The College Whigs Revue

An Anti-American post from Minnesota's 6th

2008-10-24T14:14:00.001-05:00

I am anti-American. But that’s okay, because my representative (my, MY representative, right here where I’m typing) is canceling out my anti-Americanism as we speak.

Michelle Bachmann is doing the good work, picking up my flag-burning slack. She’s making sure that none of the baby-killing, gay-loving, God-hating values I espouse don’t permeate our system of law. She’s cock-blocking the sodomy of which I would support the legalization, so long as it’s in public, in front of children. And she certainly isn’t doing anything to increase the sales of Paul Simon’s new album, “Jihad Jingle,” the proceeds of which go directly to funds for Ahmadinejad’s reelection campaign. On that front, I’m doing my best, but she isn’t allowing that anti-American filth, however finger-snappingly catchy, to permeate our nation’s spotless capital. She’s plumb got me beat.

But that’s not enough. Michelle dropped by the other day and started confiscating my books. I didn’t point out the irony of the fact that my collection included Fahrenheit 451 because, well, irony is the nectar of the elitists, and elitists, she has informed me in previous meetings, is just plain anti-American.

After my books, she took my computer. Writing, she informed me, leads too easily to sarcasm (at least in my case). Sarcasm, being a form of humor, is just-plain un-American in her book. I said “hey now, wh-wh-what if I just wanna use it for the calculator and the pictures and the games, the minesweeper and the pinball?!?!?!” And she said “I wish you would. I wish you would. But you won’t, like the media won’t, so I have to do it all myself.” And I was like “Hey, that made literally no sense,” and a group of her supporters, which had apparently accumulated in the meantime, began cheering raucously. “That’s what makes her so wonderful!” I heard one of them exclaim.

Michelle then left inexplicably, appearing distracted. “Her justice meter!” the crowd shouted, excitedly, and they began cheering and gnashing their teeth as they followed her in a storm of noise and brew-ha.

I followed them outside, across the road, through several miles of fields into the next town over, where a small clumping of rainbow flags and flamboyantly-mannered folk led me to conclude that Rep. Bachmann’s justice ESP had been triggered by a GLBT rights rally. Michelle turned to the crowd, of which I had become a hardly-noticeable piece, and sought words of rally and support. She then flipped on a big black bucket hat reading “CIA,” of the sort she had likely purchased from a street Gazebo on the Washington Mall, rolled up her sleeves, and crawled like a soldier into the bushes next to the rally.

“Look at her go,” members of the crowd exclaimed. “She’s fighting for us. Such a confident woman. Ready to lead. I love her smile!” And there was excitement and shouting and gnashing of teeth and foaming at the mouth.

But my representative was doing a bad job of spying discreetly, assuming that was her intent. Members of the rally began to shout “hey, look at that dim-witted grin! That constant, dim-witted grin! It isn’t going away! I know who that is!” And the crowd noticed the other crowd, and the fingers were pointed, and Michelle’s traveling band began shouting and wailing and gnashing their teeth and foaming at the mouth and shaking their fists, and finally, they charged. I stayed behind, collected the wallets that had been dropped, and donated their contents to the Tinklenberg campaign. And this is the story of the inexplicable fundraising boom that his campaign saw. That awful, disgusting, God-hating, gay-loving, baby-killing, flag-burning, terrible, horrible, no-good-very-bad, un-American campaign in which a social moderate and minister has been pitted, hopelessly, against central Minnesota’s culture warrior.

Next stop, some small town in North Carolina. Or wherever Alaska’s simpleton warrior with the Disney-informed sense of justice and articulation goes next. This is fun.

How to deal with Obama: Suggestions from the McCain/Palin Campaign for its supporters

2008-10-17T14:04:00.003-05:00

Dear supporters,

I need to ask you, respectfully, to stop wandering around our rallies like a bunch of half-witted penguins and loggerheaded Hitler youths.

It's not that we don't appreciate your support. We really do. But racist hicks rarely look good on TV, and this campaign is riding your coattails all the way down past the Mason-Dixon line. Even if the worst of you ocassionally surfaces in Minnesota.

So here are a few suggestions. Together, we need to address the imminent and drastic threat that is Barack Obama without seeming so uppity about it. Capish?

First of all, stop referencing his suposedly Arab background directly. If you just take the microphone and say 'he's not a good family man," or "he appears not to shower often," or "he's barely qualified to drive a cab," then we'll know what you're getting at, and there's no soundbite to boot.

Second, consider the good people at the Monty Python franchise. We know most of you don't watch Monty Python, as you probably wouldn't get most of it - but senators love that stuff. And they don't need to be burdened with the constant copyright infringements that bloggers and satirists will impose by using the witch-burning scene from Holy Grail in mocking reference to...well, all of you.

Third, we can take him on directly without being outright bigoted. You can try to scare him out of town without threatening death. For instance, we can all dress up like ghosts and stand on his front lawn in a big group. That will scare him. If that doesn't work, we can make a big lower-case "t," as in "time to stop running for president," out of two-by-fours. Then we can light it on fire so he can see it better. That'll show him.

I'm John McCain and I approve this message.

A Message from First Lady Laura Bush

2008-10-10T13:59:00.002-05:00

Hey, America. I’ve been sent here on short notice, on behalf of my husband, because the White House communications office tells me you’re all a lot more likely to listen to me, acknowledge me, and for that matter, avoid rushing the stage and barking like dogs, than if my husband were here.

Um…how can I put this? I think you’re being hard on my husband. Yes, he deserves it. Holy living hell, he deserves it today. But you were pretty hard on him back in the day, too, even when things weren’t quite as bad.

Back in 2006, people were calling him possibly the worst president ever. Hell, if your worldview is primarily informed by the show Weeds, this was practically a foregone conclusion.
But listen…things weren’t so bad back then. Sure, the war was in the tank, and some two-thirds of you who supported him at first somehow had a change of heart and decided that, being the leader of the free world and all, he should’ve had the foresight, even if you lacked it. Maybe that’s fair, if only because he has the power to mislead and yadda, yadda, yadda. And he had all those advisors. I know.

But listen – back in 2006, gas was below three bucks a gallon nationally. If you sold your stocks in 2006, you got money back, not just a piece of sandpaper whose application as a substitute for toilet paper is currently less painful than having to face the actual returns from your splurge on the online pet supply industry. And Britney had publicly melted down and been whisked away to rehab…oh, at most, once or twice. Admit it – things weren’t that bad.

Well, Phil Gramm said we were a nation of whiners, and whine we did. Even I was guilty. Whenever George would drop his pen, I would make some crack about his approval ratings hitting the floor faster than a shell-shocked Iraqi veteran who got haphazard treatment at Walter Read and therefore is still sensitive to fireworks on the Fourth of July. And every time he carved the turkey for some holiday, his dad would say “now don’t screw up, because you can’t fail upwards when it comes to losing a finger! You’re not a legacy in that department! I never lost a finger, ya dope! Can’t ride daddy’s coattails this time! Dumbass! Idiot!”

Long story short, I think we got to him. You and I and George H.W., and the writers at Showtime and Jon Stewart and everyone, everyone. And either out of spite (if he’s got the capacity) or because he started to actually believe it, he started giving half-assed speeches in the Rose Garden, and he started spending a lot of time just wandering around being sad, and Bush the Reckless became Bush the Inert, which lent itself to his transformation into Bush the Overseer of the worst financial crisis in most of our memories. And now that we’re pleading with him to do something, he’s not responding (I still can’t tell if it’s out of spite that he’s dragging his feet, doing the self-induced inept act, sarcastically, you know, ha ha). Now all he says during press conferences is “Gee mister David Gregory, you did say I was the worst president ever, gee.”

So…you get what you ask for. That’s the lesson here. And I hope you’re all happy, real happy, because you don’t have to spend the rest of your retired lives with him. Jesus God, that’s going to be fun. And yes, I am being sarcastic.

Barack Obama doesn't wash his hands after using the restroom

2008-09-26T15:42:00.003-05:00

Conservative pundits have a hootingly rage-risin’ time hunting left-wing psychos, as well as herbal healers and heathens.

For the entirety of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s tenure as front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, conservative pundits and the lemmings in their audience foamed at the mouth when they talked about her.
Fingers were jabbed and accusations of the most liberal, left-wing candidacy ever conceived ran amok. Fingers punched the air, mouths foamed, and there was wailing and gnashing of teeth as pundits decried her as the most liberal senator in memory, the most radical left-wing candidate ever to stage a run for the White House.

Then, someone off-camera whispered to them that Sen. Barack Obama had just won the Iowa primary. He had won it resoundingly, the signaled, to the effect that Hillary’s candidacy had likely received a fatal blow.

The pundits collectively paused, looked down, regained composure, and immediately thereafter resumed jabbing their fingers at the camera, declaring that Obama was the most liberal senator in the history of the whole universe, the most radically socialist feminist pansy militant left-wing candidate ever to stage a run for the White House. And also that he was a right-wing Islamo-fascist, or at least the most Islamo-fascist candidate ever to stage a run for the White House. And there was foaming of the mouth and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

It’s an interesting charge (the one about his being the most left-wing radical baby-killing God-hater (who was still an Islamo-fascist) ever to run for president, that is), because the pundits were right when they insinuated, however blindly, that Obama and Hillary were near each other on the spectrum. Of the 267 issues on which both senators cast votes in 2007, they differed on only 10. The thing is, Clinton is only ranked 16th among senate Democrats in terms of liberalism, as per voting record. Yet the National Journal ranked Obama as 2007’s “most liberal” senator.

That puts him ahead of Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer and Jack Reed, all of whom scored above 94 in the 2005 “liberalism percentile” (meaning they were more liberal on a host of social and economic issues that at least 94 other members of the senate) used by John Bibby and Brian Schaffner to examine the actual ideological placement of legislators (Clinton was in a 79.8th percentile).

The review also puts him ahead of Joe Biden, who scored an 80.2, though the Journal still ranks him third. Both Biden and Obama are ranked as “more liberal” than Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who is, in his own words, a socialist (score: 98, according to the DNC, the liberals themselves!).

It shouldn’t be a surprise, though. John Kerry came under the same attack in 2004, as soon as Howard Dean relinquished the title “most liberal” for the joint awards “most insane” and “most horrendously, catastrophically awkward.” Yet he scored an 86.7 in 2005, which put him below seven Democrats (the aforementioned three plus Paul Sarbanes, Frank Lautenberg, Tom Harkin and Dick Durbin) and eight total senators (including Sanders).

The lesson is this: Obama voted for FISA, so shut up. Rudy, Rush, Bill, you and your lemmings shut up, because either you’re stupid (assuming that he who, being thin and young and black, looks most liberal, therefore is most liberal) or you’re lying to advance your interest. And I got sick of liars way back when we found out that there were no WMDs, and that allowing gay marriage will not, in fact, bring about the destruction of the family unit, and that Archdiocese of Boston was full of it, and that Ken Lay was castrating his employees in their sleep, and when I heard, not too long ago, that chanting “drill baby drill” was something to be proud of. Tense times.

Top 10 reasons why Sarah Palin makes the GOP ticket stronger

2008-09-19T14:36:00.002-05:00

10. She’s a woman.
9. In no way is the excessive promotion of her aforementioned status as a woman demeaning in its effort to bring in Hillary voters, because any Hillary voter who swoons over Palin clearly has their head up their ass. Just kidding! But seriously, they won’t be reading this.
8. She seethes traditional conservative values.
7. Did I say seethes? I meant “radiates!”
6. To that end, no, she never banned any books. The Qu’ran is not a book…at least not in the eyes of the base, or the people who have legitimately been won over by McCain’s picking her. Those people can’t read anything - books, scripture, or lists!
5. She is an outsider who will bring change to Washington.
4. She knows that by saying she’ll being “change,” she’s literally repeating the message of her opponents. But she does a stellar job of pretending not to notice, with the sole intention of making the blood of reasonable people boil.
3. She brings more executive experience than either of her opponents on the Democratic ticket.
2. The fact that her former city hall resembles a southern Louisiana bait shop, in the words of James Carville, will likely appeal to the base, especially in southern Louisiana.
1. The fact that every positive aspect being promoted about Sarah Palin lends itself easily to criticism and mockery means that it also leads to a chance for the GOP to go on the defensive, which is sort of like being on the “consolation” offensive, which is good, considering they’ll take anything they can get.

Three conversations between Sarah Palin and John McCain

2008-09-12T14:18:00.001-05:00

Unbeknownst to all but Sarah Palin herself, these two eventual running mates met a long time before either of them knew who the other was.
It was during Palin’s days as a high school basketball standout. Palin, having gotten out of practice for the evening, was standing on a corner in Wasilla. Being winter in Alaska, it was dark when the visiting congressional candidate from Arizona pulled alongside her and lowered his window. The following conversation ensued:

McCain: “Hey there.”
Palin: “Um…hi?”
McCain: “Listen, I don’t normally do this, but I’ve been under a lot of stress lately…”
Palin: “Um, I think I should be going.”
McCain: “Need a ride?”
Palin: “No, thanks, I can walk."
McCain: “You sure? I’m a veteran baby, and I know a thing or two about staying warm when it’s cold.”
Palin: “Listen, creep, I…wait, a veteran of which war? Korea?”
McCain: “Vietnam.”
Palin: “…So, when was it cold it Vietnam?”
McCain: “Well, the floor of my cell got kind of clammy.”
Palin: “Oh…okay…”
McCain: “Yeah, it was, uh…yeah.”
(awkward pause)
McCain: “Well, I should probably get going.”
Palin: “Yah.”
McCain: “Nice to, well…yeah.” (speeds off)

Fast forward to early 2008. McCain is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, and the VP vetting process has begun. For the first time in a long time, McCain and Palin are again face-to-face. McCain doesn’t recognize Palin, but she recognizes him, leaving her irony meter painfully high-tuned during the following conversation:

McCain: “Listen, Sarah, I don’t normally do this, but…”
Palin: “You’ve been under a lot of stress?”
McCain: “Uh…yes, actually. We’ve been under a lot of stress from the pro-Hillary crowd. We see a lot of potential voters there, but we need to pick a running mate that will appeal to them.”
Palin: “Well, I’m flattered, but I have to say, I’m pretty happy with my job right now.”
McCain: “Listen, I’m a…”
Palin: “A veteran, I know.”
McCain: “…Right, and…”
Palin: “You know a thing or two about warming things up, yeah I know.”
McCain: “…Uh…right…I mean, I know a thing or two about fixing chilled relations, negotiating, that sort of thing, and I think you’d be the right pick.”
Palin: “I have to be honest, Senator. I’m just not sure I’m interested at this point.”
McCain: “(mutters) oh, fuck me...”
Palin: (hears McCain, blushes)
(awkward pause)
McCain: “Well, I should probably get going.”
Palin: “Yeeeaaaah…”
McCain: “Nice to meet you though” (goes for hug)
Palin: “(forces handshake) Yes, thanks, you can go now.”

The rest, as they say, is history. Palin was won over, and the McCain camp announced a VP pick that would prove either genius and strategic or short-sighted, reckless and unfounded on an unprecedented scale. Sarah Barracuda was grateful that McCain pressed the issue and wouldn’t let her slip away, and she decided to express that gratitude at 8:46 PM on the Wednesday night after the Republican convention (8:46 PM, astute politicos will notice, is 16 minutes past McCain’s bedtime).

(ring)
McCain: (groggy, seething) “(sigh)…Hello?”
(Background noise, shrewd laughing, no immediate response)
McCain: (angry) “Hel…”
Palin: “JOHNNY!!!”
McCain: “…Hi Sarah.”
Palin: “Johnny, Johnny, Johnny! I looooove you Johnny!”
McCain: “That’s nice, Sarah, but listen…”
Palin: “(slurring) You…you stuck with me, man. You…stuck with me…and I appreciate that.”
McCain: “Sarah, it’s late.”
Palin: “You…LISTEN…I feel like I don’t say it enough, man, but you’re just…just awesome.”
McCain: “Now, Sarah, you’re a pretty god candidate. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’re on the ticket together.”
Palin: “SHH!...shh (giggles).”
McCain: “Sarah, I have to go to sleep.”
Palin: “Hold on, hold on…(giggles)…let’s do a three-way with Barack!”
McCain: “Huh?”
Palin: “NO, no, a three way call! (cracks up, giggles, snorts) You pervert (giggles, snorts).”
McCain: “Sarah, Barack has a lot going on…”
Palin: “(escalating pitch) But once you go black you get universal health care (cracks up, laughs uproariously, snorts, giggles, snorts)!”
McCain: “Sarah!”
Palin: “Fine, you old crab (giggles). But I’m not gonna call you that name that you like anymore!”
McCain: “Sarah…”
Palin: “Ha ha, ha ha, you’re not ‘The Maverick’ anymore.”
McCain: “Stop it.”
Palin: “Nope, Ima never call you ‘The Maverick’ any more. Haaaaaaa (giggles).”
McCain: “Sarah…don’t bring that up anymore.”
Palin: “About how I’m only allowed to call you that when your wife isn’t around? Haaaaaa (voice drifts off).”
Cindy McCain: “You know, we have more than one line in the house, John. Sarah.”
(awkward pause)
Palin: “…Well, I should probably get going…”
Cindy McCain: “Yeeeeaaaah…”
McCain: “Listen, Cindy, I can explain.”
Cindy: “I’m sure you can, as soon as you get over the back pain from sleeping on the couch, you old perv.”
McCain: “Now that’s the second time I’ve been called a pervert in this conversation!”
Palin: “Well you did think I was a hooker that one time in Alaska(chokes, cracks up, giggles)!”
(longer, more awkward pause)
McCain: “I think you should…”
Palin: “Get out of here, right. Sorry.”
(click)

The exclusive McCain interview: Part II

2008-08-29T13:00:00.001-05:00

The conclusion of Millard's sit-down with...one of...the Republican candidate's Arizona estates

Finally, we’re sitting. The awkwardness had subsided as far as it probably will. We’re finally underway.
“So, Senator, you’ve come under fire lately for not knowing how many houses you own. Do you, uh, have a figure for us?”
“Well…ha,” he seethes. “That’s tricky, you see, because…well (laughs), here’s the thing…”
“The Senator doesn’t discuss his health problems” snaps a voice from the back of the room. A shadowy figure emerges.
“I’m sorry,” I ask, ‘but what health issues?”
“The Senator doesn’t discuss them.” His raspy, deep voice grows terse.
McCain turns around. “Dammit, Queeq, you only come in when I give you the signal.”
I’m taken aback. “Who’s Queeq?”
“My PR guy.”
“His name is Queeq?”
Queeq is perturbed “Talk to meh! I kill-e!”
“Short for Queequeg.” McCain throws a book behind him, aimed at Queequeg’s head. It falls woefully short.
“Ah.”
“Good throw-e, McCain-e!”

It takes several minutes for me to collect my thoughts and senses. Shake it out. Back to it.
“So, Senator, let’s tackle the hard stuff.”
“I’ve taken on the hard stuff! I’ve taken on torture!”
“Well, literally, yes. Even though I heard you couldn’t handle it.”
“Eh?”
“Never mind. Senator, you’ve drawn criticism from much of the far right-reaching wing of your conservative base, a base that many think will be critical to match voter turnout to your poll numbers. How have you addressed this, and do you plan to address it further?”
“Well I appreciate that question, Mickey.”
“Millard.”
“Right. Mickey. Sorry. I’m glad you asked that question, because it is something I plan to address, though frankly, I think that the criticism is a bit overblown.”
“Fair enough. Can you give us an example?”
“Absolutely, Mike. I’ve made strides to reach out to the religious right ever since I began exploring the possibility that I would run for president.”
“But isn’t that just pandering? Was that just for convenience?”
“Let me…see, the Christian Right has a lot in common with a goldfish.”
“What do you mean?”
“They have a memory span of six seconds.”
“…So…you’re overfeeding a starved goldfish?”
“(sighs)…Okay, bad example. But take a standard issue.”
“Abortion?”
“Perfect. I’ve always said it should be required.”
“Outlawed, McCain-e,” Queequeg interjects.
“Right. Outlawed. Sorry.”

