If you’ve ever wondered who would win a fist fight between James Bond and Indiana Jones, the answer is…
James Bond. But then Indy would shoot him with a pistol that happened to be lying on the ground.
We’ve been watching the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles via Netflix, [...]
Despite all of their complaining about curses, it seems to me that Red Sox fans are among the luckiest fans in the world.
[...][...]Just as 19th-Century Republicans eventually ran out of Union generals from Ohio, so the modern Republican Party has bumped up against the statute of limitations on campaigns against hippies.
Is John McCain’s campaign the most despicable in modern history? Or is he just calling plays from the standard “losing Republican” playbook? Do the minor outrages and insults of previous campaigns fade too quickly into the past to be remembered (e.g. which Obama advisor called Clinton a [...]
If I were asked to defend (reluctantly!) the proposition that George Bush isn’t that bad of a president, I think a key piece of evidence would be this Rolling Stone biography about John McCain. Yikes.
[...]I find this ironic, because I interned at Hewlett-Packard during graduate school, and I don’t think Carly Fiorina knows how to run a Fortune 500 company either.
[...]An incomplete list of things we know about Sarah Palin:
In both of her big campaign speeches, she repeatedly lied about opposing the bridge to nowhere.
As mayor, she tried to ban books from the public library, and then tried to fire the librarian who wouldn’t go along with her.
As [...]
I’ve come to the conclusion that, although writing about politics is fun, writing about political campaigns is boring. For reasons surpassing understanding, I watched the prime-time hour of the GOP convention last night. Both of the speeches were vicious, petty, and totally without substance. The pathetic spectacle of angry, red-faced [...]
Thanks for nothing, John McCain. I was all set to burnish my moderate credentials by writing a post praising your vice-presidential candidate. I was going to talk about how Mitt Romney is a smart, competent manager with an analytical mind; and about how he would make a good-for-a-Republican VP. (I’ve [...]
I don’t really have an opinion on Joe Biden — he seems like a good guy, and I once called him oleaginous — but his dismissal of Rudy Giuliani as “noun, verb, 9/11″ remains one of the highlights of the entire primary campaign.
[...]From the Washington Post:
Sen. John McCain’s inability to recall the number of homes he owns during an interview yesterday jeopardized his campaign’s carefully constructed strategy to frame Democratic rival Barack Obama as an out-of-touch elitist
Apparently I’m supposed to believe that eating non-iceberg lettuce and taking one’s shirt off at [...]
It seems that an increasingly desperate John McCain has accused Obama of taking his shirt off at the beach. How un-American. As all grumpy Republican politicians know, the proper way to enjoy the beach is in black wingtips and a Brooks Brothers suit.
[...]Since it’s well-known that John McCain is unfamiliar with the Internets, I can only assume it’s a staffer’s fault that the straight-talk express seemingly plagarized Wikipedia in a speech on Georgia-Russia relations.
About the Russian invasion itself: although one’s first instinct is to side with a small country unfortunate [...]
I have very little to say about the presidential race.
Barack Obama’s ideological temperament seems close to my own. His policy ideas are about as sound as one can reasonably expect. And his political skills are so good that it’s fun to watch, in the same way that it’s fun [...]
A couple of days ago, Obama delivered an honest and heart-felt oration about the meaning of patriotism. Naturally, John McCain responded by giving his own speech on patriotism.(*) Hilariously, he did so by saying things so completely crazy and unhinged from reality that he can’t possibly mean them.
If [...]
ETG writes in the comments section:
I have thought for some time that this is nowhere near a conservative administration. It is fundamentally fascist to it’s core. That they call themselves conservative is only going to blot whatever honor is left in that movement.
It’s clear that the anti-tax, anti-environment [...]
It’s hard to fathom the Bush Administration’s capacity for willful incompetence:
The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials [...]
I read in the paper today that the GOP wants to become the environmentally friendly party. Hilariously, they want to do this by drilling for more oil.
