I Wasn't Gonna Say Anything

Seriously, I wasn't.  I haven't posted anything in a while because I really haven't felt like it, and certainly this stupid duck dynasty thing wasn't going to be what sucked me back in.  It's right in the middle of my winter break man.  I mean, I'm trying to relax and re-read The Sun Also Rises over here.  Even the recent stupid budget deal* wasn't enough to get me back here.  Why would I come back for something that involves ducks?  And not even real ducks?

*Sidenote: The recent budget deal is stupid because we still have the debt limit coming up and the only reason a budget deal happened is so Republicans can hold the debt limit hostage and say "hey, you can't get mad at us about this because look we did a budget deal".  Stupid.

Listen, I can't even count how many ways this duck dynasty thing is stupid.  First of all, why is GQ asking this guy about social issues?  Clearly the intent was to bait him into saying something ignorant and rednecky, and being an ignorant redneck, he was happy to oblige.  More importantly, why is GQ interviewing this guy at all?  It's not like he's some business genius, he didn't invent the iPod.  His family invented a thing that sounds just enough like a duck (or something ducks like, I don't really know) that it helps other rednecks murder ducks for fun.  Hunting is stupid and I don't want to know what Charles Manson's grandpa over there thinks about anything.

I also don't care that he's on TV.  He's not the anchor of the CBS evening news, he's on a reality show.  And it's not even a good reality show.  For $10,000 I couldn't tell you why anyone watches that show.  Here's what I knew about that show before this month:
1) Beards
2) Something about ducks
3) Beards Again
In the last week or so I've learned that at least one of them hates homosexuals, and also that they're from Louisiana.

If I had known those last two things before I'm confident I still wouldn't have been watching.  I don't recall anyone sitting Snooki down and asking her for her thoughts on health care (I certainly hope that never happened).  You know why?  Because nobody cares what she thinks because she's a moron and so is the duck dynasty guy.  If they weren't morons, they wouldn't be on reality TV.

I also have no problem with how A&E has been handling this situation.  Yes, nobody should care about what Captain Beardface thinks, but when somebody reveals himself to be a bigoted asshole, then you have to stop giving him a microphone and a podium.  It's a really simple decision.  And even if I didn't like what A&E was doing, what could I do about it?  There is no possible way I could watch A&E less than I already do.

I'm also not surprised or in any way interested by the predictable feigned outrage from the Christian right.  I already knew they can't possibly go five minutes without claiming to be persecuted in a country where they are the overwhelming majority.  My only regret here is that this new fake persecution interrupted the last bit of fake persecution we were discussing, and I have to say that listening to people on Fox insisting that Santa Claus is factually white was more fun than talking about the duck guy.

I'm also not surprised by the fact that everyone is ignoring the equally insidious comments this guy made about how black people in the south were perfectly happy before the civil rights movement.  Yes, Mr. Robertson, I too find it hard to believe that no black person ever sought out you and your armed redneck ancestors to tell you how much they would have enjoyed equality.  I'm sure if they had you would have assisted them immediately and we wouldn't have even needed a civil rights movement.

All of these points are incredibly obvious and none of them inspired me to come sit here and type for an hour.  But I have many weaknesses, and one of them is my inability to look away when I know something stupid is happening.  This usually leads me to watching Fox News when nobody should ever be doing that, and it did so again yesterday.  I heard Fox's own Governor Huckleberry was going to be on Fox News Sunday to talk about, among other things, the duck dynasty guy.  Sigh.  I should have just kept watching football, but I couldn't help myself.

I used to sort of like Huckleberry.  He was always way too christy for me, Huck never shuts up about his invisible friend.  But, the old Huck spent more time talking about good things like feeding hungry people and helping poor people than he did talking about how the gays were ruining America.  I even remember him being sort of cordial about abortion.  As Chris Wallace pointed out at the beginning of yesterday's interview, Huck has a reputation for being a conservative, but not being angry about it, and that used to be mostly true.

But recently Huck has been become less of a reality-based political figure and more of a Fox News bizarro world political figure.  As a guy on Fox, Huck has to uphold a certain standard of nonsense in order to keep up with his colleagues.  Since Huck can't really manufacture the indignant anger of, say, a Bill O'Reilly, he has to do it another way.  So, Huck has become Fox's go to guy for fake persecution of Christians.  It's a sad end to a mediocre political career.

So Huck starts with the usual bible nonsense.  First of all, do you know how many people we'd be stoning to death every day if we actually lived by that book?  Honestly, nobody would have time for blogging or fake TV outrage or reality TV, we'd all be stoning people to death all day until we worked on Saturday or something and got stoned to death ourselves.  Of course, we'd have slaves, so maybe they could do the stoning for us.

But also, who cares what the bible says?  The old testament was written like 3,000 years ago.  Those people didn't even know where the sun went at night.  Why would I let them tell me what to do?  Seriously, sometimes I can't understand what's wrong with people.

Anyway, that was predictable, and this next bit was too but it still pisses me off.  Huck said that he is tolerant of people who have a different view of gay marriage than he does (how sporting of him) but he won't tolerate the intolerance directed at what he called old fashioned values.  He went on to claim that that this is a new level of bullying.

Come on, Huck.  I'm disappointed in you.  This is Fox's favorite trick.  Every time a Republican says something racist, they remind us that Barack Obama hates white people, so this whole racism thing is kind of everybody's fault and if you point out racism you're actually being a reverse racist so you should probably just shut up.  This trick with tolerance is the same thing.  If you point out that someone is being bigoted and intolerant, say by comparing homosexual relationships to bestiality, then you're actually a reverse bigot and a bully and you should probably just shut up.

Sidenote: This is the first time I've ever typed the word bestiality.  What happened to the "a" in beast.  Why isn't it in there?  That's weird to me.  Anyway...

Sorry Huckleberry, that's not how tolerance works.  You can say intolerant things if you want, but you don't get to do the double tolerance thing where nobody gets to call you a bigot.  Tolerance isn't like base where the first person to run to it wins.  If you're being intolerant then the rest of us get to call you a bigot and you just have to sit there and be a bigot.  And no, the fact that you claim your invisible friend agrees with you doesn't help.  The voices in my head always agree with me.

But that wasn't even my favorite part.  Huckleberry ended by trying to soften his position on homosexuality by saying that homosexuality isn't any different than any other sin.  It's just like if you lust after a woman, that's a sin too.  We're all sinners, says Huck.  That's great.  See?  God doesn't hate homosexuals, he hates everyone.  Feel better now?  For some reason, Huck thinks you should.

I changed the channel back to football once Wallace asked Huck if he was running for President in 2016.  I honestly don't want to know.  I'm obviously not voting for Huckleberry, but if he winds up running against Hillary Clinton I'll need to buy a boat and go live at sea for at least four years.  I heard Elizabeth Warren might run.  That's probably not true, and she probably couldn't win anyway.  I'd vote for Elizabeth Warren, she's smart and actually, ya know, believes in things, but she's also not awesome at running for office and when I say she's smart I mean "she's smart and would therefore make a good President" but other people will say the same thing and mean "look at her thinkin she's all better than us with her fancy book learnin".

No, I'm not getting sucked back into the 2016 election again.  I stand by my earlier predictions and Huck's sudden interest certainly doesn't change anything.  What was I talking about again?  Oh yeah, Mr. ducky duck.  I'm sure he'll be back on the show eventually and Fox will call it a great victory for values or free speech or whatever, but it'll really just be a small victory for nonsense.

Old people say crazy stuff all the time, and that's just the way it is, but I don't get why a whole news network and half the country feels the need to reflexively back this guy up.  I honestly don't understand people sometimes.

Job Killers

Did you know that the Affordable Care Act is a job killer?  I know that, because the TV told me, like 1,000 times.  If jobs are like the people of Baltimore, the Affordable Care Act is like Chris and Snoop, out there just murdering all of them for President Marlo and throwing the bodies in vacant row houses for Lester to eventually find.  So many senseless job killings, and for what?  So some poor people can go to a doctor?  If they wanted to see a doctor, they shouldn't have decided to be poor in the first place!

Luckily, the Republicans know what to do about all this murdering, so they're shutting down the government.  I mean, sure, shutting down the government will put actual people out of work right now instead of hypothetical future people, but if you want to talk about facts, you're sort of missing the point.  The point is Republicans are going to hold their breath until everyone has no health care and 14 guns, and you can't make them breathe because you're not the boss of them.  So there. 

I don't really want to talk about the government shut down though.  It's all silly political theater.  Either they'll come to an agreement today or tomorrow, or maybe never and we're all going to die, but I don't care a lot either way.  I do want to talk about job killing a little though, because the TV has been lying to me.

If I worked somewhere and they told me that I was being laid off because the government says they have to give me health insurance now and they don't want to pay for that shit, I wouldn't blame the government for my situation.  If my employer would rather lay me off than meet the basic social responsibility of providing me with health care, that's on my employer.  I realize it's easy to blame government, especially if you're a Republican and you blame government for everything, but that doesn't make it true.

What else are we supposed to do?  We're stuck with this employer-based health insurance system.  It isn't the best system, just ask Europe and Canada, but apparently it's the only one we can have because if I suggested single-payer health care for America Ted Cruz and Rand Paul would show up at my apartment later to kill me with their bare hands.  I mean, what do those stupid Europeans know about anything?  Some of them can't even drive on the right side of the road.

So in a country where we don't have other options, all we can do, before we even start to figure out what to do with unemployed people, is force employers to provide insurance for the people who work for them.  And we only have to force them because too many weren't doing it on their own.  I know it's expensive, and that sucks, but you couldn't get 20 votes in Congress for a bill with real price controls because that would suggest we don't have blind faith in the magic power of the free market.  So, once again, we're stuck with our own stupidity and without a lot of good solutions.  

You can make all the excuses for businesses that you want, but look, since the Reagan administration, big businesses in this country have been allowed, if not encouraged, to be robber barons.  Now we're asking them to do one simple thing, and they're threatening to cut jobs instead of doing it.  "We can't afford it" is not a good enough reason to not give people access to health care.  