I’m thinking the conservative base rhetoric is getting tired. Not that the sound bite war over energy reminds me of anything other than a bunch of elephants with magnetized feet trying to stampede across a giant sheet of cast iron. But the readers want to hear it, my editor has assured me.
“Senator, it’s been said that you’ve missed ten energy votes on the senate floor since you began your campaign, and maybe before that. Would you care to elaborate?”
“I, uh…I don’t think I’ve missed any. Queequeg, have I missed any?”
“Hold one, Queequeg check-e e-mail.”
We wait for a minute. Queequeg comes back, sulking, head down.
“Queequeg sorry…no check-e e-mail for months.”
I’m confused. “What does this mean?”
McCain is too busy giving Queequeg the stink eye. He slowly wheels around.
“We get our notifications of upcoming votes via e-mail. Apparently I’ve missed ten.”
“Senator, do you check your own e-mail?”
“No…”
“I guess I had heard that. So you’ve hired a hulking cannibal with a shaved head to handle your PR and check your e-mail for you?”
“Queequeg also holding Sarah Palin in basement-e so she don’t spill beans!” Queequeg shouts.
McCain pauses and looks down. Eventually he meets my eye. A single tear wells in his tear duct, again.
“You should probably go...”
“Yeah.”

I make my way out the door, through the barbed wire, making certain to avoid the booby traps. As the dusk looms, I turn back to wave to McCain, wishing to express my gratitude. He greets me in predictable fashion by yelling about the damned kids and chasing me off his lawn with a broom. And I think for one second that maybe this man, for all his ailments and years and disgustingly visible bodily functions, often visible through his thinning skin, maybe, just maybe, this old gramps is exactly the dose of senility and dementia America could use to get over its troubled recent past.

Whig Clippings, again!

2008-08-22T10:38:00.002-05:00

Millard is moving into a new apartment as we speak, so he went to CNN.com and copied/pasted the first several headlines he saw, never relinquishing his faith in politics to stand as its own mockery.
It's not particularly funny, but it gets us in by the deadline...

McCain: Obama using ‘Jesus Card’
Obama: McCain is jealous
Rove: I could make Jesus look bad
Penn: Let’s do it! I’ll start… Jesus is from the Middle East! You know what that means…

Obama: Hurricane Fay causing mass destruction
McCain: hunt down this hurricane, follow it to the gates of hell, and destroy it
Nader: I support any natural disaster that can wipe out a vast majority of the voting population, or at least sufficiently distract them through election day
Obama (again): Let’s, er, hope that this hurricane ends soon, no pun intended

Obama: I have picked my VP, but plan to keep it secret until after the election. Then, surprise! It’s the mother of your love child, America! Can’t run now!
McCain: I’ll be sending carrier pigeons to notify supporters of my VP pick as soon as I get around to that.
O’Reilly: I don’t know how he could go wrong, picking me. I would set him straight. I mean either of the candidates, by the way. They soooo need me.

McCain: I don’t know how many houses I have
Rove: Obama doesn’t know how many children he has
McCain: …that was kind of low.
Rove: Deal with it.
McCain: Seriously, that’s a sore spot for me.
Obama: Besides, I’m pro-choice.
Franken: (censored)
Franken: I’m sorry about the rape joke.
McCain: Seriously, this isn’t funny. This is getting out of hand.
Rove: The issue of Rove v. Wade isn’t resolved, and to minimize it is a slap in the face of life-supporting Americans everywhere!
Obama: It’s not called Rove v. Wade, you narcissistic prick.
Rove: Barack Obama hates America! See?
McCain: Who hired you?
Rove: Obama is a Muslim OMG LOL!!!!!!!!
Nader: I quit

Obama: In the spirit of compromise, I think there's one thing we can all agree on.
McCain: Yes!
Obama: And that is that John Edwards is an ambulance-chasing prick who ran a phony campaign at the expense of lots and lots of volunteer hours.
McCain: I whole-heartedly agree.

A message from John Edwards

2008-08-14T20:18:00.003-05:00

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,

I've screwed a lot of people in my life.
I've chased my booty tirelessly and worked a lot of late nights. And I've gotten lucky, quite a bit.
I'm talking, of course, about my career as a trial lawyer. There's a reason all those ER doctors called me the Butt Pirate with the Diamond Smile.
It's because I would take those defendants, bend them over the courtroom railing and absolutely pound the living hell out of them.
The North Carolina Bar was my formidable MySpace page, and those doctors my troupe of vulnerable, gullible 13-year-old friends who saw only the best in people, even creeps like pedophiles and PI attorneys.
I had a whole lotta fun. And when it got rough, all I had to do was pull out the lasso, the cowboy hat, and the extra-thick lacing on my southern twang, and we were in for a fun afternoon. Yee-haw.

Of course, you've probably heard - a lot of people are accusing me of screwing a whole new lot of them.
Not doctors, and no, not videographers.
Rather, my campaign staff and the people who ardently supported and believed in my cause.
And let me assure you, this is 99% tabloid trash.
More people will accuse me of screwing my wife, and my oldest daughter, and our younger children, and furthermore, of formidably screwing the memory of my deceased son Wade.
Let me assure you, these accusations are absolutely false. Each of the 99% of these falsities is 100% untrue.
I did not screw anyone. I launched this campaign with the full knowledge of my mistake and, furthermore, the full assurance that I was far too smart to get caught.
I was 99% certain that I would not be enlisting the tireless services of young staffers, interns and volunteers in vain. I was 99% certain that when a group of interns in Manchester worked 12 to 14 hours a day, unpaid, entering data and making cold calls for me, effectively giving up their summers, that their energy and idealism, which I instilled in them with my lofty policy ideas and rhetoric, would not be rewarded with an effective foot up the ass.
I want to make it absolutely clear that, had the excruciating field work on the part of my staff paid off and I had won the nomination, this would not have been a problem. I did not intend to slap them in the face, because I did not plan to get caught. And now that I've been caught, I don't know what the big deal is - after all, I didn't get the nomination. Apparently my staff wasn't working hard enough. So it's their own fault.
To that end, it was my wife's fault for supporting my bid even when she knew. And don't pull the whole "ooh, she had cancer, she was in treatment, she couldn't have made a good decision on her own, she was loopy!" card. She was in remission. No excuses for her.
Does the jury see what I'm getting at?

I'm sorry, the jury reference was instinctive.

Don't blame me, America. Blame yourselves for believing me. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Case closed.

John McCain: the exclusive interview: part one of two

2008-08-07T17:43:00.001-05:00

Revue founder and editor Millard goes one-on-one with the Republican senator and presidential hopeful at his Phoenix estate

Endure, and your spirit will be strong and sharp, like sharpened bamboo sticks.
It was John McCain's attempt to wax philosophical. I found it horrendously awkward. Mostly because the slogan, which was carved into the rubber likeness of a Vietnamese person's forehead, was hung directly above his front door.
The door was a light brown, the color of wet adobe clay. It adorned the simple, beige stucco house that blended easily into the plethora of southwest-style shingles that lined the cactus-dotted street.
Sitting naturally under the bright blue Arizona sky, the house was so modest, so nondescript that I may not have found it were it not for the mailbox stand constructed from the mangled wreckage of the veteran pilot's last airplane and his first wife's last car.

I rang the doorbell. I could hear, faintly through the door, the ring of nondescript Vietnamese shouting and American wailing.
Frightened, I tried the door knocker. The sound was amplified, by means I have yet to identify, to emanate the sound of a heavy prison gate slamming shut.

This was followed by a pause. It lasted too long.

I knocked again. This time, I could hear rustling behind the door. Shrieks and commotion indicated a struggle in a far-off corner of the house. There was a clang, followed by two more clangs, followed by silence. Then footsteps towards the door.
It crept open and a set of eyes peered out.
“What’s the password?” The doorman’s voice was high-pitched, British-accented, flamboyant.
“I, uh…what? I didn’t get a password.”
“And who are yoooou?”
“My name is Millard.” I flashed my press badge. “I’m here for an interview with the senator.”

Just then, more commotion erupted from up the stairs. I could hear it clearly now – the raspy but stern voice of John McCain. “Take it! Sit still!”
The doorman glanced up, then looked back. “Hold on for one minute, sire,” he said. “It seems we’re having some trouble restraining Mrs. McCain.”

The door slammed back shut. I waited, expecting it to be quick, but ended up standing on the doorstep for a little over two hours, which wouldn’t have been so bad were it not for the doorside booby trap that continuously shot poison darts, unprompted, at my neck.
Just when morning turned to afternoon, the door creaked back open. “The senator will see you now, rightio?”
I stepped into the modest foyer. As I wiped the coyote dung off my shoes, a cathartic figure, walking as if it were tripping in slow motion, made its way into the space. The thinly scattered white hair and pajama bottoms were unmistakable.
“Hello there,” McCain seethed. He carried himself with all the resentment of a man who needed one hour off for every three working in order to prevent complete insanity. Tough toll, I thought, on the pride of a man who already carries himself across stage like a varicose penguin.
Yet in spite of my months of research on the man, my endless hours of pensive analysis, I was taken completely aback, nearly dumbstruck by the mere opportunity to stand in the same room as the U.S. Senate’s self-proclaimed “maverick” Republican, the war hero, the icon of American politics.
So I stammered. “Uh…how…how are you?”
McCain smiled his trademark smile, lifting his lips on one side (a symptom, I once suspected, of a minor and undetected stroke) and scoffed, which I’ve learned is his normal laugh and was thus unoffended.
“It’s uh, it’s been a long season,” he said. “It’s been a long campaign. It’s been a long life.”
I was still nervous, but tried my hand at a joke, thinking it would ease my nerves.
“Well, at least Dr. Kavorkian might be right down Pennsylvania Avenue this time next year. Heyo!”
I followed this up with a high-five gesture.
McCain didn’t respond for several minutes. He didn’t blink. He certainly didn’t meet my high five. Finally, a lone tear appeared in the duct of his left eye.

To be continued…

Latest campaign gaffe: McCain appears on Leno's "Jaywalking"

2008-07-29T21:33:00.003-05:00

Jay Leno's audience got an unexpected and unprecedentedly candid look at Sen. John McCain last night.
In what his campaign spokeman has called "a really, really unfortunate thing," the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was featured as one of Leno's off-guard contestants in the show's recurring "Jaywalking" segment.
"Jaywalking," which quizzes Los Angeles bystanders on basic-level history and current events, caught McCain in the midst of public scrutiny over the 71-year-old's apparent lack of knowledge regarding contemporary geography and basic vocabulary.
The Senator from Arizona, who was found lost and separated from his caretakers at Disneyland, did not disappoint. Despite being handed a seeming softball in the form of a public policy question ("How do we know when global warming is a problem?"), McCain said the surest way to track climate change is to repeatedly check the red and white striped pole at the north pole, which does not actually exist.
"It's effectively a, uh, a dipstick," he said. "Up to seven red stripes showing, and we're safe, I think. More than that, get to the lifeboats. That's what they always told us."
Moving beyond the obvious, the DNC immediately launched an attack highlighting McCain's squandered opportunity to reference the subterranian Russian flag that was placed under the ice of the north pole last year.
"McCain's foreign policy, like McCain himself, is lacking in peripheral vision," the DNC said in a statement today. "His policy is growing big, grey, hairy, crusty figurtive cataracts, you might say, but we're not saying that, not directly."
The initial criticism over McCain's handle on current affairs began two weeks ago, when McCain referenced the former Soviet backwater Czechoslovokia, which no longer exists. Since then, he has referred to Zaire, the U.S.S.R., the continent Atlantis and Baltic Avenue from the game Monopoly while discussing his plans for international relations.
Leno, in an apparent attempt to help McCain redeem himself, asked the Senator his opinion on gay marriage, which was recently legalized in California.
"I believe that quota systems are wrong, just wrong," he replied. "Except for here, with the marriage thing. Every man should marry a woman - one or maybe two, based on a case-by-case assessment."

Let them join country clubs: conversations with Karl "Antionette" Rove

2008-07-14T10:25:00.001-05:00

Karl Rove said in an interview last week that "[Karl Rove] is that guy, the guy in the corner in a room at your country club, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, who makes snide comments about everyone as they walk by."
Rove admitted to the stigma, saying it's something he takes pride in.
"It's fun as hell," he said.
Rove's disparaging comments found repetitive hospice in targeting such "old pals" of Rove's as former U.S. House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert.
"That guy's really let himself go," Rove snickered. "Hey Fat-asstert! You aren't 20 years old anymore! Lay off the Funions, ya blimp!"
Rove also took a shot at former Sen. Rick Santorum, a practice he calls "a novelty."
"I don't care what anyone says," Rove said of the Pennsylvania Republican, who was ousted in 2006. "He doesn't really look like Howdy-Doody, even when his eyes are crossed, which actually happens a lot, like whenever he talks about abortion."
The former White House Deputy Chief of Staff, who is largely credited with Bush's successful 2004 reelection strategy, even took a shot at presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama.
"How'd he get in here?" Rove quipped.

Smear the Queer: McCain's folly of third-person ineptitudednessitude

2008-06-25T22:31:00.005-05:00

Barack Obama has been subject to a lot of nasty e-mails recently. I spent the day trying to get inside the head of a smear e-mail author - using the smear e-mail author's profound sense of logic, self-worth, and innumberable hours that could be better spent thumb-twiddling, or making lampshades, or something, in an attempt to create a similar document for Obama's Republican rival. Here's my first draft:

John McCain has alzheimers, but he won't tell you. Shoot, he probably keeps meaning to, but forgets every time. Didn't this completely ad hominem joke convince you that Obama has a more sound grasp on policy? I say, it always works on me!

John McCain is white. If this could, in some way, aid in the implication that he belongs to a religion of which many Americans are scared stupid, we would bring it up here, but since it wasn't 14 Mormons who attacked the World Trade Center, thereby speaking on behalf of every Mormon (Adam Smith himself, by God, if that's what they even call him, because God knows, if whatever they call him is all-knowing in their book, I certainly didn't do the research before setting out on this sensationalist author's bout. Do I look queer to you?), no such luck.

John McCain claims he was held as a POW for 5 years. That's not true. Several people who happened to be in the country of Vietnam at the same time as he are disputing the claim, arguing that he was, in fact, held for five and a half years. That sort of half-truth is blatently disrespectful to all the people who were busy fighting while he sat his lazy self in prison. I mean, come on! What exactly did you contribute from that prison cell of yours, old McShame???

On an unrelated note, those veterans, who happened to be in roughly the same country as McCain at roughly the same time, will soon be appearing in several TV ads to debunk the lies he tells about his service, and they will absolutely, under no cicumstances, be paid...too much*.

McCain's name scares me. It has the word "Cane" in it. And we can't have that. We can't have a president who's so old he needs a cane. Because his name is a perfectly accurate indicator of something arbitrarily given a similar name! I'm going to call him John Cane from now on, just to drive that point home.

John Cane is a...(shudder)...conservative (cue chorus of 'oooooh's). He's so conservative that I'm going to write here, in this space, that he's exactly like George W. Bush in every way, because that's a fully merited statement that isn't meant, in the least, for political exploitation.

John Cane is old, in case I haven't emphasized this enough. He actually craps his pants, regularly and in public. Now that's just gross. And given the sway that his pants-crapping has on his policy initiatives and leanings, I just don't think he's fit to be our Commander-in-Chief. I wouldn't want all our taxes going to the Depends brand. And of course you haven't heard of this, because Sen. Cane is a forgetful old no-good pants-pooping liar!!!

My initial concerns with this draft include my adherence to grammatical correctness, my moderately extensive vocabulary, and the fact that I don't take myself so seriously as to think anyone will want to read and use the discharge of ear wax mixed with fingernail dirt that usually comprises "political"** e-mails like this. I also have a job. All of these present problems.
These, and the fact that this smear author has the guts to put his name on the page.

*By some campaign's standards
**Political texts being, in this analysis, defined as plagiarized excerpts from the Klan manifesto

MCCain slips, craps pants at campaign event

2008-06-10T20:25:00.003-05:00

"I will veto every single beer, because alcohol is a diuretic."

WASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain's now-infamous slip about vetoing "every single beer" wasn't his only strip-up at Tuesday's National Small Business Summit.The Arizona senator and presumptive Republican nominee for president literally slipped while leaving the stage of the morning event, voiding his bowels and literally crapping his pants in front of cameras and onlookers.

Not to be outdone by his own aging self, McCain quickly shook the stoic look of shock from his face, turned his entire body slowly to face the audience, cracked his trademark whole-hearted smile and raised his arms and his thumbs to 90 degrees.

"Sen. McCain's…accident…demonstrates nothing more than the fact that he is an everyman," McCain spokesman Matt David said shortly after the Summit. "He doesn't consider himself above the ups and downs of bodily function that millions of Americans suffer through daily."

The incident has yet again raised the issue of McCain's age. If elected, he will be 72 when he enters office in January 2009.

The DNC issued a counter statement to David's in which they echoed the concern often verbalized by pundits.

"It's one thing when [Sen. McCain] needs to schedule naps after speeches," DNC spokesman Rick Hess said via in a videoconference with the press. "Americans might even put up with the varicose veins that pop out whenever he insists on those ridiculous shorts for his bike rides, because, to his credit, he's doing the 'everyman' thing. But now he's falling into a whole new realm where ageist stereotypes are very, very applicable."

Now that's just crappy

"Americans don't want four more years of Bush's failed policies, and they certainly don't want a president who'll sit there in his chair and bend your ear off telling stories about the war, and the trolly, and the soda parlor, all senile like that," Hess continued. "Americans want a president who can knit up the economy and knit up our reputation in the world, not one who will knit us socks and sweaters that we won't even wear, then give them to us for Christmas."

Clinton to be stripped of silver medal following positive drug test

2008-06-08T11:02:00.002-05:00

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Clinton is due to be stripped of her silver medal from this year’s U.S. presidential primary contest following a positive drug test, Reuters reported Saturday.
The official medal concession ceremony will take place next week, pending the results of her ‘B’ sample, campaign aides confirmed.
The second-term senator from New York reportedly tested positive for the garden variety of steroids, including multiple amphetamines and the human growth hormone, following her landslide victory in the West Virginia primary in May.
“Her victory there was big, but a little too big,” USOC drug-testing department spokesman Dudley Triton said over the phone Sunday. “We didn’t exactly expect [Sen. Barack] Obama to do well amongst blue-collar white voters, but we didn’t really expect Hillary to do well with the whole lot of rednecks either.”
“I mean, who was she kidding?” he continued. “We knew we had to start administering random drug tests at this point.”
Obama, Clinton’s primary rival for the Democratic presidential nomination through Tuesday, has not tested positive, Triton said. Obama, the first-term senator from Illinois, secured the gold medal Tuesday when he crossed the threshold of 2118 pledged and super delegates as polls closed on the South Dakota and Montana primaries, the last two of the primary cycle.
Clinton was ensured of at least the silver medal after additional rival former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina dropped out of the race in January, earning the bronze as the third-to-last candidate.

Arousing suspicions
The West Virginia primary wasn’t the first time Clinton fell accused of suspected steroid use, Triton said.
“People were suspicious when she inexplicably had an insurmountable lead in the Pennsylvania polls,” he said. “They were suspicious when she magically came back to win Texas and Ohio after Obama was pulling away, and I for one was awfully damned suspicious when she came out of nowhere to win New Hampshire after Obama smoked her in Iowa.”
Obama had initially come under fire from the USOC when he not only beat, but crushed, Clinton in Iowa despite entering the race in a virtual three-way tie with Clinton and Edwards.
“We passed that off, though, attributing [Obama’s] superior ability to his Kenyan heritage,” USOC deputy chair Jacques Hughes said. “We figured, with the altitude and the lifestyle of East Africans, he didn’t need to resort to blood doping, or elephant tranquilizers, or anything else that we now have reason to believe Sen. Clinton was up to.”
The suspicions surrounding Clinton were so rampant in some circles, in fact, that the USOC has come under fire for not adopting a random drug-testing policy sooner.
A Huffington Post article from December 2007 titled “Really?” accused the Senator of using performance-enhancing drugs and pointed to a number of physical factors as evidence.
“It is undeniable that Sen. Clinton has adopted some masculine features in recent months,” the article stated. “Her hair has grown shorter and her tactics more blatant, more calculated…it appears as though she has adopted a strategy of masculinity and more ‘traditional’ political practices, like conniving and cunning, in an attempt to more safely secure the nomination, but we wonder whether this will backfire, and furthermore, whether this isn’t blatant evidence that she’s been under the influence of humpback whale testosterone, or at least some powerful protein shakes, for quite some time.”

