What this means

I’m 28. I’ve been interested in politics since 1999, starting with “Lockbox” vs. “Stratergy.” I grew up on Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura. I had conservative uncles and a conservative mom. I had liberal teachers in college. I’ve heard both sides of the argument. 

 

This is different in every way possible.

 

A black man elected president is big. A black man named Barak Hussien Obama is bigger. A black man named Barak Hussien Obama with a crazy preacher, “radical” connections, a father from Kenya and a host of other scary things is a signal that there is a fundamental change in the body politic in our country.

 

What I am most proud of in this election is that for the first time people listened to their common sense and rational thought instead of fears and divisions. For the first time, we elected the candidate that gave us hope instead of threats. People listened to issues instead of distractions. We elected a president that we wanted instead of voting someone off the island. After two elections where the country was scared into a candidate, be it by gay marriage or terrorism or abortion, we said enough is enough. Instead of being forced into a corner by warnings of what might happen if we elected the other opponent, we CHOSE Obama. Bush’s platform for 8 years was you don’t know what the other guy will do. Gore was elite and out of touch with the common man. He would put liberal judges on the court that would erode our society. Kerry was indecisive and a coward, unable to handle the pressure of wars and terrorism. Every week we were reminded of just how scared we should be by warnings and color coded systems. That ended tonight.

Hopefully this will be a lesson to politicans. You can’t smear and slime your opponent and win anymore. The public isn’t going to take it. You can’t robo-call your way into the White House. The public is smarter than that. We have blogs, cable news, e-mail, volunteers, “truth squads.” We have too many sources of information to beileve just you. Campaigns are no longer run by six suits figuring buzz words in an office. It’s people on the street going door to door. It’s Facebook and txt messaging. It’s 1.5 million volunteers getting everyone out to vote. This was people getting Barak Obama elected, not Obama getting people to elect him.

Howard Dean got the ball started in 2004, and even though the wheels fell off, Obama took the ball and ran with it. He didn’t beat Hillary Clinton by outspending her, he won by out-organizing her. He motivated people. He used his role as a community organizer to get the people behind him. He created a wave of support that could not be suppressed and rode it to the White House. This speaks to the new campaign, the kind of campaign that needs to be run from now on. People first, candidate second.

I was terrified over the weekend and all day Tuesday. I was worried that people would listen to the Bill Ayers and the Rev. Wright and socialism. And the Pennsylvania fell. And Ohio. And Florida. And now, after his speech and after the rallies and after the pundits, I feel better about politics, elections and my country.

An Open Letter to McCain Supporters

Dear McCaniacs:

Awww… Sorry you’re angry. Sorry that you feel your candidate is being beat by someone less qualified. I’m sorry you feel that this couldn’t happen. I bet your shocked that someone as dangerous as Obama could win and subject you to four years of rampant liberalism that will obviously bring on the end times. Sorry that your white, war hero, established “maverick” is losing an election to a black guy with a funny name. Sorry about all that. 

DEAL WITH IT.

Last election, I had to watch as George W. Bush, probably the worst president in the history of the country, get reelected, not on his merits but instead based on mocking a war veteran (purple heart band-aids at the convention, Swift Boating) and scaring the American public shitless with terror attacks and queers getting married. Before that, I had to watch the Supreme Court hand the election to that same idiot. So I’ve spent the last eight years watching my country go down the wrong roads on social, economic and military policies. I’ve got $4 a gallon gas, a crashed stock market and a $10 B a month war, not to mention the debt my daughter will inherit. You don’t think I’m mad? You don’t think I’ve spent the last 4 years wondering just how this happened?

So in November, when Obama is giving his acceptance speech and getting ready to turn this ship around, think of this: it was YOUR policies that forced the rest of America do elect a funny looking black man with a funny name that “pals around with terrorists.” Things have been so shitty under your president’s policies that someone named Barak Hussien Obama is going to be president. And btw, how bad does your candidate have to be that people can link his oppentent to a racist preacher and a domestic terrorist and still people think he’s the better choice? 

So get up and shout at McCain. Tell him you can’t believe that the country is going in a new direction. Fight for the same policies that have led to bail-outs and unemployment, no health care and no energy plan. Keep shouting “drill baby drill!”

