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Dumb and dumbererer.

Joe the Plumber shows his crack:

“I’ll be hon­est with you. I don’t think jour­nal­ists should be any­where allowed war. I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what’s hap­pen­ing day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I-I think it’s asi­nine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you’d go to the the­ater and you’d see your troops on, you know, the screen and every­one would be real excited and happy for’em. Now everyone’s got an opin­ion and wants to downer – and down sol­diers. You know, Amer­i­can sol­diers or Israeli sol­diers. I think media should be abol­ished from, uh, you know, report­ing. You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, ‘Well look at this atroc­ity,’ well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no busi­ness in it.”

Sarah Palin makes moose jerky:

“I did see that Tina Fey was named enter­tainer of the year and Katie Couric’s rat­ings have risen. And I know that a lot of peo­ple are cap­i­tal­iz­ing on, oh I don’t know, per­haps some exploit­ing that was done via me, my fam­ily, my admin­is­tra­tion. That’s a lit­tle bit per­plex­ing, but it also says a great deal about our society.”

I know peo­ple fre­quently fall apart when a micro­phone is on. I know not every­one is glib and pol­ished and can reel off coher­ent sen­tences with subject-verb agree­ment at the drop of a hat. I know the rest of the world hears peo­ple like Palin and Plumber and thinks, “why, they’re just like me” and that any­one who would say oth­er­wise is an elit­ist. OK. I’m an elit­ist. I’m old-fashioned enough to think the abil­ity to express your­self clearly, on the page and in spo­ken words, is a basic skill every­one should have. But how is it pos­si­ble that an adult who doesn’t have a gym mem­ber­ship is seen as lazy and unse­ri­ous, but an adult who hasn’t read a book in the past year is sim­ply busy and hard-working?

Palin is one of those pub­lic speak­ers who thinks extra syl­la­bles = extra smart. I know that a lot of peo­ple are cap­i­tal­iz­ing on, oh I don’t know, per­haps some exploit­ing that was done via me, my fam­ily, my admin­is­tra­tion. Remem­ber the “use fewer words” res­o­lu­tion? Let’s see if we can boil this down, eh? [Car­toon device low­ers over sen­tence, lights flash, smoke puffs. Device lifts.] “I was exploited.” See how easy?

Joe we can’t help. He’s just a moron.

Much work to do today — start­ing with shov­el­ing snow, quel sur­prise — and not enough time to do it. So just a bit of bloggage:

Via Defamer, “Mar­ley & Me” spoil­ers for those dim enough to not have fig­ured out the ending.

After the Golden Globes I keep hear­ing that Mickey Rourke’s face is the result of his ill-starred box­ing career. You know: He earned that face in the ring. Oh, I don’t think so. This man is a plas­tic surgery addict.

Hey, Cal­i­for­nia! Join the club! Love, Michigan.

Off to fire up the snow­blower. Today’s pre­dicted tem­per­a­ture drop: 25 degrees. Groan.

Posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 9:42 am
in Current events, Movies.

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53 responses to
“Dumb and dumbererer.”

  1. Connie said on January 13th, 2009 at 10:02 am

    Worst part of my job: being the per­son who calls a snow day. When the fore­casts pre­dict bad weather, the staff starts ask­ing: “Can we have a snow day tomor­row? Can we? Can we please?”

    And there I sit in my lit­tle rural sub­di­vi­sion, where the streets rarely get plowed before 4 p.m., try­ing to decide.

    I love snow days, always a great day for bak­ing bread. But much as I would like to, I don’t call them for my own benefit.

    Fore­casts for the next sev­eral days just show it get­ting worse and worse, includ­ing words like bliz­zard warn­ing and below zero.

    Maybe we should all stay home.

