1.31.2008
1.29.2008
YEAH!
YEAH! YEAH! YEAH!
See ya later, [expletive]!
Davis's seat should be in Democratic hands this time next year.
See ya later, [expletive]!
Davis's seat should be in Democratic hands this time next year.
::sigh:: I miss Rockport
You Know What's Really Emo? Not Breathing.
via Overheard at the Beach, Jan 28, 2008
Teen #1: Get out of the street! There's a car coming.
Teen #2, not moving: I don't care.
Teen #3: God, you're so emo, it's ridiculous.
--Rockport, Massachusetts
Overheard by: Avery
via Overheard at the Beach, Jan 28, 2008
1.16.2008
1.13.2008
DCist Exposed Contest Submissions
So here is a link to the 3 pictures I entered in the DCist Exposed Photo Contest. Looks like there is some tough competition. Wish me luck. Oh, and here are the other photos I was considering.
1.10.2008
2007 Pics
My New Year's Resolution for 2007 was the same as one of the ones for 2008, take at least 1 picture every day. I didn't keep that resolution. But I did take 2196 pictures (more really but that's the number I have saved) which is an average of about 6 pictures per day. Here are 365 of them. I used 3 different cameras, my cell phone camera, a typical point and shoot digital camera and my Nikon D80 SLR. Here is the embedded slideshow, but you might want to go here and run the slideshow from there to get bigger pictures.
1.08.2008
Teh Liburlz r in ur deafth star not writing ur codez
MWAHAHAHAHA. It's not that they are asking for money that makes it so funny, it's that it's the fault of liberals. Like there is some Liberal Cabal that meets at midnight in a secret chamber under the Washington Monument and plots to destroy Red State. "I know what we'll do, we'll recruit all the Scoop programmers to our side. That will cripple them, bring them to their knees." Also, it's kind of cute/sad that they think they have 1000 readers.
1.07.2008
The NYT Opinionator... of crap.
A friend of mine sent me this opinion piece from the NYT and, well, it mostly pissed me off. This same friend has told me that I need to tone down the foul language so I'll try not to drop any F&%* bombs.
We'll start with the pathetic line at the end of the article. "But if Obama does win, the netroots (at least as Armstrong and others define them) will have gone yet another cycle without a big victory to point to." Three words: Tester, Webb, Lamont. These were netroots candidates from the start and the first two won in red states, Montana and Virginia respectively. The third, Lamont, didn't win the general election but he did force [expletive] Lieberman to show his true colors as a wannabe neocon. I call those victories. Tester and Webb gave Democrats control of the Senate. That's not a win?
And Tester and Webb were the rock stars of 2006 because they were running for close Senate seats in red states but what about these other 2006 House and Senate wins:
Jerry McNerney (CA-11) defeated Richard Pombo
Claire McCaskill (MO-Sen) defeated Jim Talent
Bob Casey, Jr. (PA-Sen) defeated Rick Santorum
Nick Lampson - (TX-02) defeated Shelley Sekula-Gibbs who won the special election to replace Tom "the hammer" DeLay for 51 days
Ciro Rodriguez (TX-23) defeated Henry Bonilla
These are a few of the actual wins for netroots candidates (others are Joe Sestak, Zack Space, Amy Klobuchar).
Then there are the almost wins, which are probably the races that generate the "netroots can't win" meme. But here's the thing, these races were in traditionally strong republican districts/states. Places that the "sensible, serious" Democratic insiders had already written off. One example:
Scott Kleeb (NE-03) lost to Adrian Smith. In a district that went 66-33 for Bush in 2004 Kleeb lost 55-44. That doesn't sound like a positive but when you factor in that the previous Representative (Tom Osborne) won in 2004 with 87% of the vote and that in the waning days of the race Bush was sent to the district to shore up support (one of the few places where a visit from the Shrub actually would help) and there were some under-handed possibly illegal robo-calls it adds up to a win nationally. Meaning that the republicans were forced to play defense, to allocate scarce resources, in places where they didn't expect to have any opposition. And that kids, is what the netroots endorsed 50-state strategy of DNC chairman Howard Dean is all about. Getting away from the "safe" strategies of centrist, beltway insiders like the DLC (do not be fooled by their use of the word progressive on the website).
