nancynall.com » Duty done.
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Duty done.

Well, that was easy. A morn­ing spent like cat­tle being sorted into pens ends with “Have a blessed year” around 11 a.m. and I was outta there. This time I actu­ally got out of the assem­bly room and was sent to a spe­cific court­room, but never crossed the thresh­old. I had a feel­ing we’d not be called after we started cool­ing our heels, and they got cold indeed. We were asked to wait in the hall­way out­side, then told to take a 15 minute break that stretched to 35, then thanked for our ser­vice and sent back to the assem­bly room, where we were freed by a clerk who passed out excuse let­ters to all.

I had but one objec­tive at that point — to sup­ple­ment the 4.5 hours of sleep I’d got­ten the night before — so I detoured into Greek­town for an early lunch to put me in a soporific state by early after­noon. I was not the most pathetic nerd in the place, eat­ing lunch at 11:15 a.m.; that would be the table of four order­ing saganaki at that early hour, i.e., the Full Opa. Some things should only be enjoyed under the cover of dark­ness. An incom­plete list: The music of Tom Waits and Miles Davis, single-malt scotch. To this I’d add flam­ing cheese.

My morn­ing at the cour­t­house wasn’t wasted, how­ever. I got 100 pages into the new night­stand vol­ume and enjoyed see­ing the sights. You’d have to go to Hierony­mus Bosch to find a more inter­est­ing can­vas of human­ity than the cour­t­house in Detroit. I took my time return­ing to the bullpen, let­ting the claus­tro­pho­bic ele­va­tors pass, and was rewarded with a ride down with one of the lawyers in the case. At least that’s what I assume he was. He came out of the court­room we’d been teed up for, car­ry­ing a bat­tered leather brief­case, the old square-bottom kind; it looked like some­thing from the 1940s. His hair needed a trim and his jacket was of the same vin­tage as his brief­case, its lin­ing droop­ing below the hem. He wore his read­ing glasses Carl Levin-style. If I were a painter, I’d ask him to sit for a por­trait, and call it The Old Bar­ris­ter. The bailiff said it was an embez­zle­ment case we’d just avoided, and while I knew it couldn’t have been the fun cou­ple from the Palace (wrong county), I won­dered what I’d have said if the judge asked if I had any par­tic­u­lar inter­est in the sub­ject. Prob­a­bly, “Ummm…”

Still, we were freed by that mir­a­cle of Amer­i­can jurispru­dence: The plea bar­gain. Remem­ber when inveigh­ing against plea bar­gains was the hot topic for cer­tain smar­ty­pants pun­dits? Remem­ber how pros­e­cu­tors started call­ing them plea agree­ments, on the grounds it sounded less sleazy? What a waste of time that cru­sade was. With­out plea bar­gain­ing we’d have a prison on every cor­ner. Infor­mants would stop being forth­com­ing in exchange for a lit­tle con­sid­er­a­tion. Mutual back-scratching would cease. Nego­ti­a­tion — a skill every­one who hires a lawyer should place high on the must-have list — would become irrel­e­vant. And we’d do a lot more jury duty.

I can’t remem­ber where I read this, but I sus­pect it was a Scott Turow novel, since I’m not exactly a legal scholar — the idea that for most offenses, a trial by jury should be con­sid­ered a last resort. Not exactly the nuclear option, but some­thing that should be avoided if it can be. It explains the con­tempt we feel toward all involved when stu­pid, obvi­ous cases come to trial; you think, some­one didn’t do their job here. The phrase “rack twelve” sticks in my head. If you rack twelve, you bet­ter be ready to play the game.

Oh, well. Done for another year now. A blessed one.

I’m sur­prised you guys didn’t toss the Obama speech around a bit more yes­ter­day. I had it on as I worked, and even with divided atten­tion, it was a beau­ti­ful thing. I got the same feel­ing I get when I watch video clips of Sec­re­tariat, that tingly sen­sa­tion that tells you you’re see­ing one of the greats. I tried to remem­ber this when judg­ing Bobby Jin­dal, that even Abe Lin­coln would have looked like a punk, clean­ing up after Barry. Still, I think we can all agree Jin­dal was more than a dis­ap­point­ment. I’ve read a bit about the guy and know he’s con­sid­ered one of the short-list best hopes for 2012, which is why watch­ing him sing-song his way through that Toast­mas­ter dis­as­ter left me with another tingly sen­sa­tion, the one you get when you real­ize just how bare the opposition’s cup­board is. You can dress up thin con­tent with a great deliv­ery (which he didn’t), or an attrac­tive pack­age (Mrs. Palin’s forté), but when you don’t have either one, it’s just embar­rass­ing.

And speak­ing of embar­rass­ment, I want it on the record now that I’m going to dis­re­spect Jindal’s reli­gion if he doesn’t do some ‘spainin’ about that exor­cism. I can respect an awful lot about some­one else’s beliefs, but when they’re run­ning for office I think I have a right to ask what the HELL about some things, and I draw the line at cast­ing out demons. No way he’s hid­ing behind the “deeply reli­gious” veil on this one. Michael Ger­son did the kneepads duty Tues­day morn­ing with this piece, the patented George Will allow-me-to-introduce-you-to-this-fascinating-outlier treat­ment, with whop­pers like this stuffed in there like but­ter under the chicken’s skin:

He con­verted to a tra­di­tion­al­ist Catholi­cism, in a nation where anti-Catholicism has been called “the last accept­able prej­u­dice.”

Oh, really? Who has called it that? How would we explain that, given that half the Supreme Court, a huge chunk of offi­cial Wash­ing­ton and var­i­ous other well-paid sinecure hold­ers are just so? They like to throw around charm­ing phrases like “cul­ture of death,” but say, “let’s hear some more about that exor­cism, Bobby,” and they run to the faint­ing couch, sob­bing into their han­kies. What a tool.

Well, maybe all that no longer mat­ters. I can see Obama in 2012, bat­ting this guy around like a cat with a mouse.

