My favorite female Jewish comedian Sarah Silverman has a new campaign at The Great Schlep: “The Great Schlep aims to have Jewish grandchildren visit their grandparents in Florida, educate them about Obama, and therefore swing the crucial Florida vote in his favor.”
Debates now remind me of doing a parent hour at Niko’s coop day care. Only much less fun.
From freelevi.org:
If we can’t, after all is said and done, make this election go the right way, at least we can save one man. I’m talking about young Master Levi Johnston. He’s the 18-year-old Alaskan hockey enthusiast who knocked up Sarah Palin’s daughter, and the National Enquirer describes him as “a boozing pot-smoker who doesn’t want to get married” – and John McCain thinks he found his soul mate!
We’ve all recently seen how evil henchman of the Republican party captured this poor innocent out of his natural habitat and forced him into a shotgun wedding, all so that their campaign narrative of fake family values could be upheld. When the 17-year-old daughter of the vice presidential candidate running on the Jesus ticket is “out to here,” it’s just better that Levi was introduced as the “fiancé.” Looks a little less white trashy.
But that doesn’t change the fact that right now Levi is America’s number one political prisoner. But Levi, you don’t have to be – this is the 21st century, at least in the blue states. We don’t have sharia law like in Saudi Arabia, or Alabama, and as much as the Bible thumpers would want it, we still don’t have arranged marriages in America. You don’t have to do this – you have options. You can pull a Juno – fuck, you live in Juneau! Or you could do what most people do with an unwanted child: give it to Angelina Jolie.
As it turns out, it’s a genetic disorder:
But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death.
Here’s hoping that the best scientists in the world are hard at work on a cure.
Interesting political piece in the New Yorker: The Code Of The West: What Barack Obama can learn from Bill Ritter.
From cnn: Bush: Olympic boycott would insult Chinese. I think that’s the point.
Not that I’m in favor of an olympic boycott, I just can’t resist the opportunity.
Just netflixed Strange Culture, about the artist Steve Kurtz and the ridiculous, arrogant bastard justice department on a crusade against him and his artwork.
It’s easy right now to be worried about the economy, our jobs and our investments. At the moment though, I’m just happy to not live in Tibet.
From the New Yorker, The Choice
The Clinton-Obama battle reveals two very different ideas of the Presidency.
But perhaps the most important difference between these two politicians – whose policy views, after all, are almost indistinguishable – lies in their rival conceptions of the Presidency. Obama offers himself as a catalyst by which disenchanted Americans can overcome two decades of vicious partisanship, energize our democracy, and restore faith in government. Clinton presents politics as the art of the possible, with change coming incrementally through good governance, a skill that she has honed in her career as advocate, First Lady, and senator.
From dems.gov (so totally unpartisan) The Country He Inherited, The Country He Leaves Behind. Ouch.