Defending Clinton
Though Sen. Clinton has yet to make a public statement regarding her alleged positive drug test, former campaign spokesman Terry McCaullife held a phone conference with the media Sunday morning to defend his former candidate.
“[Obama]’s a freaking Kenyan,” he said. “It’s just not fair. She came out in Iowa trying to do it ‘au natural,’ and you saw what happened. She got smoked.”
“I’m disappointed that everyone in the media and in Washington circles has been so quick to criticize without acknowledging the enormous barriers she’s had to overcome just to establish herself as a viable candidate, never mind the fact that the people at Time tried their best to tell you all what’s best more than two years ago,” he added. “If we’re not willing to give her a little leeway and look the other way so that she can rise to the challenge, we might as well go back to the days before suffrage. And by the way, she won the nomination, and my hero is Baghdad Bob.”

The College Whigs get props from the Florida Whig Party!

2008-04-11T04:05:00.002-05:00

http://flwp.blogspot.com/2007/05/new-home.html

Look on the right, under "Whig Bloggers." We're listed among some other very serious-looking Whig websites.

Perhaps the time will come when we will reveal to the Florida Whig party that we actually know very little about history and therefore couldn't tell you what in the name of all divinity what a whig is.

One wonders how well they've been keeping up. If they've read us recently, they're probably out and about, combing Universal Studios for missing Zimbabwe MDC or Zanu PF chads.

Hillary Clinton ran a 26-minute mile in high school

2008-04-11T03:17:00.004-05:00

The United Federation of Olympic Athletes is trying out a new slogan:

"Higher, faster stronger, but please God only insofar as it pleases your elected officials with their various candidacies for the presidency!"

"I think it's clear what the athletes are trying to tell us here:" said one spokeswoman for the International Olympic Committee. "That yes, they've trained exhaustingly for their entire lives, sacrificing relationships and careers for a shot at the Olympic Games, but no, they don't mind one bit when U.N. officials and candidates for the U.S. presidency start make the participation of athletes or world leaders a platform on which to wave their flags."

"Frankly, I think [the athletes] should be flattered that such important people care enough about them to bother taking a side," said U.S. Sen. and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has recently called for U.S. president George W. Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies.

U.S. track hopeful Marion Jones echoed Clinton's sentiment.

"I agree that, if ever there were a place for politics, for none-too subvert agendas, and for an outright flagrant violation of the dignity of sport, the Olympics would be the stage for it," she told the press, in a statement edited by her publicist, via e-mail Wednesday."

One-time 2004 gold medalist at 100m Justin Gatlin said he agreed with Jones, though he could not elaborate under his 8-year IOC ban.

Hillary's not in Kansas anymore

The relationship between politics and the Olympic Games has always been a fluid one. African American 200m runners Tommie Smith and John Carlos drew both acclaim and cross burnings with their noted human rights protest at the 1968 Games in Mexico City, where they offered up the "black power" salute as they stood atop the medal stand.

The U.S., along with Japan, West Germany, China and Canada boycotted the 1980 Games in Moscow after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Jimmy Carter justified his ultimatum on the lines that the invasion of a sovereign state that upsets others in ideological terms in so unconditionally heinous as to justify depriving American athletes, who were not involved in the invasion of Afghanistan, the once-in-a-lifetime chance to compete with the world's best.

Sen. Clinton has been the most vocal in calling for U.S. President George W. Bush to skip the opening ceremonies in protest of China's human rights record.

"I see no reason why he wouldn't do this," Clinton said. "He's always listened to me, and he's always cared so much about the plight of the demi-third world."

Some fear, however, that the chorus amongst the Democratic candidates might soon be a call to boycott the games altogether.

"It would make sooo much sense," said U.S. marathoner Ryan Hall, the first American to qualify for the '08 Games in any event. "It would make so incredibly much sense, because the repression of protests in Tibet is exactly akin to the Olympics, and they're the exact same two events, and it's all so incredibly relevant because no country that's hosted the olympics has ever, ever done something worth criticizing."

The IOC unveiled its own new slogan Thursday in light of the athletes' new banner:

"Keep Hillary Clinton and her double-plus wide pantsuits away from our athletes, and our games, because we don't very well care what she thinks, thank you, eh?"

Zimbabwe looks to Florida for final word on elections

2008-03-31T17:54:00.002-05:00

Zimbabweans went to the polls this weekend, with many predicting that President Robert Mugabe would face the most formidable challenge ever in his 28-year rule.

Results were virtually split Monday. Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) opposition party registered at 49.4 percent, Mugabe of the Zanu PF party at 41.8 percent and Independent Simba Makoni at 8.2 percent with 5 percent of precincts reporting, according to the Zimbabwe Election Support Network and MSNBC.

The split results, under which no candidate registers the necessary 51% to win the presidency, come as a surprise made even more shocking after Monday's edition of the South African Times declared Mugabe handily defeated and quoted an MDC official as having said "We have won the election."

The results could lead to a runoff election between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, though official Zimbabwean election rules state that Mugabe (not incumbents as a whole) will be given a 30% head start and immunity from campaign finance reform laws.

Looking southeast

That will depend, however, on results from Florida and Ohio, which are still tallying votes and whose 50-odd combined electoral votes could make the difference for either of the two leading candidates.

"It's really this simple - the election is close enough at this point that whoever wins Florida, or Ohio, or even the DRC, since they're still counting too, could very well win this election, completely regardless of what has happened thus far and regardless of all the other analysis I've provided to this point," said professional American political analyst Dargus Fillsvoid.

Speculation of fraud

Adding fuel to the fire is speculation that results have been rigged and tampered with, even in those regions who have reported results.

"Zanu PF is deliberately trying to overthrow a democracy they took over 28 years ago," said CNN guest analyst and Bollywood doctor Sanje Gupta. "They are taking the votes from the people. They want to do away with the government as it is but remain in power nonetheless."

Other critics have cited confusing voting machine systems, a lengthy voter registration process and lion-aided voter intimidation in their indictments of Zanu PF's oversight of Zimbabwe elections.

Media foul?

The quickness of the media to ordain a winner has also drawn the ire of ruling party and opposition leaders alike.

"It's that damn NBC," American radio host turned de facto Hillary Clinton enthusiast Rush Limbaugh said on the air Monday. "They called Florida for Gore in 2000 and now they're calling it for Tsvangirai."

Limbaugh cited further instances of the mass media's inadvertently influencing election results.

"Dan Rather stood outside the capitol in Bloemfontein on April 26, 1994, and called the Free State for Mandela," he said. "And viola, Mandela wins the Free State and every other state. IT just ain't right, what they're doin'. It just ain't right."

Looking ahead

MDC communications representative David Zinga said his party and its presidential candidate are committed to the future of the election, not the past.

"Our goal is to win, and we have no vested interest in wallowing in bitterness over what has already passed," he said in a statement to the press Monday.

He also criticized members of the international "small media" (i.e. bloggers) for analyzing Zimbabwe's elections in relation to American politics despite the reluctance of the United States to put down the Haagen-Daas and back up its statement urging fair elections.

Despite what appears, at least for now, to be a genuine threat to Mugabe's rule, many opposition party officials and strategists remain reluctant to celebrate.

"You want an honest opinion? Mugabe stays, somehow," said independent private political consultant and former Oliver Tambo speechwriter Deni Hivbeki. "It could be an overthrow. It could be an assassination."

"It might be Mugabe forcing Tsvangirai to flusteredly demand a recount, which Mugabe could rig in all sorts of ways and which would be a huge blow to the public image of the MDC," he added. "Mugabe has the gjuys who can make the MDC pretty unpopular for up to six years, and on top of that he'll win, do something big on the world stage, and be loved by a lot of people who piss a smaller group of people off with their cockiness on top of it."

Independent candidate Makoni has not yet confirmed his status as a Green Party/Consumer Advocacy (CA) party candidate in the runoff election.

"He had better not run," Zinga said. "It would totally lose the election for us and for the people of Zimbabwe and the people of moveup.co.za."

Millard is studying abroad...

2008-02-10T15:07:00.000-06:00

..for the entire semester. I'm writing this from the Humewood neighborhood in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, where American politics are quite further from peoples' minds than in Collegeville, which, we hsould note, has a political apathy rate of 98.79%.
In the Johannesburg airport last week, someone asked me if Hillary Clinton was the president. Never mind if that puts him, informationally, ahead of 90% of the voting public in the U.S. I already have plenty of reason to ignore my duties with the Revue for 4 months, and this doesn't exactly reenergize me.
Ipso facto, I'll drop in when I can, or when I want to, but the fact is that there isn't a great deal I can contribute from the Kalahari region of Africa. And the internet is crappy.
If you haven't heard from me in June, send the lion patrol a-huntin'.

- 30 -

Well-placed double entendres

2008-01-31T22:41:00.001-06:00

In light of Edwards' having dropped out, Millard has decided to throw his support behind Sen. Barack Obama. Ergo, a flood of Facebook applications suddenly became relevant.
I went with "Barack Obama Supporters." It seemed simple, to the point, and pretty well-done, but not overly so. It didn't flash green or anything. And it has that nifty little farm field "O" logo in miniature form on the sidebar and over the wall.

I thought I'd share the application with a fellow supporter or two, and it was derived that the best means of accomplishing this would be to display a picture on someone else's wall, as the application allows.

But when I tried, it simply displayed the miniature "O" and stated "This application provided no content."

Perhaps this application has said more for itself and Obama's candidacy than its creators ever could have imagined.

Whig clippings

2008-01-29T16:24:00.000-06:00

Some short hairs off my whig:

Sen. Ted Kennedy has pledged that he will not drive Barack Obama's campaign over a bridge and into a lake whilst riddled with a drunken stupor.

Women's groups have railed on Kennedy for not endorsing Hillary, noting that women's groups had traditionally stood by the Massachussetts Senator. This explains their violent protests when he failed to endorse Carol Moseley-Braun in 2004.

Pro-Hillary women's groups contend that their failure to stand by past female candidates despite the adamantly single-issue rhetoric being spewed today "was not such a big deal to the other guys they've been with."

George W. Bush delivered his final State of the Union Address last night. It constituted an update on the state of the union in the same way an Eddie Murphy self-written self-starring multiple-role screenplay constitutes comedy. The speech was bold in the same way sawdust quenches is thirst-quenching. And it was filled with soaring rhetoric the way an hour in the no-spin zone is filled with humility and light-hearted humor.

Al Franken's senate campaign has reportedly received money from over 80,000 donors, over 65,000 of whom are from out-of state. And he has vocal advocates in Hollywood. Now, as an individual who, in this portrait at least, bears slight resemblance to Alec Baldwin, I have no problem with actors and singers voicing their concerns. But they should do so in a way that doesn't sink a campaign, if they're smart about it. It appears as though Rosie O'Donnell is suffering from a routine case of "the fat in my head is so thick that I think my big lesbian loudmouthed self will resonate and wield positive influence in places like central and rural Minnesota" syndrome. Not that there's anything wrong with being outspoke or homosexual. Fat is a grey area. But Rosie and company should reexamine their roles in a candidacy, a la Al Sharpton and the strong love-prone fellow from Of Mice and Men.

Al Franken could seek the DFL endorsement with the following slogan: "Mike Ciresi looks like a total wuss in his commercials! Not that my twitching thing is much more appealing. But I can be your kind of crazy, Minnesota! The kind of crazy that drives us to things like ice fishing."

The first steel beam has been raised for the new U of M football stadium in Minneapolis, set to be ready for kickoff in the 2009 season. Gov. Tim Pawlenty has assured football fans and safety advocates that his tax cuts are only so slight as to ensure a collapse of the stadium at least slightly after he has left office.

The New York Times comes clean

2008-01-24T21:29:00.001-06:00

The New York Times has finally endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidency, just one and a half weeks out of New York's Super Tuesday primary.

The Obama and Edwards campaign consider this a victory, as NTY readers will finally be able to tell, with certainty, that the coverage is not objective.

The Times has been endorsing Clinton in some capacity - typically resoundingly positive concentrated coverage and declarations of victory for Clinton in every debate thus far - since the race began to heat up last spring.

The renowned newspaper began to feel heat from the rest of the journalism world, however, when their front page one day after the Iowa Caucuses displayed artwork reminiscent of WWII-era anti-German propoganda, portraying Obama staffers as perpetual evesdroppers and urging readers to "Keep quiet, for the walls have ears! Black ears!"

Kent Burkeman of the UC-Berkely School of Journalism was especially troubled by the lead headline on the Times' front page Jan. 4, which read "The dark continent has struck first! Band together, quasi-freedom fighters and semi-lovers of equality and justice!"
"It's just not journalistic integrity," he said. "At that point, everyone was like 'look, either endorse Clinton and let us know, officially, or stop referring to Obama and Edwards as "trouble ahead."' At least they took one of those routes."
But avid Manchester-Union Leader reader and Conferderate wannabe Davey Ricket isn't sure if that route was what he would have preferred.
"All this does is give them freedom to keep writing love letters for Hillary in the form of non-editorial so-called news, and photoshopping her pictures to make her face look less cavernous, and photoshopping pictures of Edwards so he always has a tampon string hanging out," he said. "That's queer, and I for one am no queer. I ain't reading that no more."
Burkeman says, however, that the endorsement will have a positive side.
"At least now [the Times] isn't lying to us, trying to convince us in some way that they're writing actual objective covreage of the primary campaign," he said. "They're being upfront about the fact that they, despite their collective intellect, aloof tendencies, and literacy requirement for employees, are apparently completely failing to read or process any of the things that appear, in their reports, as news.
"They're the lowest-information-voting elitist pieces of crap around, but now they're at least proud to say so."

Wait, Black Women Understand the Issues Too?

2008-01-23T22:51:00.000-06:00

It seems that everywhere I look these days, someone (not generally a black woman) is lamenting the quandary of black women in the upcoming primary elections. A storm of publications, including CNN, The NY Times, and MSN, have all recently run articles discussing what some imagine must be a universal and divisive choice weighing upon black women: deciding between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as their primary candidates of choice. These articles tend to bear titles like “Race or Gender: A Tough Choice For Black Women Voters”, but let’s not mince words. Why not just use titles like “Assuming Black Women Are Only Interested In Voting Along The Lines of Social Constructs That Have Marginalized Them For Centuries (As Opposed to Actual Issues), Would They Rather Be Race- Or Sex-Traitors?”

Particularly in the case of South Carolina, where black women are expected to make up at least one third of Democratic primary voters, one can just imagine the amount of excitement and drool escaping the hordes of pundits and politicos lining up to organize emotional pitches and moving articles based on racial/gendered lines. CNN’s article on the topic, for example, suggests that, for black women, “a unique, and most unexpected dilemma, presents itself: Should they vote their race, or should they vote their gender? No other voting bloc in the country faces this choice”.

Observe that the question is not raised “whether” voters are likely or inclined to consider issues of ethnicity and sex in their candidate selection. Rather, the writer seems to imply, with either tactless overconfidence or plain stupidity, that the entire addressed demographic group of South Carolinian black women WILL indeed be voting along lines of race or gender, and it is simply a question of which of those “allegiances” they will choose as the basis of their votes. Forget issues, forget platforms, forget facts. All black women really care about when they fill in their ballots is whether the candidates look like them. They’re not in that voting booth deciding between the candidates’ characters and policy plans. They’re in there deciding whether it’s more important that their future president have lots of melanin or a uterus.

And what was that about “no other voting bloc in the country facing this choice”? The article frames the situation of the South Carolina primary as though Obama and Clinton are the only two running. If the writer is content to forget Edwards, all the better to prove my point. If Edwards is considered out of the running, wouldn’t white men in South Carolina face the same type of “dilemma” in deciding to vote their race (Clinton) or their gender (Obama), a reversal of the decision supposedly confronted by black women? And yet, I do not see anyone clamoring over the quandary of the white, male voter in South Carolina and how he will ever manage to settle the race-gender tension that would naturally override any other substantive political or policy concerns in his decision. Are we simply to assume that these questions of gender and race in voting, which are prescribed to the black female voter with such enthusiasm, are missing from the white, male voter’s mind? Are we to assume that the white, male voters of South Carolina will naturally be basing their decisions on well-informed meditation upon facts and figures while the black, female voters of South Carolina sit around the beauty parlor comparing notes on Clinton’s cleavage and Barack’s blackness?

CNN also requests that you kindly ignore the sentence toward the bottom in which the writer admits that “while race and gender play a role, most women here say they plan to vote based on the issues. They rank health care, education and the economy in order of importance.” Dammit, those women weren’t supposed to say intelligent, rational crap about the issues. I know, we’ll just throw it in at the end of the article as an afterthought and then gloss over it with more inflammatory comments belittling their intelligence. Yeah, that sounds good.

Clinton Replaces Clinton: The Political Genius of Bubba

2008-01-23T21:19:00.000-06:00

CHARLESTON - In what is being deemed a brilliant political maneuver by the Hillary Clinton Campaign, Senator Clinton's (D-NY) spokesman announced Wednesday that for the remainder of the campaign, former President Bill Clinton will be taking over all campaign functions and duties from his wife. This includes debates, stump speeches, hand-shaking, and pretending to feel people's pain, areas in which President Clinton is deemed especially competent and areas in which Senator Clinton is universally considered weak and ineffectual. The move is being hailed by political analysts as a stroke of genius by President Clinton sure to secure him a third term in the Oval Office and cement his status as the leading political mind of our time. "This just shows the brilliance of Bill Clinton, plain and simple," says NBC correspondent and "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert. "If this doesn't cement Hillary as the front-runner in the South Carolina Primary and on Super Tuesday, nothing will."

The move, however, was not without it's critics. "I've had a feeling I was fighting Bill for the past month, this just confirms that," said fellow Democratic presidential hopeful, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who has been battling attacks by President Clinton for some time now. "This country needs change, it hopes for change, and I, uh, hope that I represent that change. Frankly, I'm not sure if this move is even constitutional or not." President Clinton issued a sharp rebuke to Senator Obama, asserting that, by bringing the Constitution into the debate, Obama was in fact, fear mongering. President Clinton scolded, "Senator Obama wants to start scaring the fine people of this wonderful nation by fear mongering! He's sounding more and more like his hero Ronald Regan every day!" Senator Clinton could not be reached for comment.

Quod Tyler Pariter

Obama Campaign Announces Bold New Marshmallow Cloud and Fairy Dust Platform

2008-01-23T15:09:00.000-06:00

CHICAGO – After disappointing defeats in New Hampshire, Michigan, and Nevada, the Obama for America campaign says it’s time for a new direction for the struggling presidential candidate. In a statement released Tuesday, the Obama campaign presented a new strategy to defeat Hillary Clinton, the only other Democratic candidate competing for the nomination:

“After Iowa it became clear that the issues most important to average Americans are: hope for the future, change for the better, and who can best galvanize their dreams and aspirations. Sen. Obama has decided to take his message of hope and change to the next level by expanding his platform to include critical issues like marshmallow clouds and fairy dust. By focusing less on the boring policy proposals of the past, and more on the ideas that matter to all Americans, Sen. Obama can unite America and end the bitter partisan divide in Washington.”

Veteran political consultant and chief Obama strategist David Axelrod, currently traveling with the Senator in South Carolina, explained further reasoning behind the new message, “Voters are fed up with candidates who just talk about heath care, education, Iraq, the economy, yada yada, snooze snooze. What they’re looking for is someone who can inspire them and make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside.” He later refuted the notion that Obama is stepping back from his previous message by explaining that, “the new message is simply building on the successes of the old one by injecting it with newer, brighter, fresher, and more inspirational themes.”

Meanwhile, at the campaign’s headquarters in Chicago, the advance team is busy building a new background for the Senator’s upcoming stump speeches. The massive new set will include rainbows, a field of dandelions surrounding the White House, fluffy white clouds turning pink with the light of a new sunrise for America, a row of cheerful garden gnomes, and cardboard cutouts of Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell holding hands. “We think this new backdrop with do a totally awesome job at supplementing Barack’s bold vision for America!” said an enthusiastic young staffer covered in pink and blue paint. Large confetti cannons are also being prepared in order to shoot glitter over the crowd every time Sen. Obama mentions the words “hope”, “future”, ”unity”, or “empathy” during the course of his stump speech.