  2. coozledad said on January 13th, 2009 at 10:16 am

    Not to worry. Tito the builder is head­ing over to Gaza, to“get Joe the Plumber’s back”. Why don’t they just throw in Paulie Shore, Car­rot Top, and Gal­lagher to show Pales­tini­ans what America’s all about.
    http://​whiskey​fire​.type​pad​.com/​w​h​i​s​k​e​y​_​f​i​r​e​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​1​/​b​r​e​a​k​i​n​g​-​t​i​t​o​-​t​h​e​-​b​u​i​l​d​e​r​-​t​o​-​v​o​l​u​n​t​e​e​r​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​i​s​r​a​e​l​i​-​d​e​f​e​n​s​e​-​f​o​r​c​e​s.html

  3. Jeff Borden said on January 13th, 2009 at 10:28 am

    Cooz,
    Don’t for­get Paris Hilton, Kim Kar­dashian and Denise Richard­son. Untal­ented women need work, too.

  4. coozledad said on January 13th, 2009 at 10:36 am

    Jeff: It couldn’t hurt. If they throw in John Cornyn they’re well on their way to a kind of Vil­lage Peo­ple of dumbassery.

  5. Jen said on January 13th, 2009 at 10:39 am

    Many of my friends work in school sys­tems, and they love to whine when they think they’re going to get a snow day (or at least at two-hour delay) and then they have to go to school after all. Mean­while, I’m creep­ing my way into work at 6:30 a.m. come hell or high water (or a bliz­zard, which we are sup­posed to get tomor­row). It’s really, really hard to muster sym­pa­thy for their plight: hav­ing to go to work and do their job when the weather is less than ideal.

  6. Gasman said on January 13th, 2009 at 10:40 am

    Every politi­cian who spends every wak­ing hour in front of micro­phones is going to make at least an occa­sional ver­bal gaffe. All that emerges from Palin’s mouth are ver­bal gaffes. She has not said any­thing sen­si­ble since erupt­ing, pustule-like, onto the national scene. I used to think that she was merely intel­lec­tu­ally lazy. How­ever, with her unend­ing bar­rages of ver­bal idiocy I am con­vinced that she is con­gen­i­tally stupid.

    It is quite clear that Alaskans set the pro­fes­sional, eth­i­cal, and intel­lec­tual bars very low for their elected offi­cials and merely attain­ing one of these offices should not be viewed as qual­i­fi­ca­tion for a posi­tion of national promi­nence. It is also equally clear that Palin’s rise to her exalted posi­tion is due to the sin­gle arrow in her quiver: her “Aw shucks” rou­tine which com­prises folksy winks and nods to the ladies and flirt­ing with the men. The woman is a moron.

    For those few Palin­ites amongst us, please, please, PLEASE make her your choice for the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee of the Repub­li­can Party in 2012! I will con­tribute to her cam­paign. The Rs have finally found some­one of their own that is W’s intel­lec­tual equal.

  7. del said on January 13th, 2009 at 11:13 am

    Palin’s great­est tal­ent is her wink and smile. Which reminds me of the best cap­tion in the Mickey Rourke slideshow — beneath a photo of him wink­ing: “Don’t wink, Mickey Rourke.”

  8. moe99 said on January 13th, 2009 at 11:33 am

    The best part of ama​zon​.com is the cus­tomer reviews:

    http://​tinyurl​.com/​5f8g6o

    and before we get car­ried away about who’s worse, JTP or Palin, don’t for­get they have learned at the feet of the Mas­ter:
    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​monthly​.com/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​s​/​i​n​d​i​v​i​d​u​a​l​/​2​0​0​9​_​0​1​/​0​1​6​3​93.php

  9. Rana said on January 13th, 2009 at 11:54 am

    Jen, it works the other way too. I finally fig­ured out why so much of the coun­try thinks that Cal­i­for­nia is the land of flakes when I expe­ri­enced my first sunny day in Min­nesota after a long win­ter. Every­one blew off work and played hooky. Ohhhh, I thought. They think that it’s like this every day in Cal­i­for­nia. Nope. If you think that a sunny day is enough to jus­tify tak­ing off from work, you’re going to get fired.

