Archive - Oct 2008

As most of the devoted Cake Eater readers know, I generally do not enjoy covers.  I can count the number of covers that I find to be better than the original on one hand. 

And I'm thinking I might have to go to two hands, because this cover by Cat Power of David Bowie's Space Oddity is pretty damn hot.  I couldn't find the entire song---if it's out there at all---but rather the Lincoln commercial on which it is featured. 

That said, my mind's not made up just yet.

Here's the cover..

And here's the original.

While I like Bowie's original, there's just something about this Cat Power girlie's voice that makes it really, really intriguing. Granted, all you hear is thirty seconds, but it's a really good thirty seconds.  I'm not sure how she'd handle the middle instrumental section, but it is enough to make you want to hear more, no? 

What say you, my devoted Cake Eater readers?  The original or the cover? 

Seriously, these people deserve a beatitude. 

Blessed are the righteously snarky...for they shall have a guaranteed seat at the bar in heaven.  With all the free peanuts they can eat. 

{HT: Ace-o-rama}

Awwww.   Go and clickie.  It's little Moses from Winterset.  In keeping with that weird central Iowa tradition of trick or treating the night before Halloween, Russ took him out tonight.  Their first stop?  The local liquor store. 

Apparently, he walked away with some travel size bottles of Absolut which I'm absolutely sure Russ pilfered from Moses' treat bag.  Steal the snickers, sure, but leave the kid the vodka, eh? 

And what the hell is UP with that weirdo "Beggars Night" bullshit anyway?  NO OTHER PLACE IN THE COUNTRY DOES IT AND IT SCREWS UP THE WORKS!  Ugh.  I hated that when I lived there.  Although, it did relieve me of handing out candy, and missing good Halloween parties.  But still....IT'S WEIRD. 

Also, the husband and I carved our pumpkin tonight.  Well, I should correct that.  The husband carved our pumpkin tonight.  I watched, provided knives, newspaper, markers and a trash can.  He went to town.  I usually do this, but the husband hasn't participated in a while and he wanted to take part, so we went to town tonight, rather than wait for tomorrow. 

The husband: hard at work with an assortment of knives and one medium sized vegetable of the pumpkin variety. 

Proud of his work, he is. 

I took this one without the flash.  Because I wanted the spooky, unfocused look.  And if you choose to question that reason, well, let me point out to you that spoon on the table is to scoop out your BRAAAAINSSSSSS!  Put a new light on things, mmmmmm? 

Happy Halloween, my devoted Cake Eater readers. 

*Tag the quote.  I put it up last year and no one figured it out.  I'll give you a hint: very deep, very gravelly voice. 

I've about had it with the FT. 

Regular (and truly devoted) Cake Eater readers will know that this is our daily, dead tree taking.  I've put up with their partisan coverage of the election, simply because, well, I can skip past it, and move onto the regular news about a. financial crisis or b. world affairs (you all do know that Congo and Rwanda are about to go at it, right?  In a big, bad and very 1994 way, right?)  that no American media outlet covers.  I like the paper, for the most part, but, right now, they're just another paper in the tank for Obama.  Curiously enough though, while they're continuing with their fawining coverage (today it was three quarters of a page dedicated to Obama's transition preparations), they've apparently decided to start hedging their bets, and started mentioning today, for the first time, that the race is tightening.  I think they're simply beginning to think that, hey, we'd better start managing expectations of our European readers, just in case Obama doesn't get elected.

Also, the columnists are starting to drive me batty.  Today, they've got Christopher Buckley writing McCain's imagined concession speech. (Which I didn't even bother reading.)  They've also got John Gapper, who is the regular Thursday columnist, telling us that the msm's shift to the left is "temporary." 

{...}It still infuriates Republicans, who are convinced that the media have it in for them. Umpteen newspapers (including the Financial Times) have declared their support for Mr Obama and Slate, the online magazine, this week disclosed that 55 of its staff and contributors intend to vote for Mr Obama and one for Mr McCain.

In fact, I think they are correct that the media currently tilt leftward in the US, but not for the obvious reason. It says less about the bias of “liberal elite” journalists and more about a breakdown of the established media order, from The New York Times to Mr Drudge.

Mr Drudge’s dominance has been undermined by competition. His sensibility infuriated so many people that left-leaning sites such as the Daily Kos sprung up to challenge him. Lately, his thunder has been stolen by the Huffington Post, an unlikely blend of leftwing blogging, reporting and aggregation founded by Arianna Huffington, the media gadfly.

