The Rake Magazine

Tag: politics

  • There's More Than One Bristol

    So, one of my fellow bloggers called my keen political insights "garbage" and asked me to go back to writing about cars.

    I will gladly fulfill your wish. In fact, how about if I write about both?

    I will even perfume my words to make sure the wind that passes when I write about politics will not offend your hope and passion for change.

    (Trying my hand here at Obama-speak. Such crap, I know.)

    (The other Bristol? courtesy of Perez Hilton and the Cap’n)

    No, here’s the deal-e-oh-my-god. As any car guy knows, there is a great British firm that has remained in business for a half-century by the Burgermeisterish name of "Bristol."

    They got their start when they acquired the tooling for the very fine BMW 328 as a WWII war reparation and constructed their first car–the Bristol 400 in the 1947.

    This proud old firm was very hot in the automotive world last year when they claimed to have turned their current Supercar–the extremely expensive and akward-looking Bristol fighter into the fastest front-engined production car in the world (Jalopnik says 1000 plus HP).

    I am about as certain they have accomplished this as I am that Ms. Palin the Sexy Librarian (in look) will last till Thursday.*

    Its a fast moving story, still.

    And this one really doesn’t stink.

    * 11:00 PM Wednesday Night. Well, well, I am wrong again. Sexy Librarian makes me look stupider than ever. She is is going to stay. Hockey Moms, however, are still no match for Ski Moms–check out this incredible true blog.

  • Sexy Librarian Makes Me Stupid

    A few days ago I had an allergic reaction to Obama’s acceptance speech. I have not changed my mind about Obama, but I have also quickly learned the perils of speaking out of my butt too fast–which is essentially the origin of most political commentary offered without the baptism of time and experience.

    I should have waited a day.

    I don’t need to know much about Sarah Palin to understand where she is coming from. My first reaction was a devil in a blue dress with sexy librarian shades and a social conservative that will tell me what to do.

    While I have not changed my mind about Obama, the timing of my comments and the central reason why he freaks me out may now be coming from the other side of the political spectrum–and as time may show, it could be cloaked in overtly religious terms.

    Let me tell you what to do, sinner.

    So call me stupid–(and this re-link is by design)

    At least I’ll be smart enough to vote in a way that favors one candidate without actually voting for their ticket. It’s cynical, but I’ve done it before. Politics is not my religion nor is religion my politics.

    I am going back to cars.  

     

     

     

  • Finding Beauty in Politics

    On Tuesday, the 29th of July, the votes will be tallied
    and the people will have spoken, singling out the King and Queen of Minnesota
    politics and bringing an end to the heated debate over who is truly the most
    beautiful at the Capitol    .

    And while the answer to this question that burns with the
    fire of a thousand orange juice soaked cold sores will be posted here for all
    to see, there’s another option for those who want to be the first to know. The
    Rake is holding a party at The Liffey starting at 5 p.m. Tuesday night,
    complete with the all-important drink specials, where the winners will be crowned
    with proper pomp and circumstance.

    More details can be found here.

  • Yes We Can!

    Bad design is all around us, but there’s no bad design like bad election year design. Let’s take a moment here to catalog some notable atrocities from recent election cycles, and then hang our heads in bipartisan shame. Offender number one is Bush/Cheney’s militantly mindless logo from 2004; you can almost hear the designer making phlegmatic war movie sound effects to himself as he drafted it. There’s Howard Dean’s bumper sticker from the same year – the one that actually had goddamn yellow crayon writing on it. I sent the good doctor a whole bucketful of cash and I still couldn’t bring myself to slap that thing on my car. The Kerry/Edwards ‘04 logo was so incompetently designed it looked like an advertisement for a personal injury attorney named "Kerry Edwards" (and not one of the better ones, either). As for this eyesore, which looks as if it belongs on a bottle of your dad’s favorite aftershave circa 1982, the less said, the better. The sad fact is most campaign materials look, at best, like they were designed by an adjunct professor of design at an unaccredited two-year evangelical college (which may well be the case in some of these campaigns). At worst, they just drip willful contempt for the viewer’s intelligence and taste.

    But think now for a moment about the material Barack Obama has been putting out in the last year. Start with that typeface the campaign uses on all of its official signage, a sans-serif called Gotham. It’s clean, assertive and streamlined. Regardless of your political or aesthetic inclinations, you can easily appreciate that it’s the kind of elegant typeface that you don’t really see in most political campaigns. Gotham was created only a few years ago by a prominent New York typographer, but it draws heavily on mid-century sources, and there’s resultantly an authoritative, timeless sense to it. It looks great and it’s highly functional. Gotham is a capital-M Modern typeface that carries all the cultural implications of Modernism with it – optimism, clarity, progress.

