63% of Those Surveyed Believe the Following Post is Crap

You can hardly go a week without hearing some breathless MSM speaker prattling on about the terrible approval ratings that George W. Bush has. And if you look at this sampling, there's no question that he's not well-loved, at least where polling is involved.

One other thing you hear is this -- because Chimpy McHitlerburton has been such a one-man Hurricane Katrina who has turned EVERYTHING TO MERDE, MIERDA, CRAPOLA, DUNG, FECES, GUANO, etc., that his personal unpopularity means that anyone who is seen within 45 statute miles of him is DOOMED. THAT MEANS YOU, JOHN MCCAIN!

Bush may have to reach up to get to the sub-basement, but he's still way ahead of our friends Harry and Nancy and the rest of their pals in Congress. See for yourself. When the Democrats came sweeping into power in 2006, Congressional approval ratings were about 30%. Recent numbers are well south of that number, and if you believe this report, the People believe that things are far more fetid on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Should you take all polling with a grain of salt? I think so. But I also think you should take the more confident pronouncements of those who tout Democrats with a grain of salt, too.

McCain Youth Outreach Efforts Fall Short

The continually troubled McCain campaign hit another snag today following the release of a disastrous new training film designed to teach campaign operatives how to reach the touted youth vote. A well-placed source within the campaign blamed the faulty message making on youth coordinator Dexter Holland, who was unavailable for comment.

Dead Support Barack Obama

The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that the Grateful Dead may reunite to help support the Obama campaign. The announcement was expected as historically the Dead have long supported the political aspirations of Chicago Democrats. Jerry Garcia appeared in this news conference and performed the moribund California rock band's 1987 hit "Touch of Grey" in a poignant tribute to the presumptive Democratic nominee's recent penchant to operate in various gray areas of political rhetoric.

The ostensibly surviving members of the Dead were quick to dismiss rumors that the other officially deceased members of the band, rhythm guitarist Ron "Pigpen" McKernan and keyboardists Keith Godchaux and Brett Mydland, were supporting the campaign of Senator McCain.

Milwaukee Gets C.C. Sabathia?

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the deal is done. ESPN is confirming this as well. Sabathia may turn out to be a rent-a-player, but he'll certainly make a difference in the pennant race. Personally I think the Brewers need a stopper in the bullpen (maybe this guy) more than another starter, but Sabathia should fit quite nicely in the Brewers rotation. And it certainly won't hurt the red-hot Twins to see Sabathia go away.

The guy Sabathia has always reminded me of is an old Pirate pitcher of the 1970s named John Candelaria. Candelaria, like Sabathia, was a tall lefty with good stuff who probably could have been better than he was. It's worth remembering that the Candy Man was a key contributor to the 1979 Pirate staff that won the World Series. One thing - it's nice to see the Brewers actually being a buyer in a pennant race for a change - it seems like the last time they were in this position was when they picked up Don Sutton in 1982.

Let the eat yellowcake

The article didn't run on the front page, of course, but I did see a version of this report in the Pioneer Press this morning on Page 2:

The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program - a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium - reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.

The removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" - the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment - was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.

Amusingly, the Star Tribune ran an excerpt of the article on the bottom of page 6 under the cryptic headline "Remnant of Saddam's ambition arrives in Canada."

Who knew Saddam had a nuclear program? I thought that Saddam didn't have any yellowcake. That's what America's favorite couple, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, told us, remember? And I thought that we'd established there wasn't any threat from an Iraqi nuclear program. Bush lied, people died, all that stuff, right? Hmmm....

Just a guess - we're going to find out a few more things in the next few months that might, shall we say, alter the prevailing narrative just a smidge.

Joy Division

We're now almost a month past the moment when Hillary Clinton accepted the reality that she would not be president in 2009. It appears that some of her supporters didn't get the memo, or perhaps that they didn't like the memo. CNN, hardly a Republican outlet, is reporting that as many as a third of Clinton's supporters may be sitting on their hands this time out.

In early June, 22 percent of Clinton supporters polled said they would not vote at all if Obama were the party's nominee, now close to a third say they will stay home.

In another sign the wounds of the heated primary race have yet to heal, 43 percent of registered Democrats polled still say they would prefer Clinton to be the party's presidential nominee.

That number is significantly higher than it was in early June, when 35 percent of Democrats polled said they preferred Clinton to lead the party's presidential ticket.

That wasn't in the script. What was supposed to happen was this: Obama would begin to heal the party and bring the warring factions together, ensuring a huge victory over the hapless John McCain and the dispirited Republicans. A month on, it's gone backward. Why?