It is yet to be determined how well the new message will resonate with voters in California, New York, Alabama, Tennessee, Minnesota, and the 17 other key states that all hold their presidential primaries on February 5. But the Obama campaign has already claimed success, citing the 3.7 million dollars raised online since the campaign announced its new platform yesterday afternoon and re-designed its website to add smiley face buttons, replace the issues section with an ideas section, and a create new “give Barack a hug for $50” feature.

Police called to domestic dispute in SC

2008-01-21T23:24:00.000-06:00

Myrtle Beach police responded to several reports of a disturbance Monday night.
No arrests were made.
The disturbance, which coincided both in time and location with the Democratic presidential debates, reportedly involved prolonged bickering between an African-American man and a white woman.
"We just assumed...you know," said one 911 caller, who asked to remain anonymous.
Police arrived on the scene to see the two "just laying it out like any old married couple," according to a police report.
Police chief Robert Frankentoo said calls to the police station initially indicated something more serious.
"A lot of the callers made it osund like some sort of physical violence was inevitable," he said. "One elderly woman was certain that the male perpetrator was about to steal the female's purse, but that didn't happen, at least before we got there."
"It was nothing, really," he added. "It looked like it was something this couple had been holding in for a while, maybe talking about but not face-to-face, and now they just let loose."
"It looked like they were just tiring themselves out," said John Edwards, reportedly the couples' biological son. "I for one am pretty tired of it. They fight like this a lot, and there's another man involved on my mom's side, and it's just a mess, and I really don't like it when they yell."
The animated debaters were given a warning. Civil action is pending in light of threats made by the female, heard by police as she was escorted away from the male suspect.
"I swear to God if he screw this up for me..." she said, according to the report.

A message from Hillary Clinton, aka your Republican father

2008-01-15T22:30:00.001-06:00

Let's get one thing straight.
First, know that I admire you and I'm proud to have raised you to think independently and high-mindedly. Every father and female democratic presidential nominee wants to be able to say that, first and foremost, they did a good job molding you into the person you are today.
But the preaching and the banter about change, change, blah blah blah, is getting pretty old.
Listen. It's really not that I'm against change. I'm not...it's a nice thing, you know...I remember being your age, and it seemed so easy. It's easy to stand up and harangue at special interests and say "yeah, stick it to the man!" I enjoyed saying such things when i was younger.
But someday you'll understand that this just isn't the way things work. Someday you'll get a job, start paying taxes, and you'll see that's I'm not quite the ice queen you thought.
Well, maybe I'll still be an ice queen, but at least you'll empathize with me.
Point is, you have a lot of growing up to do. It's a nice idea, like I said, that we could just stick it to the corporate interests and rise above the bureaucracy and seek equality of opportunity for all, and universal health care, and a peaceful solution in Iraq, and a way to fund schools. But You have to understand that the system just doesn't work that way. You'll appreciate my work someday when you've been around the block. You'll appreciate why it's so important for me and me alone to be doing this job - not some high-minded person with good intentions. You need someone who presumes the need to be a realist, not someone who wants to come in...fixing stuff. You know what I mean?
Now you'll probably just say I'm a heartless wench. That's fine and there's nothing I can do about that. But just try to keep in mind that, as the presumptive nominee for universal coronation, I am the hand that feeds you. Hey! I don't care if I'm not in power yet. At least acknowledge, however ruefully, that I will eventually be you empress. I mean president. At the very least, show a little respect for that.
I just don't know what to do with you (sob). I...I have so many plans for what I can make you into under me as president, emphasis on the fact that I'd be president rather than the fact that I'd do good things for you. What? Oh right.
Listen, you little prick. I've worked too goddamn hard for this and I will not let your irreverent ass provide a grounds for slipping up. I'm gonna do this whether you goddamn like it or not and so help me...
Put that camera away.
I said put it...
Okay, I smiled. You win for now, you little jerk. You're grounded, by the way. Hey! I saud you're grounded! Well at least tell me where you're going! But I've told you a million times that John and Barack are bad influences! No, it's not because he's black.
(whispers) It's becase he's a Muslim, but that's beside the point.
Wait! Ugh...fine. Be back by tomorrow. Good luck paying for college.

Party leaders call for end to "BCS-style" nomination process

2008-01-14T20:29:00.000-06:00

Joe Biden feels dejected.
Despite clearly being the most qualified and experienced of all the Democratic presidential candidates, the Connecticut senator was forced to scrap his White House dreams after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses, the first contest of the nomination process.
"I can say without much reservation or fear of sounding pompous that I was pretty much the best guy out here, hands down," he said Monday.
Biden's frustration with the fact that his years in the senate and on various foreign relations and economic committees was essentially disregarded in the face of glitzier, more fundraiser-happy candidates came to a head today when the stout white-haired perrenial candidate announced plans for an initiative to scrap the traditional nomination process, which heavily favors the opinions of Iowa and New Hampshire voters, in favor of a playoff system.
"This could have a lot to do with the fact that Biden always gets his teeth kicked in in Iowa despite the soaring rhetoric, months of sleep deprivation and drums of valium pills," Chris Matthews shouted from his desk at MSNBC Monday (his office desk, that is - no cameras were rolling. This is a secondhand account from David Gregory, who was down the hall). "I think the guy had gall, once, and he was a legitimate candidate in the 80s. But he's just a spoof of himself these days. I FUCKING LOVE POWERTHIRST ENERGY DRINK!!"
But Biden's rabble-rousing has not completely fizzled, a fact that caught the senator by surprise.
"How the hell did they hear about this?" Biden said in an abreviated and confused phone interview.
Alas, prominent members of both the DNC and RNC are calling for top party officials to revamp the presidential nominaiton process in favor of a playoff.
"I'm so sick of seeing great, deserving candidates held out of a chance to be the leader of the free world simply because they don't bring the money in, they don't carry the media quite as well as some, or because their fan base doesn't travel as well as those from the SEC," said RNC co-chairman Jo Ann Davidson, who for some reason (being female, likely) is listed as "co-chairman" despite her fellow co-chairman's being listed simply as "chairman" on the GOP website. "It's just not fair - Obama's got Oprah, Hillary's got Bill, and Edwards has the Steve Spurrier faithful and NC State nation behind him."
Other long-shot candidates have also joined Biden in his decrying the status quo.
"...Shit's totally uncooth, man," said Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who earned <1% and 3% in Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively.
Biden, who was further shocked that his fellow candidates took notice and, furthermore, agreed with him, explained his proposed playoff.
"We could have two-candidate debates," he said. "We run an approval bar from a focus group on the screen, and whoever finishes with the bar higher win that round. It doesn't have to be single elimination, though, and we could always base it on something completely arbitrary, like a game of quarters."
But Biden's call for nomination reform hasn't been welcomed by all.
"What Sen. Biden needs to realize is that, sometimes, the status quo is just the way it is because, well, it's the status quo, and that means that it's the best way, because that's the way it's been, and he needs to realize that," said Sen. Hillary Clinton, who won in New Hampshire despite having established herself as a stalwart xenophobe in the debate immediately following the Iowa caucus. "Sen. Biden is trying to interfere with my penultimate assumption of the presidency, where I have so many grand plans for this country, and lots of experience, and he just shouldn't be doing that. It's un-American to be interfering with the panning out of my presidency."
But Biden, as well as his allies in both parties, think the now-popular call for change could trickle down to the smallest of initiatives in the following years.
"I look forward to several years of living the dream - the American dream, that is - on a wave of goodwill," Biden said. "I can't wait for the day when we're getting things that matter passed in this government. I just hope we don't squander all the goodwill in less than a year, or anything stupid like that. Imagine the kind of moron it would take to squander a world's worth of goodwill in less than a couple years. You'd have to fricking invade a country."

Wanted: Bold Transformational Change

2008-01-11T11:43:00.000-06:00

We're back from the New Hampshire Primary and now that some votes have actually been cast, lets have a look at where the remaining candidates in the field stand.

Democrats
Hillary Clinton (D-NY): Hillary's calculated "crying" moment brought her candidacy back from the grave, and allowed her to win New Hampshire. Since she's the only Democrat on the ballot in the next contest, Michigan, she figure so be in pretty good shape. That is until the general when the Republican base will rise up against her.

Barack Obama (D-IL): Second place in New Hampshire and the endorsement of John Kerry may lead people to believe that his candidacy may be doomed to failure. If he does manage a strong showing in Nevada and South Carolina, he could be positioned for another comeback on Super Duper Tuesday.

John Edwards (D-NC): Third place in New Hampshire is going to put a drain on his fund raising capability, leaving this blogger sad and bitter.

Dennis Kucinich (D-OH): Zero Percentage. Wasting everyone's time by calling for a NH recount even though he doesn't expect different results. What a waste of a hot wife.

Mike Gravel (D-AK): My favorite. I have a feeling he is bound for greatness.

Republicans
John McCain (R-AZ): Winning New Hampshire was huge. With his experience in the Senate and being perhaps the most sane Republican in the field, though that isn't saying much, the Straight Talk Express may be pulling into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. this time next year. There, he will institute mandatory nap time for his staff from noon until 1 pm everyday.

Mike Huckabee (R-AR): Likable, dangerous, and has an Iowa win under his belt. I think the nom. may come down to a battle between him and McCain. Looks dangerous to take Michigan away from Romney.

Mitt Romney (R-MA): Two consecutive second place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, though luckily to two different candidates. If he can't win Michigan, where is father was governor, I fear it may be the end for this stormin' Mormon.

Rudy Giuliani (R-NY): Has not finished in the top three yet, and he knows why: 9/11! 9/11 is so strong that it has knocked him down a notch, but he is clearly the best person to fight 9/11! 9/11, 9/11, 9/11! If there is no clear cut front-runner by Florida, this crazy man with the crazy plan may actually become viable again.

Fred Thompson (R-TN): Too busy sleeping and rambling on about Law & Order in his best Grandpa Simpson impressiong to be bothered to actually run for president. His latest ad shows him drifting to sleep while talking about why he wants to be president, it figures to be shown prominently in Florida. You have to love a lazy candidate, especially one with a hot trophy wife.

Ron Paul (R-TX): The Ron Paul Revolution may be over. Failing to crack the top four in New Hampshire, a state who's motto is "Live Free or Die" followed by a racist rant in his name from the past may have done him in. Not that that will stop the hippies from running around with their signs and riding in their blimps. You've got to love the hippies.

Duncan Hunter (R-CA): What is this guy doing here? Does he serve any purpose but to be the ying to Mike Gravel's yang?

Predictions:
Deomcrat: Barack Obama (D-IL)
Republican: John McCain (R-AZ)
X Factor: Mike Bloomberg (I-NY)
Victor: John McCain (R-AZ)

Quod Tyler Pariter

The College Whigs: Year One

2008-01-10T18:37:00.000-06:00

We're back. In light of the fact that the blog was shut down temporarily, and with it we lost all previous posts, here they all are. All in one very long post. This was our first year (even though we started in the fall). Hopefully more will follow.

-Millard

Apparently THIS is the holiday on which Whiggy pudding is cons...
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4:23pm Wednesday, Dec 26, 2007 Delete
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...and the bad puns abound.But merry Christmas from the College Whigs. The act of making a list of items which your parents are expected to buy for you by a certain date is predated by a practice (or, rather, line of thought) known commonly as "manifest destiny."This Whig enjoyed his holiday, despite the complete absence of family and fun. I actually took a moment to look...less "gruff" in front of the mirror. As a gift to myself.Until the next depressingly boring ocassion,Millard- 30 -
In this note: Elizabeth Hagerty (notes), Mitch VanBruggen (notes), Dan Frey (notes), Tom 'Trey' Murray (notes)
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Updated about 2 weeks ago

This Whig is done with finals

1:42pm Saturday, Dec 22, 2007 Delete
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It's been a long road to the end of the semester for me, Millard, who, oddly, is still a junior in college despite having died over a century ago. It's good being a Whig, I've decided, because our lack of luster in fielding candidates or participating in actual politics these days keeps people like me from having to do much work.Usually, during election cycles, Christmas is one of those times when you're supposed to be...frantic about something. Maybe the caucus being less than two weeks away. But for now, I, like many fellow collegians, am content to wallow in lethargy and avoid the drive to my iowa-based campus and do something to back up all the bitching I'm certain to do in my spring semester political science classes. Should we endorse a candidate? No way. Should I be so much as reading up on CNN.com, or Time magazine, the newspaper, or more important blogs than this? Not today. Should I muster the strength to rise from my chair and offer a real, if still completely backbone-less, "harumph" for all the aformentioned sources of inconvenience, despite the fact that I am in no way inconveniencing myself with them? Hell no. Way too much work.Have a nice holiday though. This high society crap is usually good for a trip out of my study-dwelling easy chair and into a decent suit, if only to swig around a good warm glass of brandy and smoke a cigar, all the while acting very important and opinionated around other self-inportant opinionated wannabe statesmen. Thank almighty Christ I didn't go to Georgetown, lest I have to put up with that crap in the dorms.Millardy Christmas (shoots self in head),- 30 -
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Updated about 3 weeks ago

Maury to stump for Gravel

10:45pm Thursday, Dec 13, 2007 Delete
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In what many consider a response to Oprah Winfrey's support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, Maury Povich announced late Wednesday that he plans to campaign on behalf of former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel."Senator Gravel represents the exact kind of sensationalism the leader of this country needs if he hopes to keep the voters' attention for four or eight years," Povich told his live studio audience to a mixed reaction of cheers, boos, cat calls and racially-charged banter. "I look at all the candidates and with Gravel, I see the potential for all the shallow hogwash I've been feeding America for years to be brought to the official national stage."Some members of the audience at Maury's studio, where he announced the endorsement during a regular brodacast, said that Obama's rival for the nomination will need more than a talk show host to realize the type of bold change he's been "ranting about for so long.""Oh, dat biotch gots a whole lot comin' to him," said Tricia Davis, a longtime Maury watcher who was at her first ever live taping Wednesday. "He been sayin' all dat shit and lotta us don' appreciate dat, what 'cause he just walkin' around with a stick and throwin' rocks, bein' like 'I should be 'de president!' I don' get 'im."Yet others feel that the boost in momentum, the first since thecampaign failed to meet fundraising marks required for debate paricipation, can't really do anything but help this fledgling Gravel."Well, it can't hurt," said audience member Viggo Fredrickson. "That cat's got pretty much nothin' going for him, you know? I mean, I don't know if it'll make a difference, but take what you can get, I guess."True to form, Povich announced his endorsement live on his show by sitting Gravel and two fellow candidates, Ron Paul and Fred Thompson, on stage and eliminating them one by one."You've all proven vastly sensationalist in this long election cycle, and I appreciate what you're all doing, and you should be proud," Povich said as he pulled results from a large envelope. "But I have to choose. Ron, you are not the endorsee."This prompted an indistinguishable mix of cheers, jeers and bellowing from the audience as Paul breathed a very visible sign of relief.Povich repeated the routine to eliminate Thompson. Even then, Gravel said, he was nervous."I've seen this show where they're doing paternaty tests, you know, and they have three guys and one girl and they get down to the last guy and everyone assumes it him, but then it turns out it isn't him and the girl just looks ridiculous," Gravel said. "That's some funny shit. But I wasn't about to laugh while I was up there."Povich's decision, of course, was to endorse the Alaskan. As for events, a spokesperson for the Gravel campaign (just kidding!) said the duo will explore the availability of small conference rooms and soup kitchens."We'll be hoping to pack the house, I know that," Povich said.But will the tickets, like those to the Obama/Oprah event, be free?"Probably not," Gravel said. "Gas is expensive these days. I could make a joke about drilling in Alaska, but the truth is I have no clue how the oil exchange and gas prices work. Public policy really isn't my thing."- 30 -
In this note: Tom 'Trey' Murray (notes), Dan Frey (notes), Mitch VanBruggen (notes)
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Updated about a month ago

Mark Penn, Joe Trippi, surge in the polls.

10:01pm Wednesday, Dec 12, 2007 Delete
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DES MOINES, IOWA-With just three weeks left to go until the Iowa Caucus, the latest CBS/ABC/Google/Facebook/Mom and Pop's General Store poll shows a severe shakeup in the Iowa Caucus. Mark Penn and Joe Trippi, two operatives for Clinton and Edwards, disrespectively, are now polling higher than actual candidates Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, and Chris Dodd."I've been reading the news about the election online, and I've got to say I really like Mark Penn's 'take no prisoners' style," said Jonathan Isle, a Des Moines resident. "Joe Trippi's message towards the youth and such really turned me on to him," said Aaron Simmer, a resident of Perry, Iowa. When asked about former Senator Mike Gravel and current Senator Chris Dodd, both men responded "Who?"The poll shows Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards in a statistical deadheat. John Edwards polled at 37%, Hillary Clinton at 32%, and Barack Obama at 25%. There was a margin of error of +/- 25%."The race for Iowa is still anybody's game," Wolf Blitzer said on his 3-hour marathon of a television show. "If you limit the definition of anybody to any candidate that has raised at least 20 million dollars."Joe Trippi could not be reached for comment. Mark Penn responded that he would comment on the situation via planting stories on Drudge Report.
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Updated about a month ago

A message from Mike Huckabee

8:06pm Wednesday, Dec 12, 2007 Delete
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Well hey there!You might have seen me in the news recently. According to some polls, I'm actually doing quite well in some of the early primary states. And I think I did awfully well in that last debate there. Gee whiz, I'd sure like to extend my gratitude to those who tuned in!Now that said, I've been pretty busy. Truth told, the campaign life of a non-frontrunner is pretty lax and boring, filled with computer games and eating briars. But now that I'm in the lead in Iowa, I have to be out and about, always saying something. I have to get out and throw bones to the rabble-rousers at CNN and say something controversial about Mormons, or I have to go spouting on and on about immigration or the deficit enough to make myself look silly and open myself up to attacks of hypocrisy and abandoning conservative values. It's practically my responsibility now that I'm a frontrunner.People are being pretty hard on me. From that standpoint, I guess I'm doing my job right! CNN has really been on my case about the deal where I accidentally helped parole a convicted rapist who later, having been released, raped and killed someone. But gee, I swear I didn't try to do it!And take Ms. Hagerty here, who made fun of me a bit in the last College Whigs post. Now I respect her opinion, however quickly I'd contend that she's incorrect in labeling me a "darling of social conservatives." But if there's one reason you should vote for me, either this winter or next November, it's because I'll give people like Elizabeth the benefit of the doubt! Being the upstanding former Baptist preacher that I am, I'm compelled not to harbor anger at Ms. Hagerty and her insensitivity, but rather to assume that she's just venting years of repressed bisexuality and resentment at her conservative catholic educational upbringing. I'll assume she doesn't normally act so conceited and pissed off, but rather that somewhere, beneath the pale complexion and hellish glare, there's a soul down there in Ms. Hagerty, somewhere. Somewhere. I believe that people like Elizabeth aren't born like this. And together we can fix that.And one more thing - John McCain, take a nap already! You're gettin' pretty old there, pal! Pretty soon you'll just be bobbing your head up and down, repeating your old marching orders or something. Oh McCain, you crazy old coot! And I have to be honest, because that's what friends do - I've started to smell something funny in the middle of debates lately. There's nothing to be ashamed of if your senile ass is constantly contained in a pair of Depends(TM), but you might just want to be honest about it. Never know - you might be back in the lead someday, or at least close enough that people will readily point out your flaws.Thanks for your time, everybody. I hope you can all make it to the caucuses! Stay healthy and don't contract AIDS, 'cause you can't read any more if you do! Have a nice day and don't roll in the hay.-Mike
In this note: Elizabeth Hagerty (notes), Brett Patterson (notes), Mitch VanBruggen (notes), Tom 'Trey' Murray (notes), Dan Frey (notes)
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Updated about a month ago

Huckabee Sermonizes on the Dangers of the Infirm and Gay

8:08pm Sunday, Dec 9, 2007 Delete
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WASHINGTON—GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee announced today that he will stand by inflammatory comments he made in 1992 suggesting that the government quarantine AIDS patients from the rest of the population, calling into question both his political savvy and understanding of basic science.
“If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague,” Huckabee wrote in an Associated Press survey during his failed 1992 Senate run. “It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents.”
Facing a wave of media scrutiny following his recent success in national polls, Huckabee confirmed his position on isolating the HIV-positive and his opposition to increased funding for AIDS research.
“In light of the extraordinary funds already being given for AIDS research, it does not seem that additional federal spending can be justified,” he said, adding that a really brilliant alternative policy, one he suggested in the AP survey, would instead rely on various celebrities* “to give out of their own personal treasuries increased amounts for AIDS research.”
Until a cure is found, Huckabee recommends that all AIDS patients cover themselves completely in Saran Wrap before going out in public, if they must leave their homes at all.
Huckabee also asserted that “homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk.”
Responding to charges that having such a bigoted douchebag for a Chief Executive might pose a much greater danger than the “sin” of homosexuality, Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher and longtime darling of social conservatives, countered that it is the right and obligation of government to restrict such threatening practices as gay marriage and domestic partner benefits.
“What people do in the privacy of their own lives as adults is their business. If they bring it into the public square and ask me as a taxpayer to support it or to endorse it, then it becomes a matter of public discussion and discourse,” Huckabee declared, conveniently ignoring the fact that heterosexual couples are usually the ones receiving taxpayer support in the forms of advantageous capital gains, inheritance, and child tax credits not extended to homosexual couples.
Heterosexual couples, meanwhile, are apparently welcome to carry on as usual, in private or, if the mood strikes, even in the public square.
*The celebrities in question could not be reached for comment before press time, as they were too busy trying to think up new words ending in “-red” to put on their snazzy Gap t-shirts. However, fully half the profits of the garments are reported to go to AIDS victims in developing countries. Pretty impressive when you consider that they were probably paid .001% of the profits to make those shirts in the first place.
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Updated about a month ago

It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's...the Ron Paul Blimp

3:13pm Saturday, Dec 8, 2007 Delete
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Just when I thought political advertising was getting frustrating and tiresome, Ron Paul launches the Ron Paul Blimp. I'm glad that now, someone can be walking down the street, depressed because they don't know which candidate they are going to support this primary season, only to catch a glimpse of the Ron Paul Blimp. Obviously this will be enough to sway their opinions. Ron Paul has saved the world once again. The sky has become viable political advertising real estate. God bless Ron Paul.Quod Tyler Pariter
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Updated about a month ago

Somewhere there is a village...

