jamie lawrence-howard • highly absorbent redundant and superfluous verbiage • clogging tubes since 9.1.98
here’s a screengrab of the homepage of john mccain’s campaign website:
so — one of the most important topics to be discussed with america on john mccain’s campaign homepage is…golf gear?
really you can’t make these things up. this guy is so tone-deaf. or the people running his campaign are. flog some campaign yard signs, or some buttons, or something. anything relevant. but golf gear? jeebus.
combined with the speech he gave on tuesday, it’s clear that the lunatics are in charge of the asylum.
but i want to focus on one particular line that had kirk and me hooting with laughter.
and of course there’s a long hilarious discussion on digg.
hopefully by november this guy will, at a minimum, learn to read a teleprompter, a skill you think he would have acquired by now.
or, perhaps, i should hope that he won’t learn.
could tomorrow be the day that hillary clinton withdraws from the race?
i’m watching this closely. as one of her constituents, i’m looking to see how she gets out of the race, and how well and strongly and effectively she supports obama. she really needs to be graceful, and supportive, and needs to do her best to ensure his election. and she needs to do it sooner as in this week and preferably tuesday/wednesday, rather than later as in after this week. if she drags this out, i’ll be very upset.
if she doesn’t withdraw well, as i’ve said before, i’ll be looking to help her opponent in her next new york primary election, for senator or governor or whatever, should she be in a race.
oh, and a little thought butterfly to float over to mr. obama. promise her help with her debts. promise to bring her campaign workers on board with your team. promise to help the elected officials who are getting primary challenges via your supporters as a result of those officials’ support for her. promise to put lots of her supporters in white house positions.
but do not promise anything to hillary herself. the clintons need to be dispatched efficiently. i say this, not because i dislike hillary, but because i’ve come to really dislike bill, and i don’t want him anywhere near washington power again. and i don’t think that she is strong enough to keep him at bay should she be in an obama administration. she chose to keep him on her team, and use him, even after his odious behavior. that’s the price she should pay for making that choice.
and, mr. obama, you will lose more votes than you will gain if, before they actually vote for you, people know she’ll be in your administration.
walkscore.com — great idea for a google maps mashup site. you type in your address, and it gives an overall ranking of your living quarters on a scale from 1 to 100, in terms of walking distance to types of businesses.
here’s my walk score:
love it. i guess my distance from a movie theater drags my score down.
more accurately, it’s time for her to be made to go.
these latest remarks, citing robert kennedy’s assassination as a reason to stay in the race, are beyond the pale. you can’t tell me this was just a slip. nothing the clintons do is without purpose.
the superdelegates need to step up and end this thing officially, now. and that means i don’t want her on the ticket as vice-president. i say that partly because i don’t want her around, but mainly because i don’t want bill clinton anywhere near the white house again. my main problem with her isn’t what she does, but that she can’t seem to control what he does. he has undue influence over her. i don’t want the clintons tag-teaming and triangulating obama out of his presidency, or if he wins, out of his governance. which is exactly what they’d do, led by bill clinton. jeebus — to think i worked for his 1992 campaign.
i want them both out in the political wilderness for the duration of the presidential campaign, where they can do no harm. obama can win without her or her support. enough of her vaunted supporters will vote democratic in november anyway, with or without her. and especially without bill clinton around. and at this point, i’m not sure i want her as my senator, either. she’s frigging toxic.
peggy noonan had a great column about hillary clinton yesterday. it may be behind a paywall for you (come on, wall street journal!) so i’ll summarize: golda meir, indira gandhi, and margaret thatcher, three women who knew how to play tough politically, would be outraged at clinton’s week of claiming sexism as a principal reason for her loss. what a sorry endgame clinton has — blame society and the media. never once did you hear that from obama, even when he was far behind in the polls.
here’s my favorite quote from the noonan column:
It is prissy. Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are now complaining about the Hillary nutcrackers sold at every airport shop. Boo hoo. If Golda Meir, a woman of not only proclaimed but actual toughness, heard about Golda nutcrackers, she would have bought them by the case and given them away as party favors.
