Im sorry, but wtf?

Just a thought...

I wish I could post this without knocking Stan's DMX post down from the top spot, because that needs to sit and simmer for a bit while the messages of Barack Obama's "More Perfect Union" speech sink into some truly ignorant fuckers...

But, I have been mulling over another take-away from his speech today. I realize that the goals of the speech were to address a major issue that still casts an ugly, unfortunate pall over our country and to seal a gap in his campaign's call to unity. However, I am also wondering if this is the much needed discussion that we need to have concerning American foreign policy. I am certainly not a pacifist, but it strikes me that the nuance that Obama sees in race relations in America is reflected in his desire to talk to countries like Iran, North Korea, and Syria. Some of the notes that he struck upon in his speech also come up over and over in the study of "extremism" or "Islamist militancy." The means and statements of those movements are detestable, but nonetheless the anger lingers. The rhetoric and goals of extremist movements are reprehensible, but their popularity is borne of the legitimate concerns of people in some truly failing societies.

The speeches of Jeremiah Wright were absolutely ignorant in their tone and message. And, I realize the danger of trying to formulate a foreign policy message around a speech that was in many ways trying to correct a lapse in judgment on behalf of Obama. The America-hating sentiments from which those speeches SEEMED to originate are not the stuff of heady international affairs discussions. However, what Obama seems to recognize is the profoundly difficult nature of being a leader (whether of a congregation, a community, a city, or a country) requires a perspective from all angles. This type of thinking is not easily translated into political speeches, which this certainly was, but it is a deep level of analysis that America must beg for, for the sake of our future as a shining city upon a hill.

I am certainly in no way trying to equate the struggle of African-Americans and other minorities with those of Islamist militants and anti-West, anti-Israel hatred. But, I would simply like to point out as a student of foreign policy that this message can resonate globally as well. We can choose the politics of 100 years in Iraq, of continued war, of continued divisiveness. Or, we can choose the politics that at least hears the other side out and tries to grasp why their message is so vitriolic. I am all for throwing Osama bin Laden under the bus, but to conduct an effective counteroffensive against his rhetoric is to acknowledge that it has an origin that is neither dead nor the past. Someone who can embrace that level of nuance and critical thinking is the one I want answering the phone at 3AM.

y'all wanna be killers? get at me dog!

You guys remember the rapper and all around piece of shit DMX? Neither did I, until loyal commenter Danny sent me this interview. He is so smart, here is an excerpt to prove it:

Are you following the presidential race?
Not at all.

You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!

Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!

Barack.
What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?

Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?

Yeah.
What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta here.

You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.
I ain’t really paying much attention.

I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…
Wow, Barack! The nigga’s name is Barack. Barack? Nigga named Barack Obama. What the fuck, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his fuckin’ name. Ima tell this nigga when I see him, “Stop that bullshit. Stop that bullshit” [laughs] “That ain’t your fuckin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.

So you’re not following the race. You can’t vote right? [ed.- because he is a convicted felon]
Nope.

A Sad State

So, I could only go through the first page of this article till I had to stop reading it. Without directly approaching a key issue (at least in the first page) this article gets at what I see to be the key to our current financial crisis. The complete and utter inability of Americans to live within our means. The woman highlighted in this article had an good paying job, bought a house well within her price range, and seemed to have everything going for her. Then she decided to refinance her home with a higher interest rate to help consolidate her debt (why people give such private information to newspapers is beyond me but that is a topic for another post).

Why does someone with such a well paying job and low mortgage payment (her initial mortgage payment was probably in the range of $1200-$1300 depending on the down payment) end up in such bad shape. Especially considering she should have plenty leftover for expenses, savings, retirement, child care costs, etc.

Well, the problem is that our back-ass consumerist culture drove her into this position. She probably had good credit going into this situation therefore she received roughly 20 credit card offers each week...of course she couldn't resist setting up at least one of them since the interest rates seemed so low and spending limit so high. Next thing you know after a couple of shopping sprees at Best Buy, Nordstrom, and BB&B she is $15-20k (maybe more) in the hole to MBNA with interest payments over 20%. Awesome.

Obviously the best way out of the situation is to cash in on a little of equity on her house (whose value has skyrocketed due to an artificially low interest rate and mortgage lenders on crack) to pay off the bills and get back on track. So what if the rate is a little higher and there is a little more risk. No big deal the good times are here to stay!

