By Mark | August 26, 2007
I usually disregard the complaints that I get about this site and the stories I choose to print, but I think there might be something to this one. Let me know what you think.
Hey Mark, I’ve noticed your blog has been mostly about political stuff lately and was wondering if you could throw in some more sexually perverse stories in order to sleaze things up. Maybe you could talk about “figging”, the latest craze in the BDSM community, or the new Brady Bunch porno movie that’s coming out. Ron Jeremy plays Sam the butcher…
It’s been recently pointed out to me that MM.com has fallen in the Google “ball shaving” rakings from #1 to #2, but it hadn’t occurred to me that it could be symptomatic of something more serious. Now I’m wondering if maybe I’m allowing this little life raft of mine to float into too calm waters. Maybe it’s not a coincidence that my most popular posts recently have been about things like how much to pay the babysitter and whether or not my little town could support a minor league baseball team. Is MM.com – gasp – turning into a bland, online version of “USA Today”? If so, I think this might call from drastic measures… If you’re young, you might want to stay away for the next few weeks. Things could get scary when I shock our little ecosystem here back into balance.
update: OK, I just looked up “figging” and, on second thought, I think maybe I’m happy not to be pushing the envelope when it comes to perversion. Forget everything I said in the above post, and stay tuned for more of my musings about babies, dogs and the nature of friendship.
By Mark | August 24, 2007
Our friend Robert is on the campaign trail in Iowa this week. What follows is a brief note that he just left in the comments section. I found the part about the moving of primary dates to be particularly interesting. If it’s true that Edwards is looking good in Iowa, it only makes sense that Clinton would do everything in her power to make that particular contest appear less significant.
Rove and his people just need it to be close enough to fix. Most people have made up their minds on Hillary, and an election with her as the Democratic candidate would almost certainly be close.
Why do you people keep talking about Kerry as though his campaigned failed? The only serious thing they failed at doing was making sure there wouldn’t be massive election fraud in Ohio, not to mention the half dozen other states where it was obviously a determining factor in which way the electoral votes were delivered.
Now the Gulianni, Clinton and to some degree Obama camps are trying to pressure their people in Michigan to move that primary up ahead of Iowa’s caucus and New Hampshire’s primary. Edwards is ahead in Nevada, and I am seeing more and more indications that he is ahead here in Iowa.
The manager of Edward’s Council Bluffs office told me yesterday that he believes it’s a move force Iowa to move their caucus up even earlier. In his opinion, their strategy is to be able to claim that Iowa is too early to be relevant.
It’s really hard to gauge how Republicans here are going to vote in their caucus, but I the feeling Rudy’s personal life doesn’t play well with these heartlanders.
Another scary development is happening in California, where Republicans are trying to break up the electoral votes awarded in the general. If they succeed, you can forget about any Democrat winning in 2008.
I just hope that the Edwards team is able to play hardball with these folks.
By Mark | August 23, 2007
At the last Shadow Art Fair, a woman came to our table wanting to talk about our “Iggy Pop was from Ypsilanti” shirts. She wanted us to know that we were wrong, that he was from Ann Arbor, and that she should know, seeing as how they had dated. I told her that, with all due respect, I thought she was wrong — that he may well have “dated” her in Ann Arbor, but that his family lived in Ypsi… Anyway, the other day, I was in a bookstore, flipping though Paul Trynka’s new book, “Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed,” and I found this passage. I can barely read it now, as the image was taken with my cell phone camera, but I’m pretty sure it says, “Coachville Gardens Trailer Park is in green surroundings on Carpenter Road, just outside the city of Ann Arbor, officially in the township of Ypsilanti, Michigan.” I think Iggy says the same thing in his book “I Need More,” but I can’t find my copy at the moment… So, for the record, I’m right. While he did go to Ann Arbor’s Pioneer High, and work at Potbelly Sandwiches on State Street, he resided in Ypsi (Township) as a youth.
(And, before you get in my face, yell “I was his girlfriend,” and correct me, I know that he didn’t work at Potbelly Sandwiches. He actually worked at Discount Records, which, a few years ago was replaced by Potbelly Sandwiches. I just like to pretend that he worked there. For some reason, it really gives me joy to spread the rumor that he made shitty sandwiches for a franchise that didn’t even exist at the time. I’m odd that way.)
By Mark | August 23, 2007
Linette’s out with her friends tonight, so I’m sitting here, alone in what must be my mom’s basement, furtively stealing glances of Putin’s chest during the slow parts of Capricorn One, and feeling guilty about the Ypsipanty orders I can’t seem to find the energy to fill. (Who would have thought that panty packing could be so emotionally draining?) If only I could break free of the computer and make my way across the room to where think Linette has hidden the Cheese-Its…
And, for the record, this is what I think of television news too.
By Mark | August 23, 2007
Oliva passed along a link to this article on Republican strategy in the comments section a few days ago and I thought that it was worth a mention here on the front page. I’m interested to know what you make of it… Here’s a clip:
. . . Rove’s weeklong broadside against Clinton — which he is expected to repeat in multiple appearances on television talk shows today — looks suspiciously like an exercise in reverse psychology that his team employed three years ago when it was preparing for President Bush’s reelection bid.
The ploy was described by Rove lieutenant Matthew Dowd during a postmortem conference on the 2004 election at Harvard University the month after Bush defeated Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.
In the run-up to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when it was not yet clear who Bush’s opponent would be that November, Rove and his aides had begun to fear that their most dangerous foe would be then-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
With his Southern base, charismatic style and populist message, Edwards, they believed, could be a real threat to Bush’s reelection.
But instead of attacking Edwards, Rove’s team opened fire at Kerry.
Their thinking went like this, Dowd explained: Democrats, in a knee-jerk reaction to GOP attacks, would rally around Kerry, whom Rove considered a comparatively weak opponent, and make him the party’s nominee. Thus Bush would be spared from confronting Edwards, the candidate Republican strategists actually feared most.
Unlike Kerry, who had been in public service for decades, Edwards was a political newcomer and lacked a long record that could be attacked. And, unlike former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who had been the front-runner but whose campaign was collapsing in Iowa, Edwards couldn’t easily be painted as “nutty.”
If that sounds implausibly convoluted, consider Dowd’s own words:
“Whomever we attacked was going to be emboldened in Democratic primary voters’ minds.
“So we started attacking John Kerry a lot in the end of January because we were very worried about John Edwards,” Dowd said. “And we knew that if we focused on John Kerry, Democratic primary voters would sort of coalesce” around Kerry….
Is Rove playing a similar game against Clinton? Is he trying to stampede Democrats into nominating her, having concluded that Obama, Edwards or someone else would pose a stiffer challenge to the Republican nominee?
