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The end, finally.

Short shrift today, folks. We’ve entered the last days of the school year, which mean more work for mother, and prac­ti­cally no work for the stu­dent in the house. Today is the safety/service pic­nic, and I’m a driver/chaperone/fruit salad con­trib­u­tor. Also, I worked a seven-hour news-farming shift last night, and I don’t want to see my key­board for another 12 hours. Dis­cuss what you like. I hear Hillary’s finally throw­ing in the towel, which is gra­cious of her because, you know, she could have taken it to the streets of Den­ver, and tear gas could have been involved. I’m think­ing what hap­pened to Hillary is what hap­pens to peo­ple who live in a human cocoon, sur­rounded by ass-kissers and pillow-plumpers who either a) spend all their time cov­er­ing their own; or b) telling you what you want to hear. When Sonny Cor­leone shouted at Tom Hagen that he wasn’t a wartime con­sigliere, he was speak­ing for every­body at the head of a los­ing team: Tell me the truth!

Too bad no one did. On to Novem­ber. Remem­ber, look past the fence.

Blog­gage:

Detroit should change its motto to “defin­ing new ways to be fucked up, every day” — some­one pried an 8-foot statue of Jesus from the cross on the side of a church, and I don’t think they were re-enacting the 13th sta­tion of the cross. Best guess for a motive is, the statue is green, and the thieves prob­a­bly thought it was cop­per. (It wasn’t.) Amer­ica, behold your future!

Sweet Juniper’s dad has the sec­ond kid in cloth dia­pers, and he was feel­ing a lit­tle smug about it. Was:

…Yes­ter­day I had the mis­for­tune of going down into the base­ment dur­ing the spin cycle of that ini­tial rinse. Our wash­ing machine emp­ties into a basin dur­ing the spin cycle. As desen­si­tized as I have become to all things scat­o­log­i­cal over the past few years, noth­ing — noth­ing — could have pre­pared me for what was puls­ing into the wash basin. Vom­it­ing out of the tube was this butterscotch-tinted gray liq­uid, quickly fill­ing the room with the humid per­fume of pick­led baby shit that had mar­i­nated in a brine of cold urine for a week. I watched it rise in the basin as the wash­ing machine spun. Just when the vile brew threat­ened to spill over the top it began to sub­side in a roar­ing, fecal Charyb­dis above the drain. I swear I heard the voices of demons or lost souls call­ing des­per­ately to me from the gur­gling ferment.

That man is a good writer.

When I lived in Indi­ana, and I was about to attend my first Indy 500, I went pranc­ing back to the sports depart­ment to pick up my press pass. Ooh, how excit­ing! The old geezer who cov­ered, I think, golf and some other bor­ing sport looked at me and shook his head sadly. He’d been to the race, he said. Once. He took his kids; they had great seats right on the main stretch. The race started, that thrilling moment when 33 cars go into that first turn like a flock of fighter jets fly­ing in tight for­ma­tion, and then this hap­pened on the sec­ond lap:

Right in front of the biggest part of the crowd, right in front of his kids. The old sports­writer bun­dled his hys­ter­i­cal chil­dren into the car while they were still clear­ing the track, drove back to Fort Wayne and never felt the need to attend Indiana’s sig­na­ture sport­ing event again. Those sit­ting close told sto­ries much like this:

I see a dri­ver being car­ried on a stretcher into the infield hos­pi­tal. I am close enough I could have reached out and touched him. He is burned so badly there is no way to tell who he is. The fig­ure is barely rec­og­niz­able as a human being. I have never been able to get that image erased from my memory.

This par­tic­u­lar writer is given to melan­choly and hand-wringing; maybe this is why.

Off to hunt up my melon baller. So I can ball some mel­ons. Shut your mouth. Back later.

Posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 9:00 am
in Current events, Detroit life, Same ol' same ol'.

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38 responses to
“The end, finally.”

  1. brian stouder said on June 5th, 2008 at 10:00 am

    The defacto end of the Demo­c­ra­tic party’s very com­pelling elec­toral phase of the nom­i­na­tion process is like that scene in Pat­ton, where George C Scott and the Russ­ian gen­eral embrace and exchange gritted-teeth toasts to Vic­tory, and to the (plainly fraught!) future. (we’ll leave it to oth­ers to decide who gets to be Pat­ton, and who gets to be the Red Army Field Marshall!)

    Off to hunt up my melon baller

    she lives in Sey­mour Indi­ana, yes?

  2. nancy said on June 5th, 2008 at 10:17 am

    Har har har.

