BLCKDGRD

I'm positive I'm right but won't fight for what's right because I need to be hired next time there's a fight for what's right

I posted a link to this article to mock John Edwards, but read this paragraph on pure cynical gutlessness cubed:

Some senior members of Clinton's campaign have no intention of sticking around if Obama is substantially ahead come June; as much as they're devoted to their boss, they want nothing to do with a black-bag operation designed to destroy her rival, no matter what the cost. But these same people are also deeply convinced — beyond spin, beyond talking points, to their core — that Obama would be doomed against McCain. And Clinton believes this, too, which is one important reason why she persists despite odds that grow longer each passing day.

I'm a rube, but I swear, I'm either going to have to start enjoying this more or start really enjoying this more.

   *

• The Hillary's six-point plan.
• Your new overlords.
• Ideological state apparatuses, boyee.
• He is an fool, but as Kristol says, Americans don't always vote for the bravest fool tool hero.
• Nowak's pissed there's not enough vicious disembowelment on the campaign trail.
• Dean Elizabeth Drew with a non-hyperventilating analysis of Campaign Clusterfuck.
• Howard Dean, useless.
• On blog-whoring. Actually, this bullet-point is blog-whoring about blog-whoring about blog-whoring.
• Writing about writing about writing and the value of book reviews.
• On first-person historical personages in novels, adding, I have never been able to finish a Peter Carey novel, including the newest, which I abandoned at page 101. And I've tried them all.
• This book is sitting on my desk, left by a friend who insists I need read Price, any Price.
• New Rae Armantrout.
• I am soooooo fucking 350% fucking more than most blogs.

   *

So, does it suck to be back at work?

Theme Song March 08

Airportery, or KC 2, DCU 0

....

UPDATED, twice, below.

Didn't see it. From what I've read and read and been told, United didn't look good, United didn't look bad.

Hmmm, Kansas City in a Class-A minor league ballpark in the first of 30 MLS games or save it for Tuesday in Mexico versus Pachuca? Perhaps it's a sign of United's lack of depth that makes it an either/or, but if it is an either/or United chose the proper priority.

And if United loses 2-0 in Mexico, then oops.

More grumblings about Emilio, I hear. It may be too soon to say he's sulking over his contract, but it's not to soon to start wondering.

UPDATE:

OK, watched the last 35 minutes on comcast repeat after getting home from California. I agree with both this guy and this guy, and would add only, don't play half-assed. Save for Pachuca if saving for Pachuca, but don't sleepwalk.

BEN OLSEN! Any questions on his importance? Gallardo will be fine, Simms is fine, sure would be nice to have two other midfielders out there in the midfield, yes?  Landru  talks about the formation, but what five midfielders would United use? (Dyachenko out on red hurt, but really....)

The defense will be fine. Eventually.

I got me a bad feeling about tomorrow night.

And DCenters game summary, with lotsa links, is up.

UPDATE:

From the LA Times report on the Colorado 4-0 beatdown of the LA Beckhams:

Argentine playmaker Christian Gomez, the league's most valuable player in 2006 and acquired by the Rapids in an off-season trade with D.C. United, was the best player on the field by a long way.

Doh!

Adding, Abbey Okulaja was the referee, and, shockingly, people bitched about his shittiness. Good to see MLS addressed one of its major issues in the off-season.

  *

• The Hillary says she's in until the convention, to which Obama made the correct political response.
• Broder's boner for McCain's boner.
• Ignatius' boner for Ignatius' wisdom.
• John Edwards, weaselly cycic or cynical weasel?
• Why Edwards is weaselly.
• Why The Hillary lies? Because it doesn't matter, that's why.
• Is Hillary honest? Is Obama safe?
• Age of anti-Cassandra: Krugman's point may be true, but if we lived in an age where we listened to Cassandras there wouldn't be Cassandras.
• One of your new overlords asks for your vote.
• Rhineland Capitalism 1, Liberal-Market Capitalism 0.
• Three terse questions to ask first dates.

   *

This is true: walking right next to me towards United terminals in San Francisco International Airport an hour ago was Chris Matthews and his wife Kathleen (those of you not DCers may not know she was an anchor for Channel 7 news for years). Earthgirl can confirm this.

Here's the conversation between Matthews and his wife that I overheard: "So, what'd you think of my show last night? What've you heard people say about the show."

He's not on our flight. There was another United flight to Dulles that loaded two hours before ours, and Matthews breezed right up to the front of a long line and onto his plane while the pissed off and bored stared.

