The Curious Case of Jerry Brown

Here's a weird little chart showing the number of times each of the prospective California Democratic nominees got mentioned in a blog over the last six months.

Gavin Newsom vs. Jerry Brown vs. Antonio Villaraigosa vs. Diane Feinstein

» Configure this widget for your site!

That darker blue line hovering over everyone else's is Jerry Brown's. Except for the Newsomania of the convo, Moonbeam has consistently dominated the conversation in the blogosphere. I remain puzzled by this popularity, but I still probably wouldn't give him odds against the coming Newsomite hordes...

The Obama Eight: CA-24

Updated July 11

Alright, 'nuff stalling. Let's git this sucker started!

Introducing the first of the "Obama Eight" series, California's 24th.

GOP incumbent: Elton Gallegly

Registration:
Dem : 36%
GOP : 42%
DTS : 18%

Obama's performance (margin / vote):
+2.8% / 50.5%

2008 results
Marta Jorgensen : 41.8%
Gallegly : 58.2%

The Congressman:

Elton Gallegly's been in Congress for over two decades and, if you're like me, you probably wouldn't know him from Adam. He's solidly conservative, to the point that he's actively sought to thwart California's medicinal marijuana laws. He does support earmarks, however, as he's got a button on the front of his official page for "appropriations requests." He also tried to retire in 2006, but was apparently coaxed back.

The 24th, of course, is pretty dang red. The district covers the interiors of Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, making it the gerrymandered sister district to the 23rd, which covers the more liberal coastal areas. CA-24 has been inching ever closer to even since it was drawn. The population centers on the urban area around Oxnard.

Gallegly's a successful incumbent because for most of his career he was bringing home nearly two thirds of the electorate, including 2006. (He's also got a really cute dog.) That changed in 2008 when Obama got a clean win on Gallegly's turf, just barely breaking the fifty percent barrier. Gallegly's performance slipped accordingly. Fifty-eight percent of the vote, however, under any other circumstances would be called a commanding victory.

The Dems:

Marta Jorgensen, the 2008 Dem nominee, is a perennial candidate in the 24th, but she raised barely more $10,000. Observers therefore consider her 42% a "floor" for future Dems. With proper funding and organization, how much higher could that have gone?

A little bit, but probably not by eight points. You would basically have to contact every single voter in the district at a cost of $3 million plus. Nonetheless, DCCC saw enough potential to drop some radio ads this year, so it's being watched.

2010's Dem primary will feature one new face, Shawn Stern. He's a younger guy and an environmental consultant by day. His company's website, Green Footprint, LLC, features a Union of Concerned Scientists warning letter regarding environmental issues. It's safe to say that green activism will be a big plank in Stern's platform. The question is whether it is his starting block or his finish line.


Marie Panec, an educator in the area, and Tim Allison, a Realtor, are other names mentioned.

Outlook:

Scenario A – If Gallegly drops out, this open seat could be very competitive. If a Dem looks to be pushing on $100,000 per quarter in fundraising, it deserves serious attention from the CDP and DCCC.
Scenario B – If Gallegly sticks it out and doesn't go totally broke in his own primary, then this probably becomes a four-year race for the Dem. If the Dem can improve considerably on the so-called floor of 42%, (let's say, narrowing the margin to single digits, a >3% improvement) then he or she could make up the difference on the 2012 Obama Express. That justifies creating a competitive district for the region.

And in either case, I'd advise the Dem to very seriously consider a No Earmarks pledge or something like that. Going out on a limb, I'll suggest that the 24th's DTSers did not leave the GOP because of their bellicose rhetoric on spending, but in spite of it. A socially liberal, fiscally conservative Dem can win CA-24.