WELCOME TO 2008! The economy is now in the shits, your mortgage rate is going through the roof, even if you wanted to unload the house the market is tanking and you will end up taking a loss. Time for foreclosure and the end of the American Dream.

This, my friends, is why I am against the stimulus package that Congress recently passed. It is doing nothing to help solve the problem of people overspending on shit they don't need (yes Stan, I know you will be right behind me to give the money back to Uncle Sam). There is something to be said for personal responsibility. Obviously we need to do more to help the poor and John Edwards' is spot on when he talks about the two Americas (as hypocritical as that may be), but do people making $90k a year really need a bail out?

Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean...

April 11th. Fuck. Yes.

That is all...

As long as we're here...

This certainly deserves another airing, in my mind...

This is an e-mail in response to this article:

it's like the clinton campaign is living in a parallel bizarro world...the whole time i was reading the linked article i was thinking "why the hell are they highlighting his numerical advantages???"

then i remembered that it is the same horribly mismanaged campaign that we have seen collapse like a flan in a cupboard (hat tip: eddie izzard) over the past month. the logical gymnastics of clinton's campaign are utterly mind blowing: the ferraro fiasco (tm) was obama's fault (according to ferraro and clinton's campaign manager); he plagiarizes one of his top advisers (even though gov. deval gave him permission to use the "just words" line) but she steals john edwards' parting shots about "we're going to be just fine" and her supporters start chanting "yes, she can;" the fact that she is "mathematically" out of the hunt but she wants to suggest obama can be her running mate (the serpentine logic of why he would be a good running mate but not a good commander-in-chief is just too rich to elucidate, even here); her foreign policy "experience" being greater than obama's despite numerous key players coming out and saying she has exaggerated her role in many of the situations she has taken credit for (bosnia, rwanda, china, northern ireland)...many people have been fired, publicly disgraced, and ruined for this last point alone; she has essentially embellished her resume.

again, this latter point brings up some of my earlier inquiries as to why obama is not playing up his role as an intrepid advocate in chicago politics early in his career. he is essentially neglecting his resume while she is making one up as she goes. if he truly wants to change the tone in washington then he should reflect back to the instances when presidential nominees were not always crusading charlatans, strictly shooting for 1600 penn. ave. many former presidents cut their teeth in local politics first to show their mettle and then took it national...christ, the best hillary has done is shit out an ugly baby by bill's fetid penis.

the creepy thing about her campaign is that she is obviously delusional (almost to a clinical degree...for serious) and her advisers are all drinking from the kool-aid fountain. if obama cannot do it then let his surrogates do it for him, as was suggested in The Root, and ask clinton (a la jack nicholson from the shining) "are you out of your fucking mind?"

/trolls the internetz

Stan Wolansky: Danny sent me this from a friend of his: "i'm at a conference where the crowd will start to chant "fail, fail" when someone presentation screws up"
Maulana Dan Monday: yeah, he sent that to me too. entropy is awesome

Stan Wolansky: rooting for failure and chaos is always a winner

Maulana Dan Monday: because it is bound to happen. i am not a cynic or an asshole...i'm just rooting for the other team.

Stan Wolansky: the other team being nature.

Maulana Dan Monday: yes.

Amen...

You will be hard pressed to call me a Gary Williams' apologist. I've been critical of him over the years regarding the academic standing of the team and his recruitment of dickhead players (I knew Gilchrist and Caner-Medley were fuckups from day one), but I have never doubted his ability to coach up the team every year. Yeah, the past five years have been a little rough, but let's be realistic with our expectations. There is one program in the country that is a regular fixture in the rankings. Every team goes through cycles...look at Syracuse right now. Do you think anyone there is talking about Boeheim losing his touch? Bullshit.

That said, Wise's column in the Post today was spot on. Gary still has more chips on the table than 99% of the coaches in the country. Name five coaches who could have dug Maryland out of the hole they were in 20 years ago. We were looking at the death penalty for the basketball program and he convinced Walt Williams to play for him when the prospect of playing in March wasn't possible because of NCAA penalties.

So for all you so-called fans who want Gary to move on...FUCK YOU! We didn't fucking need you before 2001 and we don't need you now.

from mississippi, with love

slight modification from the original here

Dance for Me, Stan...

the "new map" puts you and i together.

