Month: April 2009

Pony, Bitches!2 Comments

A Long Way To Go

The White house isclaiming that Chimpy will hit 45% job approval by the end of his “legacy year”. Gallup says he has a long way to go. Gallup’s latest national poll, conducted Jan. 4-6, finds 32% of Americans approving of the job Bush is doing as president and a mere 23% approving of the job Congress is doing. The previous figures were 32% and 22%, respectively. More generally, Bush’s approval rating has bobbed between 31% and 34% for almost the entire period from May 2007 through today, averaging 33%. Continue reading A Long Way To Go

Uncategorized9 Comments

Church + State + Plucky Kids = Lawsuit!

Several random thoughtsas the kids at Elmbrook High School file suitagainst the school district for holding graduation in a mega-church: – I grew up around that area and found that most of these kids would piss and moan about anything, so it comes as no surprise to me this is going on. Apparently being rich is a major pain in the ass, or so I’m told on the new 90210… – Did I miss the part where the students are forced into a prayer huddle before they graduate? Is there an “Our Father” requirement before the kid can get a … Continue reading Church + State + Plucky Kids = Lawsuit!

Uncategorized4 Comments

Quitting Time Booster Shot

Yeah, this is how I feel when I’m forced to watch Grey’s Anatomy… – Someone needs to find the guys and gals who are responsible for Grey’s Anatomy and stab them in the heart with a pencil. First of all, if the people on that show were having as much sex in real life as the show intimates that the characters are, the guys would look like Ken dolls and the women would look like the Holland Tunnel. Second, it’s 9 p.m. on a Thursday, it’s fucking up my ability to watch the basketball playoffs because the Missus TiVOs it. … Continue reading Quitting Time Booster Shot

Uncategorized4 Comments

Disturbing

Two stories. First is from Times Online titled…“Rape, beatings and bribery: Iraqi police out of control.” It opens with: The brief film is deeply disturbing, even in a country famed for its al-Qaeda beheading videos and sniper snuff movies. The young woman, evidently drugged, vomiting and occasionally calling for her mother, tries weakly to stop the grinning man in a white T-shirt and boxer shorts from pulling off her underwear. She fails. The man, instructing the cameraman to shoot the scene with his mobile phone from various angles, rapes her. That is not the only shocking aspect of the film, … Continue reading Disturbing

Diary4 Comments

Friday Ferretblogging: Gushy Foods Edition

For whatever reason, the boys have decided to switch places. Puck, as you can see, has bulked up to the size of a small bus. And Riot, who was once nicknamed Meatwad around these parts, slimmed down so fast we thought something might be wrong, and so resorted to feeding him turkey baby food, which he gobbled with the enthusiasm of the starving, thus proving we were just suckers for falling for his little trick. OM NOM NOM. A. Continue reading Friday Ferretblogging: Gushy Foods Edition

So Called Liberal Media7 Comments

This Blog Post Alone Will Destroy Entire Networks of Community Weeklies

Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune laid people off in part, we’re told, because of the Interwebs and the destruction they hath wrought in printworld: “The Chicago Tribune today reduced its newsroom staff, a response to the economic downturn and changes in the media business model.” Today, wediscover: According to the motion, Tribune Co.’s publishing division generated $461 million in operating cash flow last year, a margin of 16.7 percent “during one of the worst years in newspaper advertising history.” A brief show of hands, please, from the business-minded among us: Who here reading would be pleased to get a 16.7 percent … Continue reading This Blog Post Alone Will Destroy Entire Networks of Community Weeklies

Immoral Values17 Comments

Scalia: Class Act

I would not be alone in a room with this man for all the beer in Green Bay: David O’Neil, an assistant to the solicitor general representing the federal government, tried to steer a middle course. The Fourth Amendment had been violated, he said, because school officials did not have a reasonable suspicion that Ms. Redding had secreted drugs in her undergarments. But Mr. O’Neil added that Ms. Redding should not be allowed to sue the assistant principal who ordered the search, because the law was unclear at the time. JusticeAntonin Scalia challenged him on the first point. “You search … Continue reading Scalia: Class Act

So Called Liberal Media2 Comments

Wow. Just … Wow.

Assholes: TheSuburban Journals, sister paper to theSt. Louis Post-Dispatch, last weeklaid off the reporter who took a bullet in the hand during the infamous February 7, 2008, Kirkwood City Council shootings. Todd Smith, 37, and aJournals reporter since September 2006, was the only person injured in the shootings to survive. He said the newspaper laid him off last Wednesday for budgetary reasons. “I got called in Tuesday and told I needed to be at a meeting on Wednesday,” Smith said. “I’d heard that thePost and [an unnamed] reporter won an award for the Kirkwood coverage, so at first I thought … Continue reading Wow. Just … Wow.

