This is the inaugural post since my decision to expand my blog beyond the scope of politics (which I will still talk about when the mood strikes me, I just find myself wanting to talk about other things too, ranging from music to gaming and the like…. I’ll save the framerate in WOTLK for a different time  however). Without further delay, let’s post.

I’ve been thinking about bands and their tendency towards getting softer as they progress, and in particular I was thinking about the band Live. I had my Ipod Touch on random, and White, Discussion came on and it reminded me that there was a time when Live didn’t just rock, they rocked hard. It’s not an essential part of aging to lose that part of your band, particularly since it was a relatively small portion of their total side. Listen to the aforementioned song or a song like Stage, and then compare them to what passes for a rocker on their second to most recent album (the relatively tame “Birds of Pray”), which is Bring the People Together, and there’s no comparison that one threatens to blow the top off of a room, and the other is a pleasent rocker. Bands don’t all do this, but bands who inhabit this sort of neo grunge area on the music spectrum tend to make this transition, and to often make it fairly quickly. Seven Mary Three did it in a couple albums, and are little more than an adult contemporary band now, and this seems to be the natural progression for the hardish rock band, but I don’t see why this is necessary. I can’t imagine that more time spent in this relatively crazy world mellows a person out, but I can’t come up with any sort of explanation either. This didn’t ultimately have much of a point, but it was something on my mind.

I hope to post a little more often and next week we’ll get my first impressions of 4e D&D. There might be a post about something random over the weekend, but mostly I just want to be organizing my thoughts more. I’ll see you over the weekend perhaps, but certianly after my first session in the new gaming group (4e has me very excited). I’m out.

It seems to me that we might well be witnessing the death of the Republican party as we know it. It might be a little premature, and I was at first reluctant to think anything of the way they’ve stumbled around since November, but it’s just not getting better. I think that the demise of the two party system as a whole would be a good thing (even though I identify with the Democratic party), so the Republican party’s entropy is fascinating to watch. It wouldn’t be good to just have the Democratic party either, so if one goes down, the other needs to be taken down. People can run for office based on their ideas and their records.

Maddow on Letterman.

The scandal (or whatever you want to call it) with AIG is really not a huge issue in and of itself. We gave them a lot of bailout money, and they are spending a relatively small amount of it on the current thing which is getting people pissed. They’ve been mismanaging the bailout money, but how could we be suprised about that? They’ve been mismanaging financial affairs for a good bit now, and the government needs to be more hands on with how the bailout money is being spent, not just in the case of AIG.

Looks like there’s a second stimulus bill in the works. Speculation is that the first won’t be enough to kick start the economy like people had hoped. I’d like to see some specifics, but it’s encouraging that while they tried with bill #1, they’re not just going to ride it out when economists say that the jobs created or saved are going to be 2.5 million instead of the 3.5 million that Obama had originally thought were going to be saved/created, but they’re going to try and take another crack at the issue at hand.

Brad Blakeman might be one of the most insufferable commentators I’ve ever seen.

Oh wait! There’s Tucker Carlson.

New Rules.

It turns out I have to get to work. See you soon.

Not everything Obama says gets me excited, but this does. Economic populism is always a way to my political heart (which is the primary reason I supported John Edwards way back when).

This does not surprise me at all, despite the cries from the far right that the media is liberal. Being a liberal I can say that with a couple of exceptions the media is not left leaning. Reality might well have a liberal bias, but news and election coverage certainly doesn’t on the large scale. Why is firefox flagging the word doesn’t as misspelled?

Bobby Jindal is getting crushed by even FOX news, which means I think we can call his speech a spectacular failure.

It’s nice to see Nanci Pelosi develop something resembling a spine, but I would have liked to have seen that when Bush was in office, instead of seeing both sides run out the clock.