When the President was first elected and started talking about finding a way to get millions of people health insurance, one of the arguments against it was "won't that mean I'll have to wait longer to see a doctor?"  Yes, yes it will.  Not if you're bleeding from your eyes, but yes, you might not be able to take your whiny, hypochondriac ass to the doctor 15 times a year for no good reason.  Sorry.  Eat a fucking apple or something.  

And this is the part Republicans aren't being honest about.  They don't really want cost controls because that would be socialism.  They also don't want people who already have insurance to have to share their doctors, because that would be inconvenient.  Republicans are cool with the way things were, which, come to think of it, sort of sums up the Republican position on everything.  But I'm not cool with the way things were, and the Affordable Care Act is a tiny little bit better, and that's better than nothing.

If you're so worried about jobs, do something about jobs.  Like a real stimulus bill with spending for fixing roads and bridges.  And high speed trains.  I don't really get the high speed trains thing, but Chris Matthews won't shut up about them and I feel like we should probably throw him a bone.  Or, even easier, just stop cutting things like food stamps.  Did you know food stamps are specifically designed to both feed poor people and stimulate the economy, because people who get food stamps tend to spend them immediately at a local business on, ya know, food?  True story.

Republicans want to make everything about jobs, except bills that could actually create jobs, those are about spending for some reason.  But health care bills aren't about jobs, they're about health care.  Just like environmental protection laws aren't about jobs, they're about environmental protection. Everything has a downside, that doesn't mean you don't do anything.  It means you do the right thing and then you do other things to mitigate the downside.  That's how grown-ups solve problems.  Then again, our country isn't really run by grown-ups at the moment.  

Ted Cruz

In March of 2010, when the Affordable Care Act passed, I wrote this:
http://somethingclever13.blogspot.com/2010/03/socialism-day-one.html

Three and a half years later, I still think it's pretty solid bloggery.  Anyway, I was sitting here writing about the current state of the health care debate (which, to be honest, hasn't changed a whole lot since 2010) and it was becoming this very long and sort of incoherent thing, and then I realized that I possibly had three things.  Three things that are all related, but weren't fitting together that well.  So why not just do three separate posts?  Then I don't have to sit here and try to think of some clever way to tie them together.  Meanwhile you, dear reader, get three posts in one week.  Win win.

Part 1 of 3 unfortunately has to be about my least favorite Senator.  I know we would all rather just ignore Ted Cruz's silly fauxlibuster, and Ted Cruz in general for that matter, but we can't and I'll get to why we can't in a second.

But first, I think one important thing needs to be said.  Ted Cruz isn't smart.  Maybe he used to be.  I know he went to Ivy League schools, and I've heard stories about him being brilliant in front of the Supreme Court (although the more I see of those people the more I think maybe it doesn't take much to impress in front of them), but however smart Ted Cruz once was, that's all gone now.  Like a running back who loses a few steps and suddenly can't even stay in the league, Ted lost whatever skills he had and he's just a dumbass now. 

I know this because Ted Cruz treated the Senate to a dramatic reading of Green Eggs and Ham in support of his stubborn insistence on hating something we haven't even tried yet.  You can call that a cheap shot, but it really isn't.  Either Ted didn't bother reading the 60 page children's book before using it to make an argument in the United States Senate, or he did read it but couldn't quite comprehend the moral of the story, which apparently only contains 50 different words.  Either way, dumbass.

And while I'll never get the people on Fox to admit that Ted Cruz is a dumbass, I would appreciate it if the regular journalists on other networks, or at least the liberals at MSNBC, would stop pretending that we all agree that Ted Cruz is a really smart guy.  He isn't.  At best, he's the smartest Republican in Texas, which is sort of like being the smartest plant in my office.  And my plants are dumb, because they came to my office and they know damn well that I'm not going to remember to water them.

And why do I care about what Ted Cruz is or isn't?  Well, for one thing, he's currently the ring leader of the thousand-ring, clown-filled tea party circus.  I often make the point that idiots only get a voice in our country when one of the two major parties is willing to take up their stupid cause.  When both parties agree about something, people can still complain about it, but they can't really do anything.

Same sex marriage is a good example.  If both political parties just said "of course anyone who wants to get married can get married, we're not going to sit here and try to codify bigotry, what's wrong with you people?" then we'd have a lot more progress than we have currently.  I'm not saying bigots go away if you ignore them, but if you don't give them the political machinery to promote their nonsense, they have a pretty hard time slowing the march of progress.  Unfortunately, the Republican party still seems more than happy to be the home of hatred, so progress is happening one state at a time and there are quite a few states left.

Similarly, if elected officials in both parties, who are supposed to be responsible adults, would all say that we're not going to shut down the government over a policy disagreement, then we wouldn't be having today's problem.  Sure, idiots could stand around in Washington with tri-corner hats and misspelled signs, but the rest of us would just ignore them like we usually do.  Wouldn't you rather be ignoring Ted Cruz right now instead of worrying about what happens if the government actually shuts down tomorrow?  I know I would.

Also, Ted Cruz is running for President.  That's definitely happening and we can't stop him.  And if he wins the Republican nomination, that basically gives him a 50/50 chance at being in charge of the country.  I wouldn't leave Ted Cruz in charge of the drive thru at a Burger King.  This qualifies as a legitimately bad thing that could happen in the near future.  And those of us who already know that Senator Cruz is a disaster waiting to happen are like the people with time machines who already know what's going to happen and have to come back to warn the rest of you.  So there, you've been warned.

People Are Idiots

Would you like to know what I think about Syria?  I think if I lived in Syria I would start walking west and I wouldn't stop until I got to a country where things don't routinely and spontaneously explode.  Although I suppose that would just get me to the Mediterranean Sea, and then I'd have to swim to Italy.  And if I survived the swim to Italy, I'd probably just walk to Paris, grow a beard and spend the rest of my life pretending to be Hemingway.   I seem to have lost my train of thought...oh yeah, Syria.

Would you like to know what I think the United States should do about Syria?  Nothing.  I'm not saying I think we should do nothing.  I'm saying I think nothing.  It's not that I don't care.  I think this is really important, and I think whatever the President and Congress decide to do will be an important moment for our country and the world.  It's not that I haven't had time to stay informed.  I've tried to keep up on the story as much as possible.  Unfortunately, cable news coverage is light on "facts about Syria" and heavy on conjecture about the domestic politics of military action and self-assured opinions from clowns who have no idea what they're talking about, but are 100% sure they're right.

Fox News, in particular, is absolutely positive that the President is being indecisive and weak by waiting for Congressional authorization for action.  Just like they'd be absolutely positive that the President was pissing all over the Constitution if he had decided to act without Congressional authorization.  I'm going to try not to be too hard on Fox though, this must be really confusing for them.  On the one hand, boy do they love bombing muslims.  I mean they LOOOVE that shit!  But on the other hand, the President wants to bomb muslims now too, and they fucking hate the President.  Also, half the Republican party is suddenly anti-war, it's like some Republicans don't even want to bomb anyone right now.  It's a strange time in the Republican party and you have to sort of feel bad for Fox as they try to be the propaganda wing of a party that can't figure out where it stands on the biggest story of the day.  It's tough being a worthless shill sometimes.

The truth is, I don't know enough about Syria to say anything useful.  I know Assad's name.  I know his country is in the middle of a revolution/asymmetric civil war/crazy shit going on situation.  I know Assad is a Baathist, and I know Ted Cruz thinks that means he forces people to take baths against their will.  I know something went on there with chemical weapons, and I know chemical weapons are bad. 

I also know that, if we do bomb Syria, it will be the fourth, count 'em, FOURTH Western Asian country we've had some sort of military action against in the last dozen years.  And that doesn't even count whatever meddling you think we did in Egypt.  Four!  That's a lot!  Bombing seems to be our only solution to anything.  I'm surprised we haven't tried bombing our public schools or our health care system yet.

I understand the arguments on both sides, and they both make sense.  Why take action?  Well, we told Assad not to use chemical weapons, and he apparently went ahead and used them anyway, on civilians, and children.  Even if we hadn't explicitly said we weren't going to allow that, it's still in violation of about a dozen international treaties. 

And if we don't do something, who will?  The French?  Seriously?  I heard they already surrendered to Syria, twice, just this week.  The U.N. can't do anything, and even if they could, U.N. military action is just the U.S. Armed Forces and like 15 British dudes, and the British already said they're not coming along for this one.

But why not take action?  Well, for one thing, we've been lied to about weapons of mass destruction before.  The case is clearly a little more plausible this time, and, if true, more of an imminent threat, but still.  The point of the boy who cried wolf is that eventually wolves eat all your sheep and nobody cares, and if you use Colin Powell to cry wolf you've sort of poisoned the well, because it's really hard to find someone more credible than Colin Powell used to be.

Also, as I've previously mentioned, this would be our fourth military adventure in Western Asia in the last twelve years.  Wouldn't it be lovely if we could just not be at war for a minute.  And look at how far we've moved the bar in terms of reasons for going to war.  Hitler took over Europe and turned London into rubble and it still took a Japanese attack on Hawaii to draw us into World War Two.   Now we start bombing every time a dictator looks at us funny.  Ron Paul's been complaining about the U.S. being the police of the world in Republican primaries since back when I would have actually considered voting for the winner of the Republican primaries.  And Ron isn't wrong. 

Also, Syria is in the middle of a violent civil war.  Why would we willingly step into the middle of that and pick a side when we all agree that we don't really like either side.  Why do we always feel the need to choose between the lesser of two evils in situations we could just choose to stay out of?  And there are probably five more valid arguments on both sides that I'm not getting to. 

So what do we do?  Well, polls show that an overwhelming majority of the American people don't want us involved in Syria.  But listen, here's the thing...This is one of those times when I couldn't possibly care less about what the American people think.  I would bet you a thousand dollars that half this country can't even find Syria on a map (and way too many of them would be proud and unapologetic about it).  I'm like 99% confident that if you asked Americans who the President of Syria is, roughly 5% of them would say Saddam Hussein, and another 5% would say Osama Bin Laden.