    I know that seems like a lot to pin to something as simple as a typeface, but in the current electoral visual landscape, Obama’s clean, simple design look downright radical, like it came from another world. It certainly calls to mind some of the more inspiring parts of our collective past, but not in a way that panders to baser reactionary tendencies.

    A show of New Deal art called By the People, For the People will be closing this weekend at the University of Minnesota’s Weisman Museum (you can read Julie Caniglia’s outstanding review of the show for mnartists.org). Seeing it a few weeks ago, I was struck by how much the work on display reminded me not of fireside chats and Woody Guthrie ballads, but of the junior Senator from Illinois. I doubt that it was a conscious decision on the part of Obama’s design squad to make explicit references to the aesthetics of the New Deal in his campaign material. But think of that Shepard Fairey poster that looks it like it came right out of an IWW print shop. Think of the explicit references to the American heartland in the campaign’s it’s-a-flag-but-it’s-also-a-farm "O." Even that ridiculous Latin-enhanced faux-presidential seal that the campaign trotted out a few weeks ago (and then promptly retired) bore a strong resemblance to the logos of FDR’s so-called "alphabet agencies" like the NRA, WPA and CCC.

    Throughout the show, I detected a certain philosophical, functional and aesthetic kinship between our era and this one – it’s all easily-deciphered, populist, progressive art-making practices in service of the civic good. I don’t know if it is Obama’s intention to suggest outright that he’s the direct heir to FDR’s high-minded hard-times liberalism (and his detractors would say he’s hubristic enough to do just that). But there is something stirring about his campaign – yes we can! – that owes quite a bit to the outsized optimism of the 1930s, and a lot of that has to do with the aesthetic decisions Obama’s campaign and his supporters have made.

    Much of the work in the Weisman show was created by obscure regional artists working under the auspices of the WPA Federal Art Project, another one of those alphabet agencies that put American artists to work capturing the Great Depression on paper and canvas. I should say rather that many were obscure at the time, and then went on to have very successful careers later. But most did not; most were artists that were paid to do a job well, and went out and did it. As you might expect with work of this nature, it really ran the gamut in terms of quality. Some of it was very staid and workmanlike, some of it was quite distinguished. What was most remarkable about all of it, though, was the uniform clarity and toughness throughout with which the subject matter was depicted.

    The Great Depression battered America in a way that makes our recent economic troubles seem piddling by comparison, but there is a sense to all of the artwork that America is perfectly capable of drawing on its strengths and pulling itself out of unimaginably difficult circumstances. It’s a broad coalition of regular people, too, that will step up to carry out that task, the kinds depicted in the work – miners, laborers, scientists, factory workers, sharecroppers, truck drivers, builders.

    The Weisman show reminds us that artists, too, were a part of that populist coalition. With the death of Jesse Helms this month and all the editorial hand-wringing that has followed regarding the late Senator’s one-man crusade against contemporary art, we forget that artists could ever be a part of a broad-based populist coalition. And yet there they were, being paid to document the troubled times in which they lived and aligning themselves not with the elite and the influential, but with the dispossessed and the downtrodden. Granted, the work they made was not always popular with those Americans it depicted, and the kind of s
    ocial realist art the WPA produced is often bogged down by the struggle between the high-minded principles it espouses and the difficulty and grittiness of the subjects it depicts. But thinking back to those pre-Culture War times and considering that talented artists would be permitted, and even encouraged, to engage in such a dialogue – well, that’s what seems most surprising and satisfying.

    One of the best surprises for me in the show was a photograph of farm laborers by Ben Shahn, the much-admired mid-century painter and printmaker. Shahn was the kind of old-school Brooklyn Jewish left-wing artist that the Obama campaign, for all its talk of inclusion and progress, would probably take great lengths to demographically disassociate itself with – too radical, too East Coast, too "elite"! I’d had no idea Shahn was out there in the field snapping photos for the Farm Security Administration, but there he was, right next to Dorothea Lange and Edward Weston. Would an Obama administration give a contemporary Ben Shahn, an artist with demonstrably leftist sympathies, the opportunity to get out there into the heartland and create art? Would a contemporary Ben Shahn even want to undertake such an endeavor? Hell, are there even any artists left in his adopted neighborhood of Williamsburg making political art?