This is a very interesting take on something cut from the stimulus bill. I think it’s a mistake to write the GOP off as dead, because they’re like a bad horror film villain in that they always seem to rise from their own ashes (which is nuts considering the extent to which they operate under a system of thought which could be charitably described as “fuck the poor”). I think they are making things difficult, but they manage to tap into peoples fears and prejudices to pull out elections that based on the issues they have no justice winning, while the Democratic party manages to squander opportunity more often than not.

Keith Olbermann link!

I think the next thing the terrorists should do is dye John Bolton’s mustache.

Maddow interviews Pelosi. Check it out here. As if I don’t spend enough time gushing about her, I will say again that the Rachel Maddow show is essential viewing.

I’m tired of the term liberal fascist, as it displays a complete lack of the modern definitions of either word, as modern liberalism and fascism are mutually exclusive ideologies to hold by an individual.

Daily Show clip!

John Kerry Oped. I still find myself wishing he was serving his second term right now.

This is very interesting.

That’s it for the moment. I’m out.

Look everyone! It’s a proper news post. It’s been 3 months since I’ve done one of these, and I miss it. But here’s to righting the ship.

Bush was a horrible president, but apparently he managed to piss Dick Cheney off near the end, and something has to be said for that.

It was nice to see a stimulus bill passed, even if it doesn’t necessarily take the best approach as far as building towards a repaired economy is concerned, because it means that we’re trying to do something, rather than bury our collective heads in the sand. This is a big deal, and I wish there had been more of a focus on job creation and less on throwing a relatively small amount of money at people who might enjoy said money, but almost no one is going to turn their lives around from it, while new jobs are more likely to have that sort of effect. I do like that the Republicans made a partisan fight out of this though. It allows Obama to say he tried to pass something most of the population is for in a bipartisan way, and maybe opens the door for just pushing stuff though by force.

Yay for public opposition of a bill before the details of said bill are even released.

We like Keith Olbermann a lot. Look here and then here.

Have fun with this link about crude oil and gas prices.

Wish I could say I didn’t see this coming.

This is a short one, as I have to get to work. I should be posting much more regularly now, particularly now that I live with my computer again.

This is a little off topic, as it pertains to the general topic of this blog, though in all fairness, people are talking about getting congress involved with the whole mess. At any rate, let’s talk steroids and baseball. First things first, congress should not be involved on any level. We have enough legitimate problems in this country that need addressed (health care, education, the economy, to name a few) without wasting the time of the people who make the laws and taking everyone’s focus away from matters which are more important than what boils down to entertainment. What’s next? A hearing on why NBC green lights crap sitcoms? 

I digress. The real reason I wanted to talk about this was to take the opportunity to rip the people who let this happen on their watch, and now are willing to pin the whole ordeal on the shoulders of a couple big names. Arod might have said things which are difficult to believe, but he did touch on something that is absolutely true, which is that the culture was such that people were using. MLB wasn’t trying to stop it, even a few years back when the single season home run records were being shattered by obvious users, because they were glad the fans were coming back after the shortened season took some momentum away from them on an economic level. When I see Bud Selig say pretty much anything on the subject I want to punch his empty head. His name should be synonymous with the steroid era more than any one player. He has no credibility, and he shouldn’t even still be the commissioner of baseball, because all of the blind eyes turned and the profiting off of the cheaters while pretending to be ignorant make the faux outrage extremely hard to swallow. Fire Bud, and move on from steroids for good, but get someone in there who wasn’t involved with baseball during the era of steroids or the following era of excuses and pin the blame.

I’m out.

