Around the Horn Friday: Still 100% Paul Smith Free
Who is bringing da funk and who is kicking it old school…? Let’s see.
Oh snap! I almost forgot my new bro Liberalgeek. His take on Cheney’s 1% doctrine demolishes the pro global warming arguments that you hear from time to time.
Nancy is helping the WNJ collect your funny/depressing Delaware FOIA anecdotes/horror stories.Check out The Delaware Way and send your tales of woe mwallick@delawawareonline.com
Do you know that Sunni and Shia Humans hate each other as much as they hate Jewish Humans? You would if you read Donviti’s De la Whare.
Tommywonk wants you to now that Olabelle is coming to Arden Saturday night. Pssst….earth to Tom, where is the youtube link? These retro (circa 2005) band plugs aint gonna cut it.
Mike Mahaffie wants you to know that Mike Huckabee is a Republican candidate for President who might not make you throw up.
People are loving the “cut the BS” Democratic Congress. Liberal Delight has the facts and figures to back it up.
Karmic Jay has a hundred times more courage than me. Karmic Musings is the most honest blog in our little neck of the woods. That’s all I’m saying.
If only I had read Blue State Rising prior to the Dean visit. I might have made it.
Remember when Peter Pan wanted everyone to clap in order to save Tinkerbell? Delaware Grapevine does. (Get it? Castle is Tinkerbell.)
Okay, this does it. I’m going to be a wingnut blogger. Hube at Colossus of Rhodey gets to go to wingnut conferences and stay in swanky 5 star hotels.
Delaware Watch is right about Delaware’s unconstitutional prison health care system. Read this post and get involved in the creation of an independent Health Care Inspector General.
delaware4obama: Where you at X? I’m getting worried.
Down With Absolutes! touches on the Amanda Marcotte thing. At MYDD and kos I commented that Joe Biden was the first Democrat to join in the utterly f’ed up and “stupidly over-hyped” non-story and throw Edwards under the bus.
First State Politics has a good guest post up keeping with the African American Month theme.
Jokers to the Right has post about Ryan turning 21. Yes, his mental age is still nine, but who is counting.
Kilroy is the chairman of “Republicans for Markell”.
Kavips has this great quote from Congressman Gary Ackerman. The Congressman was questioning Condi Rice about the fact that the military had fired Arabic and Farsi translators after learning the translators were homosexual.
“For some reason, the military seems more afraid of gay people than they are against terrorists. They’re very brave with the terrorists and if the terrorists ever got a hold of this information, they [could] get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad,”
Merit Bound Alley: Joe M, what news yon husband?
One word of advice for my man MOT Newbie: TurboTax.
I was going to add a new wingnut to “Around the Horn Friday” (c) last week because dumbass and Al Mascitti crank caller Paul Smith wrote something last week about getting snitty because poor people had the nerve to go to his middle class church. I forgot though and now I can’t find the post, so I’ll continue to ignore his crap-apalooza.
You made your blog go italiscizo again. FWIW, I am using Turbo Tax. My man Jack has been helping me. Not Markell, Daniels. He’s amazing. Without him, I owe a couple thousand. With him, I see a 5k refund! Woo hoo!
Did you get that email I sent you today from work?
Yeah, That is good stuff. You are turning into quite the hippy.
I’ve always walked that fine, jagged line.
Whoops, sorry, that was my inner Timothy Lear coming out again.
Congratulations to FSP on his successful Colbert-ian search for a new black friend.
FSP: Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would actually get the response I was looking for, but I did…
(if you care to follow the Colbert link, the relevant segment starts about 1:30 into the video).
“Kilroy is the chairman of “Republicans for Markell”.
http://kilroysdelaware.blogspot.com/2007/02/who-is-killing-delaware-middle-class.html
Sorry dude got into one of my rants did put a link back to Delawareliberal and a note (please visit Delaware Liberal this kid shoots from the hip)
Friar Paul Smith is a Mascitti crank caller? I missed this…please someone tell me about it?!