Senate Republicans aim to undercut Democrats’ claim to be the environmentally conscious party by combining their own conservation message [sic] with a longstanding [...]
[T]he Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is planning to ask voters here to change the name of a prize-winning water treatment plant on the shoreline to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.
The plan, naturally hatched in a bar, would place a vote on the November ballot to [...]
It would be nice if we had two political parties in this country, instead of one political party and one rent-seeking scam perpetrated on the American public by a bunch of crooks.
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“This idea of rewarding work instead of wealth is just insane.”
But they’re the party of working Americans. They say so themselves.
[...]Via tee bee, I see that Illinois’s corrupt governor is rapidly losing the support of his own party.
I have a theory that the most corrupt places are those where one party is dominant, but not to the extent that party members are comfortable with the idea of taking [...]
Somehow, a WSJ article trumpeting the fact that “Madison has spent more than $1 million on speed humps, [and] traffic islands” seems designed more to generate controversy than to inform the public about road construction.
A more illuminating explanation — “over the last decade Madison, responding to requests from residents [...]
One candidate is the a son of a famous father. He divorced his first wife in order to marry a wealthy beer heiress, and then used his second wife’s money to go into politics. He’s running on a platform that offers huge tax cuts for wealthy heiresses, and “adversity builds [...]
It’s easy to overlook local retailers and small businesses in an age of outsourcing, mass consumerism, and a pennywise, pound-foolish emphasis on “always low prices”; so I want to give a shout-out to Woldenberg’s clothier in Hilldale Mall.
I stopped in for the first time over lunch today, looking to [...]
If a good Samaritan returns a misplaced laptop to a police station so its owner can claim it, is it really necessary or appropriate for the police to snoop through all of the data in the hope of finding porn?
I’m sure that there’s no actual Fourth Amendment protection in [...]
I woke up this morning to an NPR discussion on the virtues of getting rid of supreme court elections, and having the justices appointed by the governor, instead.
The argument seems to be that the campaign run by Mike Gableman and his third-party surrogates spent too much money, was too negative, [...]
The snowbank in front of the mailbox is down to a couple feet, the daffodils are poking out of the ground, the robins have been here for a while, and tomorrow is Opening Day.
[...]Boulder, Colorado in our newspapers, stealing our nicknames.
When did “nice place to live” became synonymous with “X square miles surrounded by reality”? It’s almost as if there’s been a decades-long attempt by right-wing voices in the media to portray conservatism as some kind of heartland value, and to [...]
A pretty good rule of thumb when it comes to analyzing proposed ideas: when the government rolls out a plan to give X wide new power, it’s a bad idea, regardless of the plan or the identity of X. Plans like this come about because the people in charge [...]
Spencer Ackerman has a great article in The American Prospect taking a look at Barack Obama’s foreign policy team, and at what Obama means when he talks about ending not just the Iraq War, but the mindset that got us stuck there in the first place:
They envision a doctrine [...]
Like stockpiling nuclear weapons, constructing roadside billboards works best if you’re the only one doing it. Fortunately, today’s Capital Times brings good news for everyone who wants to live in a city that looks nice:
The effort to ease Madison’s 40-year ban on erecting new billboards has [...]
Can the Clinton campaign and the GOP continue to insinuate that Obama is a Muslim, while simultaneously painting the former minister of his church as anti-American for his belief — shared with many pastors on the far right of the conservative movement, but [...]
The Cap Times wonders if global warming will affect the Packers. Given their performance in the NFC championship game, it couldn’t hurt.
[...]It’s hard to see how the results last night aren’t a unmitigated disaster for the Democratic Party. Having previously lost eight hundred primaries in a row, there’s no way that Hillary Clinton can win the nomination. Having won Ohio and Texas last night, there’s no way that she can plausibly [...]
Terry McAuliffe is on my television screen, going on about how Ohio and Pennsylvania, but not Missouri or Wisconsin or Virginia or Colorado or Iowa or Minnesota or Washington, are critically important swing states in the fall. Also, caucuses are unfair because every vote should count, but superdelegates are fair [...]