  3. MarkH said on June 5th, 2008 at 10:32 am

    Wow, Nance, the Indy 500 entry sure came out of nowhere. My cousin worked in Ford PR at the time and was able to take his dad, my Uncle Ted, to that race, so they were in the pits and wit­nessed it all. Ted’s descrip­tion was har­row­ing as well. Worst crash in Indy his­tory and two things came out of it: the switch to methanol fuel, and reduced fuel capac­ity in the cars. Mac­Don­ald was car­ry­ing enough gaso­line for the whole race, almost 100 gal­lons. This is as good a descrip­tion as any of the inci­dent and all that led up to it:

    http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​D​a​v​e​_​M​a​c​Donald

    Mac­Don­ald was a bril­liant young road racer in his first 500 in a car no one else would drive.

  4. Danny said on June 5th, 2008 at 10:56 am

    Bring­ing one final thought for­ward from the last thread.

    Jeff, I’m not sure if you are famil­iar with Fer­nando Ortega, but he is an extremely tal­ented musi­cian, mainly piano with voice arrange­ments with some­times a cello or other soft accom­pa­ni­ment. Excel­lent orig­i­nal stuff and excel­lent arrange­ments of tra­di­tional hymns.

    Any­way, he’s play­ing at our church a few years back and tells a story of how grow­ing up, a friend of his could make any­thing sound like Bach. So this friend played a taste­ful arrange­ment of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” dur­ing the offer­ing. After­wards, a lit­tle, old lady asked him gush­ingly what that won­der­ful piece was called. Heheh.

    I remem­ber won­der­ing at the time if the “friend” was actu­ally Fernando.

  5. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 5th, 2008 at 11:12 am

    No, i hadn’t; on the other hand, i did see “Iron Man” yes­ter­day, and Robert Downey, Jr. took Tony Stark right off the comic pages into a great por­trayal. Good flick, odd end­ing (unless you con­sider it the close of Act I, pre­lude to Act II, which i will surely see).

    Hey, with more out of the blue tan­gents — i’m slowly read­ing (dur­ing son’s swim lessons) a Library of Amer­ica gem, the World War II writ­ings of A. J. Liebling.

    http://​www​.ama​zon​.com/​J​-​L​i​e​b​l​i​n​g​-​W​r​i​t​i​n​g​s​-​L​i​b​r​a​r​y​-​A​m​e​r​i​c​a​/​d​p​/​1​5​9​8​5​3​0​1​8​6​/​r​e​f​=​s​r​_​1​_​1​?​i​e​=​U​T​F​8​&​a​m​p​;​s​=​b​o​o​k​s​&​a​m​p​;​q​i​d​=​1​2​1​2​6​7​8​2​7​4​&​a​m​p;sr=8 – 1

    Wow. This is an eye-opening col­lec­tion, start­ing with a view of Paris and then fol­low­ing the retreat­ing (and ulti­mately sur­ren­der­ing) French gov­ern­ment from Hitler’s inva­sion of Poland to the first days of Vichy. This isn’t a joke or a side show — these devel­op­ments are why we have the Europe we do today.

    Each new sec­tion con­tains insights like that, deliv­ered in sharp, clever, even funny writ­ing, with dia­logue and char­ac­ter just jump­ing right into your head and set­ting up camp.

  6. John said on June 5th, 2008 at 11:22 am

    Fol­low­ing Bart’s prank of hav­ing church­go­ers sing the hymn “In the Gar­den of Eden” by “I. Ron Butterfly”…

    Simp­sons done-diddley-did it too!

  7. brian stouder said on June 5th, 2008 at 11:53 am

    Good flick, odd ending

    agreed (and for my money, Ms Pal­trow makes the movie worthwhile).

    I was dragged into it because the young folks wanted to see it, so my expec­ta­tions were low — and were there­fore vastly exceeded! (I was pon­der­ing the par­al­lels and dif­fer­ences between this super­hero and pre­vi­ous ones; Tony Starke’s end­ing pub­lic dec­la­ra­tion that “yeah, I’m Iron Man” was the most stark dif­fer­ence!! And the clas­sic flag-waving aspect was there, but with a def­i­nite, undu­lat­ing shadow)

  8. MichaelG said on June 5th, 2008 at 12:00 pm

    In sum­mer of 1965 they held a race in the park­ing lot of Can­dle­stick Park. I was right there when a dri­ver named Bart Mar­tin, dri­ving a Brab­ham sports racer, hit a power pole head on at speed. The live wire came down and torched the car. I don’t know if he died from the impact, elec­tro­cu­tion or the ensu­ing fire. I do know that the charred remains were not pretty. It was the worst thing I had seen to that point in my young life. Because of these and other acci­dents all forms of rac­ing are orders of mag­ni­tude safer than they used to be.

