broadcast:andrewstout

Al Franken, former Saturday Night Live star and satirist, is running for Senate in Minnesota against Republican incumbant Norm Coleman.  Before being elected to the Senate, Coleman lost a race for Governor to former professional “wrestler” Jesse “The Body” Ventura.  One of Franken’s biggest challenges in this race is to convince voters that while he may be professionally funny, he’s quite serious about his campaign and politics; he’s already caught some flak for a satirical article he wrote for Playboy back in the day.

All of which will make it that much harder for Franken to resist going to town with this.

(Summary: Norm Coleman’s wife has invented a device called — I’m not making this up — the “Blo & Go”.  How did she come up with the idea?

“I needed something of great quality that was really going to stay up,” she says. “The whole key to this is the suction.”

)

I saw WALL-E tonight.  It was utterly charming.  I loved every second of it, and I want to see it again.  I want more movies where the robots are the good guys.

Two recent missteps by the Obama campaign have me a little frustrated.  The first had to do with the decision to opt out of public financing.  Now, considering my recent pro-public-financing hyperventilation, you might think that I, like many other progressives, am steamed that he decided to opt out.  Not so: while I am in favor of real campaign finance reform and public financing, I’m also a Democrat who’s tired of righteous defeats and ready to see my team play to win.  So I think spending the Republicans into the ground is absolutely the right choice, and it’s great to be able to afford to do so for once.  What I’m disappointed in is the mamby-pamby mealy-mouthed halfhearted defense they’ve given for this choice.  Why are they making excuses about the broken system?  Why didn’t they make sure the candidate was actually looking at the camera for the video announcement, instead of so obviously reading off a teleprompter?  Why didn’t they explain that they’ve built their own public financing system of millions of donors giving less than $200 a piece, and they’ve built a movement with the strength to be true to the spirit of public financing (no PACs, no lobbyists, etc) while still getting on the air and on the ground in all 50 states?  And why don’t they call bullshit on the McCain camp’s whining and point out that if he had that kind of broad-based grassroots support he’d be blowing the spending caps, too, and besides, he gamed the public financing system he helped to create, taking the money when his campaign was broke and then trying to weasel out of the caps later?

And now there’s this flap over Wes Clark pointing out that getting shot down doesn’t make you qualified to lead the country.  McCain’s surrogates are getting all worked up over this, and Obama is distancing himself from Clark’s remarks.  But.  Well?  Military service, even heroic military service, isn’t necessarily proof of executive capability, leadership, or wisdom.  Obama could say that he honors McCain’s service, but then point out that the strength and character McCain showed in Vietnam 40 years ago hasn’t translated into the judgement, policies and change America needs today.  (See how I worked that in?  McCain is OLD.)  Don’t accept McCain’s manufactured outrage, and don’t accept the Republican framing of the argument that being a POW makes you strong on national security and thus a good president.  Personally, I think Wesley Clark is doing just what a VP candidate should do in the campaign: give the top of the ticket credibility in an area where he (Clark) is strong and Obama is less so, and throw a few elbows.  Clark threw an elbow, but instead of using the controversy to steer the conversation towards the real point — McCain has flip-flopped in favor of torture, and has been wrong on Iraq from day 1 — Obama is looking weak and everyone is talking about how McCain was a war hero.

I suppose we progressives were always going to be disappointed with the inevitable tack to the center once the nomination was sewn up, but it’s not the triangulation that bothers me so much (I knew Obama believed the 2nd amendment provides for an individual right to gun ownership…we’ve lost that battle) as the ham-handedness of it.  This team ran a nearly perfect campaign until June…why are they getting dumb now?  I’ve been thinking it was time to send them another contribution, but I don’t want to reward bad behavior…get back on your game, Barack, and I’ll send you another check.

Update: That’s a little better.

This is largely for the benefit of our awesome calligrapher, but since email was out of the question (due to file size), this seemed as good a way as any to share these, since I haven’t gotten around to installing zenphoto…

We finally got around to hanging our wedding certificate, so I’ve put together a small collection of wedding certificate photos. Wordpress isn’t offering to make thumbnails for the two photos of it framed, so you’ll have to settle for titles.  click for the full-res version of each…

asjgweddingcertificate1.jpg

asjgweddingcertificate2.jpg

BTW, the ceremony photos are by Jill Gately, who we heartily recommend.  And we’ve already steered one pair of friends Sally’s way…we heartily recommend her, too.  Also, I still harbor ambitions of someday getting the authoritative online photo album for our wedding (and other occasions!) online, but it probably won’t happen quickly…I’ve got a PhD to finish (and, um, start).

