rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

I am at a hotel on the edge of Charlottesville.
no. I am not on the lam. me and Central Virginia are in the middle of one of the snowstorm of the infant decade. one of those storms that are of interest to no one unless they’re affected by it, I understand, but I am. they are calling for up to 30 inches. it hasn’t stopped coming down for about 18 hours, now, and it’s supposed to go for 18 more. and I worked today, and it’s probably not safe to drive home tonight. so I’m at the Doubletree on the company dime. it’s the kind of hotel that gives you a warm, chocolate chip cookie when you check in.
I finished mine before I got to my room. 

so now it’s 10 pm, and it’s snowing like it has something to prove, and the assistant sports editor is on his phone, sitting on the bed next to me. we have killed a six-pack of Leinenkugel. I am sure that is not how you spell the name of this beer, but you know which one I’m talking about.
it’s been a long day. it was snowing, ever so slightly, when I drove up to work at 10 am. and it was starting to stick at 11:30 when I went to 7-Eleven for coffee. and then, by 4:30 pm when everyone else had gone home except myself and one other, the power started cutting in and out, and the snow blotted out the sky lights. we had to restart the computers a half-dozen times, and then everything finally failed at 6:15. pitch black.
as far as I can tell they aren’t plowing the roads around here very well — or at all between here and my home in the city, we got a ride over here from some guy from circulation who has access to a huge, all-wheel-drive pick up. he was a little offsetting at first — like a rural extra in an independent horror movie – and he let the truck coast down a snowy hill hands-free while he looked for his ringing cell phone. but he got us here, and offered to pick us up tomorrow. he says he’s not going home tonight, that he’ll be at the paper all evening. I hope he isn’t. like I said, the power is out. but that didn’t seem to phase him.
after checking in my boss and I had dinner at the buffet downstairs, where for 45 minutes we talked about his in-laws and that parasite that makes crazy shut-ins want to own a million cats, and I paid $5 for a Yuengling. see, this is a nice hotel. it’s got wireless internet, flat-screen TVs in the rooms, a restaurant and a small, kidney-shaped pool. I’m gonna try to get in that before I raid the continental breakfast in the morning. I brought my swimming trunks. because, oh yes, I planned ahead.

but still, it doesn’t have everything. I wish I had Doubletree letterhead to write this on, and I searched the room but couldn’t find any. I will have to store this on the WordPress until further notice. maybe I’ll publish it, or maybe not. maybe it is something for only you to read. I wish you were here right now; I’ve got the heat on blast, and there’s more pillows on this bed than I need. you would like it here.
we could make a weekend out of it, if only you could get through the snow, which is coming down in buckets through the window to my left.
but because I can’t, I will have to settle with simply seeing you soon. but that’s okay, I can handle that. I may walk through this blizzard along tire tracks to get back to you. and in fact, I’m kind of looking forward to it. so please answer the door when I knock.

I’m not gonna waste the time and energy to try and present this as something I noticed myself; it’s not like I spend every waking moment parsing the actions and statements of political leadership in Washington. I do not have the constitution for it.
but I pay a little attention to what’s going on in the politics and such, and considering the storyline of the week in DC — successfully suggested and promoted by Obama during last week’s State of the Union address — has been the seeming unwillingness of congressional Republicans to compromise or support anything put forth by the president … well, I read something timely today on cup of coffee No. 3.
the Washington Post editorial writer Fred Hiatt used his column today to make note of the fact that Senate Minority Leader and Kentuckian Mitch McConnell is, in fact, a fuckhead. it’s true! let’s read some Hiatt!

It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that the only thing that changed since May is the political usefulness of the proposal to McConnell’s partisan goals.

what the hell is it Hiatt’s talking about?
sit down, and I’ll explain! sit! if you’re hungry, get a snack. I’ve got some unsalted peanuts here. Aarti thinks they taste “like chalk,” but she’s crazy: these are delicious.
okay, see, what McConnell did was he supported a bipartisan commission that would make binding recomendations to congress on ways to reduce government spending and increase revenue. because the nation is gonna spend, you know, something like a couple of trillion of dollars this year that we don’t really have. this was an idea put forward by Kent Conrad, who is a Democrat from the cold and boring state of North Dakota; and Judd Gregg, who is really named Judd and actually a goddamn senator, and from New Hampshire.
I had no idea they were thinking about doing this. I really had no idea. did you know that legislators were suggesting such a thing? I think that’s a great idea. and I’m really not kidding.
anyway, Obama kinda got around to endorsing this idea recently, which means that the administration didn’t really like it very much, and it came to vote and would have had sixty votes, which is required to get an amendment like this through the Senate, I think. but then seven Republican senators reversed course, voted against it and it lost.
why would they do this? 
because, according to McConnell, they want a committee that only makes suggestions on spending cuts, not tax increases. no tax increases, at all. because, duh, Republicans hate tax increases no matter what! no matter if your dog is on fucking fire. if your dog is on fire, and the only way to put it out is to raise taxes, your dog is fucked. because Republicans are not voting for that shit.  
but the real reason these seven Republican senators changed their minds on this bill, I suspect, is they figure it’s more politically valuable to them to kick the adminsitration in the balls again.
I will set the stage: this vote came up last week, and Mitch McConnell and a bunch of other old white senators from places like Oklahoma and Texas and Arizona got together and were like, ’what do you think, you wanna vote for it?’ and then one of them said, ’eh, fuck it.’ and that was that. 
politics seem to be a very self-serving business sometimes, and this, I think, is a pretty good example of that. because they don’t care if the federal government continues to stall, or that the market will continue to dance around holding its dick while it waits for Washington to just do something. they’d rather stick it to Obama. again. and again. and again. like lions taking down an elephant, they hope to run his ass into the ground, beat him in an election, and replace him with someone like Mitt Romney or Bob McDonell who will then make proposals that are inevitably more dumb than what the Democrats shit out and fail to pass on the Capitol floor.