Look at the time. Look at the word count. Look at my to-do list. Time to sign off, get to the gym and make up for los­ing Wednes­day.

Posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 8:48 am in Current events, Detroit life. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


53 responses to
“Duty done.”

  1. Michael said on February 26th, 2009 at 9:18 am

    Any whiff of anti-Catholicism is like­wise con­demned by even the fallen. You can take the per­son out of the Catholic church but you can’t take the Catholic church out of the per­son.

    Yes­ter­day Diane (my wife) asked if I wanted to take my lunch to work. The option was left over chicken. My reflex reac­tion, “No, it’s Ash Wednes­day. No meat”.

  2. Snarkworth said on February 26th, 2009 at 9:46 am

    You have a point, Michael. My mother was among that minor­ity of ex-Catholics who made a clean break and never looked back. But noth­ing got her Irish up like Catholic-bashing. She had no love for the the­ol­ogy or its apol­o­gists, but she was loyal to her peeps.

  3. brian stouder said on February 26th, 2009 at 10:02 am

    Nance’s link to the Ger­son ‘knee pads’ piece was a lot to chew on (so to speak); too much, in fact. After read­ing the proprietress’s take (and there­fore fore­warned about the pablum await­ing on the other side of the link), I never made it past this pas­sage:

    At a recent meet­ing of con­ser­v­a­tive activists, Jin­dal had lit­tle to say about his tra­di­tional social views or com­pelling per­sonal story. Instead, he uncorked a flu­ent, sub­stan­tive rush of pol­icy pro­pos­als and achieve­ments, cov­er­ing work­force devel­op­ment, biodiesel refiner­ies, qual­ity assur­ance cen­ters, dig­i­tal media, Medicare parts C and D, and state waivers to the CMS (what­ever that is).

    Pablum is exactly the word for this bit of pun­ditry. They guy com­pletely destroyed the magic trick he was attempt­ing; his gra­tu­itous “(what­ever that is)” bit of con­de­scen­sion was an unmis­take­able glint off the mir­rors.

    See – nobody really under­stands all that pol­icy mumbo-jumbo, any more than any­one really gets all that reli­gious stuff…but the Amaz­ing Bobby does! etc etc

  4. Connie said on February 26th, 2009 at 10:11 am

    I think today is the sec­ond day in a row that I have posted the last com­ment in the pre­vi­ous day’s dis­cus­sion just as our pro­pri­etor posts a new entry.

    So here I go again. Demons, Ouija boards, all the var­i­ous gods, all in the same cat­e­gory as far as I am con­cerned. Made up stuff.

    I’ve said this before and many of you either flamed me or offered to pray for me, (don’t waste your time) so do your thing.

    And yes I was raised in church, Dutch Reformed in fact. I prob­a­bly had spent more hours in church by the time I was 18 than many believ­ers do in their entire lives.

  5. vince said on February 26th, 2009 at 10:38 am

    Jindal’s get­ting com­pared to the “NBC Page” thanks to his weird deliv­ery the other night.

    Who bet­ter than to respond than the Page him­self:

    http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/video/clips/the-jack-mcbrayer-response-to-the-internet-response-to-the-republican-response-to-the-presidents-address-to-congress/1040641/?dst=nbc%7Cwidget%7CNBC%20Video

  6. Kirk said on February 26th, 2009 at 10:38 am

    I fid­dled with a Ouija board a few times many years ago, but I always con­sid­ered it a toy rather than a great speaker of mys­ti­cal truths.

  7. mark said on February 26th, 2009 at 11:08 am

    Oh, where to begin. Obama’s speech. He’s a great ora­tor. Eas­ily as good and as effec­tive as Rea­gan, though dif­fer­ent styles. Lin­coln had much bet­ter mate­r­ial.

    Obama needs bet­ter speech writ­ers or at least a few will­ing to break from the con­ven­tions of the last 30 years. They limit him. The laun­dry list approach seems to be stan­dard fare, espe­cially for a SOTU like address. Obama could rise above it.

    I’m really tired of the need by every politi­cian to always tell us about some­body they just met who’s suffering/succeeding/drowning/heroic and just hap­pened to impart wis­dom so great it has to be shared with the world. Thank God Lin­coln didn’t inter­rupt the Get­tys­burg address to tell us about joshua from Mass­a­chu­settes who told him “Mr. Pres­i­dent, just get the boys some shoes and they will march to the Gulf for you.”

    Again, Obama is bet­ter than this.

    Favorite rhetor­i­cal moment: the early ref­er­ence to the First Lady. Nat­ural, gra­cious and very classy. Speaks vol­umes about him.

    Least favorite rhetor­i­cal moment: “Nobody messes with Joe.” It’s like Biden is the affec­tion­ately thought of class clown, who will prob­a­bly do some­thing goofy to grab some atten­tion unless you throw a lit­tle his way first.

    Obama has the Lincoln/FDR/Reagan skills but he needs their mate­r­ial.

    Con­nie: No prayers for you. Every­body should be so easy to please.

    On 2012: I antic­i­pate that race being less about personality/personal his­tory quirks than any I’ve seen. To the extent it is, Obama wins those points because he is really cool.

    But he is force­fully tak­ing us in rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent pol­icy direc­tions. If they suc­ceed, he wins in a his­toric land­slide. If they don’t, and have neg­a­tive con­se­quences, 2012 should be about con­ser­v­a­tive verses pro­gres­sive poli­cies much more than who did what in col­lege. Four years ought to be long enough to make some ini­tial judg­ments.

  8. del said on February 26th, 2009 at 11:13 am

    The CRC did the same thing to director/screenwriter Paul Schrader, Con­nie. (Taxi Dri­ver, Rag­ing Bull, Last Temp­ta­tion of Christ) Wikipedia includes this nugget about him:
    Paul Schrader’s early life was based upon strict Calvin­ist prin­ci­ples and parental edu­ca­tion. When he dis­obeyed his mother, she would stab his hand with a pin, ask­ing, “You think that felt bad? Hell is like that, only every sec­ond and all over your body”.

