The Phone Company

As he is apt to do, Mr. McGruder nails it.
posted by Kermit at 10/09/2004 04:12:00 PM |

Inte resting how Blogger's spellchecker flags "blog."
posted by Kermit at 10/07/2004 10:08:00 AM |

I made it for about a half hour. I had to stop. It was really painful and I must say that this may have been the first debate ever that was lost by the moderator. She was awful. She made these guys look good in comparison. As James Wolcott wrote yesterday on his blog, Gwen suffers from a "case of the cutes." His site is very good by the way.
But over all I have to say that this debate was nothing more than a sideshow in the biggest sideshow on Earth.

posted by Kermit at 10/07/2004 09:59:00 AM |

Remember Tetris? Remember that theme song. Groovy and Russian sounding? Yeah that's the one.

Good. Now it's stuck in your head too.
posted by Kermit at 10/06/2004 04:43:00 PM |

As Cat and I watched the first debate between Shrub and Kerry, she caught something that I myself missed. It was stated three times that one if the duties of the American president is to "lead the world". It was said once by Bush and twice by Kerry. It was not worded as a question but rather as an obvious fact. The phrase that I didn't even notice drew Cat's ire. She was offended by the notion, not so much in principle as she recognizes the fact that the American president does hold a somewhat unique and powerful position in the world, but rather that they would just come out and say it openly. She has a point. For a country that does not want to be seen as an empire, we are certainly using the language of one. There is a big difference between taking a position of leadership in the world and openly declaring and anointing oneself the leader. I think we tend to overlook this. But to a 'ferner' it comes off really badly. "Who the hell do they think they are?!" would be the approximate response. We could be a little bit more subtle is all I'm saying. I'm willing to bet that many languages make no distinction between the words "ruler" and "leader" and when statements like this are translated, they could sound creepy indeed.

Oh and Bush really talked about other countries as if they were a bunch of 5 year olds that needed a strict and disciplined parent.
posted by Kermit at 10/06/2004 03:55:00 PM |

...but Shatner may just be a dick.
posted by Kermit at 10/06/2004 02:09:00 PM |

On thing you really don’t get on Long Island is flyovers. A flyover is a military aircraft that flies really fast over your house at an altitude of about 400 feet. This can be very loud. 5 minutes ago, my office was shaken by a Eurofighter (the EU’s expensive new F-16 wannabe) racing overhead at show-off altitude. Really loud but kind of cool because usually our building is only shaken by 1960’s era F-4s. The way I see it, if I am going to be subjected to wall-crumbling jet noise, I want it to be because of a state of the art and really expensive piece of military hardware. I’m not impressed by a these relics unless of course they’re painted like this. But that being said, on Long island when people want this deafening experience, they usually go to the big TV room at Circuit City where it’s all Top Gun, all the time. In 5.1.

UPDATE: Yes I am aware of Grumman. Grumman is gone now. Has been for a while. And even when it was here I don't think an F-14 ever flew over our house.
posted by Kermit at 10/05/2004 02:22:00 PM |

I’m sitting at work and there is nothing to do. But I have a big ramble for ya’ll (y’all?)

I was listening to Randi Rhodes on Air America Radio yesterday and it suddenly struck me that I was listening to an inferior version of sports radio. Politics and sports have much in common. In politics as in sports you have teams and fans but there is one crucial difference: Sports fans are by and large capable of making an honest assessment of their team whereas political fans are virtually incapable of finding fault in their team. I think political loyalties, which are actually quite different than ideological positions, run about as deep as those in sports. The Mets are terrible and there is no end in sight but I could never imagine jumping ship and entering the warm embrace of the winners tent that the Yankees provide. No matter what the Yankees did or the Mets didn’t do, it would be unthinkable to change loyalties. It is the same with politics. In sports there is room for public criticism of one’s own team but unfortunately the same can not be said for politics. For instance, if you listen to Mike and the Mad Dog, you would not be able to determine what teams they support by listening to their analysis. Though Mike is a Yankees fan and Mr. Dog lays down with the SF Giants, they do not allow these loyalties to color their assessments of their respective teams or the competition. An intrinsic part of being a fan of a team is looking for ways to make the team better. Criticism is part of the game. In politics however, there is no room for any honest reflection. If Rush Limbaugh and his ilk could be honest fans of the Republicans and those on the left honest Democrat fans we would be a whole lot better off. Of course in reality, they are members of the teams. That is the problem. We are seemingly incapable of having an honest debate in the media because those charged with leading the discussion are themselves players. It’s like watching a Braves game on TBS and listening to the announcers fawn all over their team. “Chipper just struck out but darn he got some good cuts in there!” Mets announcers obviously want them to win but they do their best (sans Fran) to provide honest commentary and the games are infinitely more interesting as a result. It should be noted that in the days following 911, the best radio in Town was WFAN. They stopped talking sports and instead covered the attack and its aftermath. They did call in shows as always and provided, in my belief, the best coverage on the air. They took their sports analyst styles and just applied them to world events. It was a breath of fresh air. In the world of professional news commentators, the coverage was an embarrassing patriotism contest. These sports guys are real journalists who just happen to cover sports while the people that cover politics are anything but. We’d all be better off if Sean Hannity could be as tough on his own team as he is on the opposition. The level of play would be elevated immeasurably. There is more than enough room for editorialising but when Bush lies they should call him on it and when Kerry does the same, the left should follow suit. Fans hold their teams accountable and the teams are forced to (try to) improve themselves. But if Bush were discovered to enjoy a regular diet of babies for breakfast, Rush Limbaugh would first chastise us for questioning the diet of Dear Leader and would then uncover a massive amount of suppressed evidence that indicated that Clinton not only had babies for breakfast, but for lunch as well.

That’s all for now. I have to get back to work. I’ll edit this later.
posted by Kermit at 10/05/2004 11:20:00 AM |