It is sissy. It is blame-gaming, whining, a way of not taking responsibility, of not seeing your flaws and addressing them. You want to say “Girl, butch up, you are playing in the leagues, they get bruised in the leagues, they break each other’s bones, they like to hit you low and hear the crack, it’s like that for the boys and for the girls.”
and this:
Meir and Gandhi and Mrs. Thatcher suffered through the political downside of their sex and made the most of the upside. Fair enough. As for this week’s Clinton complaints, I imagine Mrs. Thatcher would bop her on the head with her purse. Mrs. Gandhi would say “That is no way to play it.” Mrs. Meir? “They said I was the only woman in the cabinet and the only one with — well, you know. I loved it.”
got that right.
it’s going away, like mchales, cbgb’s, le madeleine, and any other of the long list of victims of gentrification and skyrocketing rents. much of what makes the city “new york” are these individual places, and each time we lose one we’re a step closer to being cleveland. i’ve been to florent a few times, and always enjoyed myself and had a great meal. the man, a true pioneer among restauranteurs, deserves better.
think about that the next time you hit a starbucks. and i’m sure cleveland is a wonderful place.
but it ain’t new york. at least not yet.
kirk sent me an email that purported to give the schedule that the irs will follow when mailing out the stimulus checks this spring.
did i say spring? i did. more on that later.
so the email said that they would mail on a schedule according to the last two digits in your social security number. which would mean that, according to the provided schedule, that my check would be mailed on july 11th.
july frigging 11th! that’s not spring! that’s half the summer gone! some frigging stimulus. what a crock.
but wait. maybe it’s just an email hoax. so, off to check snopes.com. and you know what? it’s frigging true! i couldn’t believe it.
now, to be sure, i think that the entire stimulus check nonsense is, well, nonsense. i don’t think it will do a bit of good for the economy. but on the off chance it might do some good, perhaps it would make sense to, oh, i don’t know, have it enter the economy in a relative lump sum. at least then it would have a chance of having some effect.
jeebus. this is the best our government can do? if you are going to pander to me, at least halfway deliver on your promise. i can hardly wait for obama to get into the white house, and hopefully bring at least a bit of sanity to washington.
…so i can vote for steve novick, who opens a beer with his hook hand in his campaign commercial. now there’s a politician i can get excited about.
plus oregon has great weather, lots of organic vegetables, and is a great place as long as you don’t leave portland or eugene.
it’s been a while, so here are a few short takes:
» kirk was in the hospital overnight on wednesday for some tests. he’s had dizziness, general fatigue, and chest tightness for a few weeks now, and our doctor wanted to rule out the big stuff — heart problems, blood clots, lung problems, etc. thankfully all that big stuff checked out, but the symptoms remain. next stop — the inner ear. at least we have a baseline of good health for him. our doctor is good and persistent, so i’m hopeful that we’ll sort it all out.
» happy mother’s day, to my mom, kirk’s mom, and mothers in general. i sent a neck pillow/comforter thingy to my mom in florida, via red envelope. she loves the red box and the grosgrain ribbon. good thing — i can’t stand the company. she’s the only reason i still patronize them, and the only person i use them for. i think they have terrible customer service. the latest in a long line of gripes — a month ago they sent me an email reminder to buy something for mother’s day, with a 10% discount code. but when i used the code and made a purchase, they wouldn’t delay the shipping. so i could either send my mother’s day present directly to my mother a month in advance, or have it shipped to me and pay twice to have it shipped to arrive in a timely fashion. i chose the latter. what a crock. if you are going to ask me to buy early for mother’s day, then have the back office capabilities to ship the purchase to arrive on mother’s day. idiots.
» obama seems to have wrapped things up, defeating hillary clinton for the nomination. all the talk now is to have her for vice-president, but i think that’s a bad idea and i don’t think it will happen. two “liberal senators” on one ticket? the republicans would have a field day. we need to move on from the clintons. he needs to pick someone with foreign policy experience. sam nunn? too old — he would negate the mccain age argument. gen. wesley clark or gen. jim jones? we don’t need an inexperienced admiral stockdale type. joe biden? great choice but two senators isn’t a good idea. jim webb? perfect choice, but do you want to give up the senate seat in virginia? and he isn’t the best campaigner. bill richardson? sounds good to me. what sounds even better? wait out mccain and make him pick first.