Isn’t Gazziza another one of the devil’s nicknames, like Bealzabub? As far as Smithpalooza goes I think the key phrase is -looza.
Dude — “wingnut”?? Socially, the folks at this conference probably share more in common w/you than what you’d deem a “wingnut.”
But how would I expect you to know that??
Kilroy,
I draft the “Around the Horn” with a big red crayon on an old peice of plywood in the backyard. Not a lot of room for subtlety.
annon,
Check it out.
http://delawareliberal.blogspot.com/2006/06/lone-black-de-goper-makes-it-onto.html
The Colbert “New Black Friend” search has a Delaware connection.
Hube,
Seriously, how do you get invited to a shmooze fest like that?
Seriously, Jase? By writing in-depth, thoughtful blog posts. That’s how *I* got invited (a prof. who shares an interest in one of the topics I’ve covered at Colossus and the old “Cube” and with whom I’ve shared numerous e-mails continuing the discussion invited me) but others were invited by people who recommended them.
Now before you jump down my throat, I’m fully cognizant that not all, or even most, of my Colossus posts are “in-depth and thoughtful.” But evidently, at least on one topic, they were sufficiently so for someone to notice, natch. 😉
More power to you Hube. This points out a big difference bewteen the conservative “movement” and the liberal side of things.
The conservatives are into the care and feeding of a network of the like minded – but progressives tend to piss on each other.
Friar Paul Smith is a Mascitti crank caller? I missed this…please someone tell me about it?!
do tell, what is his handle? Is he the PAul with the wavery voice?
Here, I’l help out delaware4obama…
by John Kass, Chicago Tribune
Unsaid says volumes about Obama’s bid
Published February 11, 2007
A parade of foreign journalists have been tromping by lately, hunting pithy quotes for their dispatches about this weekend’s big announcement by U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Daley).
It’s no surprise that Obama is campaigning for president. But isn’t it exciting that he’s running on the Barack Obama-Abraham Lincoln ticket?
As for helping those visiting colleagues, I happily drew an inquisitive young Frenchman, Guillaume Serina, writing his Obama story for the Journal du Dimanche, or Sunday Journal.
“Who is he, this Obama?” Serina asked, rhetorically.
I suggested that rather than focus on Obama, focus instead on the negative space around the splashy campaign announcement in Springfield.
Listen to giddy tones of the TV cheerleaders, the sweeping rhetoric about Obama transcending this or that, the breathlessness of it all. Yet pay most attention to what is avoided, and you will learn much about the heart of American journalism, and of the liberal candidate being championed.
My wife taught me about negative space years ago, when she was a dancer for a modern dance company, choreographing modern dance concerts. She explained that an audience is compelled to focus on movement, on a dancer’s extended arm, a turning leg, arching neck.
But try willing yourself to see the space not occupied, that space around the dancers’ limbs–the space between their torsos. See how the living bodies define what is not there. That is the negative space. And it can tell a compelling political story too.
Like you, Guillaume Serina has read about Obama and understands the approved national narrative.
It led us, like bread crumbs on the forest floor, to that liturgy in Springfield–Obama invoking Lincoln, seeking the blessing of the emancipator, using a Republican icon to slyly remind Republicans that they, too, once believed in big, intrusive government, even before George W. Bush.
Serina has heard the Obama buzzwords, about the politics of hope versus the politics of cynicism. Of the young senator who transcends the cynical politics of race, when he’s not transcending the cynical politics of the past, except of course, for Saturday’s homage to Lincoln.
All of this is compelling. Americans desire a fresh candidate, someone to believe in, someone if not exactly sinless, then almost. Campaign media advisers deftly (or is that cynically?) manipulate this need, their clients marching toward Iowa.