12:47pm Friday, Dec 7, 2007 Delete
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President Bush gave out the wrong hotline number to homeowners seeking mortage relief in a televised address about the housing crisis. The administration had actually set up the hotline itself. What's more, the number he gave out was actually for a Texas-based Christian home-schooling materials company, so whether this "slip" was an accident has not been determined.Several overweight female Yale alums of the same age as Bush reported having called the same number at some point in college.*****Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have both been nominated for a Grammy. In addition to being nominated separately in the spoken word category, the duo is up for "cover of the year" for their rendition (and slight re-writing) of the song "You say 'I didn't inhale'...I say 'that's the point.'"*****Yes, I steal every story idea from the CNN political ticker*****Now able to feel Mike Huckabee clipping at their heels, one-time shared G.O.P. frontrunners Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain (as well as a trailing Fred Thompson) have launched a series of attack ads against the former Arkansas governor, taking him to task for his supposed role in the parole of a convicted rapist, a history of raising a tax or two, and a degree of self-respect, unknown to traditional Republicans, manifested in his religious exercising and losing over 100 pounds since his second term as governor.*****Bill Clinton's one-time said she is leaning towards Hillary Clinton in the upcoming Nevada primary. Nothing says "Hillary supporter" like a deceitful, halfway stupid, googly-eyed pro-choice-cause-someone-said-all-women-are, uninformed primary state resident with the last name "Flowers," who has taken to the media attention by smiling broadly into cameras and saying "Gee gosh, I just really, really think this country should have a woman as president!"Still no word on why virtually no voters who use the latter as their primary criterion for supporting Hillary have no idea who Carol Mosely-Braun is.
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Updated about a month ago

Jesus: Fred Thompson is "just alright" with me

4:24pm Wednesday, Dec 5, 2007 Delete
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COLUMBIA, South Carolina (CW) - Fred Thompson has some very important opinions to deal with.The former Tennessee Senator of Law and Order fame raised eyebrows but drew a largely favorable reaction earlier this week when he told a religion-friendly South Carolina crowd "I'm cool with God, and God's cool with me."But Thompson was apparently premature in his speaking on behalf of He who is called I Am.God's counterpart in the holy trinity and onetime incarnated son, Jesus Christ, said he doesn't quite feel as strongly about Thompson and his candidacy."Fred Thompson is ... just...alright with me," our lord and savior said in a press conference Wednesday."I don't care what he may say," the messiah added. "And, frankly, I don't care what he may do. He's just alright."Thompson has yet to respond, though a spokesperson for the campaign issued a statement to the Revue stating "Senator Thompson is obviously disappointed with Christ's decision not to unconditionally support his candidacy, as well as our savior's refusal to go through the motions and adhere to the beliefs required to join our movement."The spokesperson said Jesus would always be welcome to follow Thompson."As long as he gets BapThompsoned and believes in Transubsthompsonation, He'll be good to go," she said. "He'll always be welcome."In an unrelated event, Thompson's campaign issued a statement explaining the attack ad produced for the YouTube debate last Wednesday."The candidates and voters who don't adhere to our conservative principles will not only lose this election and fail to take our country back, but they'll be going straight to Hell," according to the press release.Jesus said He has yet to be swayed."I don't care what [Thompson] may know," He said. "I don't care where he may go."- 30 -
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Updated about a month ago

Deck my dubious halls

10:54am Monday, Dec 3, 2007 Delete
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To the kid who narrates the song "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause":Your mom was not kissing the real Santa Clause. Your parents were doing something called role-playing. They're a little sick, frankly, and this Whig wouldn't mind seeing the real Santa skip over your house this year as punishment. We can't reward this imperviously hack-tastic display of "family values." - 30 -
In this note: Brett Patterson (notes), Elizabeth Hagerty (notes), Dan Frey (notes), Tom 'Trey' Murray (notes), Mitch VanBruggen (notes)

Harumphus Mandamus
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4:55pm Sunday, Dec 2, 2007 Delete
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I remember a day when 'civility' was a word rarely uttered in the same sentence as "government."Sure, people would say that politics tends to be a fairly uncivil process. But understand that I don't mean "politics," I mean "government." And understand that by "civility," I don't so much mean "integrity and decency" as "not smacking your opponent over his holy humiliated head every time he irks you off."I'm pleased to see a resurgance in the popularity of booing, loudly, at public pre-election forums. A lot of boos were elicited at the latest Republican debate, and Hillary Clinton drew a lot of boos in Des Moines when she phoned in her comments whilst her Democratic rivals were physically present.Yes, I'm pleased. I'll even say that it's a step in the right direction. But it's not enough.I remember a day when you could literally walk down to the senate floor and take a cane to the skull of whoever had gumption enough to speak out against you. If all else failed, you could always challenge the diltred to a duel.But it's been a little pitsy-patsy as of late. For Christ, half the dialogue we see today spawns from someone being offended at something someone else said! It's all "blah blah blah, he should apologize for that attack add," "blah blah blah, she's just playing the gender card" and "bo-hoo-hoo, his family used to own my family as slaves." It's bullshit is what it is. We can do better, America.Booing is a start, but that could just as easily become equated with hissing. And I for one don't want anything to do with a bunch of soccer-piddling Italian sissies. Let's make sure we move forward with this.Ready?Bring back the "harumph."It's simple. It's legendary. It's been used mockingly in a Mel Brooks movie. And if being mocked by synagogue-going filmmaker isn't the surest sign of legtimacy known to man, then my name is Millard and I'm running under the Know-Nothing ticket next cycle.We'll be pushing for a legislative mandate for the American people. Step one, of course, will be figuring out how to push a Whig agenda in a Congress that hasn't counted a Whigs amongst its members for over a century. More on that later.- 30 -
In this note: Brett Patterson (notes), Jeremy Steven Chandler (notes), Mitch VanBruggen (notes), Elizabeth Hagerty (notes)
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Updated about a month ago

Edwards campaign responds to praise from Jesse Jackson: "Shit"

9:57am Tuesday, Nov 27, 2007 Delete
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The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has come out publicly in support of Sen. Barack Obama's presidential bid, criticized the entire Democratic field in an OpEd in The Chicago Sun-Times Tuesday.He said the candidates, with the exception of John Edwards, are ignoring the plight of African-Americans in poverty.The Edwards campaign immediately issued a statement distancing itself from Jackson."Rev. Jackson fights for very important things, but he's pretty much a kook," said Kate Beddingfield, Edwards' New Hampshire press secretary, in a statement issued from Manchester Tuesday afternoon. "To be honest, we'd just assume he kept ranting and rabble-rousing for Obama.""We only wish, in a case like this, that Rev. Jackson actually spoke for the black community as a whole, lest we carry that vote and virtually ride it to an easy victory in South Carolina," she added.Jackson's friend and cohort in African-American advocacy Rev. Al Sharpton responded almost immediately via a sattelite connection he had set up months in advance and was literally just waiting to use."Edwards should not be distancing themselves from Rev. Jackson," Sharpton said. "Never mind that he's already come out in support of another candidate. They should take what they can get.""This is an outrage!" Sharpton added in a clip taped several years ago. The same clip was rerun throughout the Don Imus controversy and the Duke LaCrosse rape investigation.The Edwards campaign remained adamant in their desire to dissociate themselves from Jackson."Listen, he's a good guy, seriously," Beddingfield said. "But he's like that guy from Of Mice and Men, you know? The one who loves things so much that he crushes and kills them. Get him away from us, please."
In this note: Brett Patterson (notes), Tom 'Trey' Murray (notes), Dan Frey (notes), Mitch VanBruggen (notes), Elizabeth Hagerty (notes), Chase Victorson (notes)
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Updated about a month ago

Eat your Whiggy Pudding

3:32pm Thursday, Nov 22, 2007 Delete
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We at the College Whigs Revue would like to wish all of you a happy and smallpox-free Thanksgiving.
Just look how excited we all are to get to the table!
Did you know that the rush to find the wishbone was the predecessor to what is now known as a nuclear arms race?
That's all for now. Happy feasting, and keep reading.
-Millard
In this note: Brett Patterson (notes), Elizabeth Hagerty (notes), Mitch VanBruggen (notes), Tom 'Trey' Murray (notes), Dan Frey (notes)
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Updated about 2 months ago

Five minutes with the average voter

4:47pm Wednesday, Nov 21, 2007 Delete
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Winston Churchill once said that the best case against democracy was five minutes with the average voter. Here's a sample of some of the phone conversations I had with New Hampshire voters this summer that work to affirm Churchill's statement:Me: "Thank you, ma'am, and we have one last question, if you don't mind. If the primary were held today, do you know which candidate you would vote for?"Female of voting age: "The black one."Me: "Okay, you mean Barack Obama."Her: "Yeah. I mean, he's obviously the most qualified black candidate we'll ever have."***Me: "Is there a candidate you support?"Elderly female of voting age: "There is, but I'll tell you the truth. I'm going to register to vote for the Republican primary and vote for the worst of their candidates, so that the Republican will lose the general election!"***Me: "Hello, sir, we were wondering which issues are important to you as a voter."Very elderly male of voting age: "My shoes?"***Me: "Hello, sir, my name is Alex and I'm working with the John Edwards campaign. How are you?"Redneck of voting age: "Fuck off!"Me: "I'm sorry?"Redneck's wife, who just picked up the phone: "Who is it?"Redneck: "Get the fuck off the phone, ___, it's the goddam Democrats."Redneck's wife: "Oh jeez, how stupid can you be?"Me: "...What do you mean?"Redneck's wife: "Well you know a Democrat has never been president. Why would you bother?"Redneck: "Don't be stupid, ___, there was probably a Democrat king somewhere once."***Me: "Hello, is ___ there?"Male of voting age: "This is he. Have you accepted Christ into your life?"Me: "Yes, sir. Now if you have a minute..."Crusader: "Let me tell you about the Church of the Latter Day Saints."Me: (click)***Me: "Hello sir, I'm working with John Edwards."Male of voting age: "Oh, I don't like him."Me: "Well, that's all right sir. Would you mind telling us what you don't like about him?"Male voter: "I don't like the Republicans. I don't wanna deal with them any more."Me: "...Actually, sir, John Edwards is a Democrat."Male voter: "Really?"Me: "...yes."Male voter: "I guess he was in that debate, so that makes sense. Alright...shit, I'll vote for him."***Me: "Hello, ma'am, I'm with the John Edwards campaign. How are you?"Female of voting age: "Ugh...why are you guys calling so early?"Me: "Well, I guess the campaigns heat up earlier and earlier every year. Kind of an arms race, you know?"Female voter: "Yeah, but the election isn't for a year and a half. Cool off already."Me: "Actually, ma'am, the uh...the primary is in January. That's only a few months from now."Female voter: "The hell are you tlaking about?"Me: "There's a primary in New Hampshire. They hold it before the general election so the party can determine who their nominee is."Female voter: "(pause)I guess that explains all the phone calls. Tell me more."
In this note: Brett Patterson (notes), Elizabeth Hagerty (notes), Mitch VanBruggen (notes)
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Updated about 2 months ago

Dodd reaches out to Hispanics, Klingons, convention-goers

12:36pm Friday, Nov 16, 2007 Delete
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Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) drew spontaneous applause from the UNLV debate audience Thursday night when he answered a question regarding immigration in Spanish.What he did next, though largely unnoticed, was perhaps even more impressive.When posed with a question regarding the exploration of space and the potential for future immigrants from space, he responded in Klingon, the fictional language of the species of the same name from the Star Trek series.“tlhIngan maH! Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam lojmIt yIpoSmoH!” he said to scattered but enthusiastic applause.The newly exposed Start Trek enthusiasts in the audience quickly sat back down and denied having applauded.The fact that what Dodd said translated roughly to “Your mother has a smooth forehead” seemed to draw less attention than the very fact that he was able to speak the language fluently.“I’m just flat out impressed,” said debate-goer and professed Star Trek convention attendee Weldon Christiansen. “That might even be the thing that makes up my mind, the fact that he can speak so directly to me.”Christiansen isn’t concerned that his presumptive vote for Dodd in January’s primary will be too focused on a single and non-consequential issue.“Politics is retail here,” he said. “I mean, it never has been, but now that we have a primary, we’re allowed to vote for whichever candidate canoodles up to us the most or the closest to polling time.”Other candidates were skeptical of the power that Dodd’s language skills could utilize for actual progress.“I’ll give him credit for studying and having that answer ready, but I think it’s a little fake of him,” said rival candidate Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). “I mean, I’m the only one here who’s actually seen a UFO. Talk only goes so far.”Kucinich and Dodd are currently battling with Delaware Sen. Joe Biden for fifth place in both national and Nevada polls.Dodd stood by his words.“nuqDaq 'oH puchpa''e'lojmIt yIpoSmoH!” he said. “We need to talk about the issue so it can be black and white once it becomes an actual problem.”The Klingon Civil Liberties Union (KCLU) filed suit against Dodd following the debate for “neglecting to acknowledge and honor the multitudes of the Klingon species who fall between black and white on the color spectrum.” According to the Bureau of Klingon Statistics, 99.99 percent of the Klingon species is colored dark brown.
In this note: Elizabeth Hagerty (notes), Sean Suter (notes), Brett Patterson (notes), Tom 'Trey' Murray (notes), Dan Frey (notes), Mitch VanBruggen (notes)
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Updated about 2 months ago

A serious post? Naw, a pick-me-up.

1:08pm Thursday, Nov 15, 2007 Delete
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My mom is a teacher, so whenever education plans or NCLB or anything like that comes up, I tend to get a little irked. People like my mom work tirelessly and well and there's pretty much no tangible progress for it. Not that that's a tangible reason to get mad about things, but something's rwong and it's time to connect the dots.Aaron Sorkin always tickles my fancy, especially when he writes a good bit about education. Here's one of the better Bartlett speeches he ever wrote in The West Wing:Joy cometh in the morning, scripture tells us.I hope so.I don’t know that life would be worth living if it didn’t.And I don’t yet know who set off the bomb at Kennison State.All I know for sure, all I know for certain, is that they weren’t born wanting to do this.There’s evil in the world, there’ll always be. And there’s nothing we can do about that.But there’s violence in our schools, too much mayhem in our world. And we can do something about that.There isn’t nearly enough character, depth or discipline in our classrooms.There aren’t nearly enough teachers in our classrooms.There isn’t nearly enough, not nearly enough, not nearly enough money in our classrooms, and we can do something about that.We aren’t doing nearly enough, not nearly enough to teach our children well. We can start this moment today. They weren’t born wanting to do this.- Booya -
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Updated about 2 months ago
Viva Vegas

2:48pm Wednesday, Nov 14, 2007 Delete
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The next Democratic Debate is scheduled for tomorrow night in Las Vegas and you know what? I can't wait. I need to figure out where these candidates stand on the issues; the 57 debates they've had so far have not been substantive enough to fulfill my need of wonk-ish knowledge on Mike Gravel's health care plan and Bill Richardson's governorship of New Mexico. I know, who knew he was the governor of New Mexico? He never mentions it, he must be either extremely modest or embarrassed, though I'd bet on modesty. But by far the part I look forward to the most is seeing Hilary mop the floor with "those boys." All they do is attack her positions where she has them and call her out on waffling when she attempts the Bill-ish pander, and yet even with her flaws abundantly clear, from what I hear she already has secured the nomination and the rest of the race is simply a beauty pageant to see who gets to be her VP. Did you see Richardson suck up to her last debate? It was pure ass kissing, so he's my new favorite to win the Hilary VP spot. I wish they were taking bets on this in Vegas. So to all of you, make sure you watch this important debate tomorrow, it is completely necessary, and it should be fun to see who is with Hilary and who is with the terrorists.Quod Tyler Pariter
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Updated about 2 months ago

Hillary: no more campaigning, thank you

11:52am Wednesday, Nov 14, 2007 Delete
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NEW YORK - In what many consider an unorthodox move, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has announced that she will no longer be actively campaigning for her party's nomination.Clinton maintains that she is not dropping out of the race."Campaigning is a pain in the ass," she told the AP Wednesday. "The canoodling and the butt-kissing and the retail, it really gets tiring.""I just don't see the point," she added.Clinton also confirmed her motives."I've got this thing wrapped up," she said. "I'll answer to the concerns of voters when I damn well please, thank you."Wednesday's announcement comes on the tails some other controverail relevations about Clinton's candidacy.The AP reported Tuesday that a student at Grinnell College in Iowa was given a pre-written question to ask the senator at a town hall meeting for the campaign."Screw you guys," Clinton responded to the whole of the Iowa political community. "You all need to learn to appreciate my finnesse."Many have been less than surprised by Clinton's announcement."I'll be honest, she just hasn't been into it for a while now," said the millions of viewers who have seen any or all of the Democratic debates this cycle. "It seemed like the facilitator always had to go up and be like 'excuse me, Senator, sorry to bug you, but we did just ask you a question," you know? She has an attitude, man.""I'm sure she got excited and went all gung-ho a few years ago when she first came up with the idea to run," the millions continued. "She probably drew up a little strategy and got on the phone and called all her friends, yadda yadda, cutsie cutsie. But it wore off. She got burned out."No response has been issued from any of the other candidates' press rooms.
In this note: Elizabeth Hagerty (notes), Brett Patterson (notes), Mitch VanBruggen (notes), Tom 'Trey' Murray (notes), Dan Frey (notes)
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Updated about 2 months ago

Giuliani knocks Clinton for waffle-making

4:44pm Sunday, Nov 11, 2007 Delete
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Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani attacked Democratic frontrunner Sen. Hillary Clinton today, calling her "indecisive" and "quick to parsing.""Senator Clinton simply can't decide how to cook her waffles," the former mayor of New York said in an interview with Wolf Blitzer. "Do you make them round or do you make them square? Do you make them solid and crunchy, or doughy? Sen. Clinton needs to stop waffling around the issues."Giuliani's attacks received backing from the maple syrup industry, whose endorsement could carry serious weight in the pancake and waffle-loving states of Iowa and South Carolina."The dexterity of a doughy breakfast creation does a great deal to affect the amount of syrup used," said a Ms. Jemima, spokeswoman for the syrup-bottlers' union. "I can tell you one thing for certain: we will not endorse a candidate whose own waffles don't encourage heavy syrup use, and we certainly won't endorse anyone who simply witholds the answer. We've been taken advantage of too many times to fall for that."The Clinton camp denies the accusation of parsing and waffling."Sen. Clinton is demonstrating her willingness to thoroughly examin the merits of both sides of an issue," a spokesperson for the campaign said this afternoon. "To encourage reckless plainspokenness in these delicate times could lead to disastrous results in kitchens across the nation."Giuliani remains adamant in his charge."This type of waffling will not be stood for," he said. "But don't just listen to me - the 28% of restaurant workers and stay-at-home moms who vote in their states' primaries will let it be known when the time comes."
In this note: Brett Patterson (notes), Elizabeth Hagerty (notes), Mitch VanBruggen (notes), Tom 'Trey' Murray (notes), Dan Frey (notes)
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Updated about 2 months ago

