I <3 The Scorpions

Woohoo! With Dolly officially a Hurricane, I’m ready to kick off cable news’ favorite season with one of my favorite songs.

And apparently Dolly could be a sequel to the one that happened a few years ago. Katarina? Korrine? Damn, I forgot its name.

Coastal officials worried today that Hurricane Dolly may bring so much rain that flooding could break through the levees holding back the Rio Grande.

The Rio Grande? I wonder if that’ll bring in a flood of illegal immigrants too? Let’s enlist this guy to hold ‘em back:

Here’s to levees, makeshift plywood window covers, high winds, flooding, exploding glass, sinking cars and weather reporters making asses of themselves!

The troops are bored and poor

Who’s this guy kidding?  Did he really expect the marines to allow him to sell his name while still serving overseas?

I have recently been informed that my intent with “Choose My Name,” while being a Federal employee, violates Federal regulation. Therefore, the auction of my naming rights ends at this moment.

Hell, I’m in need of money.  I think I’ll auction off the naming rights to my fingers on ebay.  Yes, the very same fingers that bring you this blog.

Anchor Babies & Latin Jazz

For all the nitwits who believed the reaction to Hurricane Katrina was a calculated move - or even worse, Katrina’s severity scientifically blown up - to rid New Orleans of its minority population should take heart.

The Times reports:

In the latest twist to the demographic transformation of New Orleans since it was swamped by Hurricane Katrina last year, hundreds of babies are being born to Latino immigrant workers, both legal and illegal, who flocked to the city to toil on its reconstruction.

Rest assured the morons and bigots will grapple onto this for dear life. It’s another opportunity to jump onto the Illegal Immigration non-issue again. What a lively debate about the real issues facing our nation and our neighbors!

Everybody knows there are zero white people who work in construction. I myself have never seen a white carpenter, nor a white drywaller, not a white tiling contractor. They simply don’t exist. It’s all part of the ‘jobs Americans won’t do’ list.

It also adds a new and incredibly American word to the lexicon. “Anchor baby.”

Anchor baby: a pejorative term used to refer to a child born in the United States to illegal immigrants or other non-citizens. The baby becomes the “anchor” of the chain by which its family may receive benefits from social programs, and by which that family’s members may themselves eventually become citizens of the United States.

Anyone want to get a pool going as to how long it’ll be before we see “anchor baby” scroll across the bottom of Fox News?

There’s a certain level of poetic justice to a democratic stronghold’s obliteration, only to be repopulated with the children of much-hated illegal immigrants.

But I’m excited to hear the sounds coming out of New Orleans within a few decades. You can add a flamenco guitar to that mean sax and splash symbol.

Can you dig?

Double your pleasure, half the fun & Facebook politics

Hoho! Yes yes. This merits some thought. Adding a blog? What self-indulgence. I struggle with this Blog and can’t imagine how much duller a second would be.

Sometimes I jab a USB drive into my eye after I read a post the next morning (this one won’t be an exception… so if I have a red eye tomorrow, console me).

You may not have noticed, but I try to see if the micro is a reflection of the macro. I fail miserably 99.9% of the time, but even that has its appeals. A second blog won’t allow me that pleasure.

The idea reeks of a contrived attempt at convergence. My approach to a journalistic story for a blog would be mechanically different from one I’m sending to print. I’ll prove this to you on the orgy known as Election Night.

I do like suggestions of community blogs, and feel that would be much more productive on many levels. We’ll get the tools down, as well as some team work in. I also believe it has much more legitimacy (at face value anyway).

***

Some of my craft classmates saw me stroll in to class today with a massive envelope, MRI in block letters across the front. No worries, it’s only three degenerated disks in my thoracic spinal area. I half-jokingly told the doc it was from my workload in school.

***

On to the elections and the outstanding yet meaningless contribution technology has made to it. I’m talking about Facebook (again). They’ve added an “election pulse” option to all profiles, allowing you to list candidates you support.

All candidates have profiles on this social networking site, though I’m not sure if they are legitimately maintained by the candidates, PAC’s or run by Facebook.

The governator, Arnold Schwazenegger, seems to have a legit page. I’m only assuming because he doesn’t have the standard issue American flag as his profile picture. He’s also eating the competition alive, with a 33 point lead over the democratic challenger Phil Angelides. He’s eating him like a cake.

 

This controlled madness constitutes the highest level of political activism many of Facebook’s stoned, pimply users will undertake.

Which brings up the question of legitimacy. How many of these supporters are falling into the trap of youth-partisanship, and how many are genuinely informed on the issues and candidates?

More importantly, how many of these “supporters” will show up at the polls? If these voting patterns transfer over on election day, we might have a flood of democrats winning offices nationwide.

How other contested races are coming up in Facebook’s Election Pulse:

Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has a 12 point lead over Tom Kean Jr. (R).
Sherrod Brown’s lead over Mike Dewine (R-OH) jumped by 15 points in a single day, and is at 36 points.

Other important candidates losing according to the Election Pulse:

Rick Santorum (R-PA), Joe Leiberman (I-CT), Ken Blackwell (R-OH), Lincoln Chaffee (R-RI), and George Allen (R-VA).

If nothing else, maybe a social networking site like Facebook can spark some semblance of interest in politics among the bong-hitting, Halo-playing population that is my generation.

And maybe, just maybe, Kinky Friedman will be governor of Texas one day.

Heads, Tails… or Torso?

I’m always insulted by the existence of the two party system.  No issue facing the nation today is black and white, and there’s always more than two options.  Most rational people know that, as do most politicians.

