Barack Obama Never Visits Our Blog

This asshole never invited the Stinque.com on his stupid show either. He has on all these halfwit half-hearted progressives and someone fails to recognize the standard bearers of progressive thought and apolcalyptic vulgarity.

Didn’t we already try having an Administration slavishly loyal to a news network?

Didn’t it work out well with Sean Hannity as Minister of Truth for Dubya?

Haha! As much as I love Philly (sometimes), damn if Tweety isn’t a fucking embarrassment to me. Ed was the thing that pushed me over the edge to News Hour. And I thank him.

@JNOV: Cable nooz taking a deep nosedive to the mediocre center pushed me to the News Hour, but this Ed dude is just Rick Sanchez without the giggle factor.

@FlyingChainSaw: I just caught Matt Taibi on this Ali V show on CNN, and he actually called for Wall St. ganglords to be shown “Getting shanked on Rikers”. I nominate him for the Stinque Broadcasting Excellence Award.

oh and hey! Nice to be soberin the same time zone as y’all!

Hey! I like B5.

But yes, you do have a point.

@Nabisco: Yeah, better if he could hold out a wedding dress for Hank Paulson to wear in the exercise yard at the supermax. “They’ll love you in chifon, Hankicakes; they’ll love you to fucking death, asshole.”

Ed has his moments, but they’re mostly on his radio show – I used to be an avid listener. It’s something I struggle with daily – President McCain would have been a disaster, and Obama is great in comparison, but there is necessarily compromise when actually governing. Or not … I vacillate.

@blogenfreude: Compromise in legislating, yes, although I don’t see Demrats lining up to do anything about the extra-Constitutional filibuster.

And compromise in governing? Well, if only Barry would enforce the War Crimes Act, I might think better of him. Feel free to submit your own ten-page list of Bushie decisions since January 2009.

I spoke on a panel at Netroots Nation last Friday. A lot of self-importance there, given how many of those guys appear to be living in grandma’s basement with no job or girlfriend. But, I have to say, the sports book at the Rio (in Vegas) is pretty awesome and you can get a sandwich there that would choke a tiger for $10.

Man, how do I get a shout out from The Old Spice Dude?

@nojo: I would like it as well, but he’d be a one-term president for sure. If I could be sure he’d do it second term, I’d be cheerleading. But he won’t. So sad.

@blogenfreude: Barry’s actually bragged about being a one-term president, if that’s what it takes to get the job done.

My take: Make Difficult Governing Decisions all you want, but don’t go crying about the lack of enthusiasm among erstwhile supporters.

@Dodgerblue: I have issues with Percy Weasley types. Say, what’s Hunter doing these days?

Thoroughly unrelated, but I think people will enjoy it. From the comments in the current Slashdot poll:

How do you turn a duck into a soul singer?

Stick it in the microwave till it’s bill withers.

Admittedly, I had to look it up. Then I LOLd. :)

Quite an interesting piece at Wash Monthly quoting Krauthammer (I know) comparing Obama to Reagan at this point. Seems the right-wing equivalent of us was even more down on Ronnie than we seem to be on Hopey. Personally I think we all need to be very very careful what we wish for. War crimes was never a possibility in this country. Ever. To say, oh well, he’s better than the Republicans would have been, is just a little unrealistic. We would be in far worse shape had McCain won. If they win too much in Nov there will be a full-scale melt-down. Hopey may not be everything we want but he’s better than we’ve had in years. And they have achieved a lot. Not everything we wanted but more than I ever thought possible. He was never left-wing. He was always centrist. And I think we all need to start praying they don’t get creamed in Nov because we will be paying the price.

@al2o3cr: … right, right…

@al2o3cr: That’s great!

@Dodgerblue: Is that the Sigfield or Roy Sandwich, then?

@Benedick: Krauthammer’s right, but both sides are now engaged in lowering expectations so folks don’t forget to vote.

And hey, Bubba was certainly better than the alternatives, but I’ve never forgiven him for frying a dude just to prove his cojones.

Yes, a GOP House would be a truly ugly thing, but I’m not engaged in partisan cheerleading. Demrats don’t get credit for not being Repugs.

@al2o3cr: Pfft. Bill Withers: Abusive Asshole.

@Benedick: Couldn’t agree more.

@Benedick: Okay, having read Benen’s take today (as well as his original notice when he posted it), I’m reminded that I pretty much checked out between the air-controller strike and Iran-Contra — the Republic was bad enough without me rubbing my face in it — so I don’t recall first-term Ronnie-bashing.

And it’s long been noted that Saint Ronnie totally ignored the wingnuts yapping at his door, so I’ll pass on that.

So we’re left with something of a retrospective take: Things are better than they seem. Half-measures are better than none at all, and crawling in the right direction is preferable to running in the opposite.

All true.

What bothers me is the long and continuing string of Own Goals, starting symbolically with Rick Warren, and continuing substantively with national-security policy. Executive summary: They’ve never given me anything to cheer wholeheartedly. Just one bummer after another, most of which can be found in Greenwald’s archives.

This may indeed be as good as it gets — we are talking about Amurrica, after all — but I’m not in a mood to settle, although I’ll be happy to revise my judgment with time.

Say, ten or twenty years. If I’m still around.

@nojo: I could settle for Windows if I had to, but I’d rather use a Mac.

@nojo: Okay, so this is TOTALLY off topic, and I could read about this somewhere else, but I’m kinda (read: very) lazy, and I’m interested on your take on the whole Windows was stolen from Apple thing.