The Huffington Post has leapt past the Drudge Report in traffic, attracting 4.5m unique users in September, compared with 2.1m for Drudge and 2.4m for Politico, a political news site. While Mr Drudge picks out stories that could hurt Mr Obama, the Huffington Post does the opposite, highlighting anything that makes Mr McCain look bad.

This shift leftwards online has been matched on cable television, where Fox News, the rightwing news channel, has increasingly faced its mirror image at MSNBC. The latter’s leftish talk-show hosts, Keith Olbermann and now Rachel Maddow, a chirpy gay liberal, dish out scorn about Republicans in opposition to Bill O’Reilly and others at Fox.

The effect is not just to balance out Mr Drudge and Mr O’Reilly but to place old-school media objectivity, as practised by US newspapers, under pressure. Obama-supporting blogs have ridiculed stories in outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post that fail to dismiss distortions by Mr McCain.

All this, and falls in advertising and circulation, is pushing newspapers back to a scrappier, more plain-spoken and partisan “yellow press” past. Instead of soberly trying to filter all information with a careful “on the one hand, on the other hand” balance, they are becoming more colourful in tone and politics.

Some old hacks are shocked. Michael Malone, a columnist and “one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I’m cut”, wrote on ABC News online that the bias to Mr Obama on television and in newspapers was “not just bewildering but appalling”.

Well, maybe, but it looks familiar enough to a British journalist: this is Fleet Street. It is what happens when you get intense competition among different media outlets, all seeking to play on (and pander to) the audience’s sympathies and biases.

The centre is no longer holding. “Having many voices is the natural state of the media. There was just a three-decade long exception in the US when city papers and networks dominated,” says Jeff Jarvis, a blogger and lecturer in journalism at City University of New York.

Just as Fleet Street swings left and right politically, depending on where it sees its commercial advantage, the US media have shifted left for a time, to mimic what they judge to be the country’s mood. When that mood swings back, so will the media.{...}

 

My first nit to pick on this one is there anyone in the real world who actually puts the Huffington Post and Drudge on the same level?  They're entirely two different kinds of sites.  It's comparing apples to oranges.  Drudge mainly links to other people, and provides very little content of his own. (And, no, kids I don't count the usual six word lede, "Obama did so and so...developing" to be original content.)  Huffington Post links to no one, but puts out plenty of their own (atrocious) content (and steals bandwidth every time they get a chance to do so). That HuffPo had more traffic in September than Drudge, is supposedly Gapper's best example of internet leftist media winning out.  Which is bullshit.  Because neither of these sites purports to be an actual "news" organization, or if they do, that's not what they are in reality.  They are citizen op-ed pages.  Pure and simple.  That's it.  And everyone knows that, or at least they should. 

The "new media" of the internet has never proclaimed to be truly out there to represent the people, in an All the President's Men-Ben Bradlee-get two solid sources to confirm-we've got to be objective-sort of way. It has happened, particularly when Powerline brought down Dan Rather in 2004, but for the most part, the right side of the blogosphere is a bunch of tech saavy people, surfing the web, linking to stories and commenting on them.  They also provide more information than has been reported in the msm. It's developed as a counterbalance to what many people have seen as the leftist tilt of the media, which is nothing new but rather developed during the Clinton Administration---another president that the media loved and wanted elected.  That the internet came to the fore during his tenure is interesting, because while the economy it created saved Bubba in varied ways, it, ironically, almost brought about his downfall.  Drudge was the first guy to report about Monica Lewinsky, and it's completely possible that if he hadn't done the work, and hadn't published that story, the mainstream media wouldn't have done anything with the information.  In my personal opinion, Drudge has yet to trump that scoop.  The Huffington Post, to my knowledge, has yet to break any worthwhile news at all, you know, other than that John Cusack (or any number of celebrities) is apparently pissed off about the Bush administration.  But the point is still the same: for some unknown reason, Arianna Huffington felt liberal viewpoints were being ignorned by the mainstream media, so she created an outlet for them.  Same deal, different decade.  This isn't, for the most part, citizen journalism, it's citizen op-ed writing. 

While I won't deny that the web and blogs have been handy for grassroots efforts, on either side of the equation, mostly, it's about bitching.  I should know.  I'm a prime example.  And one of the things that people bitch about, left or right, is the perceived imbalance of the media.  The left thinks the msm was in the tank for Bush in the lead-up to the Iraq war; the right thinks they're in the tank for the left every day of the week and twice on Sundays. 