    I’ve never seen Taxi Dri­ver or Rag­ing Bull. Too heavy. I like farce. I know the Apa­tow films can bor­der on awful but the wife and I thor­oughly enjoyed For­get­ting Sarah Mar­shall. Sto­ry­line includes a hero who writes a musi­cal about a lovelorn vam­pire who sings a song that ends: “I want to die. But I can’t.”

  9. jeff borden said on February 26th, 2009 at 11:20 am

    One point Nancy hits on the Jin­dal response that is right on the money is the paucity of GOP tal­ent avail­able. It’s not that Jin­dal can’t over­come a lousy per­for­mance. As Mark pointed out yes­ter­day, Bill Clin­ton was ham­mered for a ter­ri­ble, career-destroying speech at the 1988 con­ven­tion and he was the nom­i­nee four years later. What’s painful is to hear how lit­tle new was in his remarks. This is the kind of boil­er­plate we’ve been hear­ing from Repub­li­cans since the late 1970s. And the irony that all this talk about eco­nomic dis­ci­pline comes from the gov­er­nor of a state that sucks up far more fed­eral dol­lars per capita than my state of Illi­nois is just rich.

    Who else might’ve given the response? Sarah Palin is now a national punch­line to all but the Kool-Aid drinkers. Mike Huck­abee?? Maybe. At least he seems to have a sense of humor to pair with his fun­da­men­tal­ist reli­gious­ness. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell? They are so widely hated all they need are handle-bar mous­taches. Tim Paw­lenty? Dry­ing paint has more charisma. Eric Can­tor or Mike Pence? The Democ­rats couldn’t get that lucky.

    Oh, but wait! All the great and mighty thinkers of our rightwing world will be gath­ered in one giant coven today in D.C. as CPAC con­venes with the mighty slice of man cheese that is Rush Lim­baugh as the keynoter. No doubt some bright and shin­ing star will emerge. Right?

  10. brian stouder said on February 26th, 2009 at 11:44 am

    No doubt some bright and shin­ing star will emerge. Right?

    Hard right, baby!

    Maybe that can be their adver­tis­ing hook – why not aim to be as hard as pos­si­ble, all the time, on every issue?

    With a young guy like Jin­dal, or a vibrant pres­ence like Palin (instead of white-haired white male), it would at least NOT look like one of those ‘erec­tile dys­fun­tion’ com­mer­cials with lots of bare trees and logs scat­tered about

  11. del said on February 26th, 2009 at 11:49 am

    I agree with you Mark about pres­i­den­tial speeches includ­ing ref­er­ences to par­tic­u­lar aver­age joes. It seemed sweet when Rea­gan started it but by the time the Bushes and Clin­ton employed those pan­der­ing the­atri­cal devices it made me cringe. Cut the crap.

    As for 2012, I think the crit­i­cal issues won’t be the actual suc­cesses of Obama’s poli­cies as much as how effec­tively the mes­sage of suc­cesses and fail­ures are con­veyed by our news/infotainment sources. But I’m a cynic. There are some alter­na­tive real­ity “news” sources out there. We’ve wit­nessed it already with com­pet­ing his­to­ries about what caused and resolved the Great Depres­sion.

  12. del said on February 26th, 2009 at 11:55 am

    Brian, per­haps, a shin­ing star like this razor clam will emerge at CPAC.
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​X​D​E​H​n​4fBPhA

  13. adrianne said on February 26th, 2009 at 11:57 am

    Ah, yes, the old “Catholic-bashing” chest­nut rears its ugly head with Bob­bie Jin­dal as the poster child. I can just hear William Dono­hue revvin’ up the old fax machine at the Catholic Anti-Defamation League, or what­ever he calls his hor­ri­ble orga­ni­za­tion these days. I actu­ally had a reader accuse my news orga­ni­za­tion of being “anti-Christian” because we didn’t have a story about Ash Wednes­day ON Ash Wednes­day. To which I replied: You don’t really believe that, do you? Do you? Because if you do, we just can’t have a con­ver­sa­tion and we might as well call it quits now. I also told him I didn’t think it was the job of the sec­u­lar press to REMIND peo­ple it was Ash Wednes­day. Leave that to our priests, I say!

    As a semi-observant Catholic, let me just say this: We do NOT embrace the exor­cists! They’re weird! ‘Nuff said.

  14. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 26th, 2009 at 12:05 pm

    Walt Whit­man — “I am infi­nite, i con­tain mul­ti­tudes.” In that spirit:

    I can be psy­cho­log­i­cal: the sub­con­scious is where some of our dark­est long­ings seek to find expres­sion.

    I can be Jun­gian: there is a col­lec­tive uncon­scious, and it has a Shadow side.

    I can be clin­i­cal: there are many ele­ments of epilepsy, addic­tion, obses­sion, as well as sim­ple neural dis­ease or insult, that man­i­fest in strange behav­iors that are impos­si­ble to neatly clas­sify.

    I can be poetic: the Void is hun­gry, and must con­stantly be fed.

    I can be anthro­po­log­i­cal: human his­tory is filled with dif­fer­ent ways we try to under­stand both inhu­man­ity and ill­ness as depar­tures from an ideal norm, often per­son­al­ized and anthro­po­mor­phized.

    I can be cheer­fully lib­eral: We fear the dark, but there’s really noth­ing there except for our need to learn and under­stand and grow beyond our fears.

    I can be grimly lib­eral: Greedy self­ish­ness can and should be elim­i­nated, but as long as it is allowed to flour­ish its ulti­mate expres­sion is in oppres­sion, dis­crim­i­na­tion, racism, and geno­cide. (But a manda­tory addi­tion to the pub­lic school cur­ricu­lum or gov­ern­ment pro­gram can slow or stop greedy self­ish­ness at its root!)

