urbanmennonite.com

I’d like to thank the American taxpayers all over the country for providing, yet again, another fireworks show free to DC residents.  It’s not often we feel your love and I know you think we aren’t really that special — being something more than a city and something less than a state — but once a year, for a day, you make up for it.

So here’s a little something from me to you, America.

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Your campaign staff, that’s what.

So John McCain — incapable of getting any sustained press coverage at all in the last few weeks, facing a never-ending series of Gallup polls showing him basically stuck and has now left the issues to complain about attacks on him — is putting someone new in charge of his day-to-day operations.

So what can we expect from this?  Well, it’s a pretty clear sign that a campaign is worried when they switch up campaign managers.  And the new guy, he’s got a wee bit of a reputation.  So it’s going to get ugly.

Very. Very. Ugly.

So back to Entertainment Weekly’s list of “New Classics” — the movies, books, music and other cultural flim-flam that might (or might not) outlast our own brief sojourn here on Earth.

And while I thought the music list was palatable — strange, but palatable — I can say no such nice things about the Top 100 Books.

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In case it appears that I’m going a bit overboard with my support of the Democratic nominee, I offer the following list of things I don’t like about him.  I mean, he’s just a man.  A man who gives the world’s best speeches and has a truly awesome wife (I have a bit of a girl crush on Michelle), but still … just a man.

Fundamentally, our political system will still be as flawed as ever even with him in the White House.

• His flip-flop on the FISA bill
• His too-careful wording about gay marriage
• His stance on the death penalty
• His support of ethanol (rather than more sustainable bio-fuels) and his championing of coal
• His pandering on the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment decision

Breaking news!  The most beautiful couple in all the world are about to give birth to what will surely be the world’s most beautiful twins to add to their UN-like collection of progeny.  Angelina has checked into a French hospital.

Two comments:

• Brad: surely the most perfect accessory a pregnant woman could ever want
• Angelina: making pregnant women everywhere feel bad about themselves (although the dress is fugly).

UPDATE: Apparently, she could be in the hospital for several weeks.

I went to the Amish Market in Upper Marlboro on Saturday and it was weird.  It was good too, don’t get me wrong; I adore whoopie pies and pretzels.  But it was weird because:

1.You cannot find two populations more different from each other than the Amish and the population of Upper Marlboro Prince George’s County,Maryland.  At least there are white people in PG County because you can’t really say the reverse.  But despite all those historical and religious differences, when it comes to the culture of food?  Eh, not so different.

2. The Amish know nothing about me.  I am just one more face in the crowd.  But I know them.  Oh sure, I don’t know their names or their family situations or them personally but I know something about their heritage, about their community, about who they fundamentally are.  I’m only three (great-grandpa, right?) generations removed from being Amish myself.  If it hadn’t been for some choice made by some young guy, I could be serving up angel food cakes and shoofly pies to tourists waiting to get married and have kids because all I have is an eighth-grade education. I have some weird connection to them.  And I’m torn between wanting them to recognize me as one of their own and desperately hoping that they don’t.

But again, the whoopie pies?  Excellent.

• A wrong vote vs. no vote: one man decides.
• Those cute little Amish kids?  Inbred.  And who is picking up the tab?
• Canadian Mennonite boy makes good; bike-riding Mennonite boy still not so good.
• He likes us, he really likes us (because he’s obviously never spent any time at all with us because we don’t even like each other this much).
• Witness still a kick-ass movie.
• Mennonites in South America preparing “killer corn” and getting involved in some shady, shady stuff.
• Please add “protecting yourself from sleep-deprived deer killers” to list of things that God doesn’t allow the Amish to do.  Puppy mills however?  Just fine.
• If you missed it on TV, watch it, read it and see the photos online: The Amish, rumspringa and how freedom isn’t always free.

OK … this is funny. Maybe only in a DC, inside-the-Beltway funny, but still damn funny.

Wednesday, June 25, a bill was introduced on the floor of the Senate and then referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.  This bill, a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the US Constitution relating to marriage and called the “Marriage Protection Amendment,” would likely have all sorts of terrible consequences and do very bad things.  This isn’t a new bill; shit like this comes up all the time and usually doesn’t get very far (this isn’t the funny part).

Here’s the funny: Guess who is sponsoring this one?  Among the nine sponsors appear the names of one Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and one David Vitter (R-Louisiana).

Ha, ha.  Those Republicans are a hoot.  Getting a toe-tapping, bathroom-trolling, I’ve-got-a-wide-stance convicted closet case AND a diaper-wearing, prostitute-visiting, name-in-the-black-book-of-a-dead-madam adulterer is SUCH a good way to defend heterosexual marriage.

What’s next?  Ted Haggard making appearances in support of it?

Conservatives should be thanking their lucky stars that the gays even want to get married at all in the face of such shining, stellar examples of opposite-sex marriage.  Sheesh.

I just want it publicly out there that I’ve got a bet on NYMEX oil futures settling at $150/bbl by July 4.  And with it reaching a new record today ($140.21/bb), I think I just got a little closer to that win.

Which will be tempered by the fact that my stocks aren’t worth crap at this point.

Win some, lose some!

Little bored at work?  It’s a Friday afternoon on a beautiful summer day but the boss has you doing the TPS reports or you’re stuck going over the charter statement for that BPM project.

Why don’t you read some classic literature done as Microsoft Office products?  No worries.  Even close up, it looks like you are hard at work creating the latest PowerPoint presentation.  It’s time to take a break anyway from recreating popular music in Excel graphs.

(reading link via Slog; graphic via Graphjam)