Wet Dream, VI

From The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder:

RNC Goes Up In Montana

The state and its three electoral votes are now competitive?

A Democratic media buying source says -- Republicans won't yet confirm -- and Republicans now confirm -- that the RNC's independent expenditure arm has bought television ads in the state.

The ads begin Wednesday.

In 2004, George W. Bush won Montana by 20 points.

Ron Paul is on the ballot. And Ron Paul supporters aren't happy with John McCain...

A Republican congressman from Texas could throw the state to Barack Obama.

Developing....

We Have To Work Like Our Future Depends On It, Because It Does

I'm old enough to know better so it's hard to admit, but I'm just embarrassingly moved by this guy's oratory. 

McCain-Palin's Base

Cheap shot? (You reap what you sow, Pallin'-Around Palin.)

We all know this stuff is out there, but hearing of an actual plot makes it all the more eerily real. 

(WASHINGTON) — Federal agents have broken up a plot to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 102 black people in a Tennessee murder spree, the ATF said Monday.

In court records unsealed Monday, federal agents said they disrupted plans to rob a gun store and target a predominantly African-American high school by two neo-Nazi skinheads. Agents said the skinheads did not identify the school by name.

Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of the Nashville field office for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the two men planned to shoot 88 black people and decapitate another 14. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community.

The men also sought to go on a national killing spree, with Obama as its final target, Cavanaugh told The Associated Press.

"They said that would be their last, final act — that they would attempt to kill Sen. Obama," Cavanaugh said. "They didn't believe they would be able to do it, but that they would get killed trying."

As far as I'm concerned those federal agents are fucking American heroes. Sadly, their job has probably just begun. 

Mad About Mad Men II

I've learned since my last Mad Men post that some of you out there have seen a few episodes of the show and were left cold. Well, all I can say is that not everything moves everyone and that's cool. I stand by my recommendation, though, for those of you who haven't tried it out. 

But I think it important to point out that one should watch the entire season before making a final decision, as the show and its characters unfold slowly and subtly. The joy of the show is its pacing, its nuance, its arc. Or as one of The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates' readers puts it:

To me each of those shows have more in common with novels than episodic TV. Which is why I never get into this episode was better than that episode debates.…To me you have to view each episode of theses series like a chapter in a novel. You never hear someone say chapter 13 of Moby Dick was the shit, but 20 was lame. You judge the novel as a whole. Same with these series. You need the whole season to play out before you pass judgement.

You may not end up liking Moby Dick, but you should at least read the whole thing before drawing your conclusion.

Speaking of Coates, he has an interesting post on Mad Men titled "The Negro Don Draper" in which he meditates on the way Draper is akin to other marginalized minorities, some of whom can "pass" in society. It's one of only two shows that have ever made him tear up:

When I rewatched the first season of Mad Men, all of this came back to me. Don's past is unorthodox for his profession, and furthermore it is an object of great shame for him. And yet the past is the source of his power. In the last episode of season one, Don has to do a pitch for "The Wheel" a slide projector in need of rebranding. Don's marriage is crumbling and he's lost his brother—the last link to his murky, and poignant past. Don pulls all of that together and makes a beautiful pitch, rechristening "The Wheel" as "The Carousel" a device that's a time machine which takes us to a place where we ache to go again." The pitch blows everyone away, and Don is hailed as a genius. But what only we know, is that Don can write such pitches because he sees different, and he sees different because he's literally seen different things. His life has been much harder than his colleagues, and that gives him a power to see more than them.

But he's also haunted by the past. Don believes his progress is tied to no one ever knowing who he truly is, to no one discovering his true history—his secret identity, if you will. Don Draper is, in the parlance of old black folks, passing. His orgins are not proper and gentile--he is the child of a prostitute, who as reinvented himself for the Manhattan jet-set. He is Gatsby and Anatole Broyard, no? And yet the irony that animates Mad Men is the fact that, without that past, Draper would likely be the sort of pampered hack he despises. He'd be Pete Campbell. His double consciousness, makes him, indeed, doubly conscious, doubly aware. Don Draper sees more.

