Wednesday, March 31, 2010

A Loose Amalgam of Real Money

Well Obama finally chucked one to Real America.

The president's interview with Matt Lauer was characterized by a clearly agitated and arrogant Obama, who testily interrupted America's Interviewer, repeatedly called him a "douchenozzle on 'high'" even after it stopped being funny, and at one point appeared to strike Lauer on the cheek with an open palm in response to a question about the president's Middle East peace plan. Lauer did manage to wrestle and pin down the president on one question in particular in which he asked Obama about his impressions of the the American Liberty Rebirth Movement, commonly referred to condescendingly by the MSM as "Tea Party activists," "teabaggers," or the "get off my lawners."

Watch:



Um wow. A "loose amalgam of forces," some of whom are "legitimately concerned" with the role of the federal government in American governance, others of whom are "dug in ideologically" in the belief that he's a foreign-born socialist and who probably will not be "convinced" otherwise? I have never been more offended by such an even-tempered, thought-out, and accurate portrayal of a minority of Americans by my commander-in-chief.  This man is a disgrace.

A point about presidential interviews: What the "mainstream media sans Fox News" considers deference to the Office of the President--mainly allowing the presidential interviewee the ability to answer a question before offering a rebuttal in the form of another question in an effort to expose the perceived misstatement or dodge committed by said presidential interviewee--Fox News sees as weak, fluffy, ineffective, lap-doggyism.  But let's just imagine that instead of elf-man Bret Baier interviewing President Obama, we had the nasally David Shuster interviewing George W. Bush in the same manner. Now imagine the conservative outrage over the left's blatant disregard for the dignity and respect deserved of our commander-in-chief. Imagine the indignation of the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck over the condescending, insulting breach of decorum that the White House and the office is due. Now look me in the face with a straight expression on yours and tell me this scenario would not have played out exactly like I described it. You can't do it. When an R is in office, the right becomes the defenders of the grace and glory of the presidency; when a D is in office, they must do everything in their power to tear down the walls of the People's House and expose the cockroaches inside to the light of day.  Bret Baier is a common man's journalist who is simply, earnestly striving to obtain the truth. Charles Gibson and Katie Couric on the other hand are elitists who have no business being so crass in asking a candidate for the second highest office in the land if she understands the Bush Doctrine or, you know, reads.

Finally, a quick read of the transcript of the Obama-Baier interview reveals six moments of "Cross Talk," including this journalistic gem:

OBAMA: And, Bret, let me tell you something, the fact of the matter is that for the vast majority of people, their health care is not going to change because right now they're getting a better deal. The only thing that is going to change for [the vast majority of Americans] is, is that they're going to have more security under their [health] insurance and they're going to have a better situation when it comes to if they lose their job, heaven forbid, or somebody gets sick with a preexisting condition, they'll have more security. But, so — so —

BAIER: So how can you —

OBAMA: — the notion that —

BAIER: — guarantee that they're not going to —

OBAMA: — so but —

BAIER: — they're going to be able to keep their doctor —

OBAMA: Bret, you've got to let me finish my answers —

BAIER: Sir, I know you don't like to filibuster, but —

OBAMA: Well, I'm trying to answer your question and you keep on interrupting.

The sign of a truly award-winning journalistic interview surely is when the interviewer talks over the interviewee during his answers so much that you can't even hear them, thus canonizing the fearless interviewer as a mighty hero of free speech and the press!

Maybe Bret would do better to submit these soft-ballers to the judging panel:

BRET BAIER: Today you were talking about keeping America safe. Do you believe that there hasn't been a terrorist attack on U.S. soil in more than seven years because of the policies your administration has implemented?

Yes, oh dearest President Bush, explain to the American people just why you are so good at keeping America jihad-free!

BRET BAIER: Do you worry at all that the incoming [Obama] administration will undo some of the things that you say have kept America safe?

Here's the pitch....it's a lobber really, and Bush smacks it out of the park deeeeep into left-wing terrorist appeasement field (Though in reality he shanked it into foul territory so as to not immediately handicap an incoming administration on such a critical effort. Kudos, Mr. President)!

BRET BAIER: When you're leaving now, your approval rating is hovering around 30 percent or a little below. It's been below 40 percent for 27 straight months. And that matches Harry Truman's string of sub-40 percent approval ratings. And you'll pass him this month unless there's a big surge that we don't know about. Weigh in on the public opinion, you know, the feelings about public opinion throughout-- do you care?

Please, offer to us your deserved place in the canon of unfairly rejected yet ultimately considered visionary and honorable leaders like Truman. Jesus?

BRET BAIER: What are you reading now?

Now here's a doozy for Obama. Which one is it Barry? The little red book or Mein Kampf?