I’m laughing all the way to the ballot box. It’s our turn now.

One More thing on Palin

All this outrage over the Palin personal life by the right brings up another question from me. Why is that when John Edward’s life was dragged into the spotlight, no one said boo? Why is it when Spitzer’s personal life was dragged into the spotlight there was no outrage? When did politicians personal and family lives become irrelevant and off-limits? And on top of that, as far as I know the only people to really pick up on those stories were bloggers and US Weekly. I don’t think any of the major news networks or cable news were running stories regarding some of the now defunct rumors on her family. When politicians enter public office and enter the cesspool that is media attention, I’m pretty sure they should expect these things to come up every once in a while.

Convention Wrap Up

Now that they’re over, I’ll wrap up my thoughts on the many different aspects of the conventions.

Democrats

Way to play down the bigger-than-life, celebrity, elitist angle with the pillars and the stadium. On top of that, as someone e-mailed into CNN, way to not have any flags on the stage for the first day. Right or wrong, for the last 8 years you’ve been painted as sissy America-hating socialists, and visually I’m not sure you did much to re-assure the populous that you’re not. Generally, Americans tend to focus more on the visuals of what your saying and less on what your actually saying (If anyone needs proof, watch any action hero movie and try and follow the plot, and the try and figure out how it made $1,000,000,000 in a weekend.) So it doesn’t matter how many times you say you’re tough on terror and how much you love the country and how much you say you’re part of the “American dream,” the only thing middle America sees is the big stage and the pomposity of it all.

That said, to any reasonably intelligent person the speeches were great. The platform is great. I think Obama did a good job of setting his plan forward and equalizing McCain’s mantra of patriotism by saying “we all put country first.” He also did a good job of painting McCain as an honorable man (something that democrats have always been good at) but also forcibly and decidedly pointing his policies as wrong (something that democrats have not been good at, despite their best efforts.) Biden’s speech was unimpressive, as his call and response, “That’s not change, That’s more of the same” didn’t fit into the rhythm, nor did it really inspire me to do anything.

The Dark Knight

Nothing would make me happier than to be able to trash this movie. Anyone who knows me understands I like to think I hate everything popular, and this seemed like a prime candidate. I hate superhero movies, and action movies in general are a little to campy for me in the first place, so there was alot of negative ground to work from. That said:

The movie actually rocked.

Heath Ledger was unreal. Normally, I watch movies like this and say “RUN TOM CRUISE” or whoever, because the actors reputation overtakes the role. Watch War of The Worlds and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Why is this scientologist crazy person living while everyone else is getting vaporized. Why did the jumbo jet crash and leave a PERFECTLY DRIVABLE PATH down the street.

Ledger naturally looks like the Joker should look. I think the moment he was cast in the role, people seem to say, “yeah. that makes sense.” But what really gets to you in the movie is the how deep into character he gets. He IS a psychopath. There’s no question about it. For everyone who’s seen the movie, the scene where he meets the mob is probably the best example of it. Between the looks and dialogue its hard to be like “Hey, that’s the gay cowboy” or whatever “wasn’t he the knight in that dumb Disney flick that my girlfriend in college had posters for?” Its frightening how good he is

The plot was any other movies plot, but there were a bunch of twists that were pretty good. Three or four times I leaned over to tell my friend “dead” or “bang” and I think I was wrong twice, which is a pretty low batting average for me. (Here’s an aside for anyone who wants to get into the movie-guessing-whats-going-to-blow-up game: If the camera focuses on a building or car for more than 2 seconds, odds are its going up in flames. See Casino.) Nolan did a good job of keeping people on their heels and tense for the 6 1/2 hrs that movie seemed to go on for.

For all its good parts though, me being the cynical bastard I am couldn’t come out of the movie without one thing to bitch about. Any Jimmy Norton fans will have the same opinion I did after hearing him talk about it, but the voice on Batman was a little too deep. And by a little, I mean McGruff the Crime Dog if he were meant to give kids nightmares deep. You’re mysterious Batman. Lets move on.

