Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Maya detangles the Holidaze.


Maya detangles the Holidaze.
Originally uploaded by emaggie

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

"And if you lived in Hawaii, does that really give you a license to critique poi?"

The Dems are certainly heating up. Everyone's taking chances with their rhetoric. All those covering the race in Iowa and beyond are struggling to not hyperventolate over what they think they've heard. But one nugget from today makes me think Hillary's feeling the heat in the kitchen more than she's used to. Namely, she attacked Obama by implying that living in Indonesia in his pre-teen years doesn't allow him to criticize current American foreign policy. Or whatever she was trying to say. Parse it yourself. I see it as a major-league dumb-ass flub on her part whatever the spin. With poll numbers headed the opposite direction of what her team expected, this might be an anecdote that nobody can spin. Or it might be bunk. It just struck me as a particularly bitchy moment.

Hope your own calls from Omaha deal almost entirely with arrival times today. Rock on.

Monday, November 19, 2007

"Who am I? Why am I here? Why do I still have a career?"

I won't fall for the alleged charm of Mike Huckabee. Please remember, he was one of the three GOP candidates that responded to a "show of hands" question at a debate that he didn't believe in evolution. He's trying to run as a Baptist minister who condemns abortion as a Holocaust. He says that terrorists are the greatest threat in our Nation's history. But he knows how to make lemonade out of crap. His Chuck Norris ad is hilarious. I recommend watching it, chuckling (pun intended) and then going back to believing that this man is the equivalent of James Stockdale in this election cycle.



Hope you don't watch a single episode of "Walker Texas Ranger" today. Rock on.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Novak once ate a puppy in Reno. With a spoon.

We've all seen the battle initiated today in the Dems Primary Race an embarrassing number of times before. A major political campaign gets sideswiped by cowardly innuendo, in this case from a traitorous windbag some decades past his prime. The thusly engaged parties involved throw flaming balls of crap at each other. Everyone gets burned, while somebody (usually the roped-in dope, or dopette) survives to fight another battle. And the jerk-off who threw the first bomb gets to start more battles later. In campaigning, it's called the dark arts. For tax purposes, those paid to do it call it "opposition research". I call it something else - the Full Novak.

To explain - Robert Novak threw a bomb of an undefined "story" in his especially horrid column meant to tarnish Barack Obama with "scandalous" overtones that was blamed on Hillary Clinton's campaign. No one knows any of the details yet. But Obama's already come out this afternoon to say don't "Swift Boat" him and Hillary's minions are spreading loads of counterattacks and denials. We all know Novak's the ultimate dooshbag. We all expect unending scandal in the current state of electoral wrangling. Sadly. But did ya expect that a guy who was utlimately responsible for outing a CIA agent and sending Scooter Libby to jail would go this far, this soon thereafter? I can only hope that this story is nothing but bunnyfarts and we all laugh, laugh, laugh at the momentary ripple at this stage of the campaign. But hope ain't shite in politics. It's just a hick town in Arkansas.

Hope your own weekend is focused on what it should be - football. Rock on.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Next question: "All of us in (insert appropriate Hickville reference) want to know if you believe that prayer is helpful with your work?"

Hillary's campaign continues to amaze. If you've not yet heard (and I was pleasantly surprised that a particularly well-informed dinner guest last night hadn't), her latest kerfuffle relates to planting questions in the audience of Iowa rallies. As if. Everyone knows it happens given all the 20-something advance staff marshalling supporters and cheeseballs around the endless events they're currently droning on through. Yet the way her people have handled it "without her knowledge" convinces me that she's once again trying to have it both ways. She condemns attack politics, but doesn't deny it happened in her shop. I'll say it again - horrible, horrible campaign work. The action is much, much less offensive than the reaction. Which leads me to repeatedly intone that we should all be very afraid of the arrogance of the Dems heading deep into the '08 cycle. Congress ain't even baked a cake much less given anyone anything they can use during their leadership. And we're supposed to believe in this "inevitable" candidacy? Somewhere right now, Howard Dean is screaming in an airport bathroom. Oh, and that's in no way meant to be the pun you think was intended.

On another Hillary follow-up, the Maid-Rite waitress, Anita Esterday, gave an interview to The Huffington Post regarding TipGate. No surprises if you're entirely cynical. Her life has been turned upside down and she will no longer consider voting for Hillary. If you're unacquainted, you can catch up. Anyhoo, I sound like I'm piling on here. But I seriously feel like this sort of junk targeting her was as likely as Tuesday following Monday. Guess that makes me the cynic, after all.

The NYTimes scored an interview with Pervez "The Perv" Musharraf in which he offers the most Orwellian defenses of martial law since, well, Orwell. But that was fiction. Pakistan is a nation-sized keg that's gonna get dropped at least a few more times before it makes it to the deck and gets tapped in the crowd. Thereafter...well, stand back and try not to hold the first glass.

