It’s Dukakis-Bentsen!

Sat Aug 23, 2008 8:10 am by McGehee 5 comments [Get Offa My Lawn!] [Obama-Biden '08] [Here's Your Sign]

We interrupt this blogging hiatus to bring you my reaction to breaking news: Michael Dukakis named Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas as his vice presidential running mate early Saturday, balancing his ticket with a seasoned congressional veteran well-versed in foreign policy and defense issues. Dukakis announced the pick on his Web site with a photo of the two men and an appeal for donations. A text message went out shortly afterward that said, “Mike has chosen Senator Lloyd Bentsen to be our VP nominee.” » Dukakis selects Bentsen as running mate This suggests that John McCain will have to pick Spongebob Squarepants to be his running mate. Biden: “I knew Dan Quayle. I worked with Dan Quayle. Dan Quayle was a friend of mine. And Spongebob, you are no Dan Quayle.”

The Perfect Image
Wed Jul 2, 2008 11:53 pm by McGehee 1 comment [Here's Your Sign]	If I wanted a picture to illustrate the “can’t help themselves” level of stupidity exhibited by some people, it would be the one associated with this old article I stumbled on while following some silly internet bunny trail this evening. Of course, it’s really unfair to the squirrel, because it really didn’t know any better—whereas people (theoretically) do.

The Shape of Things to Come, if Obama Is Elected

Mon Jun 30, 2008 11:09 am by McGehee 2 comments [Elections] [Here's Your Sign]

Back in the ‘70s, when “Doonesbury” was still occasionally funny, Garry Trudeau had fun with Jimmy Carter by imagining him with a Cabinet-level “Secretary of Symbolism.” In keeping with the notion that Barack Obama would be a second Carter term… Unity, N.H., is not just small, it’s small and out-of-the-way. The town has no major roads, just winding country ones. It has a single school, the elementary school, no large retail center and no parking. It is an hour and a half from the nearest sizeable airport, and hotels for traveling press are nowhere to be found. Who in the world would hold a political rally for several thousand people here? Barack Obama would. Unity might be one of the worst towns in America in which to hold a major political rally, but symbolically it was ideal for the Obama campaign. Where better to have Hillary Clinton join Obama on stage in a display of party loyalty, showing her supporters that there are no hard feelings for her loss to Obama and urging them to work hard to make him President, than in a town named Unity, where in the New Hampshire primary in January the vote for Obama and Clinton was evenly split—107 apiece? For the attendees, the choice of location would be a nightmare. For the Obama campaign, a campaign based entirely on symbolism, it was perfect. » Used in Unity If America is going to elect its first black president, don’t you think he should be good for something besides symbolism? How is he not making a token of himself here?

Not Necessarily Not the News

Sat Jun 21, 2008 3:49 pm by McGehee [Here's Your Sign] [Nature]

Matt Drudge, here’s your sign. Drudge has deemed it headline-worthy to point out that Phoenix could see a high temperature of more than 115°F. Granted, such temps are undoubtedly more common in Tucson or Yuma, but Phoenix isn’t exactly in Arizona’s snow-belt. Hell, I may have seen a temperature of more than 115° in Sacramento while I was growing up. Probably not an official temperature, mind you, but that was before they started putting official weather stations on hot blacktop or next to heat-spewing air-conditioner units.

…apropos of nothing
Sun Jun 15, 2008 10:55 am by McGehee [Asides] [Here's Your Sign]	In 1976, the American people invited Jimmy Carter to become president and mind the public’s business. He wasn’t very good at it, so in 1980 the American people invited him to go home and mind his own damn business. He’s not very good at that either.

Cruise Control Means Not Hitting Your Target

Sat Jun 14, 2008 11:58 am by McGehee 4 comments [Here's Your Sign]