and there it is. I just laid out the next seven years of American politics.

Howard Zinn died a couple of days ago. that sucks.

not quite a blizzard
it is snowing pretty steady here. again. after watching the response to last month’s blizzard, the novelty of snowstorms in Virginia has worn off.
why? because these people don’t know how to handle a snow storm. yeah, that’s right. I said it.
and, as no one wants to pay the goddamn bills to fix the fucking roads in this state, they don’t have the resources to plow the streets even if they did. so wed had something akin to a local transportation apocalpyse.
and … yes, because I don’t have boots. because it’s not supposed to snow in Virginia! no, it’s just not. mayo is not supposed to go on french fries, and it’s not supposed to snow in Virginia. there are rules.

the dumb, dumb musings of a college basketball fan
I hate Illinois hoops. you know why? their pep band played “come out and play” by the Offspring right now. and that is really gay.
but oh no, that’s not the only reason. because I can’t stand Mike Tisdale, that archtype: the rare, talented giant white guy who plays for the team that isn’t yours that you find really annoying. because of that chestbump thing a couple of years ago after Eric Gordon reneged on his verbal commitment to Bruce Weber. well, fuck that. he’s from Indianapolis. 
but mostly because they’re just an Indiana rival. I don’t hate Purdue hoops nearly as much I hate Illinois, which is verboten for most IU fans. but, eh. Hummel’s from Valpo! so I’ll save my blind hatred for the NFL, the other organized sport I pay attention to.
I  just watched Indiana lose on an admittedly great play by the Illinois guard, McCamey, as time expired. we were down 13 at one point in the first half, and I thought we were gonna get run out of the gym, but we came back, lead by six at a point in the second half. so that’s twice we’ve lost to Illinois this year, but we were supposed to lose this game, not lose on a prayer at the buzzer. Illinois needed this win a lot more than we did. and really, who gives a fuck if we make it into the NIT at the end of the season? for our future is bright, and we will be back.

Obama argued with House Republicans on live television for an entire hour and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

“If there’s uniform opposition because the Republican caucus doesn’t get 100 percent or 80 percent of what you want, then it’s going to be hard to get a deal done. That’s because that’s not how democracy works.”

instead of an argument, you may call it polite debate. fine. I call it something that stupid asshole who was our last president for eight years never did. because, if he had, he would have looked like awful. he would have mispronounced words, and blinked a lot. because he was a stupid asshole.
I was gonna “live blog” the State of the Union address earlier this week. I started to, got sleepy, and stopped and just watched it instead. if you watched it, then you probably know that  it kind of sucked, as those speeches often do, and it didn’t do much to alleviate the pressure the Democrats seem to be under in Washington after losing the Massachusetts Senate seat. they’re fucked! they only have an 18-seat majority now! all is lost.
but this Q&A with people like Rep. Jason Chaffetz from Provo does a lot for Obama that the speech wasn’t able to do. it shows he’s willing to debate policy, and he’s well informed. and this recent swing, from the administration on its heels after the party loses a midterm runoff to a mediocre annual clapping session to a whole hour spent dressing down some of the loyal opposition’s finest assholes while the cameras roll, shows that only a few days can make a difference.
I am not convinced, despite the howl of the professional pundit class that suggests otherwise, that the Democrats are gonna get smoked in November. yes, they will lose seats, but they’ve already got a large majority; it only makes sense that they would. but now the Senate Republicans have their precious fucking filibuster. that means stonewalling for the next ten months isn’t an option for them, because they’ll suffer as well. 
right?

read and be informed.

Osama bin Laden on climate change. wherein he namedrops Noam Chomsky. yeah, that’ll help Chomsky go mainstream.