Think about it this way.  If you casually ran into the President, or your Senator, or your Congressman on the street and they asked you what you think they should do about Syria, would you 1) calmly tell them your opinion and expect them to listen or 2) panic because the people running our country are so completely out of ideas that they're asking your opinion without knowing whether or not you even have a vague familiarity with the subject matter?  I'm not saying the President and Congress should never listen to the people (although honestly sometimes I think we'd be better off that way), but on complicated foreign policy matters?  Come on.  People are idiots.  And even if we weren't idiots we wouldn't have time to get familiar enough with something like this to form an educated opinion.  And even if we did have the time, we don't have access to most of the pertinent information. 

I'm also not saying we should just follow the government blindly into war because we're too stupid to know any better.  I don't have any problem you voicing your opinion about Syria, and if you can get the Congress and the President to listen to your nonsense, then good for you.  I'm just saying that if I was the President and you told me what you think I should do about Syria I would respond to you the same way you respond to a three year old when you ask him what he wants for dinner and he yells "ice cream and pizza! Oh, ice cream pizza!"..."Really, ice cream pizza, okay buddy, I'll get right on that."

And if President Obama decides to take military action against Syria in spite of public opinion, and if it turns out to be a colossally horrible decision, and if it turns out his administration lied a little about why we were going there in the first place, then we get to shun him and pretend he was never President.  Just like George W. Whats his face. 

Now I grant you that shunning President Obama in 2017 won't fix whatever mistakes he makes just like shunning President Bush now doesn't fix the federal disaster area that was his presidency.  But the thing is, that's what these guys signed up for.  I don't want a President who hides behind Congress or polls instead of making the decision he thinks is the right one.  When you're the President, sometimes you have to make really hard decisions, and sometimes you have to make really hard, really unpopular decisions, and sometimes you might get them wrong.  If you get a big one wrong, then everybody hates you forever.  That's the job, and if you aren't up for it, then you shouldn't sit down in the big chair in the first place. 

2016 Election at the Jersey Shore

I wasn't planning on saying anything about the 2016 election for a while because, first of all, I tried predicting who would get the Republican nomination in 2012.  I picked Haley Barbour, and remember that time that Haley Barbour didn't even run?  I also wasn't going to say anything about 2016 for a while because it's 2013 right now and are you fucking serious?  

But, according to cable news, it's definitely time to start talking 2016.  Chris Matthews almost pissed his pants on live TV a couple of weeks ago when something happened that made him think Hillary Clinton was definitely running.  It even distracted him from Anthony Weiner for like five minutes.  Meanwhile, Fox News is like 2 steps away from having Rand Paul followed around by a reality TV camera crew at all times.  So, that's the way it is.  This is happening.

Well, this is happening in a minute.  But first, what's with all the outrage about Anthony Weiner?  Matthews held what would be best described as a week-long penis vigil on his show about it.  Meanwhile, Matthews' two favorite Presidents (Clinton and Kennedy) nailed interns like it was their job.  Kennedy seriously might have thought it was his job.  I'm not saying Anthony Weiner isn't gross, I'm just saying that if you're going to get outraged about this stuff (which I'm not), actually banging the interns seems worse to me.

Anyway, Republicans first.  For starters, I don't think Jeb Bush runs.  He's never seemed super interested to me, and he's had the opportunity to watch his dad and his brother be President for a total of 12 years.  Even if you hate the President, you have to admit that guy has a tough job most days, and I can't imagine watching two family members try to do it for 12 years has left Jeb with much of a taste for it.

I know these early front-runners rarely end up winning, but I do like Chris Christie for this.  People say Christie can't get the nomination, but I totally disagree.  Christie would wind up in the same position as Romney was in last time.  He'll be in a primary with Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and five other lunatics fighting to be named king of the clown car.  Santorum, Bachmann, Cain and Perry made Mitt look sane, reasoned, even smart.  And Gingrich was nice enough to make Romney seem like not that much of a dick.  

And by the way, Christie makes a pretty solid general election candidate.  I don't know a lot about Chris Christie in terms of what he actually knows, but if he turns out to be kind of dumb, that's not really going to hurt him in Republican primaries, or even that much in the general.  Meanwhile, I know Christie does all the superficial things that people love in Presidential candidates.  He talks tough, he doesn't take shit from anyone and he treats the press with the contempt that they've earned over the last 15 years.  I can't wait for him to go on Fox and sucker punch Sean Hannity.  

Also, if the Republican brand is anything, it's anti-government.  Specifically, the Federal government.  Ask yourself how the Republicans get the useful idiots in the tea party, who are mostly middle class people who, like almost everyone, are one lay-off from the poverty line, to protest against things like health care for poor people and slightly higher taxes for the wealthy.  They do it by equating everything they don't like to a robbery of freedom.  And since nobody is dumb enough to actually believe that more health care = less freedom, they inject the Federal government into the middle of the equation, so it's more health care + Federal government involvement = less freedom.  And that shit works like a charm.

So, if you're looking for a nominee from the everything the Federal government does = less freedom party, you may want to look for someone who isn't, ya know, currently holding a position in the Federal government.

And finally, if Christie ran against Hillary Clinton, I would absolutely vote for Chris Christie.  You can write that one down now.  Look, I even stopped calling him Governor Fatpants.  I will not vote for Hillary Clinton.  If Hillary Clinton, Rand Paul and a half-eaten meatball sandwich were running in a three way election, I'd vote for the sandwich.

You might ask, "hey Sean, you've always been a Ron Paul guy, so why no love for Rand?"  I just don't buy it.  People think Rand is a conviction libertarian like his dad, but I haven't seen enough evidence to believe it.  Ron Paul was never a serious Presidential candidate because he cared more about his beliefs than he did about winning, and you can't have it both ways.  Rand's level of ambition makes me think he's just another regular Republican who's trying to trade on his dad's name for extra votes by being a faux-libertarian and hoping people will believe it.  I don't believe it.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.

Where were we? Oh yeah, luckily for me, I don't think I'll get the chance to choose between Hillary Clinton and a half-eaten sandwich because I don't think she'll get the nomination.  She's in exactly the same position she was in eight years ago.  How did that work out?  Now she's eight years older, eight years less exciting and eight years more oh my god why won't she just go away.  

First of all, for every independent voter who loves Hillary Clinton, there's an independent voter like me who wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton if you threatened me with violence.  A Clinton/Christie election puts people like me, who sprinted away from the Republicans once the tea people showed up, back in play.  Bad times for Democrats.  

Also, the far left doesn't like Hillary that much either.  Hillary Clinton isn't just an establishment candidate, she's THE establishment.  How does that play at a time when everyone hates the government (for both actual and made-up reasons)?  Not well, I think.  I'm not saying Hillary can't win, she's certainly the favorite, but I wouldn't put my money on her.

So who does get the Democratic nomination?  That's a tough one.  Normally the sitting Vice President would be a strong favorite.  And it's not like Joe Biden has never expressed any interest in running for President.  But, unfortunately, he's Joe Biden, so that's almost definitely not going to happen.  

What about Democratic Governors?  Can you even name a Democratic Governor?  I can name Duval Patrick (he's still a Governor, right?), but he really doesn't feel like a President to me.  Not everyone is cut out for the big chair, ya know?  Other than the Governor of the state I currently live in, I couldn't name another Democratic Governor, and I feel like most other people couldn't either.

Democratic members of Congress?  Yikes.  If Harry Reid ever runs for President, we should all probably kill ourselves just to be safe.  The Democratic nominee has to come from somewhere, but if he/she comes from Congress, it has to be someone who hasn't been there very long.  Which brings me to my pick.  Cory Booker.

Twenty years ago Booker would have been easily dismissed as way too inexperienced, but that's not the way it is anymore.  Barack Obama proved that if we like someone enough we're not willing to wait four or eight years while he gets more experience.  And if you hate Barack Obama, then I would submit to you that the fact that we're talking about Ted Cruz and Rand Paul for 2016 prove the same point.

Cory Booker is probably going to be a Senator soon, but when 2016 rolls around he won't have been in the Senate long enough to get that Senate stink all over him.  He's got executive experience as a mayor, and he's the mayor of an actual city, where people live, not some podunk middle-of-nowhere nightmare like Wasilla, Alaska.  And from what I hear he's a good mayor too.  Booker's good on TV, seems smart, he's generally pretty likable but he's also tough enough to not take the Republicans' shit.  

Plus, wouldn't an all-Jersey Christie/Booker election be pretty fun?  I feel like it would.  And as a citizen I'd like this election because neither one of these guys terrifies me, like a certain Mitt Romney did.  I think both of them would at least be an adequate President.  Imagine having two decent choices in a Presidential election.  Has that ever happened before?  The 2008 election doesn't qualify because of Sarah Palin.  1992 or 1996 maybe?  I can't remember if Bob Dole was really a decent candidate or not.  I'm digressing. 

Anyway, that's my call.  I don't know which side of the things I'd like to see happen/things I actually think will happen line I'm on here, but I feel pretty good about these picks.  So we're probably looking at Ted Cruz/Rand Paul vs. Joe Biden/Anthony Weiner in 2016.  Everybody get a helmet.

Crazy Week

This has been a crazy week.  I feel like it would be a helpful public service to take a minute here and just sort of review everything. 

First, on Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court announced that they had decided to gut the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  Not a good start.  Now, to be fair, were we really going to let minorities keep voting in the south forever?  I mean, come on.  Plus, this Supreme Court is very into the founding fathers, and if you had asked Thomas Jefferson about this he would have said something like "What?  Why would I let my slaves vote? What's wrong with you?".  I assume those are the two basic arguments opponents of the Voting Rights Act made.  I can't think of anything better.

Seriously though, this was terrible.  It seems to me that the right of citizens to vote should be marginally more important than the right of states to not be minimally regulated based on their long histories of institutional racism, but then again, I'm not a big time fancy lawyer. You may not be a minority voter, and if you don't care about minority voters I can't make you, but just remember that the Supreme Court, the group of people who interpret the laws for your country, cares about the rights of states more than it cares about the rights of individuals, and that's pretty sad.

Also, there's no truth to the rumor that Alabama will now be granting an extra vote to anyone who shows up at the polls wearing a confederate flag somewhere on their clothes, and two extra votes to anyone who shows up wearing nothing but a confederate flag. 