» congratulations to the writers of iron man, one of whom is the husband of a good friend and former co-worker of mine. he struggled for years, has enormous talent, and is deserving of every bit of success he’s getting.
[flv:/movies/fiftypercent.flv 320 240]
the genesius theatre in reading, pa., where kirk first learned stagecraft, had a benefit at the end of february 2008. it was called “he sang…she sang” — men sang songs usually associated with women, and vice-versa. kirk performed in a few numbers, but this was his solo performance.
chills, i tell ya. i get chills.
the media has gotten obama to denounce the last uppity black man in his life. now maybe they’ll be satisfied and move on to things of consequence.
like, say, health care, the economy, the middle east, iraq, and iran.
In his harshest criticism yet of his former minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama said he was “outraged†by Wright’s comments at the National Press Club Monday, and “saddened by the spectacle.â€
personally, i’m guessing that wright chose to fall on his sword to a degree — to get out there and make comments so outrageous that obama would have an opportunity to really put some distance between them. obama has been less than forthcoming about all this, i think. and i have to admit that the people who can’t understand why he stuck with the church have somewhat of a point. i know that church does not equal pastor, and there’s a new pastor now, and you should be going to church for the institution more than the personalities involved.
still. maybe this will precipitate a clean break between the two. let’s hope so.
in any case, better sooner (now) than later (october). there’ll always be a percentage of people unable to separate the two in their minds. hopefully this will mitigate the damage that’s been done.
i want that small squidgy thought floating in the back of my mind — “perhaps hillary is more electable after all” — crushed mercilessly.
update: just remembered what this was — obama’s sister souljah moment.
from swampland, a blog at time.com, via the washington post, comes a story about the decision to torture detainees:
Nineteen of those documents were withheld from disclosure specifically because the Bush administration decided they are covered by a “presidential communications privilege,” according to the filings, made in federal court in Manhattan. Some were “authored or solicited and received by the President’s senior advisors in connection with a decision, or potential decision, to be made by the president.”
which raises the question: if they can do that stuff when everyone’s watching them like a hawk, what’s going on at the white house when everyone’s attention is on the election?
kirk and i spent three nights at ricketts glen state park in north central pennsylvania this past weekend through tuesday.
what an incredibly awesome place. we’ve been before, but this time we especially enjoyed every minute of the peace and quiet, especially on monday night, when we were the only campers in the park. and the cell phones don’t work there. love that.
we took advantage of the empty time to take a look at the campground, figure out the camping spots we liked, and picked a top 5. our positive criteria were seclusion, beauty, and space. negatives we looked for included being too near or (especially) at the end of a road (headlights in the tent — not good), being too close to the road in general, and close proximity to the bathrooms (too much noisy foot traffic). we labeled the ones we liked with “y” (for “yes”) and appended a “-” for a decent site with some problems, a “+” for great sites, and an “!” for the outstanding sites. our top five sites are all “y!” sites.
your criteria may differ from ours. if so, check out the details of the individual sites and plan accordingly. kirk took pictures of the sites we liked — they’re coming soon.
here’s a page where you can download a map of the campground, so you can play along at home.
there are two camping areas in ricketts glen: the big loop (sites 1-73) and the small loop (sites 74-120). the small loop sites are all knocked out of serious contention immediately. none of them border the water, some of them (sites 80-93) allow pets (no pets allowed in the big loop), and they are very crowded with no buffer zones to speak of. we gave three small loop sites a “y-” ranking: sites 101, 108, and 115. but they are strictly a fall-back position, in case the big loop is completely full. if the big loop is full, and these sites are gone, certainly there’s enough positive features at the park to still come. but it’s going to be packed with people, and you’re likely to have a less than optimal experience.
for the big loop, i’ll list only the sites that got “y-” or better. the sites not listed got knocked out for the aforementioned reasons.
big loop “y-” sites:
3, 5, 17, 23 (17 + 23 close to bathroom but big), 27, 33, 46 (27, 33, 46 at end of road, but on water), 49, 52, 54.
big loop “y” sites:
7, 9, 24, 26 (campground host site, near entrance), 34, 35, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 57, 71, 72, 73. all but 42, 44, and 71 are on or near water. 57 is at the end of a road but is so spectacular that it loses the minus.
big loop “y+” sites:
5, 20, 22, 29, 31, 56, 66. all but 5 on the water.
big loop “y!” sites:
21, 36, 37, 59, 61, 64, 65. there’s nothing wrong with any of these, in our estimation. site perfection.
and for the top five — again, culled from the “y!” sites:
#5 — site 64. at the end of a road, on the water, huge with no near neighbors.