I don't claim to understand how portsiders think. But there are clues all over the place. Look to the left and see Tom Hayden issuing a jeremiad over at the always-sensible Huffington Post, which is also offering this helpful information. Look closer to the center and watch Jeff Jarvis chronicle the buyer's remorse at Buzz Machine. Even notice the restiveness at that wholly-owned subsidiary of the Obama campaign, the editorial page of the New York Times.

This was supposed to be a transformative year. Perhaps it will be. But it really helps an advancing army if all its troops are marching in the same direction. And so far, that's not happening. And as rock fans know, before you can have New Order, sometimes you have to have Joy Division. As Tom Kelly might say, "aw, that's a shame."

Cross-posted at True North

Happy 4th of July!

A wonderful day in the greatest nation in the world. No matter how much or how often we might disagree over politics or religion or any number of other bones of contention we chew on 'round here, I know that we all love our country and are grateful for the many blessings we share.

So enjoy a few:

James Cagney

Bogie and Bergman

Orson Welles

Preston Sturges

Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn

Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint

Groucho and Harpo

Donald and Daffy

George C. Scott

Guilty Pleasures Part Twenty-Four -- Valentine's Day 1988

We've taken a few weeks off from this feature and now is a good time to bring it back. One of the cool things about having 40 years worth of Rolling Stone at my disposal is that it has extensive music charts, which allow me to look back at specific moments in time. Today I've chosen to look at what was happening on or about February 11, 1988. It was an eventful moment in my life, that much is certain. Sting was the cover boy that day, but he's not part of this competition as he didn't have a song on the charts at that moment.

So if you were listening to the radio, or hanging out in the dance clubs at that time, what would you have heard? The answer might surprise someone with only a passing memory of the era - what you would have heard was dance music. In fact, everyone was dancing, it seemed.

Yep, even former Beatles were dancing. George Harrison was riding the charts with his biggest hit single in years. It was a jaunty record that he recorded with the help of his Traveling Wilbury pal Jeff Lynne, and in the video George (or more likely, a body double) gets up and busts a move. George told us all that

I've Got My Mind Set on You

Meanwhile, house music was starting to emerge from the post-disco haze and was starting to become a big factor in the clubs. It wasn't my thing back then but some of it sounds a little better now, including this dance smash from the almost-forgotten M/A/R/R/S that could have doubled as a NASA promotional video. Brothers and sisters, it's time to

Pump Up the Volume

Meanwhile, guilty pleasure mainstays the Bangles were on the glide path toward obscurity, but they had a pretty big hit with this rocking cover of an old Simon & Garfunkel song that was part of the soundtrack for a quintessential (but not very good) 1980s movie, Less than Zero. Watch for a young Robert Downey Jr. in between the gals wielding their guitars and lots of PG-13 type action as we experience a

Hazy Shade of Winter

Our final contestant had one of their biggest hits going at this time. I think INXS is a good Guilty Pleasure band - they were tuneful and fun but they weren't especially deep thinkers, as they conclusively demonstrate in their ham-handed attempt to emulate Bob Dylan's famous Subterranean Homesick Blues video from 1965. But the song is fun enough on its own terms and I'm sure many of you remember it well. Here's the ill-fated Michael Hutchence and the rest of the boys telling us that they

Need You Tonight/Mediate

The polls are open. Happy 4th!

A Good Question

I understand why public sector unions are big supporters of Democrats - the Democrats are the party that love government and want to expand it, which makes supporting the portsiders a natural for AFSCME. But it's a different matter for private-sector unions. The ever-sagacious G-Man over at Boots On asks a great question - why on earth would the UAW support Democrats?

The UAW is in the business of selling automobiles. Automobiles run on gasoline. But, Democrat policies designed to destroy Big Oil and make scarce the gasoline pump have already forced the closing of several GM plants. Just today, major automobile makers announced 18-28% drop in sales. This means lost jobs for UAW members.

To be precise, the UAW isn't in the business of selling automobiles - they are in the business of providing labor to the companies that are in the business of selling automobiles. But if the companies that UAW supplies labor to go under, there won't be much left for the UAW to do, so their interests are tied inextricably to the industry. And yet they support a party that is doing everything they can to make driving personal automobiles difficult.

Of course labor and the Democratic Party go way back. Walter Reuther led the UAW during its glory days and was a major figure in Democratic politics. Reuther has been gone a long time now, nearly 40 years. But his union still supports a party that is doing everything they can to hurt the companies that employ the vast majority of UAW workers. The plants that are closing, in places like Janesville, Wisconsin (where Obama appeared in the accompanying picture) and St. Paul, are UAW shops.