Yet, according to Gapper, all this opinion  that started with the web, and is filtering into cable news, is putting pressure on "old school media objectivity" because, as Gapper sees it, opinion makes money and keeps dying newspapers afloat, while strict, objective reporting of the news is a financial loser.  Yellow Journalism, apparently, pays, if Fleet Street is any indication, and it is in Gapper's book. 

See, this is the sort of thing that drives me bananas.  Because there is, obviously, a double standard at play here.  What Gapper isn't saying is that Yellow Journalism is all right now that there's a candidate on the left that we actually like and want elected (and, yes, the FT did endorse Obama earlier in the week) and are willing to get behind.  But if it was the other way round, if the candidate of the moment was a rightwinger, he'd freak out. He'd be, undoubtedly screaming, about media objectivity, and how they weren't doing the job the people of the world expect them to do.  (And that's only if the media could ever get in the tank for a rightist candidate, which is unlikely.)  Gapper insinuates that it would work this way, because media outlets that mimic the public's mood make money, so there would, eventually, be a wholesale media shift to the right. 

And how likely do you think that outcome is, my devoted Cake Eater readers. 

What Gapper doesn't get is that Americans truly believe that the media should be objective.  We want the facts, without opinion, if you please, because we want to make up our own damn minds about things.  If I want to only read articles that I agree with, I'll stick with the blogs or opinion magazines, thank you ever so bloody much. I want facts.  I want numbers and names and who said what and when did they say it and how they said it.  This is what I want as a media consumer.  I don't want endless "analysis".  I don't want pundits putting their two cents out there, fifty times a day.  I don't want any of this.  What I want is to make up my own damn mind about things, and for that I need facts.  Plain, boring facts.  I want the who, what, where, why, when, and how.  AND THAT'S IT.  I don't want the media to have an agenda of their own, that they push on their own pages, and by that I do not mean the editorial pages.  Their bias filters down into news stories, where they decide what are the germane facts and what aren't.  We place an awful lot of trust in these people to give us accurate accounts of what is going on, and what happens when that trust is shattered?  What's going to happen to the FT, and every other newspaper who doubled down on the hope of an Obama presidency, if McCain is elected?  How will people be able to trust anything they publish ever again?  I'm already starting to doubt the other stories that they publish because their viewpoint is so obviously compromised, what's going to happen after the election?  Eh?  

Gapper doesn't seem to have any good answers other than to tell us to get used to the pendulum swinging from left to right to left to right in the media.  What happens, dear Mr. Gapper, when the pendulum falls to the ground and shatters completely? Because, come Tuesday, there's a very good chance of that happening.  What role with the mainstream media play then?    

Sheila, in yet another excerpt from her (wonderfully) overstuffed bookshelves, covers Rosalind Russell's autobiography today.

Sadly, Roz died of breast cancer.  Her autobiography was published after her death, and her husband wrote the prologue to the book. :

After she died I found a petition she had tucked away in her prayer book. It said in part, "Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point. Seal my lips on aches and pains. They are increasing, and love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by."

While  I doubt she meant for anyone to read that, that struck me as pretty damn good advice for those of us who have to deal with health issues. 

People often wonder how they should treat those who are very ill, or are battling with a disease.  They worry a lot about making a wrong move, bringing up a delicate subject, or offending their friend/loved one to the point where the relationship is irretrevably broken.  I think people worry too much about this.  All anyone needs to know when chatting with someone who is ill is not to ignore the big, fat, pink elephant that's sitting in the middle of the living room, but to simply treat their ill friend/loved one like they did before they were sick.  That's all I wanted. I wanted Mr. H., when he came to visit me in the hospital, to joke and chat, and not see me be unable to eat any food, or take water, or to fall asleep in midsentence.  I was so pleased when he was able to help me walk around the hospital floor.  I had to get out of bed, to move, to heal, it was part of the bargain, and I needed him and the husband to help hold me up as I walked to the nurse's station and back.  I was pleased I was able to be normal in front of him, even though the situation was patently abnormal.  