    Nor­mally I don’t like spoil­ers — I even tend to hate trail­ers (espe­cially the ones that excerpt all the good bits) — but I’m sourly amused by this one, because I’ve hated the whole “Mar­ley” thing since the book came out. The thought of watch­ing a large, poorly dis­ci­plined ani­mal mis­be­have and wreak havoc on inno­cent bystanders while sit­ting in an audi­ence of peo­ple who find this “cute” and “adorable” makes my hair curl. Maybe now that it’s “spoiled” it will die the death it needs to.

  10. Colleen said on January 13th, 2009 at 12:59 pm

    Why is any­one lis­ten­ing to any­thing Joe the Plumber has to say? Really.

  11. Rana said on January 13th, 2009 at 1:05 pm

    I think it’s one of those self-replicating loops. He’s on tv, so he must have some­thing to say, and since he must have some­thing to say, let’s put him on tv.

  12. The Quiet One said on January 13th, 2009 at 1:22 pm

    Maybe JtP can star in a reverse “Dirty Jobs”. After all, being a sur­geon can’t be harder than butcher­ing a deer. And den­tists use drills just like Joe’s Black and Decker. We can see how com­pe­tent a wingnut thinks Joe is when he vol­un­teers to have him take out his appendix.

  13. Gasman said on January 13th, 2009 at 1:26 pm

    Can some­body please explain why the hell Joe the Hope­lessly Clue­less Plumber is in Israel? What f*%&ing moron would buy his plane ticket in order to inject him into that sit­u­a­tion? Is there any human with so lit­tle intel­li­gence lurk­ing our fair planet that believes, even in a moment of nar­cotic induced delu­sion, that JTHCP could pos­si­bly, even remotely, have any­thing of any import to say on this — or any other subject!?!?!?!?!?

    “Peace between the Pales­tini­ans and Israel has been elu­sive enough to stymy our intel­lec­tual elites. Even Nobel Lau­re­ates have been unable to solve this one. Hmmm. It’s time to bring the men­tal and moral big guns to bear on this one. Let’s send Joe the Plumber.”

    Who’s to be next in the pan­theon of inef­fec­tual Middle-East com­men­ta­tors? Why not Mr. Whip­ple? How about Mitch Albom? Do I hear a call for Charles Barkley? “Pag­ing Paula Abdul to the UN Secu­rity Coun­cil. Pag­ing Ms. Abdul to the UN Secu­rity Coun­cil.”

    Hell, if we really want to get right down to the most inane, use­less, and infu­ri­at­ing bab­blings on the sub­ject, let’s just send Palin.

  14. mark said on January 13th, 2009 at 1:29 pm

    And dumb­est?

    “Um, this is a fairly unique moment both in our, you know, our country’s his­tory, and, and in, in, you know, my own life, and um, you know, we are fac­ing, you know, unbe­liev­able chal­lenges, our econ­omy, you know, health­care, peo­ple are los­ing their jobs here in New York obvi­ously um, arh, you know…”

    Gee, this game is fun. And easy to play.

    I noticed that today’s scripted man-in-the-Iranian-street demon­stra­tion fea­tured the burn­ing of very large pic­tures of pres­i­dent elect Obama. The aya­tol­lahs need a good PR man. Keep burn­ing pic­tures of Bush and some here will keep ignor­ing the gen­eral thug­gery of the regime and its spe­cific sins, chalk­ing it up as inevitable reac­tion to the evil George Bush. Screw with Obams in effigy and we might have to con­sider the pos­si­bil­ity the Iran­ian regime is malevolent.

  15. Catherine said on January 13th, 2009 at 1:39 pm

    Well, the Cal­i­forn­ian in that arti­cle is leav­ing Nipomo, which after all is California’s answer to, I don’t know, some­place with lots of oil wells, trailer parks and domes­tic violence.