  9. BOSSY said on June 5th, 2008 at 1:56 pm

    Is it mean that Bossy is still laugh­ing over the part where you pro­vide the fruit salad? Bossy’s daugh­ter signed Bossy up for the same task.

  10. brian stouder said on June 5th, 2008 at 2:18 pm

    So, not to sound all “Seven Days in May”, or moon­batty, or wingnutty — but this story seems to be an aer­ial view over a deep, dark abyss

    http://​www​.msnbc​.msn​.com/​i​d​/​2​4​9​88491/

    some excerpts — (empha­sis added)

    “Top-level Pen­ta­gon offi­cials gave Mose­ley the option to resign or be fired dur­ing a meet­ing this morn­ing,” the Insid​eDe​fense​.com reported, quot­ing an uniden­ti­fied mil­i­tary official.

    and

    Other con­tro­ver­sies include the award­ing of a con­tract for the Air Force’s elite Thun­der­birds fly­ing group and the service’s mis­taken ship­ment of fuses for nuclear mis­siles to Tai­wan in 2006, said a con­gres­sional source, who had been informed about the mat­ter. “There has been a lack of account­abil­ity that raised con­cerns,” the source said.

    One assumes that the nuke fuses raised more con­cerns than the Thun­der­birds did!!

    and

    The Air Force has endured a num­ber of embar­rass­ing set­backs over the past year. In August, for instance, a B-52 bomber was mis­tak­enly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise mis­siles and flown across the coun­try. The pilot and crew were unaware they had nuclear arms aboard. The error was con­sid­ered so grave that Pres­i­dent Bush was quickly informed.

    What is this? What’s going on?

    It looks very “grave” indeed — even if you don’t wear a tin­foil hat every night. (Maybe this Michael Wynne is Jack D Ripper’s grand­son, or some such)

  11. Catherine said on June 5th, 2008 at 2:40 pm

    Noth­ing says end-of-the-school-year like balled mel­ons. I’ve made at least 4 fruit sal­ads in the last week.

    And while we’re on food — Nancy, I made your beans & rice last night, to rave reviews. 4 stars!

  12. Danny said on June 5th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

    What is this? What’s going on?

    I only know of one per­son who can sift through this data and give us a rea­soned analy­sis. As Jimmy Durante might have said, “Good­night, Mr. Cal­iban, wher­ever you are…”

  13. brian stouder said on June 5th, 2008 at 3:04 pm

    “Good­night, Mr. Cal­iban, wher­ever you are…”

    this reminds me of a movie I caught on Show­time — Bloody Mary — wherein the oblig­a­tory group of young cou­ples in a cabin get involved in the manda­tory drink­ing games, and then amidst the required sex­ual ten­sion, some­one makes the inevitable sug­ges­tion that they play a pre­dictably stu­pid game; where­upon a young fel­low goes into a dark bath­room and says some typ­i­cally stu­pid incan­ta­tion three times (“bloody Mary come to me” or some such) — and then things (includ­ing the sex­ual ten­sion) begin to fly to pieces in a hurry!!

    By way of sayin’, let sleep­ing Cal­ibans lay!!

  14. Danny said on June 5th, 2008 at 3:21 pm

    HAHAHA!

  15. brian stouder said on June 5th, 2008 at 3:38 pm

    speak­ing of rous­ing ghosts, the only quib­ble I have with the ter­ri­ble youtube video is that they label it the CART series. Really, the team own­er­ship group called CART (Cham­pi­onship Auto Rac­ing Teams) arose (in the late ’70’s, when I had hair!)almost lit­er­ally from the ashes of the hor­ren­dous com­pla­cency of USAC and other, older sanc­tion­ing bod­ies, with a heavy insis­tence on safety improve­ments, such as fuel cells and improved mono­co­ques and so on.

    Race fans my age and younger have got­ten used to rac­ing as some­thing other than what­ever it was, just a few years before. Rac­ers don’t die all the time any­more, and rarely get badly hurt; very dif­fer­ent from just a few decades ago.

    And as I sit here and write that, I’m reminded that my very favorite racer — a per­son­able fel­low that I had the ‘high honor and dis­tinct priv­i­lege to meet’ (in the pad­dock at Gate­way Race­way in St Louis), and whose hand I shook, was sud­denly killed, when he crashed at the then-new Cal­i­for­nia Speed­way at Fontana.