But while that was happening, something awesome was also happening, in Texas (seriously).  The Texas State Senate was trying to pass a bill that would severely restrict abortion rights in Texas, because that's what Texans do I guess.  Tuesday was the last day of the legislative session and Texas State Senator Wendy Davis decided she was going to filibuster until midnight so they couldn't pass the bill.  She started a little after 11AM and kept going with no breaks for like 10 or 11 hours. 

I didn't really see any of the filibuster because I had work all day and also none of the cable news networks covered it and it took me a while to realize it was going on, but I tuned in on YouTube around 11PM Texas time and I feel like I caught the best part.  Apparently the Republicans in the Texas Senate were claiming that Senator Davis violated the rules of the filibuster three times, and in Texas three strikes means your filibuster is out.  The Democrats appealed this ruling and I tuned in while the Texas Republicans were googling "how to make a woman stop talking" (supposedly they were actually reviewing parliamentary rules and such, but based on what I saw my theory sounds more plausible).

They finally started Senating again after about 10 or 15 minutes, and that's when Senator Davis' colleagues started trying to help her out.  First, Senator Older Librarian Lady (I don't know any of the names except for Wendy Davis) stepped up, and she was a whirlwind of parliamentary inquiries.  I'd say she took up a good ten minutes just politely asking questions.  Unfortunately she eventually ran out of steam when she ran into some circular "because I said so" Senate logic from the guy running the Texas Senate (hereafter known as Captain Mustache, though I may be making up the fact that he had a mustache, but he looked pretty mustachy to me).

Then they moved on to debate on the appeal of the ruling that ended the filibuster.  Senator Beauregard T. Crockett went on for about ten minutes until Captain Mustache got tired of listening to him and just let some other guy call the vote on the appeal.  My favorite part of this section was that it took me and most of the people commenting on YouTube about five minutes to realize Beauregard was on Wendy Davis' side.  It was sort of jarring when it hit me.  He was just so southerny and Texasy.  Good for him though.

After the Republicans voted down the appeal, it was time for Senator Hispanic Lady in a Pants Suit, and she was awesome.  Senator Pants Suit peppered Captain Mustache for a good 7-8 minutes with her own hurricane of parliamentary inquiries.  When Captain Mustache finally got tired of her, she finished by asking what a female Senator has to do to get recognized over her male colleagues.  What happened next was, literally, the best thing I've ever seen in a Senate Chamber.  OK, that's pretty specific, but still.

The gallery, who had been super well-behaved up to that point, sensed that the Democrats were sort of out of ideas and the Republicans were getting ready to vote on the actual bill.  Captain Mustache finally stopped falling for the parliamentary inquires and may or may not have turned off some microphones so the Democrats couldn't bother him anymore.  You know what they say in Texas, fool me 114 times, shame on you, fool me 115 times, shame on me.  So, with the vote coming and the Democrats defeated, the gallery, in response to what Senator Pants Suit said, proceeded to cheer and chant for about 18 minutes until it was a few minutes after midnight.  At one point, Captain Mustache tried the old "if you stop cheering we'll stop voting" trick, but the gallery didn't fall for it.

This was fun to watch and really impressive/inspiring, but I went to bed thinking the bill had still passed, seeing as Captain Mustache said it did.  When I woke up, I found out that Captain Mustache is a liar and a cheater and the bill had, in fact, not passed.  The bill will almost certainly pass eventually, Texas isn't getting any smarter, but this was an awesome moment of democracy and I'm glad I had the chance to see it.

That was just Tuesday.  Wednesday featured two almost simultaneous happenings.  Two things which received news coverage almost inversely proportionate to how important they were.  First of all, we found out that while the New England Patriots may not have won a superbowl in a while, they've been secretly leading the league in murders (allegedly).   And that's really all I have to say about that because the TV won't shut up about it and I just don't care.

More importantly, the Supreme Court (remember them from yesterday?) announced that they had struck down a section of the Defense of Marriage Act and had also declined to rule on Proposition 8 in California, effectively restoring marriage rights to same-sex couples in California.  Both of these rulings were, while not perfect, full of all kinds of good stuff for marriage equality.

Here's how you know this was a big day for marriage equality.  Fox News almost completely ignored this story all day.  If you've never watched The Five on Fox, they basically get five of the stupidest people you could ever find (OK, four of the stupidest people you could ever find and Dana Perino, who is adorable), put them at a table and have them talk about politics and stuff.  I watched them for pretty much the whole hour yesterday, they didn't go anywhere near this.  I'm not sure Republicans have any idea what to do with this now.  Even the Roberts court won't back them on homophobia.  It's a bad week for bigots and religious nuts.

Fox spent the rest of the night talking more about Paula Deen than they did about two historic Supreme Court decisions.  Ya know, I was originally on the fence about Paula until she went on TV this week like a blubbering idiot and cried about how you can go ahead and cast the first stone if you've never said something you regret.  You know what Paula.  How about she who has never said the n-word can keep getting paid ridiculous amounts of money to melt butter on TV.  Go away.

And then, as if all of that wasn't enough, today the Senate passed an immigration reform bill.  Sure, it's probably dead on arrival in the House, but still, the Senate did a thing!  I had to check with all three cable news networks to make sure MSNBC wasn't hallucinating.  So it was a crazy week, and here's what I learned:

1) Seriously, cable news is awful.  They spent more time this week on Paula Deen, Aaron Hernandez and George Zimmerman than they did on the awesome Texas filibuster and three really important Supreme Court decisions.  A friend from college pointed out to me the next day that while the filibuster was going on CNN was airing an important discussion between Piers Morgan and Dr. Drew regarding blueberry muffins.

I guess CNN gets a pass, I have a lot of questions about blueberry muffins.  Why not chocolate chips? Can I trade you one blueberry muffin for four mini-muffins? Can you tell me what blueberries taste like because I don't really know?  I guess if I had watched Piers Morgan and Dr. Drew instead of the filibuster, I'd know the answer to these and many other muffin related questions by now.

2) No matter how obviously you murder someone, you can always find people on TV to take your side. I watched like five minutes of George Zimmerman coverage, because MSNBC literally stopped in the middle of a great discussion of the DOMA ruling so they could show us silent pictures of the Zimmerman trial, and you know what I'm already 100% sure of?  George Zimmerman is definitely a murderer (allegedly).  Even if you believe every word of his story, his basic story is "that guy was punching me, so I shot him in the chest".  That's not a proportional response!  I'm not a Florida law expert, but it can't possibly be legal to shoot somebody in the chest for punching you.

3) I will stay up way later than I planned to in order to watch anything that even remotely reminds me of an episode of The West Wing.

4) I think...oh wait, forget about what I learned, because also, I almost forgot about this, the President made a big speech about climate change and said he's going to start doing a bunch of executive orders to get on top of that whole thing.  I don't know if he'll actually do anything, or if it'll actually work, but that was like the 8th biggest story this week.  Crazy week.

Why Are You So Bad At Your Job?

I've been thinking about this for a while and game 6 of the NBA finals was sort of a tipping point for me.  First, Tony Parker clearly got pushed when he tried to make a game winning shot at the end of regulation.  He also flopped, but still, he was fouled first.  Then, Manu Ginobili got mauled by more than one Miami player on his way to attempting a lay-up near the end of overtime.  Manu also took about 4 steps.  Neither one of those things drew a whistle.  Then Danny Green got tackled by Chris Bosh while trying to make a game tying three at the buzzer.  Van Gundy commented that he was OK with the no call but "is that a foul in the first 46 minutes of the game? Definitely!".  That's not how rules work Jeff!

Quick sidenote on the NBA finals.  I guess I'm rooting for the Spurs, but I kind of don't like either of these teams and I feel like neither outcome will save me from a summer of having to hear about Lebron all the time, so I mostly don't care who wins. 

Anyway, back to the point...why is it so hard to find competent officiating for major professional sports?  It's an honest question.  I sometimes feel like the NBA is secretly only allowed to recruit referees from prisons that are full of prisoners whose crimes somehow related to their complete inability to understand the rules of basketball.

Before we get to actual sports though, a quick honorable mention for soccer.  We'll talk about the NBA more in a little bit and when we do, just remember that flopping started in soccer.  Soccer referees throughout the world were so incompetent at discerning the difference between an actual foul and a flop that flopping became something of a soccer tradition, like 0-0 ties or standing around and not doing anything while the game is actually happening.  The influx of European players to the NBA was immediately accompanied by the advent of NBA flopping (I'm looking at you Vlade Divac).  There's no excuse for American referees to be just as useless as European soccer referees, but still, like most things, some of this is all soccer's fault.

Let's start with the NHL because, as usual, hockey is better than everything else.  I honestly can't remember the last time I walked away from a hockey game thinking that the officials had influenced the outcome of the game in any real way.  Hockey officials are the exception that prove the rule.  You could read this and say I just hate all referees, and you could be right, except you're not, because I don't hate hockey refs.

To be fair, there's definitely some built in advantage here.  Most hockey calls are relatively subjective and the NHL has taken concrete action in the rules to avoid flopping and exaggerating to get calls.  Also, most hockey commentators are Canadian, so they're generally pretty nice abooot stuff and they don't kill the refs too much even when they do miss a call. 

Hockey officials also get extra bonus points because A) if you count each skate individually, hockey players are carrying three deadly weapons at all times and B) hockey officials have to know how to skate, making them the only officials I can think of who actually have a skill. 

One more important point here.  Since, when you grow up, you learn that none of your dreams actually come true, I don't live in Canada.  Our syrupy neighbors to the north take hockey at least as seriously as we take football, and I imagine that if I were to walk into a Winnipeg sports bar in January I'd hear Canadians using their awesome accents to politely complain about all the bad calls in last night's Jets game.  So maybe it's all just a matter of perspective. 

Speaking of football, the NFL is sort of a mixed bag.  On one hand, I feel like there's been a disputable or debatable call on every football play I've ever seen.  The NFL provides a constant stream of questionable officiating, and I'm not sure I've ever fully agreed with a call in an NFL game. 

But the thing is, I'm not sure I've ever fully disagreed with a call in an NFL game either.  Officiating football is really hard.  Take a look at the basic situation for NFL refs:
-Players basically assault each other on every play and it's perfectly legal...
-except for the quarterback, who has like one square foot of area where you're allowed to touch him.  -I'm not sure if anybody in the world is 100% clear on when you're allowed to hit a receiver.
-Commentators constantly point out that there's holding on every play, which seems true enough, but you obviously can't call it on every play. 
-The rules change slightly every time someone gets another concussion.
-And there are all these complicated extra rules about eligible receivers and things happening down-field and whatnot. 