Pat Robertson: Satanic symbols OK, given Republican origin

12:16am Thursday, Nov 8, 2007 Delete
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Christian Televangelist Pat Robetson announced Tuesday that he will support any symbols of the anti-Christ, so long as they are sponsored by the Republican party.The announcement has left experts baffled as to why Robertson, a well-known figurehead for the American Christian Right best known for proclaiming that God had sent a stroke to Ariel Sharon for conceding part of the Gaza Strip to Palestine (thus digressing on the Evangelist-ppurported theory of the build-up to the rapture) or suggesting that the U.S. assasinate Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez for suppressing Christianity, would take his support of the Republican party so far."I can't believe it," said Jewish-Christian scholar Samuel Sandmel. "It's almost as if he'd been using the rightousness and religion card as a front for some underlying socially fascist views.""I mean, the guy has always defended Anne Coulter, but I figured it was because of the anti-Semitism," he added.Robertson's announcement adds to the line of questions that followed his endorsement of presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, a supporter of gay marriage and abortion rights who happens to be a Republican with a conservative social agenda and a virulent hatred for the homeless."The theory that [Robertson] was just a huge fascist phony acting righteous to easily negate dissenters was always considered a radical one, even after he endoresd Giuliani," said world-renowned theologian and filmmaker Kevin Smith. "But this kind of raises the idea to the level of a credible threat. Otherwise, it makes absolutely no sense. He's going against all the crap he's been preaching since the inception of 'ABC Family'."Robertson, who first rose to fame with his "Kick-a-sick-puppy-in-the-nuts-for-Jesus! Crusade" Evangelical campaign throughought the American South in the 1970s, defended his actions in a press conference late Wednesday.The conference was called in light of reaction to the original announcement made earlier in the day."I have always stood up for what I believed to be right," he told reporters. "I will stand up for it, whatever it is, whenever I happen to know what it is."Robertson has repeatedly claimed to speak directly to God.Wednesday's press conference was no exception."God is speaking directly to me now...He is telling me the answer...and He says you're all a bunch of pud-pounding Doubting Thomases!" Robertson told reporters. "Now get going to Hell, brown-people lovers!"Sandmel stands by his latest theory."It's pretty obvious that [Robertson] is just a huge, insecure fascist douchebag who got way more attention than he knew how to handle," Sandmel said. "Seriously, I had a feeling that he was just a huge dick all along, and it looks like he just exposed himself."Robertson had strong parting words for guests at the later press conference."OOOOOHHHH, my NIPPLES!" he said, cringing as he grabbed his chest with both hands and made a twisting motion. "They HURT when you TWIST them!"The Christian Right has affirmed their continued support for Robertson."He's our guy, straight up," said fellow televangelist Billy Graham in a phone interview. "He just plain makes the most sense of anyone out there."

CNN is kinda respectable
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9:51pm Monday, Nov 5, 2007 Delete
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While perusing CNN.com, I just saw a headline that said "Bush kinda talks tough with Pakistan."KINDA. THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES "KINDA" TALKS TOUGH. And this isn't some random mother's-basement-blogger, this is CNN.COM! They have a 24 hour news network! They're a trusted name in journalism! They have integrity! Yet, they used the word "KINDA" in a headline as if it were legitimate.No satire today, just disbelief.
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Updated about 2 months ago

Right Said Fred

11:52am Monday, Nov 5, 2007 Delete
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FRED THOMPSON IS TOO SEXY...(apologies to Fred Heads, Pete Snyder)Fred'stoo sexy for his shirtthe shirt that says he's runningtoo sexy for official candida-cyyyyyyyyyFred'stoo sexy for opinionstoo sexy for good aidestoo sexy? No they keep resign-ingggggggggggFred'stoo sexy for a hairpiecetoo sexy for wrinkle creamnot sexy enough for his wiiiiiiifeFred'stoo sexy for a platformtoo sexy for his floor votestoo sexy to care what you thiiiiiiiiiiinkFred'stoo sexy not to knowthat presidents should showsomething other than a-pa-thyyyyyyyyyyAnd Fred'stoo sexy for the TVand now we know that hecan only pretend at law and order...
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Updated about 2 months ago

Get over it

10:33am Monday, Nov 5, 2007 Delete
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Here's a conundrum.We're told repeatedly during our lives as voting-aged citizens that, if we don't vote, we ought to cease complaining about the function and afunction of government.Yet four of the biggest winers are missing a considerable percentage of their own voting opportunities - votes that have a more immediate and staggering impact than those cast in a primary or general election.Four of the current Democratic presidential candidates are serving terms in the U.S. Senate as we speak, and they've all missed over half of their floor votes in the last two months, according to CNN.Let's establish the obvious - Obama does a lot of wining about the current state of affairs. Hillary can be pretty critical herself, if only when the opportunity is most politically omnipotent (and even if she doesn't actually believe what she's saying). And it's hard to match Biden and Dodd in the category of blabbermouthing and senatorial diatribe.And in the last two months, they've missed 80%, 63%, 68% and 65% of their floor votes, respectively.I couldn't track down information on former senators Edwards, who I'm sure missed some legislating in 2003-'04, or Gravel, who never sought the nomination while serving a legislative term.Bill Richardson was the governor of New Mexico, in case he had not told you. Ipso facto, no missed votes for him.And it should be dually noted that no one misses Dennis Kucinich when he's absent from House votes.CNN has declined to publish similar information on the Republican candidates, seeing as they are mostly former governors, former dud-turned-right-place-right-time mayors, and former actors.So which is more ridiculous - the fact that the candidates continue to bemoan the evident problems despite forgoing much of their power to enact change, or the notion that the First Amendment only applies to those who have taken favorably to the beureaucracy that is voter registration?
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Updated about 2 months ago

In the beginning

10:52pm Tuesday, Oct 30, 2007 Delete
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In the beginning, we wrote everything by hand. And when we did that, we penned the first "s" in every word in ridiculously elongated fashion, such that it more closely resembled a lowercase "f".In the beinning, we fettled thingf by mafculine meanf. We hit each other on the head with canef, or, at the very leaft, fettle our difputes by meanf of a duel. It if reafonable to purport that we didn't suck around. We cut the bullfhit, fo to fpeak.The problemf befalling uf would be of a fimpler nature. Everything waf a matter of black and white. There waf no need to fimmer the ifsues, af there waf nary a difpute! At leaft that'f what Rufh "rough" Limbaugh and Rick fantorum would have uf believe. Did I mention that we all believed in Jefus and fupported hif being integrated into every afpect of everyday life?In the beginning of the hearty political condrummerief captured all too well in the wooden etchingf ufed to record our day-to-day efsence, we wore our fideburns long and connected at the mouftache. Our wigf were powdered and our facial hair bufhy. And the damned women ftayed out of the machine! I mean the democratic machine!Needlefs to fay, the Clinton conundrum would not be an ifsue had you all juft followed our lead.Fhe has, after all, been voted the candidate moft likely to provide for a fcary Halloween coftume. Juft look at CNN.com. It'f there.Were it like the beginning, I might be able to write "feven fcrapulous faudi foldiers folidify ftanding, fays faddam" and know that you would be able to difcern what I faid.And in the beginning, we all had terrible lifps. But we had the fmarts to get rid of the crippling letter "s." How sucking ftupid do you guyf look...
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Updated about 2 months ago

Desperate For Change and an Introduction

10:31am Tuesday, Oct 30, 2007 Delete
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Hello faithful "The College Whigs Revue" readers! All nine of you may recognize my name, since I think I was the first writer besides Alex to be a part of the blog, but I haven't wrote...and I have no excuse. A boring job usually allows for me to write, but sometimes I just want to sit and stare at the wall instead. Insufferable madness will do that to a man.On to the blogging...Steven Colbert announced last week that he intends to enter the presidential race, running as both a Democrat and a Republican (delicious!) on the docket in South Carolina. Within days the web was swept up with "Colbert Buzz" and his Facebook group, "A Million Strong for Steven T. Colbert" has already passed a million members. Obama, the candidate who is supposed to be the one who "understands the youth" has just over a THIRD of that size in his Facebook group. Friends have asked me if I would vote for Colbert, if given the chance. I'm somewhat dumbfounded. Vote for a comedian with no political plan? I love Colbert. He is smart, hilarious and clearly on top of the satire game, but as a serious political candidate? Most can't even distinguish between the actual Colbert and the Papa Bear-esque character he plays on "The Report".However, I am glad he is doing what he is doing. If for no other reason, Colbert's campaign has shown Washington that the young do want change and not "soon" or "down the road"...but now. The idea of change is labeled on a lot of campaign slogans...and has been since the birth of at least this nation, and probably since Acropolis in Greece. The advertised change is artificial. It might be a change from one party to another, or worse just a change in the warm body occupying the chair of authority. When we look at the last 40 years of American politics, we see change, but what kind of changes? We haven't seen radical political change since at least Wilson to FDR. Since the end of the Cold War, we haven't reviewed our political ways in America, we've gone on as usual, waiting for change to just happen, or worse...forced to happen.I'm sure someone is thinking: "Do we need change? Is this not working?" The answer, of course, is yes we do. I'm not talking about a mere change from George W. Bush to someone else, be it either a Democrat or a Republican, but actual, meaningful change to the system, the people and how we view our leaders. The Cabinet, Senate, House and all elected leaders are supposed to be public servants, but they aren't anymore. They serve their own causes, not those of the people they serve. How can we have a president have a 30 percent approval rating? How can the huddled masses be shouting at the top of their lungs and not be heard?I realize how idealist this is. I know that any political system will become corrupt at some point, it is the way humanity works, but I think our current system has been exploited enough and it may be time for a change, and it has been shown to us all by a guy who became famous on Comedy Central. God Bless cable.={+}=
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Updated about 2 months ago

If You Want to Crown 'Em, Then Crown Their Ass

7:41pm Sunday, Oct 28, 2007 Delete
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Why do we have a primary system? Clearly is isn't necessary. According to the cable news I've been watching, it's already a Hilary v. Rudy, New York v. New York, Hawk v. Hawk, Moderate v. Moderate race. I sincerely hope that these aren't my only options come next November. I thought that maybe we'd start moving slightly forward as a country, but these two options clearly wouldn't allow for that. All we'd hear about in this race is Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton, the New York Yankees and, of course 9/11, 9/11, and 9/11. Did you know Rudy was the mayor on 9/11? Did you know he single handedly saved the world from further annihilation on 9/11? Did you know if we don't elect him we'd be facing another 9/11? Have you heard the Hilary is married to former president (who can make a certain 21 year old male intern feel like a giddy little school girl after exchanging a few words on a street in Manchester) Bill Clinton? Have you heard that he liked to get a little oral in the Oval with overweight interns? Have you heard any of this? The most forward looking item on the docket in any debate might be over whether Iran should be bombed now or in a few weeks, or whether we should stay in Iraq because it was a big mistake and we screwed up or whether we should stay in Iraq because it's awesome and 9/11 9/11. This isn't what I want to listen to from February to November. I hate the Yankees, I hate the possibility of an American-style aristocracy of Bush's and Clinton's, and I hate harping on the past. This is a presidential election, we should be talking about how to bring this country forward to lead the world in the 21st Century. I can't take it. I think I might curl into a fetal position and cry.If the media has become the new smoke-filled rooms, picking candidates to put before the country for voters and the primary system of voters choosing their candidates has been ended, don't dangle exciting candidates with new ideas and interesting things to say like Edwards and Obama. Don't titillate my funny bone with people like Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich. Don't scare the hell out of me by dangling Mitt Romney as a possibility; if I don't need to be that scared I don't want to be. If the primary process has become nothing more than a show to put on to make the people happy, I don't want it anymore. Watching Fred Thompson's best Grandpa Simpson impression, Mitt Romney fill a debate talking like a little boy with a crush on Hilary, and Mike Gravel yell at the other candidates every single time they call on him sure is entertaining, but to quote former Arizona Cardinals coach Dennis Green, "If you want to crown 'em, then crown their ass!" Just do it, don't get my hopes up, don't offer me possibilities that aren't real. Give me the truth, I can handle it, even if Jack Nicholson doesn't think so.Quod Tyler Pariter
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Updated about 2 months ago

I bet Colbert blog posts are popping up quicker than facebook ...

9:52pm Thursday, Oct 25, 2007 Delete
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Support for Stephen Colbert’s presidential run is spreading faster than a California wildfire.The Facebook group “1,000,000 strong for Stephen T. Colbert has surpassed 982,000 members and will likely reach its promulgated goal before the night is through. And it’s probably safe to say that the current administration is spending more time worrying about Colbert than about recovery efforts in Malibu. Heckuva job, Brownie.At least Colbert’s purported candidacy probably won’t lead to any arrests, at least directly. The same cannot be said of the fires in California, as reports of arson evidence and suspects are coming in. You never know, though – Colbert could always pull through with a lewd conduct charge. Perhaps public indecency. He may well appear nude at a rally, saying something along the lines of “I know some of you may laugh at my lack of bodily-concealing cloth. But rest assured, the doubters will not be included, nor will they take part when my grand dream for America comes to pass. Another great emperor once stood nude in public, and you can sure-as-shootin’ bet that no one pointed it out to him. And you know what the difference between him and all you schmucks is? He was an emperor, and none of you are. So take that.”I’ll let the parallels between The Emperor’s New Clothes and the Bush presidency draw themselves.
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Updated about 3 months ago

The Passion of the Coulter

9:25pm Thursday, Oct 25, 2007 Delete
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My original hope was to do a regular-length short story on this, but it's coming slowly. Here's the premise, though. And this might be as expanded as it gets:A Coulter Carolact oneAnne Coulter is peeved because noone understands her. Here she was, going on national TV to explain why the Jews need to be perfected, and everyone got mad at her and wouldn't let her explain the basis of her anti-Semitism. What's more, she's been waiting for two hours at this coffee shop for Martin Luther, from whom she's seeking advice as per some of his scathingly anti-Jewish writings that she admires most. Never mind that he's been dead for centuries - the damn fool had better respect her, for she is Anne Coulter. But she's been waiting long enough, so she leaves to seek advice from a more reliable theological source - Mel Gibson.She returns from Mel's Australian estate disappointed. Not only wouldn't he give her advice, but he kept inferring thta she was secretly Jewish - a traitor of sorts. This puzzled her. Now Anne is frustrated and confused.As she's going to bed that night, Anne is visited by the ghost of Martin Luther. Luther is at first authoritative and mad, though he grows flustered as Coulter repeatedly responds to his not-so-scathing ways as "French," "Pinko," "Russian," "Franco-Prussian" and "traitorous." He blows his top and says "screw you Coulter, I wasn't going to sic the whole "Ghosts of yadda yadda past and yadda yadda future, blah blah blah, but I'm going to, and just out of spite." He nails a piece of paper to the door as he flies out. Anne reads it - it says you're more Jewish than you think...Now she's even more confused.So the stage is set. Anne Coulter will be visited by the ghosts of Christian-Jewish relations past, present and future. She doesn't really give a rip, though. "They're all just a bunch of stupid French commies" she mutters as she drifts off into a deep, hazy sleep...To be continued...
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Updated about 3 months ago

The Ass of Hastert

1:35pm Thursday, Oct 25, 2007 Delete
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WASHINGTON - G.O.P. legislators are expressing their infuriation over the Democrats' plan to hold a vote on the SCHIP children's health care bill today, when many Republicans will be joining George W. Bush's visit to the scene of California's wildfires."This is a cheap political move," one old, fat white legislator declared, pounding his wrinkled fists on his desk for emphasis.The AP reported only hours ago that more jowls have been rabbled around today than at nearly any other legislative session in history. The last time there was this much jowlage and rabble-rousing in the chambers of Congress, reporters estimate, was at Calhoun's famed standoff with the "colored-loving and French," as he called them, anti-nullification states.This is, however, only the second-largest display of Harumphing on record. Today's episode is trumped only by the last G.O.P.-wide 24-watching partay at the Casa Rumsfeld.Avowed actionFormer House Speaker Dennis Hastert has vowed that the blatant politicking by Democrats will not go unchallenged.The rotund old fellow has declared an emergency session of the former majority."This session could go pretty well into the night," Hastert said. "Even if we don't get the votes to overturn this imminent decision by the original deadline, or the end of the original session, we'll probably just hold the vote open indefinitely until we get the votes we want.""We can do that," he added. "It's in the interest of the greater cause of credibility and integrity and character and Patriotism and 9/11. By the way, are you going to eat that?"Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay concurred with Hastert's holding that the former majority's actions were righteous."Frankly, I don't even give a hoot if they are," he said. "I can do any damn thing I want. I'm Tom freakin' Delay, stupid cop!"In other news, recent documents released by the office of former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove's office reveal that the President's longtime policy adviser in 2004 swore he'd resign the day he saw "Nancy Pelosi getting the best of the Republicans with their own time-honored tactics."-30-Post Hoc
In this note: Mitch VanBruggen (notes), Elizabeth Hagerty (notes), Brett Patterson (notes), Tom 'Trey' Murray (notes)
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Updated about 3 months ago

A 'Word' on Stephen Colbert

11:43pm Thursday, Oct 18, 2007 Delete
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Stephen Colbert has announced that he's entering the race for the presidency of the United States.The talk show host has yet to go out of character when discussing these plans, as far as I know, so we'll see.My inkling is that the whole thing is a big satirical shot at Fred Thompson's bid - the delay, the previous experience (yeah, Fred was in the senate, but his colleagues have called him "lazy"), the laissez-faire way he's gaining support...it's a perfect parallel!But let's pretend for a minute that it's not a joke. Let's assume that Colbert will, in fact, get himself on the ticket for the South Carolina primary. He is, after all, gaining massive support on facebook. The group "1,000,000 strong for Stephen Colbert" has reached upwards of 110,000 in just over two days of existence. The Washington Post reports that 15 people are joining the group every second. While I sat at my computer refreshing the page for about an hour (simultaneously reading Samuel Sandmel, mind you), group membership rose about 10,000. No joke.The cool part is that he says he's planning to enter both of the major parties' contests, saying last night that his party affiliation is a matter best left up to the people.That's actually a neat idea.The great thing I've started to see in Colbert is that he is a subconsciously unifying force, at least amongst college students. Liberal kids love the satire (tell me the Report isn't one big parody of The O'Reilly Factor), and conservative kids love him equally. It's almost hard to explain - obviously he can't take two sides on every issue, and it's hard to believe that it wouldn't catch up to him if he were to become a serious contender. If, to reiterate, he's actually running.Yet something about his act, his brand of satire, has created a whole new sort of debate among denizens of all political stripes.Whether than argue whether he's right or wrong, hero or jackass (a la, say, Jon Stewart), I could reasonably fathom Democrat and Republican clashing over whose interests Colbert represents, with both sides arguing the affirmative.Colbert could be the most unifying force ever to grace the modern political landscape.And maybe, just maybe, he'll be running a presidential campaign, right here in this country.Now, how refreshing would that be?