Next, we'll discuss the whole "netroots against Obama" theme. It's simply not true. For one thing, this implies that there is some sort of consensus among the netroots. There is not. The blogosphere can be an unruly place. People have strong opinions and are not afraid to express them. And in primary season that means attacking fellow Democrats, or at least expressing a preference of one Democrat over another. Often, expressing that preference means saying that one doesn't like some other candidate's stance on X subject or the tactic some other candidate is using to differentiate themselves from your candidate. It can get ugly. But, what I think you will see once the Democratic candidate has been chosen is a circling of the wagons effect. While the netroots are definitely fractured with respect to who the best Dem candidate is they/we all know that any of the Dem candidates are infinitely better than any of the republican candidates and our support will show that reality.
Finally, Chris Suellentrop is being a bit disingenuous with the entire premise of his piece. First of all, the entire piece is really a response to one blog post by Jerome Armstrong, on one blog. Somehow that doesn't seem representative of the netroots. But whatever, let's actually look at what Jerome says. The first thing to note is that this post is from June 14, 2007. I think it is safe to say that things are much different now than they were in June, but again we'll kind of ignore that and look at the first sentence of Jerome's piece, "I don't have a dog in the race, and voted "other" in the MyDD poll. But I gotta tell you, this race is Hillary Clinton's to lose at this point. I wish to be wrong, and see Obama or Edwards get the nomination, but I honestly don't see it happening from this vantage point, and it's very frustrating." Um, Chris, I think we have a problem, not only is Jerome not against Obama but is actively saying that he would be happy to see him win the nomination. Is there really any point in continuing this discussion?
Sigh, I guess we'll continue. The gist of Jerome's post is this, "the frustration is more directed at Obama because he has the opportunity to lay claim with what's grown in the netroots this decade and hasn't grasped it at all, and it shows." Not that there is necessarily some animosity or even dislike of Obama in the netroots but that he hasn't acknowledged us. Meaning that either he doesn't agree with the progressive netroots or he is too scared of the right wing or he is trying to claim the middle ground (the same territory Hillary has planted her flag in). None of those options are going to give the netroots the warm and fuzzies for Obama although only the first one is potentially a real problem.
Suellentrop goes on to quote this, "never aligned with the existing movement that began with Dean in ‘02, swelled for Wesley Clark in ‘03, led Dean to the DNC Chair and propelled the [Paul] Hackett and [Ned] Lamont candidacies," as if that was some kind of indication of the unreasonableness of the netroots. But, um, it's true, Obama seems to have decided to avoid the existing netroots movement and create his own, which as Jerome points out seems to consist entirely of insisting that they have a movement. Just saying it doesn't make it so.
Which brings us to this from Suellentrop, "The netroots will not have “Obama’s back” when the news media turns on him, Armstrong said." Jerome explains this further down in the post:
"It's ludicrous that some point toward the outreach and early partnership that Edwards has done with the blogging community and the netroots in the same manner that a candidate reaches out to an issue base group, and argue from there that Obama doesn't kowtow to such groups. First of all, that's bs, he does plenty of pandering and is very ordinary in that regard; but more fundamentally, this is the base of the Democratic party's rapid response team. The issue is combating the rightwing machine in unison with Democratic candidates, but you can't partner with a candidate that [is] not inclined to join the partisan progressive movement. In all those emails, Obama has never once even associated with the word Democrat or Democratic, not mentioning either word even once."
I do disagree with Jerome a little on this. I think once Obama is the nominee (and I think he will be) the netroots will have his back, maybe somewhat reluctantly, but we'll be there nonetheless. Because, when you get down to it the netroots movement is about electing Democrats because they are more likely to be progressive and, also, the issue is about "combating the rightwing machine" more more than eating our own.
Finally, let's look at the other two links Suellentrop uses. The first is a satirical piece about Obama eating babies. Do you see what he did there? By linking to the post through the words "actively hostile" he might give someone the impression that the satire was actually a serious post and representative of what is to be found on Daily Kos. This is reinforced when he says that there is so much hostility to Obama that someone wrote a satirical piece about Obama eating babies as if it was not the SAME post he linked to. That being said, there IS some hostility towards Obama on DKos... and towards Hillary and towards Edwards and towards Kucinich and all the rest of the candidates. There are also satirical pieces in exactly the same vein about all of them as well. Basically, you could substitute any of the other candidate's names in that post and no one on DKos would be surprised.
