Football season is here. Eh. Something tells me the Packers are going to suck this year. And there’s no way I can get all that interested in the Vikings, but I’ll probably settle into my usual routine of having the games on as background noise. I do need to get back to Green Bay at some point to check Lambeau Field v2.0. When I was a kid, I went to a couple games at Lambeau and got to sit on the sidelines. Probably not the safest place for a person in a wheelchair to sit during a football game, but I had some good views of a couple bone-shattering tackles. I think they’ve moved the disability seating to the upper deck now, which in a way is too bad. Sitting on the sidelines, you almost felt like part of the team.

Let me see if I understand this. If John Kerry wins the election, terrorists have an open invitation to attack us. Yet we need to re-elect Bush because terrorists are plotting against us. If Bush wants to win this election, he needs to send Cheney back to his crypt before more excrement escapes his mouth. As for the TANG story, it remains to be seen whether it will have the same legs as the Swift Boat ads. I wish both sides would leave the past behind, but like Kos says, what’s good for the goose… The fact that Bush got special treatment from the Guard should surprise nobody. I only wish these documents had emerged in 2000. Not that the election results would have been any different, but the issue would have been put to rest one way or the other. As it is, this will probably be the nastiest election in my lifetime.
And to the woman named Lisa who posted a comment today, send me an e-mail. The one I sent to you bounced back. I’m at wintermute2_0@the19thfloor.net.

I’ve highlighted Thomas Frank’s latest book on the sidebar because it’s one of the most intriguing nonfiction books I’ve read in the last couple years. Frank is an astute observer of the political forces shaping his home state of Kansas. and because Kansas is supposed to represent quintessential Middle America, it might also explain similar trends in other states. What was once a hotbed of radical left-leaning political movements is now one of the most conservative states in the nation. He explains that modern conservatism has succeeded in uniting people of vastly different economic backgrounds on social issues like abortion, etc. People in lower and middle income brackets vote Republican even though Republican economic policies overwhelmingly favor the wealthy. This strategy is brilliant because the social battles are ones that can never really be won, but it’s what mobilizes the base and they can be relied on to also vote for tax cuts that will almost certainly do nothing to benefit them. These people, good and decent for the most part, vote for policies that will weaken their towns and cities, slash funding in their children’s education, and deny themselves health care while allowing themselves to be placated by promises of a restoration of “traditional values” in this country; promises that will never materialize.
Frank also is fair-minded enough to blame the left for its failures as well as the right for its manipulation. At some point, liberalism ceased to have any meaning to these people. Maybe the left was too condescending towards the cultural views of so much of Middle America. Maybe we pushed too strongly for globalization at the expense of the union workers in this country. Whatever the causes, the book is a fascinating study of how we got to our present Red State/Blue State Paradigm

I’m taking advantage of the holiday weekend to catch up on some movies that have been on my list. Yesterday was Hero, the Chinese martial arts movie starring the color wheel. It was actually a quite beautiful film with some vivid backdrops. The story has a couple twists, but nothing that will make you want to pluck your eyes out (a la The Village). The fight scenes have marked similarity to the ones in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but didn’t feel unoriginal. Jet Li doesn’t have the expressiveness of Chow-Yun Fat, but he does a good nameless warrior impression. And today, I think I’m going to see Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut with my sister. It’s been getting a lot of buzz on the internet and I want to see what the fuss is about.

Bill, you should have backed off the Big Macs a long time ago. These days, a quadruple bypass is about as routine as a root canal and I have no doubt that Clinton will be on his feet in a couple weeks, giving interviews and signing books. Ten bucks says that the paperback edition of his book will have a whole new chapter about his brush with mortality.
Like most people, I’m absolutely horrified by the mounting death toll at the school in Russia. The Russians don’t seem to have a good track record in resolving hostage standoffs. Are their cops that incompetent or are the Chechens that bloodthirsty? It’s hard to tell from this side of the world. Even after 9-11, I think most Americans have a hard time comprehending a way of life under constant threat from bombings and other acts of violence. If things like this were happening on an even semi-regular basis in the US, we would see a wave of mass paranoia sweep the country. Our geographic isolation has a lot to do with our (sometimes false) sense of security. In other parts of the world, bloody conflicts with one’s neighbors are a fact of life. Here, we think of our neighbors as vacation spots, if we think of them at all.
I managed to go the entire week without watching one second of the RNC. Of course, sometimes you have to put politics aside out of business necessity. Go read Alexa’s blog and see what I mean. Alexa is a New York blogger who may get herself a book deal if she keeps at it.