Important links
Candidates:
Jorgensen for Congress
Shawn Stern for Congress

News:
Brian Dennert, Ventury County Star

Party:
Ventura Co. Dems
There are a few Dem Clubs around the area, including in Lompoc, but the Santa Barbara Co. Dems' website was down at the time of this posting.

~~~

This is an on-going process, so if you have tips, corrections, or grievances to share, please leave 'em in the comments section or shoot me an email.


Metanote & Shameless Self-Promotion: Last month, David Dayen at Calitics also expressed his pessimism about the Obama Eight, despite the DCCC's commitment, and for basically the same reasons as me. As he put it,

"Some would argue that, properly resourced, these seats would suddenly become very winnable. I give you CA-50, [however,] where Nick Leibham consistently beat Brian Bilbray in fundraising and maxed out at the 45% ceiling on Democrats in that district."

Although Dayen's looking at this from a different ideological perspective than I am I think our pessimism is not political but institutional. Regardless where you sit, the Democratic establishment does not seem ready to take on this challenge.

I hope DCCC proves us wrong.

Excessive Caution

Last night, I had a conversation with an acquaintance about caution in politics, and perhaps that it can be excessive. I'm not cautious, I'm paranoid, but her point was well-made. And this morning, Senator Leahy offered a nice example.

On Meet the Press, he and Senator Sessions were asked about the schedule and timing of the Sotomayor hearing and confirmation. Leahy interjected at the end of the discussion to give the Standard Senate Response, or SSR:

The Senate operates by its own procedures and I will make a determination in accordance with Senate process and in consultation with the Ranking Member.

The SSR works as an answer to almost any question, including "You want to do Mexican or sushi for lunch, Senator Leahy?"

Unfortunately, about thirty seconds earlier, Leahy had lost his noggin, necessitating the SSR. When asked if he would keep to President Obama's preferred schedule for the confirmation, he answered defensively,

"I'll keep to MY schedule!"

This got a knowing smirk from Sessions, who was probably nudging Leahy off camera and muttering, "WTF, dude? Much respect, but you gotta clean that up!" And so he did.

Trying using the SSR in your own daily life!

The Battle Royale over Harry Reid

I have remained shrewdly aloof of the whole Harry Reid re-election thing. It's gonna be bloody, and you don't need me to tell you that. However, when Senator Reid gets his own headline button on the front page of RGJ.com, well, that sets off alarms. (Especially when that headline is sandwiched between stories about Memorial Day and sunless tanning.)

The story is about Our Country Deserves Better, a conservative group that just released a $100,000 ad blitz to oppose Senator Reid's re-election. They hope to spend "in excess of $1 million" by November 2010. For now we'll ignore the $7.5 million already raised for Reid's cause.

There is no viable Republican candidate yet declared for the race and even Senator John Ensign acknowledges that that needs to happen "in the next few months." Why groups would be spending money on a race that doesn't yet exist seems... curious.

So let's cut to the chase: Senator Reid's 2010 campaign has so far been not a battle between the parties, but an arena for two simmering internecine fights, and it will likely remain so until nearly the end.

Our Country Deserves Better is closely tied to Move America Forward, a soft-money outfit run by pro-war California conservatives. Our good friend Deborah Johns is a regular collaborator. Y'know, that lady who attacks people's patriotism in front of incorrectly flown American flags.



What is telling is who attended the group's presser: Assemblyman Don Gustavson, who primaried long-serving Republican Assemblyman, John Marvel, and Sharon Angle, a possible challenger to Reid who tried (and failed) to ouster Nevada Senate Republican Leader Bill Raggio. These are two of the foot soldiers in the guerrilla war against the Nevada GOP.

In the article, Angle brought up California's budget catastrophe. That's a bit tactless, considering her latest patrons are the very people who precipitated the catastrophe. Not satisfied to sink their own state, they're now exporting their services to Nevada, whose lawmakers, faced with similar procedural hurdles, actually do their jobs.

