Doctor O's Love Shack

CBS calls Virginia for Obama

2008-11-04T21:46:00.001-06:00

The Giants win the pennant
The Giants win the pennant
The Giants win the pennant

2008-11-04T21:26:00.001-06:00

2008-08-02T14:46:00.003-05:00

John and Marty were a morning radio duo. They had been at the station for 20 years. They would crack lame jokes (MICHAEL JACKSON IS WEIRD, LOL) and do a "high-larious [pronounced like that] headlines" bit about moose getting jobs as security guards at banks in small towns in Maine and that sort of thing. They never took their eyes off their goal though: the evening rush hour slot and, some day, syndication. "Next year, next year" the suits in the front office kept telling them "keep it up in the AM and just as soon as The Crew retire, the slot is all yours". Maybe once John and Marty had believed the crap management spewed but over the years they turned sour, the banter devolving to bitter recriminations. Then, one day Marty just won't stop hitting the "awwooga" button when John is trying to talk.

There's sounds of a scuffle

Then, a groaning gurgle and a sharp bang

The line goes dead

The next day there were two new morning DJ's on Crazy 104.7 and no one had ever heard of John or Marty.

So ends the tragic waltz of John and Marty, two local radiomen who burned not too wisely, but too well.

Weep not for them

They've gone to that big broadcast booth in the sky

But, every so often, remember your old friends John and Marty and hit the awwooga button (just once) in their memory.

And they'll smile down on you.

From the land where it's always drive time

And the next caller is always a very special guest.

Netflix and shame

2008-06-13T09:55:00.005-05:00

I feel a sense of personal failure when I return a movie to Netflix unwatched, after having it sit in my house for two or three weeks (during which I watch and return other movies).

Bloomberg

2008-06-12T12:14:00.005-05:00

I'm sorry Bloomberg isn't going to get the VPOTUS slot but "A black and a Jew" is the beginning of a joke at a Republican fund-raiser, not a presidential ticket. Bloomberg for Treasury Secretary for real, though.

Mia culpa.

2008-06-04T09:05:00.011-05:00

Looks like I was wrong on all counts. I forgot that Hillary isn't responding to the real world, she's reacting to her own fantasy world.

If Hillary were my vice president, I'd pity my food taster.

I'd also like to announce the retirement of the Nomination tag. The Nomination is over and Obama has won it. Hillary can continue playing primary tea party as long as she pleases, it matters not one whit.

We have an election to win, an election that will determine whether the country will go forward or remain mired in the failures of Right-Idealism abroad and crony-capitalist fiscal mismanagement at home that the Bush Administration (and the Bush Administration's anointed successor, John McCain) represents.

EDIT: It looks like the Neocons over at PNAC couldn't pay their internet bill anymore...

Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) supports Salmon dieoffs

2008-06-02T12:08:00.010-05:00

Gordon Smith: Bad for bears, wrong for America.

(This message paid for by Charismatic Megafauna for Merkley)

Prediction

2008-06-02T10:47:00.010-05:00

Hillary will suspend on Tuesday night. She won't concede because:

She's hoping for a Sirhan Sirhan in June.
She wants to get a bailout from Obama.

But she will suspend after being beaten in the West (I predict 19 of 31 delegates in SD and MT go for Obama).

Remember folks (and I mean that literally since only my family reads this): you heard it here last!

Vertical farming

2008-06-02T10:33:00.010-05:00

Vertical farming really unlocks the crazy dreamer in me. I see a world of self-sufficient cities, swaths of the country returned to nature. Safaris watching Buffalo graze old corn fields in Kansas.

I'm sure that it can never work (just imagine the water needed and wastewater produced, especially since water supply generally and urban water supply in particular is an area of concern), but what a beautiful idea. Maybe it's just because I was a sucker for the Arcologies back in Sim City 2000 or maybe because I've always been a fan of urban utopianism but...

Rules Committee

2008-05-31T18:09:00.004-05:00

Hillary supporters: "Democracy means we win every time no matter what."

Goddamn it, don't these meetings have Sergents-at-Arms?

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex In The City (But Were Afraid to Ask)

2008-05-30T14:15:00.003-05:00

From Anthony Lane's review of the movie:

I walked into the theatre hoping for a nice evening and came out as a hard-line Marxist, my head a whirl of closets, delusions, and blunt-clawed cattiness. All the film lacks is a subtitle: “The Lying, the Bitch, and the Wardrobe.”

Ouch.

