an erection lasting longer than four hours

The new poll at Right Wing News of the 100 Worst Figures in American History led me to this thought:

How empty are the lives of these people?

I'm fifty years old now.  I have a daughter in high school.  I have parents who are in their seventies, and their health (my dad's in particular) is a concern.  I have a niece in college, a couple more in high school, nieces and nephews in elementary and middle school.  My wife is considering her retirement options.  I'm trying finish the book I'm currently reading and keep up with The New Yorker and Guitar Player and Vintage Guitar and whether I'll be able to go to Tuesday's pickin' session.  I'm planning the menu for the week and scheduling the trip to the farmer's market.

George Bush was the worst president of my life (yes, even worse than Nixon, on the grounds that falling in shit is worse than stepping in it), maybe the worst in American history, but I hardly spend a second of my day remembering him or seething at his perfidy.

So how empty, lost and alone are these people that after nearly forty years they can still keep a hate hard-on for Jimmy Carter?

if you're jim cramer...

...how do you not go home tonight and put your head in the oven?

Lord, that was a brutal beat-down.

Oh, and everyone who thinks Stewart should scream and shout and try to rip people a new one should shut up and watch him.  Not only did he pin Cramer to the wall, his approach removed the possibility of that bald-headed, bald-faced schmuck deflecting the points raised by calling "foul" on Stewart's comportment.

ye gods

For the last two weeks, the members of the panel on ESPN's The Sports Reporters have breathlessly clutched their pearls as they consider the Alex Rodrigues revelations. Much pissing and moaning has ensued over "the purity of the game." "How," these stalwarts (I'm looking at you, Mike Lupica) ask, "how can we believe in anything anymore?"

Stow it, Mary^{TM Roy Edroso}. This is baseball. It's part of the entertainment industry. You guys convicted Barry Bonds whilst having sportsgasms over Roger Clemens, when anyone with one functioning eye could see that whatever one of those two guys was doing was identical to the training regimen of the other. Your kids need purity in baseball (now frolicking on the field of dreams--the racist Ty Cobb, the whoremongering Babe Ruth, the drunken and whoremongering Mickey Mantle... the list goes on, as long as you want to make it) to grow up and be productive citizens? You are the worst fathers ever.

Besides, who cares what these emotionally stunted gasbags (I'm looking at you, Michael Kay) think? These are the idiots who hold annual debates about "the greatest player ever" and cannot see the truth that is plainly evident to anyone who ever watched more than ten games: Willie Mays.

i guess the cabbie can't help you now, can he?

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quick hits

1. What is happening with the Eagles/Cardinals? Why are the Eagles so off-balance? Is Larry Fitzgerald some sort of alien life form? I think the praise for Kurt Warner might be tempered by the fact that he's throwing to Optimus Prime.

2. John Cole is pissed about the over-the-top coverage of Obama's trip to DC. I understand it, but I think John makes a mistake--yes, a lot of people are ecstatic about Obama, which lends a "Princess Di" feel to the whole thing, but a large part of the euphoria is just relief and jubilation that King Pretzel is leaving town. If Obama didn't show up until Thursday, I think a lot of the same feeling would prevail.

3. Some cockwad named Matt Towery just gave the smuggest, oiliest speech of the young year on C-Span 2. Apparently he's written a book called Paranoid Nation. Can you guess his positions? Try this--the "left" is paranoid and, oh yeah, Obama will not prove he's anything more than a pretty face until he crushes the UAW. Hey, douchenozzle, why are the working-class the problem with this country? Not everyone can stand up with a dyed-blond Caesar haircut and just let the right-wing welfare roll in.

blurg

I think that what pisses me off most about l'affaire Roland Burris is something Harry Reed said on Meet the Press: "We decide who sits in the Senate."

Fuck you, Harry Reid. The people decide, and that's why this is really a travesty. The appointment process might have made sense when it was difficult, nigh impossible, to get the people together on short notice, but these days are not those days. A special election ain't that hard in 2009.

So stuff your royal tendencies up your wrinkled ass, Harry. You're not the king or the king-maker.

left behind?

If you want to read a great deconstruction of the holiest document of all (at least to some fundamentalists), you should go here. Be warned; it's long and working through it will take some time. As a bonus, you'll laugh a lot.