Meanwhile on the left, Mother Jones has led the insurgency against Reid with much sniping and a glorious hit piece trying to slander him as a friend of the mining industry. (In other news, the Pope is Catholic.) You can bet there's more to come. Reid is not popular among die hard liberals who think he's feckless on a number of counts.

Anyway, Sharon Angle is not a viable candidate. No candidate is viable who can't win as a Nevadan first and nothing ticks off Nevadans more than sanctimonious Californians. I can think of at least one Nevada GOPer who could lick Senator Reid, but they've yet to make much noise.

Until that viable Nevadan shows up, this will continue to be just a primary-by-proxy.

The Obama Eight: The '08 Gang

On the suggestion of faithful reader, Laine, I'm going to add one more element to the analysis of the Obama Eight. Then, we'll get to work looking at each of these races in greater detail.

In my previous posts I did not factor in the performance of the Dems in 2008. My thesis is, essentially, that those Dems did not ride Obama's coattails as far as they could have. We'll test that by adding my flipability factor on to each Dem's actual performance. The lower the number, the better they did.

[(Obama% - McCain%) - (GOP Reg% - Dem Reg%) + 2008 margin of defeat]

(Thus, the flipability of the district will act as a handicap to judge the Dems against one another.)

Metanote: For the time being, let's set aside debates about the nature of Obama's coattails and the tactics of using such in an actual campaign. Each of these districts maintains a registration advantage for the Republicans, so the on-the-ground reality was not in favor of anyone.

District	Incumbent	Challenger	Flipability	Margin of Defeat	Flipability Gap
44th	Calvert	Bill Hedrick	-6	2.4%	-3.6
50th	Bilbray	Nick Leibham	-5	5.1%	0.1
48th	Campbell	Steve Young	-16	15.1%	0.9
3rd	Lungren	Bill Durston	-2	5.5%	3.5
24th	Gallegly	Marta Ann Jorgensen	-3	16.4%	13.4
25th	McKeon	Jackie Conaway	0	15.6%	15.6
26th	Dreier	Russ Warner	4	13.1%	17.1
45th	Bono Mack	Julie Bornstein	1	16.6%	17.6

It is really important to qualify these numbers. Two important factors not included are money and experience. Each candidate's fundraising matters, but so too does the incumbent's. Also, some of these candidates were running for the second time, while others were first timers.

I was hesitant to publish this because I don't want to be seen as disparaging the Dems and their campaigns. Despite my ranting, I could not have won any of these races either. My purpose is to attract institutional attention, showing where opportunities were in 2008, with the hope of building even better campaigns for 2010.

With all that said, if you were on one of these campaigns (or are one of these candidates!) please share you experiences. What did you do that got you ahead? What would you do differently?

Editing Pessimism

If you know me personally, then you know that depression plays a big role in my personality. I can quickly fall into bouts of melancholy.

One of the greatest realizations I came to in my adolescence was that being depressed is not wrong. That is, my melancholic personality was not a condemnation of my moral being.

From there, the next step was learning that it is a mark of maturity to control my emotions. Certainly, spontaneous grief and joy are what makes life meaningful, but day-to-day functioning requires some ability to express emotions by choice rather than by habit.

Finally, the toughest step is figuring out how to modify my own emotions. I keep looking for new tools every day, and I want to share one with you that seems to pay dividends.

This speech about optimism has an interesting strategy. The topic is programming, but the theme is overcoming pessimism. Special thanks to DivaLion for sharing this on her blog.

The basic gist is that we consider a given circumstance along three axes, namely

• personal vs. impersonal
• general vs. specific
• permanent vs. temporary

Pessimists like myself instinctively apply personal, general and permanent attributes to negative events. For example, after being rebuked for a mistake at work I might think to myself, "I'll never get the hang of this job." Mapped out, that sentence looks like this:

I'll (personal) never (permanent) get the hang of this job (general).

An alternative thought could be

My boss (impersonal) criticized one of the things I did (specific) yesterday (temporary).

The difference keeps negative thoughts in the realm of constructive criticism rather than condemnation, and pessimists tend to do the opposite with positive events.

The trick is that this requires cognitive therapy, that is, thought training. It means catching when I find myself thinking the former and reformulating my private ideas into the latter.

Editing is the biggest challenge in writing. Self-editing seems even harder but even more vital. So far, this maneuver's helped on several occasions.

Two Men

Political philosophy time!

Here are two quotes from two men:

A man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil. For if everything is considered carefully, it will be found that something which looks like virtue, if followed, would be his ruin; whilst something else, which looks like vice, yet followed brings him security and prosperity.
- Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince


The means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

Before going out into the tall grass, some background assumptions: Machiavelli and Dr. King are both writing at very different times for very different reasons.

The Prince is Machiavelli's attempt to convince Lorenzo de' Medici to take up the task of Italian patriotism, and give him the political tools to do so successfully. This quote is what usually gets boiled down to the maxim 'the end justifies the means,' although Machiavelli himself never used that phrase. For him, the greatest evil of his time was Italy's perpetual submission to foreign invaders, and the peninsula's hapless rulers were to blame. Thousands of Italians died in every war, and thousands more lived in perpetual meanness under siege and misrule. These evils, according to Machiavelli, were allowed to occur because Italy's leaders were feckless and refused to shoulder the burden of dirty, sinful work, so their subjects could live in peace and faith. As John Adams formulated it, "I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy."

Dr. King's Birmingham letter is also directed at a specific audience and a wider readership, simultaneously. He is answering a letter from Christian and Jewish leaders in Birmingham while incarcerated in the city's jail for "parading without a permit." Quite forcefully and stubbornly, Dr. King is justifying his nonviolent direct action methods by demonstrating that unjust laws must be justly broken, and that nonviolence does so appropriately. This particular passage chastises the leaders for their commendation of the Birmingham police, who restrained their public actions in order to maintain the injustice of segregation and racism. Indeed, siccing dogs on the protesters, denying them food, and mistreating them in custody can hardly be called 'restraint.' Those actions are, Dr. King says, the charlatanry of bigots and the city's religious leaders are their oblivious patrons.

So, I guess Machiavelli and Dr. King are not writing about very different things at all.

Clearly, though, Machiavelli is ready to sacrifice morality before the altar of happiness (or Christianity before the nation-state), while Dr. King defines morality as the struggle towards happiness (or Christianity's contribution to the nation-state). In practice, the two men's philosophies are identical: if the end is just, the means will necessarily be also just.

But Dr. King's admonition of "immoral means to attain moral ends" seems so diametrically opposed to Machiavelli's 'ruinous virtue.' Can they be squared? Another factor to consider is Dr. King's reproach of black nationalists' methods and his certainty that their strategy would result in bloodshed across the South. Just as the Birmingham police seem to act morally, the black nationalists' ends only seem moral. In reality, they would be a nightmare.

The operation that is central for both men is the determination of the justness of the end. Both are quite certain of the justness of their particular end and go to great lengths to prove such.

Machiavelli's work, as well as his other works such as The Discourses on Livy, details all the failures of Italy's rulers and implies the loss of life, liberty, and wealth (i.e. happiness) they hasten. Dr. King, for his part, explains that the first step of nonviolence is to determine that injustice does somewhere exist, and in Birmingham he cites the city's brutal record of mistreatment and several bombings of homes and churches.

Thus, just as Machiavelli would say that being a good Christian ruler is without true virtue if it results in the suffering of people, Dr. King would argue that no act is Christian in nature which precipitates injustice.