Bad Ass in Chief

2008-05-30T13:51:00.003-05:00

(Photo: Talking Points Memo)

2008-05-27T13:06:00.001-05:00

So that's what becoming below-average feels like.

Kennedy, Hart and Hillary (or: Hillary as Black Panther)

2008-05-23T11:15:00.054-05:00

Driving into work today I heard some Hillary supporter whining (do Hillary and her supporters have tones of address other than "whining" or "shrill"?) that Gary Hart and Teddy Kennedy were allowed to carry on their candidacies until the convention and that that the calls for Hillary to end her campaign were sexist.

Two points:

The notion that the needs and interests of women voters can only be served by women politicians is itself terribly sexist and in fact fundamentally undemocratic. My interests are represented in the U.S. Congress by Gwen Moore (with whom, to belabor the point, I share neither gender nor race) and she represents those interests with at least acceptable ability. To suggest that a politician must belong to a group to serve the interests of that group is to subscribe to some sort of bizarre atavistic theory of representation more suited to the separatist movements of the 1970's than to the needs of America today.
It is telling that this Hillary supporter takes 1980 and 1984 as her models. In both 1980 (Kennedy) and 1984 (Hart), the party lost the general election by huge margins (although to be fair, the full measure of blame for those defeats cannot be laid upon Kennedy and Hart) and emerged internally devastated. I suppose that should Hillary's greed split the party, she can have in 2012 the coronation she hoped for in 2008 with Obama (and through him, young or minority party members) safely relegated to either the backbench or the dustbin (where we clearly belong) and go on to give McCain a second term.

The story closes with the Hillary supporter threatening that if Hillary is not awarded the nomination she (and her co-conspirators) will vote McCain in November.

Let me be perfectly clear so that there is no chance of misunderstanding me: A vote for McCain in November is a vote for someone who has consistently been against Roe v. Wade, against the availability of contraception (for both minors and adults), against pay equity, against flex time, against universal health care and on the wrong side of every other issue that affects working families.

But Obama defeated Hillary, so they won't vote for him.

Florida is Zimbabwe, lol whut?

2008-05-22T10:42:00.009-05:00

Hillary's latest insanity almost makes me wonder if she is doing all this purposefully to turn even her most fanatical supporters from her to Obama for the good of the party.

Hillary wins Kentucky: Let's all act like this matters!

2008-05-20T21:08:00.003-05:00

Asking Kentucky voters what they want in a Democratic nominee is a bit like asking Pepsi drinkers what they want in Coke. The last time someone did that, we ended up with New Coke.

A tragic sense of Hillary

2008-05-14T12:03:00.014-05:00

Looked at a certain way, the scrambling of Hillary from weak to weaker defenses of her continued candidacy is heart wrenching. Everyone has seen things they thought they were a lock for disintegrate before their eyes.

It must be terribly disorientating for Hillary (who has literally been running for this since 2004 and perhaps since 2000) to watch what "should" have been a cake walk turn into a long and ultimately futile battle.

That doesn't change the fact that she should end her campaign, that she needs to end her campaign (for the good of her country and her party as well as her own future in both of those institutions) but I find the sadistic triumphalism of some of my fellow Barackniks just a little bit tacky.

New look...

2008-05-13T09:48:00.003-05:00

Just because. Not that anyone actually reads this.

The Effexor-McCain connection

2008-05-12T17:08:00.003-05:00

This is just one of those things you always dream about but so rarely get to see.

Hillary? On MY Democratic ticket? (It's less likely than you think...)

2008-05-09T14:13:00.004-05:00

I would make point 6 #1. Why wouldn't she sabotage us to open up 2012 for herself? I understand and even sympathize with (if not support or condone) her motivation (she really wants to be president and really doesn't want to wait until 2016 to get her shot) but we'd be fools to allow it.

Apropos

2008-05-06T23:07:00.012-05:00

North Carolina:
Obama: 56%
Clinton: 42%

Indiana:
Clinton 51%
Obama 49%

(Note at 2310 CST: This is with Gary Indiana still at only 28% reporting.)

(Note at 2340 CST: Lake County at 56%, statewide percentages unchanged)

(Note at 0010 CST: Lake County at 98%, we are't going to close the gap. Tonight was a massive net gain for Obama.)

(All numbers from CNN)

Michigan and Florida "revotes"

2008-05-06T14:16:00.003-05:00

Why should we make final arbiters out of people we originally punished for going too early?

May 2, 2008.

2008-05-02T00:00:00.000-05:00

Remember not to forget.