    I remem­ber being very dispir­ited for quite awhile; and my brother, who is only 10 years older, had a much more detached point of view. He’d seen all this many times more than me…it wasn’t stun­ning to him. (although he stopped going to the short, high­banked track at Win­ches­ter years ago; he’d just seen too much there, includ­ing in the stands)

  16. caliban said on June 5th, 2008 at 6:49 pm

    In the Sum­mer of ’68, it was down to Bobby if you weren’t some effete jack­ass that was Clean for Gene. If you had a brain, you were for Bobby. I don’t mean this cul­tur­ally, and I don’t mean that had some­thing to do with my genes.

    When Bobby was shot, I was stay­ing up late, watch­ing Cal­i­for­nia pri­mary elec­tion returns. I was mak­ing a pineap­ple upside down cake for an Eng­lish class cel­e­bra­tion with a weird char­ac­ter named Fr. Polakowski, SJ. My par­ents were out at some Mich. Dem fundraiser. I watched that faux-Brit twat Howard K. Smith say that the other net­works had declared Bobby the win­ner in CA, but that his recal­i­trant ass wasn’t throw­ing in the towel. Like he had an axe to grind and any­body cared what his pompous ass thought.

    Bobby was shot, and I couldn’t believe it, but I’d seen the same thing hap­pen to his brother Jack, and my whole fam­ily had watched spell­bound while Oswald was mur­dered on live TV. I woke up my brother, same as I’d done when Bob Bea­mon exceeded 29 feet. Chris had a Ten­nyson quote of Bobby poster over his bed.

    Our par­ents had been quin­tes­sen­tial Kennedy peo­ple since ’63. .Gorgeus mom that made her own style in the midst of Mem­phis Bevo-impersonators and was there every step of the way as my dad defied defied con­ven­tion and treated, well, black peo­ple, as peo­ple, and wasn’t above just bul­ly­ing when it came down to it.

    I sup­pose there’s some­thing like a Bush dynasty, but if any­body wants to put those war prof­i­teers, bail­ers and draft-dodging coke hos in the same breath as the Kennedy’s, I’d be obliged to kick their greedy, cow­ardly asses. It’s just so shabby and money-grubbing.

    I was on the Obama band­wagon after his ’04 con­ven­tion speech. You could look back to the day after the con­ven­tion on the DNC blog I said he was a can­di­date with no need of a sec­ond name. Maybe he’s not. NcCain is so purely Bush, it’s just not worth con­sid­er­ing. When Poppy got shot down, he left his two best friends to drown or get blown up. War Hero? McCain, shot down and incar­cer­ated? War hero? If you had been Viet­namese and he was rain­ing down death indis­crim­i­nately, would you have thought he was a war hero or a crim­i­nal? When W absconded to Alabama from the Tejas O Club, was he a hero? But ‘Bring it on” when some­body else got blown up or com­mit­ted sui­cide because it was too expen­sive to treat trau­matic stress dis­or­der. Piece of shit, most Lyn­nyrd fans would say.

    So he runs against a hero that is so much smarter, and braver, than his sorry ass is he can’t com­pre­hend. So he gets wackos from Nixons world to make up shit.

    And then. And then. It’s a done deal, and Kerry actu­ally beats this lit­tle scum­bag. But Ken­neth Black­well, the Secratary of State, bags Cuya­hoga County that is so Demo­c­rat his­tor­i­cally, and we have an idiot instead of a hero?

    It was robbed with­out a doubt. When Repub­li­cans rob votes, they attack African Amer­i­can vot­ers, by telling them they might be inves­ti­gated if they vote at all.

    In the last 20 years, there have been exactly 4 episodes of delib­er­ate lying at polls. This is like what Repub­li­cans say about wel­fare fraud. There isn’t any, you scumbags.

    There was a guy that made all this shit up. His name was Lee Atwa­ter. When he was dying from an inop­er­a­ble brain tumor, He said it was bullshit.

    What I do have to say: Pro­gres­sive. Kiss my ass. We invented this long before your beady eyes invented your­selves to make out like we didn’t under­stand issues. We under­stand issues. If you look at what the can­di­dates have said, the only place Obama comes close to get­ting an issue is when he pla­gia­rises from some hillary site. What’s he say about health care

    So I’m unde­sir­able. If you say so, could you coment on National Health Care? No you can’t Nei­ther can Obama. Asshole’s not Bobby by any stretch. How about global warm­ing. Obama got a clue? Spouts some lame imi­ta­tion of hillary. Not made up, moron. She knows what shes talk­ing about, you have no clue.