The first computer I ever used ran BASIC, and I can’t even remember what the stupid program I wrote did. Maybe I put in ten lines of code so it would say, “Hi, JNOV!” or whatever. Dad learned FORTRAN and COBOL OTJ back in the day, and my mother used to use be a key-punch operator. I was raised on these things, but I know like nothing about them, really.

I remember DOS. BWAHAHAHAHAHA! The only decent thing about that machine (at my job) was Solitaire.

THEN Drexel was the first school (I believe) to force students to buy computers — they used Macintoshes, and that was our first home computer (Mom jacked one from work).

Then we made the HUGE mistake of dabbling in the PC world. I blew up more PacBells, Dells, Sonys, Gateways, etc. that I can count.

Ramble. Ramble.

So, did Gates steal the “window” idea from Apple or what? I’ve heard there was some licensing issue, that first they were maybe kinda collaborating, but then all hell broke lose.

@JNOV: No.

Xerox PARC pioneered the window/mouse approach in the late ’70s. Jobs and some Apple dudes visited the Xerox lab, came away inspired, licensed some patents, futzed a lot, and produced Lisa/Mac.

Gates, who had pulled a smooth trick buying DR-DOS then licensing it to IBM, later licensed some elements from Apple (such as overlapping views) to produce Windows 1.0.

This dispute arose — this is all from memory — over Windows 2.0. Apple claimed that its license didn’t apply to succeeding versions. Microsoft demurred.

So, no theft, not in any legal sense. And Apple didn’t “invent” a lot of what it gets credit for inventing. What Apple does, historically and today, is perfect (or bring to market, if you prefer) ideas that have been floating around geekdom, perhaps even attempted, but never executed or marketed successfully.

This reminds me of the whole Tavis Smiley bitch-fest over Obama during the campaign: “HE’S NOT LISTENING TO MEEEE!”

Not that I’m aiming to defend the Unicorn that much. I never thought him anything but a centrist technocrat, but the lack of spine in anyone choosing to have a (D) after his or her name is always disappointing.

@nojo: Gracias, Nojito.

I got the spinning pinwheel of doom all day/night Friday, eventually whipped out the ole iPhone, ran some Google searches, learned how to open my macbook in safe mode, ran some fsck -y -f thing, and got it to repair itself using disc utility. I have no complaints about this machine at all. None. The only thing that went wonky was the power cord. Bought a knock off, and all is well. Still not a big Jobs fan. But yeah. I’ll help keep him in black turtlenecks.

@JNOV: @nojo: But who, if anyone, holds the patent on spellcheck? Or rather, that magical thing where the iFon automatically puts airquotes around some words so it appears as if I don’t do Windows, but rather “do” tell stories.
@Signal to Noise: the lack of spine in anyone choosing to have a (D) after his or her name is always disappointing.

Turns out that mammalian Ds with spine learn they can stand and walk, and often do. Meaning that we’re left with the jellyfish running the asylum. Such as.

ADD: I desperately need an excuse to buy an iPhad. I don’t run a blog out of my Orange Country redoubt, but I do spend a lot of time on airplanes and in airports, some of which have wi-fi. Does the “but it’s better than a Kindle!” argument hold water?

@Nabisco: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! It’s secretly recording you when you use it. It’s watching you, man!

What I have noticed is that the iPhone is learning my fake words and anticipating when I’m going to use them. Or maybe they’re not my fake words, but it seems to know “BLARGH” now.

@Nabisco: “Accidentally” break your Kindle. It works for kids…

@nojo:
You’re right, but the Windoze 7 commercials piss me off because of the “ooh, I invented it!” even though the mac had it for years, decades even, before.

@Nabisco: Psst. He’s not in OC, and he might send a hellfire missile out to our neck of the woods, from his iPad, natch.

COUNTDOWN TO MAD MEN!

@Nabisco: Well, it’s more expensive than a Kindle, and the battery doesn’t last as long as a Kindle, so if all you need is a gadget that does what the Kindle does, stick with the Kindle.

But if you need to browse, do email, watch YouTube, select images, compose posts and write comments while laying on your back on the couch, the iPad is very handy.

Me, I don’t spend time in airports. If I did, yes, I would find it a godsend, especially a 3G model in case wifi isn’t available.

Go find one first, and play with it. You’ll know very quickly whether you want to join the cult.

@JNOV: WOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!

And I think I missed a season. Heh.

@nojo: +1

@Nabisco:
welcome to EST beesko!!
StinqueThinque
i can’t believe you said that. we were having this discussion last night.
how old were you when you realized no one sane/altruistic was in charge? the end of innocence, the start of snark? we were 9.

@Dodgerblue:
i’m outing you. our favorite superhero fighting for the environment was at his speaking engagement FACEBOOK CHATTING WITH ME.
(see above)

@nojo: 2 things:
i HAVE to have an ipad now, and
i CANNOT believe you didn’t go to comic con. i’m proud to say i would have costumed up and geeked out. a cnn bobblehead said this about it:
“it’s not like there were klingons or anything….”
blasphemy!

@baked: I’m wondering about a superhero crime-fighting story involving Proust, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf who have a secret lair under Shakespeare & Co where Sylvia Beech is their front to the world. The first installment could be about an attempt on the part of the Prince of Wales to steal all the whiskey in Ireland and smuggle it to Russia where his cousin, Nicky, is set to fence it. I’m imagining a high-speed boat chase off the Scottish coast with Virginia and her helper Vita Sackville-West in pursuit of a German submarine. Knowle, of course, becomes our heroes’ lair in the Home Counties. I think it could fly.

Note to noje: It is, of course, under copyright.