  16. Peter said on January 13th, 2009 at 1:54 pm

    Joe the Plumber is in Isreal? Haven’t the Jews suf­fered enough?

  17. alex said on January 13th, 2009 at 1:59 pm

    Gee, this game is fun. And easy to play.

    Yes, mark, even you could be a war cor­re­spon­dent in Gaza.

  18. Connie said on January 13th, 2009 at 2:09 pm

    I believe Joetp is in Israel report­ing for Paja­mas Media. Who knows what they were thinking.

  19. coozledad said on January 13th, 2009 at 2:12 pm

    Here we go. Jump into thread where there’s a cer­tain lib­eral con­sen­sus with some patented Gold­ber­gian non-sequitor.
    1.“Obama says umm a lot, so he’s just as dumb as our piss-the– liberals-off overfed fake every­man white-trash agit­prop, and our UV baked trailer bride veep can­di­date.“
    .….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….…
    Prob­lem is, Obama got that Ivy league diploma with­out a down­court fore­arm assist from old money, and he’s already wiped his feet on said Repub­li­can idols. Now they’re cir­cling the “lifestyles of the edu­ca­tion­ally retarded” toi­let.
    .….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….…
    2. Fol­low pre­dictably snarky lib­eral response with wail­ing and gnash­ing of teeth. Falsely claim dou­ble stan­dard. Tune radio to Rush Lim­baugh, await fur­ther instructions.

  20. coozledad said on January 13th, 2009 at 2:16 pm

    Also.

  21. moe99 said on January 13th, 2009 at 2:47 pm

    cooze, that was Car­o­line Kennedy, that the poster was quot­ing. Obama is far more elo­quent on the stump.

  22. mark said on January 13th, 2009 at 3:08 pm

    coo­zledad–

    1. Hope my inter­rup­tion of your “lib­eral con­sen­sus” doesn’t steal your seren­ity. The roar of the peanut gallery con­tin­ues even with the occa­sional interruption.

    2. The quote is from Car­o­line Kennedy’s inter­view with the NYT, not from Obama. Your mis­take did give oppor­tu­nity for an enter­tain­ing if inap­pro­pri­ate rant against old money.

    3. I don’t think Kennedy is dumb. It’s just very easy to ridicule peo­ple you dis­agree with for poorly artic­u­lated thoughts. I’m sure Obama would spend a lot of time mak­ing fun of peo­ple if his plate wasn’t so full. That was sar­casm, by the way. Obama actu­ally seems to like dis­cussing ideas rather than people.

  23. coozledad said on January 13th, 2009 at 3:10 pm

    Thanks Moe.
    I’m forced to agree with Mark, then. At least tan­gen­tially. The whole dynasty thing is a non-starter. Always was.
    Most lib­er­als I speak to don’t have any­thing approach­ing the cultish rev­er­ence for Car­o­line that we saw man­i­fested for Sarah.
    I think Car­o­line would make a hell ceram­ics instruc­tor, or sous chef.

  24. Matt Mendelsohn said on January 13th, 2009 at 3:41 pm

    Nance:

    Not sure if I sent you this one, speak­ing of our dear Joe:

    2010 Pulitzer Prizes Announced; Bono, Plumber, House­wives Among Winners

    http://​www​.mattmendel​sohn​.net/​m​a​t​t​-​m​e​n​d​e​l​s​o​h​n​s​-​d​a​r​k​-​s​l​i​d​e​/​2​0​0​9​/​1​/​1​1​/​2​0​1​0​-​p​u​l​i​t​z​e​r​-​p​r​i​z​e​s​-​a​n​n​o​u​n​c​e​d​-​b​o​n​o​-​p​l​u​m​b​e​r​-​h​o​u​s​e​w​i​v​e​s​-​g​e​t​-​n.html

    Best,

    matt

  25. Gasman said on January 13th, 2009 at 3:44 pm

    Oh for the unre­pen­tant Palin­ites! You cho­sen few. Keep singing her praises. You’ve obvi­ously uncov­ered an insid­i­ous lib­eral plot to unfairly defame this bright con­ser­v­a­tive star. You’ve clearly iden­ti­fied an immor­tal truth that has eluded the vast major­ity of Amer­i­cans, lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives alike. She is such a vic­tim. It’s far too easy to poke fun at her. We have sim­ply cho­sen to ignore all of her bril­liant speeches, essays, and pol­icy state­ments that stand as tes­ta­ment to her intel­lec­tual prowess. When will we ever learn?