/slinks away to lounge music

do not want

What a coincidence. Stan Wolansky just returned from his afternoon trip to the thunderbucket where he read this article on CENTCOM's Thomas Fallon. Leaving aside the dull-from-overuse cardplaying metaphor and turtleneck Tommy Barnett's obvious desire to live out the rest of his days nestled snugly in a pair of Fallon's used tighty whiteys, the article made me feel good that the CENTCOM commander was there to muffle the war drums from the flat-earthers and chickenhawks gearing up for war with Iran. However that feeling vanished as soon as he returned to his computer and saw this. pwn3d.

everything you need to know about DC politics, in a nutshell

This post is a little out-of-date, but I couldnt get the damn picture off the camera. sue me. Anyways, the particular makeup of DC tends to make politics here rather predictable. How predictable? Well look at the scroll on the bottom of the picture below (I took it the night of the so-called Potomac Primaries"):

Thats right, with O% reporting, MSNBC calls DC for Obama.

delegate and popular vote lead...u haz?

Alright. Im sorry to bump Ratticus's two excellent posts with more boring crap about politics, but this shit needs to be said. Remember a few days ago when the Clinton campaign floated the idea of a joint Clinton-Obama ticket? Now they are shocked, shocked that this idea was considered. Clinton staffer and marble-gargler extrordinaire Howard Wolfson today says “We do not believe at this point that Sen. Obama has passed that key commander-in-chief test” that Clinton would require for a veep. WTF is going on here? Hey Howie, here are some numbers for you:

Pledged delegates (Obama +155)
Obama= 1378
Clinton= 1223

Total delegates (Obama +120)
Obama= 1588
Clinton= 1468

This one is also somewhat important:

Total votes (Obama +603,687)*
Obama= 13,025,003
Clinton= 12,421,316
*Iowa, Nevada, Washington & Maine Have Not Released Popular Vote Totals

Given Obama's insurmountable lead in delegates, and likely in popular votes as well, where do the Clintons get off trying to position Obama as the veep? As one of the reliably hysterical New York tabloids said, Clinton is trying to sell a house she doesn't own.

Open Letters from the DC Metro

An Open Letter to the Person Taking a Picture of the Dupont Station Escalator:

Hi there, welcome to Washington D.C. This is a truly amazing city with breathtaking yet regal architecture, and more monuments than you can shake a stick at! I'm more than certain that you'll notice these incredibly picturesque visages, provided you can actually bring yourself to climb the escalator and reach the surface of our fair city. That's right, the escalator isn't just a cool-looking structure. Actually, it isn't even a cool-looking structure.

I have to say your fascination with escalators astounds me. Are you a converted Amish? Do you have a fetish for moving metal platforms? Chances are you're a tourist from a midwestern state; you people have malls so big they have fucking roller coasters in them, don't tell me you've never seen an escalator before...

But I digress. I implore you to actually use this contraption you find so fascinating so that you may get up to the street level and take pictures of all sorts of other objects (cigarette butts, manhole covers, trash cans) that manage to be a waste of film even for a modern camera that holds thousands of pictures.



An Open Letter To The Twat Who Won't Stand To The Right:

Stand to the right, twat.


An Open Letter To The Guy Who Asked If I Could Spare 10 Cents On The Metro Escalator:

No.

Bond, Achmed Bond

Fuck the upcoming election that you dudes keep talking about, there's something just as consistent and twice as awesome that's always on the news: Pakistani lawyers. This picture here is from the front page of the New York Time. Just look at this guy: wearing a full black suit while hopping over barbed wire to avoid a tear gas cloud? How many law school students in the U.S. can you picture pulling that off? This guy looks like a complete badass. He could easily give Connery a run for his money.

My dad is a lawyer in Roanoke; mostly bankruptcy and real estate. He often jumps over barbed wire during political riots, if by "jumps over barbed wire during political riots" you mean "drives his Lexus to work".

The most amazing thing isn't that as lawyers they're protesting something related to their profession, it's the way they approach it like it's another day at the office. The riot is their office.

Thank you, Musharraf.

strong leader: reagan 1985 edition

Dudeweekend is a viper's nest of hillary-hate. Its not only the deviousness with which this monster has run her campaign, the nefarious cast of characters which cling to her, her philandering husband's embarrassing antics, or the constant racial and religious shenanigans (He's not a Muslim as far as I know") this devil in a red pantsuit has resorted to in an effort to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Its mostly the constant dissembling, double standards, and general dishonesty which is the mark of this woman, nay this couple.