    Obama’s campaign has been a fascinating one to watch. At times I have felt (a) like it seemed too good to be true, (b) like it was the true last hope for whatever might be salvageable of the American dream, (c) like the whole thing was hopelessly personality-driven and vaguely demagogical, (d) like Obama might be the only major political leader in my lifetime I could get genuinely excited about, and (e) like it was all noble sentiment and erudite speechifying with no real call to sacrifice and action – often all of these confusing sentiments within the space of a week. Many Americans on both ends of the political spectrum also felt the same sort of ambiguity about Roosevelt. FDR’s harshest critics went so far as to decry him as a Fascist, a charge that has recently been unearthed again in two recent books from both the right (Jonah Goldberg’s phenomenally stupid Liberal Fascism) and the left (Nicholson Baker’s elliptical account of the lead-up to WWII, Human Smoke).

    When we look at this moment in time from a purely aesthetic perspective, it seems to me that we’re looking at a mainstream progressive movement that values good artistic practices and welcomes artists back into the fold, for perhaps the first time since the New Deal. In fact, one of the minor planks in Obama’s long-term plans is the creation of an "Artist Corps." Would the Ben Shahns of 21st century Williamsburg clamor to join such a movement for the good of the nation? Before you answer with a flip remark about the callous solipsism of the youth of America, it’s worth visiting this gallery of Obama-specific street art, which runs the gamut between officially-sanctioned campaign iconography and totally wacky guerilla work. Compare it to these beautiful specimens of WPA poster art. Even if Obama’s cult of personality is a bit overemphasized at the expense of the broader issues in much of the newer art, I would say the aesthetic, functional and ideological parallels are readily apparent, and the comparison on all counts is generally favorable. It looks, at very least, like the opening arguments in a long overdue national discussion over what role art is going to play in contemporary political engagement. That’s something worth getting fired up and ready to go about.

  • The 2008 Most Beautiful People at the Capitol Awards

    Photos by Denis Jeong

    Nearly two months ago, we embarked on a quest unprecedented in the history of Minnesota politics. Our pursuit — nay — our calling from a higher being, was to seek out the most beautiful, spectacular, and otherwise hot people who labor at the Capitol — in obscurity or otherwise. The response was overwhelming, with hundreds of comments and e-mails singling out the stunning men and women who turn the wheels of legislation.

    Of course, there were roadblocks, not least of which was the MN House of Representatives, according to several reports, "suggesting" that House members not participate in the contest in any way and a persistent error message popping up when House members tried to access the site. But through the ingenuity, perseverance, and profoundly inappropriate suggestions of outfits for winners to wear to their photo shoots by The Rake‘s editorial staff, we found a way to bring you, our readers the unbelievably sexy hotdish that is the 2008 Most Beautiful People at the Capitol awards.

    And because our readers made this possible, it’s up to you to pick the King and Queen of Minnesota politics. Take a moment to decide which one man and one woman in the photos below gives you that odd tingly feeling — whose smoldering stare leaps forth from the electronic page to make you shift uncomfortably in your seat. Once you’ve wiped the sweat from your brow, post a comment below to tell us your choices. We’ll be throwing a coronation party later this summer to announce the Alpha and Omega of Minnesotan political beauty and allowing you to marvel at their glory and majesty. A memory to treasure for a lifetime, to be sure.

    The Five Most Beautiful Women at the Capitol

    (Click images for full size.)

    LauraLaura Blubaugh
    Age: 26

    Hometown: Elmhurst, IL

    Party Affiliation: DFL

    One of the most stunning administrators in the history of the Senate Health, Housing, and Family Security Committee, Blubaugh arrived for her photo shoot intent on posing with a handwritten sign calling for universal healthcare. After some discussion, however, it was decided that the focus should be on her fabulously toned legs, rather than a controversial policy platform.

    Lest ye think she’s a simple policy wonk blessed from on high by a happy genetic accident, Blubaugh attacks her pastimes with the same zealotry she does equal access to healthcare for all. After work hours, she’s more often than not risking the aforementioned spectacular limbs boating through local white water in a kayak. And after emerging from the river like an adrenaline-fueled Aphrodite fresh from the foam, she finds time to take in plenty of live music, going out two or three times a week to take in anything from Greg Brown to Sigur Ros.