BRET BAIER: Were you angry [about the economy possibly sinking into depression under your watch]?

Please Mr. President, describe how you feel. I will drink my toe-shavings in bourbon when a Fox News interviewer asks this president how something made him feel.

BRET BAIER: You have your ideas about how and when the government should step in and intervene with this amount of money based on advice from Secretary Paulson. Now Democrats are gonna take control of the White House and Congress. Are you concerned that you've created a government intervention monster here?

Let's pause here folks. Analyze this brilliant line of "fair and balanced" questioning with me for a moment. What exactly is the line "you have your ideas about [government intervention in capital markets]," when juxtaposed with Democrat-controlled "government intervention monster" supposed to accomplish?  Perhaps this construction--pitting President Bush's SEVEN HUNDRED BILLION DOLLAR *sadly necessary* BAILOUT of the financial industry (hedged, of course, by "based on advice from Secretary Paulson," as if to remove some shred of accountability from the man who ultimately approved the THREE PAGE bill) against the evil out of control Democratic intervention monster!!!--is meant to salvage what was left of the legacy of a president to whom Mr. Baier's network had been all too favorable in its unbiased portrayal. Anyone care to explain why Mr. Baier felt it necessary to include Democrats in a question about a Republican orchestrated government intervention? Oh yeah, cuz Democrats LOVE to government takeover the shit out of everything, now I remember. Let's compare this line of questioning--in which Baier is seeking the fair and balanced truth about the emergency authorization of a trillion less three hundred billion U.S. dollars to effectively nationalize the financial markets temporarily written in a bill shorter than this blog post--to this question concerning President Obama's health care reform initiative:

BAIER: Mr. President, you couldn't tell me what the special deals are that are in or not today.

OBAMA: I just told you what was in and what was not in.

BAIER: Is Connecticut in?

OBAMA: Connecticut — what are you specifically referring to?

BAIER: The $100 million for the hospital? Is Montana in for the asbestos program? Is — you know, listen, there are peoplethis is real money, people are worried about this stuff.

OBAMA: And as I said before, this — the final provisions are going to be posted for many days before this thing passes, but —

BAIER: Let me get to some of the specifics on substance not process.

OBAMA: The only thing —

(CROSSTALK)

BAIER: (INAUDIBLE)

Obama OWNED! This is REAL MONEY okay?  While Bret Baier was forced to set up Bush for the spike with questions like "are you kinda angry about almost fucking the economy forever?" while brushing over that president's "ideas" about government intervention to the tune of oh, say, $700,000,000,000.00 taxpayer dollars to Wall Street bankers who fucked us all over with little to no strings attached or provisions for transparency, he was quietly dreaming of the day when he could repeatedly talk truth to power and talk about people who are worried about the allegedly unknown contents of a bill that has been debated not for mere hours but for a whole year!

As if all this weren't enough, Baier had the audacity to end the interview with this cunt-fuck comment:

BAIER: I apologize for interrupting you, sir. I tried to get the most bang for our buck here.

Oh, wait. That's legit. I guess I should've just read that last line first and saved me a bunch of time and outrage better directed here.


Step into the rain: secondrain.blogspot.com

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Zing

“If Senator Coburn believes that federal law should not allow coverage of erectile dysfunction medications to folks whose impulses have led them to break the law, then surely he would agree that anyone who has admitted or been found guilty of involvement with prostitution should not be covered either,” said Louisiana Democratic Party spokesman Kevin Franck.

Hahahaha cuz David Vitter fucks hookers.

Hat tip Glenn Thrush.



Step into the rain: secondrain.blogspot.com

Bolsheviks 220, Americans 211

It was bad enough that we lost to the Canadians in the America Games in Canada last month, what with their emaciated, stunted bodies languishing under the life-suppressing rationing of socialized medicine. But now, after Obama signed this thing in blood, we'll be forced to join those dirty commies in the ranks of the third world. Sunday night's historic vote on the long-debated health care reform bill had all the drama of a DC insider wheel-and-deal poli-thriller starring Diane Lane as Nancy Pelosi, Lupe Fiasco in his motion picture debut as Jim Clyburn, Jude Law as Aaron Schock, Norm McDonald as Mike Pence, and Dennis Kucinich as himself. But in the end, this was no Hollywood triumph. Even after John Boehner did his best Colonel Kendrick and the tea people did their best "white people sitting in the front of the bus in 1955" (yes, EVERY TEA PARTIER is a racist. And a homophobe, too. Fact.),the wholesome all-American heroes were Louise Slaughtered and all of America was flooded by the Red River. Of communism. That is red.