Those of you who are regular readers of this site have probably noticed a few things about the typical format, being the link dump with commentary (you may have also noticed that I have been terrible at making my once a week goal for the post, we won’t get into why but you can expect me to start posting with more regularity soon), and I’m happy to keep up with the posts of that nature. Sometimes though I want to talk a little bit in depth about something on my mind, and this one has been brewing for a bit. These are going to be a good bit more random than the standard posts and this isn’t technecally the first time I’ve done one. However, I thought it would be best to title my standard posts the way I always have and have these concentrated blasts come as less of a suprise. I’m sure it was an unnecessary move, but here we go anyway.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of my original prefered candidate in the political arena since he admitted to the affair he had (the admission you’ll remember came over the summer). I’ve gone on record as saying that on a political level I couldn’t care less about who a person sleeps with and I stand by that. Obviously I think that on a personal level it was slimy, but I digress from my real point. I think Edwards is done with politics, at least electorial politics, and I think that’s a shame. His presence in the presidential primaries shifted the debate to a more populist location, even if he never really stood a chance without winning Iowa (his second place finish still shocked many, mostly supporters of Hillary I would wager), and the top tier candidates often followed his lead on domestic issues (health care being a chief example) which is why I believe Elizabeth Edwards didn’t say anything. She suspected (like his supporters) that he was the best chance to advance goals of that nature (health care, college for everyone, etc). His voice is a huge loss to the discussion of domestic issues, but I don’t see him making a comeback, or at least any time soon. If we compare his case to that of Bill Clinton we have one huge thing that made Clinton’s subsequent success possible and a couple of major things going against Edwards. Let’s talk about the advantage that Clinton had. He was a winner and already had ascended to the highest rank in the land (debatable I suppose, but let’s grant the premise for the moment) in a party which finds presidental politics to be something of a challenge, even when the climate was such as it was in 2004. But the reason Edwards is almost certianly not going to make a comeback lie in his wife. First, when he had the affair he was aware of the cancer, and somewhat related to that she is a much more sympathetic figure than Hillary Clinton was.

I’ve been thinking about that for a while and I wanted to post my thoughts. For now, I’m out.

So, that was an ass kicking. I’ve been meaning to get back on to talk election stuff, but real life happened and here I am the day after the election seeing that in all likelihood Obama will have won by 190 electoral votes when North Carolina and Missouri are official. Now troll your conservative friends myspaces and whatnot to see why many conservatives are what we refer to as low information voters. Having been a Democrat for a bit now, I’m a bit surprised we actually got out there and put him up by this much. The Democratic party is not usually a well oiled machine. Not having Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency is the most important part of having not elected McCain.

Amendment 48 got smacked down in Colorado, and a similar measure failed in the much more conservative North Dakota, which I think suggests that Roe v. Wade is here to stay. 

Sadly it’s looking like California is going to ban gay marriage again, which is a huge blow to seeing it anytime soon on a larger scale. How did we fall behind Spain on this issue, given their ties to the Catholic church?

Massachusetts decriminalized marijuana, which I think makes it the most liberal state on an official level.

I’m pulling for Al Franken, who is down by less than 400 votes at present time. We’ll see how it goes, but I’d like to see it.

I’ll probably post more later, but for now I’m out.

Let’s start by saying that a 3 AM text was in poor taste, particularly when you’re trying to win over the people you’re jabbing at (people who have to this point shown no signs of a sense of humor), though I don’t see it being a huge deal long term. Clinton will do what she needs to do at the convention, and that will do more to sway her voters than anything thus far. Moving on to the actual pick. Would Joe Biden have been my first pick? Not as such. I’m fairly left on the political scale, and I would have liked to see someone like Boxer, Kucinich, or even Lincoln Chafee (even though he was until recently a republican, and would have never been considered on any level, he’s a politician I’m rather fond of), but if we look for a moment at Barack Obama, he’s by no means a progressive. He’s slightly left of center, and his vp selection was going to reflect that. People I know seem to not like the Biden pick, but look at the rest of the short list. Bayh? He’s a fucking joke, and he makes both Obama and Biden look more left leaning by comparison. Kaine isn’t any better, though I suppose at least as a govenor he has some executive experience that would have given him a modest edge over Bayh. I think perhaps Biden was the pick all along, and the others were on the list to make the progressive base see Biden and rationalize him as the best choice (which given the options he was). He’ll be able to attack where Obama is more likely to say something entirely too thoughtful for most of the American voters. I think he’s a solid pick, not spectacular, but we weren’t going to get spectacular. Anyone who thought we were was kidding him or herself.

