i don’t even think this qualifies as “beating a dead horse,” as
there’s little evidence the horse was ever alive in the first place to
BE beat to death.

i wonder if this is “mccain being mccain.” between his present
advisors being lost at sea and his own patented brand of fucking up,
it’s hard to tell.

i know what they’re trying to do, but i think in this economic climate
the sight of bill clinton will be comforting to many americans who’ll
remember that the last great economic moment they knew was under his
watch, which only benefits dems.

yay, dumbocracy!

sometimes on bright, sunny days when i’m high, i dream of having the level of political discourse in this country to acknowledge why iran is (and should be) more frightened of us than we are (or should be) of them.

sure, our military is stretched, as bilbo baggins said, “thin, like butter spread over too much bread,” but that was never the threat. far more threatening than cluster bombs are 17-year-old boys and girls getting hold of pirated tarantino dvds.

and with their president simultaneously seeking to maintain a strangehold on the import of western culture into his country while at the same time disingenuously admitting to steve inskeep he enjoys some western media, you can count on iran’s young populace to come as close to outlaws as they can without risking state-sponsored mutilation. (i’m assuming they don’t put angry scorpions on your eyes if you’re caught with a dvd of “the dark knight.”)

meanwhile, has the u.s. EVER experienced the “threat” of imported culture compromising our very way of life? even the exaggerated ties between labor and communism in the 20^th century pale in comparison to the opening of a single pizza hut in a muslim country.

the argument for intelligent design.

’nuff said.

pundits have noticed how the campaign in general and the candidates in particular have been sort of dwarfed by the bailouts. suddenly, all eyes are on the lame duck (if somewhat indirectly … you could easily argue it’s more on paulson and bukkake), and the blustering of both candidates seems tangential and impotent in the urgency of the matter and momentousness of the, um, moment.

and while this is certainly true in their capacity as candidates, they’re both fuckin’ senators! both yield tremendous power in their respective parties, and could have already blazed a “maverick” trail by kick-starting their presidential policies by injecting them through the current congress.

if it worked, the candidate/senator who pulled it would annihilate come nov. 4. of course, i don’t see either attempting this david blaine-esque trick, cos the converse would be a fucking unmitigated disaster. AND both are bristling at this bailout; for all we know, their positions could end up being similar.

senator larry craig, of the republican gay scandal club, sent out an email to constituents last week that despite california’s recent massive beef (gettit?) recall, we’re still better off getting our sausage domestically.

i honestly think there’s a point where irony can be so ironic that it really ceases to be ironic at all. i’ll file this one there.

thanks to destiny and lego king for passing this along.

it came out of a recent experience i had while giving blood, when i noticed that if you’re a man who has had sex with another man even just once since 1977, you are not allowed to donate blood. which, given the fact that most of the nation deals with a daily blood shortage, and the leaps and bounds in blood testing technology and reliability, seems really retarded.

so i poked around to find out why this is, and the result was published in 10zenmonkeys today.

meanwhile, in a total coincidence of timing, san jose state university announced that it’s suspending blood drives to protest the fda’s current anti-gay policy.

of course, blood centers aren’t happy about this, considering the perpetual state of crisis in local blood supplies, and as much as i obviously am trying to focus attention on the flawed policy, i’d have to agree this is pretty counterproductive.

especially since it hasn’t received much media coverage, which i’m sure was the whole point of making such a statement.

except this one.

maybe i’m wrong. i really hope i am. but even while mexico beat the u.s. in abolishing slavery, there was never a mexican rosa parks or mlk, so at this point they’re a few decades behind us as a society dealing with racial issues. and considering how retarded we still are about race in this country, that’s a pretty sad affair.

which could mean a boon for sex workers with frequent flier miles!

for obama supporters, yesterday’s super tuesday results weren’t exactly the new york giants-style shocker they were hoping it to be. and while i believe obama still has a good chance at being the democrat’s candidate in november, the opium dream that gripped his campaign’s most wildly optimistic reveals something that they’d better acknowledge before that big fall day (which, to wax poetic, ain’t so far away).

and that is – be careful of staking your hopes on the young’uns.

oh sure, they watch the corny black eyed peas will.i.am video endorsing obama (are they gonna replace fergie with scarlett johansson, who not only sings better but makes the dutchess look like an … um … ex-foil-clutching tweek smoker? okay, that was catty and unnecessary to the argument at hand … ). they even show up to the rallies.

and though the youth vote turnout for the bam’er looks pretty impressive in some states, i’m still very nervous about the tendency of 18-to-25-year olds to actually get their collective asses in the booth. sure, it looks like things are gonna be different this time – why shouldn’t young voters be more enthusiastic about someone who can toss off a contemporary cultural reference without looking like a complete douchebag? or identify with a guy who doesn’t look like the cryptkeeper?

but while they made an impact last night, if it was anywhere near as dramatic as obama’s carried-away staffers dreamed it could be based on the cultural buzz surrounding the campaign, we’d be having a completely different conversation about obama vs. clinton today.