Only two groups of people truly can sense something amidest—the blacks, and the Jews. There is a lovely scene in Season Two where Peggy, Don and the black elevator man are riding up. They are talking about Marilyn Monroe's death and noting how shocked they are. The elevator man casually notes, "Some people just hide in plain sight." It is not so much that he directly knows Don's identity, but that he is playing the role that blacks play throughout the show--they are a kind of Greek chorus, unseen, but offering short poetic takes on the themes at work.

The major theme is set from the first episode, when Don, wooing Rachel, a Jewish proprietor of a department store, is enjoying the sound of his own voice. Rachel listens skeptically and then cuts right through the mask:

I don't know what it is you really believe in, but I do know what it feels like to be out of place, to be disconnected, to see the whole world laid out in front of you the way other people live it.There is something about you that tells me you it to.

To be out of place, To be disconnected. That is the essence of us, and I guess in one way or another, it's everyone else too. 

That scene with Rachel was the one that hooked me, the one that intimated that the show was going to be something more than interesting set pieces and nostalgia, that it was going to be something special. 

Red, White, & MILF

I'm not sure I like this vid, it's only moderately clever and sorta, kinda funny. But I thought it worth posting anyway, if only to further sear Palin's ridiculousness into the collective consciousness. Points, though, for mentioning the Bridge in the bridge.

With Friends Like These

Rumsfeld lackey and man who introduced Cheney to Wolfowitz, uber-con Ken Adelman joins the ranks breaking away from the floundering GOP. Choice cut of his devastating critique of McCain:

Granted, McCain's views are closer to mine than Obama's. But I've learned over this Bush era to value competence along with ideology. Otherwise, our ideology gets discredited, as it has so disastrously over the past eight years.

McCain's temperament -- leading him to bizarre behavior during the week the economic crisis broke -- and his judgment -- leading him to Wasilla -- depressed me into thinking that "our guy" would be a(nother) lousy conservative president. Been there, done that.

I'd rather a competent moderate president. Even at a risk, since Obama lacks lots of executive experience displaying competence (though his presidential campaign has been spot-on). And since his Senate voting record is not moderate, but depressingly liberal. Looming in the background, Pelosi and Reid really scare me.

Nonetheless, I concluded that McCain would not -- could not -- be a good president. Obama just might be.

[For the record, he's either wrong or lying about Obama's record.]

Things Like Fruit Fly Research In Paris, France

Richard Wolfe brings the nasty on this Countdown segment:

The more she talks the better it gets. I'm beginning to think she's an Obama plant.

Lions And Tigers And Obamas, Oh My!

Man, I would not want to get on James Wolcott's bad side.

Presidential Monster Chiller Horror Theater!
This Halloween be on the lookout for all the righty bloggers dressed as drama queens. They'll be the ones looking as if they just escaped from Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor, swatting away invisible mites as they battle a bad case of Obama on the brain pan. It's been quite an inglorious spectacle, watching these wracked souls lose their shit as they swing from the belfry.
Take that double-decker sandwich of snap judgments that goes by the name of Phyllis Chesler, one of Pajamas Media's many reclamation projects gone awry. In the first giddy rush of excitement over the Pittsburgh "B"-cheek attack (quickly unrobed as a hoax), Chesler discerned a pattern of violence unfolding across the sidewalks and lawns of America; gripped the railing; and girded for anarchy:

Folks: This is not good. American v American in a race war, a class war, a gender war [a threefer!] even while jihad has been declared against America?

Forget about all the voting fraud allegations and the chaos at the polls: Do we all have to get guns? Will we need the National Guard to protect us when we vote? Or to walk voters home?

It's an infallible sign of how porously susceptible Chesler is to bogus hysteria that in the same post she snappily salutes the cut-and-paste heroism of "Pamela the Magnificent of Atlas Shrugs," yes, the same Pamela Geller who fell with a thud for two debunked stories last week, the "B"-cheek hoax and the Michelle Obama room-service-at-the-Waldorf fraud. Put their two heads together and you've got yourself a set of maracas.