My back is out. Brownback, that is.
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12:48pm Thursday, Oct 18, 2007 Delete
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Sideburns here, ready to disperse with some hardcore, hot and heavy, totally titillating, barely legal blog action. Gentlemen, pitch a tent and feel the excitement.I was going to write some brilliant, beefy satire about Senator Brownback's self-removal from the Presidential race, but I'm not The Onion. Or the Daily Show. My satire isn't well done like theirs, it's more medium-rare.Brownback hoped to fill the bible-thumping, evolution-denying, gay-hating, abortion clinic bombing void that the current slew of GOP candidates failed to fill. The campaign was dealt a crushing blow when it fizzled in the Ames Straw Poll back in August, coming in third behind a sizzlin' Mike Huckabee, a Christian conservative clinging to a mantle of compassion and conscience.While Brownback is easily caricatured as a religious fundamenalist whackjob, Huckabee has stood apart and appeared to be reasonable, almost moderate. Then again, so did George W. Bush in 2000. Brownback has been slaughtered in the polls and in fundraising, having less than $100,000 cash on hand. Fortunately, he still had more money than Mike Gravel, who I believe I saw groveling for change on the subway this weekend.Brownback is the third candidate to drop out of the race, following the lead of such first class fundraisers and political phenoms as Tommy "Thomas" Thompson, and Tom "Afflack!" Vilsack.Interestingly enough, Tom "Final Solution" Tancredo is still in the race. Then again, so is Robert Haines and John Cox.I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Brownback isn't a completely terrible guy. He seems to care for the environment and the genocide in Darfur, which I'm pretty sure was made up by some fat former Veep. That's right Mondale, lose some weight.In conclusion, I'd like to see "Brownbacks out" become a phrase among the extremely politically nerdy for the next few weeks. Also, Hillary Clinton is a lesbian.Sideburns, out.
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Updated about 3 months ago

So we aren't quite the Huffington Post...

8:11am Thursday, Oct 18, 2007 Delete
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The College Whigs Revue is now going "global." By this I mean we have two new contributors. The first is a college graduated, recently non-single drummer for the band Judging Ronald. He also works a cubicle job and knows a thing or two about typing. The second is a fellow intern from this summer. He has the best mutton chops that side of the Mason-Dixon line, and he's in the closest
In this note: Brett Patterson (notes), Tom 'Trey' Murray (notes)
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Updated about 3 months ago

The new face of politics, part 2: the G.O.P.

6:32pm Wednesday, Oct 17, 2007 Delete
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Before starting part two of the most fun entry to date, it's worth noting that Joel Stein of Time totally ripped me off and did an analysis of candidate MySpace pages for his essay in an early June issue of the magazine. Just kidding, Joel. Though I'm still suspicious.**Also, my apologies to Tommy Thompson fans. He gets a mention in this late-May entry, even though he dropped out after the Iowa straw poll in August.************************************************************************************Don’t you think for one minute that the Republicans are going to let themselves be left out of the youth-inizer (say that out loud a few times) that is the maintenance of a Facebook profile. They’re every bit as hip and fly as their blue-state counterparts who, as trends would suggest, have been wooing the young vote, all the while proving themselves the more internet-savvy of the parties. Whether the correlation is a coincidence is up for debate, but Republicans would be wise not to pass it off. The G.O.P. is working to change their association with the tubes, despite their morbid fear of change.An article in today’s Start Tribune detailed the efforts of former Republican congressional aide David All to launch a blog and “spur his fellow Republicans to bridge the digital divide.” According to the article, by Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post, All writes that “Today our Revolution begins,” that referring to his proposed technological revolution in the G.O.P. But his rhetoric inadvertently acknowledges that Republicans are going to have to scramble to make up for an internet gap that is widening between their party and the Democrats. According to the article, Michael Turk, who was In charge of internet strategy during the Bush campaign in 2004 said, bluntly, “we’re losing the web right now.” All said that “Republicans are stuck in Internet circa 2000.” That’s pre-YouTube, pre-Facebook and pre-pod casting. Think of how different the internet was in 1993 compared to 2000. Seven years is a long time in terms of internet technologies and resources. Seven years is a much larger percentage of the life of the internet than the life of, say, printed news.But fear not, lapel pin-wearers and blue blazer with khakis aficionados! The Republicans are ready to rock the vote, Facebook style. Here’s the rundown of their profiles.Rudy GiulianiSupporters: … @#*!Okay, the font-runner isn’t on Facebook. It’s safe to consider this a bad start. I would call him a square, a la Bill Richardson (who apparently just now announced that he is officially running…who knew?), but the whole point is that the Republican party is the party of squares, and Facebook is their way of eradicating themselves of that devilishly clingy stigma.John McCainSupporters:2,788For Chrissakes Rudy, the 70-year-old war veteran with a (literally) crusty face is more attuned to popular culture than you, oh seasoned host of “Saturday Night Live” and guest star of such cinematic classics as “Anger Management.” Thus far, McCain’s profile is the only one that didn’t appear immediately at the top of the search results. What’s more, he appears to have a separate, private account in the Washington, D.C. network. Surprising, given that, at 70, he probably requires multiple naps every day. And avid watchers of C-Span will note that he doesn’t have a lot of free time given his quite thorough involvement in what appears to be every single senate committee Sometimes I think he just shows up and takes someone else’s seat. McCain’s profile is pretty solid. Though he completely gaffs in the realm of telling us what he believes, he was savvy enough to list some favorite T.V. shows, movies, music, etc. Especially deserving of note are his “Religious Views,” which McCain lists as “North Phoenix Baptist Church.” Apparently the Senator got confused and wrote down his specific parish, but now I’m worried that the North Phoenix Baptist Church has been marketing themselves as an independent religious organization and the sole proprietors to all that is holy. That, or North Phoenix, with its multiple Baptist Churches, is an officially recognized sect of the Baptist Church. I wonder what the specifics are. Maybe the cactus is venerated and the congregation, unlike most non-Catholic sects of Christianity, practices Lent by actually spending 40 days in the readily-accessible Sonora Desert. A few minutes later, the Straight Talk Express is rolling with two fewer supporters. Perhaps college kids are afraid that “straight talk” from a 70 year-old will involve several hours of McCain reminiscing about his days in the service and his relatively non-humorous encounters the other senile folks at the VFW, all the while watching him nod in and out of sleep, complete with the infrequent but notable rants about the damn city council and their damn property tax rates. They might have fun connecting the dots with his liver spots when he finally starts snoring, but this likely won’t get anyone excited about his candidacy.Mitt RomneySupporters: 8,117Mitt has filled out most of profile very thoroughly. Especially the part about his family under “About Me.” I wonder if the whole monogamist thing is an act – if he’s actually writing about his many, many wives and kids but speaks about multiple kids under the same name. Speaking of polygamy, Romney has neglected to fill out the “Religious Views” section of his profile. Could it be that he’s Mormon? I think it is. That’s cute, how he realizes that his personal life might not be completely in tune with the general “tolerance for everybody except non-W.A.S.P.s” message of the G.O.P. But I think it’s too bad that he feels like he needs to hide it, or at least to not mention his religion without prompting. That’s tough when you’re trying to pull alongside the “family values” crowd, especially the crowd that defines “family values” so narrowly as to pertain to specific religious precepts, McCain’s idolatry of cacti nonwithstanding.He’s a devoted monogamist, or at least he says he is. When asked about his wife, he said “She’s a babe. I was saying that when she was 15.”Apparently it’s not the Mormanism that will hurt him as much as the pedophilic nature with which he talks about his high-school sweetheart-turned object of transfer from Stanford to BYU-turned wife. As Jon Stewart put it, “Okay, so he’s not a creepy polygamist. He’s a creepy monogamist.”That said, Mitt is one of few candidates who actually lists his or her ideology in the profile. And don’t worry Tancredo, Romney is a self-proclaimed conservative. In only the way a Massachusetts governor who oversaw the legalization of gay marriage in his state (the first) could be. Yet Romney displays a disheartening willingness to overlook details and norms of absurdity for the sake of advertising patriotism. His address is listed as “United States,” and under “Interests” (where we’d expect a Republican candidate to say “hunting, reading Tom Clancy, John Wayne, wearing brown penny loafers, khaki pants, a navy blazer with a lapel pin and a red and white striped tie all at the same time, parting my hair on the side, polo, and vacuums of morality and self proclamation”), he writes “Besides my family, I have a great interest in strengthening this country and our economy. Fixing our failing schools so we can better compete with blah blah blah blah blah.” First of all, he’s using periods where commas would be proper. Second, appealing to youth will not work if your very written word suggests monotony. Finally, and I hate to say it, but doing things like writing incomplete sentences, calling the “United States” your address and referring to collective groups like “the jihadists” will probably gain quite a bit of moderate support at this juncture.A few minutes later, this monogamist Mormon has added one more family member…er, supporter, to his family. I mean support base.Mike HuckabeeSupporters: 421At first, I was disappointed. Part of my idea for these Facebook entries came from a search that turned up, among others, Huckabee’s profile, in which visitors could see a photo of him rocking out on stage with a bass guitar. It was certainly a refreshing site, given that, in my imagination, George W. Bush plays the air guitar on a frequent basis. It gave me the sense that Huckabee knows what he’s doing. But now, that photo has been replaced with some official-looking portrait in front of the Arkansas state flag. Huckabee is rare amongst Republican candidates in that he has utilized the “status” function and, like Edwards, is using as an effective advertisement, even if he’s only pointing you to another website: “Mike Huckabee is hoping you’ll check out his official MySpace page.Maybe this is because the South likes to do things differently, if only for the pleasure of being a self-proclaimed group of outsiders. But why would he point us to a customized website that’s popular and is frequently and easily accessed by young voters when we’re already at one? I, for one, am not on MySpace, and I don’t plan to join anytime soon. Your loss, Governor.I’ll hand it to Huckabee – he’s not ashamed to have featured a photo of his gubernatorial reelection in 2002, a year when he was over 100 pounds heavier than today. Maybe it’s been set in public strategically, with the hope that visitors would notice and credit him with pulling himself up by the bootstraps of his running shoes. But it certainly doesn’t purvey images of the Good Life. It’s kind of like the adage about how you’re not supposed to trust a skinny cook. It makes you think that he and Bloomberg are conspiring to force all citizens onto the South Beach diet. And you thought Huckabee was clean of corporate anchor interests…Now, he has 422 supporters. Like Dexitrim has 422 satisfied customers.Sam BrownbackIt’s getting late and I don’t have the energy to get into the Kansas Senator and his 1,233 supporters. Being from Kansas, he probably doesn’t believe in evolution, which means that he’s convinced that his campaign will not progress in terms of support or candidacy. In fact, the campaign started with 1,233 supporters after it was created spontaneously in the book of Genesis. Now: 1,232 supporters. FIRE AND BRIMSTONE!!! There’s only one explanation for this vagabond supporter, and that is that he or she was the first to be claimed in the rapture. Don’t worry, remaining 1,232 – I’m sure you’re next.Thomas TancredoSupporters: 614The Colorado representative and self-proclaimed protector of conservatism in this election lists among his activities “skeet shooting.” It was a good run, Representative Tancredo, but I’m afraid that your attempt to woo young voters will backfire magnificently as soon as you get enough supporters to notice. Also, it’s a good thing that Harley Davidson has made a comeback, lest young people misjudge what it means when you say “riding my Harley.”It’s also worth noting that he lists “Contemporary American Politics” under his interests. Um, good, Mr. hopeful for the presidency of the United States.614 people still support this man’s interest in shooting skeet.Duncan HunterSupporters: 200The representative from gay-loving, God-hating California has listed the absolute bare minimum of information on his profile (network, current position, and position for which running) and features as his profile picture an American Flag waving in the wind. God attempt at the simplicity, Representative – surely your pot-smoking target audience wouldn’t have the attention span, interest or mental wherewithal to read anything more than one word long. I’m glad you cared enough to create your profile and then do nothing with it. That’s what’s called a waste of resources (in this case time and energy) – there’s no point in investing time and energy in something, just for the sake of creating it, and then doing nothing to reap the benefits. It’s kind of like building a courthouse that displays the Ten Commandments.Supporters now: still 200 people who, based solely on the thumbnails of their profile pictures, look lonely and strange.None of the other candidates have profiles. It’s a little disappointing, given that strategists should be all over this new and inexpensive means of support-compounding. But it’s not like I wanted to see any more pictures of Tommy Thompson’s jowls.
In this note: Brett Patterson (notes), Brady King (notes), Mitch VanBruggen (notes), Elizabeth Hagerty (notes), Tom 'Trey' Murray (notes)
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Updated about 3 months ago

The new "face" of politics, part 1: the Democrats

6:30pm Wednesday, Oct 17, 2007 Delete
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I'm now beginning the process of re-posting all my blog entries. They were deleted when I went to NH for the summer to work a campaign, because, lest we forget, I was not working in the Edwards press department. I'll refrain from posting a lot of the entries that were time-sensitive. Here's one of my favorites:The New Face of PoliticsA lot of the presidential candidates, as well as candidates for any number of offices, have taken to the series of tubes and set up their own profiles on Facebook. I stumbled on the first few by accident after performing searches for related groups of support, but I found profiles that are open to the public, support or no support. The candidates are vulnerable to anything that anyone wants to say on their wall, including the profane number of people who ask them to join a group in their favor at such-and-such U without apparently having invited the candidate, which would be the easiest way. But still, you can send them a message. Disappointingly, you can’t “poke” them. Either way, I decided to check them out.Hillary ClintonSupporters: 20,298Hillary is listed as having no network, whereas most candidates list their current hometown. I thought she dealt with her embarrassment over having come out of Arkansas by moving to New York and being their senator, but apparently she’s still living it down.Of all the candidates on Facebook, Hillary’s wall appears to be the most heavily infested with attack posts. For instance, a Mr. Trey Kennedy from Clemson (who appears in his profile photo to sport a military-style crew cut, in addition to his being flanked by a fighter jet in full flight) writes “the military hates you...please don't get elected or most of us will be sent to our deaths.” Even more interesting is the dialogue between Tom Keeler of William & Mary and John Post of Arkansas Tech, in which Mr. Keeler either hasn’t noticed Post’s prolific use of sarcasm in the fully-capitalized and incoherent posts he leaves or simply doesn’t care, lest he forgo his opportunity to smugly rip a few ignorant liberals. Clinton does a nice little diatribe about how she “was raised in a middle-class family in the middle of America,” and how, “from that classic suburban childhood in Park Ridge, Illinois, [she] went on to become one of America's foremost advocates for children and families.” Take note that she doesn’t record her previous work info under her educational background. Perhaps it’s because she draws her early political experience from her days as an intern for the House Republican Caucus under Gerald Ford. I’ll allow the Norm Coleman comparisons to draw themselves.It might be worth noting that she’s only in 13 groups – unlike the other candidates, she hasn’t joined every campus and state-specific group that supports her candidacy. I can’t tell yet if that’s good or bad – on the one hand, it seems like she’s ignoring her base, though on the other, it looks like she isn’t trying too hard. But she probably could have picked a better picture. Say one where her mouth isn’t hanging ajar.A couple hours later, her supports number 20,330.Barack ObamaSupporters: 75,515Barack has by far the most supporters of any candidate on Facebook, which isn’t surprising given his popularity amongst college students. His profile is a little more personal – he gives us a glimpse into his religious views (United Church of Christ), his relationship status (married), in addition to some of his favorite activities (loafing w/ kids), movies (Lawrence of Arabia), music (Coltrane), books and quotes. He’s taken advantage of the “status” feature as well, though whoever is managing the account for him hasn’t quite mastered the art of working around the preexisting “is,” to say nothing of the fact that his name is automatically in the status as well. Case in point, last week the status read “Barack Obama is Barack is excited to head to New Hampshire for the big canvass this weekend.” Amateur. Also, I’m guessing that the “KickOff” he’s referring to in the current status is the trademarked name of whatever event he’s going to, lest that be two typographical errors in as many recent status updates.On the whole, though, Barack is doing well with Facebook – he seems like he gets it and it’s a perfect connection to the group of people that is arguably providing the most unwavering support, even if they aren’t quite numbering one million, for which the well-known group displays its ambition in the title. Speaking of groups, he’s in more than Hillary, and more that have specifically to do with his presidency, but not quite as many as Edwards.A few hours later, Obama’s support base on Facebook rose to 75,642. John EdwardsSupporters: 6,829I’ll admit it – Edwards is lacking a lot of support amongst college students. I should mention, though, that lots of students admittedly like him and think he’s the most marketable, if not “safe” candidate, but they’re throwing their support behind the candidates like Barack that, while perhaps being a longer shot, are more exciting to get involved with. But it’s also an indication that, while the story is different amongst adults in the south and Midwest, the more bland of the candidates just isn’t as attractive to students.Edwards, like Obama, is doing well with Facebook. Unlike Hilary, he doesn’t seem so out of touch in the sense that he doesn’t fill out the bare minimum information. He tells us about his favorite music (boiled down to specific songs), movies, quotes, etc. He posts videos and photos. He has a good picture. And he also has a great grasp on the potential uses of the status feature – rather than actually telling you that he’s excited for some upcoming event, like Barack, or simply ignoring it, like Hillary, he makes it into an advertisement. It currently reads: “John Edwards is hoping you will order your FREE ‘Support the Troops. End the War.’ Bumper sticker in time for Memorial Day weekend.” He does the same thing with his photos, where the first photo displays the available merchandise for the war-ending call to activism that he’s been so heavily involved with lately. Also, I’m not sure if it’s a good thing, but they give you a number for his “land phone” under the “Contact Info” section of his profile. I’m guessing it’s for the national headquarters, but it still strikes me as odd at first glance. His wall isn’t free of attacks, but it’s clear that he doesn’t carry nearly the divisive power of Hillary. Consider this post from a Mr. Emmett Robinson of Cedarville:“Senator Edwards,I mean this sincerely - would you please consider dropping out of the race? Your desire to shamelessly use the situation in Iraq to gain political points by cutting and running and allowing the terrorists to take over the region, coupled with your statements regarding the ‘Two Americas’ (while you yourself live in a multi-million dollar mansion in North Carolina), has already done and will continue to do inestimable damage to our nation.Thank you, sir, for considering my request.Emmett”Now that’s classy. Nothing like the guy who told Hillary that the military hates her and that she’d send him to his death. It looks like the senator himself has been writing the things on his profile, as was the case, partially, with Obama and Clinton. I should implore the candidates to consider having someone edit their writing, though, as Mr. Edwards’ profile is not completely absent the notorious credibility-killer known as the typo. For instance, when you write “…my wife, Elizabeth (isn’t she great)” there should be a question mark at the end of the question. Little things. Also, the “About Me” is written almost entirely in sentence fragments. But he’s a man of the people, and big words certainly don’t go over well. Way to rock the southern twang, Senator. A few minute later, he has one more supporter, and it’s not me.Joe BidenSupporters: 1,821Biden has a surprisingly large number of supporters. I decided to investigate, and have concluded based on several photos in which young people look to have been unwillingly propped in front of Biden and made to hold campaign signs as white as his thinning hair that most of the “supporters” were coerced into joining, perhaps via account infiltration and stolen passwords. Not that the Biden campaign would have the resources for that. It may have been Karl Rove trying to make the democratic electorate look too divided and confused, thus convincing moderates that the Republicans are the only ones with a united plan. Not that they do…The biggest red flag for me was the fact that, in most of the photos, the senator was the only one smiling. He looks like that dad who kept coming to events and hanging around everybody, trying to live through the young people. But such has been the legacy of his multiple failed bids for office.And it’s still 1,821.Dennis KucinichSupporters: 1,835 and Willie NelsonWere the race held today and contested solely between Biden and Kucinich, we would be assured of a very close and exciting race.That said, Biden might have the edge, because Kucinich’s profile photo is the most suggestive of pedophilia of any of the candidates I’ve seen thus far. The way he cocks his head down and looks up at you with the big puppy dog eyes, I’d liken him to the guy who tries to seduce the cop as a last resort to avoid a speeding ticket. I think the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire will give him the collective “Step out of the car, sir.”I like Dennis. I really do. I like what he has to say and I think he knows what he’s talking about. But his being so out of touch on Facebook as to write nothing of interest in addition to his multi-paragraph diatribe about his hopes for the nation is a good indication that he’d make a better policy advisor than figurehead politician.Still 1,835.Mike GravelSupporters: 578I would say “yawn,” but Gravel has been the most interesting of the candidates to hear thus far, if only because he probably realizes he won’t exactly win the nomination by hanging back and playing it safe. There’s nothing but support on his wall, though I’m guessing that most abrasive conservatives either haven’t heard of him or have done a basic economic analysis and have, in turn, concluded that their energy would better be spent putting a lapel pin on a navy blue blazer.A minute later, he has 577 supporters. Ouch.Bill RichardsonThe Governor of New Mexico is not on Facebook, though someone named Bill Richardson from Santa Fe who is listed as “ASU Staff ‘08” features a picture of the Governor as his profile picture. Richardson = square.Tom VilsackSupporters: -3Vilsack is on Facebook, though his having withdrawn from the race means he’s not in the “Election ‘08” network, and thus his profile is not accessible to non-friends. It’s interesting to note that the search turned up a group named “Jack Sparrow has a better boat than Governor Vilsack.” Of course, they’re referring to the vessel to which Captain Sparrow shouted “Stop blowing holes in my ship!” in one of the first two “Pirates” movies, as well as the numerous boat analogies Vilsack made in his withdrawl speech.Supporters now: 10 vagabond Iowa State football fans who, having confused a piece of used toilet paper for a map of Iowa, have been lost for a while and didn’t know he pulled out of the race. Go Hawks.Al GoreSupporters: Little Debbie, Aunt Jemima, Ronald McDonald, Barbara Streissand, Time/WarnerAl has probably gotten the impression that he shouldn’t run especially given that his biggest legacy as a politician is the fact that he was on the (kind of) losing side of one of the most controversial elections in U.S. history. Time Magazine seems to think they can convince him otherwise by publishing multiple articles in which they “speculate” over whether he’ll run. He’s not on Facebook, though the search retrieved a group named “Here’s an inconvenient truth: Al Gore, you’re a MORON.” Politics aside, I laughed a little.Gen. Wesley ClarkSupporters: Conservative Republicans, war hawksLike Al Gore, Gen. Clark hasn’t officially announced anything and may never. Somewhere in private, Joe Lieberman is weeping.
In this note: Brett Patterson (notes), Brady King (notes), Mitch VanBruggen (notes), Elizabeth Hagerty (notes), Tom 'Trey' Murray (notes)
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Updated about 3 months ago