So call me a fanboy or whatever, but the movie lived up to my personal hype of it, which was higher than any other movie thats come out in theaters in a while, which was enough to make me come out and see it. And now that its over, I will return to my ways of only seeing Oscar contenders and Reno 911 sequels, should they make another one. I really am a pompous fraud.

Protect and Swindle

Here’s a story in the news about take home cars for the Sherriff’s department.

It’s late, so I’ll just respond to my favorite parts:

In contrast to Brown, however, Howard expressed no concerns about his department’s take-home autos when interviewed recently. But Howard agreed more than he disagreed with the deputies complaining about the patrol fleet. He made these points:

• “There are police agencies in the country that actually believe in assigning all of their personnel take-home cars,” he said, explaining that a police car in a driveway — even an unmarked car recognizable as a police car — indicates an officer is nearby.

Yes. In towns with one Sherrif I’m sure that he takes the car home, because if criminals are afoot they’re the only one who’s gonna come a’gunnin’

• Are all his cars safe?

“A lot of our fleet is more than three years old and relatively high mileage. I wouldn’t describe anything in service now as unsafe. But I think a better word would be to say, not reliable . . . older vehicles have just normal mechanical breakdowns.”

Fancy Speak for no. I would love to chase down the perp but the wheel fell off my cruiser.

• He believes every take-home vehicle can be justified. For example, Doyle, his administrative chief, often works weekends or late into the evening and should not be expected to tie up a personal car that his family might need, Howard said.

Thats what work does. It ties up a car. Until we invent cars that drive you to work and them drive themselves home, everyone is in the same boat on this one. And of course he thinks every take-home vechile can be justified. He’s the one justifying them.

Patronik, his technical services official, has responded from home to cases of missing youths, and his skill in retrieving e-mail has revealed a child’s whereabouts, Howard said.

• Howard wants to be able to call his appointees to work when needed.

“If I ever say, meet me at the office, I don’t have to hear, well, my wife has the car,” he said.

Show me a family that only has one car and I’ll show you someone who churns their own butter. And do people in the private sector get that same luxury. “Gee boss, I’d love to come into work today, but the Misses is using the car to take the pool boy home, and that takes an hr and a half even though he only lives 5 minutes from here. Guess I’m going to be late”

• The cars are for official use only.

“A single gross violation would result in their loss of the car,” Howard said. “Maybe not forever, but at least for a period of time.”

And who, might I ask, would turn a fellow officer in for using his car for non-offical use? Do they put a Sherriff out there to look for the Trailblazer helping a friend move?

• The superintendent of his Holding Center, Robert Koch, and Correctional Facility, Donald Livingston, often go to their facilities at odd hours, “either because of emergencies or to make checks,” Howard said.

Meet the only two men in the world who work “odd hours”, Robert Koch and Donald Livingston.

Wouldn’t their personal car get them there?

“It would,” the sheriff said, “but would it be fair to expect them to do that?”

When my boss calls me into work at 12:30 at night, I don’t ask him to call a cab to get me there on his dollar. I go to work. So yes, I think would be fair to ask them to use there own car to get to and from work.

———

I understand this sounds terribly anti-law enforcement, but its not meant to be as such. Its more along the lines of how many perks do people need, particularly those making enough money in the first place. And as the article states, this isn’t about the patrol cars, its about the people behind the scenes that seem to get the best rides.

The Title

Obviously the title is from Fight Club. But why I’ve decided to go with it is a longer one:

Four years ago a few friends and I decided to start a Website, seeing it as an easy way to early retirement. With our combined powers we would make the funniest, greatest Website of all time and google would have a new force to reckon with. All we had to come up with was a name.

It took us a good two hours to come to an agreement. Jackswastedlife was on the top of my list, but .com was taken. That left Jacks-wasted-life.com or Jackswastedlife.net, which, if I remember, was deemed “gay” by one of us and “who uses hyphens?” by the other. So, being the mature 20 somethings we were, we decided on….

TheAtomicWedgie.com

This is what our website, the site that was to enlighten and bring the masses to a higher plain was to be called. A fifth grade bully’s best tactic was my first adventure into the internets.