It was just like being in Tenley Market at the corner of Wisconsin and Nebraska. Just like the day after tomorrow. When I'll keep my mouth politely shut again. Me the rube.

UPDATE:

CNN's John King sat four rows in front of me on United 218 from San Fran to Dulles. Earthgirl can confirm this. I kept my mouth politely shut again. Me the rube.

Putting Skillz

One of the regulars who showed me around Delaveaga yesterday was a female doctoral student in Environmental Studies at UC-Santa Cruz named Stacy, an ardent and un-shrill The Hillary supporter, who makes the argument that the sexist attacks on The Hillary by the media and Obama and Obama surrogates and supporters are so prevalent as to be invisible. Stacy didn't go as far as this blogger, who likened The Hillary's treatment to domestic violence, and when I asked Stacy about that comparison she said that's why she didn't read political blogs. (I told her I blog, I gave her the address; she said she might look, but don't count on it, and she certainly wouldn't comment.)

The point of my post yesterday was that I see The Hillary as genderless, that I'm completely anti-CLINTON INC, that it could be the Clinton's parakeet running for president, and as long as Mark Penn and Terry McAuliffe and James Carville and Geraldine Ferraro and every other CLINTON INC executive and major $$$-contributor believed in their bought-and-sold hearts that the parakeet was entitled, nay, ordained to be president, I'm anti-that fricking parakeet. Posting a picture of Elton John in a yellow pantsuit was snark but not sexist: he's as genderless as The Hillary, his "music" as cynical as CLINTON INC's politics.

Stacy said she'll vote for Obama begrudgingly if he's the nominee, though she'll donate no money and volunteer no time, and challenged me to make the same claim about The Hillary, and I.... 

I keep saying to myself Alito Scalia Roberts Thomas, Alito Scalia Roberts Thomas. Stacy said it may not be sexist to hate The Hillary, but it is sexist to vote for - or not vote against - someone who will add two more pigs to the Alito Scalia Roberts Thomas train if The Hillary is the nominee.

Which is blackmail, of course. Regardless which candidate. Whether or not as cynical as Elton John's "music" is the question.

That I'm a rube is beyond dispute.

   *

• But shit like this doesn't help.
• But shit like this doesn't help, adding, it's not sexist to tell her to go and it's not sexist if she wants to stay.
• But shit like this doesn't help, adding, release your tax returns, you gender-neutral corporate spokesperson.
• But shit like this doesn't help.
• But shit like this doesn't help.
• James Carville on servility and fealty above national interest.
• Shameless self-promotion.
• Soft-totalitarianism of the American elite.
• Morality, justice, and life-destroyed.
• Sadr's revolt and the myth of the surge.
• Sheesh.
• If you just remove the word "success..."
• On torture and McCain.
• Meta meta meta. Adding, I'm reading Human Smoke now, wish I'd been reading it when the conversation was on.
• Two-legged dog walks upright.
• Radioactive cat arrested on I-5!
• I will read this, adding, Midnight's Children is still one of my five favorite novels ever.
• The end of the world starts in Switzerland.
• Friday Hope Blogging (weekly, the most beautiful post in the world).
• Meet your new overlords.

   *

Stacy, btw, threw a 77, and didn't miss a putt from 50 feet and in. She'd set up, rock once, laser her aviar dead center, no hyzer, no arc, zing and ching.

I'd volunteer for The Hillary - I'd wear a The Hillary button! - in exchange for Stacy's putting skillz. I've got your cynical servility and fealty above national interest.

   *

And no, I didn't forget.

....

I suppose I could watch it on my laptop, but it's my last night of vacation and my last night in San Francisco.

I'll watch the Pachuca game Tuesday night and be at RFK a week from today for Toronto and the Wednesday after that for Pachuca.

Oh My

Played DeLaVeaga.

Here's Bromark's new star Destroyer (169g):

.....

Here's my new star Beast (168g)

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Pictures, description, below fold.

Brand Music

So, if the phone call comes at 3am and The Hillary need make a snap and public decision, while bombs explode in Midtown Manhattan, people die while The Hillary's make-up artists make her publicly presentable?

Even Kinsley, in his inane column on the unfairness of being The Hillary, admits at 3am it will make no difference that The Hillary looks like the 60 year old woman that she is - ordering the response jets into action takes no make-up - but the idea that The Hillary on the campaign trail is disadvantaged by her vanity in a vanity contest is as sexist as the sexism it purports to attack.