The street light near my house burned out the other day. It took the city less than 24 hours — at a time of the year when the engineering department is overextended and working like crazy because of the weather — to fix the problem. So kudos for building an [...]
Airing a fearmongering commercial in which a sleeping child wears pajamas that say “Good Night”.
[...]Ron Brownstein has an article in the National Journal on the changing demographics of the Democratic Party, namely that we are “growing younger, more affluent, more liberal, and more heavily tilted toward women, Latinos, and African-Americans”.
Brownstein notes that:
this year’s changes have accelerated a clear movement away from key [...]
Today is the beginning of secular Advent: the first day of spring training.
[...]I like Hillary Clinton, and once her presidential ambitions are put to rest, I think she’ll go on to make a superb majority leader. If she wants to, she can be the next Ted Kennedy, a lion of the Democratic Party with a national voice and an undisputed mastery of [...]
The answer appears to be no.
As a reward for winning every single precinct in Dane County, and for winning big in all the neighboring counties as well, Barack Obama will win five delegates from the 2nd CD, while Clinton will win three.
Unfortunately, unless things change, his actual advantage at the [...]
Barack Obama won Wisconsin 58% to 41%, but it’s more fun to look at the local results. He won Dane County 67% to 31%, and he won the city of Madison 71% to 28%.
There are 188 wards reporting in Dane County (*). Barack Obama won all 188 of [...]
Brad Vogel is growing (understandably) weary of the mockery that McCain has endured for his quip about staying in Iraq for a hundred years:
McCain’s explication of the statement is anything but off the wall - it demonstrates a better understanding of U.S. military and global history, as [...]
Can twenty thousand Madison residents stand patiently outside in 8° weather for an hour and a half, in order to get into a packed-to-the-rafters Kohl Center, with people sitting in the aisles, and on the stairs, and in a huge overflow room? Yes we can.
After getting seated, can we wait [...]
This may be the snowiest winter on record (and seriously, how the hell are we getting more snow than Syracuse?), but on the bright side, Opening Day is less than seven weeks away.
[...]Everyone seems to be assuming that Mike Huckabee is the presumptive nominee for Vice President, and that McCain needs to pick him to shore up his conservative base. It doesn’t seem so clear-cut to me, and putting Huckabee on the ticket is a pretty mixed bag:
1. Mike Huckabee isn’t ready [...]
The decision to stop publishing a print version of the Capital Times, save for a free news and op-ed section every Wednesday and a free culture section every Thursday, seems to bode ill for the future of Madison’s news industry.
The Capital Times is a solid little newspaper, and I hope [...]
When you lose the delegate count (845-836), the popular vote (50.2% - 49.8%), and the number of states (14-8), it’s preposterous to send your spokesmen out to claim “victory”.
On a broader level, when I hear Hillary Clinton speak for herself, answering question after question in town hall meetings [...]
George Bush last week:
Just as we trust Americans with their own money, we need to earn their trust by spending their tax dollars wisely. Next week, I’ll send you a budget that terminates or substantially reduces 151 wasteful or bloated programs, totaling more than $18 billion. The budget that [...]
Via the Thoughtful Conservative, it’s the Wisconsin version of Super Bowl trivia (no cheating!):
Which team won Super Bowl I?
Which team had the MVP in Super Bowl I?
Which team won Super Bowl II?
Which team had the MVP in Super Bowl II?
Which team won Super Bowl XXXI?
Which team had the [...]
John McCain usually does better than any other Republican in head-to-head match-ups against both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The polls have shown this repeatedly for many months, but I still have a hard time believing it. Is McCain really the GOP’s strongest general election candidate? To me [...]
Aside from petulantly insisting that Congress “must” do things, he has absolutely nothing to say. At least his opportunities for inflicting his oratory on a country that long ago stopped listening are rapidly running out. He’ll have a speech at the GOP convention, and he’ll probably gin up an “important” [...]
