https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPw0UGZwTvk

We spent Monday evening dwelling on what to do about the new Senator from Utah — besides six years of unsatisfying oblique references — but we’re not quite sure yet about our Course of Devious Action. Instead, to buy some time, we bring you The Most Awesome Mike Lee in the World.

A Hard Line on Debt: Tea Party Sen Says “No Way” [ABC]

Longtime inmates will recall that “Morning Sedition” began as an inside joke. We were doing some volunteer geeking at the old website (long story), but nobody had posted at the old website for a few days. Following an outcry among the masses, we asked permission of the Former Overlords and posted a brief item to keep things fresh.

That was Tuesday. But the Overlords remained AWOL, so we posted another item or two Wednesday. Yet the Gaping Void remained unfilled, so Thursday morning we posted a link dump of headlines, called it “Morning Sedition”, and the rest is history. (The Overlords finally returned from their alternate universe Friday night, and decreed that our Accidental Blogging would become permanent. Much to their later chagrin.)

We were so fucking mildly clever — Morning Sedition. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! It was funny because it was a play on a well-known radio news program, and we had taken over the website! Now our sharp wit would take over the world!

Until we learned a few weeks later that “Morning Sedition” had also been the name of a popular Air America program.

Oops.

Of course, we had never heard of the program, since, like most Americans, we never listened to Air America. For that matter, the program itself had long since been canceled, if still fondly remembered in certain circles. So, we decided, fuck it: We liked the name, it was original to us, if not to the world, and if somebody called us on it, we’d just claim honest ignorance and fuck you.

And then it happened again.

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For as long as the Web has been public — we’ll date it from Netscape, since Mosaic was more of a geek plaything — the Fretting Class has fretted that it’s turning us into a nation of lonely sociopaths. The line seems to be that through the Eighties, American society was a marvel of public gatherings, which immediately ceased when online porn became readily available.

Either that, or it wasn’t, and the Web just exacerbated a Disturbing Trend that was crystallized in the landmark 1995 paper “Bowling Alone”. Which, now that we’ve gone to the trouble to find it online, outright lied about its fretspectacular premise:

The most whimsical yet discomfiting bit of evidence of social disengagement in contemporary America that I have discovered is this: more Americans are bowling today than ever before, but bowling in organized leagues has plummeted in the last decade or so. Between 1980 and 1993 the total number of bowlers in America increased by 10 percent, while league bowling decreased by 40 percent… The rise of solo bowling threatens the livelihood of bowling-lane proprietors because those who bowl as members of leagues consume three times as much beer and pizza as solo bowlers, and the money in bowling is in the beer and pizza, not the balls and shoes. The broader social significance, however, lies in the social interaction and even occasionally civic conversations over beer and pizza that solo bowlers forgo.

Did you see that move? If you’re not bowling in a league, you must be bowling by yourself. Untold years of bumper-sticker sociology were based on a false claim. (“Bowling With Friends” would have ruined everything.) Thank god Communitarianism was finally taken out behind the barn and shot.

Anyway, where were we? Ah, yes — lonely sociopaths:

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This is the homepage of the Obama campaign’s Fight the Smears website. It was launched to great fanfare as a one-stop shop to counter the scurrilous slurs circulating among opponents and your misguided relatives.

We don’t know how effective it was in practice, but we liked the symbolism: A candidate who wasn’t going to sit back and let smear merchants define the terms of debate. A campaign that would aggressively rebut the wild charges against it.

The website hasn’t been updated since November 2008. Because, as everybody knows, smears against Obama, Democrats, and their policies completely stopped the moment he was elected.

Our lovely and talented assistant Maru performs an interpretive dance expressing our frustration upon encountering story ideas too small to merit our attention, forcing us to resort to a kitty video to meet our self-imposed deadline.

And yes, we’re fully aware that the celebrated Don’t Touch My Junk incident happened across the freeway from Stinque World Domination Headquarters. Yet somehow, we still can’t feign interest in it. Maybe because we’ve only flown maybe a dozen times in our life.

Ted Koppel almost got us killed.

The year was 1980. We were watching breaking news in our dorm room about Jimmy Carter’s Iran-hostage rescue attempt, the one that failed with choppers going down in the desert. We swore, more than a little. Jimmy was going to start a fucking war, all because that asshole Koppel was needling him on TV every night.

In four days, we would turn 21. Vietnam was over. But not by much. We were raw meat for Our Nation’s next militaristic fantasy.

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The President’s Advisers are making a lot of noise about “getting” this election, never mind their repeated failure to get the last one:

The advisers are deeply concerned about winning back political independents, who supported Obama two years ago by an eight-point margin but backed Republicans for the House this year by 19 points. To do so, they think he must forge partnerships with Republicans on key issues and make noticeable progress on his oft-repeated campaign pledge to change the ways of Washington.

Ummm, right. You’ve already adopted the Republican healthcare plan, Republican financial reform, the Republican security state…

Oh, geez, that’s really impolite of us to start off Monday with a bummer. Any new kitty videos out there? No? Well, maybe this will be good enough for a laugh:

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