It's a lot, is what I'm saying.  Watching a group of guys try to properly officiate an NFL game is a lot like watching your dog try to work the microwave.  He's not going to get it right, but it's not really his fault either.  Plus it's football, so it's not like we're going to stop watching, so who really cares.

Now we come to baseball and this is where I start to get annoyed.  Baseball umpires have the easiest job I could possibly imagine.  First of all, most baseball rules were written 150 years ago.  People were less creative back then, so you have really simple rules like "if the ball beats the runner to first base, the runner is out" or "if a fielder catches the ball before it hits the ground, the batter is out" or "women aren't allowed to vote", etc. 

Secondly, if baseball were moving any slower, the games would be happening in reverse.  Baseball umpires are the only officials I can think of that literally never have to worry about watching more than one thing at the same time, and that's because there are four of them (six in the post-season) and there's almost never more than one thing happening at the same time.  Unlike other sports, baseball doesn't really have things happening off the ball that the officials have to worry about.

So, to recap, the job of a baseball umpire can be summed up as "watching the shiny ball and describing what happens around it".  And yet, way too many baseball umpires are just terrible at it.  I honestly feel like you could train four smart horses to umpire a baseball game and you wouldn't necessarily notice the difference in call quality.  I'm also 100% sure baseball umpires could be 100% replaced by some well placed sensors, a locator chip in the ball and a computer.  Why haven't we done this yet?

Finally, we come to the NBA.  Why is every basketball game I watch an officiating catastrophe?  I don't even know where to start.  You get two steps when you pick up your dribble.  TWO!  Can NBA referees not count to three?  I could replace NBA refs with the smartest kids in a nursery school and get better calls on traveling violations.

And the blocking/charging calls.  I know, that's not so easy, but still.  If you put me in a room where I couldn't see the game and just told me whenever there was a blocking/charging call situation and I just flipped a coin to decide which one to call, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between my results and the results we get from NBA refs.  You know I'm right about that.

And the flopping.  So much flopping, so easy to fix.  Just stop making the calls.  Next time a defender dives to the ground like he was shot trying to draw a charge, don't call a charge, or a block.  Just let them keep playing so the offense gets two points because one of the guys on defense is rolling around on the floor like a moron. 

And then there's Lebron.  Yes, Lebron gets his own paragraph because watching NBA referees officiate Lebron is one of the most frustrating things I've ever seen in sports.  Every time Lebron goes to the basket he uses his off hand to clear out his defender (which is super effective for him, because he might be the strongest person in the history of everything).  Not only does he never get called for this, but half the time the defender gets called for a foul for viciously assaulting Lebron's left elbow with his face.  I sometimes think NBA referees all have a secret memo from David Stern which reads, in part, "Our research shows that people like watching Lebron score, so if you see anyone trying to stop him from doing that, just call them for something, we don't really care what". 

You know why people can't stop spinning conspiracy theories about the NBA using officials to manipulate games and playoff series results?  It's because people watching are just trying to think of a plausible explanation for how the officiating could be so consistently awful.  And the most frustrating part is, we never get an explanation.  Why are referees the only people in the world who never have to be accountable for their job performance?  Why don't they have to do a press conference at the end of the game like coaches and players do?  Just once, I'd like to see a reporter get to raise his hand in a press room and ask the lead official of an NBA crew "Why are you so bad at your job?" 

Boston Convert

As I'm writing this I'm getting ready for game 2 of the Rangers/Bruins series.  First of all, if you aren't watching the hockey playoffs, honestly, what's wrong with you?  Whatever you're doing instead just isn't nearly as important.

Anyway, as I've tried to figure out who I'm rooting for in this series, I've come to a shocking revelation about myself.  I think I'm becoming a Boston sports fan.  True story.  It seems ridiculous to just switch all rooting interests to a whole new town, but let's go through it one by one.

The Celtics are the easiest one.  I've always been a Celtics fan, except for that brief period in the 90's when there were only two basketball fan identities (Bulls fan or Bulls hater) and I was a Bulls fan.  My parents were never that into sports (except for my mom and the Rangers, and we'll get to them in a minute), so I inherited a lot of my rooting interests from my grandmother.  Because the Celtics are implicitly Irish, we rooted for Boston.

Sidenote: In hindsight, there also might be something to the fact that, in the 80's, the Celtics pretty much cornered the market on white basketball players.  Really...Bird, McHale, Ainge, Walton.  It's like a who's who of useful or better NBA white guys.  I don't know, I didn't really give that a lot of thought when I was 7.

In terms of hockey, I grew up an Islanders fan.  My grandparents live like 10 minutes from the Nassau Coliseum, and back when I was like 0-3 years old, the Isles were winning four straight Stanley Cups.  So that's a pretty formative experience.  A few years ago I disowned the Islanders because of their many many uniform transgressions.  Since then, I assume in response to my outrage, they went back to the classic uniform scheme and I've been back on board.  But, they're moving to Brooklyn soon.

I'm sorry, I'm not rooting for a hockey team from Brooklyn.  Especially after they change their name to the Hipsters or the Skinny Jeans or whatever and incorporate irony into their new uniforms.  No thank you.  Plus, I'm from Queens, I don't want to root for Brooklyn anyway.

And the Rangers and Devils?  Come on.  Listen, the Rangers suck.  And the Devils, they're even worse.  I had a girlfriend in college who loved the Devils, and even when someone I loved loved the Devils, I still fucking hated them.  They are perpetually unwatchable.  The uniforms are awful, and even though they don't play like they did in the 90's anymore, I can't watch them without seeing that awful neutral zone trap.  Boooooo!!!!!!!!!

Meanwhile, the Bruins have great uniforms, aren't from Brooklyn and aren't planning to randomly move to some other part of Boston just for fun.  I like the Bruins and I'm not having a hard time seeing myself getting on board with being a fan.  I mean, just look at Zdeno Chara.  He's like an angry giant on skates. Who doesn't want to root for an angry giant?  Also, they have a goalie named Tuukka.  Tuukka!  Come on, he has an extra K.  Everyone knows K is the best letter.  At least it is in Finland, or Sweden, or Denmark or wherever the fuck Tuukka is from.

Football is pretty easy too.  I've always kind of hated the New York football teams, and I haven't really kept that a secret.  In my football watching life I've bounced around from the Houston Oilers (until they moved) to the Tampa Bay Bucs (until they got new uniforms) to just being a fan of the NFL Redzone network (because it's seriously fucking awesome).  I can settle in with the Patriots.  I already have a Patriots jersey (although it hasn't been worn since September, and even then not by me, and the story of how I became the owner of a Patriots jersey is interesting, somewhat embarrassing, has very little to do with being a Patriots fan, and I'm not quite ready to tell it yet).

Oh, and did I mention the New York football teams are actually from New Jersey?  Yeah, that's a real thing.

Honestly, I'm not even sure why people have favorite football teams anymore.  It's like having a favorite character on a sit-com.  It's just a TV show.  When I watch How I Met Your Mother, I don't root for Marshall, I just enjoy the show.  I feel like having a strong rooting interest might ruin football for me, but I've never had one before, so I'm open to trying it.

But then there's the Yankees.  I grew up a Yankee fan.  I've always been a Yankee fan.  The '96 World Series was awesome.  And so were the other three they won when I was in college.  But the last one, honestly, the thrill just wasn't there anymore.  I've said this before.  Being a Yankee fan is exhausting.  Yankee fans only have two emotions, terrible disappointment when the Yankees don't win the World Series, and what could best be described as relief when they do.  To be honest, I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a Yankee game.  In some ways, my Yankee fandom has become like a bad relationship that I'm just too much of a wimp to get out of.

Speaking of bad relationships, I can't really imagine what it's like to be a Red Sox fan.  I'm not 100% sure it would really be more fun, but I'm 100% sure it wouldn't be less fun.  Typical relationship dilemma.  Stay with something familiar, or go try something new that isn't necessarily any better and just leaves you feeling like an idiot.  As you can probably tell from the fact that I'm going to die alone, I'm not very good at this.

Some other valid reasons to switch to Boston fandom:

- I live in Massachusetts now, so there are always Boston teams on my TV.  I mean, I could just watch and root against them.  That's essentially what I did with the Red Sox my first year here, but, to be honest, that wasn't a lot of fun.

- Boston girls are almost exclusively awesome.  New York girls are, frankly, kind of a mixed bag.  Don't make that face at me!  You know I'm right.  You've seen Sex and the City.  So if you're in a bar with half Boston girls and half New York girls, which side of the bar would you rather have a common rooting interest with?  Yeah, me too.  I've also found that Boston girls are significantly more likely to be into sports, so there's a better chance of them being in the bar to begin with.

- Aerosmith is from Boston.  And so are the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.  Who's from New York?  LL Cool J and The Ramones?  Similar question.  If you got invited to watch a game and hang out with famous music people, who would you pick?  Dicky Barrett and Steven Tyler or LL Cool J and whichever Ramone is still alive?  Again, yeah, me too.

Look, to be honest, I'm not sure if I can go through with the full conversion.  I'm still stuck on the Red Sox thing.  That's not an easy switch.  But I've already decided that I'm not buying the MLB extra innings package this season, the Yankees just aren't worth $40 a month to me anymore.  So I suppose I'll watch a summer of Sox baseball and see how I feel in September.  I'll keep you posted.

MLB First Impressions - National League

...and now for the National League...

Washington Nationals
I'm not as crazy about Bryce Harper as I think some people want me to be, but the TV did remind me that he's a year younger than Mike Trout, so I guess we'll see.  Meanwhile, Washington added Dan Haren and Rafael Soriano, and Stephen Strasburg should be mostly free of innings limits this season.  Washington looks really really good.  Easy division winner.  Can we force them to move back to Montreal at this point?

Atlanta Braves
I've always said double the Upton equals double the awesome.  Why wouldn't you want both Upton brothers on your team?  Some things worry me about the Braves.  Tim Hudson is 37 and can't do this forever.  Kris Medlen has to regress a little bit, right?  The left side of the infield has a real "who the fuck are those guys?" vibe going.  Still, having an excellent bullpen and cornering the market on Uptons should be plenty to land Atlanta a wild card spot.