  17. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 5th, 2008 at 7:23 pm

    Wow, Cal­iban — the cheap shot on G.H.W. Bush is really, uh, Swift­boaty of you. I assume you’ll let folks spec­u­late on cir­cum­stances and moti­va­tions and chronolo­gies about Kerry’s ser­vice with­out objection.

    Look, McCain’s an oppor­tunist, Clin­ton is an amoral scram­bler up greasy poles, and Obama has flirted with neo-Marxism his entire adult life (and they’ve run to replace Bush-lite, who was born on third and thought he hit a triple). Let’s leave it all where Jesus flang it and debate what they pro­pose this coun­try do in for­eign pol­icy and domes­tic pro­grams. There’s room for plenty of heated, pas­sion­ate, very worth­while dis­agree­ment over how we should increase health care or deal with inter­na­tional aggres­sion, and i’m up for that.

    But fling­ing mud over LBJ’s Sil­ver Star, whether JFK was lost when PT 109 got run down by the Jap destroyer, or if Hyman Rick­over lit­er­ally gave Lt. (jg) Carter a pad­dling on the ward­room table — that’s not pol­i­tics, that’s soap opera. For that, i read Mar­vel Comics.

    And Poppy Bush is on the short list of actual heroes we’ve had in the White House, and he’s proof that being a hero does you no earthly good in gov­ern­ing a nation: so i’d drop the muck­whack­ery and let the man have his due, because it makes a bet­ter argu­ment against McCain than what­ever blither­ing point you thought you were making.

    I know, i know — don’t feed the trolls.

  18. basset said on June 5th, 2008 at 8:01 pm

    1968 was the sec­ond and last year for the tur­bine engine at Indi­anapo­lis. That being, if I remem­ber cor­rectly, a mod­i­fied Alli­son heli­copter engine… and Alli­son, right there in Indy, being a major defense con­trac­tor, mak­ing pow­er­plants for heli­copters used in Viet­nam… one tur­bine wreck­ing early and the other two going out late with the same prob­lem, a bro­ken fuel pump drive… it’s obvi­ous to any­one with a brain that the Dems had the fix in. Unde­sir­able, no you just can’t handl t truth, hillary was there somwhr. wak up sheeple.

  19. Dave K. said on June 5th, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    Thank you, Jeff.

  20. Dexter said on June 5th, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    effete what? C’mon now…if RFK had really been for the party, he would have joined forces with McCarthy right after the Ore­gon Pri­mary ‚McCarthy would have won Cal­i­for­nia and been the nom­i­nee. He would have been elected in Novem­ber, 1968.
    The war would have ended by sum­mer, 1969, and McCarthy would have kept after and improved LBJ’s social pro­grams.
    Nixon would be remem­bered for his Check­ers speech , and Bobby Kennedy would still be alive today.
    I was 18, out of high school and wait­ing for the draft, and work­ing in a fac­tory, and Gene McCarthy was my can­di­date, and RFK ruined it for him, and us.
    That is fact…but does not dimin­ish the tragedy that befell RFK.

  21. Dexter said on June 5th, 2008 at 8:28 pm

    I was lis­ten­ing to Fred Agabashian broad­cast­ing the race when Eddie Sachs died. Sachs death got more air­play than MacDonald’s, as I recall. Agabashian had a great radio voice, and knew his stuff, as he was a retired Indy dri­ver at the time.
    He died in 1989.
    TV is nice, but it was spe­cial all those years to have it on the radio, too.
    I never for­got the name, Eddie Sachs. This is the first time I ever saw a video of the death-crash. And Mac­Don­ald was pack­ing 100 gal­lons of fuel? wow…

  22. caliban said on June 5th, 2008 at 8:34 pm

    When Barack gave his stemwinder, I could have been the first onboard. I com­mented on the DNC Kick­ing Ass that this was a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date and only one name would be nec­es­sary. Like Bob.

    Crak­shaft needs to con­sider the Up Your Bung­hole Prostae Exam cav­ity search. I don’t mean to inject any­thing like seri­ous­ness (or, as a dis­dic­tional friend of mine in col­lege said, sort of to the point, Syr­i­anly; the guy once said all pan­don­ian was break­ing loose, and, when he asked me to edit a paper, I found he had lit­tered it with “for all inten­sive pur­poses”). but Richard Reid was a full-goose looney inca­pable of harm­ing any­body Syr­i­anly but himself.