    RachelRachel Hicks

    Age: 23

    Hometown: Brooklyn Park, MN

    Party Affiliation: DFL

    Rachel Hicks, legislative assistant for Sen. Patricia Torres Ray, looks nothing like a former rugby player. She does, however, have the drive to advocate for immigration rights and feels an intense responsibility to help do something positive for the immigrant community. In the meantime, she does the rest of the metro area a favor by moonlighting as a beer tub girl on salsa nights at the Loring Pasta Bar.

    When not ministering to her adoringly thirsty congregation at the Loring, Hicks is an avid traveler — already making her mark on every continent save Antarctica and living in Argentina for a time. Through it all, she has stayed close to her family, especially, in a Skywalker-esque twist, her twin sister — whom she keeps close to her heart with a tattoo of a double helix DNA strand on her lower back. In fact, in high school at the ISEF-International Science and Engineering Fair, the twins took second place in the heated competition with an entry titled "Twins Two, It Takes Two: Phase Two".

    MelissaMelissa Reed

    Age: 29

    Hometown: Minneapolis

    Party Affiliation: Impressively non-partisan

    Leave it to the City of Minneapolis to employ a stunning, scooter-riding, world-traveling brunette with spectacular taste in liquor as a lobbyist.

    Melissa Reed, the stunning, scooter-riding, world-traveling brunette with spectacular taste in liquor in question, is uniquely qualified to argue for her hometown. She grew up on Lake Harriet and went gallivanting across the globe — from Italy to Morocco. She even lived in New Orleans as a civics, law and world history teacher for Teach for America only to return home as one of Minneapolis’ biggest boosters. And along the way she’s picked up that special something that turns heads in every room, despite being directed to dress like a proverbial nun for her photo shoot.

    Outside of her efforts at the Capitol to get the funding, programs and respect Minneapolis so richly deserves despite its reputation for hedonism and occasional depravity, Reed develops women’s health curriculum for religious organizations through a non-profit group and raises money to bring disadvantaged New Orleans kids to Minneapolis for seminars on political activism every year. That she accomplishes all this while engaged in a Sisyphean quest for the ultimate bacon cheeseburger and keeping her household well-stocked with high-end Scotch makes her all the more impressive.

    ReginaRegina Garza

    Age: 26

    Hometown: Roanoke, VA

    Political Affiliation: DFL

    Handpicked by former Sen. Jane Ranum to join her staff while working in D.C. as an advocate for labor and immigrant rights, the petite lady in red was brought here by the seductive, yet deceptive, song of Minnesota summers — learning too late that the rumors she heard about the state’s other seasons are all too true. She keeps herself warm by serving as Sen. Mee Moua’s Judiciary committee administrator, keeping a watchful eye on public safety and the courts while working unofficially on immigration policy initiatives for the senator.

    A self-described public policy wonk and political animal by nature, Garza still finds time to get away from the grasping tendrils of the legislative arena. Having met her fiancé, a competitive ballroom dancer, while salsa dancing, she continues to learn in the hopes of one day joining him in competition. She is also living proof of the Capitol’s effects on the mental state of all who work there – her tenuous grip on sanity causing her to run the Boston Marathon and planning to follow it up with the Twin Cities Marathon as well. But her drive and passion, combined with that little bit of crazy, makes for a striking package.

    MaryMary Lahammer

    Age: 34

    Hometown: St. Louis Park

    Political Affiliation: "None whatsoever"

    TPT’s politics reporter, program host and documentarian extraordinaire is generally known for her impartiality and political acumen, but there’s an extremely vocal subset of her audience watching for the disarming combination of her nigh-angelic good looks and choice of footwear that brings most mortal men to their knees. And despite being one of the most recognizable political journalists in the state, her career in public television has taken her far afield of the Capitol as well — from a pastoral week for a documentary on Isle Royal to a 17-course meal with Fidel Castro and Jesse Ventura.

    From her honeyed-blonde hair to her white leather high-heeled boots, Lahammer isn’t one to do things by halves — living an intense life away from Saint Paul’s hallowed legislative grounds as well. A recent foray into cliff-jumping in the Boundary Waters is only the latest example of her fervent desire to live what most would call an exhausting lifestyle. Training for the Olympic marathon trials and hauling 1,000 rolls of sod for an extreme landscaping project with her husband, who shared a 12 mile run with Lahammer on their first date, is seen as the norm in Minnesota’s first family of political journalism.

    And to make sure the next generation is prepared to take up arms for the cause, Lahammer’s daughter’s first words were, "More Capitol news mommy, please."