“I’d go back to the Carter administration, get rid of the Education Department first. Go back to the Clinton administration, AmeriCorps has got to go. Go back to the Bush administration, TARP funding has got to go. And no funding for ACORN ever.”
– quote from a local congressional candidate and tea party activist

interesting story in the New York Times about a fractious ‘tea party’ function. no one trusts each other, and they all hate the GOP establishment.
I don’t think I’ve ever written on the tea party types before. I don’t recall having done so, so I’ll just start here like this is the beginning. there’s a lot of them in my congressional district, Virginia’s 5th, and there’s a whopping five (I think) of them vying for the Republican nomination to take on Tom Perriello, D-dragonslayer.
at work, McNeill the political reporter has very much enjoyed covering this primary, as it has made for great quotes and great campaign moments. the tea-party candidates all hate the guy backed by the party establishment to run for the seat, a state senator from somewhere down south of here, name of Hurt, and are attempting to unite around someone to Hurt’s right to defeat his nomination.
problem is: they’re crazy, and try to out-crazy each other. no one believes in taxes; they all hate “the bailout,” which doesn’t mean any one thing, I don’t think, but rather anything done in Washington since August ‘08; and no one believes in global warming. but then again, neither does my supervisor. so take that for what you will.
so yes. the local tea party activists are dipshits, but you could probably say that around the country. reading the Times story, you get the feeling that if this movement is able to get a wing off the ground, it could actually make some noise in a midterm congressional election. they actually might affect change in the GOP from the ground up, which is a fascinating concept.
this is nothing more than a gut feeling. I certainly hope these assholes don’t win any votes, but I gotta admire their pluck. the Times describes one of these groups as seeking “to take over the Republican Party from the bottom by filling the ranks of local and state parties with grass-roots conservatives …” which is a pretty ambitious goal. and they’re getting what appears to be pretty consistent press coverage. so maybe there’s something to them.

PS — the Democrats have taken notice, well before me, I’m sure, and are looking to exploit this rift in the opposition. here’s a generous cut and paste, as I know none of you assholes click on the links I provide you. fuck. you:

The memo (which is being advertised by Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Robert Menendez and his aides) urges Democratic candidates to force their opponents to answer a series of questions on health care, taxes and some of the favorite causes of the far right:
“Do you believe that Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen? Do you think the 10th Amendment bars Congress from issuing regulations like minimum health care coverage standards? Do you think programs like Social Security and Medicare represent socialism and should never have been created in the first place? Do you think President Obama is a socialist? Do you think America should return to a gold standard?”
If a Republican candidate says no to any of the questions, the memo says Democrats should “make their primary opponent or conservative activists know it. …”

you know, when the game went to overtime, I had this weird pang; for a second, I wanted the Vikings to win. the reason being? I’d rather have Favre in the Super Bowl just so I could root against his ass. I didn’t really have a dog in either fight today, rather just a dog I actively dispise: one Brett Favre. look how sad he is there.
but anyway, that moment was fleeting. and I did the involuntary fist pump and “fuck yeah” when he threw that interception with 14 seconds left, the score tied, and his team in field goal range. how quickly that feeling can go.
so thank you, Brett Favre, for being that asshole that I love to hate. if you decide to bring your bored ass back for another season, fine by me. you’re my NFL security blanket. my constant. every week, I’m rooting for Chicago, whomever Green Bay is playing, and whomever is picking off Brett Favre.

I will interrupt this other long stretch of ignoring the blog to address the colossal political news going on today. stop reading that stupid goddamn whatever it is you’re reading  on the internet, and look at this shit:

The Supreme Court struck down prohibtions on corporate donations to political campaigns. McCandidates!

The Obama administration is proposing legislation to limit banking companies from involvment with hedge funds and growing past a certain market share. size and scope!

and national health care reform is literally tearing apart at the fucking seams because the Democrats managed to lose the senate seat that Ted Kennedy held for, like, forty years. oh how fragile it truly is!

and meanwhile Haiti still burns! oh god it burns! so in all seriousness, give to the Red Cross for christ’s sakes.

send me your prayers and apple juice.

nice job with the photo, Aarti.
the guy in the room next to me was getting work done on his rotator cuff. it made me feel like a total weenie.
but anyway, I’ve got the day off tomorrow to eat a bunch of percocet and write my magnum opus. and continue reading about Haiti. as if there were one country that didn’t need this.

I’m gonna interrupt this long streak of ignoring the blog to highlight two news stories.

Haiti, as if it didn’t have enough problems already, got hit by a massive earthquake around 3 pm eastern yesterday. AP didn’t have photos coming out of the country for six hours afterward, if that’s any indication of how completely fucked that country is.

and after it uncovered an attack on its email servers targeting the accounts of Chinese human rights activists, Google may pull it’s entire operation in that country if itsn’t allowed to work free of government censors. which means that creepy fucking company that reads your emails to send you targeted advertising may not be totally evil, after all.

good news, Ugandan homosexuals!  you’ve been given reprieve from a possible death sentence to mere  life imprisonment!

and they can thank American evangelicals, widely discredited in the US, for helping to foment this kind of dumbassery.