    The Cuya­hoga Line truck­driver that was going to cut down the Brook­lyn Bridge cables (1000s of strands of wire wound into 29 or so 2 inch cables, wrapped around each other to make 39 – 1/2 inch sup­port cables) in broad day­light with an acety­lene torch. The Lib­erty City Des­per­a­does that were scam­ming a guid­ing light FBI plant they thought was Al Quaeda into try­ing to scam some Desert Storm boots, I-Pods
    and $50 grand.

    Don’t know about y’all, but when every lead­ing polit­i­cal car­toon­ist other than Ann Tel­naes runs some horse­shit about Hillary’s bunker men­tal­ity , and every one of them makes an ass of him­self, by mysogin­is­tic vitu­per­a­tion aimed at Phan­toms not wear­ing sttriped birth con­trol panties, maybe ole’ Crank’s got a point. It’s all a crock.

    I mean, might ter­riss (sorry, that’s the way Mr. Inter-Coke-aTur’s pup­pet says it) just be a, gasp, boogey­man? Like really black OJ and cafe-au-laity OJ, and Willie Horton

    In the mean­time, if Hillary Clin­ton points out that Lyn­don Johnson’s leg­endary vast incrim­i­nat­ing files were’nt ‘called in, there would have been no civil rights Act of 1965. that’s some­how like Nixon and the South­ern Strat­egy. And if Bill points out his wife knows more about health care in the USA, than any­body, that’s racist.?

    Don’t care now. Every impor­tant world gov­ern­ment (well every one is impor­tant, I mean the one’s that can do any­thing) has adopted the tac­tics of John Kerry, which ought to tell Mark Trail and Rex­Mor­gan and maybe Margo Magee, we hit these aholes in the bank account. Kerry did that to the Ray­gu­nistas and they had to shut down. They still sleazed by and man­aged to blight the coun­try and advance some per­verted Malthu­sian agenda based on the idea they were intel­lec­tu­ally supe­rior, and they got over on greedy preach­ers that never believed for a minute that ‘What­ever you do to the least of my broth­ers, you do it to me.’

    Can’t comics heroes be Christ fig­ures? Naah. The idea there’s some global strug­gle over right and wrong is just totally belied by Com­man­dant Mis­sion Accom­plished crawl­ing to kiss the shit-whiping hand of Saudis and admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials that know where Bin Laden is because they send him money at the drop box.

    So ass­holes steal Cuya­hoga County and the ulti­mate draft dodger (and I don’t see any­thing wrong with dodg­ing the draft.) I guess, nei­ther do the cham­pi­ons of the New Amer­i­can Cen­tury, that made it into an art-form.

    I doubt there was a racist com­po­nent to oppo­si­tion to Obama. I decided I sup­ported Clin­ton when Obama said repeat­edly, some­thing like: Her sup­port­ers will vote for her. I don’t know if mine will vote for her. Who was slag­ging party unity?

    Y’all have time to read their com­pet­ing platform-style state­ments about energy and health care. Obama’s vague, some­times he pla­gia­rizes, Clin­ton knows exactly what she’d try to do. Hillary’s ought to make the Demo­c­ra­tic Plat­form. She knows what she’s talk­ing about and he mostly is speak­ing in platitudes.

    Please tell me peo­ple that find daily news­pa­per car­toons divert­ing actu­ally care about pol­i­tics too. There’s a spec­tac­u­larly won­der­ful word for what Obama online has unleashed toward a good woman that just started out to ensure that every Amer­i­can get’s good health care. Vituperation.

    Did Obama attempt to coopt Hillary’s state­ments on health care and the envi­ron­ment? Yeah, he doesn’t know so much, she does, and what the hey. Are these the two issues that mean more in some ongo­ing econ­omy? Well Hillary knows that for a fact and Barack’s guessing

  23. coozledad said on June 5th, 2008 at 9:08 pm

    We just hit 97 degrees today, and we’re going to be around 100 this week­end. Some­times I do miss air con­di­tion­ing.
    Sorry I’m OT. Hav­ing trou­ble with synapses.

  24. beb said on June 5th, 2008 at 9:48 pm

    oozledad says:
    June 5th, 2008 at 9:08 pm

    We just hit 97 degrees today, and we’re going to be around 100 this week­end. Some­times I do miss air con­di­tion­ing.
    Sorry I’m OT. Hav­ing trou­ble with synapses.

    After Cali­iban, you’re a breath of cool air.