#4 — site 59. secluded, on the water, huge surrounding area.
#3 — site 36. at the end of a road, on the water, huge, only site we saw with a constructed tent platform.
#2 — site 21. huge, on the water, secluded. the best part about this site is that the area behind the site drops down to the water, and then there’s a shelf right by the water. so you can sit by the water, and no one can see you. spectacular.
and the #1 site — #37. the huge site drops down from the road, so you are hidden from everyone else. and you have an enormous peninsula you share only with site 36, with water views on three sides.
there you go — our subjective opinions, explained. what do you think? leave a comment if you disagree, or have experiences to share.
had dinner at salvatores of soho on friday night. the name’s a bit misleading — the restaurant isn’t in soho. it’s in riverdale. maybe salvatore is from soho, and he came to riverdale to open a restaurant. not sure.
anyway.
they have excellent basic red-sauce italian food. great pizza. a well-planned menu with lots of variety. and they deliver it all. we’ve been a few times before, for basic stuff. so far, a solid neighborhood option, but perhaps not worthy of an unsolicited recommendation.
but we splurged a bit on friday night, taking a chance on some more expensive entree specials. three things shoved them over the edge, to the point where i’m flogging them on my blog:
» amazing specials. on friday i had a whole grilled bronzino with a rosemary sauce. i’d never had this mediterranean fish before, but man was it good. i like a fish roasted whole, head and skin on and bones in, because it keeps the fish moist and delicious like no other cooking method, if done correctly. and this was the best whole grilled fish i’d had in ages. it rivalled anything i’ve ever had at uncle nick’s on 9th avenue in midtown manhattan, which is mecca for a grilled fish. kirk had a broiled steak with mushroom sauce, which was equally as wonderful.
» great staff. welcoming, professional, prompt, every single person genuinely concerned with my total experience. they all enjoy what they are doing, and it shows.
» byob. they don’t have a liquor license, so you look at the menu, grab a bottle of wine from down the street, bring it back, and they serve it with no corkage fee.
total bill with tip was $50, which is about as much as you could possibly spend here. it’s a mixed crowd — half of the tables are families eating meals and bringing wine, like us, and the other half are tables of college students splitting pizzas. two could eat well and comfortably here for $20. but any money you spend here is well spent, and everything on the menu is an incredibly good value for the money, even the more expensive entrees. they definitely have kitchen staff that knows what they are doing.
we’ll be back.
a lot.
for the specials.
had dinner last night at orsay, in new york city on 75th st. and lexington avenue.
i’m usually not one to venture onto the upper east side of manhattan. the transportation is awkward if you live on the west side, which we do. the extreme upper west side. but last night, kirk chose this restaurant to celebrate his raise and new title at work.
so i schlepped.
and i’m glad i did. the a la carte menu looked great, especially the blanquette de veau, and a beef cheek special. but they had a prix fixe “surprise”, which intrigued. for $38, you got a surprise appetizer, a surprise entree, and a surprise dessert. you could tell them “fish or meat” for the entree, and of course let them know if you had allergies and whatnot. but other than that, you were flying blind. we went for it, and asked for wine pairings to accompany.
the appetizer was a chicken terrine, wrapped in smoky bacon and studded with vegetables — i remember mushrooms and carrots. accompanying the terrine was a frisée salad with small potatoes and bacon. both were wonderful, both separately and together. the wine was a chablis — i remember it being very buttery, though not sure of the name. i was very proud of myself for figuring out the wine tasted buttery; i usually can’t tell these things and when the sommelier gave us that assessment unprompted, i was amazed.