Yet, on the flipside, ill people have to remind themselves, often, that most people just don't want to hear about it, particularly if you're of the chatty variety, and aren't possessed of a John Wayne-like sense of stoicism, like myself.   You may want to talk, but they probably don't want to listen---well, not after the first few times, anyway.  You learn that, even though you may want to answer honestly when a friend asks you how you're doing, you'll simply say, "I'm fine," even if you aren't, to enable them to work around the big, fat, pink elephant---your illness---in the room.  If you want them to treat you normally, you will enable your friends and family to do that.  It's the classy thing to do, and Rosalind Russell knew that it was also a hard thing to do: she prayed for help in doing it.  You're focused on the maladies and the pain they've caused you and the struggle sometimes becomes omnipresent in your head, but your friends and your family members---and, most importantly, your spouse---don't need to hear all about it.  Rosalind, bless her soul, undoubtedly, was seeking a bit of normality, but I'm sure was also trying to make the burden lighter for her much loved husband, who had to see her deteriorate from the lovely, vibrant woman she was.

Yet, everyone handles finding the normality differently.  For some people it means ignoring the obvious.  For others, it means taking off the kid gloves.  Take Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner, for instance.  After her death, Wilder later recounted that she was a pretty whiny patient, that something was always wrong, that she was terribly spoiled, and could be petulant and unfair at times.  He didn't want to argue with her because she was sick, and he knew it was the illness that was causing her to be this way, but, after letting it slide a few times, he decided he wasn't going to let her get away with it, and he blew up at her.  She thanked him for it.  She said, something like,  'See?  I must not be dying.  You wouldn't argue with me if you thought I was dying.'

Besides, being sick---you know, after the inital drama of the diagnosis---is boring.  It's a life sucking drudge of an experience.  Why bore other people with it?   If they're leading productive, happy lives, let them get on with it, instead of dragging them down.  While they want to be a friend to you, to hear you, you have to be just as much of a friend to them, by shutting the hell up.  

Who thought this would be a good idea?

Yes, that's right, my devoted Cake Eater readers, Lancome has come up with a vibrating mascara wand. 

I already get black goop all over my eyes whenever I apply mascara---how is this supposed to help me avoid that problem?  Eh?  Eh?  Good gravy, people!  This is NOT a good idea.  I mean, seriously, do I have to spell it out for you? I guess I do. 

Ahem. 

You'll shoot your eye out, kid!

Ok, well maybe you wouldn't shoot your eye out, but bad things, nonetheless, could happen with this.  I smell lawsuits!

I'm not even going to tell you what other uses the husband thought the mascara tube could be good for. 

Hold onto your granny panties, my devoted Cake Eater readers, here's yet another piece of information about  Barack Obama that the mainstream media won't report, and if they do, they'll let the lefties spin it to a favorable position. 

Check it out. 

Go ahead and press play.  It's only four minutes long, and it's worth your while to see what kind of flaming leftist Obama really is. 

Ace translates:

1. The Supreme Court never considered "redistribution of wealth" or "economic justice" among the guarantees provided to citizens.

2. Even the Warren Court was not "radical" enough to do so -- to impose real change on the nation.

3. The courts have generally provided negative constraints on the government rather than positive obligations the government owes to its citizens (specifically, here, such as economic justice and redistribution of wealth).

4. Therefore, it is a "tragedy" that the civil rights movement became so courts-focused, because it limited what redress they could actually obtain -- and it took attention away from the "community organizing" efforts which could assemble "coalitions of power" (political power, that is) to actually achieve "redistributive change." Such change simply could not be had in the courts, still laboring under the "constraints" imposed by the Founding Fathers.

5. "And in some ways we still suffer from that."

 That is disturbing. 

No matter what kind of spin his lackeys are putting on this, the truth of the matter is that Obama thinks that the courts aren't a great place to get economic justice---but that it's ok to do it legislatively. 

Which, considering we, the American people, have pretty much rejected socialism in the past on a wholesale level, is disturbing.  That's what he's about.  That's what he's talking about with his wealth redistribution; it's class warfare on a Marxist level.  If given the chance, he will do precisely what Marx wanted.  This is the same plan that didn't work in the Soviet Union.  This is the same plan that didn't work in Vietnam. This is the same plan that didn't work in China. The latter two having switched over to a state-enforced capitalism. I could go on with the examples, but you get the gist, I'm sure.  Why didn't it work? you ask.  Because people are inherently unable to discard their sense of self-preservation to work for what is considered the "greater good" when that greater good leaves them worse off.  In other words, people will always want theirs, "theirs" will be better than what they currently have, and they'll do what they need to get it.  It's hardwired.  How can an ideal overtake your hardwired sense of self-preservation?   It can't.  Unless that ideal works with the hardwiring---i.e.capitalism.  This is why communism failed. 