One of the under-noticed results from Iowa was that all three Democratic candidates received more votes than Mike Huckabee, the Republican winner. Almost as many people voted for Barack Obama as voted for all the Republicans put together.
And today, after two weeks of terrible press, Obama more than [...]
Everyone agrees that cable news sucks, and that the political coverage from CNN, et al. is laughably bad. Usually, people blame this on the media’s overemphasis on horse race coverage. I don’t think that’s right.
At least, I don’t object to horse race coverage. I like it. And I imagine that [...]
I’m not really in the target market, but wow, that’s a good-looking commuter laptop. I’m continually impressed with Apple’s ability to hit a price-point a couple hundred dollars more than what one is looking to spend, but with quality and design good enough that, after a little deliberation, you [...]
Is it merely a coincidence that news anchors — Brian Williams tonight, Jim Lehrer or Gwen Ifill pretty much all the time — are vastly better at asking questions that are reasonably tangential to things people want to hear about, than are political journalists like Tim Russert and Chris Matthews? [...]
I got to spend my lunch hour at the DMV today, renewing my driver license. It was news to me, but apparently the state rolled out a new driver license a couple years ago. It’s now almost certain that we have the ugliest and worst-designed driver license in the [...]
Andrew Sullivan quotes a reader’s email:
I’m starting to get the impression that the Clinton camp is trying to lure Obama into playing the race card. The obvious tactics of calling him kid and everything seem to me like a race-bait tactic. First, get Bill to belittle Obama in what [...]
I caught a story on NPR this morning about the success of the surge in reducing violence in Iraq.
I’ve been reluctant to call it a success, since the whole point was to give the various parties the breathing room (lebensraum?) necessary to reach a political settlement. That hasn’t happened, and [...]
Obama is in good shape to win New Hampshire, and after that, South Carolina. But is there any evidence whatsoever for the idea that black people won’t vote for black candidates until white people vote for them first?
This vaguely insulting theory has been proffered by a number of pundits in [...]
The (apparently untrue) rumors that Bill Richardson and Joe Biden are asking their supporters to caucus for Barack Obama are, with the help of a gullible media, doing a pretty good job creating the impression of an last-minute Obama surge.
And taking a page from LBJ, the [...]
Jay asks if The Golden Compass is worth seeing.
Yes it is, and the book is definitely worth reading as well.
The film is absolutely gorgeous: the atmosphere and the scenery are amazing. It would be worth watching even with the sound off, just to see Phillip Pullman’s universe brought [...]
Obviously, a party that is run on behalf of rich people is going to be less sympathetic to unions and collective bargaining than a party that is on the side of the middle class. And obviously, those little shows of support for American labor — buying signs and buttons from [...]
I’m still confused as to how on earth “Stacks” made it through even the most rudimentary quality assurance and usability testing, but three cheers for Leopard’s 10.5.2 update.
[...]The Poinsettia Bowl kicks off tonight, starting a pre-New Year’s gauntlet of lesser bowl games with ridiculous names (*), and also initiating the annual ritual of bellyaching from ESPN about how the BCS sucks (true), about how we need a playoff (not true), and about how the Big Ten and [...]
How much can be read into this anecdote about the Clintons campaigning together in Des Moines yesterday:
On the way out of the store, a woman asked Bill to sign a greenback. Bill obliged, while pointing out “this isn’t legal” to the amusement of folks standing nearby.
A few minutes later, [...]
In contrast to the aftermath of last week’s storms, the streets were in very good condition (*) this morning. The WSJ mentions that the city “doubled the amount of equipment on main roads to clear the heavy accumulations that continued into the afternoon”, which probably had a lot to [...]
After a campaign season full of headlines like “Ziegler faces conflict questions: Husband on bank board; she made rulings anyway”, and after hearing Annette Ziegler argue that, despite state laws to the contrary, she can use her own private “gut check” to determine if there are any conflicts [...]