    I can be nihilis­tic: The Dark is ulti­mately All.

    I can be cau­tiously polit­i­cal: Some peo­ple believe that there are oth­ers who often are influ­enced some­what by fac­tors beyond their under­stand­ing or con­trol, and i think we all agree that those peo­ple need and deserve our help, with the best tools avail­able in our soci­ety today.

    Or, i can be a fairly main­stream Chris­t­ian: I think we dis­miss the Bible’s talk of demonic influ­ences and pos­ses­sion too eas­ily; i’m not always sure i see what scrip­ture is get­ting at when demons are described and dealt with, but it cer­tainly has some pow­er­ful analo­gies to lives i see play­ing out around me, let alone in my own erratic heart.

    Hey, i can be a really lib­eral Chris­t­ian: Haven’t you heard of Wal­ter Wink? “The Pow­ers That Be” helps us see demonic pos­ses­sion as less a mat­ter of an indi­vid­ual issue, but of struc­tures and sys­tems, gov­ern­men­tal to con­gre­ga­tional, and reminds us that the spir­i­tual real­i­ties of change are as impor­tant as the pol­i­tics of trans­for­ma­tion.

    But some days i’m just a tra­di­tional, basi­cally Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian: I believe there are demonic forces at work in the world that wish me ill and drag me down, within and with­out, that affect rela­tion­ships and com­mu­ni­ties and events, on which prayer and fast­ing have a very real impact. Those acts often help in stop­ping and chang­ing those assaults. Those acts help me stay on the path i try to fol­low, but am often tempted to stray from. I might not par­tic­i­pate in an exor­cism, but i would never mock some­one for choos­ing to do so — i might ask them if they really think they know what they’re doing, the same as i would some­one “play­ing” with a Ouija board. I don’t want to burn them, wouldn’t laugh at some­one for doing so, but i would walk away.

    Of course, for say­ing i con­tain many con­tra­dic­tory aspects of my per­son­al­ity, some might say “He has a demon in him!” I’m with C.S. Lewis, who said we don’t help mat­ters by being too inter­ested in the demonic any more than we do by claim­ing there is not and could be no such thing.

  15. alex said on February 26th, 2009 at 12:25 pm

    In four years it may be too soon to tell whether any of this administration’s cur­rent efforts are suc­cesses or fail­ures. But one thing’s for sure: Obama has raised the bar as a com­mu­ni­ca­tor, and if the GOP expects to win it had bet­ter run some­one who doesn’t insult the aver­age person’s intel­li­gence the way Bobby Jin­dal, Sarah Palin or Mike Pence do.

  16. MichaelG said on February 26th, 2009 at 12:38 pm

    Add my con­cur­rence to those who are tired of pres­i­dents intro­duc­ing mem­bers of the audi­ence. It wore out after the first time back when­ever. Drop it. Please. It’s sooo Ed Sul­li­van.

  17. Sue said on February 26th, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    I love how we can dis­cuss demonology more calmly than pol­i­tics. And to pick up on yesterday’s com­ments: Dex­ter men­tioned the 40 pounds he has lost since last June, to which I say, good for you, and I’m at 7 myself. Not for long, though; today was girl scout cookie deliv­ery day and my lunch will con­sist of a glass of milk and a whole box of caramel delites. Oh yes it will.

  18. Kirk said on February 26th, 2009 at 12:46 pm

    It seems like maybe Daddy Bush insti­tu­tion­al­ized the audi­ence recog­ni­tion thing with his 1,000 points of light. And it’s become very bor­ing and pre­dictable.

  19. beb said on February 26th, 2009 at 12:47 pm

    I don’t think there’s nearly enough Catholic-bashing, that Prada-wearing, boy-raping and holocaust-denying apol­o­gist bas­tard. Oh, wait, that’s just the Pope. Ah, but the taint goes all the way down.

    The most hated reli­gion in Amer­i­can isn’t Catholism, or Islam, it’s athe­ism.

    Jon Stweart com­pared Jindal’s speech to Mr. Roger’s Neigh­bor­hood. The pace and deliv­ery were eerily sim­i­lar.

    I sus­pect by 2012 the Repub­li­cans will be back with Rudy Gulianni. Rudy could give a good speech while Mitt – he always looks like he’s look­ing at you through a mask. Spawn of the Devil.

  20. del said on February 26th, 2009 at 12:49 pm

    Jeff tmmo, your point is well taken. I recall a quote sim­lar to yours from Whit­man from a let­ter, I think, men­tioned in the Nor­ton Anthol­ogy of Eng. Lit. intro to Lord Byron in which he described him­self as “a strange melange of good and evil.” We’re com­plex beings.

    But that leads to my com­ments about the Ouija and exor­cism. I cer­tainly did not intend to mock by express­ing skep­ti­cism — though I did mean to speak plainly, directly and truth­fully, espe­cially after read­ing as much of the Jin­dal exor­cism arti­cle as I could (with­out buy­ing it). Accord­ing to the arti­cle Jin­dal and his fel­low “Chris­tians” falsely impris­oned the “pos­sessed” girl in a room and started rit­u­al­is­tic incan­ta­tions that led her deeper into hys­ter­ics.

    From my per­spec­tive, the group dynam­ics of that par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion were appalling. These reli­gious zealots were clois­ter­ing the poor girl into an alter­na­tive real­ity. A psy­cho­log­i­cal hell, really. Poor kid prob­a­bly thought she was going insane when the insan­ity was foisted upon her. That being said, how­ever, I do not doubt Jin­dal and oth­ers’ good faith in act­ing as they did. They were sim­ply fol­low­ing the real­ity which they had been led to believe.

  21. Kirk said on February 26th, 2009 at 12:52 pm

    Scary thought: Unless Obama can get the econ­omy back in some sem­blance of health, it won’t mat­ter much who the Repub­li­cans run in 2012. Nor will it mat­ter whether four years is too soon to judge the suc­cess of his efforts; that’s all most Amer­i­cans will be will­ing to give him to straighten things out.