I doubt the two men would see eye to eye, though they share one more thing in common: a profound dissatisfaction with the church. Both men criticize so-called Christians for oppressing themselves and their neighbors with mealy-mouthed religious rhetoric. Dr. King, of course, was a minister, though he was frustrated by his White co-religionists' unwillingness to answer the call to justice. Machiavelli, however, was no man of the cloth, but was also a contemporary to the most notorious of the 'secular Popes' such as the syphilitic Alexander VI. Both men were raconteurs of similar men in different robes.

It is without a doubt difficult to find common ground between Machiavelli and Dr. King - probably a fool's errand. But it is equally hard to deny both men's insight into the nature of justice, and impossible to ignore their contributions to the art of politics, insofar as it seeks to secure human happiness.


Perhaps for us, their lessons can only be this: never let what appears righteous deter us from what is righteous.

Newspapers v. the Internet

Here's a spoofy video from... Slate. *groan* Oh, well, it's still funny.

The punchline's at about 0:58 and it's a little tricky to catch, so listen closely...



And of course, no Internet post on this blog is complete without a reference to former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.

Why is 2010 gonna suck?

Because of comments from anonymous facebookers like this:

"Why 2010? It seems we waste money all the time on 'special' elections."

2010 is not a special election!!!

The Obama Eight: Playing w/Numbers, redux

Californians are voting today. Well, maybe 1-in-3 of them are voting. At best.

On the advice of readers, I've put all the data from the previous Obama Eight posts into one chart. This, I think, better illustrates my central thesis; namely, that there is little correlation among the measures of DTS registration, Dem registration, Obama's performance, and my own "flipability" metric.

District	Incumbent	Flipability	DTS Registration	Dem Registration	GOP Registration	2008 Presidential
26th	Dreier	4	20%	35%	41%	51% Obama 41% McCain
45th	Bono Mack	1	16%	38%	42%	52% Obama 47% McCain
25th	McKeon	0	18%	38%	39%	49% Obama 48% McCain
3rd	Lungren	-2	18%	38%	40%	49% Obama 49% McCain
24th	Gallegly	-3	18%	36%	42%	51% Obama 48% McCain
50th	Bilbray	-5	24%	31%	40%	51% Obama 47% McCain
44th	Calvert	-6	18%	35%	42%	51% Obama 47% McCain
48th	Campbell	-16	22%	29%	45%	49% Obama 49% McCain

Commenter fnpople also hooked us up with a list of declared candidates, which I hope to do a little research on later this week.

CA03- Elk Grove Mayor Gary Davis
CA24- green businessman Shawn Stern
CA45- Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet
CA48- Irvine City Councilwoman Beth Krom
CA50- 2006 Dem nominee Francine Busby

There is, of course, a gaping hole there in the 25th, which is odd. Of the Obama Eight, it has the closest Dem/GOP registration numbers. LA County Dems, where ya at?

...oh yeah, CA32.

The Obama Eight: Playing w/Numbers

Tomorrow, Californians will probably screw everything up by voting down all the budget resolutions. So let's take a look at something a bit more meaningful: the fates of the Obama Eight.

I blogged earlier about my pessimism regarding these seats, but I want this to be a creative pessimism - my unique, useful form of paranoia, as a friend of mine might call it.

The list is usually displayed as it was in that post, with Dan Lungren's 3rd district at the top (although Buck McKeon's 25th is the closest in registration numbers). Registration is, of course, a key indicator - voters tend to support the candidates representing their party - but I don't think party registration is the best predictor of future voting behavior, comprehensively. It's also useless in predicting independents' behavior.

Independents, or "Declines to State" as they're called in California, are therefore a good place to start. Statewide, 20% of Californians are DTSers.

District	Incumbent	DTSers	Dem Registration
50th	Bilbray	24%	31%
48th	Campbell	22%	29%
26th	Dreier	20%	35%
44th	Calvert	18%	35%
25th	McKeon	18%	38%
24th	Gallegly	18%	36%
3rd	Lungren	18%	38%
45th	Bono Mack	16%	38%

Not surprisingly, more DTSers means fewer Democrats, generally. Unfortunately, this is still not very helpful. The Obama Eight's districts go from Mary Bono Mack's partisan 45th - which delivered the highest vote percentage for Obama (52%) - to Brian Bilbray's fence-sitting 50th.