But then, these asshats deserve his blistering scorn. Read on:

Over at Protein Wisdom, Jeff Goldstein, who always seems to have a lot going on offstage, gives his runny seal of approval to the pessimist porn of a mysterious entity named Kim Edwards:

I am not a reactionary person by nature, but trust me when I say the first 100 days of a Barack Obama presidency will bring holy hell upon those who adhere to a classical liberal philosophy. This man is a radical of the first stripe, and he has left no stone unturned in his quest. [Some sentences follow detailing the mighty zombie army Obama has amassed to march under his command.]

Did I mention this man hates me? You and me? Yes he does. Why? Because he can. Yes He Can. Beneath that cool persona is a megalomaniac. Cool? Like Stalin after a purge, emotionally and sexually spent. Like Saddam after a torture session, dozing in his chair with someone's genitals curled in his fist. Like Pol Pot after a petit mal seizure, mumbling a litany of the dead. Cool that way.

Obama hasn't even been elected into office yet, and already he's kissing cousins with history's most sadistic mass murderers. Talk about a brother not being able to catch a break!

Even if Obama loses, he'll be blamed for unleashing the days of wrath:

But what if Obama loses? Wouldn't that win us a reprieve, at least? Not necessarily...

Several of Obama's higher-profile backers have openly said that for him to be defeated could only be the result of foul play...or "racism." In our time, "racism" is one of the foulest imprecations a man can suffer. It's a justification for doing anything and everything to him, regardless of the evidence for or against it. Never mind that the word has been emptied of all objective meaning. Remember Judge Charles Pickering, and see if you can disagree.

Regardless of who wins, the election on November 4 has a staggering potential for tearing the country violently asunder. The lines make it too probable to contemplate.

Your Curmudgeon has decided not to stint on preparations. He's filled his pantry, doubled his gold reserves, and replenished his ammo stocks.

And to think they called us "sore losers" in 2000! They haven't even lost yet and they're already blaming the victor, acting all butch and making with the big talk about stocking up on gold and ammo as they hole up in the shag-carpeted panic room and let their whiskers grow. They can't face the fact that conservatism has epically failed; this is their way of pouting and refusing to come out and play, leaving everybody else to deal with the ruin left behind.

A Groucho Marxist Maybe?

Check out Biden's response when wacky Florida newscaster Barbara West drops the Marx bomb. Perfect.



h/t: Wonkette

Jinkies!

Can you say unhinged?

No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No!

And my fav so far:

Surreal Life: The McCain Series

Yesterday:

Fox News VP: If McCain Worker 'Mutilation' Story Is a Hoax His Campaign Is 'Over'

Today:

Ashley Todd Fake "Mutilation" Exposed
Police say a campaign volunteer confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter B in her face after seeing her McCain bumper sticker.

At a news conference this afternoon, officials said they believe that Ashley Todd's injuries were self-inflicted.

Todd, 20, of Texas, is now facing charges for filing a false report to police.

Maybe, they figure if they're going to lose, they might as well lose big?

An Apple A Day…

Keeps the homophobes away. From Apple's start page:

No on Prop 8
Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.

Great products, great politics. I'm proud to be a user.

False Equivalencies Falling Away?

One of the surprising (and amazing) things to happen this election cycle is the push back by many in the media against false equivalencies—that is, the obsessive need to report both sides as being equally complicit in an act, for example, when in fact, both aren't. It's the fruit of the Right's generation-long tactic of working the ref; hammering mainstream media types as liberal so much and so often that they internalize the beating and will do anything to disprove their alleged liberal bias. 

It's been the cause of frustration for liberals and just straight up reasonable watchers for years now, but we've learned to live with it like one does smog. And it's finally changing. 