    As for an intel­lec­tual cage fight between Sarah Palin and Car­o­line Kennedy, my money’s on the Old Money in that con­test. I’d pay good money to wit­ness that one.

  26. coozledad said on January 13th, 2009 at 3:56 pm

    Matt: Life imi­tates art again. Bono will prob­a­bly get his Pulitzer despite “not being too good with the com­mas and the full stops.“
    http://​imo​mus​.live​jour​nal​.com/​4​2​7​5​6​0.html

  27. Matt Mendelsohn said on January 13th, 2009 at 4:24 pm

    Coo­zledad:

    I’ve stopped plac­ing bets. One can only pon­der (and weep) what the future holds: I’m Paris Hilton and this is the Nightly News.

  28. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 13th, 2009 at 4:28 pm

    Ah, Joe. He should have known enough to say no, but why did they put him out there to make the trip way, waaaay out of his sphere of com­pe­tence? He’s not an idiot, but he’s put him­self in a place where he is inevitably going to sound like one, which i think is too bad.

    Two words: Peter Prin­ci­ple — and before you chuckle too much at Joe, remem­ber to con­sider Peters’ Corollary.

  29. alex said on January 13th, 2009 at 5:21 pm

    Peter’s Corol­lary…

    Those who are com­pe­tent are kept from ris­ing to the posi­tions where they’re most des­per­ately needed?

  30. Gasman said on January 13th, 2009 at 5:50 pm

    Jeff (tmmo),
    You are far too char­i­ta­ble to Joe. He’s not an idiot? Even at gun­point I could not point to a sin­gle utter­ance of JTP that dis­proved his idiocy. If you can point me to any­thing that he has said on any sub­ject that indi­cates thought­ful­ness or intel­li­gence, I’d be happy to recon­sider my assess­ment about JTP’s alleged stupidity.

  31. Matt Mendelsohn said on January 13th, 2009 at 5:51 pm

    I’m with Gasman.

  32. jeff borden said on January 13th, 2009 at 6:08 pm

    Don’t know if any of you folks saw the lat­est Buf­falo Beast list of the 50 most loathe­some peo­ple of 2008, but Joe the Plumber is in the mid­dle ranks. They ranked Obama as No. 50 and Sarah Palin as No. 1.

    This annual exer­cise in some of the most acidic snark around is always a blast. Like Beloit Col­lege, which has cor­nered the mar­ket on the old “this year’s class of incom­ing fresh­man have never known a world with­out BLANK story,” the Beast has become the go-to pub­li­ca­tion for seri­ously dress­ing down our politi­cians, ath­letes and media personalities.

    What’s most mad­den­ing about peo­ple like Joe is the pride they take in being poorly informed. Look at the guy puff out his chest. He likes him­self just the way he is. He doesn’t know any­thing about the long-standing strife between the State of Israel and the Pales­tini­ans? He doesn’t need to! He’s just a reg­u­lar Joe talkin’ to the other reg­u­lar Joes. Palin is a Rhodes Scholar com­pared to this asshat.

  33. brian stouder said on January 13th, 2009 at 6:15 pm

    Nate Sil­ver over at fivethir​tyeight​.com posted this link

    http://​com​mu​nity​.adn​.com/​a​d​n​/​n​o​d​e​/​136523

    which made me laugh sev­eral times. It is an e-mail exchange between Gov­er­nor Palin and the edi­tor and pub­lisher of the Anchor­age Daily News

    an excerpt — Gov­er­nor Palin’s email to them:

    Hello Mr. Doyle and Mr. Dougherty!