After months of saying so on this blog that virtually no one reads, Rachel Maddow is getting her own show. It’s dissapointing that Abrams is losing his, when we could have just as easily shifted David Gregory out of the lineup, but it seems decently likely that we’ll see Dan back on the air again at some point (perhaps once Race to the White House is no more).

The DNC is next week, and I hope to update a couple times during the week to post my thoughts, though I won’t actually be attending as far as I know now (which is dissapointing because I signed up to volunteer a good while back).

RIP Stephanie Tubbs Jones. I thought you were a bit daft, but you still were an admirably principled politician, and Washington needs more of those. Your presence will be missed on the hill.

Here’s something from Eugene Robinson, someone I’m always happy to see at MSNBC.

Andrew Sullivan poses an interesting question here.

McCain and the POW card.

And to end, here’s something from Arianna Huffington.

I’m out. Back in a few days (barring anything unexpected).

Not that there was any real question, but it has been determined that the Justice department has been politicized, and the blame was laid at the feet of one Alberto Gonzales. The woefully under qualified Monica Goodling (who got her education at praise Jesus university, or possibly Liberty university…) played a decently large role in this debacle, while Gonzales played more the role of the inattentive parent, I suppose.

This is one reason why I could never align myself with the current brand of Republicans. Oft times I find myself just as pissed off at my party as I am at the Repubs (see FISA) but in this instance I’m just glaring across the aisle.

This should come as little surprise to anyone who actually pays attention to the many McCain gaffes that get completely ignored by much of the mainstream media, but let’s have a look anyway. I’m tired of hearing the liberal media nonsense.

Harry Reid is showing the kind of spine and fiestyness that I have completely given up on his House counterpart ever displaying. Kudos to Reid though (I have to admit I wasn’t thrilled when he became the leader of the Senate Democrats, but he’s not so bad). Pelosi is fucking useless (though many have heard me echo that statement outside this blog).

I hate to even link something that has its reporting basis in the National Enquirer, but mostly I want you to look at the idiotic comments from people who are treating the Enquirer like it’s a source of actual news. I honestly am relatively unconcerned about the sex lives of people anyway, but in this instance, I don’t even see reason to believe it.

Olbermann and Rachel Maddow (give her a show already) discuss the White House feeding talking points to FOX news thing (as if that was any real surprise).

Ah, this takes me back.

Robert Novak hit someone with his car and then claimed he didn’t see them at any point (therein explaining why he just drove off). Even if he hadn’t done any of this, he’d still be a douche.

I’m not completely sure if I’m glad about this or not.

There are a good many reasons why I like Letterman a lot more than I like Leno, but the most recent is fantastic, and I would find it difficult to see sophisticated political discussion of this level on many news and commentary programs, much less coming from the empty suit who occupies the time slot at NBC.

Alright, as I have to get ready for work, I’m out.

I can honestly say that I’m completely surprised at the overreaction concerning the cover of the New Yorker depicting a militant Michelle Obama and a Muslim Barack Obama, for a very obvious reason. It was satire. I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t funny, but the day where people start bitching about satire (in this case mostly on my side) is not a good day. Don’t get me wrong, I support Barack Obama for president (by default, I’ve been considering paying to create t-shirts which say “Barack Obama”… We could do worse.”), and I do find it staggering that a) people think Barack Obama is a Muslim, b) that they at the very least think he was raised Muslim (both facts that he’s refuted), and c) that people actually think that his religion is important (I couldn’t care less whether a presidential candidate is Muslim, Christian, or even Morman… as a rational human, I vote on whether I think a person will do the best job. That’s it. This should be less of a contest to prove you’re closer to god, and more about simply crafting a vision with regards to how you’re planning to run the country). On an aside, while Barack Obama is clearly running a better campaign than did John Kerry, I’ve seen nothing to convince me that a hypothetical president Kerry wouldn’t have been better than a hypothetical president Obama (the only time of John Kerry’s life where he didn’t embrace the fact that he was a liberal/progressive was when he had Democratic strategists telling him to… that was a stupid decision, but Obama is more legitimately center than was Kerry, and we don’t need another Bill Clinton passing things like Welfare reform under the Democratic Party label… though Clinton wasn’t all bad, just not great either). I digress, and quite a bit. Anyway, do we really think the people who actually believe all of these perceived negatives and actual falsehoods about Obama are going to be more convinced by seeing the cover of the New Yorker? Liberals are becoming huge pussies, and this is often why we lose elections. Admit it’s satire and if it’s important to you, reaffirm the truth and move on with your life. Lots of people I normally agree with are giving this much more media exposure than it would have had if we had just treated it like it should have been treated (which is to say like satire). You think people care what the New Yorker is doing? I’m politically left and I don’t care what they’re doing. Jonathan Alter made a good point about our responsibility to low information voters. That being the case, shouldn’t we treat a joke like a joke and simply present the facts to them? Let’s try to steer the conversation back to things that might actually tell us something about the candidates.