Philadelphia Phillies
Can we just fire Charlie Manuel now and get it over with?  On paper, this team still looks like it should be good, except that it isn't.  I've never trusted Cliff Lee, and I never will.  And now I'm hearing Roy Halladay and "decreased velocity" in the same sentence an awful lot.  And did you know Chase Utley is 34?  I didn't know that.  Yikes.  I love Cole Hamels, the rest of this is a disaster waiting to happen.

Miami and The Mets
Speaking of yikes.  Neither one of these teams has any redeeming quality that would allow me to choose one over the other.  If I have to pick one, I'll pick the Mets to finish just ahead of Miami, if only because the Mets are used to being depressing by now while the Marlins are still sort of reeling from the embarrassment that was last season.  The Mets also have David Wright, which I suppose is marginally better than not having David Wright. 

Cincinnati Reds
I looked at Cincinnati's depth chart and thought "Ryan Ludwick?  Still?".  But then I actually looked at his numbers from last year and they aren't half bad.  More importantly, I love everything about the Reds' pitching and they picked up the Choo Choo train.  All aboard for a division title!

St. Louis Cardinals
Word is Chris Carpenter is most likely done.  That's sad.  As for the rest of the Cardinals, there's so much about this roster that makes me nervous.  Jason Motte seems like one of those "hey, remember that brief period of time when that guy was good?" guys.  Beltran and Holliday are both guys who are older than you think they are, but also seem older than they actually are, if that makes sense.  I don't like what I'm seeing here.  Still second place though, because this division is terrible, even without Houston.

Pittsburgh Pirates
The Pirates are a lot like the Royals only, unlike the Royals, they haven't yet bothered to go out and get some actual pitching.  Also, I don't know if the Pirates know this, but Russell Martin hit .211 last year.  Who signs that guy to be a starting catcher?  I'm sorry, I can't take the Pirates seriously until they start taking themselves seriously.

Milwaukee Brewers
Ryan Braun is pretty good, so there's that.  I'm just so underwhelmed by the rest of this roster.  I thought we had all given up on Carlos Gomez.  Maybe I'll like them better when they get Corey Hart back.  Probably not though.  When does training camp start for the Packers?

Chicago Cubs
Talk about bottoming out.  Is Carlos Marmol still seriously the Cubs' closer?  They had all off-season to think about this and nobody had a better idea?  He's not even young anymore, he's 30.  And I don't even want to speculate about how old Alfonso Soriano is.  Theo Epstein better know what he's doing.  When people in Chicago get angry, shit goes down.

Arizona Diamondbacks
OK, usually when I think Arizona is going to the playoffs they wind up finishing last, so I apologize to D'Backs fans in advance, but I think Arizona wins the west.  Solid pitching, solid offense, solid everything.  Guys like Martin Prado and Cody Ross are really nice pick-ups.  They're the kind of guys you see filling roles on winning teams.  Also, remember the name Adam Eaton.

San Francisco Giants
Yes, Tim Lincecum is zeroing in on being finished, but the Giants still have Matt Cain and Madison Bumgarner, and the surprisingly adequate Barry Zito.  I really like this team, no great hitters, but lots of perfectly solid bats.  I think this is actually the best team in the division, but they'll be hurt by some early season Lincecum train wrecks before they figure out he's finished and I think they wind up settling for a wild card.

Los Angeles Dodgers
Hey, remember when everyone said you didn't want to sign Carl Crawford to a long term contact because he'll eventually lose a couple of steps and suddenly be very mediocre at best.  Well that's happening now, enjoy Dodgers fans.  The Dodgers have the potential to be legitimately not awful, but too many question marks for me.

Colorado Rockies
Carlos Gonzalez and Troy Tulowitzki have to be enough to make this team better than San Diego, right?  Right?  I heard the Rockies signed Jon Garland.  That's not a bad move, as long as this is 2005.  Is this 2005?

San Diego Padres
Add San Diego to the long list of teams that decided to try to turn a potentially excellent closer into a starter.  Too bad Andrew Cashner, you would have made a solid closer, instead you just go on the pile with Daniel Bard and Joba Chamberlain.  The Padres are a mess.  Can we relegate them and call up a triple A team?

National League MVP: Maybe if I keep picking Justin Upton I'll actually be right one year.
National League Cy Young: Cole Hamels!  Cole Hamels!
National League Champs:  This is tough.  Look, I'm going to have to pick Washington, but I don't have to like it.  I think the Nats lose to Tampa in the World Series.  There you go.

MLB First Impressions - American League

I've decided to take the baseball previews in a new direction this year.  More brevity, less rambling.  I'm just going to take a look at each team's depth chart on MLB.com and ESPN.com and jot down some first impressions.  Yankees fans, I hope you enjoy this, because we won't be enjoying anything else for the next six months.

Tampa Bay Rays
Tampa finally did what they should have done three years ago and turned a couple of their pitchers into an impact bat.  Wil Myers is a hitting savant, Rays fans (all 22 of them) will love his work.  I do think Tampa will miss B.J. Upton.  I know he's awful most of the time, but he also has those two week runs where he can just carry a team.  They'll miss that.  But the Rays still have excellent pitching and perfectly adequate offense.  Tampa is still the best team in this division as far as I'm concerned.

Boston Red Sox
This Boston team has "wait, how are they good?" written all over them.  You know who the best manager in the world is?  Anyone who isn't Bobby Valentine.  If Ellsbury and Lester and Buchholz can all stay healthy and be productive, I like Boston for a wild card.  On the other hand, this is my last year of patience with Jon Lester.  If he can't get it together this year, then next year's baseball preview starts with "what the hell happened to Jon Lester?"

Baltimore Orioles
I read an article on ESPN.com that told me Baltimore could field two starting rotations with all the pitching they have.  That may be true, but I'm not convinced either one of those rotations would be any good.  Plus, this is supposed to be the year that Buck Showalter leaves and then some fraud comes in and takes all the credit for what he set up (cough, cough...Joe Torre...cough, cough).  With Buck staying, I have no idea what's supposed to happen now, but I'm not convinced Baltimore can make the playoffs two years in a row. 

New York Yankees
This is all so depressing, but honestly, it isn't all the injuries to the offense that have me down.  I think this team can still hit.  It's the pitching.  You can say the bullpen looks good with Rivera back, but how good are they going to look when the starters are giving them 2 innings every night.  I couldn't possibly hate this rotation more.  Why is Andy Pettitte still here?  Go away Andy Pettitte!  Please!  Ugh.  I may skip the extra innings package this season just so I don't have to watch this.

Toronto Blue Jays
What am I missing here?  Toronto won 73 games last year.  In the off-season they added a guy coming off a steroid suspension (which means he'll either go back to sucking like he used to or he'll get suspended again and they'll lose him for 100 games), a 72 year old knuckleballer and the core of a 69 win Marlins team.  I'm having trouble understanding why people think this all adds up to awesome.  I still don't trust Toronto's pitching, and I'll never trust Jose Bautista. 

Detroit Tigers
Remember the first year after Lebron went to Miami?  The Heat spent the season trying to figure out how to play together, then they went to the finals and lost to a pretty mediocre Dallas team.  The second season for Miami was championship or bust.  Same in Detroit this year.  I've stopped waiting for Justin Verlander's shoulder to explode, I guess he's just a freak.  Detroit still has some bullpen issues, but they should be good to go for a division title.

Kansas City Royals
Wild card for the Royals!  You heard me.  The Royals finally have a rotation, with fastballs and breaking pitches and everything.  Just like a real team!  Solid bullpen, and this team can hit son.  I'm telling you, if they weren't the Royals, I wouldn't be the only one putting them in the playoffs.  Then again, they are the Royals, so I guess we'll see.

Cleveland Indians
I had the Indians in the wild card spot until I looked at their depth chart and saw Scott Kazmir in their rotation.  You can't go to the playoffs with Scott Kazmir.  You just can't.  Having said that, this team can also hit.  If Ubaldo Jimenez can get himself together, Cleveland could be really good.  That's a big if though.  In a related story, Indians fans turned out to be the losers of the Who Gets to Watch 600 Nick Swisher At-bats This Season sweepstakes.  Get ready to hate life.

Chicago White Sox
Every year one team just screams 81-81 at me.  It's usually the Braves, but this year it's the White Sox.  Paul Konerko can't keep this up forever.  And how bad does Gordon Beckham have to be before we all give up on him?  He's a .245 career hitter, and last year he hit .234 (that's called trending in the wrong direction buddy).  I like Jake Peavy and Addison Reed, and I hate pretty much everything else.

Minnesota Twins
I can't even talk about the Twins.  Two different websites have Vance Worley as their number 1 starter.  I really can't talk about them.  So I'm going to take this space to bash the Mets a little.  What happened to Mike Pelfrey?  How did they screw that up?  Everything about young Mike Pelfrey said "this guy's gonna be an ace".  Everything about current Mike Pelfrey says "I wish I had played for anyone other than the Mets". 

Los Angeles Angels
I'm a little worried about Albert Pujols, he's 33 and clearly starting to regress.  And I'm a little worried about Josh Hamilton in Los Angeles.  I heard they have cocaine there.  Having said that, I love Tommy Hanson for this team, and Mike Trout is Mike Trout, so I think they win the division. 

Texas Rangers
It was pretty hard for me to find a second place team in this division.  Texas was my natural inclination, then I looked at their rotation.  Then I looked at Oakland's roster.  Then back to Texas.  I'm going with the Rangers because I think they can still hit and Joe Nathan looks all the way back, but I don't see a wild card coming out of this division (which is sad, because they all get to play Houston a bunch of times).

Oakland A's
Oakland's done it with young pitching and a bunch of nobodys before, but that doesn't mean it works every time.  And this time they have to do it without Brad Pitt.  Also, the one thing people always forget to mention about Moneyball is that Oakland never actually won a championship, or even the American League.  I'm not saying Oakland can't be good, but there's a ceiling.