Economy3 Comments

Holy Crap!™

Double-Whammy! Home prices fell a record 1.7 percent in the first quarter and the number of workers on jobless benefit rolls held at a four-year high, underscoring the economy’s woes, data on Thursday showed. The continued slump in housing prices in the first quarter pushed them 3.1 percent below their year-ago level, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said. Like the quarter-to-quarter drop, the decline was the biggest in the 17 years the housing regulator has tracked the data. OFHEO said prices fell 0.4 percent in March from February and are now down 3.7 percent from their April 2007 … Continue reading Holy Crap!™

Uncategorized6 Comments

Teabagging for God & Country

Interesting howsimilar therecaps are, right down tocrowd estimates, fear of socialism (European-style to the midwesterner, plain old liberal for the Gret Steter), etc. etc. You know, part of me feels a little sorry for these folks–but only a little. They obviously don’t understand modern civil society. They feel like they’ve been cheated, and they have been, although their understanding of just who’s cheating them and how is about as close to zero as it gets. In fact, they stubbornly insist on believing in the very con artists — or neo-con artists — who lead them around like sheep. Which is … Continue reading Teabagging for God & Country

Uncategorized1 Comment

Objectively Pro-Soviet

OK, to be technical, it’s “Objectively Pro-Red China” — and Objectively Pro-Torture; however, it’s ironic that the very people screeching about “socialist” Obama spent the last eight years shilling for a regime that literally took their interrogation cues from the commie handbook for eliciting false confessions. And now we know why they needed false confessions, i.e., that was a feature, not a bug. Ironic, but not surprising. Intellectual dishonesty is pretty much the neo-con’s stock in trade — otherwise they’d be embarrassed to claim their fealty to “small government” while simultaneously supporting both the military and prison industrial complexes, not … Continue reading Objectively Pro-Soviet

Books, Political Crack4 Comments

Part I: Catching the first light

[I decided I wanted to spend a couple or three posts over some Wednesdays focusing on one of my favorite books, the man who wrote that book, and the characters and setting.The Gay Place is a novel made up of three smaller novellas. It’s mostly about politics and politicians, and most of the action occurs in 1950s Austin. I wanted to ruminate some on it here because it’s got a lot to offer anyone addicted to that ol’ political crack monkey and also because while it’s widely regarded as a masterwork, it’s still considered somewhat obscure. ]

p>Had he lasted till now instead of burning out three decades ago, Billy Lee Brammer would have been 80 years old yesterday. But Billy Lee didn’t make it.

He died of a drug overdose in February, 1978, something that didn’t seem to surprise anyone who knew him. The last few years of his life weren’t kind, he’d run out of health and money, hadn’t held a job since he’d lost a gig as a cook in theDriskill, and he’d lost that after adrug bust back in 1974:

He had over an ounce of pure crystal methedrine in his pocket on the night he was arrested, quite by accident, having caught a ride with a friend who proved to be the subject of a statewide police alert and was soon zooming down South Lamar in Austin barely ahead of several patrol cars. Following the inevitable smash-up, there was a bit of a shoot-out, Billy huddling all the while on the floor of the back seat frantically groping for the plate-glass bifocals he needed to see with. He looked so incredibly harmless that not even the police could take him for a criminal. It was two hours before they bothered to search him, but it had been years since he’d had his hands on a whole ounce of speed and he just couldn’t bring himself to throw it away.

So that was the beginning of the down-and-out end of Billy Lee Brammer, a man who’d once been the epitome of an insider’s insider. He’d been a confidant so close to theMaster of the Senate and future president that he even ghost-wrote LBJ’s letters home to LadyBird and the girls. An intellectual who rubbed shoulders with everyone from Ann Richards to Eliot Janeway to Ken Kesey, Brammer also served as mentor and influence to a seemingly endless list of authors, journalists, editors, even musicians and actors.

Billy Lee Brammer was a short soft-spoken Texan who once, just once, wrote a book, The Gay Place.

That’s right, just the one, and it wasn’t just a good book, but a great one. No less than Gore Vidal called it “an American classic,” Willie Morris
said it was “the best novel about American Politics in our time.”

There are two classic American political novels. One is All the King’s Men…the other is The Gay Place, a stunning, original, intensely human novel inspired by Lyndon Johnson…It will be read a hundred years from now.” — David Halberstam, New York Times Book Review

Glowing as Halberstam’s review may be, I’d argue that the book was not inspired by Lyndon Johnson, at least not originally. Those who are still invested in perceiving LBJ in only one dimension, the people who won’t even deign to read the amazingRobert CaroPath to Power series, will likely also not care to readThe Gay Place. In both instances, it’s their loss if they really are interested in American political history, about how politics really works. Neither Caro’s books orThe Gay Place are truly “about” or inspired by the real or fictionalized LBJ. They’re about power, about how someone with that much power thinks and operates and achieves or fails.