And then we have the link to the Weekly Standard, a neocon rag started by "Bloody" Bill Kristol and Fred "Global Warming Denier aka Idiot" Barnes and owned by Rupert Murdoch's "News" Corporation. Need I say more? Okay, Dean Barnett is discussing this post from Matt Stoller of Open Left but if you actually read Matt's post you find things like this: "And while Obama performed fantastically, Clinton and Edwards did better than any Democrat has ever done in Iowa... except Obama. This is very very good news, and continues the trend of huge infrastructure gains for Democrats. Obama's coalition was also extremely liberal and Democratic, with 41% of self-identified very liberal Democrats going his way." and "Lots of Obama staffers and media types want this to be a show of independents and Republicans coming over to Barack, but the reality is actually better. In the 17-29 age bracket, Obama took 57% of the voters; in the 30-44 age bracket, he took 42% of the vote. He took 41% of new caucus goers, while Edwards led with prior caucus goers. This was a liberal, Democratic, young group that went for Obama. In other words, Obama is in fact capitalizing on or creating new Democrats. And demographically, this generation is as large as the baby boomers, and if they vote as Democrats, which it looks like they will, that's huge." and "The electorate really is changing in dramatic ways, and Obama is a key part of that shift. This country is turning far to the left, and while I don't expect media pundits to talk about pandering to youth the way they do values voters, they should." Even the quote that Barnett highlights is followed by this, "It's not like the Republicans didn't also have a caucus. But on another level, there really is a multiracial emergence here, a new generation of activists taking over the party." I can't really dissect Barnett's craptastic piece further here since it would require a post at least as long as this one. Suffice to say, that most of what he says simply makes no sense when you actually look into it. So, where does that leave Suellentrop? Basically, he polished Barnett's piece of poo and said, "look at this truthiness."
We'll start with the pathetic line at the end of the article. "But if Obama does win, the netroots (at least as Armstrong and others define them) will have gone yet another cycle without a big victory to point to." Three words: Tester, Webb, Lamont. These were netroots candidates from the start and the first two won in red states, Montana and Virginia respectively. The third, Lamont, didn't win the general election but he did force [expletive] Lieberman to show his true colors as a wannabe neocon. I call those victories. Tester and Webb gave Democrats control of the Senate. That's not a win?
And Tester and Webb were the rock stars of 2006 because they were running for close Senate seats in red states but what about these other 2006 House and Senate wins:
Jerry McNerney (CA-11) defeated Richard Pombo
Claire McCaskill (MO-Sen) defeated Jim Talent
Bob Casey, Jr. (PA-Sen) defeated Rick Santorum
Nick Lampson - (TX-02) defeated Shelley Sekula-Gibbs who won the special election to replace Tom "the hammer" DeLay for 51 days
Ciro Rodriguez (TX-23) defeated Henry Bonilla
These are a few of the actual wins for netroots candidates (others are Joe Sestak, Zack Space, Amy Klobuchar).
Then there are the almost wins, which are probably the races that generate the "netroots can't win" meme. But here's the thing, these races were in traditionally strong republican districts/states. Places that the "sensible, serious" Democratic insiders had already written off. One example:
Scott Kleeb (NE-03) lost to Adrian Smith. In a district that went 66-33 for Bush in 2004 Kleeb lost 55-44. That doesn't sound like a positive but when you factor in that the previous Representative (Tom Osborne) won in 2004 with 87% of the vote and that in the waning days of the race Bush was sent to the district to shore up support (one of the few places where a visit from the Shrub actually would help) and there were some under-handed possibly illegal robo-calls it adds up to a win nationally. Meaning that the republicans were forced to play defense, to allocate scarce resources, in places where they didn't expect to have any opposition. And that kids, is what the netroots endorsed 50-state strategy of DNC chairman Howard Dean is all about. Getting away from the "safe" strategies of centrist, beltway insiders like the DLC (do not be fooled by their use of the word progressive on the website).