Go ahead and look it up. It doesn’t exist (though I think we might still be paying for it.) At it’s prime it had photos (most famously of Toronto’s tribute to fallen industrial workers,) a news section that wasn’t all that bad, and what is possibly the best compilation of all the awful and horrible things I’ve done to myself and others in my life, written by myself and posted to attempt to talk a girl out of dating me. I guess this was my idea of “flirting.” And if I remembered the wording of them, I’d gladly repost them, but by now my self hatred is no longer funny as instead simply miserable.

The content wasn’t why the site failed; overall most of it was pretty cool. It was the conversation I had to have with everyone about the name of the site:

“What’s the name of your site?”

“Ah, theatomicwedgie.com. All one word,” followed by a feable attempt to explain why we chose this.

“Right. I’ll… I’ll see what its all about,” followed by them NEVER seeing what it was all about.

Like I said, this was at least 4 years ago.  But like any good sociopath, I still remember sitting in that room with a pad of paper and coming up with ideas and listening to my two friends shit all over the hyphens and the .net and instead reverting back to dick and fart jokes.

So now, almost 10 years after the movie came out, I’ve chosen to shoehorn a memorable line from it into a blog title. Way to keep up with the times, Slouch

Little Green Idiots

Here’s a post on Little Green Footballs, one of what seems to be the right’s most popular blogs, complaining about a statement from Obama planning to increase public service, saying that he’d like our civilian national security forces to the same size as our actual military force. True, that might be a little much, but from anyone that isn’t a complete ideologue could realize this.

795 times people have found it necessary to comment on this. I didn’t read all of them, but I searched for hurricane, natural disaster, or Katrina. Only “natural disaster” showed up, and that was only once. Hitler, on the other hand, appeared more times than I could count (although many were calling the comparison over the top.) A few of my favorites:

“Why do all tyrants have a cool single name?

Hitler, Napolean, Nero, Saddam, Obama”

“Suicide Obamers”

“Obama is going to create a civilian force with this level of funding and equipment? To do what?

Oh gee, I don’t know, to get elected maybe?”

There’s more, but it would just get tedious. But then this:

You know, if he intended to create such a force to be a tool of national policy to supplement the military, this wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

A force trained in important tasks such a building infrastructure, civil security, diplomatic missions, sanitation, health care, etc. to complement military missions would be a great idea.

But that isn’t what he has in mind.

I’m pretty sure that’s EXACTLY what he had in mind. Imagine that, if we had enough people to fix our failing bridges, to rebuild New Orleans, to help out in Kansas and Missouri with tornadoes and things of that sort. That would be crazy. Obviously he’s doing creating this to enslave the white race.

This is the mindset of the other half of this country. 795 times (as of writing this) people decided that it would be a good idea to add their two cents to this idiotic conversation. God help us all.

I’m bound to pack it up

What Everclear was to the ’90s…..

the White stripes are in the 2000s.

The Best commerical on Television

This is how advertisers see women. Listen to the first line of the commercial; this strong 21st century woman  will no longer be defined by how many dishes she can wash.  That’s what women are: walking dishwashers. As if women should come with a tag that tells you what there Energy Saver rank is to let you know how much she’ll cost in utilities over a year compared to different models.

Sure, that one’s cuter, Rick, but look how much more she’ll cost me in gas bills over a year. We’ll take the ugly more efficient one please.

Sure, some women are CEOs and one was even running for president, but this happy homemaker is apparently struggling to get out from under the oppression of the dish towel. But here comes Dixie, with their disposable paper plates to rescue women from what has to be their biggest problem:how can I get the kids to soccer practice and dance practice and playdates and still have time to pick up my perscription for Prozac if I have to load a dishwasher.

If a man ever said these things, we’d be sexist and pricks. But Dixie’s advertising agency writes this, sends it to Dixie, and Dixie obviously said “yeah, thats the message we’re trying to get across.”

Personally, I think its funny, soley becuase I have very little shockabilty left in me. I’ve seen enough beer and car commericals to come to expect this kind of stuff. But if I was a woman and watched this, I might start wondering just how dumb Dixie thinks I am. But few people do. We’ve taken advertising in as background noise, or maybe the constant ringing in our ears that we’ve all learned to live with.