    The Five Most Beautiful Men at the Capitol

    (Click images for full size.)

    JuddJudd Schetnan
    Age: 35

    Hometown: Fergus Falls, MN

    Party Affiliation: "I work for the governor"

    Arguments about transit within the hallowed halls of the Capitol often get ugly, but the Met Council’s transit czar, Judd Schetnan, looks damn good after helping deliver a solid session for transit, despite threatened funding cuts for the Central Corridor — not to mention an angry GOP core out for blood after an overridden gubernatorial veto. And it’s obvious the Met Council’s transit lobbyist understands the heavy responsibility that comes with his runner’s physique, deep tan and somewhat roguish charm — looking to help lawmakers find ways to fit public transportation into an already strapped budget to help the entire state live up to its potential.

    Of course, now that the hard fought session is over, Schetnan is enjoying a well-deserved break. He spends as much time as possible lately with his wife and two sons, not to mention trips to his cabin just south of his hometown, as well as his boat on the St. Croix to work on deepening his tan – all the better to woo lawmakers in ’09 when the budget forecast is even more dismal than it was this year.

    NickNick Busse

    Age: 26

    Hometown: Jordan, MN
    Party Affiliation: decidedly non-partisan

    Busse, despite his obvious charm and good looks, was less than thrilled upon being the first nominee for this singular honor. However, after realizing the damage was already done, he decided to indulge his co-workers and allow himself to be enshrined as one of the hottest men to ever write for the Session Daily and Weekly.

    And despite this break to recognize his contributions to beautifying Saint Paul, this University of Minnesota graduate’s veins pulse in tune with the ebb and flow of legislation — even proposing to his wife at the Capitol. But let it not be said that Busse’s beauty is one-dimensional — when not furiously reporting on House activities, he runs Saintpaulitan.com, a blog devoted to showcasing the finer side of Saint Paul, and the occasional squirrel, to all those who fear to tread where legislators dwell.

    PeterPeter Brickwedde
    Age: 24

    Hometown: Minneapolis
    Party Affiliation: DFL

    As one of the men who keeps the State and Local Government Operations and Oversight committee functioning smoothly, one might imagine Sen. Ann Rest’s legislative assistant would be drunk on the heady nectar that is political power. However, this undeniably dreamy veteran of the Minnesota Senate is well-grounded, saying he’s working in one of the greatest environments he could ask for and demonstrating his modesty by downplaying the hordes of salivating colleagues who demanded his rightful place on the list of the state’s finest.

    When not wandering the halls of the Capitol, Brickwedde is a sports fanatic, contributing his journeyman labors to the Senate softball team and honing his already impressive Hebrew physique by playing tennis regularly. And when "The Brick" isn’t in action, he’s often enjoying some well-earned down time watching the Vikings, Twins, Wild, or sumo wrestling on "The Ocho."

    RonRon Latz

    Age: 44

    Hometown: Golden Valley, MN

    Political Affiliation: DFL

    The lone legislator in this roundup, Sen. Latz cuts a striking figure posing in the retail and housing complex he helped build at Excelsior and Grand as a St. Louis Park city councilmember. His work in the legislature is no less striking — having played a pivotal role this session in the 35W bridge collapse victim compensation bill. The majority whip from Senate District 44 has served in the MN Senate since 2006 and for four years before that in the MN House.

    The senator also maintains a thriving criminal and employment law practice and spends as much time as possible with his family, traveling from soccer game to soccer game watching his kids and waking up before dawn to maintain the what are, according to one anonymous commenter, the "impressive shoulders and steely jaw that draw jealous stares from his GOP colleagues."

    But Sen. Latz isn’t simply a masculine figure for St. Louis Park, Hopkins and Golden Valley housewives to gaze upon with barely disguised desire. He also indulges his artistic side by indulging his inner Von Trapp with his family — singing and playing piano with his wife and kids.

    Dave
    Dave Gillette

    Age: 30

    Hometown: Minnetrista, MN

    Political Affiliation: Card carrying member of the press

    The avant-garde creator of a whole new form of video-based illustrated political commentary, Gillette uses his massive drawing muscles for incisive critique while wooing his public with boyish charm and well-developed forearms that would make Olive Oyl swoon in lustful abandon. An avid spectator of politics, Dave combined his passion for illustration with a college-born near-obsession with video documentation that was further fueled by a comedy show he helped create for Channel 45.