Mrs. Wolansky made the comment the other night that Hillary is like the little girl on the playground who will antagonize and goad her playmate into hitting her, then scream bloody murder for the teacher. Thats a pretty apt description. But I want to take on another myth that has suddenly materialized from the ether.

Now Clinton is the "strong leader" (by extension Obama is not). This is laughably stupid for many reasons, but let me pose just one obvious one- a "strong leader" does not cry at the prospect of losing the New Hampshire primary, or after getting her ass handed to her in the Potomac primaries. Sorry Hillary, you reaped the benefits, now its time to pay the costs. She should be asked if she is going to break down in tears at the negotiating table because "its not easy?" Is this the pose of a strong leader?

Dude Dining

Time for a new segment on the ole blog: the Dude Weekend Dining Guide. Here we'll feature the latest cuisine of the various places we live and travel to. This first edition features China Star in Fairfax, VA, brought to us by Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide. Implicit in Cowen's blog is that the best ethic food in the National Capital area resides in the suburbs, where most of the area's ethnic communities live (notable exception: DC Ethiopian food is the tops).

I had the Szechuan chili chicken which was tasty but really, really hot. I'm talking Indian American Cafe (Harrisonburg, VA) no. 3 or 4 hot. Crystal shrimp was unique and enjoyable; curry chicken highlighted the freshness of the ingredients.

Conclusion: worth the drive if you have car access and like spicy food.

Next week: Stan checks in from the cafés half a world away...

the darker the barry, the sweeter the juice

Check it.

And right before Ohio too? Well what would be the point of that...oh wait...I see...Awesome. Somewhere out there is the unpaid staffer with shitty MS paint skills who actually did this. Which brings up another point. Does everything the devil in the red pantsuit does have to be so damned amateurish? Jesus. Take some of the five million dollars you loaned yourself and hire a professional. You know, like these guys. (h/t spencer)

Wait, so I guess this means he is "black enough" now? How about now?

Beginning of the End

It was only 8 weeks ago that we watched Iowa propel Barack Obama into the status of front runner for the Democratic Presidential nomination. How far we have come...It will now be a long 7 weeks till we get to the next big primary in Pennsylvania (or, as someone once said "Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in between).

Last night was disheartening to say the least. We watched an experienced political team mount an incredible comeback against the fresh face of the party. It came with a well placed ad that kept the pundits buzzing for days. It also came with a former supporter entering a serious criminal trial. When fighting history while trying to stay above the fray Obama was placed in a tough position.

Where the race goes from here is any one's guess. I believe that we are looking at the end of what should have been a very promising year for the democratic party. Instead we are now faced with the prospect of Obama and Clinton tearing each other down, possibly till the convention in August, while McCain and Bush sit back and enjoy the show. Whoever wins the nomination is going to come out facing a rested and ready Republican machine and what should have been a landslide in November now looks like a repeat of 2000.

As I stood in line to caucus last night I had a sinking feeling that things were not going to turn out well. I didn't imagine walking home, turning on the television, and seeing Obama down almost 20 points in Ohio at one point. It made me feel tired. I'm tired of Clintons and Bushs running the country. I'm tired of watching every policy matter tied down in partisan bullshit. It is time the country gave itself something to feel good about.

Isn't Obama the realization of the American Dream (if it still exists)? I know the guy isn't perfect. I know he will probably fuck up on a couple of things and I will probably be pissed at him at least a dozen times during his first year in office. But unlike any candidate we have seen in a long time he has an ability to motivate and lead that we have not seen in a long time. Fuck, my 65 year old dad made his first political contribution this year. Isn't that saying something?

As I said, I have no idea where the race is going from here, but I don't see it ending well. Call me a cynic (and I am) but the idea of watching this primary dragged out another 3-5 months makes me want to go hangout with Sawyer and Hurley for a while.

Wait a god damn minute...

hillary clinton just said in her victory speech for RI and OH that we can strive to achieve a better america...excuse me, devil in a red pantsuit, but that sounds an awful lot like "hope." i thought you said that was akin to a platitude...what gives, soccer mom haircut?

and, are people at your rallies really chanting "yes we will"????? and who plagarizes??? your whole campaign is a lie and a joke. face it, we're just not that into you.

by the way, your husband cheated on you...HAHA