Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Tag: Politics

  • Pretzels

    You know… while he’s onstage at the Republican National Convention, someone should present Bush with a bag of pretzels.

  • On Politics

    I make it a point to not really write about politics here, for several reasons. First, it’s a hot topic for too many people. Second, I frankly don’t feel qualified one way or another to sound off; I have opinions, sure, but before I voice those opinions, I better be able to back them up intelligently—and there’s a fair amount of political knowledge that I’m ignorant or just plain wrong about, I bet. Third, it’s been my observation that once you start voicing a political opinion in a public venue like a website, the vast majority of people who respond either are of the same opinion as you (which ultimately degenerates into a mutual admiration society that closes off from the rest of the world) or are fervently opposed to your point of view (which ultimately degenerates into a vicious group of trolls who have nothing better to do than denigrate you because you think differently from them); there’s very little real diversity or intelligent conversation. Finally, politics just doesn’t interest me enough to write about.

    Having said that, I’ll write a bit about politics, inspired by having President Bush on television tonight (annoyingly pre-empting regular TV).

    I’ll just be blunt. I am so sick and tired of the spin and political bullshit that surrounds politics these days. All of it. Whether it’s Bush and all the shit going on over 9/11 and Iraq and everything, or Clinton and his “That depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is” hijinks, I don’t care. I do not care.

    What I want is a President who can step up to a news conference like Bush did tonight, and instead of spinning out lies and evasiveness and bullshit, just look into the cameras and say, “Yeah, we fucked up. I fucked up. I was wrong, and it cost us, and now it’s time to fix things.” Is that really too much to ask? Whatever happened to responsibility, accountability, and humility, anyway?

    Hell with it. Rant over.

  • Arnold is Governor

    So the freak show in California is over and Arnold Schwarzenegger is the new governor.

    Lovely.

    Reminds me of an old California joke: California’s like a bowl of cereal; once you get rid of the fruits and nuts, all you have left are the flakes.

  • Blogging Bush

    The big news around here is that George W. Bush came to town. Ironically, he came to talk about healthy forests and programs to help cut down the forest fire danger, but was pre-empted from Camp Sherman to Redmond because of forest fires.

    Here are some links:

    And Jake over on UtterlyBoring has blogged a bit about it, too, both here and here.

  • Air Time

    More on the California governor race. In order to be fair, federal rules dictate that all candidates have to have equal air time on television, and since there’s a huge disparity between the screen time someone like, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger has and someone like, say, Larry Flynt has, cable TV networks have made the decision to pull Arnold’s movies. There’s a story about it here.

    As you might imagine, I have several thoughts on this.

    First of all, nationwide cable TV networks are pulling Arnold’s movies? Seems unfair to punish the rest of the nation for the consequences of California’s governor race. I wonder how long it will take for some litigation-happy idiot outside of California to try to sue the SciFi Channel for this.

    But then, wouldn’t it be much more amusing (and California-like) if instead of pulling Arnold’s movies, they gave equal amounts of screen time to the other candidates? Then there would be nothing on California TV except candidates… imagine the horror:

    • Hours and hours of Diff’rent Strokes for Gary Coleman;
    • For Larry Flynt, there’d either have to be a Hustler Channel (is there one already?), or just show The People vs. Larry Flynt over and over again—though no doubt some Californians would vote for him thinking they were electing Woody Harrelson;
    • Arianna Huffington would be on the air flaming all the other candidates and progressively moving closer to a “gang audit” (in the immortal words of Dennis Miller) by various government agencies;
    • Porn. Courtesy of Mary Carey. This might not be so horrible.

    If you’re interested, the certified list of candidates is here (PDF). All 135 of them.

  • California

    I suppose most everyone has heard by now, but Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced that he’ll run for governor of California. What a great day for American politics.

    Hey, I’m serious; I drank a beer in honor of Jesse Ventura’s election to governor of Minnesota. Colorful personalities like this certainly revive interest in politics, whatever people may think.