In this table talk, Andrew Sullivan and Marc Ambinder discuss their takes on the phenomenon and—bonus—Sullivan's love for Sarah Palin:

Opie Goes After The Geriatric Vote

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Mad About Mad Men

I've written about the relatively new AMC show Mad Men before and will write about it in greater depth at some time, but I need to get this out of my system now.

Never mind the stellar acting, the exquisite writing, the piercing social critique, the slow, careful way each scene unfolds, and the finely-tuned, impossibly-accurate set designs, any show that stimulates this kind of intelligent discussion is one that you just shouldn't deny yourself. Take some time to read the post and comb through some of the 90+ comments. Then ask yourself why the hell you haven't gone out of your way to watch what is undeniably the best drama on TV (and in today's post-Soprano's/ post-Six Feet Under cable climate of The Shield, BSG, Breaking Bad, etc., that's saying something. I mean it.). 

Listen, you're my friends, I wouldn't steer you wrong on this. Do us both a favor and watch this show.

Less Is Fewer

Being a word lover, I'm fascinated by the English language, its rules, the way people break them, and the way they shift over time. English is an incredibly vital, alive language. It's constantly evolving, growing, absorbing, becoming. 

The meanings and pronunciations of words change from place to place and time to time in ways that can be both fascinating and/or frustrating. Ultimately, I'm a populist when it comes to usage. That is, while I hew to most grammatical rules and believe in using language carefully, I love the fluidity and the democracy of the language. I'm certainly not a grammar Nazi insisting people use words in a narrow, particular way. 

Still…I was reminded this weekend as I overheard a conversation at a restaurant, that I have my pet peeves. Misspoken phrases or mispronunciations or misuses that drive me up a wall. 

For example, even though double negatives have a history of grammatical correctness before Samuel Johnson began codifying grammar in his famous dictionary, they sound uneducated and wrong to me. 

There a couple others I can't think of now, but the misusage that really drives me up a wall—the one that really raises my hackles and makes my skin crawl—is the use of less when fewer should be used. This happens all the time and I just can't fucking stand it. (I never say anything, of course, because no one likes a grammar Nazi, but the teeth clench.)

Example? "You know less people than I do." No, I know fewer people than you do. Jackass.

It's a pretty simple rule to follow actually. Here's the deal, courtesy of e-Learn English: 

The words fewer and less are commonly confused in English. You'll be less confused and make fewer mistakes after reading through this lesson.

Fewer
Fewer is used with countable nouns: people, animals, chairs, shoes.

There should be fewer books on the table.

I have fewer ideas than everyone else.

Fewer of us show up each year.

Less
Less is used for uncountable, usually abstract nouns: money, happiness, snow, idealism.

I hope less snow falls this year.

We need more money and less debt.

I have less computer savvy than you.

You should spend less of your time complaining.

Less is also used with adjectives and adverbs:

I'm less happy than I used to be.

He runs less quickly than you.

The Bottom Line
Just remember that if the noun can be preceded by a number (one person, three dogs, six of us, nineteen problems), it should be modified with fewer. Otherwise, less is best.

Put another way, via Language Rules!:

Fewer should be used when the things you are describing are able to be counted. 

Less is used when is describes an adjective or when it is referring to something that is not countable; it is used to describe abstract or imprecise things like time, speed, quality, etc. 
…
A good rule of thumb, while certainly not hard and fast, is to look at what you’re referring to; if it’s singular, use less; if it’s plural, use fewer.

Capice? 

Wet Dream, V

Via 538.com:

Today's Polls, 10/23: McCain on Life Support
…
As a result of all of this, there is now no perceptible rebound for John McCain; in fact, the race may still be trending toward Obama, although the safer assumption is that it's flat. Meanwhile, Obama's electoral position appears as strong as ever. John McCain's chances of winning the election have dwindled to 3.7%, down from 6.5% yesterday.

Wow. 

(Click the link for the latest state polls which is what they're referring to by "all of this.")

Wet Dream, IV

Via Daily Kos, the GOP's latest "Death List."

"I Want To Rear My Little Head"

Hilarious!