No, you will not find this explanation (at least I'm fairly sure you won't) in any research.  I don't have the data to back up my assertions.  This is simply my observation---and has been since I was a senior in high school.  The Soviet Union not only fell because they could no longer keep up with America's nuclear spending (Way to go, Ronnie!) but it also failed because the people had lost sight of what the ideals of communism were supposed to be: everyone prospering by hard work, that success could be egalitarian, and the state could make it so.  The comforts of the burgeois life were to be abandoned.  No one was to have them.  Everyone was equal.  Everybody was a "comrade."  Everyone would have food on the table in their hovel and would go to sleep each night, thinking righteous red thoughts about the power of the worker within the state that respected them.   Well, that's not exactly how it worked out.   Some people in the Soviet Union prospered more than others, and they were generally high-up party members, who had sleazed their way up to the top, for more and better perks.  These people were corrupt, but they were at least honest: they knew how the system worked, they knew what they needed and they went out and got it for themselves.  Unfortunately, that left the poor, idealistic, potato-picking sap to foot the bill. 

Oh, and never mind the repressive measures the Soviet Union had to put in place to keep the people from rebelling.  Their very own revolution came back to bite them on the ass.  That is, only if they didn't end up building the Road of Bones in Siberia. 

Is this what we want for America?  Do you really want Joe Biden riding around D.C. in his limo, asking neighboring cars to roll down their windows, and asking them if they have any Grey Poupon, while the "workers" toil for a bread and soup?  Because that's what you'll get if you elect this Marxist asshole.

Ok, perhaps that's an overstatement.  While I doubt either you or I will be sent out to pick potatoes in the fields, this is what Barack Obama is about.  This is what he wants: wealth redistribution.  A key tenet of Marxism is wealth redistribution..  Marxism morphed into communism.  Communism has been tried and has failed, time and again.  Capitalism, however unfair, actually does work.  Communism means that you don't own anything, and if you did, well it was siezed by the state and will be given to other people.  Obama's clever enough to realize that some people remember the cold war and the evils of communism, the wholesale repression of the people under its boot.  He just wants to take money from those who have enough and give it to those who don't, thus making everyone middle-class.  Said money will be redistributed through tax refunds, welfare payments, universal healthcare, etc.  This is what he wants.  Oh, sure it sounds good: take from the rich and give to everyone else! Fabulous!  Where do I sign up to get my own pair of Manolo Blahniks?   But, here's the catch---and there's always a catch---what happens when you don't have rich people any longer?  Because communism doesn't encourage rich people to do what they do what they do best, which is to create wealth.  There's no purpose to it when it will only be confiscated by the state.  Who foots the bill then?  Whose wealth will be resdistributed then, my devoted Cake Eater readers?  Why, it will be the only wealth available to the ruling class---yours.  Those massive social programs don't fund themselves, do they? 

Obama wants economic justice, which really means that the state will have the power to run your life.  Is that what you want? Choice will no longer be an option, except when it comes to abortions, that is.  Is your health insurance premium so much that you're willing to give up the essential freedom of choice?  Did you lose so much in the stock market over the past couple of weeks that you feel the best solution is what government can give you?  Are you willing to trade your integrity and your dignity as an independent, free person to feel the warmth and security of the nanny state's blanket? 

This man is not only a nasty, slimy piece of work, he's a thief.  He fancies himself as Robin Hood: he steals from the rich to give to the poor.  The only problem with that analogy (as someone has already pointed out, but forgive me, I can't remember who it is) is that Robin Hood was stealing from the Sherriff of Nottingham, who had imposed huge taxes upon the people of Sherwood Forest to pay for his battle against King Richard, and his wine bill, to the point where the people were starving.  Robin Hood was taking money that rightfully belonged to the people and giving it back to them.  This is who Barack Obama claims to be.  He'll take from the rich and give it to you.  But the thing is---this being the difference between Robin Hood and Barack Obama---that money was never yours to begin with.  Someone worked hard for that money.  They---straight from the diaphragm of John Houseman---earned it. That's the difference. It goes from being your money to being their money simply because they're in charge of the government.  If they're willing to do it to their biggest donors, why wouldn't the Democrats do it to you?  What's going to stop them?