Well, we’ll see  (I think Shirley Franklin might be in the running, too).  I haven’t kept enough up to date on Deval Patrick’s doings as governor — I gather he’s had a rocky first year — , but he beats the hell out of the last guy, who thought he was presidential material.  Anyway, through a link on a friend’s blog I stumbled upon this, which is at least a lesson in good parenting.  I’m proud to have voted for him.

So, I could write a blog entry about what my last week has been like, but really, it’s my wife’s to write.  Go read her blog entry, then come back here.  (A teaser, if you need it: the emergency room, a potentially totaled car, and two nights without power!)

I don’t have a lot to add to that narrative.  Reunion was great.  For many people, I think coming back to Swarthmore is a more intense thing, though, than it is for me, because for many people — my wife included, I think — Swarthmore fundamentally changed their lives.  I had a similar experience, of my time spent at a place fundamentally changing the way I thought about myself and what I could achieve, of intense friendships and all-night philosophical conversations…but it was IMSA, not Swarthmore.  Not Swarthmore, not because of any deficiency on Swarthmore’s part, but only because I’d already had the experience when I got there.  Still, it was and indeed is a wonderful place (and still formative, obviously, as I found my life partner and career path there), and it was great to catch up with all the cool people with whom I shared my time there.

Also, I’ll take this moment to reiterate an oft-repeated observation: hospitals are terrible places to try to get rest.  I think they should require that people sharing a room use headphones for their television.  Why is that continual racket considered acceptable?

I think the only other addition I have to make to Julie’s accounting is that the week totaled over 1000 miles on my car; Julie did a good chunk of the driving to and from Swat, but I drove 600 miles back and forth to school or the hospital last week.  Ugh.

Oh, and it’s looking like the transmission on Julie’s car isn’t wrecked, just the parts in the steering column, from the towers trying to force it into neutral without a key.  It’s in the shop now, covered by insurance.  So, that’s a relief.

If you’re running a beta of Firefox 3 (I am ‘cuz I just upgraded my desktop to Ubuntu 8.04), type `about:robots’ into the address bar for a little easter egg.

I just read a discouraging statistic in an otherwise unenlightening Newsweek column by conservative George Will: less than 10% of Americans check off the checkbox at the top of their tax returns to send $3 to the fund that finances publicly-financed elections, even though doing so does not change their tax liability. I indignantly read this to Julie, who looked at me like the cat who swallowed the canary and said “maybe they don’t realize it won’t change the amount they owe.” “But is says so right next to the checkbox!” I replied.

So, dear readers, I’m going to admonish you now, and try to remember to remind you next tax season: CHECK THE CHECKBOX! Public financing of elections is the most critical, most fundamental reform needed in our government. All the other improvements get easier when you get the big money special interests out of the business of buying politicians. And it doesn’t cost you a thing — in fact, it’s the only time you get to dictate exactly what gets done with your tax dollars (well, three of them, anyway).

Saw the new Indiana Jones movie tonight, for a friend’s birthday party. I have a vague recollection of perhaps seeing some of the original three back when I was a kid, but I didn’t really remember them, and Julie hadn’t seen them, so we’ve been “studying” in preparation by watching the originals again. Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade are okay, but Temple of Doom is possibly the worst movie ever made. No redeeming quality whatsoever.

So I was prepared for Crystal Skulls to not be that good, especially since I’d heard some early reviews to that effect. I was pleasantly surprised: I think I’d say the new one is the best of the four. It’s totally preposterous, of course, but in a willing-suspension-of-disbelief sort of way, at least I thought. Lots of entertaining action sequences and special effects. No jarringly terrible dialog. The one bit of aggregious racism was mercifully brief, and almost felt to me as though it had been included for authenticity, as a requisite characteristic of any Indiana Jones movie. Not the deepest way to spend two hours, to be sure, but I enjoyed it.

And there was a shot in the movie in which a swarm of (giant) ants chasing after a character build a tower/bridge out of themselves. I imagine to most people that was just a clever way of the monsters getting to the bad guy, but I’m a big geek so I loved it because ants actually do that, and it’s a wicked cool example of collective/emergent intelligence in nature.

Spoiler alert!  Spoiler in the comments thread.

My cousin the music production wizard made an entry for Radiohead’s remix contest: he put ‘Nude’ in 5/8 time and had his wife re-record the vocals…gives it a cool jazzy feel.  Check it out!