There are all sorts of scarves and foam fingers. There are countless thundersticks and pom poms. There are even a handful of clackers and cowbells. But there's only one towel: the terrible towel™. The pride of Pittsburgh will be out in full force this weekend as the Steelers try to win their 6th Lombardi trophy. I was unaware of the history of the towel until I read Greg Garber's article on ESPN today. It turns out that what started as a ratings gimmick is now a 2.5 million dollar boon for a home for mentally disabled and autistic people. I'm pretty sure that trumps Kurt Warner's "faith". Sorry, Kurt. God's going with the Steelers in this one. And so is Obama, apparently.
In my June 18th post-Celtics-championship post, I noted how extraordinary it is to watch your favorite team win a title and how the Steelers had made me wait 26 years for a Super Bowl win. Sunday evening brings another chance for glory for the towel-waving, faithful fans of the Black and Gold. Go Steelers! Let's make VTK a two title blog!
DC, meet VTK. The last time I was in the nation's capitol was exactly 4 years ago, several months short of the advent of VTK, for the same event - the Presidential Inauguration. Of course, that trip was in a protest organizer capacity (the Turn Your Back On Bush action), and this one was in more of a celebratory capacity (my cartoons and flipping birds at federal agencies notwithstanding). BV has a close friend in Arlington VA, so we carpooled down with a few friends and crashed just over the river for a few days. The hospitality was great and I've been assured that my paranoid certainty that the 8 year old son of the hosts had stolen my toiletry bag was unfounded. I'm still not convinced, but I'm letting it go. This is me, letting it go.
Moving on. We made our way into DC for the Inaugural concert mid-afternoon on Sunday, with a brief stop to greet the new Department of Interior.
Unfortunately, security stopped letting people into the concert area at the beginning of the show so we milled around the Washington Memorial, trying to get a good view of one of the jumbotrons. We made it in time for Stevie Wonder and Obama, which was good enough for me. Apparently, I am too cynical, snobbish, whatever, to enjoy Pete Seeger singing This Land is Your Land like everyone else. Just didn't do it for me. We walked around DC after the show and ran into Obama in a CVS. We discussed our eyeglasses.
The evening was spent feasting on Ethiopian food (everyone) and sneaking peeks at the Steelers' score on BV's blackberry (me).
Monday was pretty chill as we met friends at the Native American Museum for lunch (I had the buffalo steak mid-rare, with brussel sprouts and wild rice) and dinner (roasted chicken with date stuffing on a bed of sauteed chard). We topped it off with some vodka gimlets at VTK reader lc's "Eat My Balls" Inauguration Party, which featured cheese balls, popcorn balls, meatballs, etc. It was a good night for city roaming.
We got up before the crack of dawn to head into the city on Tuesday to meet up with everyone and make our way onto the Mall to watch the Inauguration. That plan fell by the wayside immediately as we realized that we were in trouble after standing still in line for 20 minutes with 1000 other people trying to get into the Subway station in Arlington. We decided to walk the 3 miles to the Washington Monument. It was 10 degrees, but at least we weren't trapped underground for 3 hours.
We crossed the Memorial Bridge into DC and were excited to find that we were at the Lincoln Memorial and that while we weren't likely to meet up with our friends, we had thousands of port-a-potties at our disposal, plenty of time, and our pick of Jumbotrons. In other words, I was unlikely to have the claustrophobic panic attack that I had been predicting. Best. Case. Scenario. I took this photo of what I called the Inaugural Layer Cake (sky, federal building, trees, buses, port-a-potties, people):
The ceremony itself was great, with ubercreep Rick Warren being the only downside. Fortunately, his hypocritic blather was followed immediately by Aretha Franklin's transcendent rendition of My Country Tis Of Thee. I'm not so cynical/snobbish/whatever that I couldn't appreciate this:
And then, of course, there was this:
And Dick Cheney was in a wheelchair. Great day. And traffic was a total non-issue on the ride home. Great trip. And BV's new New Yorker was waiting for us when we got home. Great fun:
I just launched a new blog for what I hope to be a monthly political cartoon: Obe Lincoln. You may remember my rant about Obama's Lincoln Complex in the 2008 Review Post. He's taken it one step further - he'll be arriving in DC via train from Philly, ala ... Abe Lincoln. C'mon. As VTK reader lc put it: "kind of a niche thing to be perturbed about". Yes. But it's my niche, dammit! Here's the first one (click for larger view):
A friend called yesterday afternoon and offered me a free ticket to the Celtic's game. So instead of watching on the tube while working and eating leftovers, I watched the champs from center court, third row - actually below the rim. And exactly on the half court line. My feet were on the hockey boards track. It has ruined me for basketball. I'll never be able to watch it the same again. It's crazy to me that people pay $195 for a midseason midweek game, but it's almost worth it. You really get a whole different sense of the mood and dynamics of the game down there. The players are bigger, better, and more graceful than you think (except for Rondo, who is smaller than I thought, which makes his play even more impressive). Garnett is completely insane - really - the cosmos shakes when he enters into it. He's on a totally different plane than everyone else. I was also entertained by Patrick O'Bryant during every time out. He's the biggest man on the court and he knows he's not going in so he just wanders around. hilarious. Conversely, Bill Walker, who also knows he's not going in, is completely zoned in during every time out. He's like a hoop junkie. Get this guy some minutes, Doc. As for the game, Pierce went off for 39 and the Celtics won in OT. Not bad.