Next, we'll discuss the whole "netroots against Obama" theme. It's simply not true. For one thing, this implies that there is some sort of consensus among the netroots. There is not. The blogosphere can be an unruly place. People have strong opinions and are not afraid to express them. And in primary season that means attacking fellow Democrats, or at least expressing a preference of one Democrat over another. Often, expressing that preference means saying that one doesn't like some other candidate's stance on X subject or the tactic some other candidate is using to differentiate themselves from your candidate. It can get ugly. But, what I think you will see once the Democratic candidate has been chosen is a circling of the wagons effect. While the netroots are definitely fractured with respect to who the best Dem candidate is they/we all know that any of the Dem candidates are infinitely better than any of the republican candidates and our support will show that reality.
Finally, Chris Suellentrop is being a bit disingenuous with the entire premise of his piece. First of all, the entire piece is really a response to one blog post by Jerome Armstrong, on one blog. Somehow that doesn't seem representative of the netroots. But whatever, let's actually look at what Jerome says. The first thing to note is that this post is from June 14, 2007. I think it is safe to say that things are much different now than they were in June, but again we'll kind of ignore that and look at the first sentence of Jerome's piece, "I don't have a dog in the race, and voted "other" in the MyDD poll. But I gotta tell you, this race is Hillary Clinton's to lose at this point. I wish to be wrong, and see Obama or Edwards get the nomination, but I honestly don't see it happening from this vantage point, and it's very frustrating." Um, Chris, I think we have a problem, not only is Jerome not against Obama but is actively saying that he would be happy to see him win the nomination. Is there really any point in continuing this discussion?
Sigh, I guess we'll continue. The gist of Jerome's post is this, "the frustration is more directed at Obama because he has the opportunity to lay claim with what's grown in the netroots this decade and hasn't grasped it at all, and it shows." Not that there is necessarily some animosity or even dislike of Obama in the netroots but that he hasn't acknowledged us. Meaning that either he doesn't agree with the progressive netroots or he is too scared of the right wing or he is trying to claim the middle ground (the same territory Hillary has planted her flag in). None of those options are going to give the netroots the warm and fuzzies for Obama although only the first one is potentially a real problem.
Suellentrop goes on to quote this, "never aligned with the existing movement that began with Dean in ‘02, swelled for Wesley Clark in ‘03, led Dean to the DNC Chair and propelled the [Paul] Hackett and [Ned] Lamont candidacies," as if that was some kind of indication of the unreasonableness of the netroots. But, um, it's true, Obama seems to have decided to avoid the existing netroots movement and create his own, which as Jerome points out seems to consist entirely of insisting that they have a movement. Just saying it doesn't make it so.
Which brings us to this from Suellentrop, "The netroots will not have “Obama’s back” when the news media turns on him, Armstrong said." Jerome explains this further down in the post:
"It's ludicrous that some point toward the outreach and early partnership that Edwards has done with the blogging community and the netroots in the same manner that a candidate reaches out to an issue base group, and argue from there that Obama doesn't kowtow to such groups. First of all, that's bs, he does plenty of pandering and is very ordinary in that regard; but more fundamentally, this is the base of the Democratic party's rapid response team. The issue is combating the rightwing machine in unison with Democratic candidates, but you can't partner with a candidate that [is] not inclined to join the partisan progressive movement. In all those emails, Obama has never once even associated with the word Democrat or Democratic, not mentioning either word even once."
I do disagree with Jerome a little on this. I think once Obama is the nominee (and I think he will be) the netroots will have his back, maybe somewhat reluctantly, but we'll be there nonetheless. Because, when you get down to it the netroots movement is about electing Democrats because they are more likely to be progressive and, also, the issue is about "combating the rightwing machine" more more than eating our own.
