Yeah, well, whatever.

At this point, for me it’s a matter of Obama’s leadership. Instead of commentators claiming that Obama can’t get anything accomplished because of Ben Nelson, when will Obama kick Ben Nelson’s fucking ass? Because that’s what we elected this guy to do — kick ass, take names, and give the middle finger to anyone who gets in his way. Instead, we have a president who just won’t fight back.

– Me, 12/13/09, expressing my frustration over Obama’s lack of leadership on, well, anything.

To avoid political embarrassments like this, all Obama has to do is be a leader. In fact, at this point Scott Brown is the canary in the coal mine for the Obama administration — if he keeps walking down the shaft of attempted bipartisanship, Obama will get the shaft. If he doesn’t figure out more effective ways to be a leader, then Obama mine as well be a lame duck since, come November of this year, forget the supermajoirty — Obama may not even enjoy a Democrat majority in either house of Congress.

– Me, 1/20/10, after Scott Brown’s surprise win in Massachusetts to take Edward Kennedy’s old seat in the Senate.

And after that election, what a difference a month makes…

This is how politics is supposed to work. Well, not really — in reality, you’d like to see your leaders actually lead, i.e. do the right thing first, before being forced into it by circumstance. But we’ll take the latter.

– Matt Taibbi, 2/24/10, on Democrats finally growing a spine in the health care debate.

It’s easy to criticize, and I’m guilty of doing way too much whining. Am I fully satisfied with what the Obama administration is doing right now? No. However, the President is taking a leadership role now. After throwing so much harsh criticism his way, I’d be remiss (which is a polite way to say “hypocritical”) if I didn’t praise Obama for the health care summit.

There are basic questions which can be asked of the summit. Was it a spectacle? Well, that’s certainly what it became, but I don’t blame Obama for that since he was the most mature party at the summit. Was it a setup by the Obama administration to move forward on health care? Maybe, and my opinions on this range from “Well played, Mr. President” to “Well, he gave the Republicans a chance to speak” — and he did. Obama gave the Republicans an invitation and advanced notice that he wanted a health care summit, live on television, for six hours. If the Republicans had any proposals to solve the health care problem, Obama gave them (let me stress that, gave them — could you imagine the Republicans giving their opposition opportunities to present their plans) ample time to make the GOP case for health care. Instead, the Republicans continued to be obstructionists (”We need to start over”) and apparently developed massive cases of Papyrophobia to cry over the size of the bill.

And Obama is doing something I’ve been asking him to try for a long time — Lead. Now if he had acted like a leader 6-8 months ago, we could have had a public option by now…

Sigh.

One parting thought about the Republicans, though: How American are they? I mean, we all learn about the America of strength, whose mantra can be fit into a bumper sticker: “We can do anything with one hand while knocking you out with the other hand. Oh, and fuck you. USA!” When that attitude is taken literally it’s something to worry about, but when taken figuratively it’s something to be proud of. Look at America’s history during and after WWII: We were strong and did fucking everything. At the beginning of the 60s, JFK said (I’ll paraphrase here): “Fuck you, we’re going to the Moon, motherfuckers!” And everyone in the country said, “Fuck yeah, we’re going to the motherfucking Moon!” And what happened? We went to the motherfucking Moon, that’s what! And that Apollo rocket doubled as the world’s largest middle finger, projected squarely in front of the USSR. You better believe that rocket had a gargantuan set of truck nutz dangling from its thrusters, too.

Could you imagine the results if JFK had to work with today’s Republican party, though? McConnell, Cantor, and that Boner guy would complain about the size of the rocket and how the government shouldn’t partake in any activities that the private sector could possibly make a profit off of, otherwise, well, it’s just SOCIALISM! I couldn’t imagine FDR working with this current crop of Republicans, either, without the end result being all of us speaking German. Roosevelt is remembered as the lion of the liberal executives, but what nobody ever talks about is the consensus building between both parties (as well as business leaders) FDR undertook in order to prepare the country to be strong enough to fight WWII. To the Republicans credit, they put aside partisan bickering and supported FDR.

Can you imagine today’s Republicans doing that? Hell no. All these people can say is “no no no”.