  22. mark said on February 26th, 2009 at 1:08 pm

    Funny, kirk, I was going to say the same thing. I think Rea­gan started it with the guy who dove into the Potomac to res­cue pas­sen­gers on the plane that over­shot the run­away. Bush I put them on a team, gave them num­bers and handed out T-shirts. Bleah!

    The more I think about it, the more Obama ought to make it a pri­or­ity to get some great speech writ­ers. Noo­nan is a ditz but she knew her boss and put some great words in Reagan’s mouth. I used to joke with a con­trary think­ing friend that I could give 5 mem­o­rable Rea­gan lines for every one from Clin­ton. The ratio for Rea­gan to Bush II might be fifty to one.

    Allow­ing for my bias, here, from present mem­ory are a few that I recall:

    Carter-
    …malaise..?

    …sinned in my heart…?

    Reagan-

    Mr. Gor­bachev, tear down this wall.

    These are the men who scaled the cliffs. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc.

    I paid for that micro­phone.

    Honey, I should have ducked.

    …slipped the surly bonds of earth, and touched the face of God… (cribbed, I know)

    Evil empire

    “shin­ing city on a hill”

    Are you bet­ter off than you were four years ago?

    With Rea­gan I could go on and on.

    Bush I-

    thou­sand points of light

    read my lips, no new taxes

    this will not stand (Kuwait inva­sion)

    Clinton-

    Bridge to the 21st cen­tury

    I feel your pain

    The era of big gov­ern­ment is over.

    I did not have sex­ual rela­tions with that woman, Ms. Lewin­sky.

    …what “is” is.

    Bush II-

    “Bring it on”

    evil­do­ers

    axis of evil

    mis­sion accom­plished

    Maybe the rest of you have a larger list for the non-Reagans. To me, even the “mem­o­rable” remarks post-Reagan have been pretty pedes­trian. The field is wide open for Obama.

  23. Joe Kobiela said on February 26th, 2009 at 1:15 pm

    Ok,
    we all know most peo­ple on this board would have voted for Hitler if he would have run for Pres­i­dent this last time. I per­son­ally don’t think what the Mes­siah is doing in Wash­ing­ton now, is going to make one bit of dif­fer­ence in the long run for the econ­omy. We should have let the free mar­ket make the nec­es­sary cor­rec­tions. Yea some peo­ple would lose their homes and some busi­ness would close, but in the long term things would have worked out. But I hope things turn around and if they do maybe I’ll vote for the incum­bent in four years. My ques­tion for every­one on the board is this. What would have to hap­pen to make you NOT VOTE for Obama in 4-yrs?
    Pilot Joe

  24. alex said on February 26th, 2009 at 1:24 pm

    What would have to hap­pen to make you NOT VOTE for Obama in 4-yrs?

    His fail­ure to run for the office.

  25. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 26th, 2009 at 1:39 pm

    Bush I –
    Naa, gaa, daa, wouldn’t be pru­u­u­dent.

    (Wait, that was Dana Car­vey. Didn’t George prime say it, tho’?)

    Oh, and the inim­itable “Stay the course” with hand ges­tures.

  26. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 26th, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    Del – “group dynam­ics of that par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion.” I’d say bingo. That’s the prob­lem with folks who actively seek out an encounter with creepi­ness, whether they want to cast out demons, speak in tongues, go sit in empty rot­ting farm­houses next to grave­yards, or even some­times just with kids in a dark base­ment play­ing “Bloody Mary” with a spoon dan­gling over a can­dle, let alone a Ouija board. Five and a half days out of seven i’m pretty much entirely in the psy­cho­log­i­cal approach per­son­ally, let alone pro­fes­sion­ally, but then i have another con­ver­sa­tion with some indi­vid­ual who starts out a story with “Look, i know this is going to sound stu­pid, but . . .”

    The group rein­force­ment does some­thing, i’m just not always sure what to call it, but you have peo­ple start­ing to say and do stuff out of these pseudo-seances or para­nor­mal “explo­rations” (it’s amaz­ing how much money is to be made with sell­ing IR meters and high-freq audio recorders to wannabe Ghosthunters, who really could more cost effec­tively just go back to the thread and spoon and can­dle, but then they couldn’t call it “sci­ence”!), stuff that isn’t so much uncanny as it sticks with and haunts and unnerves peo­ple for years and years to come.

    Plus, he said with his offi­cial hat on, think­ing of files in the desk right now, they keep push­ing for more of a thrill, and next thing they’re tor­tur­ing cats to death, or dig­ging up rural ceme­ter­ies, hop­ing for a skull or at least a good femur. Call it the taint of Cthulu if you like, but they very often find they can’t just laugh it all off the next day, and they can’t get past it, and they want some­one to help them feel free of it. In my day job(s), the most i do is ask if they’ve talked to a coun­selor or pas­tor, and try to help them find a sym­pa­thetic lis­tener some­where. Off duty, i say a prayer for ‘em.

  27. paddyo' said on February 26th, 2009 at 3:00 pm

    Off-topic but FYI to ink-stained wretches, present and for­mer:

    Denver’s Rocky Moun­tain News pub­lishes its final edi­tion tomor­row, two months short of its 150th anniver­sary.

    http://​www​.rock​y​moun​tain​news​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​0​9​/​f​e​b​/​2​6​/​r​o​c​k​y​-​m​o​u​n​t​a​i​n​-​n​e​w​s​-​c​l​o​s​e​s​-​f​r​i​d​a​y​-​f​i​n​a​l​-​e​d​ition/

  28. brian stouder said on February 26th, 2009 at 3:04 pm

    Hey – for the first time in liv­ing mem­ory, I had an inter­est­ing food expe­ri­ence at lunch time!