But our national discourse is vaguely similar to this:

So some Republican governors fall left of center on some issues?  Well, to New Yorkers, this is no shock.  We’ve got the most liberal republicans in the entire nation running our city.

But I’ve tried to consider the possible benefits of having two parties run everything. Here’s what I’ve come up with, and please add to my list:

Better fundraising - take a bunch of people with a hundreds of different issues, and choose the side that most benefits corporate America, and you’ll enjoy a massive boost to your campaign funds.

Safety in numbers - want to get a proposal through to the House?  Well, if you’re lucky enough to be in the majority party, it’ll most likely get through to the floor, unless you propose national Child Molester Apperciation day.  Not a good career move.

Dumb Joe Voter down - Want to get voters to blindly accept your stance on issues they don’t understand just cause you’re a [insert party here]?  The sad part is many voters check off ballots along party line, often making choices that HURTS them in the long run.

Disagree?  Got any more you can add?  I DARE you to, SWINE!

Let Freedom dry in the sun

Freedom is fine when you give it to people with some class, dignity and respect. Like these guys…

But 9/11/06 became a circus of the highest order. Another wasted get together, with groups of self-interested swine peddling their swill.

Evangelicals preaching Armageddon competed with a string quartet, a Japanese Kabuki dancer, and a rally for the “forgotten” undocumented workers who died during the WTC attacks or were sickened cleaning contaminated office buildings. There was even a group lobbying to “free Pakistan.”

Maybe I’d be willing to give up some freedom and a get lot more police brutality…

But brutality resides, as we all know, within the beltway. The greatest intellectual battle of the century reached a rolling boil on Capitol Hill!

“You’re soft on homeland security”
“No we’re not!”
“Oh yeah, what’s your plan”
“You… You stop politicizing 9/11″

Ted Kennedy burped out his party’s knee jerk reaction less than half an hour after Bush’s 9/11 address. He was better off sleeping on it.

The democrats have become a community college class that’s trying to screw with the Ivy Leaguers. Not one party member can describe the five greatest democratic principals. No one can! They have none.

Add to that, the lack of central leadership, uncertainty on how to spread money and you have a basketcase of a party that thinks it’s going to win the House… and people comment on low voter turnout.

Maybe I’d be willing to give up voting rights and be fatalistic about my government. This would be easier to accept if we weren’t responsible for it.

Maybe God did it? He might be responsible…

Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history.

The ‘Third Awakening?’ I’m skeptical. Maybe I’d be willing to give up my freedom of religion and hope the people of this country wake up.

Otherwise, I’d like to be tortured by the CIA. And make it sooner rather than later.

The biggest sticking point, [Senators] said, was how narrowly to define practices that might subject CIA interrogators or others to charges of committing war crimes.

I’d commit a war crime… in the war on drugs!

Marijuana can improve the effectiveness of drug therapy for hepatitis C, a potentially deadly viral infection that affects more than 3 million Americans, a study has found. The work adds to a growing literature supporting the notion that in some circumstances pot can offer medical benefits.

I can’t stand the wacky terbacky, but if it helps someone, why not?

I’d be willing to give up on this country if Americans were as dumb as they seem. But I believe they aren’t, so I’m not quitting yet…

Unwarranted apologies

Zeyad finally showed up at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism after leaving Baghdad and spending three months in Jordan. I showed him where the offices were. Hey, it fulfilled my one good deed of the day.

In case you’re wondering, Blog Jarvis described Zeyad as:

the amazing blogger behind Healing Iraq, a founding father of the Iraqi blogosphere

A classmate and I had the opportunity to spend some time talking to Zeyad today, and I was overwhelmed by the urge to apologize. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and say, “God dammit man! I can’t imagine what you’ve seen or felt, but I’m sorry we lit the fuse on the firecracker!”

I really wanted to apologize for being the dumb, “Support our troops” and Freedom Fries American. For not being able to point out Baghdad on a map.
Zeyad gave me some peace by telling me the war is beyond America now. He might have said that just to make me feel better. Or he could be right.

In the bombings in Baghdad on Thursday, a roadside bomb that exploded about 7:30 a.m. near the mosque in the Cairo neighborhood killed three people and wounded 16 others, the Interior Ministry official said. About 9:30 a.m., a suicide car bomber detonated a bomb near police vehicles whose tanks were being filled at a gas station in the Karrada district, killing 10 people — some of them police officers — and wounding 17, the official said.

At 10:45 a.m., two more people were killed and 23 wounded when a second suicide car bomber exploded a bomb in the Bab al Sharji district, a mile north of the gas station, near the Interior Ministry’s headquarters. At 3:30 p.m., a third suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle in the Kadisiya neighborhood near a police convoy, wounding seven police commandos, the Interior Ministry official said. At 7:15 p.m., a roadside bomb killed a woman and wounded 13 others in the Amil district.

On Wednesday, Ahmad al-Mashhadani, nephew of Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker of Parliament, was abducted while driving his car in northwest Baghdad, the Interior Ministry official said. Also on Wednesday, a roadside bomb killed two people at the funeral of a Shiite militia leader.

I wonder if Zeyad’s as upset about news like this being buried as I am. I wonder if he realizes just how embedded we are in a bubble of ignorance.

It’s here that our news media, even the Times, has become impotent. They all need a solid brass set and a double dose of Viagra.

Maybe that’s where Zeyad can help.

I was surprised to find out that no one gave him a New York Salute yet. That would be this: