Sunday, September 20, 2009

Opinions on scattered current events

Senator Franken wins a seat-I was hoping having an SNL star crossover to the senate might make the Senate hip again. Perhaps, it's a sign of SNL's declining popularity (or probably the fact that Al Franken's Bad Boy era was so long ago and so less culturally relevant) that Franken's appoitnment hasn't had a lot of the youth following Senate affairs so closely. If someone from Gossip Girl or American Idol got elected to the Senate then, I guarantee you, all the youth would be following Senate proceedings.

Joe Wilson-I think what’s interesting about Joe Wilson is that there are people defending him on erroneous grounds and there are people chiding him on erroneous grounds. People say Wilson couldn’t have acted out of bounds because he’s a patriot. He’s a war hero and his son serves in the war. Never heard of anything less relevant. It’s also not relevant, Jimmy Carter, that people in the South are racists.

The Beer Summit-Definitely an interesting development. I fully agree that if people talk about their problems, things would get better. I think there might have been some perception that Gates could only look good to media exposure and Cawley would look bad. Cawley is just a lug-head cop and Gates is a distinguishged professor….Upon seeing youtube clips of both people being interviewed Cawley seems far more intelligible and, besides, did you see Gates' mugshot? Also interesting: Biden doesn’t drink beer ever. What an awesome thing to do: Abstain from beer your entire life.

Sarah Palin resigns-This lady was so adorable at first but then started revealing herself to be a vicious rabid bull dog. It was like the wool was slowly being pulled over my eyes with her and it took me a while to notice just how terrible she was. It’s one thing that Palin is just kind of an odd anomaly but she really gets pretty mad and crazy when she’s on the defense. I do think she still gets a little mischaracterized. I read a little more into that issue of her wanting to ban books from the library and Palin’s actions were totally misportrayed by the media. One thing’s for certain: She’s an anomaly.

Sarah Palin's talk of presidency-I think it would be impossible for Sarah Palin to win the presidency. People aren’t impressed by her directly. They’re only impressed by the fact that she could swing the “base.” In order to win the presidency, you can’t have entire segments of the population calling you out on lies that are moderately provable and you can’t have that many people hating you. She basically sunk McCain’s chances of beating Obama so how would she have been able to win without him?

Levi Johnston attacks Sarah Palin-I like Levi or at least I liked him based on the first two interviews I saw with Tyra Banks and Larry King. He’s dumb as a rock and he doesn’t pretend he isn’t. That’s about it. So many people going on talk-shows are intelligent or at least try to be. Johnston is pretty much showing us himself at face value, so I guive him credit for that. He also has this dumb-founded love for being a dad, has strong connections to his family (mom, sis, dad) and still said he would vote for Palin even though she hates him. I hear Johnston’s gotten a bit more Hollywood-like since, so now I’m not so sure until I see those interviews.

Two journalists freed- It sounds like a good question to ask….what is this TV network Al Gore owns? Is it on basic cable? Can the guy single-handedly produce that much content? He’s still kind of boring even if he won a Nobel Prize and while he's established himself as truly a deserving noteworthy person, it must have sucked to have his frenemy Bill Clinton be the hero instead of him. The event was interesting to me because it revealed the tension between Clinton and Gore if nothing else. Of course, this reinforces our belief that President Clinton is superman. Obama might be slowly rendering him irrelevant but here literally comes President Clinton to the rescue. I don’t know the details (and I don’t think anyone else does) of how exactly Clinton used his powers of negotiation but the fact that he succeeded was ridiculously cool and increases his mystique.

Governor Sanford falls under fire-What an exciting and interesting story! First of all, there’s a lot of hypocrisy in the “Governor Sanford deserves to be impeached because he votes for Family Values.” The only questions at stake were is it his personal business or does it concern the state? It’s true that he lied to the state about where he was but I think South Carolina has rightfully realized that it doesn’t cancel out his other accomplishments on the job. To vote him out is to vote him out on the basis of the affair, and just like we defended his rivals by this logic, an affair is someone’s personal business. If you’re going to form the view on whether Sanford deserves to go or not based on his votes on gay marriage or the Clinton impeachment, then you’re being vindictive. That being said it’s also a most entertaining story. Sanford is full of fun and amusing quotes.

Michael Jackson dies-Did people actually like Michael Jackson when he was alive? Seriously? I never even knew this. I remember elementary school kids starting to make fun of MJ’s weirdness. My whole life, I've never experience much but hateful xenophobia for Michael Jackson in the years leading up to his death that I think this outpouring of love is mixed in with a lot of guilt for how hard people have been on him. I don’t think people are admitting that at all. I also think his death is being cashed in on tremendously, but with the entertainment industry struggling so much, I don’t necessarily condemn them for it.

The health care debate-I think everyone should get basic coverage. Not amazing coverage but some basic coverage. I realize it’s complicated but I have to have faith that people are working on it. My basic question is "Are the guys who oppose Obama's plan being bought out by pharmacuetical or insurance companies?" I'm not really mad at these opposing congressmen if they just validly think that Obama's plan is bad but who can be sure.

Tom Delay on Dancing with the Stars-It's like the Governor Sanford thing where my political side of the spectrum is being shallow by attacking Delay for doing this. The number of hotshot liberal pundits (including Jon Stewart) who are taking advantage of him being on Dancing with the Stars to take all sorts of easy potshots at his character and use him as the butt of jokes. If the guy was still making laws, then I'd say it's ok to attack him, but the guy is on a dancing show. I should think he's still aloud to participate in society and I'll defend his right to publicly dance.

Blagojevich's nominee, Burris, makes it to the Senate and fizzles out-Well, duh! That Burris guy was obviously dirty. He was appointed by a dirty man who everyone knew was dirty. Why would the Burris appoitnment all of a sudden be legitimate? I sort of commend Sen. Reid and colleagues for being flexible enough to re-examine the case of Burris' appointment but we already knew that Blogojavech was the most laughably corrupt politician and he was specifically under pressure for selling the Senate seat.

John Edwards is a sleezeball-Seriously, this guy was so nice and charismatic but he lied 8 million times. OK, maybe we all pick and choose which scandalous affair we want to make a big deal of but Edwards was dangerously close to becoming vice president of America and practically discrediting the democratic party. I rank him at the bottom. OK, maybe I'm a hyppocrite?

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