Big news upcoming on the Maya front. We're shifting her from the part-time educational care of the Lutherans to that of the Jews. Call it a system upgrade. Or don't - no offense to all those Lutheran IT managers out there. Regardless, it won't happen until January. So pics of the Jesusmas pagent will still get some play here before we get ready for all the High Holidays that I vaguely remember come somewhat annually. But don't quote me on that. In all seriousness, it will be very nice place for her advancement just down the hill from our home. Maya's impressive command of all the lyrics on the latest Justin Roberts album I think slam dunked her application.

Hope your own upgrades go smoothly today. Rock on.

Friday, November 09, 2007

Attention DC Servers: Tucker Carlson will "leave a Hillary" for every meal for at least the next year.

Oh. My. Gawd. Hillary. Sucks. Or, at the VERY least, her campaign staff is so ruthless and tonedeaf that they don't deserve a chance in Hell once things really get dicey. Confused? Call it TipGate. NPR broke the story yesterday inadvertently, regarding a visit to a Iowa restaurant by Hillary and her subsequent use of an anecdotal exchange with a waitress, Anita Esterday. The waitress claims Hillary left no tip. I listened to the report yesterday and today's follow-up in real time. Without a doubt, Ms. Esterday (a single mother of two boys working two jobs) is legit. Everyone agrees that it's utterly ridiculous. Still, in the most incredibly stupid fashion I've ever seen, the Clinton campaign is trying to trash this minimum-wage working woman including using a pseudo-slick new counter-attack website. Somewhere right now, Matt Drudge is spooging into his mock-tweedy pants.

The follow-up story on today's "Morning Edition" is essential reading/listening. Do I think Hillary intentionally tried to short Esterday? Surely not. But the utter ruthlessness of her minions' response and obfuscation concerns me greatly. I expect that Hillary's campaign is the front-runner. I think she's a smart manager. I, nonetheless, understand why so many people so deeply despise her. Most of it's not her fault - she's surrounded by opportunists that will never rightly admit a wrong. But this story has legs that shouldn't even be possible. By not admitting that a mistake was made and instead offering up credit card receipts that in no way supports her story, Hillary's staff just lost her tens of thousands of votes from waitresses nationwide. Horrible, horrible campaign work. If anything thus far for '08 has approached the toxic volatility of Howard Dean's overplayed scream in Iowa, this sucker has the volume.

Hope your own tips are at least 25% today. Rock on.

Monday, November 05, 2007

Make my sauce extra-snarky, please.

Just to get it out there quick and easy - Pervez "The Perv (eternal credit to Harry Shearer)" Musharraf in Pakistan is running the funniest con-game since "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" gave us Steve Martin as Ruprecht.



Back to the point at hand - if anyone buys this State of Emergency, I've got a handful of other States in the Middle East to sell you. Atrocious. But the one moment of levity in this whole debacle is that all Pakistani lawyers appear to dress alike. Not exactly "LA Law" couture for the counselors down yonder. Some shtick aside, though - Dubya's schedulers are posing as almost vaudvillians (eternal credit to me for that linguistic construct...please). Specifically, he spoke out for the first time about the crisis with the Prime Minister of Turkey seated next to him. Who probably had a Kurd tied up in his limo. Who also got to scold Musharraf for his extra-legal abuses. Somewhere right now, on strike satirists are peeing in their pants and grinding their teeth down to the nubs.

Hope you're all still hailing the manhood of Brett Favre while snacking on some Kansas City style ribs today. Rock on.

Friday, November 02, 2007

When Ayad Allawi's the funniest man in the conversation, we're so totally screwed...

A quickie reference to the NYTimes Op/Ed page today. Which was a fairly sickening distillation of everything our current political reality represents in a single page. Paul Krugman rightly eviscerated Rudy Guiliani - in this case regarding his fear-mongering on, of all viable possibilities, health care options. David Brooks wrote the least funny piece possible regarding the Dems debate earlier this week. And Ayad Allawi (assuredly ghost-written by shameless shill and former Bushie Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Blackwill) railed against elections. In Iraq. Cough. There are thousands of take-aways from this trifecta. Do yourself a favor and search for your own. You owe it to the cocktail parties you'll hopefully attend this weekend.

Hope your own jokes today are eons better than the umpfrickinteenth reference to John Edwards' hair or Joe Biden's verbosity. Rock on.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Maya and Groucho prep for an evening of toiletpapering our new neighborhood.

Maya demanded that her Halloween costume from last year be recycled. She's so Seattle. We added the beak and let the new neighborhood drive the fun. Which was truly warm and on occasion silly. We hope y'all had at least as much fun as us during our most recent pagan fest. Rock on.

Maya's soundtrack this Halloween was equal parts Travolta and "Chicken Run"


"Could you ever refuse me candy?"


Please don't fixate on the beak. Repeat - don't fixate on the beak.


Zombie Maya says "Love the Milwaukee Brewers..."


Maya's new coloring book. Everyone loves a new coloring book.


After seeing Justin Roberts, Maya looked toward the Croc to see what else might be of interest on their marquee.