rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

Luke Harangody is from Schererville, which makes him Your Boy. but really, you’re gonna need more than Harangody to compete in that hoops league. they were hanging with Pitt in the first half, and now they’re just getting smoked. too many good teams. too many tall trees.

okay. Michael Steele is gonna lead the RNC.
he’s a moderate Republican from Maryland. he lives in PG. and he’s, oh yes, he’s black.

during the 2004 Senate election in Illinois, Barack Obama was originally pitted against one Jack Ryan, the winner of the state’s GOP primary. before he could even get going, though, Ryan’s campaign was derailed after the Chicago Tribune sued and the records of his divorce trial were made public. see, Ryan the politician was married to Jeri Ryan the actress and her amazing rack. and in those records, Jeri claimed Jack took her to sex clubs and tried to get her to bang him in public, and the like. this is the kind of shit that will not do if you’re a Republican Senate candidate. you’re the morality candidate, and everyone knows that people who fuck have loose morals.
so Ryan withdrew in late June, and Obama was left without a major party opponent. the Illinois GOP searched far and wide, looking for the most qualified possible candidate, and came up with, yes, Alan Keyes.
Alan Keyes was, or is, many things. one thing he is – he’s crazy. also, very conservative. another thing? he’s black. and he wasn’t even a goddamned resident of Illinois before the Republicans came for him, grasping at straws, in a bald-faced attempt to pick up on the minority vote. they literally went 500 miles outside the borders of their state to dig him up; Keyes was a resident of Maryland, making him during the 2004 election the definition of a carpetbagger.
and unsurprisingly, Obama beat him by about 40 points.

right now, the Republican Party is weak. they’re in exile, they’ve gotten stomped the last couple of elections, and they’re trying to redefine themselves. to be honest, I was happy to watch them flail about for another cycle or two, the fuckers. it’s not like they don’t deserve it. assholes. ran the fucking country into the ground in astounding fashion. and they may continue to flail about, but I think Steele’s a good pick. while he’s not representative of its membership or its support — demographically, the GOP remains firmly the Party of the Cracker — from what I’ve read, he isn’t from the fringe, and he didn’t come up under the Bushes. he appears to be a clean break from the party leadership of the last eight years. which is precisely what they need.
so, with that being said: is Steele a carpetbagger? are the Republicans just half-assing a new wave of inclusiveness? will their platforms stop being blatantly nativist, divisive? or, is this a clean break? do they see the shifts in the electorate, the tides changing, and will they adjust accordingly?
cause if they do, you know, in the long run, that’s good for all of us. but electing a black guy RNC chair doesn’t it do it by itself. we’ll see. it’ll be hard to drag Republicans away from blaming migrant labor for every possible malady, no matter how politically shortsighted it is to piss off Hispanics with border fences and anti-immigration policies.