Monday morning, as we roamed through the wreckage of freedom, lightning cracked and burned the dark skies over Capitol Hill while somewhere in a studio in New York, David Shuster gleefully ejaculated on Joe Scarborough's suit jacket on camera while screaming "Repeal this!"

 John Dingell and Nancy Tokyo Rose Pelosi share a dildo.

This historic game card will be safeguarded here.

Yes, I made this in Paint.



Step into the rain: secondrain.blogspot.com

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Goodbye, Lucille

Mourn with me brothers and sisters. Our beloved Lucille has gone quietly from this earth.

She entered my world six years ago, having already served her previous owner, my uncle, with dutiful hard work and diligence. When I first got behind her wheel, she had already lived a full life and had traveled more than 130,000 miles on her able legs. She was my first combustion-propelled love, the first engine I truly knew. A 1995 Honda Civic 1.5 liter, 4 in-line cylinder front traverse engine with 75 mm bore, 84.5 mm stroke, 9.1 compression ratio, overhead cam and two valves per cylinder. I only know what half of that means, but her specs are not what I cared about. It was the way she moved.

It was the way she carried me down Route 1 in New Castle County on my way back home from school on a sunny day in May, freedom blowing in through the cracked open (power!) window.  It was her companionship; she was my expedition partner, my fellow wanderer, as I uncovered new uncharted paths from Chesapeake City to Delaware City just for the fun of it.  It was her wildness; she was my little turbo rocket blasting out of the gate, racing up 141 into Wilmington, beating yellow lights and my friend's Mustang, Sally. It was her fearlessness; she was my familiar friend facing the unknown as we journeyed together over the Bay Bridge and down I-95 to Richmond en route to our new home (while racing a cute girl in a white coupe from Fredericksburg to Glen Allen. Girl won).

It was her resiliency; I remember feeling like such a klutz having taken her to the car wash but failing to lower her radio antenna, thus resulting in it being chopped off by the soapy, flapping fettuccine thingys.  For years onward I've heard only two stations: 9.37 WSTW in Wilmington and 101.1 DC101 in Rockville, because their signals were the closest. She suffered through more of my absentmindedness as I left her lights on in the school parking lot multiple times and subsequently had to jump her with the help of my friend's Volvo or, as in one instance, the school janitor's pickup truck (thanks Mr. Dinsmore).  She once blew her radiator on I-95 near 273 just past the Christiana Mall and overheated, a condition that eventually would claim her lif years later.  The first year I got her, my dad accidentally broke off the knob on the temperature control panel, so I've used a small screwdriver to adjust the heat ever since.  Just recently she took a shot to the chin at a red light on 17th and I St. NW when a brain-dead woman in a red Ford Explorer back into her inexplicably, denting her front bumper and ripping through her tag.

I named her Lucille after all of B.B. King's famous black Gibson guitars

I loved her for her confidence; she beamed with pride parked next to fancy new BMWs and Lexuses on my driveway or in the parking lot of my high school. She put on her best face when she ferried my gorgeous prom date and me alongside stretch limousines and party buses. And she hoped with me on the drive back from the after-party as I desperately wanted to kiss the girl in the passenger seat. And when I didn't, she was there to peck me on the cheek.  It was her support; she bent to fit my mood.  She'd sleepily usher me back home from rock shows one late night, calmly trotting down the single right lane. A week later we'd be tearing up that same stretch of highway, weaving in and out of cars and trucks and whatever obstacles got in our way while keeping an eye out for the po-po.  Speaking of the 5-0, I loved her for her support, especially when I got pulled over by a Dick Cheney look-a-like in Newport on the I-95 onramp for doing 75 in a 50 on my 18th birthday. And when I got pulled over a few months later on the St. George's bridge after having been snagged in a speed trap set up by Delaware's finest boys in blue for going 82 in a 60.  And when I got pulled over a few months after that in Camden, DE in the rain by one of the three small town cops with a bone to pick who thought he'd smack me with a failure to register charge in spite of the evidence I provided to prove Lucille's registration on top of the 32 in a 25 speeding infraction (the judge I was brought before waived the former charge after the head of the Dover DMV, a small elderly black woman, called the cop and chewed him out for his ineptitude and general display of douchiness).

There's Lucille, not the least threatened or intimidated by that shiny new 06 530i I'm standing next in my prom tux.

And she was there when we nearly veered off of Barley Mill Road after I spun her too fast over a patch of black ice, sending her into a fishtail that almost landed us in a narrow ditch.  She was there to soothe me after I initially cracked up laughing for 30 seconds before, panicked, I started breathing rapidly and heavily to keep up with my pounding heart.  She was with me when I saw my first shooting star, three minutes afterwards.