Thought I was going to bag it, didn't you? Honestly, I considered it. I've been putting it off because, as I said in the last post, there are over 30 cabinet selections and I'm really not that familiar with many of them. For some reason, I felt like this had to be an exhaustive, definitive statement on Obama's cabinet - one that would lead to a specific conclusion about his political orientation at this moment in time and a prediction of what we can expect from his first four years. I guess I thought that would be the sexy vtkesque thing to do. But the reality is that I don't have a degree in economics, I don't work in public policy, foreign policy, environmental or constitutional law. I don't have a highly educated understanding of health care, education, or transportation or energy policy. And I really don't know anything about Agriculture, the GAO, or Small Business Administration (Except what I know about the administration of my small business, which is so small that it can hardly be classified as a business. I'm a step above a Junior Achievement corporation selling knick knacks door to door). Another thing I'm not: a journalist. (ah, the amateur blogger's journalism complex...)
Further weighing down the anticipated (by some, at least) report card post is the fact that the term hasn't started yet so we can't really judge the performances of the cabinet. Beyond being a rhetorical point, this is significant because we don't know what impact the players will have on the team captain and the team's performance. We don't know who will have the ear of the president, who will drive policy, in what direction, or what events will happen that will force changes or realignments of policy. Elucidating these points, Harvard University's Stephen Walt presents a reasonable case for witholding judgement on Obama's foreign policy picks. The question before us is this - if we can't yet judge the individuals' performance, can we judge the individual who chose the individuals?
In answering this, I'm casting aside a few arguments: Forget about the beltway etiquette that says that a president should be afforded the courtesy of his cabinet selections; that etiquette saw the Democrats approve Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Bolton, etc, each of which was a shameful confirmation with regrettable consequences (understatement). Forget about the benefit of the doubt - these are the big leagues and I doubt everyone who has risen to this level of political power. Forget about the politics of the picks which explain that certain selections were token picks to allow the Administration to present a diverse face, and forget about the politics of picking people in order to guard against future political attacks. At what point do we move beyond the politics? ever?
So discarding these obstructions to judgment on cabinet selections, I see no reason why we shouldn't look at all Barack Obama's selections and criticize or praise him for them. He may not have been sworn in yet, but his presidency is well under way, and therefore open to debate - open even to lefty, hack bloggers like me who haven't done enough research. I'm inspired by John Nichols' article for The Progressive, How to Push Obama, which reviews Obama's progressive roots and his migration to the center, and suggests a strategy for pushing him leftward through reasoned, proactive opposition:
The way to influence Obama and his Administration is to speak not so much to him as to America. Get out ahead of the new President, and of his spin-drive communications team. Highlight the right appointees and the right responses to deal with the challenges that matter most. Don’t just critique, but rather propose. Advance big ideas and organize on their behalf; identify allies in federal agencies, especially in Congress, and work with them to dial up the pressure for progress. Don’t expect Obama or his aides to do the left thing. Indeed, take a lesson from rightwing pressure groups in their dealings with Republican administrations and recognize that it is always better to build the bandwagon than to jump on board one that is crafted with the tools of compromise.
I may not live up to this (particularly in the proposing alternatives department), but I reserve my right to hack away (and hopefully open a forum for the readers of this blog).
OK, let's get going. This is a long one. Keep in mind that this is a report card of Obama's cabinet selection choices, not a report card on the performances of the cabinet members - they all get incompletes so far. This also shouldn't be read as a prediction about how Obama is going to rate as a president; it's just an honest taking-to-task of the team with whom he has chosen to surround himself, and unless he turns out to be the greatest micro-manager of all time, they're going to have a big impact. To start you out, here is a mostly-commentary-free biographical breakdown of the team from Huffington Post. And without further ado, here's your VTK Team of Rivals Report Card:
VP: Joe Biden - B+ - (not sure if VP is cabinet or cabinet-level, but Huff puts him here so I'll follow suit) - clearly a good pick by Obama insofar as Biden helped him to get elected (which is a good thing). Joe had more Joe Sixpack cred than the Hockey Mom or the Joe the Plumber in the end. Am I the biggest Joe fan in the world? No, but I'm not a hater either. It was a smart, effective pick by Obama and I think Biden will sensibly scale back the role of the VP in US governance, which will further highlight Cheney's criminal power usurpation. I wish he were a little less hawkish.