You would think that the UAW would put ancestral political loyalties aside and ask their ostensible patrons in Washington to make life easier by making it easier for oil companies to go after oil that is available, which would send an unmistakable price signal to the markets that would bring prices back down. In other words, you might expect that the UAW would demand that their party of choice actually deliver something that would help their members. But you would be wrong. It's puzzling, really.

Breakfast of Champions

I can't even post this picture. Just behold.

(H/T: Instapundit)

How others see Packer fans

(H/T - Strolling Amok via Gino)

Rasputin in Hattiesburg

It must be boring down in Hattiesburg this time of year. In one of the least surprising developments of the summer, Brett Favre is mulling a comeback. Somewhere, Aaron Rodgers is not smiling.

What do you say about it? At some point the guy has to move on. He will be 39 in the fall, ancient by NFL standards. I sincerely doubt that he is in playing shape right now and if he did come back, he'd probably stand a good chance of getting injured. Because he has played 275 straight games (including playoff games), his endurance and toughness are legendary. And goodness knows, as someone who has enjoyed watching him play for nearly two decades now, I'd sure love to see him on the field again. And certainly the Packers were pretty close to the Super Bowl last season.

My guess is this: if Favre comes back, it won't end well. If I were the Packers, I'd let him come back, but he'd have to earn the job. At this point Aaron Rodgers deserves the chance to lead this team.

Strib, Meet Schumpeter

So the Star Tribune has decided to stiff some of its creditors. Neal St. Anthony reports that while Avista Capital Partners, the firm that owns the Strib, was able to pay their first-tier lenders, they decided to stiff the second-tier lenders.

Star Tribune honcho Chris Harte:

"If we can restructure this debt, we still have a very viable [business]," Harte said.

Big if, doncha think? Based on St. Anthony's article, the boys at 425 Portland owe $400M to their first-tier lenders and $96M to the lenders they stiffed. Does anyone see half a billion of equity in the Star Tribune, either now or at any time in the future? I sure don't.

The bottom line is this: newspapers have competitors that they didn't even envision a decade ago and these competitors are destroying the newspaper business model. Even 5 years ago, the Star Tribune used to publish multi-section real estate listings in the Sunday paper, multiple sections of classified ads for everything imaginable and cars, cars and more cars. The advertising revenue that the Strib once claimed now goes to Craigslist and Google and CarSoup and any number of other competitors. The real estate agents don't need the Strib any more, either. And if you want news, you can get it anywhere you want on the Internet. Mostly for free, too.

The Star Tribune has never been big on economic theory - they have a decent, generally rational business section but their editorial board hasn't much cared to understand markets. Unfortunately, the market understands the newspaper business quite well right now. Perhaps as the bien pensants of Portland Avenue prepare for a world without their sinecure, they might want to learn something about the subject. Topic A: creative destruction.

Cross-posted at True North

40 Years of Pop Culture in a 5 Pound Box

My brother, bless his generous soul, sent me Rolling Stone Cover to Cover. For a music obsessive like me, it's a great gift, although it's like drinking out of a fire hose. I used to subscribe to Rolling Stone when I was younger but hadn't bothered with it much in the past 10 years or so. Partly it was because of the dim, self-congratulatory leftist politics that Jann Wenner has always championed (with the notable and honorable exception of P. J. O'Rourke), but mostly it was because staying current in rock becomes less urgent as you get older.

Having said that, if you want to understand a certain cohort of the Baby Boom, Rolling Stone is probably the best pathway out there for doing so. The package comes with four DVD discs that contain every issue of Rolling Stone from 1967 through the end of 2006. It's all there, even the advertisements. You can study the changing obsessions of certain Boomers by looking at the ads. Back in the 1970s, many of the ads in RS were for stereo equipment; by the end of the 1980s, it was all about fancy cars, booze and luxury items. It's great source material for this blog, no doubt about it.

Not good

Apparently someone has been going around and flagging sites on Blogger that are critical of Barack Obama. So if you try to access me sometime and can't, that might be why.

I like a candidate whose supporters are so confident that they try to shut down free speech. Don't you?

Might be time to investigate WordPress. . . .

Relax

They are Spartacus, apparently. The New York Times brings us the happy story of supporters who have taken the middle name "Hussein" in solidarity with their personal savior, Barack Obama. From the article:

The result is a group of unlikely-sounding Husseins: Jewish and Catholic, Hispanic and Asian and Italian-American, from Jaime Hussein Alvarez of Washington, D.C., to Kelly Hussein Crowley of Norman, Okla., to Sarah Beth Hussein Frumkin of Chicago.