    When not offering views sketched out in ink, Gillette is an avid outdoorsman, having just returned from a week in the Boundary Waters. He also just bought a home, allowing hopeful viewers a stable location to maintain their watchful vigil on the artistically tousled commentator.

  • Perverts Park Here

    What’s in a word?

    More specifically what word makes a post zoom up the popular pole faster than others? Of course, there are the easy words like "porn" and "sex." Then there are the more inventive words (for professional writers) and happy accidents (for plebians like me).

    I have come across one recently. I won’t name the golden word, or perhaps the platinum-status proximity of two words. I have become superstitious about this discovery and don’t want to jinx it before I figure out how to hold Tom Bartel over a bigger barrel.

    Yet I must admit it feels delicious to be popular. Or at least it felt that way until my fragile literary ego was popped by a bigger man (in so many ways) and better writer than me.

    "Your post is doing well because of the perverts out there. Why else does it score so high every morning?"

    He is right.

    Get the headlines just right and you’ll increase traffic to your site. With an automotive blog, however, it seems that getting the traffic is far more contigent upon the headline than the vehicles it recommends for venturing into that real everyday madness you find on the street.

    Then again I guess even perverts need a place to park online. Speaking of which, I think its only fair that I credit my good friend Tom for the teaser line on this post (so good I almost can’t ask for money.)

    In fact, I was going to make this the headline for this post unitl my other editor informed me that Prom is now past–and the event is no longer "sticky."

    That was hardly my experience in high school.

    Then again my world, and my words, have long since changed.

     

     

  • Rum, Sodomy, & No Cash

    (This the car from its most umistakable angle. It looks even more like a nameless Japanese car from the rear and side.)

    The Pax Britannica that led to a relatively peaceful 1800s (unless you were Irish) was imposed primarily by the glorious Royal Navy.

    While it is politic to assert this prestige came from good government, passive politicians and the daring of former pirates made good, realists claim it was built on rum, sodomy and the lash.

    Which immediately brings the new Jaguar XF to mind.

    I drove this smallish land-yatch yesterday and I came away sore as hell. Because Jaguar has pretty much sunk its last hope for reiventing its once sexy (if unreliable) brand. (Think neutered–like this Lexus.)

    So how bad are things? Let me count the ways:

    a) While more trees were harmed in the manufacture of its exquisite interior this side of a Daimler, it still has too much Ford switchgear and soon-to-fail gizmodics.

    Pictured: This gives you some feeling for the amount of wood lavished upon the new Jag interior. Real stuff. Rich. And far more modern that this picture.

    b) The exterior.

    c) The exterior.

    d) The exterior.

    e) The ext…what? I almost missed it because it looked like the Lexus E350 which is itself modeled on the Camry, for chrissake…erior. The most important new car in Jaguar’s history (apart from the XJ) must be the new paradigm for sex on wheels, not a paen to sonambulism.

    f) The performance is "comfortably numb" compared to its peers. Another dumb move from a brand once vaunted for pace and grace.

    The buzz in the business is that Ford put all the money into the interior, then ran out of funds to adapt the hot XF show concept to production.

    Poor Jag. While they are no longer drunk on their past elegance, someone still has this brand over a barrel, and this time I think it’s finally going to sink.

  • A+B=WTF

    On Wednesday, April 30, 2008, Sen. John McCain jumped the
    shark.

    Now, I’ve got a lot of respect for the man. He’s always been
    something of a straight shooter. And when a man spends time in a POW camp and
    can’t raise his arms above his shoulders as a result, I’m inclined to cut the
    guy some slack. But in a campaign stop in Pennsylvania yesterday, McCain claimed that pork
    barrel spending caused the 35W bridge to fall down go boom    . Pork barrel
    spending didn’t cause the bridge to fall. All reports up until now point to
    trade school engineers from the 60s who were likely too baked to carry the
    damn one. And given how commonly politicians have taken the "If I say it, it
    must be true" approach this campaign season, I would’ve much rather watched the
    GOP’s candidate for president actually jump the Mississippi on a
    motorcycle     than listen to a man formerly known for candid statements trying to score political points by holding court whilst spewing
    forth a toxic slurry of obfuscating crap that would rival the noxious sludge at
    the bottom of the Mississippi itself.