Let's take a look at the actual preference of the voters and compare it to the voters' party identities (as measured by their registration numbers). The formula is simply the difference between Obama's win percentage and the GOP's registration advantage.

(Obama% - McCain%) - (GOP Reg% - Dem Reg%)

The result represents the disparity between the voters' identities and their actual behavior. The higher numbers represent districts with close registration numbers and a considerable preference for Obama. I'll call this "flipability."

District	Incumbent	Flipability	Dem Registration
26th	Dreier	4	35%
45th	Bono Mack	1	38%
25th	McKeon	0	38%
3rd	Lungren	-2	38%
24th	Gallegly	-3	36%
50th	Bilbray	-5	31%
44th	Calvert	-6	35%
48th	Campbell	-16	29%

According to this, David Dreier's got the most to lose, where his voters are frequently Democrats and they voted for Obama in a big way. Compare this to John Campbell's situation, whose voters only barely picked Obama, and remain overwhelmingly Republican anyway.

(This could also serve as a political guide for Dem candidates in these districts; the lower the number, the more conservative the voters and, thus, the more conservative must be the candidate.)

The next task will be identifying and recruiting viable candidates for these districts. If you know of someone who's declared - or should declare - please let us know!

Coincidence... or conspiracy!?

Note: If you don't care about Nevada politics, you can probably skip this one. But if you're a marriage equality advocate, you may want to read on.

That domestic partnership bill passed the Assembly last week. No word if Gibbons will sign it. (Although I can see him taking that bait...)

I commented on the bill's torturous path through the Senate and, at the time, paid little attention to the two Republicans who voted for it, Randolph Townsend and Mike McGinness.

Townsend really didn't shock me. He's a known moderate who represents Incline Village, the most affluent place in Nevada. That's not a recipe for social conservatism.

McGinness, meanwhile, represents a decidedly rural and conservative district. Like most of Nevada's conservatives, he's not outspoken on social issues, but I had no reason to think he'd support domestic partnerships when the rest of his caucus opposed them.

In the Assembly, the bill passed with the support of one Republican, Ed Goedhart. He, too, is a solid Nevada conservative and, before Friday, I would not have pegged him as a supporter of domestic partnerships.

What's the connection? I have no idea. Senator McGinness's and Assemblyman Goedhart's districts are, however, nearly identical.


⇐ Goedhart's Assembly district

McGinness's Senate district ⇒

Is there some grassroots clamoring for domestic partnerships in Hawthorne or Pahrump? Perhaps the old ranching dynasties need a better legal tool to keep their property in the family - or, more likely, to consolidate their water rights. I'm just stumped.

So if you have some special insight, please drop a comment below. Help a brotha out.

RedState pisses me off! ... I guess that's why I read it

I'm sorry to keep beating this dead horse, but the "Obama denigrates America!" meme circulating among conservatives is getting under my skin.

Today, RedState helpfully pointed out U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice's statement that our human rights record has "not been perfect."

The occasion was the U.S. admission to the Human Rights Council, and RedState's general point is valid: the Council includes egregious violators of human rights, including China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia, making it a huge farce. This, I agree with.

RedState also believes the U.S. should not "grovel at the feet of these abusers of their own people and apologize for the United States of America." In wholly diplomatic terms, RedState is correct. We should not let China off the hook for its offenses in a self-serving attempt to prostrate ourselves. Unfortunately, I doubt RedState's interest is really in refining our diplomatic repetroire, but rather to demonize anyone who opens up a converstion about America's human rights record.

They say "Obama’s 'We Suck' tour of the world continues," but Bush's "We're Totally Awesome!" tour wasn't a diplomatic winner either. It is outright insulting to the intelligence of the worlds' citizens for us to claim the path righteousness when we imprisoned our own people in shacks, evicted entire nations, and ENSLAVED HUMANS.

*deep breath*