Obama is not at fault. He seeks the White House and could become a fine president. Right now, he must sell himself as the Democratic antidote to Sen. Hillary Clinton. That’s his job, and he’s doing it well. But what isn’t mentioned this weekend is part of the story too.
He transcends race? How many times have you heard or read that slogan–hundreds, thousands of times? What does it mean, exactly? It is politely vague, yet if Obama were not of African descent, would foreign journalists flock to Springfield?
What if his name were, say, Michael Brannigan or Chris Rypczinski? And he spent years in the Illinois legislature taking orders from the wily state Senate Democratic boss Emil Jones. (Jones once double-dipped adroitly as a city sewer inspector, making him the only sewer inspector in alligator shoes and camel-hair coat.)
And later, say, Brannigan/Rypczinski ran for the U.S. Senate, as other candidates imploded from sex scandals and allegations of spousal abuse, and Brannigan /Rypczinski were elected accidental senator from Illinois? Could either one convince you they were transcending the old politics?
Another aspect often ignored in the approved national narrative is Obama’s perplexing endorsement of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. As the national Democratic Party’s anti-corruption poster child, Obama correctly lectured Republicans on corruption scandals that would help cost them control of Congress.
Daley’s people were all around him by then, the mayor’s brother Bill, and their media consultant, David Axelrod, who also is Obama’s media guy. The Daley administration in Chicago is one of the most corrupt in history, roiling with federal investigations, convictions of top aides, convictions of Outfit-connected mayoral cronies, scandals costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. And amazingly, the uncynical Obama endorsed Daley’s re-election bid.
Yet this will most likely be ignored in national accounts, politely avoided by design. The heroically dead Lincoln will crowd out Chicago’s living and powerful Democratic machine mayor in the weekend’s symbolism. The mention of indicted influence peddler Tony Rezko will most likely be avoided too.
“Rezko? Who is Tony Rezko?” asked Guillaume Serina.
For a second I thought Serina worked for The New York Times. But I wrote Rezko’s name out for him, anyway.
And Rezko is out there now, too, somewhere, suspended around Obama’s campaign, in that negative space that belongs to all candidacies, and tells us so much about them, including this one.
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
This is hilarious; someone is typo-squatting at http://delwareliberal.wordpress.com
I’ve never called Al Mascitti. I don’t even know when he’s on. My last work assignment was out of WDEL’s broadcast range, so I wasn’t able to listen. I don’t know who that crank caller is, but it’s not me. There is a P.J. Smith with the Conservative Caucus, but he’s no relation to me, and I have no involvement with the Conservative Caucus.
And as far as me being snitty about a “poor person” attending my church, that’s not what I wrote at all. Which fits your standard MO: take what someone says, claim it means something completely different and then make the person out to be something evil. Here’s what I wrote:
A guy held up a $20 bill and asked me if I had a ten he could take back as change. I was so stunned I just answered his question with a “I don’t know. I don’t keep track of what people put in.” He then reached into the basket and found two fives, dropped the twenty in and sent me on my way.
I wasn’t bothered by the size of his donation. Nowhere did I make a distinction about class. I was bothered by the inappropriateness of reaching into the collection basket to make change during Mass. If he had asked me for change before or after Mass, no problem. If he hadn’t made a donation at all, no problem.
And while we don’t check bank accounts at the door, this guy didn’t look poor. He had nicer clothes on than I did.
I know it’s easier for your worldview to think all conservatives are evil, selfish jerks. That’s not the case. There’s plenty of those on both sides of the aisle. Try not to think so uncharitably of those you disagree with. You might accidentally learn something.
DIPFest 2007
Paul,
I guess I was thinking that you were one of Al’s crazy regulars. My bad, as the kids say.
You negelected the “nice clothes” detail in you post and it struck me as snitty with all that “11th commandment” stuff.
Annon,
An anti-jason and now a typosquater? I’ve hit the big time!
I know it’s old-fashioned of me, but I like posting my own photos.