There is no strength projected from today’s Republican party. There are no displays of can-do attitude. There is no inclination to get anything done. Let’s face it, today’s Republicans are the biggest bunch of crybabies that politics has ever seen. There’s no telling what kind of damage today’s Republicans would do if they sniffed more power.

In the face of such opposition, the best thing President Obama can do is, well, become the “can-do” president. It’s time for him to project American strength of yore: The attitude that together, we can accomplish the biggest feats and solve the toughest problems. Why? Because we’re goddamn fucking Americans, that’s why. We can do anything, we’ve done it before and we’ll do it again. Anybody who doubts this can just step aside. Then dare the Republicans to challenge him from such a position.

That’s what I’d like to see, at least. Whether or not it happens is an entirely different story…

I’ll just leave this here without further comment.

I need you to help me out.

Unfortunately — with a historic level of unreasonableness — your colleagues in the Senate are acting like petulant children. It’s really getting pathetic.

And even though there’s no great love between us, I also know that you like it when people such as myself criticize Obama. But if you keep acting like immature brats, Republicans, then let me warn you that I’ll have so much sympathy for the president that you’ll cause me to go full liberal again.

There’s a problem for me here, though, since I’ve spoken out against Obama one too many times and, heh, my liberal membership card has been revoked, you see. At least that’s what I gather from backhanded swipes about how people like me blog with my head firmly implanted in my sphincter. Or whatever.

I’m not allowed to go full liberal anymore. It’s like I’m stuck between a bunch of crybabies and a roc– well, more crybabies, actually.

So if you could do me a huge favor and please stop all this silly obstructionism, then I can get back to criticizing Obama (which, currently, I’m still loathe to do since he gave me a larger tax cut than Bush ever did; and money does purchase my mouth sometimes). That way, none of us are uncomfortable!

I’m sure you agree that this is the way it must be. (Look, I rhyme!)

Sincerely,

tashole

Dumb question: Did Sarah Palin write notes on her palm to reference during her speech and interview session at the teabagger convention this weekend?

Correct answer: Who gives a flying monkey fuck?

In all honesty, Palin probably did you her hand as a cheat sheet — regardless, my answer remains the same. This is yet another example of useless stories liberals latch onto which have no bearing on issues and policies, whereas of we focused on what Palin actually said instead of its purported source, we would have a larger, more credible story.

I didn’t listen to her whole speech (I can’t listen to Palin for more than a couple minutes before screaming), but here’s a snippet of what Mrs. Family-Values-in-a-Short-Skirt had to say on energy:

So what’s wrong here? After Palin looks at her hand, despite what is written on it, this is what she says:

“We have sitting warehoused, under God’s green Earth here in the United States of America, rich resources — oil, and gas, and our coal, and all these conventional sources of resources — we have got to actually walk that walk to allow them to come to development.”

I emphasized “gas” because, by default, Palin means natural gas — a resource that America doesn’t have an abundance of. But remember, we were told by the media during the 2008 campaign that energy was Palin’s cornerstone issue. Since Palin was governor of an oil rich state, this somehow made her an energy expert. Yet here she is attacking the Obama administration with this natural gas resource.

Fact is that anyone who is an expert on energy resources available in America would not claim that our country would benefit by becoming more dependent on natural gas. Actually, the American economy would become more dependent on Russia and Iran since both countries control a lion’s share of the world’s supply — and more importantly, reserves — of natural gas. Hence they can control global prices of the commodity. For those who need the wonky details proving this, I’ve done the legwork:

America’s natural gas reserves are six trillion cubic meters. What about the countries with greater reserves than America? Russia has 44.6 trillion cubic meters, followed by Iran with nearly 27 trillion CM, and Qatar with 25.6 CM of natural gas. In fact, the Department of Energy’s 2008 outlook states that “Russia, Iran, and Qatar together accounted for about 57 percent of the world’s natural gas reserves as of January 1, 2009.” By the way, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also rank higher in natural gas reserves than the United States.

By claiming that America needs to rely more on its natural gas resources, Palin proves that she knows absolutely nothing about energy policy. Worse, a Palin energy policy would make our economy dependent on the whims of Russia and Iran. All of this isn’t my opinion, this is solid fact — it’s not debatable. Unless conservatives want to debate the 2008 projections of Bush’s Department of Energy (who seem to be pretty unbiased on the matter).

Now should Palin become important in the 2010 or 2012 election cycles, what better issue could there be to use against her, and her teabagging compatriots, than energy? These people are so ignorant on the issue that their energy policy would make America more indebted to Russia and Iran. What American of any political stripe wants that?

But instead, we’re talking about Sarah Palin’s palm. Right now, here’s the only palm I’m thinking of:

1. Uncle Barry gave me a $1000 tax credit for being a college student. I think I like him more now. If anything, it increases my federal tax return so much that, instead of having to work temp gigs for a few months to save up enough money to afford to look for a real job, I only need to think about a couple months of temping now.

2. I’m sick of hearing that I, and people of my somewhat extreme leftward political persuasion, are wrong to criticize Obama for not bringing reform quickly enough. Was it any of us who promised a fixed economy and healthcare system within a year? No. Let’s reach back into the archives — on February 24, 2009 — to see who’s guilty of applying a generous amount of aspirations to the Obama administration:

As you can clearly, it was Obama himself who promised to fix the economy and healthcare (among other things) within a year. I purposely picked this clip from the Daily Show because of Jon (fake-but-should-be-real-journalist) Stewart’s reaction to Obama’s speech — which goes a great deal into explaining why Obama left a bunch of people feeling shitty.

Did we put both the economy and healthcare on the table at the same time? No, Obama did. So I’m sick of being insulted for criticizing Obama’s own agenda. It was Obama himself who pushed both agendas through Congress after this speech he made to a joint session of Congress a month into his presidency. It was Obama himself who set the expectations of his own administration too high. It’s time for pundits to shut up about Obama’s leftwing critics expecting too much of our president — if these parasites had any honest bone in their bodies, that is. Which I’m starting to doubt.

3. If I start calling Obama “Uncle Barry,” will liberals skullfuck me?

4. Classically in American politics, the party which holds the executive office suffers during the midterm elections. Scott Brown’s surprise election to Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in Massachusetts could serve as foreshadowing to a brutal slaughter for the Democrats at the polls this November — that is, if Republicans can hold their party together.

I’m sure you’ve all heard that the rightwing kooks — the ones who claim Obama is a Kenyan Muslim Socialist who wants to destroy Christianity, our nation, and yadda yadda yadda — are holding a “Tea Party Convention this weekend in Nashville. Some of these jerks are even running as third party candidates.

While Tea Party candidates would attract more rightwing voters to the polls in November, the likely outcome is that, despite the higher voter turn out, the conservative vote will be split whenever Tea Party candidates run — and Democrats win despite the traditional anger held by the American electorate during midterm elections against the power holding the executive office.

I dunno about you, but I think a squander of this magnitude would be fucking hilarious.

My apologies to all 2 or 3 readers about the site outage.

Since I’m always interested in new ways to learn new skills, and maintain old ones, with Arabic, this New York Times article on online language studies piqued my interest. Until I read the intro:

The young woman seated next to us at the sushi bar exuded a vaguely exotic air; her looks and style, we thought, made it likely that she was not American born.

But then she spoke in perfect American English, even ending her declarative sentences in that rising questioning lilt characteristic of many young Californians.

As it turns out, however, she wasn’t from these parts after all; she was born in Iran and spoke only Farsi until her arrival here two years ago. What classes, we wondered, had she attended to learn the language so well?

“I didn’t,” she said. “I used RosettaStone.”

Bullshit. On a couple fronts.

First, language education in other parts of the world are drastically different from the United States English-centric (and fuck every other language) approach. Other parts of the world, stretching beyond Europe and into the Middle East, place a heavy emphasis on English language education. From conversations I had with Iranians I met when I studied in Cairo (my university was a nexus students from all over the Middle East looking for a good education), I learned that students in Iran are given a choice to learn English or French as a second language. No offense to the French and their beautiful language, but the majority of Iranian students pick English for its usefulness. (The westernization fetish among many young Muslims in the region plays a role, too.)