Finally, let's look at the other two links Suellentrop uses. The first is a satirical piece about Obama eating babies. Do you see what he did there? By linking to the post through the words "actively hostile" he might give someone the impression that the satire was actually a serious post and representative of what is to be found on Daily Kos. This is reinforced when he says that there is so much hostility to Obama that someone wrote a satirical piece about Obama eating babies as if it was not the SAME post he linked to. That being said, there IS some hostility towards Obama on DKos... and towards Hillary and towards Edwards and towards Kucinich and all the rest of the candidates. There are also satirical pieces in exactly the same vein about all of them as well. Basically, you could substitute any of the other candidate's names in that post and no one on DKos would be surprised.
And then we have the link to the Weekly Standard, a neocon rag started by "Bloody" Bill Kristol and Fred "Global Warming Denier aka Idiot" Barnes and owned by Rupert Murdoch's "News" Corporation. Need I say more? Okay, Dean Barnett is discussing this post from Matt Stoller of Open Left but if you actually read Matt's post you find things like this: "And while Obama performed fantastically, Clinton and Edwards did better than any Democrat has ever done in Iowa... except Obama. This is very very good news, and continues the trend of huge infrastructure gains for Democrats. Obama's coalition was also extremely liberal and Democratic, with 41% of self-identified very liberal Democrats going his way." and "Lots of Obama staffers and media types want this to be a show of independents and Republicans coming over to Barack, but the reality is actually better. In the 17-29 age bracket, Obama took 57% of the voters; in the 30-44 age bracket, he took 42% of the vote. He took 41% of new caucus goers, while Edwards led with prior caucus goers. This was a liberal, Democratic, young group that went for Obama. In other words, Obama is in fact capitalizing on or creating new Democrats. And demographically, this generation is as large as the baby boomers, and if they vote as Democrats, which it looks like they will, that's huge." and "The electorate really is changing in dramatic ways, and Obama is a key part of that shift. This country is turning far to the left, and while I don't expect media pundits to talk about pandering to youth the way they do values voters, they should." Even the quote that Barnett highlights is followed by this, "It's not like the Republicans didn't also have a caucus. But on another level, there really is a multiracial emergence here, a new generation of activists taking over the party." I can't really dissect Barnett's craptastic piece further here since it would require a post at least as long as this one. Suffice to say, that most of what he says simply makes no sense when you actually look into it. So, where does that leave Suellentrop? Basically, he polished Barnett's piece of poo and said, "look at this truthiness."
1.03.2008
Yup, corporate media still sucks
And water is still wet. What a bunch of self righteous pricks. As Glenn says, it is not their job to be hostile to Hillary, it is their job to report. That being said Hillary doesn't do herself any favors.
We got all kinds
Who ever said Manassas didn't have diversity?
None of Your Fancy Airs and Graces for Us
Girl #1: I'm Jewish.
Girl #2: I'm Catholic.
Girl #3: I'm Christian.
Girl #2: What kind of Christian?
Girl #3: Plain. Plain Christian.
Freedom Center
Manassas, Virginia
Overheard by: Amused Counselor
via Overheard Everywhere, Jan 2, 2008
None of Your Fancy Airs and Graces for Us
Girl #1: I'm Jewish.
Girl #2: I'm Catholic.
Girl #3: I'm Christian.
Girl #2: What kind of Christian?
Girl #3: Plain. Plain Christian.
Freedom Center
Manassas, Virginia
Overheard by: Amused Counselor
via Overheard Everywhere, Jan 2, 2008
Hotel, motel, hoilday inn
This is the grandfather of rap. Without this song rap might not have made it out of NYC (not really true, but no one can deny that this song was the beginning of the phenomenon). I found this version from here (CO shout out, Meg Frost is a goddess). The thing that really caught my attention were these lyrics:
I don't mean to brag
I don't mean to boast
But we're like hot butter on our breakfast toast
Which are remarkably like these Beastie Boys lyrics
I don't mean to brag
Don't mean to boast
But I'm intercontinental when I eat french toast
Also, check out the "dancers" in the video, almost as good as the song itself.
1.02.2008
Holey nu biblez tranlashons! Kthxbai!
This is the most awesomest thing ever and will usher in a new age of understanding and peace. A LOLcats (and here) translation of the Bible. Yez, Ceiling Cat yu can haz cheeseburgerz now.
1.01.2008
2008 New Year's Resolutions
1) Take at least one picture every day
2) Post at least one blog entry every day.
2) Post at least one blog entry every day.
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