Have some pride, for fuckssakes, people, and say definitively that a. you'd like to be rich, too and b. the government had better not take it when I get to that point.  Sure, it's harder to commit to than taking a hand-out, but have you no shame?  This country was not founded, and built to what it is today, by weenies who looked to the government to solve every problem they had.  They worked for it.  They made their lives better with their own two hands.  Perhaps you've got someone in your family tree who made a success of themselves?  What would they think if you were to tell them you're voting for the guy who's going to redistribute the wealth from the rich and give it to people who already have roofs over their heads and food on the table?  They'd be, rightly, infuriated with you, methinks.  They would consider taking handouts as shameful.  They would rather starve, undoubtedly, than take charity where none is needed.  They would understand that you NEVER beg unless you absolutely need to. 

People right now do not need to beg. 

They are comfortable.  Their 401K took a hit, but it'll rebuild its value in a few years.  Their home might have less value, but it should never have had that value in the first place because of an overinflated market. Yet, a small, temporary, decrease in their individual prosperity---which is just another example of the law of self-preservation---is going to lead them to vote for the guy who's going to give them a handout?  Even though they'll undoubtedly regret that handout later? Yep.  That's what it appears they're going to. 

People are getting stupider every year.  I swear.  

March has arrived in 1941, and rumours are flying around about where the spring offensive is to be, and whom will be attacked this time round.  He also explains the panting that occurs during his broadcasts. 

 have your cake and read more too!

It's February, 1940, and winter sports are all the rage in Germany.  Never mind that there's a state of war between Germany and Britain and France...it's time to go skiing!  Because of the dearth of real news regarding the war, Shirer decides to record some of the stories he hears, but isn't allowed to report.

 have your cake and read more too!

Dogs and cats must now be living together in peaceful harmony.  The Strib has endorsed Norm Coleman.

Truly, the world has been turned upside down. 

Money quotes:

Count this newspaper among the Minnesota voices that long for a lessening of partisan polarization and a return to constructive problem-solving in Washington. If demonization of the partisan opposition continues to be the political coin of this realm, effectiveness of American democracy will be diminished.

Independent judgment, exercised on behalf of the best interests of the country and state, is what we hope to see from our U.S. senators. With that hope in mind, this newspaper recommends the reelection of Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.

The more independent, pragmatic Coleman emerged when he helped speed money to Minneapolis for a new Interstate 35W bridge; when he promoted tax credits for renewable energy investment; when he pushed for larger Pell Grants for needy college students; when he stood up to President Bush on extending publicly subsidized health insurance, including MinnesotaCare, to more poor children and their parents.

He showed good judgment most recently when, despite a tide of constituent opposition, he voted to authorize spending $700 billion to inject capital into banks and thaw a credit freeze. He rightly judged that quick action was needed to avert serious damage to the nation's economy.{...}

We bank our hope for a less polarized America with Coleman, despite accord with DFL challenger Al Franken on some important issues. However, we consider his recommendation for a "no" vote on the economic bailout package the wrong call at the wrong time.

Franken is a gifted communicator. His best-selling books skewering the Bush administration and the Republican right helped revitalize the Democratic Party when it was on the ropes. He's an effective critic. It isn't as easy to envision him as a constructive force for bipartisan legislation.{...}

While a. newspaper endorsements don't really mean much in terms of swinging voters one way or another and b. it's laughable that the editorial board of the Strib now suddenly wants more bipartisanship (HA!), it's nonetheless laudable that they called this one correctly.  They finally looked past their own liberal agenda and saw the truth.  I doubt this conversion is on the level of St. Paul being struck blind in Damascus, but it's nice to see they finally have some sense, because I've been wondering about that for quite some time now. 

Al Franken is a joke candidate.  If elected, he will be an embarrassment along the lines of Jesse Ventura and, honestly, we don't need that.  If Al Franken gets elected, we will be the laughingstock of the nation. And that's no joke.  He will offend people, he will polarize them....he will do everything we already know doesn't work.  Norm Coleman can serve us better and more effectively than Al any day of the week and twice on Sundays.  He knows what kind of work needs to be done.  And, quite frankly, as much as I don't appreciate long-time incumbents, along the lines of Robert Byrd, I do think we need someone in the senate who knows the ropes, and won't be starting out at square one.  Minnesota's senate seats have churned through a lot of people in the past ten or twelve years.  It's time for some consistency.  Because, beyond the fact that he'd be a freshman senator, Al Franken knows literally nothing about being a senator and what the business of governing entails.  I'm pretty sure he just wants the gig because he can always be on tee vee whilst bloviating on the senate floor, even if it's only C-Span.  C-Span, undoubtedly, has a bigger audience than Air America ever did. 

*with huge apologies to Steve-o for stealing his line.