Review: The Sound of Music (1965)

2008-04-30T15:23:00.027-05:00

By 1938 the Nazis had deprived German Jewry of their property and livelihoods, sterilized then "euthanized" the mentally disabled, rebuilt the German military and primed it to wage war upon the world. But the most terrible act of those dastardly Nazis? They made the von Trapps stop singing.

Blithe and arrogant decontextualization is the order of the day in 1965’s wretched “The Sound of Music”, a film whose continued popularity I can attribute only to high levels of lead and other heavy metals in the water supply.

The film is a symbolic reaction of mainstream American culture to the rise of the countercultural left: by reducing social upheaval to a couple of kids (in paisley prints, no less!) singing we can minimize and therefore ignore it. It is unfortunate that six million Jews were not able to minimize and therefore ignore the spreading genocidal menace of the Nazi state, but wouldn't a nice song make us all feel better?

One of Five. (This was a zero but as Matt points out: "Giving it a zero means there is no way you could wretch any redeeming qualities out of the movie.", that and it isn't as bad as Vantage Point.)

Review: Vantage Point (2008)

2008-04-30T14:54:00.004-05:00

Fox News decided to remake Rashomon.

They called it Vantage Point.

This was the worst movie I've ever seen. In that category of "movies I've seen" I include a great deal of truly awful porn, but this movie is worse still.

The tragic part is that someone made a conscious decision to green light the production, release and distribution of this movie. This movie crowded out a better movie. This is the evil twin that ate the good twin in utero, an invasive plant in the cinematic garden, a Frankenstein's monster of poorly executed scenes and half-understood ideas lifted from other, better movies (and compared to this, every movie is better).

Utterly without social, political or artistic merit.

Zero of Five.

(Crossposted at Facebook)

Paging Tom Lehrer...

2008-04-28T14:42:00.004-05:00

Oh Poll Tax, how I love ya, how I love ya, my dear old Poll Tax!

Review: The Moderns (1988)

2008-04-28T10:08:00.008-05:00

This was not a good movie.

Predictable plot involving art forgery and lost love. Trite happy ending. Titled after a literary movement it shares no features with. Impossibly overblown dialogue. Mocks pretention and parvenuism while succumbing to both. Actors playing "name" characters (Gertrude Stein, Alice Toklas, Ernest Hemmingway) bear at best a passing resemblance. Visually interesting but craft cannot salvage art.

Two out of Five for trying.

Drop out Obama! Wait, what?

2008-04-25T15:23:00.012-05:00

An interesting post on Slate. (I swear I read other sites, Slate is just really good, ok?) It certainly goes against what I've been saying very recently but it does make for an interesting counterproposal.

I'm not even sure I disagree at this point. A Clinton defeat (and don't think for one second she could actually win: she's too divisive and unlikable for non-Democratic moderates, she's a lighting rod for conservatives and she lacks liberal support due to the Obama thing and yadda yadda yadda, we all know this by now) would help purge the Party of Clintonites and other nudniks.

My dad (hopefully among my readers) has a theory that no matter who wins in '08 they'll be out in '12 (or '13 I suppose). The economic and foreign policy stages are just too messed for it to be otherwise. I'm not sure I agree with him but if someone has to be sacrificed I'd rather it be McCain than Obama and the only way to get McCain in without screwing up Obama's future may be to use Hillary.

Again, not sure I agree but I can at least see the argument as coherent and internally consistent.

Talk about softballs lobbed across the plate.

2008-04-24T16:43:00.003-05:00

It is difficult to analyze this graphic without being a bit of an elitist prick. Hillary voters are poorer, less educated and more rural than Obama voters.

Hillary post-Penn

2008-04-23T09:49:00.000-05:00

According to Slate's delegate calculator even if Hillary gets 60% in every primary to come (which is highly improbable, especially since Obama is way ahead in North Carolina), including 60% of the Florida and Michigan delegates (which will never happen since the Obama and Clinton camps would have to both agree on the split of FL and MI) she will still have 1771 delegates to Obama's 1776. Even then it's doubtful that Hillary would get enough super delegates to lock the nomination. She needs to bow out now. It just can't go on into the summer. This is madness, this is hubris, this is lending aid and succor to McCain.

I'm not even against the idea of an Obama/Clinton fusion ticket anymore (although I can think of better ways of solidifying support among the putatively important white working class base than Hillary) but something has got to change.

And we're back!

2008-04-23T09:47:00.000-05:00

This is the latest incarnation of my blog that has been around on-and-off (mostly off) since some time in 2005. This will be a political incarnation.