    The fellers and I went to a Korean restau­rant (which used to be a gas sta­tion, I think) and after read­ing over the menu, I set­tled on bin­bin­bap (all the dishes had names akin to sound-effects from comic books), along with kim­chee and cucum­ber salad…and of course, an icy cold Diet Coke

    And lemme tell ya, bin­bin­bap is GOOD stuff! (although my head began to sweat)

  29. Connie said on February 26th, 2009 at 3:53 pm

    I highly rec­om­mend Sonny’s Korean Gar­den Patio Restau­rant in Mishawaka. (6th and Spring Sts.) I have no idea what I have had there, but it is usu­ally a mixed up bowl of lots of stuff with fiery hot sauce to put on it. Try for a nice day when you can eat at one of the patio pic­nic tables.

    When one eats Korean one should expect one’s head to sweat.

    Can you tell I am bored at work today? I did send out one news release today so at least for today I can class myself with the rest of you journos. :-) Library and WorkOne coop­er­ate to assist fil­ers.

    Whoops, back to edit, make that two. Library Cel­e­brates Young Artists in 2nd Annual Art Show . I didn’t actu­ally write that one myself though.

  30. MichaelG said on February 26th, 2009 at 4:09 pm

    It looks like the Seat­tle P-I and the (sob) SF Chron will pos­si­bly bite the dust in the next few weeks. If they do, I wouldn’t be sur­prised to see an avalanche.

  31. jeff borden said on February 26th, 2009 at 4:49 pm

    Michael G,

    Unfor­tu­nately, I think you’re cor­rect. There are going to be a lot of good, well-established pub­li­ca­tions going down for the count in this eco­nomic cli­mate. There are many who will cel­e­brate the demise of these old print oper­a­tions, but their loss will be felt in so many ways. I truly won­der how local TV sta­tions will get by when they no longer have a 75-cent “tip sheet” every morn­ing to work from, or what local radio talk­ers will have to gab about when the local daily is either kaput or grotesquely down­sized. This eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion is going to hurt a lot of busi­nesses.

    Walk­ing to the movies in our North Side Chicago neigh­bor­hood a few days ago, the grow­ing num­ber of empty store­fronts was quite strik­ing. And even in Wrigleyville/Lakeview, where there is a large pop­u­la­tion of young peo­ple, a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of bars, tav­erns and restau­rants are sim­ply not open­ing the doors on Mon­days or Tues­days. A buddy and I went to the Music Box The­atre sev­eral weeks ago to see “The Wrestler.” We walked sev­eral blocks before we found a bar open on a Mon­day night.

    These are some ugly, ugly times.

  32. Dexter said on February 26th, 2009 at 4:55 pm

    brian: I used to fre­quently stop a lit­tle place in Ann Arbor called “Steve’s Lunch”. The casual passerby would have had no idea it was Korean-run and had the cheap­est, best Korean food in town,sadly long-gone now…best bi bim bop I ever had…
    FROM ANN ARBOR WIKI: “Steve’s Lunch was a diner on South Uni­ver­sity that served typ­i­cal diner break­fasts and the quin­tes­sen­tial bi bim bop and oh-moo rice. It was a cul­tural insti­tu­tion; prob­a­bly the first Korean diner in Ann Arbor. It’s gone now, replaced by Rich JC in the same place. ”
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Tom Waits is best enjoyed on a cold windy Octo­ber night, or any­time the melan­choly is waft­ing about…I just watched Tom Waits is a sup­port­ing role in a 2006 movie ( I think it was 2006) called “Wrist­cut­ters: A Lovestory”—quite a strange movie set in a kind of pur­ga­tory.
    I am a Waits fanatic…all the albums, cds, have seen all his movies, have seen him sev­eral times live in Chicago (Chicago The­ater, Step­pen­wolf Theater)…love the guy, always will….

  33. Jolene said on February 26th, 2009 at 5:05 pm

    Inter­est­ing details, Jeff. I’ve been hear­ing, too, that week­nights are dead in restau­rants and bars.

    I worry a lot about who is going to do the report­ing once news­pa­pers are gone. Unfor­tu­nately, I don’t have any good ideas except sub­stan­tially higher prices. There are peo­ple who might pay a cou­ple bucks most or all days of the week for a paper, but I sus­pect there aren’t many of them. So many peo­ple are so ill-informed now. It’s a lit­tle fright­en­ing to think that things will get worse and, equally impor­tant, that there will be fewer peo­ple keep­ing an eye on peo­ple in high places.

  34. Sue said on February 26th, 2009 at 5:30 pm

    My daugh­ter is putting her­self through col­lege as a bar­tender in Mil­wau­kee, and we used to laugh about the pay cut she would have to take when she grad­u­ated and got a big-girl job. One-two punch: she prob­a­bly won’t be able to find a job in her field (or any field), and the vari­able income that comes from a tip-based job is hurt­ing her just as she enters the home stretch and needs to con­cen­trate on get­ting those last classes done and her var­i­ous internships/work require­ments com­pleted. She doesn’t have a sec­ond to her­self and still is look­ing around for a sec­ond job, except no one is hir­ing. And this is going on even as we are help­ing her out.
    And re news­pa­pers, I have been try­ing to start a sub­scrip­tion to the local paper for five weeks. Five weeks of get­ting kicked off the web­site after com­plet­ing the online sub­scrip­tion appli­ca­tion (three times!), five weeks of refusal of the web­site to rec­og­nize my account num­ber, and, oh yeah, five weeks of no deliv­ery. I can’t even get an email back any­more from the guy who was help­ing me (Steve, we’re on a first-name basis now). My credit card trans­ac­tion went through fine, though.