My last drive with her was much different than how we usually got from A to B. Last Saturday on my way up to Frederick from Shady Grove, I noticed her engine heat indicator was close to maxing out.  I pulled into a Dairy Queen parking lot and turned her engine off, which would not start up after that. After checking her radiator for leaks and finding none, I got a cup of water from DQ and gave her engine a cool down. She started up again but was in bad shape: shaking, trembling, burning oil and puttering out of her muffler. My dad showed up and we moved her to a Wal-Mart parking lot and left her over night. The next day we returned and brought her some proper coolant, which settled her down a bit but not entirely. As I pulled her onto Route 15 to I-270, my dad watching carefully behind me, I cruise controlled the right lane, my eye fixed on the heat indicator. Instead of passing slow-pokes in the left lane and eeking in front of 18-wheelers, we drove steady. Instead of grooving to loud music through my iPod, we rode in silence. All the while I was just thinking about getting her to a garage like a father hopes to get his sick daughter to a doctor.  When we finally pulled into the garage, Lucille was on her last legs.  We'd come to discover that she'd blown her head gasket when she'd overheated on the trip to Frederick.  She wouldn't ride comfortably again and her engine would eventually break down under the pressure of the spontaneous combustions caused by heat pockets. To repair her would cost a thousand dollars or more, more than what my family was willing to put into a car that the resale market would callously consider "significantly depreciated."  I looked at my dad and the garage manager who both looked at me the way a surgeon might look at you before delivering news you could not bear but had begun to fear. My heart heavy, I sat down behind her wheel, placed the key in the ignition, turned.  Lucille would not start.  This was it.  Instead of driving her to a final farewell, my dad and I pushed her lifeless body into a vacant parking spot behind the garage.  It was there I emptied her out. I had the pleasure of cleaning her a few weeks back, vacuuming her interior and putting her through the car wash.  I was glad I did, because although she lay barren, she was clean.  I shut the driver door and locked her up for the last time. Before giving her one more farewell, I glanced at the dashboard to find what mattered most: 186,433.


Lucille
1994-2010

P.S. Alright, so I can't say she's dead. Someone(s) with money to put in her can fix her up. In fact, my dad donated her to Purple Heart so that an American hero can get good use out of her.  I know she'll serve him or her well, just like she did me.


Step into the rain: secondrain.blogspot.com

Saturday, March 20, 2010

"Mr. President, We've Got Your Back."

Thanks to my buddy Tobin Van Ostern at C-Prog (that's right y'all, C-Prog), I scored two VIP tickets to President Obama's youth rally at the Patriot Center at GMU in Fairfax.  These tickets afforded me a spectacular view from the floor, roughly 30 feet from where the President was speaking.  The location had special symbolic importance for Mr. Obama; more than three years ago in February of 2007, a mere three weeks after launching his then long-shot presidential campaign, Senator Obama arrived at GMU to kickoff the Students For Barack Obama movement. He spoke to a full crowd about the need for health care reform and student loan reform, two initiatives he is poised to sign into law in the coming days as President of the United States.  When he returned to GMU yesterday he was met with a raucous crowd of diverse supporters ready for some special presidential treatment. Below is his fiery speech in which he declares the time for reform is now; only this time, now may be closer than ever before:

A few notes: Behind and to the upper right of the President is my dad, the brown guy in the gray shirt! Also, pay close attention to the 2:43 mark, as a certain someone fills a pregnant pause in the president's speech with a resounding rallying cry:



A few photos, none of which came out well at all:





After the speech the President shook hands with supporters in the front row. When he approached my side I shouted out a line that I've always thought I'd tell him if ever given the chance.  Among a crowd of college kids, senior citizens, blacks, whites, and browns, I said, "Mr. President, we've got your back."  He looked up at me while grabbing for my hand and said, simply and sincerely, "Thank you."


Pee Ess: To close out the day, I learned that my sister and cousin met Kim Kardashian, Timbaland, and in what was clearly the biggest get for my new celeb status family, Dwayne Wade's brother AND father in Miami. We're fabufamous!


Step into the rain: secondrain.blogspot.com

A Certain Degree

It's official, and they can't take it away from me.





And after Sunday, these things might even come with continued health benefits!


Step into the rain: secondrain.blogspot.com

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Mad(onna)Hatter


I hear her performance carries the movie.

Madhat-tip P&S WMMR.


Step into the rain: secondrain.blogspot.com

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Baguette 9, Trig 0

Via NYT:
Andrea Ray Friedman, the actress who played Ellen on “Family Guy,” and who, like the character, has Down syndrome, objected to Ms. Palin’s interpretation of the episode.

In a letter to The New York Times, Ms. Friedman wrote, “I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor.”

She added: "My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life. My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes."

I only got off of the floor I've been rolling on to hit 'post.'


Step into the rain: secondrain.blogspot.com