Random Observations [UPDATED]

When I watch movies made before September 11, 2001, especially in the '90s, it's as if they're happening underwater, dimmed and made irrelevant by innocence.  People are driven by small and scattered preoccupations.  Their unwary gazes go every which way, iron filings without a magnet.  They don't feel us watching them, shaking our heads.

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I bet Barack Obama yearns for the days when he was only running for President.  That's what he was good at.  He'll have to reach much deeper into himself to find leadership, if it's there, and not just the idea, the mirage of it.  It's scary and funny to see him so shaken by trying to ride the jackass bronc of Congressional Democrats and the mad bull elephant of House Republicans.  Now we're getting somewhere.  I don't think he'll completely fail, but it will be an unnerving while until he finds his seat.

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UPDATE:  Do you notice his scolding tone?  We're going to be scolded for at least four years, which is pretty damn condescending and tiresome, and comes straight from the "We know how the world should look!" mindset.  (Granted that being flattered that we are just great the way we are, and lied to about how everything's going to be just fine, are not acceptable alternatives.  How do you talk to a nation that is reluctantly emerging from an orgy of denial, from the highest to the lowest?  Ruefully but resolutely; as one of us, not one above us; saying what we all know, that it's time to sober up; not acting as if you spent the last two decades on a better planet.)

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All there is is love and death.  And ____________.  (Fill in the blank.)

(Coffee.)

Comments

[RW Rogers]

dog fish?

[RW Rogers]

Speaking of mad bull elephants, we can thank them for this bit of madness now contained in the so-called stimulus bill. Reminds me of the consequences of getting GOP input into original bail-out bill last year. Guess their snouts are permanently affixed to the trough upon re-election. Oink, Oink, Oink. If net of result of listening to the GOP is going to be massive increases in already bloated pork legislation, what's the point?

[amba]

EEEK!! Genetic engineering?!

[RW Rogers]

Animation, dear. Animation. Xlnt animation at that. (I got it wrong, too: apparently it is a officially called a "fishdog.")

[amba]

Eerily well done, then.

[Ron]

Maybe they want the genetic engineering so they can clone The One to run every branch of government. Stiumlus, indeed!

[PatHMV]

In fairness, Randy, whatever the merits of that provision, it's not "pork." May be bad policy, but it's bad policy which would affect, potentially, every home buyer in the country. Pork is a project which is local in nature (the "bridge to nowhere") and which provides benefits to a very small group of people (and many of them contractors who get hired to build the pork project).

[RW Rogers]

Sorry, Pat - it is pork brought to us courtesy of the National Association of Home Builders. The likelihood of abuse costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars is great. It is not a stimulus - its a payoff to a special interest group. They tried the same trick a couple of weeks ago in California, Pat, and have been shopping this idea in other state legislatures as well. The fact that the congressional GOP bought into it so easily proves they are as clueless today as to why they are out of power now as they were after the 2006 debacle.

[PatHMV]

I'm not defending the proposal, Randy, just quibbling over the definition of "pork."

According to Wikipedia:

"Typically, "pork" involves funding for government programs whose economic or service benefits are concentrated in a particular area but whose costs are spread among all taxpayers. Public works projects, certain national defense spending projects, and agricultural subsidies are the most commonly cited examples."

[RW Rogers]

I see your point, Pat.

[Icepick]

"Typically, "pork" involves funding for government programs whose economic or service benefits are concentrated in a particular area but whose costs are spread among all taxpayers.

Well, the economic benefits would be concentrated in the housing sector, so I think this can still qualify as pork.

[PatHMV]

It might be considered pork because of the Nat'l Assoc. of Home Builders involvement. Close call. If the motivation for the support is populism and gaining votes, I'd call it non-pork, because of its broad impact. If the motivation for the support were to gain more campaign contributions and the like from the NAHB, then I'd call it pork.

But I don't think the concentration in the housing market is what makes it pork. That's a BIG market. When the tax deduction for home mortgage interest first passed, that wasn't "pork."

[Horace Jeffery Hodges]

I just hope that we don't have Carter redux. Is Obama old enough to recall why that didn't work?

Jeffery Hodges

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[Norma]

I didn't like him or vote for him, but even so, have been quite surprised and disappointed by how negative he is. Maybe I believed that "hope" rhetoric?