  25. brian stouder said on June 5th, 2008 at 10:28 pm

    I blame Danny; he kicked the dang dawg!

    I will agree that the overt sex­ism Hillary got hit with exceeded the overt racism that Obama got hit with.

    For exam­ple, just the other day Pam told me she saw a bumper­sticker, that said some­thing like “Life’s a bitch; so why would you VOTE for one?” This gave her seri­ous pause; if a sen­ti­ment like that is accept­able to even 10% of the Amer­i­can pub­lic, what chance did Hillary ever really have?

    But it’s water under the bridge, now. Cal­iban (et al) will have 5 months to chill out, before decid­ing whether to vote for Barack Obama, or else acqui­esce in the defacto exten­sion of the Bush administration

  26. basset said on June 5th, 2008 at 11:34 pm

    the “old geezer” in the sports depart­ment was prob­a­bly not the same Terry Doran who worked for the Bea­t­les and was allegedly the “man from the motor trade” in “She’s Leav­ing Home.” Just guess­ing on that, I could be wrong.

    mean­while, back to the oblig­a­tory topic:

    second-best t-shirt I’ve seen in awhile had on it… let me see if I can describe it properly…

    let­ter I, a heart, pic­ture of Hillary, pic­ture of a tree, musi­cal note.

    and under­neath… “I love coun­try music.”

  27. Catherine said on June 5th, 2008 at 11:48 pm

    Brian, I think you hit the nail on the prover­bial head. One les­son I’ve learned from this pri­mary is that it’s not OK to be overtly racist any­more; how­ever overt sex­ism is pretty much fine.

    The ques­tion we’ll be grap­pling with now is: How much covert racism exists, and how will it affect the num­bers in Novem­ber? I hope I don’t have another les­son com­ing. What do you all think? Overt sex­ism vs. covert racism: which is more preva­lent? Which is worse?

  28. Terry WAlter said on June 6th, 2008 at 12:25 am

    When A.J. Foyt started dri­ving, he decided not to get too close to the other dri­vers; lost too many friends. Seems he kept it up for the long haul. I remem­ber sev­eral years ago when Rob­bie Gor­don was dri­ving for Foyt. He crashed at Indy, prob­a­bly not for the first time. A reporter came up & asked him if he was hurt. The reply “Not yet”.

  29. Dexter said on June 6th, 2008 at 2:18 am

    Hey, I only watch a net­work show if I am tipped off by some­one I trust that it is a smash, or at least inter­est­ing.
    Craig Fer­gu­son men­tioned a show called “Swingtown”…said he will watch it…I guess it is on CBS…anybody got a thumbs up or thumbs down?
    Fer­gu­son rules…he cracks me up every night.

  30. Jolene said on June 6th, 2008 at 2:48 am

    One of the elec­tion fea­tures on the WaPo web site is a sort of polit­i­cal advice col­umn called “Stumped”. Today’s col­umn has to do with the issue of sex­ism in the just-concluded Dem pri­mary. You might want to check it out.

    Cather­ine, the sex­ism vs. racism ques­tion is so com­pli­cated that I get tired just think­ing about it. Am going to try to fig­ure out what it is I think I want to say. If I suc­ceed, I’ll let you know!

  31. moe99 said on June 6th, 2008 at 3:37 am

    Ok, ok. I hate to weigh in with the wingnut side on this but I will say that there was an attor­ney in Seat­tle, named part­ner in a mid sized firm, still had his mil­i­tary crew cut in the ‘80s. Rock ribbed Repub­li­can in a city that has very few, and unashamedly so. How­ever, he said that he would never vote for GHWB. Rea­son being he flew the same plane in WW2 that GHWB flew and he said that it was con­fig­ured such that if the pilot ejected it opened the hatch and impris­oned the gun­ner sit­ting behind him. So the drill was the guy in the back ejected first. GHWB lost his nerve and popped out w/o giv­ing his part­ner the first chance, thereby con­sign­ing him to his death. I dunno. The attor­ney was a real straight shooter and highly respected in the legal pro­fes­sion. He was not a tin foil hat kind of guy at all.

  32. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 6th, 2008 at 8:16 am

    Moe, i appre­ci­ate the way you frame the story you heard, and hey, the inter­net is all about sto­ries we’ve heard that wouldn’t make it onto the front page, so that’s fair.