the entrée was a pork porterhouse with a dipping sauce that had tiny julienned cornichons, and frites. that’s french fries, to you and me. the porterhouse was incredible — it had been brined well and cooked to perfection, with a crispy exterior while still tender inside. and the fries were sensational, as only fries cooked twice and perfectly can be. the perfect combination of salt, heat, and grease. yummy. the wine was a great merlot.
dessert was good, but not great — a kind of ice cream cake with sliced bananas on top and chocolate sauce brushed underneath. it got better as the ice cream softened a bit. the dessert wine to accompany was of course very sweet and fruity, and i liked it quite a bit even though i’m not much for sweet wines. i remember it was from the south of france, but no more details than that.
espresso with a nice belgian chocolate finished the evening.
the service was very french — completely attentive and friendly in the way it should be. wait staff were personable, helpful, and witty but not obsequious and pushy. everyone knew their role and executed exactly as they should have. in fact, our waiter guided us away from a la carte and toward the prix fixe, even though the former would have been a bigger check for him. good thing we listened — the chef was transitioning from the winter menu to the spring menu next week, so our dishes were a sneak preview of the spring menu items. our food definitely drew attention from the many regulars sprinkled about.
in all, a great experience — all pluses and no minuses. we’ll be back.
from an obama/clinton story on talking points memo:
“Blocking revotes in MI and Fla.” Lol! I just love this mindless talking point.
Where did he acquire the power to stop the Michigan and Florida legislatures from passing laws and/or the state parties from submitting workable delegate selection plans to the DNC? Is this like a legal power granted to him by virture of his being the front runner by some previously unknown laws passed in those states? Or is it a superpower he acquired after he was bitten by a radioactive Diebold voting machine? Is it a magical power? Is he using a +4 Staff of Disenfranchisement against poor Hillary?
and even more:
He’s beaten her. He beat her fair and square. She had a flawed, inflexible, and arrogant electoral plan, he identified the flaws in that plan early on and took advantage of them. She was unable to adapt and now she can’t turn it around. The superdelegates are not going to overturn the results of the delegate race, Michigan and Florida have screwed themselves, and the voters in the ten remaining states are not going to give her the 70 – 30 victories in each and every congressional district that she has to have to pull even with him in the popular vote and delegate races.
comment of the day? hell, it’s the diatribe of the year.
i love reading wonkette.com. the attitude is a perfect antidote to boring and conventional political coverage
i’ve wailed and moaned for obama to get tougher. it seems that he has.
the last couple of news cycles have seen a steady ramp-up of stories about how hillary clinton outright lied “misspoke” about her trip to bosnia with sinbad and sheryl crow.
a clinton obfuscating a prevarication? who knew?
nice to note that the obama campaign pushed this story, and the press picked up on it, and there’s no blowback to the obama campaign itself. nice to note also that hillary was at no point in any danger, despite her protestations to the contrary. we gotta keep her safe, so obama can ignore her for the v.p. slot but use her strategically to get out the fall vote.
now that’s how you get elected.
last i checked, i was musing about obama getting control of his message. not sure it’s gotten any better.
first we have the whole “rev. wright” business. an astute politician, or a worthy adviser to that politician, should have seen this coming a mile away. and should have worked in advance to negate the effect, or had plans in place to blunt it immediately. as it was, he seemed blindsided.
yes, the subsequent speech on race was brilliant. could turn out to be a political recovery for the ages. the rapturous media response may help obama’s “wright” problem, though his subsequent foot-in-mouth moment about “typical white people” doesn’t help. and i’m not sure that long oratory lends itself to this era of “sound-bite” politics.
and this latest staged leak of the photo of clinton and rev. wright is about as clumsy and heavy-handed as you can get.
i know it seems like i’m dumping all over obama. i think he’s still the best choice, and has unlimited potential for improving this country like no one else can. today’s news cycle (the passport mess, and the bill richardson endorsement) is certainly more favorable.
but i think there needs to be an experienced, hard-nosed old-style pol installed near the top of the hierarchy.
update: to clarify my thoughts on the clinton/wright picture: good idea, poor execution. no way this should have been traceable to the campaign.
update update: and now there’s this. the obama campaign finally starts playing a bit of hardball. maybe there’s hope for hope.