Again, RedState demonstrates conservative punditry's appalling inability to perceive the level of analysis in matters of foreign policy. The Obama administration's new tone is not directed at China and Cuba, but at China and Cuba's people. You see, humility is a strength, not a weakness, that can inspire people everywhere.

Nothing, however, is less inspiring than a jingoistic bully.

The Obama Eight

Pic unrelated. But oh how I wish it wasn't.

2008 was a pretty good year for the Dems, wasn't it? They won the White House and also secured a commanding majority in both houses of Congress - expanding daily!

During and immediately following the campaigns, my discussions with Dems followed one of two broad formats:

a) "♥Yay! Democrats foeva!!!♥"
b) "Shit. We're screwed in 2010."

You may place my pessimistic tuchas squarely in group B, because of this:

District	Incumbent	Dem Registration	GOP Registration	2008 Presidential Results
3rd	Dan Lungren	38%	40%	49% Obama 49% McCain
24th	Elton Gallegly	36%	42%	51% Obama 48% McCain
25th	Buck McKeon	38%	39%	49% Obama 48% McCain
26th	David Dreier	35%	41%	51% Obama 41% McCain
44th	Ken Calvert	35%	42%	50% Obama 49% McCain
45th	Mary Bono Mack	38%	42%	52% Obama 47% McCain
48th	John Campbell	29%	45%	49% Obama 49% McCain
50th	Brian Bilbray	31%	40%	51% Obama 47% McCain

These are the Obama Eight, the California Republicans whose districts were all won by the Democratic presidential candidate. Oh, and every one of these Republicans was re-elected.


2008 was, in my opinion, a huge missed opportunity for the Dems. In 2010 they will have an uphill battle trying to unseat the Obama Eight Republicans.

Fortunately though, not everyone in California is salivating over Ellen Tauscher's seat.

Sorta NSFW!

Who wants some pr0n‽



And a special thanks to Wonkette for delivering the win.

A photography post that's been a while coming

This is my picture-of-the-Metro that it seems every DC photog is required to include in their portfolio. I'm perturbed by our apparent fascination with the Metro since all the stations look the same. I don't write the rules, tho, so there's my contribution.

Now, the Roosevelt Memorial, that's another problem.


Waterfalls at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, originally uploaded by kimberlyfaye.

This image is not mine, of course. The Roosevelt is my favorite contemporary memorial on the Mall, tho I have yet to get a picture of it that has truly satisfied me. Technical limitations may be the root of the problem. Without a proper camera, I can't effectively slow the shutter speed or narrow the aperture. Even in the image above, however, the two-dimensional nature of the low-profile architecture is not really overcome.

I have yet to really overcome DC's phallocentric skyline. So the quest continues...

More Tubes greatness

In my ongoing effort to direct you to the most fantastic corners of Ted Stevens' gift to humanity, I draw your attention to Fuck You, Penguin.

FUP is a blog that tells "cute animals what's what." And they don't let them off easy. Here is what they have to say to the adorable Porcupinefish:

YOU ARE SO FUCKING CUTE I WANT TO HUG YOU AND NAME YOU GARY. But I know better, Porcupinefish. You may me be smiling and having a great time now in your little undersea neon world, but next thing I know I'll come too close and you'll push me away.

The truth is, Porcupinefish, I don't know if you could ever really get close to anyone. Before you love someone, you have to love yourself, and I'm worried about the time you're putting in. You drift from place to place with no purpose in life, and you couldn't even spend enough effort giving yourself a name, you just picked something with spines and added "fish" to the name.

And so on, and so on.

My attraction to this blog is rooted in my firm and zealous faith that penguins are trying to take over the world. Trust no one!

Update: Seriously, people! Don't you remember Batman Returns‽

Orwellianism

In the course of the job hunt, I come across a LOT of different federal agencies, position titles, associations, and firms with deceptively innocuous-sounding names. But this one takes the cake:

Policy Analyst, Office of Economic Adjustment - Department Of Defense

What the heck is "economic adjustment" and what is it doing at the Pentagon?

For the record, they help communities that get shafted when DoD changes plans. I guess that's a good thing. Like an employment development office for military towns.

Still, couldn't they come up with something that doesn't sound like the Ministry of Love?