    Please, say it aint so: did you really allow a story to run in your paper today claim­ing Levi John­ston is a high school drop out? Did I read that right?

    And did you really print a story last week sug­gest­ing I had any con­nec­tion with Sherry Johnston’s activ­i­ties in the past six months or so and you won’t cor­rect the story? Did I read that right?

    And is your paper really still pur­su­ing the sen­sa­tional lie that I am not Trig’s mother? Is it true you have a reporter still both­er­ing my state office, my very busy doc­tor (who’s already set the record straight for you), and the school dis­trict, in pur­suit of your ridicu­lous conspiracy?

    And, oh, I could go on…

    Come on Mr. Doyle and Mr. Dougherty, I so des­per­ately want to have even a tiny bit of faith in the ADN.

    the response is bru­tally efficient

  34. alex said on January 13th, 2009 at 7:01 pm

    My gawd, you’d think Palin would stfu already about her per­se­cu­tion com­plex. (There’s drugs that can fix that, honey, and your in-laws make ‘em.)

    Paja­mas Media. Sounds like it might be a straw out­fit set up by Sacha Baron Cohen or Michael Moore. Ya think?

  35. joodyb said on January 13th, 2009 at 7:51 pm

    i’d use as my idiot barom­e­ter the fact that JtP still hasn’t learned when to keep his yap shut. SJP seems to exem­plify the level of nar­cis­sis­tic per­son­al­ity dis­or­der polit­i­cal office attracts, gen­er­ally speaking.

  36. moe99 said on January 13th, 2009 at 8:22 pm

    Alex, Paja­mas Media is a right wing enter­prise (though it does include turn­coat Bal­loon­Juice in its pan­theon of bloggers)

    http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​P​a​j​a​m​a​s​_Media

  37. alex said on January 13th, 2009 at 9:08 pm

    That killed my buzz, moe. Know you didn’t mean to.

    Right now enjoy­ing an unex­pected evening of Idol­ness. So far the only gen­uine tal­ent I’ve seen was the tatooed lady doing “Barracuda.”

  38. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 13th, 2009 at 9:53 pm

    Idol is doing their part to remind our elected offi­cials of the scourge of unmet men­tal health needs in our communities.

  39. Dexter said on January 13th, 2009 at 10:56 pm

    Detroit Pis­tons were lead­ing Char­lotte 78 – 71 with a cou­ple min­utes to play and gave up ten in a row and lost 81 – 78…this would be a per­fect adden­dum to Mitch’s SI​.com story about Detroit, the city.

    http://​sport​sil​lus​trated​.cnn​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​w​r​i​t​e​r​s​/​t​h​e​_​b​o​n​u​s​/​0​1​/​0​7​/​d​e​t​r​o​i​t​/​i​n​d​e​x.html

  40. Deborah said on January 14th, 2009 at 1:18 am

    Ah the plumbers smile. What a jerk ( said like Betty Davis say­ing “What a dump”)

  41. Dexter said on January 14th, 2009 at 1:40 am

    Rana…I just read your Bug com­ments from the pre­vi­ous thread. It’s always nice to re-kindle Bug mem­o­ries. I had a 1960, a 1962, a 1968 Bug and a 1968 Kar­mann Ghia, and 1966 , 1968, and 1969 Microbuses. I still have the ’69 Bus.

  42. Dexter said on January 14th, 2009 at 1:43 am

    Any­one going to the Inau­gu­ra­tion? My nephew and his fiancee are dri­ving . She was the person-in-charge of Illi­nois Women for Obama.