...however much he may deserve it. The recent cross-country drive was my first real long-distance opportunity to enjoy the use of cruise control. I already knew it wasn’t helpful on congested highways, which means just about any paved surface within 200 miles of here, but on the relatively uncongested rural interstates of the western U.S. I rather quickly developed one simple technique that enabled me to avoid most possible negative interactions with other drivers: I settled on keeping the cruise set to one or two MPH above the posted limit. Generally speaking, unless there’s a crackdown ordered from on-high most troopers won’t bother someone who’s within a few ticks of what the signs say, as long as they’re driving safely otherwise. Since my top priority was to minimize maneuvers, I needed a setting that would enable me to pass the excruciatingly law-abiding, who tend to bunch up in packs—while also allowing the more daring to glide smoothly on by whenever they overtook me. The 67- or 72-mph bracket is very little occupied and was almost perfect for me. It left only three categories of drivers for me to be concerned about: The occasional driver just like me who had sought and found the same in-between “sweet spot,” and who thus threatened to bunch up with me if I didn’t manage to shake him loose and put more distance between us. The seemingly increasingly rare long-haul driver who either doesn’t have, or prefers not to use, cruise control—and who is too inattentive to maintain consistent, predictable driving behavior. These tended to exhibit wide variations of speed, requiring me first to pass them, then to let them pass, and quite often to find some way to shake them loose and get away from them. On more than one occasion I had to do this repeatedly to the same driver, using different tactics until one finally worked. In Kentucky I even had to exit the highway and take a lunch break to get rid of one especially egregious idiot. Slightly-faster, cruise-using drivers who hadn’t learned good passing etiquette. The number of offenses in this category could merit a post of its own, but the worst is committed by those who crawl past the vehicle on their right, especially when several other cars are lined out behind them, also wanting to pass. Next worst is, after crawling past the slower vehicle, FAILING TO GET BACK OVER TO THE RIGHT. I avoided cruising in the left lane. When passing another vehicle that was moving at a speed too close to my cruise setting, I used my gas pedal to speed up at least a little even when there was no one else on the road. I always made sure I left plenty of space between me and the other vehicle before I moved back over, and I gently eased up afterward to let the cruise re-engage. And then I kept an eye on the vehicle I’d just passed to make sure the space between us was getting wider rather than narrower. In Kentucky (what is it about Kentucky?) I watched a guy (not the one mentioned above) in a pickup actually run another car off the road after he discovered that tailgating me wasn’t going to make me go any faster than the cars ahead of me were going. The car he tangled with was able to avoid leaving the paved shoulder and recovered almost immediately—but I was sure the guy in the pickup was going to end up killing somebody eventually. If he did, I wasn’t around for it. He somehow managed to get through the congestion and disappear into the distance. At the freeway accident scene we passed in Nashville I looked for his truck but didn’t see it. Since moving here and dealing with Atlanta-area freeways I’ve watched my opinion of big-rig drivers go from generally positive to generally negative, but the overwhelming majority of those encountered on this trip were no trouble at all. We did see a trucker defy the requirement to exit the highway for a brake inspection on I-24 before descending the steep grade at Monteagle, Tennessee, but that was the worst of it. I think if the freeways around here are just too congested for my nerves, they’re probably affecting the pros too.

You Know What?

Sat Jun 14, 2008 11:23 am by McGehee 8 comments [Elections] [Here's Your Sign]

I’m starting to think Bill Engvall was wrong. We don’t need for stupid people to carry signs warning us who they are. We need for people who do actually have two working brain cells to rub together, to carry signs letting us know they’re not stupid. Ever since John McCain clinched the GOP nomination, I’ve been watching as otherwise intelligent-seeming Republicans have been trying to come up with his ideal running mate. Almost every one has been either a woman or someone with other than European heritage. As a short-term, pandering response to Barack Obama’s nomination, it makes a kind of cold-blooded, winning-is-the-only-thing kind of sense—but as just one more rabbit-punch to the idea of America as a cohesive society, it’s the kind of attitude that makes me think the Founding Fathers were wrong, that we have failed them irreversibly and perhaps were fated to do so. It wouldn’t bother me so much if so many of those whose names have been floated, were not already out of the running for one reason or other, either because they don’t want it or because McCain would never risk being overshadowed by such an attention-getting choice. Today I saw one too many “it’s not rocket science” arguments for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be McCain’s running mate, completely ignoring that SHE HAS A NEWBORN SON WITH DOWN’S SYNDROME and therefore more important things to do than gallivant all over the country on a speculative bid for an office she doesn’t want, and where she will never be as effective nor as popular as she is right there in Juneau where her constituents overwhelmingly want her to stay. I’m content to wait for McCain to make his choice. I’ll give him one last chance to impress me and make me think maybe I’ve been too quick to reject him. If there’s one positive thing I can say about him it’s that he’ll make his own damn choice regardless what anybody else says. Hell, he could potentially earn my vote by choosing a running mate that just totally pisses me off. Or, you know, he could just totally piss me off and make me more determined than ever to avoid voting for him. But if he panders—to identity politics or to me—I definitely wouldn’t vote for him. Come on, you people: we conservatives didn’t get in this fix by being smart. We got here because somewhere along the line we stopped being smart. Unrelated: And the past tense of “wreak” is not “wreaked,” it’s wrought! Seeing “wreaked” in place of “wrought” overwreaks me something fierce. Not to mention, it reeks.