For the first time in 24 years, an Illinois football season is going to end the way we all hope, back in September, that it will end: with a trip to the Rose Bowl.
Forget the BCS. Forget all the different proposals for a playoff system. If I were [...]
Nate argues:
Why Huckabee is surging in Iowa is that while he takes very socially conservative stances, he also brings an economic populist message.
The problem with this is that Mike Huckabee isn’t an economic populist. His economic proposals consist of a plan to abolish the IRS, “to completely eliminate [...]
Maybe Rudy Giuliani could also run for president of the Alabama football team.
[...]The Democratic Party of Dane County is holding elections tonight.
Russell Wallace dropped off over 40 new memberships ($10/piece) to the Dane County Democratic Party last night, just before the deadline to ensure he will have a healthy majority in the race against Wayne Bigelow. A typical [...]
“But I never knew why it had to have a trash compactor — that’s about the dumbest thing in the universe, when you think about it.”
[...]I’ve said mean things about them in the past (and sometimes they’ve even deserved it), but the Wisconsin State Journal’s editorial board is right on the money in arguing that Dane County’s current transportation infrastructure is unsustainable, that an RTA is needed, and that the health of the [...]
Ross Douthat offers an interesting theory on the future of small government conservatism, but it misses the mark here:
As rich countries get richer, the demand for state services - and particularly middle-class entitlements - may naturally rise, because people increasingly feel like they can afford the pinch of taxation [...]
Via WisOpinion: Don Huebscher, editor of Eau Claire’s Leader-Telegram, thinks trains are a waste of money:
An amendment was offered as part of the Amtrak budget vote that would have capped taxpayer subsidies at $200 per passenger next year, and reducing that cap by $25 per passenger in each [...]
Fred Thompson was making sense on MTP this morning, pointing out in answer to a question about overthrowing the government of Pakistan that:
Well, when you say we allow the head of a country to stay the head of a country, you know, thats, thats, thats kind of a mouthful. [...]
Even if Chuck Schumer is right when he says that Mukasey’s “integrity and independence” are unimpeachable, and even if it’s true that rejecting his nomination might tempt Bush into circumventing the Senate and appointing an acting attorney general (*) who would be worse, voting No still seems like the [...]
The debate last night, which promised and delivered more fireworks than previous iterations, clarified some of my thoughts about the primary.
Debates are probably the wrong forum in which to launch attacks or harsh criticisms. Your opponent will have a chance to respond, immediately blunting the impact of your charge. [...]
About a year ago, I asked what the purpose of the Democratic Party was. It was a post largely inspired by this post by Russell Wallace. He argued that:
The purpose of the Democratic party is to turn the views and values of its members into public policy.
That’s exactly [...]
Connecticut Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd has vowed to put a hold on a Senate bill that reportedly would grant retroactive legal protection to any phone or internet company that helped with the president’s secret, warrantless wiretapping program, Dodd announced via email and on his presidential campaign [...]
I’d like to associate myself with this excellent post at Dane 101, about Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson’s artistic genius, and shame on Pipefitters of State Street.
It’s been almost twelve years since a new Calvin and Hobbes strip has appeared, and there’s still nothing in the daily comics [...]
John McCain, after arguing in favor of an unlimited commitment to Iraq, wants to win hearts and minds in the Arab world:
As president, I will employ every economic, diplomatic, political, legal, and ideological tool at our disposal to aid moderate Muslims — women’s rights campaigners, labor leaders, lawyers, journalists, [...]
For the most part, I think Ned Yost’s been doing a good job. He’s not the Manager of the Year, but I’m certainly not on the Fire Ned Yost bandwagon. He’s adequate, and there aren’t any potential candidates out there who would be obviously better.
Over the course of a [...]
Once upon a time, the two houses of the state legislature were governed by different parties. One party wanted to create a large, new program to guarantee universal health care for everyone in Wisconsin, and raise the taxes necessary to pay for it. They came up with an ambitious but [...]