I think it might be a good sign that Governor Schwarzenegger would apparently accept a job in an Obama cabinet, because it suggests that the RINOS might not just vote down a party line. I think we had Lincoln Chaffee a while ago, but when people like this who are left leaning on quite a few issues (Chaffee on a good many, including being more liberal than Obama on gay marriage for instance), than we might see the more moderate Republicans cross over as well. I don’t think Obama was the best candidate the Democrats fielded, but I do think he’s the best we can do now. If we’re ever going to create a system where the third parties have a chance, it’s sure as hell not happening this time. (Though Bob Barr’s insane ass presents an intriguing x-factor. I think liberals learned their lesson in 2000, but the evangelicals haven’t had this dilemma yet).

It was spectacular to watch the Governor of South Carolina (Mark Sanford) completely choke when asked to present a difference between the Bush economic policies of the last 8 years and McCain’s current economic strategy (though I use the term loosely). If you haven’t seen this, it’s fantastic. We know one guy who killed any real chances of being named McCain’s VP.

It’s not even new that Scarborough has been criticizing Bush, but having seen him on Bill Maher a good many times, he is certainly no darling to the left. Anyone would suggest otherwise is being lazy.

John Venrick on Sean Hannity: “Maybe you whine too much, you fucking douche.” I was a little surprised that even Newt called him on his shit though.

Enough has been said about Phil Graham’s comments that I will simply point out that they’re completely detached from reality and move on.

Rachel Maddow has been an excellent fill in for Olbermann, and I think it’s high time we get her a show following Abrams on MSNBC. I like Keith but we don’t need Countdown 3 times a night.

I can’t remember if I had posted since Obama’s FISA flipflop (in my opinion, his first which actually matters… I don’t give a shit about public financing right now, we can fix it when we’re not gutting the Constitution, here with the help of Obama), but read the parenthetical and now I have.

Sometimes I like to be reminded that Jesse Ventura is kind of insane. It’s not that he’s not running. It’s the reason he gave. Particularly the bit about surfing. Plus he’s for a flat tax, which I suppose is fantastic if you’re rich.

I know Andrew Sullivan was posting this because he liked what was said, but the fact that a good many people who aren’t religious won’t call religion on its shit when it’s fucking up the planet is what’s wrong with some atheists and agnostics and a good many left leaning religious folk. These people are providing cover for hate mongers and ignorant assholes, and we shouldn’t treat them to a different standard because they claim to believe fucked up things because it’s what their invisible man in the sky would want them to think.

No Obama didn’t win the Midwest by being progressive, he won it by being slightly left of center, which is where he is and where a large amount of the Midwest is too. I lived in the Midwest for a while, and progressive is certainly not the way I would describe much of it (Excluding your Columbus, Chicago and the like).

No Daily Show links this week. I’m out.

One more thing I forgot. Tony Snow often seemed like an arrogant buffoon, but at the same time, he was a guy who seemed not completely soul dead. Rest in peace (which is an odd thing coming from someone who pretty much doesn’t believe in an afterlife).