    What i’m not up for is lead­ing the search party for truth so far into the weeds we all get lost. I’ve read enough on both sides to say that John Kerry prob­a­bly made some mis­takes dur­ing his time in ser­vice, and how he described his ser­vice, but there’s not enough there for it to be worth over­rid­ing the con­ver­sa­tion about what Kerry wanted to do this year. It’s beyond doubt that Bush-lite got a lit­tle help, even if no one asked for it, from folks want­ing to be nice to the fam­ily, get­ting into his ANG unit — as did Quayle, but instead of the safety Quayle and Robert­son found behind full metal type­writ­ers, Bush-Dubya got into a crappy fighter jet … prob­a­bly because he needed to prove some­thing to Daddy-Poppy.

    Like all of us haven’t done stu­pid things to prove our­selves while doing self­ish things to pro­tect our­selves, espe­cially in our twenties.

    And Obama has shown amaz­ing focus and dis­ci­pline get­ting into the polit­i­cal game and knock­ing off oppo­nents with a fair degree of ruth­less­ness — exactly what James Madi­son said we’d be cre­at­ing with the polit­i­cal sys­tem they cooked up at the Con­sti­tu­tional Con­ven­tion, so we needed to hedge such strivers around with checks and bal­ances, to blunt the edge of pop­u­lar pas­sions (see the South Sea Bub­ble and the Tulip Craze for what made the Framers tick). The Elec­toral Col­lege, the Sher­man Com­pro­mise (yeah, slav­ery was in there too, but that’s not the whole argu­ment), bal­ance of pow­ers between the branches — they’re all built into the sys­tem because an elec­toral rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­racy will draw peo­ple run­ning for office like the can­di­dates we’ve got.

    Once we’ve con­firmed they aren’t unin­dicted felons or delu­sional psy­chotics, i say let’s look at what they pro­pose and dis­pute heat­edly about that. And i say again, hero­ism doesn’t make good pres­i­dents, so Bush Sr. could have choked and McCain could have cracked under pres­sure, Obama may be an oppor­tunist more than altru­ist and Kerry may be a com­pul­sive exag­ger­a­tor. So what.

    Just read Liebling’s “Run, Run, Run, Run,” and i’m in the mood to give the ben­e­fit of the doubt to Bush on that canopy. If some­one who flew along­side of him feels dif­fer­ently, that’s their call, and i respect that, but it doesn’t help me make polit­i­cal decisions.

  33. brian stouder said on June 6th, 2008 at 9:00 am

    Jolene — thanks for the link to the inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion of sexism/nepotism.

    I think it is very easy to mis­un­der­es­ti­mate and/or over­look just how badly hand­i­capped Hillary Clin­ton was, by her last name. As the arti­cle says, her cam­paign began by heav­ily empha­siz­ing EXPERIENCE and depth of under­stand­ing (such as only an “insider” would have)…

    and 20:20 hind­sight now tells us that this was a doomed effort, in a heav­ily CHANGE-oriented year, wherein the con­test is for an office already held by the scion of another president!

    Hillary defined her­self as the estab­lish­ment can­di­date, and suc­ceeded in that effort — 

    The End.

  34. Danny said on June 6th, 2008 at 10:13 am

    …Oh, no. What have a wrought!

    {chuckle}

  35. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 6th, 2008 at 10:16 am

    One more, and i promise i’ll drop it — http://​www​.maam​.org/​f​l​i​g​h​t​s​i​m​/​n​e​w​s​/​t​b​m​_​h​i​s​t​o​ry.htm (scroll down past the refur­bish­ment story to the Lt. Bush story)

    58 com­bat car­rier take­offs, 56 land­ings, with the inci­dent at ChiChi Jima in the mid­dle (not long after the forced ditch­ing where all three aboard were res­cued). I just have trou­ble call­ing that guy a cow­ard and a friend-killer based on what we know. So let’s argue his pol­i­tics, where you can call me an idiot and i’ll often smile and agree.

  36. Your Girl in London: The American primaries « said on June 6th, 2008 at 6:00 pm

    […] I cruised the Web, I found myself nod­ding at what media blog­ger Nancy Nall said in her sum­mary of the cam­paign: I’m think­ing what hap­pened to Hillary is what hap­pens to peo­ple who live in a […]

  37. Dave said on June 7th, 2008 at 5:13 pm

    Terry Doran is a Fort Wayne local, not the Bea­t­les asso­ciate, I’m sure he wasn’t the old geezer sports­writer Nancy refers to, either. Don’t think he’d be old enough.

  38. basset said on June 8th, 2008 at 12:25 am

    »Terry Doran is a Fort Wayne local, not the Bea­t­les associate

    ya think? really?

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