserved to win. At least Vince wasn’t as ridiculous as Michael Robertson when it came to renaming. Lin—s indeed.
A gentleman who just signed his name Ryan asks me something of greater importance:
After avoiding diagnosis for the better part of three years I finally got on medication for Type I Bipolar Disorder and am now currently about three months in on medication. Some days I feel it’s working but others it’s more so that it’s only slowing me down such that I can tell I’m getting manic before it can get really bad. I was just wondering how long you were on medication before you were able to (for lack of a better phrase) function?
Now, I don’t have Type I bipolar (better known by its pre-PC cognomen “manic-depression”), so my experience won’t correlate to yours. Type II bipolar, which I have, is a lot harder to diagnose and treat. It sounds like you’re on lithium carbonate, though, which can take months to start working effectively. Your brain has a lot to level out in comparison to mine (which actually makes it easier to treat, since you can perform more gross adjustments to brain chemistry), and it takes longer for the brain to adjust to its new chemical balance. It took about three months on Lamictal before I noticed a change, although other people noticed before I did. The point is to stay on your treatment. You will start to feel better, honestly.
Memo to Sean McIver: Thank you for that excerpt from Texas law about the governor’s ability and inability when it comes to executions. However, the fault here lies not with the use of reprieves, but with the atmosphere that Dubbaya created that allowed the Texas judiciary to start pronouncing death sentences like they were nothing more than traffic fines. And thank you for admitting that the attempted smear of Kerry vis-a-vis Jane Fonda was disgusting, even during The Year Of Pure Politics. Just another little piece of work from the Junta, just like the smears of McCain during South Carolina in 2000.
And staying on that subject, neocon tool Brad Totman tried to state that the Kerry/Fonda photo was real, and that Kerry admitted to it. No, what Kerry and Fonda have both said is that the two spoke at a few of the same rallies, and that they barely said a dozen words to each other in the process (and those rallies took place prior to Fonda going to Hanoi). The photo is a fake. Kerry, Fonda, and the photographer who took one of the photos all said so, and the photographer brought out the original to prove it. And unlike you, bitch, I was alive during the Vietnam protest era, so I do know what I’m talking about. Get your nose out of the neocons’ asses and look around at reality. Hell, even Monroe doesn’t support Dubbaya anymore.
Edward Gisske continues along the general Wisconsin theme:
Tommy Thompson is neither a liberal or an ex-cabinet member. What he can fairly be called is a grinning idiot, or as Tony Earl once famously called him “A hick lawyer from Elroy.” And then Tommy kicked his ass.
Well, he is an ex-Cabinet member. And he’s a winner when it comes to elections.
Tommy is one of the better retail politicians that I have seen. He also was a shameless corporate toady an pretty much in the pocket of the road builders.
He is still in DC, but we in Wisco-World live in fear that he will quit and come back to haunt us. It will be the downside of beating Bush. If that is the price, however, I can live with it.
Now, when I lived in Chicago, I liked Tommy as governor of the neighbors to the north. He reminded me a lot of the Republican Thompson that we Illinoians kept in the governor’s office in that he was pragmatic and didn’t let ideology get in the way. So I have no real problems with him per se. However, selling himself to the Junta to get SecTrans really made me wonder.
mdnav turns the conversation to the subject I covered last week in my slam against an ESPN idiot, hot dogs:
When Eric S. dives into a dog, what species does he choose? Sorry to put you on the spot but if I’m gonna continue eating these tubes of delight I wanna go with a Cadillac, not a Vega…
I don’t eat hot dogs. Remember, I know how they’re made. That being said, if I was buying hot dogs, I’d stick with a certified-kosher beef dog of your brand of choice (Best’s Kosher is pretty good if you can find it). You’re going to pay more, but they tend to have less crap in them, the only meat in there is beef, and they’re a little more mild due to the fact that they’re smoked in plastic casing (which might also help to alleviate any queasiness about having sheep intestines touch your sausage). In order to determine if something is kosher, look for a K with a circle or a U with a circle on the package. That means that it’s certified as being kosher by an actual rabbi. Stay away from Oscar Meyer; the f*ckers had a chance to hire me at their facility in Davenport and didn’t.
And, finally, a special shout-out to Chris Harris, who’s living in my former territory while I’m living in his, God help us both. That stretch of I-80 between Omaha and Des Moines is the worst. There’s nothing there. It’s a sad indictment when the best thing you can say about that road is that the rest stops are well-located, which really helped when I drove to Chicago for Christmas, because I had a case of the shits that day.
That is enough out of me this week. Read everyone here, blah blah blah, and I’ll see you next week. Download this as a file