    But why do candidates feel so comfortable hocking these
    juicy loogies of misinformation at us? They know that the words
    tumbling forth from their forked tongues are simply a devious combo of smoke,
    mirrors, and sweet pandering nothings that smoothly caress the genitalia of
    their base constituencies, thus lulling them deeper into a bullshit-induced
    trance, right? Most blame television for forcing politicians to compress complicated
    issues into easy to digest bites. TV conditioned people to want
    their news spoon-fed – meaning whoever screams the loudest with the most glib
    sound bite generally is regarded as the prophet of truth. This applies even when the person screaming the loudest is the crazy fucker having a dance
    party in his underwear in front of Block E.

    But the honest truth is that the blame for the sorry state
    of affairs that is the American political system falls squarely on the eagerly
    nodding culture whores known as American citizens. It’s us. We’re the reason Jeremiah
    Wright’s sermons make such effective weapons in a campaign. It’s our fault John
    McCain feels justified in using the deaths of 13 Minnesotans to make an
    unrelated point about earmarks. And it’s my own damn fault I’m wondering why Al Franken
    couldn’t find a nice Jewish uncle to keep his books. We’ve become a
    society of listless zombies who claim to be too busy to understand the issues
    at hand, but also refuse to devote any of that precious time to information
    that may contradict opinions or worldviews developed by listening to the chorus of malformed mewling
    creatures     polluting the public dialogue.

    Make no mistake, it is pollution. Yes, Rev. Jeremiah Wright
    said "God damn America."
    In fact, he danced on the altar while a chorus of seraphim drifted down from
    the heavens to sing those very words in a bawdy sea chanty written by the
    Archangel Gabriel himself. It doesn’t matter all that much though, since Wright isn’t
    running for president. Plus, it’s highly unlikely that, should Sen. Obama be
    elected the next president, he’ll take punitive steps against white America.
    Steps like outlawing rugby, New Balance sneakers, Volvos, Joe Mauer and his thrice-damned sideburns or any of the other ridiculous crap we fetishize. But because we’ve spent the
    last two months with politicians and pundits alike regurgitating bile and
    chunky bits of flag-waving rhetoric, Sen. McCain’s health care proposal hasn’t
    gotten the coverage, or scrutiny, it deserves. The lack of details in Sen.
    Obama’s plan hasn’t exactly been called out as a particular failing either. And
    because we’ve been too busy obsessing over what appears to be an innocuous
    accounting mistake on Al Franken’s part, no one has taken the time to marvel at
    the profound stupidity of Hillary Clinton staging
    a press event at a gas station     to demonstrate just how in touch with the
    plight of the common man she truly is while advocating for a gas tax
    holiday     that would save the average American about $30 over three months.

    A well-informed populace is vital to the operation of a
    democracy, according to our slave-owning, and banging, founding father Thomas
    Jefferson. And sad to say, we’re not well-informed. We’re well-indoctrinated. So we debate over whether Obama is,
    in fact, an Islamo-fascist for not wearing a flag lapel pin. We fight over whether McCain’s
    "senior moments" are the result of campaign trail exhaustion or a sign that
    he’ll be in Depends
    before his second term. And we shiver in fear as we wonder whether Hillary Clinton is a creature risen from the
    grave by sheer force of will, determined to win the presidency in order to
    secure access to the delicious babies necessary to sustain her unholy semblance
    of life. And all of that pointless noise pollution goes a long way toward explaining why, in the midst of this
    interminable, abominable election season, our status as one of the greatest and most influential superpowers
    this world has ever known can now be summarized in just under two minutes by Grand Theft Auto IV’s Serbian protagonist –
    Nico Bellic.

  • Nurses, diesels and douchiness

    (Pictured. Douching device (not to size). May also be used for urea replacement in your diesel. Read below).

    Do me a favor. Take the snarky tone of my blog (is it? oh, is it? please!) and put it aside for a minute. I mean create an Obama and the Preacher (aka bigot) wall between my blog and what I am about to say.

    I might have been wrong about diesels.

    Someone acutally convinced me last night that the new 60mpg Jetta will never be for weasels. I now think I agree.

    In fact, I am not totally certain that stateside diesels will pollute the air any more than their non-diesel counterparts. I also realize you could compellingly prove that their emissions are as pure as Michelle Obama’s intentions. And I like the Mercedes Bluetec. I also like nurses, and talking to them in the hospital when I am not really sick.

    Yet I continue to be dogged by the MIT alumnis (my Dad and others) who say that you really cannot completely teach an old dog new tricks. Proof of this is Audi/VW’s DSG. It was touted as better than Ferrari’s paddle-shifting 18 months ago and now it is being panned as more clunky than cool.