As best as I can understand this, the notion being proffered for why one would adopt the "Hussein" moniker is because there is a fear out there that since Obama's middle name is Hussein, it lends credence to the notion that he's either a Muslim or otherwise someone who falls outside the parameters of the American mainstream. And if young mopes like these folks are willing to change their name, at least symbolically, to match that of Sen. Obama, they defuse the controversy.

Harmless fun? Perhaps. A little creepy? Yeah, I kinda think so. I think the picture with the NYT article is especially amusing, as the five supporters hold their precious Warholesque Obama sign and sport the facial expressions and postures that one might ordinarily see on the cover of a Death Cab for Cutie album.

When I was that age, there were thousands of people walking around wearing "Relax" t-shirts in solidarity with this long-forgotten pop phenomenon. What was most amusing about the Frankie Goes to Hollywood thing is that a lot of people didn't understand what Frankie was really talking about (link not safe for work). People are always looking for some way to connect with the zeitgeist, to be part of something greater than themselves. Obama has capitalized on this quite nicely. So relax.

Over the transom

I almost didn't see the e-mail because it got directed to my spam filter. But there it was. It was a note from a local politician that I have written about in unflattering terms. The note was gracious - he wanted me to know that while he recognizes that we are on opposite sides politically, he has enjoyed reading my blog, especially the non-political stuff.

Since it was a private note, I'll not reveal the author. But it was a reminder of something that we all need to keep in mind; we should always be careful about how we discuss issues. It's pretty easy to get personal in politics, especially since politics is one of the most personality-driven things around. And the closer you get to where the action is politically, you can learn things about politicians that you might be able to use against them. But the focus should remain about issues and philosophy. I see a number of bloggers who are playing oppo wannabe games, trying to make a name, trying to spread dirt about candidates. I don't want to do that here.

And to the author of the note: thank you again for the kind words.

What would be more absurd than William Jefferson (D-LA) sponsoring an ethics bill?

Having David Vitter and Larry Craig be listed as co-sponsors of the Federal Marriage Amendment. It's stuff like this that makes life easy for the late night comedians. It's also the reason that we'll never completely forget Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld.

(h/t - Allahpundit)

Forever Changes

(photo from Bruce Bisping, Star Tribune)

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm stumped by what the Woofies did yesterday. They drafted the talented but potentially troublesome O.J. Mayo, then shipped him off to Memphis in the middle of the night. In return they received Kevin Love, the talented but shortish UCLA center. There were others involved in the deal and the most significant part of the trade was getting rid of the useless and expensive Marko Jaric.

Still, I really wonder. Love is clearly a talented guy, but he's not quite 6-8. He'll probably play center for the Wolves, which will allow Al Jefferson to move to power forward. That much makes sense. But I really wonder if Love is big enough to play the position. The last guy who was Love's size to be a successful center in the NBA was Wes Unseld. But that was a long time ago.

Every time the Wolves make one of these draft day deals, it seems to blow up on them. The Wolves had Ray Allen and traded him away. The Wolves had Brandon Roy and traded him away. Now it's Mayo. Maybe this time things will be different. But there's reason to doubt it. My guess is that Love will be a perfectly good player. But I also suspect Mayo will be a big star. And since he's in Memphis, he'll have a chance to remind the Wolves of their mistake several times a season.

I do like what my beloved Bucks did, though. Richard Jefferson is a very nice player and Joe Alexander should be a very good NBA player, too. And getting rid of Bobby Simmons was long overdue. While trading away Yi Jianlian might turn out to be a mistake, it's worth remembering that he didn't really want to be in Milwaukee. Alexander does. That matters. Jefferson and Michael Redd should be a pretty dynamic duo for the Bucks. Things should get better in Milwaukee soon.

Another White Sox Look

Of all the looks the Mighty Whities have perpetrated over the years, this was the worst. And to model this happenin' gear, we bring you

an obscure guy. Sports Illustrated had a history in the 1970s of putting a hot rookie on the cover their magazine. In 1979 they chose this guy, Harry Chappas. Harry Chappas was one of the smallest men to ever play in the major leagues. He was 5-3, 150. He made his major league debut in September of 1978, straight off the roster of my beloved Appleton Foxes, the White Sox A-ball farm team. Chappas had a fantastic year in A ball on a very good Foxes team (among others who played in Appleton that season were two pitchers who had decent major league careers, Britt Burns and LaMarr Hoyt). He was a dynamic middle infielder with some power and great speed. He stole a lot of bases in Appleton and hit for a very high average. But the thing was, that was A ball. What worked against the Quad Cities Angels didn't necessarily work against the California Angels. Once Harry got to the big leagues, he was overmatched and he didn't last long - he didn't even stick long enough to be around for the Disco Demolition. But he did make the cover of SI. That's more than most people can say.