  35. coozledad said on February 26th, 2009 at 5:55 pm

    When I saw Bobby the other night, the only thing I could think of was sit­ting in a dorm room with the bong being passed around, and sud­denly on the TV there’s the majesty of Itchy Pop­kin hawk­ing fur­ni­ture to the Marines. I thought his ass was lost to his­tory, but I looked him up. And he’s in this month’s issue of the New York Times online. Go Fig­ure.
    http://​query​.nytimes​.com/​g​s​t​/​f​u​l​l​p​a​g​e​.​h​t​m​l​?​r​e​s​=​9​9​0​C​E​5​D​7​1​1​3​9​F​9​3​1​A​2​5​7​5​1​C​0​A​9​6​3​9​5​8​2​6​0​&​a​m​p​;​s​e​c​=​&​a​m​p​;​s​p​o​n​=​&​a​m​p​;​p​a​g​e​w​a​n​t​ed=all

  36. del said on February 26th, 2009 at 5:57 pm

    Jeff Bor­den, I’m sur­prised to hear about Wrigleville/Lakeview. My brother’s place is a few houses off Clark on W. Cor­nelia, a locale I likened to Bour­bon Street north.

  37. Jolene said on February 26th, 2009 at 6:16 pm

    I’ve actu­ally begun to feel sorry for Jin­dal. He has really been get­ting ham­mered. The speech was ter­ri­ble in both form and con­tent, so the ham­mer­ing isn’t sur­pris­ing but the per­for­mance was. The guy has a long-standing rep­u­ta­tion for being really smart.* I think he got really bad advice about his speech style. A WaPo arti­cle described him as “fast-talking”, and I sus­pect that some­one told him to slow down and that’s how he ended up w/ the sing-songy, Mr. Rogers deliv­ery. As I men­tioned yes­ter­day, I didn’t find his speak­ing style appeal­ing when I heard him on Meet the Press, but it was, at least, a mature, nat­ural style.

    I can’t say that I’d be sorry if he doesn’t reap­pear on the national scene, but I hope he has a resilient psy­che and a sense of humor. It’d be touch to have every TV come­dian and cable talk show host mak­ing fun of you, not to men­tion hav­ing mul­ti­ple copies of your embar­rass­ing per­for­mance avail­able on YouTube.

    *His appar­ent igno­rance of what “vol­cano mon­i­tor­ing” might be raises some ques­tions about his aware­ness of what goes one in the world. You don’t have to be much of an expert to know that sci­en­tists mea­sure seis­mic activ­ity.

  38. harrison said on February 26th, 2009 at 6:40 pm

    regard­ing catholi­cism …

    just won­der­ing if any of you folks saw the 30 rock broad­cast, iirc, on feb. 12.

    in it, jack don­aghy (played by alec bald­win) wants to take his main squeeze, a his­panic nurse whose name escapes me (played by selma hayek) to a fancy restau­rant on valentine’s day. hayek’s char­ac­ter, how­ever, drags him to church that day to cel­e­brate the feast of saint valen­tine.

    she asks him, and i para­phrase, if he is a catholic of con­ve­nience who goes to church only on sun­days.

  39. alex said on February 26th, 2009 at 6:44 pm

    Jindal’s prob­lem is that he’s hogtied by a ran­corous and sim­plis­tic ide­o­log­i­cal mes­sage that he’s not allowed to devi­ate from. Even some­one with Obama’s ora­tor­i­cal gifts couldn’t make that sow’s ear into any­thing but what it is.

    I’m sur­prised to hear about Wrigleyville/Lakeview, my old stomp­ing grounds. But then I went from being able to afford din­ing out seven nights a week to hardly at all in the post-9/11 econ­omy. I’m only now earn­ing again what I grossed in 1994.

  40. moe99 said on February 26th, 2009 at 8:09 pm

    Pilot Joe,
    If we’d let the free mar­ke­teers free rein instead of the adults cur­rently in charge, I can tell you we’d be in a death spi­ral now. We still may be in one in a few weeks, months or so, but it was of the mak­ing of the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion. Not the cur­rent one.

  41. whitebeard said on February 26th, 2009 at 8:30 pm

    moe99, my thoughts indeed; the free mar­ke­teers have had their days of infamy, now let san­ity pre­vail. And it would be really really intel­li­gent, Pilot Joe, if you would drop the Mes­siah crap; your guys lost big, live with it.

  42. caliban said on February 26th, 2009 at 9:47 pm

    Inserted into penis ends? Bada fada bada. The Oba­mas­peach was awe­some and the Repub­li­can response was …weak…

    We just watched Frozen River. Have to say, I’m a Melissa Leo fan since Homi­cide. But this is stun­ning. Her per­for­mance is as good as Tommy Lee Jones in Three Buri­als (if you haven’t seen that movie, that’s kindqa like miss­ing Ham­let, com­ing up.)

    Any­way, Frozen River is superb. Bet­ter than the Ozcar nom­i­nees. Why are the best movies about Amer­i­cans on the fringe of polite soci­ety? Eight years of mar­gin­al­iz­ing every­body that wasn’t rich or a Hal­libur­ton catspaw?

    Redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth is a belleweather of con­ser­v­a­tives, and we’re sup­posed to believe Obama is a dan­ger­ous social­ist. While W was pret­zeldent, CEO salaries went from 30 times the aver­age worker’s take­home to 300 times.That’s a fact.

    Who was con­tract­ing the mid­dle class to ben­e­fit the wealthy class cre­at­ing deriv­a­tives and other crooked schemes? Who was keep­ing the inva­sion and the occu­pa­tion off the books by mak­ing all that fund­ing ‘emer­gency’?

    WaPo says Obama is play­ing a bud­get trick by includ­ing the occu­pa­tion cost? Where were these bas­tards the last eight years? And that fis­cal respon­si­bil­ity shit from Repub­li­cans?

    Bobby Jin­dal, Great Brown Hope? Jimma Ed with­out the sin­cer­ity, gen­uine­ness and intel­li­gence. Also lack­ing any sort of humil­ity in the face of his ambi­tion. But gaw­damighty, that jack­ass was Bar­ney Bibe on the national stage.