It's true: The Hillary, if photographed waking up, helmet hair tangled, wrinkled cheeks un-pancaked, would suffer unimaginable mockery as the photo pings around the world from pc to pc, and her candidacy as a 60 year old woman would crater like a pox mark on her face before foundation fills it in, and so the fuck what? She's not running as a Hillary, she's running as The Hillary, soulless, genderless, yellow-pantsuited emissary of CLINTON INC.

.

.

She's not Elton John. She's Elton John's "music."

   *

• On boycotting elections.
• The poverty of the presidential campaign.
• Last two paragraphs, Clinton INC's doctrine.
• Leahy and Casey, winking to super-delegates. Why doesn't someone go to Harry Reid and tell him, shut up, go back to obscurity, give the Majority Leader job to The Hillary? Oh.
• On David Brooks' mancrush.
• World's shittiest human is morally aghast that Democratic candidates use exaggeration and hyperbole.
• The Pastor flogs "compassionate conservatism," one more time. He's self-replicating guano, The Pastor.
• Veepstakes. Edwards is in Clinton's columns of choices, as is Obama.
• Though Edwards' donor prefer Obama. Profiles in courage, that John Edwards.
• Hillaryist says no to voting for McCain if Obama nominee. (Again, no snark intended. The author is worth reading - her adoring commenters are morons - but she's worth reading for perspective, wrong as it often is.)
• The threat to rich Democrats.
• Obama missed a tax-loophole: what's his game?
• Fat Albert, loser (h/t Cynics' Party too for the Elton John pic.)
• Metros 20 least-used stations. Morgan Blvd?
• What will bookstores do without a new Potter? (And, since that link is to The Millions, Happy 5th Birthday!)

   *

Time Literary Supplement reviews the new selected later poems of Ashbery, calls him a "poet for our times."

.

Just Walking Around

 

What name do I have for you?

Certainly there is not name for you

In the sense that the stars have names

That somehow fit them. Just walking around,

 

An object of curiosity to some,

But you are too preoccupied

By the secret smudge in the back of your soul

To say much and wander around,

 

Smiling to yourself and others.

It gets to be kind of lonely

But at the same time off-putting.

Counterproductive, as you realize once again

 

That the longest way is the most efficient way,

The one that looped among islands, and

You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.

And now that the end is near

 

The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.

There is light in there and mystery and food.

Come see it.

Come not for me but it.

But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other.

Black?

.....

   .

Um, fuck CLINTON INC Nike, I've got your Black Flag:

.

Yes

.....

From Albion on the coast, south of Mendocino, 57 miles to Cloverdale, the most sublime road I've ever driven. Expect many canvases from Earthgirl.

As for south of San Francisco, when I come back to California I'll be going north of San Francisco.

And If The Hillary Wants to Smack Road Warrior Obama, Spit on Road warrior obama - smack! - She will

Using Scaife to damage Obama is despicable enough. Expecting Scaife to not use using Scaife to damage The Hillary if The Hillary gets the nomination is planned and stupid. I'm sure The Hillary would quote Dick Cheney: So?

What would be exciting is if a Clinton-Scaife tag-team represented true fear that Obama might change corporate politics, and that an Obama presidency truly threatened the nepotistic and incestuous vicious divvying of political profits by warring halves of the same family.

Hah. I made a funny. Clinton-Scaife vs Obama is Nike-Adidas versus New Balance.

   *

• On antipartisanship.
• It is surely just a coincidence that the day after new accusations of Obama's anti-Semitism begin, Pastor Gerson's column How Hate Begins finds the Pastor sitting in the Holocaust Museum. If anyone knows how hate begins, it's Pastor Gerson.
• An interesting metaphor. Drum concedes.
• The Hillary 2012, adding, it's now or never, and she's running like it.
• The Hillary 2012, adding, I'll never forgive The Hillary for making me agree with Modo all the fucking time now.
• The Hillary 2012, adding........
• The company The Hillary keeps. The Hillary calls this "vetting."
• Shitty novelist calls The Hillary a beaver. No, really. (Mind you, I can see outclicks if I choose.)
• George Bush as Caligula's horse.
• Oh, about that surge.
• McCain as first pomo presidential candidate.
• Douglas Kmiec endorses Obama? (A voucher for Kmiec's integrity here.)
• More later. Or not.

   *

Now, the greatest tag-team ever?

The Hillary's the one in the beard. No, not Ole, Arn.

With Robert Coover Teaching Basket-Weaving and Casket Boover weaving teaching robert

.....

Just outside the Fort Bragg which calls itself Fort Bragg.