Common Sense

Hey Mom, I'm on television

Toni Harrison from KBTX in Bryan/College Station is here at the Common Sense househould and we've just finished our interview on blogging and the impact it has on the American media landscape. Also, I think I mentioned I'm an egomaniac about a million times.

I'll have to ask her when this airs so all of you Aggieland people can watch me in all my glory. Did I mention I have a robust ego?

Oh yes, there will be Movie Blog

This weekend's biggest box office went to Saw II, the movie I so desperately wanted to review, but was unable to.

Apparently, it cost under $5 million but made over $30 million on opening weekend. That is indeed a recipe for Saw III.

I've read many a review and this one in the Dallas Observer I like best.

That's one expensive game of golf

I saw yesterday, via QR, that Kinky had raised $150,000 in a golf tournament hosted by Willie Nelson and Jesse Ventura.

You know the longer you people keep giving him money, the longer it will be before he realizes an independent candidate can't win in Texas. Sad but true fact when it comes to our election laws and the partisan make-up of our population.

The latest poll says as much. In a matchup between Perry, Bell and Friedman, Kinky has 18% of the vote, followed by Chris Bell at 27% and Gov. Perry at 40%.

At this point, Kinky is really just a spoiler. For whom isn't entirely clear since many think he is drawing just as much support from the GOP as the Democrats. But it seems fairly clear that Perry is vulnerable (and Strayhorn all but forgotten) and that this race is much more winnable than people thought it was just 6 months ago.

Texas doesn't need someone whose main reasons for voting for him are "Why the hell not" and "I wouldn't be any worse than these other guys." We need someone in the governor's masnion who reminds people why this is such a great state and why we refer to ourselves as Texans first. That's not Kinky.

Rocky VI: The SCOTUS nomination

It looks like everyone is squaring up for a fight. The left is gearing up to go to the mat to defeat Alito because he is a Scalia clone and posterboy for the out-of-touch rightwing.

The right is giddy with excitement because they are going to get the fight over a judicial appointment they've been spoiling for for 20 years.

Talk about creaming your shorts in anticipation.

I don't know if it is my cynical nature or just that I don't want to see a big fight that we'll probably lose, but I think we should ask our questions in the hearing and kep quiet most of the time. We've got a big story in the CIA Libby indictment that feeds into a larger narrative about corruption and unethical behavior from Republicans. Spending a ton of money to defeat a nominee that is going to win in a walk doesn't seem like that smart of a plan to me.

No, we've got other fish to fry and we need to win elections if we're going to have a voice in the modern politik. The Democrats are outsiders with no power in Washington. I'd rather we spent our time in greener pastures.

It sounds like I'm giving up, but I'm not. I want us to win and I think we can, but we have to be smart.

Accepting the Alito nomination means that it won't be the big story that the right wants it to be. The ongoing trials of Libby and DeLay and anyone else in the leak probe will still gain front page coverage that way. We saw this with Roberts. His nomination was relatively quiet with no real opposition on our side of the aisle and Cindy Sheehan had more headlines than he did.

If people want us to protect the right to choose or to keep kooky fundamentalism from being the national religion, then they should vote for us. If they're not going to, then we should let them see what happens. Republicans are consistently bad at governing and they will not disappoint.

Long story short, don't pull out the stops on this nomination battle. It's what the right wants and it's a fight we're not going to win. It's better to just defuse it and move on.

What to expect

Pre$$titutes has a great rundown of what to expect from the media in the way of reporting on the Alito nomination.

First, the media will play along with the distraction game, i.e. don't expect to hear much about a major indictment in the White House.

Second, expect reporters to blindly and unanalytically repeat terms like "conservative," "judicial activism," "legislate from the bench," "strict constructionist," "strictly interpret the Constitution," etc... As in "Bush wanted to avoid someone who would engage in judicial activism, so he picked a conservative judge who is a strict constructionist, someone who will strictly interpret the Constitution and who won't legislate from the bench."

Will they follow the oh-so predictable path, or will they actually do their job? Find out tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel.

Dial S for SCOTUS

President Bush has nominated someone to fill Sandra Day O'Connor's seat. Drum roll, please: It's Samuel Alito.

I'm sure there is likely to be a partisan battle on the horizon over whether "Scalito" is too far right or too crazy, but I would like to take this time to say that I'm impressed that he actually picked a judge this time. How's that for lowered expectations? He picks a judge for the Supreme Court and I'm impressed.

Frankly, I'm surprised we got a new nominee so soon after Harriet. It sends my liberal brain into conspiracy mode wondering if maybe something wasn't up with Miers' nomination in the first place. Perhaps they've been vetting Alito for weeks and had him waiting when they saw that Miers was going to self-destruct. Maybe Miers wasn't who the president really wanted to nominate.

Maybe they didn't vet Alito and we get some interesting quotes leaked to newspapers before the Christmas recess.