—–

Continue reading “Part I: Catching the first light”

Stupid Republican Tricks21 Comments

We Keep Walking Away

Hey Peggy. Fuck you, youshallow, trivial, solipisistic moral dsylexic: “Some things in life need to be mysterious,” said Noonan, adding, “Sometimes you need to just keep walking.” She also added: “It’s hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking, oh, much good will come of that.” I’m sorry, Peg, is it boring around the house these days? Is it just such a bummer having to read about how the president whose leg you humped like a beagle on ecstasy hired a bunch of people to break the … Continue reading We Keep Walking Away

Faith20 Comments

So Long As There Are Still Sheep In America

Bill Donohue will remain un-laid: LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Director Ron Howard on Tuesday defended his film adaptation of “The Da Vinci Code” author Dan Brown’s “Angels & Demons” from criticism that it smears the Roman Catholic Church, heightening an ongoing battle over fictional depictions of the Vatican. Howard, who also directed the 2006 movie adaptation of “The Da Vinci Code,” posted a blog at The Huffington Post website saying that neither he nor his new movie “Angels & Demons,” which debuts in May and stars Tom Hanks, are anti-Catholic. “And let me be a little controversial: I believe Catholics, … Continue reading So Long As There Are Still Sheep In America

Economy3 Comments

And unhappiness is treason

American economic mythology. Coney Island, which lost its beloved Astroland amusement park last summer after 46 glorious years, is set to be home to the rebirth of one of the area’s original landmarks, Dreamland. Constructed in 1904, Dreamland Park was one of the first entertainments built on Coney Island. It burned to the ground in 1911, following a fire that started appropriately enough at the “Hell Gate” attraction. Now, nearly a century later, Thor Equities, the polarizing real estate developer who bought the site in 2006 for $30 million, is set to bring Dreamland back. <…> “To throw some carnival … Continue reading And unhappiness is treason

Music, Of Interest

Serious business

“Aretha’s Gold” was the first album I ever bought the very first time I had any money ever to buy anything besides gum. And I was so young and obsessed with that album, and this song, I still thought, you know, maybe one day I’d “grow” into being able to sing just like her. HA! Life, you teach the lessons so hard. kellydeal(not that one, the one w/out the “e”) Speaking of doctors, serious business, and feeling good, send your welcome back home/get better vibes toracymind, who’s gettin’ outta jail today. Continue reading Serious business

Economy10 Comments

Keep Teabagging

The idea that you shouldn’t have to pay anything for anything is really working out great: Tinley Park officials can look to a few neighbors for advice as the village considers charging residents and businesses a fee when firefighters are called to their properties. Park Forest for more than a dozen years has charged fees for responding to false fire alarms, vehicle fires and extrications, Park Forest Deputy Fire Chief Bruce Ziegle said. Matteson charges fees when firefighters douse burning vehicles and rescue people in confined spaces, among other incidents, Fire Chief Nick Wilkens said. Tinley Park has been researching … Continue reading Keep Teabagging

Uncategorized9 Comments

Torture x 183

Go read Marcywho has been reading the torture memos. OK so we learn that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in a one month period. That information came via a CIA IG Report. As Marcy notes: The CIA wants you to believe waterboarding is effective. Yet somehow, it took them 183 applications of the waterboard in a one month period to get what they claimed was cooperation out of KSM. They certainly did work to make us believe waterboarding was effective. You may remember this story, reported on September 13, 2007 by Brian Ross, from former intelligence/CIA officer sources: … Continue reading Torture x 183

Geek Cred2 Comments

This is the Future, Y’all

I’m not finding myself with a lot of sympathy for Meghan McCain’s discovery that a lot of weaselly creeps who have made money off being assholes in public fora turn out to be … weaselly, creepy assholes, but I have to admitthis is a good line: It’s really scary when the guy who houses hisinmates in tents in the summer and whose most visible public-relations success involvespink underwear, boxers, and handcuffs tells you to tone it down. Unfortunately she then goes on to deplore the reporting of what she Twitters, which … EVERYBODY CAN SEE THE INTERNET. For fifteen years … Continue reading This is the Future, Y’all

Stupid Republican Tricks5 Comments

Today on Tommy T’s Obsession With The Freeperati – Journalism support edition

Ok folks – before we get silly, a serious note.Athenae started the ball rolling early last week, asking First Draft readers to fund two student journalism projects.Both were funded completely by the end of that day (?!?!?!).I didn’t get to contribute because my bi-weekly pay day wasn’t until last Friday.So –wander over here and look at this one –not only are the students concentrating on blogging, but on becoming critical consumers of media. Could anything be more important than teaching your students how to separate spin from reality by comparing what multiple sources say about the same events and divining … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession With The Freeperati – Journalism support edition

So Called Liberal Media11 Comments

A Perfect Storm of Wanking and Dumbassery

What is “Howard Kurtz interviewing David Brooks,” Alex? An erudite author and talking head, Brooks, 47, is sometimes cast as the left’s favorite conservative. At times he seems to delight in taking on his own side, drawing fire from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, and yet he drives some liberals up the wall. “I look at a lot of commentary, and so much of it is campaign advocacy for one side or another,” he said. “That turns me off in a visceral way.” Brooks pronounces himself “disappointed” in both Obama and John McCain. Right. It’s just so tiresome. See this, … Continue reading A Perfect Storm of Wanking and Dumbassery