And on the second front, there’s wealth. In this case, an Iranian in America (the NYT article seemingly purports that this incident happened in America, though it doesn’t actually say where) would come from one of the country’s wealthiest families. This is true throughout Middle Eastern countries, which have poorer economies than ours — but the rich are very well off. Unless the Iranian in the intro of this article was an exceptional student, she couldn’t have afforded to come to America. But even if she were from a poor family but intelligent enough to get into a school for the wealthy, the end result would have been the same — she would have studied English at a younger age there, and it probably would have been exceptional English when she reached adulthood.

So the NYT’s claim that an Iranian woman in America learned American-accented English in two years with Rosetta Stone, after having no formal classes in English, has to be bullshit. Either this story is an advertisement for Rosetta Stone, and other similar programs, or the journalist who wrote this knows nothing about the Middle East. Either option wouldn’t surprise me; though it’s probably the latter.

Honestly, all you have to do is give me a DVD-ROM to go with it.

I had happily used an iBook for five years up until last summer, when parts started breaking and I was forced to get an IBM compatible laptop because it was damn cheap. But being an intelligent computer user, I also knew that Apple’s are so expensive because they figure what I call the “frustration cost” into the price. PC manufactures take the frustration cost off, and in turn PCs are so frustrating to use that I wish I had the money to shell out for a fucking Apple computer.

People insult Apple’s for being trendy, pretty pieces of plastic. And I assure you, Mr. Jobs, that you’ve made millions upon millions by turning your product into a cult brand and selling your goods to yuppies that you’ve brainwashed. On the plus side, you’re at least selling them computers and gadgets of superior quality that run well, run quickly, and run everything I need.

I wish I could say the same for my new PC. Alas, the frustration cost kicks in. I have to use Windows Vista — I know there are rave reviews about Windows 7 being superior, but I’m not convinced since the operating system hasn’t been out long enough yet for its flaws to reveal themselves. Which always seems to happen with Microsoft products. Anyways, Windows Vista is slow as shit, so I installed Linux Mint on my computer. After years of trying other Linux builds, Linux Mint was the first one that actually worked. Great!, I thought. Problem solved! I’ll never have to pay the frustration cost for an Apple again… That is, until I tried using audio programs in Linux Mint to sync to my iPod so I can listen to podcasts. At first it worked, but now… Now I’m still troubleshooting it.

Linux Mint runs fast and clean on my PC, but the compatibility issues with what have become basic real world tasks are lacking. Linux has been around for a decade, yet it’s still not ready for primetime — how long do Linux developers expect me to wait before they get their shit together?

Right now, I have computer double life between Windows and Linux, troubleshooting both, which causes frustration and wastes time. I wish I could get a computer that runs quickly, doesn’t require much troubleshooting, and is compatible with everything I own and need it to do.

In other words, I wish I had an Apple.

I understand, Mr. Jobs, that beyond getting into new markets with the iPad, you’re hoping to destroy the concept of a PC. You haven’t outright stated this goal, but I can see it. For a couple decades now, computer users have been used to sitting at desks and communicating with their machines through input devices like keyboards. The iPad is designed to change all this by making the power of desktop computing transportable, with the small size and light weight of the device, and personal by removing input devices. And it will catch on like wildfire, starting with the business community and — more importantly — college students looking to save cost (not to mention backpack space) on textbooks. And the iPad will make older end users like myself, who are comfortable with the habits of desktop computing, technological dinosaurs. I’ve never been comfortable with tablet devices, Mr. Jobs, but at the very least I see you have a keyboard and stand as accessories for your new iPad. If you give me a DVD-ROM, since I still have a bunch of educational DVDs I need to access; and a mouse (since I’m a dinosaur), and you’ve got yourself a sale.

In other words, I’ll be happy to purchase the iPad when it’s compatible with my life. I’ve used Apple products before and know their dependability and ease of use — which is certainly lagging in PCs. The PC market will never change. So, Mr. Jobs, I beg of you to get me the hell off this laptop which causes endless amounts of frustration. You’re almost there. Just give me the dinosaur desktop computing stuff I still need.