Enough is enough

I've had it with these people. I'm really, truly tired of those that would demonize Halloween. I would like to say we should respect the cultures that brought us Halloween and the diversity that it brings out in our country, but that would be bullshit.

You know what Halloween is all about: Candy!

Candy and going to the movie theater to spend $20 on candy and watch a horror movie. It's about commercialism. Just like Christmas and Easter, there is no longer a religious element to the holiday. That has been sucked out and replaced with a need to buy decorations and presents and spend money, crass commercialism run amok. And I think that's great.

We live in a capitalist society and I have no problem spending my hard-earned money on candy for the neighbor kids and for movie tickets and DVDs to enjoy with friends.

What I do have a problem with are the people that try to inject religion back into it, especially Christianity. The creamy nuget center is all full, no need for your sourpuss moralism here. Can't we heathens have one freakin' day to enjoy teeth-rotting chocolate and B movies with slight nudity without the Moral Police showing up to remind us abortions send you to hell. Churches put up what are known as "Hell Houses" for little kids to learn the horrors of abortion, masturbation-related blindness and unrepentant homosexuality.

Halloween is the last great holiday where kids get to be kids and grown ups get to be kids and their is an orgy of candy eating. Don't fuck this up like you did Christmas, crazy fundamentalists. I need my candy.

Is she a 'professional?'

David Neiwart at Orcinus has a very good takedown of why Michelle Malkin is not a "professional Journalist." Not the least of which is her horrible grasp of the importance of facts in reporting a story. She's very bad about that.

Not only is she an idiot, but as I said in my "Hot Asian Chicks You Should Know" post, I pointed out that she's racist and batshit insane.

Definitely not a journalist, though.

It does bring up that question again about bloggers being journalists. I consider myself a journalist, but only because I work six days a week at a daily newspaper putting out original content. That has very little to do with my blogging, which I consider to be simple punditry. When I put on my blogging hat (I have an actual hat, it's from Australia) I'm offering opinions based on the news I read and relay to you, my readers. The same as Sean Hannity, except I like to think my opinions are based a little more on reality and independent thought and not talking points from the RNC.

I also like to think that I use those pesky facts more than he/she/they do. But it's because I work at a newspaper that I take it a little bit more seriously.

So are we clear? Malkin and I are not journalists when we write columns or blog. She, however, is a crazy bitch.

Hat tip to Atrios.

Caricaturization of politics

A recent article in Vanity Fair has caught a lot of heat from the editors at the Trib. Today's editorial from Carlos Sanchez and a blog post from entertainment editor Carl Hoover all say the same thing: we're not hicks.

Evgenia Peretz spent the summer here talking to people about why President Bush spends his long vacations every August in Crawford. She paints a picture of a place with high heat, high and mighty Baptists and people who are mostly clueless as to what is going on in the world.

Believe me, I want to pan her for caricaturizing my home, but the truth is that Waco is what she says it is.

It's Halloween and I'm wearing flip-flops and a t-shirt, does that tell you how hot this place is? And no matter what you say about the people who broke the rules and we dancing and drinking before 1996, you still can't go five feet without tripping over a Baptist in this city. There are well over 100 churches for the estimated 100,000 people in the Greater Waco area. And you can't sit in a Starbucks without someone sitting down with you and asking if you have a personal relationship with Jesus.

And if you did a poll of the residents of Crawford, I am confident that 90% would say the economy is great, Saddam had WMD and was behind 9/11 and that George W. Bush is the smartest man on earth. Before the election last year, I ventured to enemy territory every once in a while to ask people why they supported Bush. Some were voting for him simply because he has a "ranch" in Crawford. Others had a more disturbing reason: Bush doesn't like terrorists.

I asked them if they thought John Kerry did and they would respond "Yes." That's what scares me.

Waco is becoming a "big city." We're getting new shopping complexes, great new restaurants and more people. But everyone still thinks in the same small-town, small-minded way that the residents of Crawford. If you come to Central Texas, you will find people who are uber-religious and think it is their duty in life to run yours. You will find that the heat and the humidity is what kills you. And you will find some of the most gullible rubes on the planet who will send hate mail to anyone who disagrees with them, complete with childish misspellings in all caps.

Go to Austin, you'll be much happier.

First on my hit list

Last night was the end of Daylight Savings Time. We had a whole extra hour to watch movies and TV at the Common Sense household, but I think I should come out and say it: this needs to end.

Not that I don't appreciate an extra hour to goof off, but I'm not Ben Franklin and we don't need to save candle wax. All this serves to do now is confuse me and my DVR as to what time it really is. I didn't get to record Inuyasha last night. And you know how cranky I am without my anime.

The worst of it is that I can't reprogram my car stereo clock. Space Monkey has to do that for me. And it never feels like it is the time it is supposed to be. It takes me 6 months to acclimate myself to the new time, then it's time to change the time again. I can't win.

This day in age, it's not necessary. It serves to just confuse the common citizen (me) as to what time it is. Daylight Savings Time must die.