The Short Bus

Thu May 8, 2008 1:48 pm by McGehee [Coweta County] [Here's Your Sign]

So I’m driving along on a state highway here in Coweta County—one on which the posted limit is 55—and I come up on a parade. About a half a dozen vehicles are stuck plodding along at 35 behind a short bus with the logo of a day-care chain that we have in the area. Apparently this has been going on for a while because eventually the two vehicles immediately behind the bus pull out and pass on a double-yellow. The bus driver is riding his brakes and acts like he’s lost, or on something. A third vehicle—a pickup with a trailer—tries to follow the other two that escaped, but oncoming traffic robs him of his opportunity. One location of this day-care chain is not very far from my home; I start to worry that if I don’t get out of this parade I’ll be behind this short-bus driver for most of the afternoon. There’s a traffic light coming up, and I consider my options: I could make a left at the light and end up taking a long way home, the only advantage being that I don’t have to look at the bus’ slow-moving backside anymore. I could stay put and hope the short bus isn’t going my way. Or, I could duck down a short detour to the right, come back around to the light from a different direction and hope that between being able to go faster and the timing of that light I’m able to get there before the bus has gotten through the intersection. I take Plan C. It works. It shouldn’t have worked; there were too many variables against it. I should have ended up taking that other, longer way home. But the bus was waiting at the light as I got there, and the intersection was clear so I could make a right turn and wind up ahead of the parade. For all I know that bus is still leading those other drivers, only just now getting to the next major intersection on that stretch of highway. I think that day-care chain needs to hire people whose short-bus experience is driving, not riding. Afterthought: Maybe the driver thought he was a portable school zone…

How Did He Ever Get Elected to ANYTHING!?

Fri May 2, 2008 8:25 am by McGehee [Here's Your Sign]

Bill Richardson is clearly suffering from Jimmy Carter disease. The New Mexico governor thought he could talk Chavez into pressuring Colombia’s FARC into releasing its hostages, including three U.S. contractors they’ve held since 2003. Given his catastrophic negotiations with the Taliban, however, you’d think he’d know better. The problem with this fracas in Caracas is that our allies in Colombia’s government are already negotiating for the release of the hostages, and didn’t really want Richardson involving Chavez in the process. But such concerns never deter the Armchair Diplomat brigade. These go-getters just know they’re better qualified than American diplomats—or Colombian diplomats—to negotiate with America’s adversaries. The question of negotiation is an interesting one. [Investor’s Business Daily] rightly wonders what Richardson laid on the table to enlist Chavez’s help: “Such disrespect for Colombia raises questions about the governor’s judgment and, worse still, what he might have offered Chavez and FARC in behalf of a future U.S. Administration.” That future administration would be Barack Obama’s, of course. » Dunderhead Diplomat Gah. I have to believe that the more the American people learn about Barack Obama (and those he’d bring with him into office), the less likely they’ll be to elect him president against—yes, even John McCain. The Democrats appear poised once again to nominate, not a potential President of the United States, but November cannon fodder. Some things never change.

Kidz 2day!!!

Fri Apr 25, 2008 9:39 am by McGehee [Our Times] [Here's Your Sign]

The cell phone ad featuring the family with a daughter and a grandma who actually talk like text messages, may not seem so funny in a few more years. OMG! The shortcuts and symbols that teenagers use in electronic conversations are creeping into their schoolwork! That’s one of the conclusions of a study released Thursday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project and the National Commission on Writing, and it’s no surprise to Sacramento teens. “My drama teacher gets papers that use “b/c” for “because,” said Katie Talbot, a senior at McClatchy High School in Sacramento. “Sometimes I get text messages and I have no idea what they mean. Why can’t people just use a few more letters and have it make sense? I think writing is very important. I guess my generation is just super-lazy.” Talbot herself is anything but lazy. She texts and e-mails “pretty much all day,” she said, but takes pains to use proper language. “I always use full, grammatically correct English,” she said. » Teens’ texting symbols invade schoolwork As do I. Then again, when I send text messages I don’t try to cram a 400-word thesis into 136 characters (spaces included). If I exceed my character allotment, I edit for brevity and clarity, drawing on a wide-ranging vocabulary and a respect for my recipient and for the English language. Still, even if there were a practical reason for “txt-spk” in SMS text messages—which, given the lack of actual content, there isn’t—kids need to learn where it is and is not appropriate to use slang. I simply will not take anyone seriously who uses “txt-spk” unironically while typing on a full-size keyboard.

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