  43. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 14th, 2009 at 8:15 am

    I’m about to trade in my 2000 Impala for a new 2009 Impala, for which i will appar­ently pay less than i did eight years ago. It does seem like ben­e­fit­ing from the mis­ery of oth­ers (unless it turns out i’ve pooched my research and it’s actu­ally that much more cheaply put together).

    We thought about going Tau­rus to reward Ford for not going to the trough with GM and the Com­pany Soon To Be Merged With GM, but the legroom ain’t the same. Legroom vs. eco­nomic prin­ci­ples … yeah, it’s the legroom (i’m tall and long-legged, so i’ll never be a Smart Car owner).

  44. brian stouder said on January 14th, 2009 at 8:25 am

    Another Impala advan­tage: if it’s white or black with non-schnazzy wheel cov­ers, you can speed down high­way on-ramps — and peo­ple will imme­di­ately get out of your way, think­ing that they’re about to get a ticket

  45. beb said on January 14th, 2009 at 8:28 am

    Jeff, I’m kind of long-legged myself, yet I found the Geo Metro, cer­tainly one of the small­est cars ever made, sur­pris­ingly com­fort­able. That’s some­thing that can’t be said for every mid or even full size car. It’s a funny world, and dif­fer­ent car com­pa­nies have dif­fer­ent ideas about build­ing com­fort into their cars.

  46. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 14th, 2009 at 8:41 am

    Mwa­ha­ha­ha­ha­haha!!!!!!

    Brian, it took me two years to real­ize what was going on with traf­fic ahead of me, but it really is a stitch. I clear out a path in front of me with my black Impala like Charl­ton Hes­ton at the beach. Beb, my favorite car of the 90’s was a Neon, which folks thought looked like a clown car at the cir­cus when i would pull up and get out. But the truth is, once i was in, it was as com­fort­able as i’ve been dri­ving a car. So legroom has to be tested — can’t go by the web­site cubic feet, or “legroom” dis­tance, which obvi­ously is always mea­sured from the two most favor­able points.

    My EE friends are optomistic, but say five more years before the bat­tery sit­u­a­tion gets good. I’m gonna burn old fash­ioned dinosaur poop until then.

  47. brian stouder said on January 14th, 2009 at 8:50 am

    A nice lit­tle arti­cle, Jeff. I can­not recall W at any quiet lit­tle pre-Inaugural sit-downs with who­ever was at the lib­eral van­guard, or vet­er­ans of the WJC amen-corner in 2000 (Tony Lewis? Dan Rather?). Quite the con­trary, amidst the 2000 elec­tion end-game, the rule was flatly par­ti­san, with Rove and com­pany busily vil­li­fy­ing the other side.

    I think this is more proof that President-elect Obama is pre­cisely who we thought he was, when we elected him — and in that spirit, I think we all Obama sup­port­ers should say “Bwa­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­haha!!!”, in happy unison!

  48. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 14th, 2009 at 9:03 am

    Agreed, unless Obama ate some of the pods while at Will’s house. Don’t eat the pods, Barack, stick with the lettuce!

    A good friend of mine, global busi­ness­man, strong sup­porter of our hous­ing coali­tion, life-long Repub­li­can (we’re the only two on our board) told me Mon­day he went into the vot­ing booth, and at the last minute voted for Obama — he said it apolo­get­i­cally, and i told him “hey, no, i totally respect that choice, but tell me why you made a late pivot?”

    His answer, quite tellingly, was “i just had this sus­pi­cion that he’d name a cab­i­net that would make me puke.” He felt like Palin was a defen­si­ble choice, but that McCain and his team were good for about one, out-of-the-box, hori­zon extend­ing choice per year, and that was it. The rest would be off of a Char­lie Black list. “You may well have made the bet­ter choice,” i told him. I think Doug Holtz-Eakin would have been a good basis for an eco­nomic plan, but beyond that, i don’t think i’d have been as impressed by the early team McCain would have named as i am by Obama’s group and path so far (includ­ing his choice of preacher for the 21st!).