Seattle Mariners
To believe Seattle can contend, you have to believe King Felix can carry them, because the rest of that rotation is a mess.  And I'm not so sure I believe anymore.  Five straight seasons over 200 innings, and ERAs above 3 the last two seasons.  I'm not saying he'll be bad, but 2009/2010 Felix is gone, and I don't think he's coming back.

Houston Astros
Love the uniform upgrade, hate everything else.

AL MVP: Robinson Cano.  I know I said the Yankees will be terrible, and they will, but I think this is one of those years when nobody from a contender really stands out and someone from a losing team puts up huge numbers and gets the MVP.

AL Cy Young: David Price.  I can't just pick Justin Verlander, and I refuse to pick a Weaver.  Plus, if Tampa is actually going to win the AL East, they'll probably need Price to put up Cy Young numbers.

AL Champs:  I like Tampa, I really do.  I know Detroit is probably a safer pick, but I like Tampa.

Pope Me The First

Yeah, I'm going to be the new pope.  And you know what else?  I'm going to be the best pope ever.  Catholics for the rest of history are gonna be like "that Jesus fellow was OK, but Pope Sean was the shit!"  That's how Catholics talk.  Believe me, I know Catholics.

Why should I be the new pope?  Well, first of all, I'm totally qualified.   Don't believe me?  Take a look at my pope resume!

Pope Qualifications

Catholic? - Check (technically, I was baptized and stuff)
Knows the rules? - Check, 12 years of Catholic school baby!
Looks good in big funny hats? - Check
Speaks Latin? - Check.  Well, I mean, I've heard of Latin.  I'm familiar with it.  Nobody knows Latin anyway, I think if I just fake it I'll be fine.  Agricolae...puella...you know how it goes.
Actually believes in, ya know, god? - Hey, is that the first stone I see you casting?  I'm not infallible you know.  Not yet anyway.
Number of times I've been accused or suspected of having sex with children?  Zero.  That's literally never happened to me.  This one feels fairly important.

Qualified isn't enough though, and I understand that.  The church isn't doing so well lately.  The church needs new ideas, or a new direction, or at least a new haircut.  You want new ideas?  I have so many new ideas!

Pope Ideas

No More Church
OK, hear me out.  The book says you have to keep holy the sabbath day, it doesn't say you have to sit in a hot room and be bored for an hour every Sunday.  Church is boring and awful and everyone knows it.  I will decree that whatever you do on Sunday from now on is just between you and the god that isn't really there.  And we'll turn all the churches into homeless shelters.  And we'll sell all the gold in the churches and give the money to charity.  This is a good idea.  Have you seen how much gold churches have?  So much gold.

Lady Priests
This one's pretty obvious, but yeah, we need some lady priests.  And we also need some married priests.  No wonder the church is struggling so much.  Women make stuff better.  It's a true story.  Will the man priests and the lady priests be allowed to marry each other?  I don't know, I'll probably leave that up to whoever I pick to be the Vice Pope, who, incidentally, will almost definitely be a lady.  Oh, and since there doesn't seem to be one now, I'm also adding a Vice Pope.  Make a note.

Three Strike Policy for Sex Offenders
I know what you're thinking, and listen, a three strike policy would still be better than the church's current infinity strike policy.  But no, that's not what I mean.  You don't get two free molestations.  My three strike policy means that the first time you get caught touching kids I strike you in the head three times with my giant jewel-encrusted pope stick.  You will almost definitely die.

Listen, you have to keep this one a secret though.  I want offending priests to be really surprised when they get to the Pope House wondering "Oh, I wonder what the Pope is going to do to me.." and then I beat them to death with my pope stick.  They'll be so surprised!  You don't expect a lot of beatings from the Pope.  New ideas I tells ya!

War!
Don't worry, not an explosions and death war, more of a war of words, and possibly pranks.  Long term, the idea would be to engage Protestants worldwide in a winner-take-all fight with the goal being to eventually have one side win and re-unite Christians.  I'm tired of all these heretic Protestants running around.  It's confusing and I want to be the Pope of everyone.  I'm pretty flexible on the details of what we "believe", so I think this could work.

Be Nicer
I don't know why I have to decree this, but I feel like I definitely do.  We're going to be nicer, like the fellow from the bible, what's his face.  Nicer to women, nicer to non-heterosexuals, and just nicer in general.  Not a lot of cheek turning from Catholics lately, and the Protestants are even worse (remember we're conquering them). 

No More Vatican
You heard me mention the Pope House before.  Well, it's definitely going to be in America.  I'm not one of these people who hates Europe, but you couldn't pay me enough money to live outside of the U.S.  It's nice here, I speak the language, I already know where stuff is and I don't plan on breaking any laws, so I wouldn't really need to be my own sovereign nation. 

And if the Pope doesn't need the Vatican, neither does anyone else.  Italy can have it back.  They can turn it into a soccer field.  Or a million soccer fields.  I don't really know how big Vatican City is.  I'm guessing larger than my high school but smaller than Spain?  That sounds right.

Interfere in the World When Needed
I feel like there are things the Pope could make happen if he just took a minute to give a crap about them.  For example, Pope Sean decrees that How I Met Your Mother has to tell us who the mother is, like immediately.  And it has to be someone really good too.  Seriously, I've completely had it with that show.  It isn't even a comedy anymore.  Just tell us who the mother is so we can all move on with our lives.  You're basically just holding us hostage now.  See, I feel like if the Pope sent CBS a letter saying essentially the same thing I just said, we'd get some action.

Human Resources
There seems to be a lot going on inside the church, and I can't fix it all with my magic Pope powers.  I've decided we need an HR department.  I'm also all for a priest union.  In fact, yes, we're definitely starting a priest union.  And I can definitely afford all of this, just think of how much more money we'll have after we conquer the Protestants.

If, somehow, I don't wind up being the next Pope, I have a request.  I hear there's an African guy in the running.  I don't really know anything about him, because I obviously don't really care at all about this silly nonsense, but I vote for the African guy.  I would like to see a movie in which Morgan Freeman plays the Pope, and as sad as it is to admit, we're running out of time for that.  It may be now or never.  Get on it!

A Brief History of Stupid

Sometimes I feel like other countries wouldn't believe us if we tried to tell them how stupid our government is.  Let's pretend that you, dear reader, are Germany for a minute.  You don't want to be Germany?  A little too aggressive for you?  OK, France then.  No?  A little too surrendery?  OK let's say Australia.  Everyone likes Australia.

Hey Australia, you'll never guess what happened.  In the summer of 2011, our government reached our debt limit (again, this happens constantly now).  That's stupid thing numero uno, by the way.  Why would we work under a self-imposed debt limit?  I can understand trying it once to see if it actually helps us be more fiscally responsible, but that doesn't really seem to be working, does it?  Now it's just an arbitrary number that we have to raise every once in a while so we don't default on our debt.  Except when the President is black, then we have to fight about it first.

So we reached our debt limit and then, because Republicans don't actually understand how debt works, they demanded that spending cuts accompany any deal to raise the debt ceiling.  Actually, it may be that Republicans don't understand how time works, because they seem to be missing the part where cutting future spending won't really help with the debt we owe for past spending.  To be fair, time is pretty complicated and Republicans hate science, so, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

The Democrats though, they don't want to cut spending.  They say they do, because it sounds good and it's always good politics to be for general spending cuts, but they don't really want to.  They don't want to cut social programs because they, ya know, believe in those things.  And they don't want to cut defense because if they do someone will call them weak and they'll lose an election and have to get a real job.

And don't tell me about how the President has offered $2, or $2.50 or whatever of spending cuts for every dollar of revenue.  I'll give you two and a half unicorns for every one of your horses.  What unicorns?  Don't worry, I've got unicorns.  And I've got traumatized workers who helped me make half unicorns.  You can have the workers for free.  They mostly just sit and cry now.

And the Republicans, they do want to cut spending, except not really.  Republicans don't want to cut defense spending, because if we don't have at least a million times more tanks than every other country in the world then we're all going to die.  And they don't really want to cut social security or medicare either.  They say they do, but they know if they actually did the very old people who vote for them would march on Washington...slowly.  That's why Mitt Romney's plan was to start cutting entitlements ten years from now, two years after it conveniently wouldn't have been his problem anymore.  I wonder if the 2023 Congress would have actually gone ahead with Mitt's plan.  I'm thinking no.

So everybody really wanted to cut spending, except that nobody actually wanted to cut spending.  Then they came up with a big, fool-proof plan to cut spending.  It was called...drumroll...the sequester (ohhhhh).  They came up with all the worst spending cuts they could think of and put them all into one big package of cuts that would take effect at the beginning of 2013 unless some people could, somehow, reach a deal on spending cuts that everyone would like better. 

I guess I should talk about why this particular move was so insanely stupid, but I feel like I really shouldn't have to explain to you why an economic suicide pact is a bad idea for our government.

But who would work together to reach such a deal?  Well, get ready for another stupid thing.  Instead of trying something innovative or smart, they just put together a smaller group made up of people from the bigger group that already couldn't agree on anything.  Even though this was a super smart plan, and even though they were called the Super Committee (ohhhhh again), they somehow failed to agree on anything. 

"Then what happened?"  Good question, Australia.  Well, then they all forgot about it and went to run for office for a year.  It was another excellent plan.  I mean, who has time to worry about the impending economic disaster when the gays are still trying to marry each other and Mitt Romney is being mean to poor people?  Not me, and not any of the people who are paid to worry about stuff like that either.

After the election was over and everyone had a good cry, they all suddenly realized they hadn't bothered doing their jobs for a year and this sequester thing was still happening.  "Ohh noooos!" said John Boehner.  They had until the end of December to reach a deal, but they had a much better and much stupider idea.  Instead of actually doing something, they just raised some taxes that never should have been lowered in the first place and then put everything else off for two months. 

Then, and I swear this happened, they sort of forgot about it again for like a month while the Republicans spent time bitching about Benghazi and the Democrats ran around talking about raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires even though they had literally just done that shit.

By the way, I'm not saying taxes couldn't be higher, because they absolutely could and should be.  I'm saying Democrats spent a year whining about how all they were asking for was a return to the Clinton era tax rates, and as soon as they got it, without even blinking, they immediately started acting like it never happened.