    Even if they really have made a bijon freis hunt like a bloodhound why do you need to replace the urea in a new diesel every 10,000 miles?

    Urea. Right. Sounds like piss.

    Finally you can take ALL the empirical evidence in the world to show me that Diesels are 100% weasel-free and I would counter with this elegant observation:

    Can you see Maserati or Ferrari in the same sentence as "diesel"?

    If I must live and write in pedestrian fashion, as I frequently do, then I want a bike and a normally aspirated Benz.

    This is life, I am sure, as nature intends.

     

     

     

     

  • Readin', Writin', and Ninjutsu

    Like the stealthy shinobi, Secretary of
    Education Margaret Spellings slipped in and out of Saint Paul yesterday,
    accomplishing her mission with a minimum of bloodshed and outcry from those
    who would oppose her     in carrying out the quest laid upon her by her daimyo.
    Few recognized her shadowy presence, overshadowed as it was with news of racially-charged
    electoral rhetoric, newly appointed slutty
    governors    , and medical
    incompetence     of nigh-mythical proportions.

    Spellings’ quest is, of course, to stump for George W. Bush’s
    premier education program, No Child Left Behind
    (NCLB), which has been up for renewal since September 30. Her stop in St.
    Paul yesterday, complete with Pawlenty photo opp, concerned her decision to
    allow some states to make modifications in how schools are penalized for not
    making "adequate yearly progress". According to Spellings, the modifications
    are intended to allow states to differentiate between schools that are barely
    missing benchmarks and those that are dramatically underperforming on a
    year-to-year basis. Strangely, no mention was made of providing the money
    promised by Washington to fund the testing required by NCLB.

    Spellings’ speech emphasized that this new flexibility would
    not come at the price of accountability. Punctuated as it was by the secretary
    brandishing her gleaming ninja-to
    and threats to send her shadowy clan of kunoichi to "encourage"
    adequate yearly progress from the nonconforming and recalcitrant school
    districts not living up to the administration’s lofty standards, many in the
    Washington offered their confidence that these measures would make a monumental
    difference in closing the education gap.

    Oddly, Minnesota isn’t one of the states eligible to
    participate in the pilot program. Minnesota has yet to secure approval for the alternative
    exams developed for English language learners, so won’t be able to participate
    in the program. DFL lawmakers seized upon this opportunity to question why the
    secretary chose to come to Minnesota at all if the state wouldn’t be reaping
    the benefits of the Department of Education’s enlightened new policy –
    wondering if, in fact, this was all just a way to bring attention to Norm
    Coleman’s campaign for reelection. Given the nature of the news, this was
    unlikely at best. Regardless, Spellings quickly silenced these voices of
    dissent with a torrent
    of shuriken before vanishing into the quickly fading twilight, as ninjas are wont to do.

    Despite these modifications, which are intended to address
    one of the primary complaints about NCLB – namely that a school that doesn’t
    make adequate yearly progress gets bent over, sans lube, regardless of how
    close or far from the mark they hit – Congress and the Department of Education
    are unlikely to come to any significant agreement on renewing NCLB in the near
    future. The upcoming presidential election makes it even more likely Congress
    will sit on its collective arse expressing shock that baseball players would
    stoop so low as to take steroids, all the while informing the public on how
    hard it’s working to come to an agreement that "…will serve the best interests
    of the children. My god, won’t you think of the children?" Clearly our
    legislature has our best
    interests     at heart.

    Once we reach the end of the interminable two-year slog
    known as the modern election season, our elected representatives in Washington
    may stop wetting themselves every time a significant policy decision needs to
    be made long enough to create meaningful legislation. As a result, the act is very likely to be modified heavily, or even
    disappear altogether, after the election. Obama and McCain both want to modify
    the act heavily, and despite voting to put NCLB in place originally, Hillary
    Clinton is the only candidate who has stated she’ll put an end to the act,
    though she hasn’t yet provided a plan to replace the accountability measures
    many have agreed are good for several of the groups struggling with the
    achievement gap.

    And if that prognosis spawns an odd feeling in the pit
    of your stomach that feels remarkably like hope for the future, there no reason for concern. You can rest easy in the near certainty that the
    next administration, whoever may lead it, will almost certainly put an asinine,
    overpriced and ill-advised education policy in place that makes the reaming our
    schools have received under NCLB look like a threeway with Strawberry Shortcake
    and Rainbow Brite.
    Then again, Strawberry Shortcake turned out to be quite the tramp.