    Johnny Mac will serve us all well in the Sen­ate along with Dick Lugar, and i’m cheered and encour­aged by what OUR pres­i­dent is set­ting in motion so far … but that doesn’t mean i’m for his re-election in 2012! OTOH, if the alter­na­tive is McConnell or Crist, i could become an Oba­macan yet.

  49. MichaelG said on January 14th, 2009 at 9:20 am

    They use Impalas for cop cars back there? It’s still all Crown Vics here in Cal­i­for­nia with the occa­sional Dodge thrown in.

    You can bet that Obama is sorely pissed at Gei­th­ner. I mean the first ques­tion they ask one of their prospec­tive nom­i­nees is “Do you have any turds in your pocket?” This guy has both IRS (he wants to be Sec Treas?) and alien nanny prob­lems. What a dolt.

  50. brian stouder said on January 14th, 2009 at 9:40 am

    Speak­ing of dolts, the “Indi­ana Wants Me” guy got cap­tured (sur­prise sur­prise), after his brain­less “bailout” plan failed… and using my nn.c sharp­ened photo analy­sis skills, this pic­ture gave me a chuckle

    http://​msnbc​me​dia4​.msn​.com/​j​/​M​S​N​B​C​/​C​o​m​p​o​n​e​n​t​s​/​P​h​o​t​o​/​_​n​e​w​/​g​-​c​v​r​-​0​9​0​1​1​4​-​m​i​s​s​i​n​g​p​i​l​o​t​2​-​6​a​.​g​r​i​d​-​5​x3.jpg

    After one admires the tro­phy plane and the sexy wife (or vise-versa).…one even­tu­ally detects the sub­ver­sive lit­tle fore­shadow of the guy’s essen­tially low-rent view of the good life. Yes — he has a Lexus — but he appears to have bashed into some­thing (some point­less law or reg­u­la­tion, no doubt)

  51. joodyb said on January 14th, 2009 at 7:04 pm

    brian: i’m sure i’m not the only wire ed who’s sorry they caught him (or quite so fast, at least — we didn’t even make it through jan­u­ary). the yarn was already at a ridicu­lous length! it was fun to watch it unwind.
    i’m rue­fully con­fi­dent there will be more like him.

  52. brian stouder said on January 14th, 2009 at 8:42 pm

    joodyb, I con­fess that this guy’s antics have been enter­tain­ing me; his com­i­cally craven, oddly cal­low and cow­ardly antics have been com­pelling, to me.

    And let’s not for­get, the guy LOOKS like a hoosier!! He has the same semi-goofy look as Sen­a­tor Bayh, and any num­ber of oth­ers of us.

    His story will make for a gen­uine black com­edy, with the mil­lion dol­lar house in Geist, the stunt-plane faux-bravery, the low-rent affair with some even-more-callow bimbo, the tro­phy wife who wises up and dumps him only AFTER the Feds come and ran­sack the mil­lion dol­lar house (on New Year’s Eve!), and the cocka­mamie ‘escape’ plan involv­ing care­lessly send­ing his air­plane careen­ing to God-knows-where as he drifts toward the ground and his hid­den red motor­cy­cle with sad­dle bags!

    And the guy accepts (seeks?) a ride from the police to the vicin­ity of his hid­den hog?! And his best idea after that is a KOA tent and slit­ting his wrists??

    If the guy hadn’t pulled the rip-cord, or if he’d flown his plane to the ocean, or if he drove the Lexus to the Ohio River and then jumped into it.…or if he manned up and faced the con­se­quences of his actions — THEN — fine.

    But instead, every­thing about him is a fraud, includ­ing his angst!

    (but we’ll grant him that for what? — 20 years? — he was “on a roll’!!)

  53. joodyb said on January 14th, 2009 at 11:36 pm

    that’s what was so com­pelling. what will he do next? i’m floored at the patho­log­i­cal abil­ity to jump out of a plane unthink­ing about who/what it might hit. that stops me cold.

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