Then everyone remembered the impending crisis that they had just created, and then they fought about it without agreeing on anything until finally it was March 1st.  This is where the President overplayed his hand a little.  The White House spent a week making it sound like the sequester was the end of the economic world, when everyone knew it really wasn't.  I heard people on TV talking about how long airport lines would have people immediately demanding a budget deal.  Really?  You know who doesn't give a shit about airport lines?  Everybody who isn't at the fucking airport right now.  And screw those people anyway.  I don't have time to fly around the country all willy nilly, let them wait on line.

Meanwhile, all this economic crisising left Congress with no time to deal with things like gun control and infrastructure and immigration.  Oh man!  They really wanted to do those things too, there's just no time.  If only there was time!

And so here we are.  Minimal spending cuts that won't really help that much with deficit reduction in the long run, done the stupidest way possible, which is to say the government basically closed their eyes and threw darts at the discretionary budget while telling themselves that none of those cuts were actually going to happen so don't worry about where the darts are landing.  At least now that we have this problem, our leaders are working tirelessly to fix it instead of just trying to go on TV and blame each other.  Oh wait.  Nevermind.

Poor Faulkner

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten dollar words.  I know them all right.  But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."

This sentiment from Hemingway is always appropriate for a big political speech.

This year's State of the Union comes without the usual pregame madness thanks to whatever the hell was going on in California.  I did learn that Bill O'Reilly doesn't believe in the death penalty.  Who knew?  The rest of it was mostly just video of a cabin burning down.  I'm just looking forward to the President awkwardly working this situation into his speech.

8:57PM: This is pretty fun.  The huge panels of bloviating jackasses the cable networks put together for tonight each got about three minutes to talk.  In order to understand why this is fun, you really have to understand how much these people enjoy being on television.  Don't be surprised if someone burns down a cable news studio later tonight.  Also, Blogger doesn't know how to spell bloviate.  Or maybe Blogger just noticed that I opened with that Hemingway line and is trying to point out my hypocrisy.  Listen, if I could write like Hemingway, I wouldn't need to use words like bloviate.

9:02PM: The Cabinet is very slowly and boringly making its way into the chamber.  Also, breaking news from CNN, the White House says this speech is going to be effective.  What a scoop!

9:05PM: Seriously though, I just noticed CNN has Newt Gingrich in the studio.  He's barely getting a word in.  I think his head's going to explode.  And when a head that big explodes, terrible things happen.

9:07PM: I'm starting to wonder if the President is coming.  If he knew Newt was talking on TV right now, I'm sure he'd jump in and stop it.

9:09PM: Newt's laugh is disturbingly creepy.  Oh, I miss the Republican primaries.  No Newt!  Don't go!

9:10PM: Here comes the Prez.  I keep saying they shouldn't let Biden and Boehner sit together.  They already look like they're up to something.

9:11PM: Lots of poorly executed mustaches in the crowd tonight.

9:14PM: People say Congress never does anything, but could you stand and clap for this long without a break?  Also, Biden and Obama appear to be wearing the same outfit #awkward

9:16PM: Lots of "does anyone know what Mitt Romney is doing right now?" jokes on Twitter.  Probably enjoying being filthy fucking rich and not having to deal with all this nonsense.  Mitt may have dodged a bullet in November.

9:18PM: Did you know we're buying less foreign oil than we have in 20 years?  Still quite a lot, but, you know, less.

9:18PM: "The state of our union is strong."  OK, goodnight folks.

9:19PM: Biden looks twitchy, Boehner looks pretty drunk.

9:20PM: "The American people don't expect us to solve every problem."  True, but solving one would be nice.  Just try one.

9:22PM: Apparently the sequester is a really bad idea.  Everyone seems to agree on that.  If only we could find all those people who voted to pass the sequester in the first place.  Ohhh, I bet the Prez and Mr. Boehner would like to have a word with those assholes.

9:25PM: "Already, the affordable care act is slowing the growth of health care costs."  Yeah, I'm not sure that's good enough.  Health care costs are skyrocketing on a slightly less steep trajectory.  Hooray for us!

9:27PM: We're wallowing in the deficit reduction portion of the speech right now.  The working title for this section around the White House was "all the shit that's never gonna happen".

9:29PM: In the last minute, only the Democrats have applauded for "less crises" and "paying our bills on time".  Tough crowd.

9:30PM: Biden cracks me up.  Obama just said Congress needs to pass the rest of his growth agenda, which caused Biden to laugh out loud.  I'd love to be texting with Biden right now..."Congress do something? OMFG! LOLZ!"

9:32PM: The Prez thinks we should invest in good ideas.  Also, Biden is inexplicably wearing glasses now.  Wait, now the glasses are gone.  Why is Biden doing costume changes?  Just sit still man!  VPs are the worst.

9:34PM: Obama says we can make progress on climate change while also fostering strong economic growth.  I wish he'd stop saying that.  Not everything has to make money.  When you try to pair fighting climate change with trying to make everything profitable, you get stupid ideas like cap and trade.  How about we fight climate change just for the sake of, ya know, not dying?

9:38PM: "Let's cut in half the energy wasted by our homes and businesses over the next 20 years".  Sure, why not?

9:39PM: Even the Republicans stood up and clapped for fixing bridges.  They're not going to vote for any funding for fixing bridges, but, philosophically, they like fixing bridges.

9:41PM: On passing some bill that's currently waiting in Congress.."what are we waiting for?".  Well, the Republicans are waiting for a less black President.  I'm not sure what everyone else is waiting for.

9:42PM: Obama is seamlessly transitioning from one topic to the other.  Climate change, then bridges, now education.  He's really pushing for funding for pre-school.  I don't know.  I remember pre-school mostly just being day care with some counting.

9:44PM: Apparently, German kids are ready to work right out of high school.  I probably could have worked in Germany right out of high school too.  I don't want to work in Germany.

9:45PM: Something about re-designing America's high schools.  No, not going to happen.

9:46PM: "Colleges must do their part to keep costs down".  He said that last year too.  That is definitely not going to happen.

9:47PM: Now we're on boarder security.  He's like a tornado of policy proposals.

9:49PM: The President wants Congress to send him a comprehensive immigration reform bill so he can sign it.  I'm mostly hearing that this is going to happen.  I predict the end result will be toothless and ineffective.

9:50PM: Great audience shot of some lady shaking her head in anger at the idea of equal pay for women.  It isn't easy being a Republican woman, but at least you get to hang out with all of those hot Republican guys.

9:52PM: Raise the minimum wage?  Yes please.  Well, yes please for me, no thank you for the Republicans.

9:53PM: Boehner looks super fidgety.  Someone give him a ball to play with.

9:55PM: "By the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over."  Kudos if he actually pulls that off.  I'm also glad to hear that we're going to spend plenty of time training and equipping the Afghan army that we will most likely be going to war with in about 25 years.

9:58PM: Chuck Grassley may or may not be asleep.  Also, Obama has successfully conditioned the Democrats to applaud whenever he pauses, no matter what he just said.

9:59PM: Even the lady who wouldn't clap for equal pay stood up and applauded for keeping Iran from getting nuclear weapons.  I wonder if she gets equal pay?  #hmmm

10:01PM: "today's world contains not just dangers, not just threats, but also opportunities".  He added, "opportunities to be endangered and threatened".

10:02PM: Did he say AIDS free generation?  I think he did.  That's sounds like a good idea.  Let's do that one.  Someone go find out why Magic Johnson is still alive!

10:05PM: Boehner just seriously sat there and refused to applaud for equal treatment for gay military members and equal benefits for their families.  What a dick.  These guys are so funny to me sometimes that I forget that they also spend a great deal of time being assholes.

10:08PM: About Newtown and gun control..."this time it's different".  Except not really and it's been two months and Congress still hasn't done anything.  But other than that, it's much different this time.

10:11PM: Republicans won't even applaud for voting on gun control laws.  If you were honestly against something and thought it was a bad idea, wouldn't you be all for stepping up and voting against it?

10:12PM: "they deserve a vote"...best section of a State of the Union speech I can remember in a while.  Well done Prez.

10:14PM: Hey look, that old lady voted. Way to get back to the silly nonsense!  I'm sorry, I'm sure it's a very inspiring story, but these little human interest stories are always my least favorite part of this, and really, of anything.

10:16PM: And hey it's over.  Sort of crash landed there, but OK.

10:17PM: I'm going to stick around for the Marco Rubio response.  Last year Paul Ryan's response was basically just 10 different ways to propose tax cuts.  I'm not expecting much more out of Marco, but we'll see.

10:25PM: If Rubio doesn't show up soon I'm bailing.  I can't wait around forever just because he has great hair.

10:27PM: Finally, here comes Marco Rubio.  I predict I'll never have that thought again.  Before I find 15 different ways to call Marco stupid, I want to give him some honest credit for doing this.  For every guy who made a name for himself giving the State of the Union response, there's another guy who committed political suicide attempting to pull it off.  This isn't easy.

10:30PM: Right off the bat..."for much of history, people lived in societies where a tiny minority stayed at the top and nobody else had a chance".  Ummm, that seems to be where the Republicans have been trying to take us for the last 32 years.  That's a literal description of the result of Republican policies.  Not a good start buddy.

10:32PM: They should have scored Marco a podium.  He's having trouble figuring out what to do with his hands.

10:33PM: Obamacare is bad, check.  Obama is divisive, check.

10:36PM: If the President will abandon his obsession with raising taxes, the Republicans promise to continue their obsession with lowering taxes.  Deal?

10:37PM: I think Rubio is also wearing the same outfit as Obama and Biden #doubleawkward

10:38PM: Republicans don't say "school vouchers" that much anymore, but that's still what they're talking about.

10:40PM: I don't know what Republicans think the President wants to do to the rights of law abiding Americans, but I guarantee that there's nothing in the Constitution about having the right to unregulated firearms.

10:41PM: Yikes.  Rubio just stopped for a drink of water.  Clearly unplanned since he had to stop and reach out of frame to grab the bottle.  That was super awkward and probably all anyone will remember from his speech.

10:43PM: I honestly haven't been listening since that weird water break.  Rubio's sound team isn't doing him any favors either.  The words weren't especially terrible, but the stagecraft was just an atrocity.

Well, there you go.