  43. Dexter said on February 26th, 2009 at 10:26 pm

    At least Jin­dal has totally taken the heat from my man Den­nis Kucinich as the gnome-in-da-spotlight.
    All sum­mer I had my blood boil­ing when Kucinich, who espoused all the ideas I believed in, was ridiculed by msm before and after every debate, then uncer­e­mo­ni­ously cast aside — booted to the side­lines to com­mis­er­ate with Mike Gravel. It’s good to see Jin­dal take these lumps; it does my heart good.

  44. caliban said on February 26th, 2009 at 11:08 pm

    Dex­ter. Re.:Jindal.

    Every­body that ever fade dun of Jimma, they can ear it. First, he looked like a joke. Then, he sounded hilar­i­ous. Then every­thing he said was a demon­stra­ble lie. The fact that he anchored his most obvi­ous lie to his par­tic­i­pa­tion in fuck­ing over Kat­rina vic­tims? that’s those Repub­li­can scamps. Heck­uva job. Repub­li­cans? Self-inflicted wounds.

  45. Gasman said on February 27th, 2009 at 12:44 am

    If Jin­dal can’t cri­tique Obama’s speech with­out lying his ass off (his apoc­ryphal post Kat­rina tale, the myth­i­cal train from L.A. to Vegas, the $30 mil­lion mouse), how con­fi­dent can he be in the strength of his own mes­sage? If you are con­fi­dent in your posi­tion, you don’t lead off with lies.

    I think that it bespeaks the incip­i­ent arro­gance that per­vades the upper lev­els of the Repub­li­can Party. The Rs hon­estly think that they can say what­ever the hell they want and no one will call them on it. They have been con­di­tioned by the dit­to­heads that swell their ranks and will­ingly swal­low any­thing that they are fed.

    It also demon­strates that despite their love of Twit­ter­ing, they really don’t fully under­stand the impli­ca­tions of the inter­net and YouTube. It’s too damn easy to instantly fact check the lies. Why do they keep try­ing to get away with them?

  46. Dexter said on February 27th, 2009 at 1:05 am

    So…racist? No? Can you believe this ass­hole didn’t know about the racist his­tory of old time car­toon­ists por­tray­ing African Amer­i­cans as bum­bling fools slob­ber­ing over a slice of water­melon?
    http://​blogs​.sun​times​.com/​m​i​t​c​h​e​l​l​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​2​/​m​o​n​k​e​y​s​_​w​a​t​e​r​m​e​l​o​n​s​_​a​n​d​_​b​l​a​c​k.html

  47. Gasman said on February 27th, 2009 at 1:55 am

    Dex­ter,
    Mayor Dean Grose of Los Alami­tos, CA would have us believe that

    he was “unaware of the stereo­type that black peo­ple like water­melon,” and didn’t mean to “offend” African Amer­i­cans.

    Right. Every­body who believes that, stand on your head. If Mayor Grose is to be believed, then what was the mean­ing of his e-mail that con­tained an image of the lawn of the White House turned into a water­melon patch? What pos­si­ble mean­ing could it have if it wasn’t one of racial debase­ment? Where pre­cisely is the “humor” in such a broad­side?

    Why is it not sur­pris­ing that an elected Repub­li­can offi­cial would issue such a big­oted cir­cu­lar? Could it be that it is because there have been many such “jokes” that have come from the ranks of the Repub­li­can Party within the last year? That Repub­li­cans so read­ily engage in this brand of “humor” is evi­dence of a great moral defi­ciency within the party.

    This is not funny and it should not be regarded as any­thing other than the basest, the mean­est, the most inhu­mane type of degrad­ing racism that exists in our soci­ety. Why does the pub­lic face of this type of big­otry seem to reside nearly exclu­sively among the Repub­li­can Party?

    Is this the “big tent” phi­los­o­phy that the Rs are using to swell their ranks? I guess they think that the dark­ies will flock inside if there’s enough water­melon and fried chicken to be had. Add some refried beans and the wet-backs will be there too.

    This is but one of MANY rea­sons that I am NOT a Repub­li­can.

  48. Dexter said on February 27th, 2009 at 2:15 am

    Gas­man, it looks like we will deal with these Nean­derthals from now on. It also appears we will have lit­tle dif­fi­culty in sort­ing out these creeps. And they are EVERYWHERE.

  49. Connie said on February 27th, 2009 at 6:37 am

    Dex­ter: I have been a fan of Kucinich ever since he said: Our health care should not be a place for prof­its. And I think that was way back in the 2000 elec­tion pri­mary.

  50. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 27th, 2009 at 8:01 am

    Con­nie, you will never be wel­come among the Fer­engi.

    http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​R​u​l​e​s​_​o​f​_​A​c​q​u​i​sition

  51. Connie said on February 27th, 2009 at 9:25 am

    You’re right Jeff. Reli­gion and cap­i­tal­ism all in one. My IT guy here is a pub­lished “alter­nate Star Trek” author, I’ll have to men­tion this to him, as he and I think alike on most things polit­i­cal.

  52. LA Mary said on February 27th, 2009 at 1:16 pm

    Con­nie, we are on the EXACT same page. The Dutch Reformed Church makes great athe­ists.

    Mark, you left out the most mem­o­rable of Bush II’s quotes. You know all the stuff about putting food on your fam­ily or obste­tri­cians being unable to prac­tice their love on women.
    We won’t get fooled again.

  53. brian stouder said on February 27th, 2009 at 2:22 pm

    Mary, today the pres­i­dent stated that the troop draw-down in Iraq will be com­plete – as in zero com­bat troops – by 2011 (and will be sub­stan­tially reduced by 2010).

    If this comes to pass, then on that basis alone, he will win re-election in a crush­ing elec­toral land­slide, and gen­er­a­tions will pass all through the 21st cen­tury, wherein the com­mon wis­dom will be that Repub­li­cans start wars and Democ­rats end them…just the oppo­site of the old saw in the 20th cen­tury

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