Students go green - and get wet

6:23pm Wednesday, Oct 17, 2007 Delete
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In order to help the environment, seven CSB/SJU students and their leader had to be exposed to it firstSJU sophomore Patrick Lowder has decided to become more environmentally conscious.“You hear a lot about it now,” he said. “I’ve heard enough about it that I wanted to help out somehow.”That’s why Lowder, at the urging of fellow sophomore Michael Jaeger, joined six other CSB/SJU students in braving the rain and cold Saturday and Sunday to help construct an environmentally friendly house in Lake City, Minn.“I figured it was a good way to find out more about the environmental issues,” Lowder said. “But it was cool to go for the service aspect, to do something to help others.”Campus connectionThe home is being built by Paul and Sarah Freid, ’99 graduates of SJU and CSB.The Freids’ project caught the attention of SJU junior Brandon Drazich and SJU Campus Ministry social justice coordinator Shaun Crumb, who said he has been in contact with the Freids for about four years.“Under the Benedictine values and the Catholic social teaching, stewardship and environmental consciousness are key,” said Drazich, who, with Crumb, organized the trip. “Paul and Sarah have both worked with Catholic organizations, and they were happy to have us.”Braving the elementsLowder and Jaeger rose early Saturday morning to make the trip with Crumb and their classmates.“We left at 8:30, which is pretty early for a Saturday,” Jaeger said. “But we both wanted to run in the morning, so we had to get up at 7 a.m.”After arriving in Lake City, the students spent the day applying homemade plaster to the frame, despite the fact that rain slowed their efforts.“Paul and Sarah were very accommodating,” Jaeger said. “They would let you work inside if you were uncomfortable with the weather.”Eventually, Jaeger said, a tarp was pulled over the site to prevent the plaster from being worn away. Sunday’s work was also cut short due to rain.“It didn’t seem like we finished everything we were trying to,” Lowder said. “But it was cool to have helped them out, even if it was only a little.”The night was spent camping near the house, which is how the Freids have been living since construction started.“We got to talk with [the Freids] for a long time around the campfire,” Jaeger said. “They have a lot of cool stories about all the work they’ve done.”A long line of serviceThe Freids worked in Winona at the Catholic Social Worker, a social issues advocacy group, prior to undertaking their homebuilding project.Crumb said the Freids were looking to settle down and establish their own community project after the recent birth of their daughter, Claire.“They wanted to start their own intentional community with the focus on sustainable agriculture,” Crumb said. “They ended up just buying this land in Lake City last year, and they laid the foundation May 16.”Though Sarah’s parents live in Lake City, Crumb said, the Freids have spent most of their nights camping outside.“Paul is even talking about winter camping,” Crumb said. “I suppose the onset of winter might be extra incentive to finish the house.”And on whether the Freids are looking to establish a multi-house community?“They keep using the word ‘community,’ but I don’t think they exactly plan to have a lot of people living on their land,” Drazich said. “They might emphasize it as a place of hospitality and allow the homeless to come in. But I think the emphasis is on helping the larger community.”Sustainable livingCrumb said the Freids have gone to great lengths to plan an environmentally friendly building.The first step was using bails of hay to fill the wooden frame of the structure.“The hay is a waste product, since straw comes off the top of the pile,” Crumb said. “It’s a cheap local resource, and it will help insulate the house in the winter, which will minimize energy costs.”Jaeger said the house will be heated mostly by sunlight.“They have windows positioned so that the sun will always be shining in,” he said.And the homemade plaster?“The external plaster is made from locally harvested clay,” Drazich said. “Most of the materials are local.”The spirit of serviceJaeger and Lowder said the Freids invited the group to work again over the CSB/SJU long weekend Oct. 11-14.“Most people were pretty enthusiastic about going back,” Lowder said. “I’m going to look into it, for sure.”Though Jaeger will have a conflict that weekend, he said he plans to go back at some point.“It would be really cool to see this project through, to see it get finished,” he said. “Paul and Sarah were great, and it was great to be able to help them out. I’ll definitely try to make it back.”
In this note: Patrick Lowder (notes), Michael Jaeger (notes), Brett Patterson (notes), Brady King (notes), Elizabeth Hagerty (notes)
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Updated about 3 months ago

The throroughly-examined life

6:19pm Wednesday, Oct 17, 2007 Delete
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Here's something different - I did a personality profile on one of my roomates for a class. Since it's been a while, I thought I'd put it up. Don't worry - I have more coming. Anne Coulter has given me plenty to talk about in the last week.It's worth noting, too, that the quote from Doug Trumm is heavily paraphrased from a conversation we had several weeks ago...SJU junior Zach Hunter is arguably one of the great thinkers of the CSB/SJU community. He says he owes it all to his booksA giant black triangle looms in the background of the photograph, resonating in the early morning clouds.“I’m standing at the top of Volcán Atitlán in this, and you can see the shadow in the distance,” says SJU junior Zach Hunter as he points to the picture. “That’s the highest point in Central America.”The photograph, which Hunter took while studying in Guatemala last spring, is one of the only objects decorating the bedroom of his campus apartment. The dimly-lit quarters have no television and no furniture besides a desk and chair.“I try to avoid a television because, frankly, my laptop provides enough distraction from homework,” Hunter said. “Plus, there’s not much that I’m interested in on TV.”Instead, Hunter has adopted a habit rare among his peers.“I’d rather read,” he said.Great readsHunter said his love of reading pushed him to enroll in an honors Great Books course.The 100-book reading list for the course, which Hunter estimates totals roughly $1,000 in value, is the reason a new bookshelf is among the room’s scarce decorations.“The shelf they gave us with the room was too small,” Hunter said.Hunter has utilized the shelf and its contents.“I just finished reading Barrabas this weekend,” he said. “I’m reading Lolita right now, though I should finish that up by tomorrow and move on to something else.”Despite the volume of reading, Spark Notes will never be a part of Hunter’s reading list.“I’m a slow reader,” he said. “I take the time to read, to build up images. If I don’t understand a sentence, I’ll go back and read it again.”He has made an impression on those he works with.“Zach is probably the most judicious reader of anyone in the course,” said classmate Doug Trumm, an SJU sophomore. “He always, always has something relevant to contribute and it’s amazing sometimes to hear the things he says.”Yet Hunter admits his work ethic can be far from flawless.“After an intense phase of Tolstoy of Dostoevsky, I would continue to read a lot, but I might only finish half of each book for a bit,” he said. “It’s a vice I’m still trying to correct.”Trumm said Hunter probably doesn’t even realize that he’s usually a step ahead of his classmates.“Zach is pretty modest,” Rice said. “But he’s incredibly smart.” A creature of habitHunter’s reading habit was instilled at an early age.“My dad read me The Hobbit when I was little, and it made me wonder if there were other books by the same author,” he said. “I went to a bookstore and found three large books by the same guy. Of course, the author was Tolkien and my first great literary love was the Lord of the Rings series.”Hunter said the habit was solidified in high school, where he discovered the work of Leo Tolstoy.“I read War and Peace my junior year, and that’s when I really began to take interest,” he said.Now in the throes of the Great Books course, Hunter is also working his way through a list of books compiled by literary critic Harold Bloom.“The list is many pages long and it has hundreds and hundreds of books,” he said. “That’s a lifetime goal that may never be reached, or, if it is reached, it will be a long time from now.”Though Hunter said he prefers literary or aesthetic reading, the humanities major will rarely turn down a book.“Humanities is a broad picture of everything, which is conducive to my personality because I’m pretty much interested in everything,” he said. “I’m not sure how I’ll be employable. I’ll either have to focus on something or be a librarian.”Books and the big questionOf those many interests, Hunter said, perhaps his strongest is religion.It’s a topic Hunter has personally struggled with since high school.“I had a very religious childhood,” he said. “Our church wasn’t fundamentalist, but it was in that direction.”“My own religious upbringing was so narrow and focused, and I had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t right,” he added.Hunter was baptized as a high school senior, a decision he said he wasn’t committed to. But he wasn’t comfortable challenging his religious background until his dad did the same.“Religion can be difficult to investigate because there is so much family and emotion tied into it,” he said. “But after my dad did his own dissent and found his own kind of intellectual approach to it, I started perusing the philosophy section of Barnes and Noble.”There, he said, he found his first books on atheism.“Frankly, I found their arguments quite convincing,” he said. “Eventually I had to come out with it and tell my family that I wasn’t a Christian anymore.”“That was hard on my mom,” he added.Still, Hunter said he is the foremost critic of his own beliefs.“I’m interested in discussing it, not engaging in fierce debate or winning anyone over,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve read enough or thought enough about it to promote it.”Again, Hunter will use reading as a means of guidance.“I don’t think you should divorce emotion from this important of a subject,” he said. “But religion is the most interesting subject ever, and I’m going to keep reading about it.”Enriching experienceThough Hunter enjoys a tranquil lifestyle in a simple living space, he’s no stranger to balance and adventure.“I think you should be creative in living and doing things that are unusual and meeting new people and trying new things,” he said. “If you read, you get a lot of that vicariously, but I’ve been trying to do it more. I have that capacity, but sometimes I’ll get caught up in books or homework or something.”Though there is no substitute for a real experience, Hunter said, reading enriches his experience nonetheless.“Milan Kundera wrote that we each put up a curtain, and that’s what we think life is about,” he said. “Literature pulls that curtain aside. It reveals things you maybe knew were there, but hadn’t necessarily thought about.”It is possible to learn more from fiction, Hunter said, than from any work of science or history.“With literature, you can compare what Milton called ‘master spirits’,” he said. “They’re the works of many writers as it relates to the broad range of experience they’ve all had. To be able to encounter that is a privilege.”Hunter points to a photo of a supernova on the floor.“Reading these works is like being able to see these photos from the Hubble Telescope,” he says. “It’s a privilege and a blessing, and I’m lucky to have them.”
In this note: Brett Patterson (notes), Brady King (notes), Zach Hunter, Mitch VanBruggen (notes)
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Updated about 3 months ago

A Message from Tom Tancredo

1:41pm Tuesday, Aug 28, 2007 Delete
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Hello, faithful white denizens of the American West. I’ve temporarily taken over the operation of this web log, and so today’s post comes from the heart of Colorado’s 6th. I’ve come before you to reiterate something that, as per the words of my closest advisers, I thought was perfectly clear to everyone, everywhere, in the four time zones of the whole universe. But as of late, I’ve had reason to believe otherwise. So here it is:I’m running for president. Of the universe! I want to lead the people of the greatest universe on the face of the earth to dominance over brown things everywhere, and I found it infinitely pertinent to kick off this campaign in the shit-stained farm fields of Iowa. Just kidding. I love Iowa. Go Bears!But nary a bit of progress has been made lately. It seemed that more people heard about the cancellation of our free bus service for anti-brown Straw Poll voters via 500 hoax e-mails than have heard about my official bid. But fear not. I’m here to reaffirm, in a medium celebrated by young folks everywhere, that I’m out to save the jobs of well-to-do, law-abiding citizens of the universe everywhere. I really should be doing better amongst the young crowd. This is truly puzzling. What has proven a better rallying point for the young throughout history than mutual hatred of some vaguely related and differentiated group of people? I see the potential – what says “rock and roll” better than a direct threat to take out some Muslim holy sites as retaliation for terrorist attacks? I see the rage in the music and the movies, and I for one believe that it can be translated into the kind of irrational hatred I’ve been advocating for all my years in the civic service. I believe, baby! And nothing will bring the young people on board like some photo of my skeet shooting hobby. Extreeeeeeme!But enough campaigning for now. My real passion lies with discourse, with public policy, with genuine efforts to better serve the public. So there have been some things on my mind. For instance, I don’t care what anyone says – I like Michael Vick. For him to have the gumption to stand in the face of adversity, to hang and electrocute and drown and sodomize and grind up and give AIDS to unsuspecting dogs, consequently throwing himself in the line of fire of pussy peddler bleeding heart liberals…that takes guts. Don’t get me wrong, I love dogs as much as anyone. But I value my values more, and his willingness to follow through with his misguided hatred in the face of compassionate people left and right…this has earned him my respect. I only wish he would turn his soulless irrationality to a more productive cause…immigrant fighting rings, anyone? Eh? Eh? Citizenship incentives for the winner? Eh? Just throwing it out there…just a thought. Forget I said it.That’s all for now. I’ll be sure to drop in every once in a while…this has been fun. So thanks for your time, and remember to vote for Tancredo for an all-white universe in ’08! Gotta run…24 is on next. Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback are coming over for an anti-Darwin circle-jerk. Can’t evolve if you’re moving in a circle, son!Regards,Rep. Tom Tancredo(R) Colorado
In this note: Brett Patterson (notes), Elizabeth Hagerty (notes), Mitch VanBruggen (notes), Tom 'Trey' Murray (notes)
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Updated about 4 months ago

Rally, Minnesota

12:43pm Monday, Aug 13, 2007 Delete
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I’m going to be serious for once.Yesterday I caught my first up-close glimpse of what remain of the 35-W bridge in Minneapolis. I’ve been working in New Hampshire all summer and wasn’t around when the bridge collapsed. To be honest, it was a little surreal to see my hometown on the front page of every east coast newspaper, to say nothing of seeing the collapse featured on the front page of the BBC website.At the same time, there was a surreal divide between the coverage I’d expect out of something of this magnitude and what we were actually met with.Yes, it was a tragedy. Yes, it was on a near-epic scale that provided for some stellar aerial footage. But we never heard about the people of Minneapolis banding together, uniting in spirit, planting the flag somewhere, and holding spontaneous city-wide vigils. The coverage I saw made it seem as though life pretty much went on, save the routine on the 5 o’clock news.Was it because the 9 deaths thus confirmed are lower than we’d expect given something on that scale?Was it because we’re desensitized post-9/11 to the point where our post-disaster spirit comes out half-heartedly?Is it because people don’t consider Minnesota, its population largely out of the mindset of the rest of the country, quite worthy of the attention? I’d hate to think of the reaction had Piston’s coach Flip Saunders been on the bridge (he claims to have been only yards from the start of the bridge at the time). Rare would be future travels directly west or kind words regarding Minnesotan infrastructure amongst the denizens of Michigan.At least this was my theory. But I was there yesterday, with thousands of fellow Minnesotans on the stone arch bridge overlooking the wreckage, and all signs point to the fact that the reaction here, at least post-immediate aftermath, is just as nonchalant.That’s a terrible way to put it. People are struck by it. People care about what happened. But the crowd I moved among yesterday seemed to lack direction, purpose, conviction. We were a formidable crowd of tourists looking at our own version of some foreign tourist beacon, our own Eiffel Tower – people acted struck, but it may well have been because convention so dictates. My first exposure to the site was right underneath the south end. I actually stumbled there by accident, having followed the shoreline for a bit in the hope of finding the stone arch bridge and its vista of newspaper lore. That was the only set of shock for me, and it was more out of surprise to have stumbled upon this concrete behemoth. The edge that approached the water was sloped neatly towards the ground, and an opposite side slope could be seen in the distance. There was no twisted steel, no busybodies occupied with recovery or cleaning, that we could see from the ground. Two lone policemen stood behind the yellow tape, and a few of us stood silently, most taking pictures, most seeming surprised to have stumbled upon this lesser-beaten path. I didn’t experience any sensational emotions after the initial surprise to have found the wreckage. It’s a huge structure, and it’s surreal to imagine it falling down. But it was too quiet, too neat, too void of activity to indicate that any real tragedy had recently taken place. It lacked the openness of Ground Zero in New York – openness not in the sense that we could go in, look around, inhale the fumes, etc., but in the sense that everyone was taken aback by it, and everyone was open and frank about their feelings because they were all on the same page. Here, in the dirt and weeds of the riverbank, we stood silent and awkward, a hallmark roadway half-collapsed in front of us.The only truly eerie thing I saw was after I drove off, back into the city a way, to once again search for the stone arch bridge. This took me directly over 35-W, a section where people were driving immediately before and after having been on the bridge. To some, this was the road that marked everything in their having escaped disaster; to others, it marked one of the last things they saw before going around the corner and down the slight decline onto the bridge. I glanced both ways. The six-lane freeway was completely empty. I eventually found the stone arch bridge, by the Guthrie. Parking by the theatre was hard to come by, to the point where I barely slid into my parallel spot and, having gotten out, thought better of it, and gone back to grab an extra couple of quarters for the meter, was met with two separate cars waiting there, thinking I might be leaving. It would be like a Twins playoff game were it not a little more sanctimonious, and said sanctity was evidenced only by the hopeful driver’s choice to wave kindly rather than flip the New Jersey salute. The walk to the bridge led me behind the theatre and onto the riverside parkway, past the old mills, between the river and a gleaming downtown. The crowds were huge. But they were largely silent. The volume wasn’t unusually low, but for the couple of thousand that were walking towards or on the bridge, everything was surprisingly unchaotic. And the view wasn’t that terrific – from several hundred yards you could see some twisted steel, the backwards slanted section of road in between the two ends, and some of the twisted lanes sitting, isthmus-like, in the water. You had to move around to get a clear view of any one thing, and it was virtually impossible to see everything at once. The river twisted around and we lacked a clear vantage point. But people crowded the south-facing side of the bridge, trying to see what they could. Binoculars and cameras ran abound. No one said anything profound. It was all a little too obvious. There was nothing about the sheer scale of the collapse – it was so far away that it seemed, frankly, smaller than in the aerial pictures. There was nothing about the loss of life, even though the ninth body, that of twenty year-old Richard Chit, was reportedly being pulled form the wreckage as we stood there. The most frequent quip I heard was about the ominous storm clouds gathering to the north. So I walked back. There was nothing definitive about my time there. I was almost disappointed.Imagine my surprise, then, when I got back to my truck. Right to the side of me, sitting on a bench facing away from the sidewalk and road towards the Guthrie parking complex, there sat an older woman, mid-sixties, with her face buried in her hands. She was silent, breathing heavily, maybe sobbing. As I stood there, a younger man walked up, sat next to her, and resumed the same pose. Even if they weren’t showing it, talking about it, wearing it on the outside, something was amiss. And here, two presumably unrelated Minnesotans were taking solace in each others’ company, sharing in the disdain being so overwhelmed as to resort to hiding one’s face, escaping, however briefly and artificially, from the sheer scale of the thing that’s been weighing in the back of peoples’ minds all along. Maybe we didn’t notice it, and frankly, maybe we weren’t as boastful about it, but it was evidence that there was some truth to Steve Stack’s editorial cartoon in yesterday’s Star Tribune that depicted several Minnesotans - citizens, firemen, police, doctors, etc. – arm in arm, connecting one end of the river bank to the other through sheer power of will and solidarity. I can only hope that it’s solace to the old man, clad in a U of M alumni sweatshirt, who was fighting back tears on the bridge, overlooking the demise of this aesthetic hallmark of his college and adult life.And I didn’t even delve into politics. To those who know me well – enjoy it and don’t cling. The College Whigs Revue will soon return as normal.