Sec. of State: Hillary Clinton - C- - readers of this blog know where I stand on Hillary. I think she's a hawk, I think her foreign policy experience has been greatly exaggerated, and I think there were better people for this prestigious post. How about the junior senator from MA, John Kerry? This is a purely political pick and as such, it's irritating to me. But she's far from incompetent. Time will tell how she does.
Sec. of the Treasury: Timothy Geithner - C? - Here's where my ignorance comes into play. I don't really know anything about Geithner. I know even less about what the right diagnosis for what the country's economic illness is. So I'm about to hit the internet and search my favorite radical lefty sites for an unbiased assessment that will surely leave me outraged. Please hold [insert elevator music]. Ok, I'm back. And still unsure what to think. I found an informative discussion on DemocracyNow!, in which Naomi Klein calls the selections of Geithner and Larry Summers (director of National Economic Council) "a profound disappointment". She calls Obama hypocritical for picking them after all his campaign criticism of deregulation: they "played key roles during very important economic crises in other countries, in Russia, during the Asian financial crisis, during the Mexican peso crisis. And when these countries were suffering a profound economic crisis created by deregulation, they preached more deregulation, more privatization and—this is key—they preached economic austerity to disastrous results."
The American Prospect's Robert Kuttner agrees but is less pessimistic: "I can point to a couple of silver linings here. Number one, in Obama’s own speeches on the subject, he’s been very much on the side of stringent re-regulation of financial institutions as the price of recapitalizing them and also as the necessary policy. There’s a very good person who is going to be in charge of the specifics of what banking regulation should be going forward. That’s Dan Tarullo, who’s one of the two or three real progressives at fairly senior levels inside the Obama administration ... I do think Geithner is a competent technocrat. He’s not an investment banker himself. He’s been a civil servant for almost all of his career. And secondly, when he was pursuing these failed policies, he was doing so as part of a threesome that included Bernanke and Paulson. And of the three, Geithner was the most inclined to tough regulation as the price of bailout."
Amy Goodman hedges Kuttner's optimism by reading a piece from William Greider in The Nation, with which Kuttner agrees: "Geithner was busy executing the government’s massive rescue of Citicorp--the very banking behemoth that Geithner and Summers helped to create back in the Clinton years, along with Federal Reserve [chairman] Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin, Clinton’s economics guru. Now Rubin is himself a Citicorp executive and his bank is now being saved by his old protégé (Geithner) with the taxpayers’ money ... Geithner has been a central player in the deal-making, from Bear Stearns to AIG to Citi. The strategy has not only failed, it has arguably made things worse as savvy market players saw through the contradictions and rushed out to dump more bank stocks.”
Read (or listen to) the whole discussion here, but it seems that they're more concerned about Summers than Geithner. Lastly, is it notable that stocks soared when the news broke about his appointment as Treasury Secretary? Should we trust the market? Fuck if I know. William Greider provides his opinion in the aforementioned article: "[Geithner has] been seen as a weak and compliant regulator of Wall Street firms, someone who did not seem [sic] the storm coming. Occasionally, Geithner would anguish publicly about the accumulating time bombs like credit derivatives and urge bankers to do something, but he did not use his supervisory powers to compel action. In bailout negotiations with Wall Street titans, Geithner and the Federal Reserve were spun around like a top more than once. No wonder the stock markets rallied explosively when they heard Geithner would be their new boss in Washington. They think he is their guy." So, what should we expect? As I said - fuck if I know.
Attorney General: Eric Holder - B - Let's not let the fact that the Republicans have chosen him to be the subject of their token nomination fight define him as a leftist. He may be, but the fight in the Senate is about the GOP fighting Obama, not Holder. And it's on. Holder's a former Clintonista. On the basis of that alone, I'm tempted to label him a centrist, but I'm wary of assigning guilt by association. The conservative US News and World Report calls him part of the cabinet's liberal core and writes that Democratic officials are saying that he will "serve as a liberal advocate on social issues important to minorities, feminists, abortion-rights advocates, organized labor, and gay-rights activists." Clearly, it's relative, but let's hope they're right. Was there a better pick available? Don't know.
Sec. of the Interior: Ken Salazar - F - In case you didn't know what the Secretary of Interior did, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, "As the overseer of the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Minerals Management Services, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Endangered Species Act, the Secretary of the Interior is [the] most important position in the protection of America's lands, waters, and endangered species." Here are a few bullets from the CBD about Salazar:
- voted against increased fuel efficiency standards for the U.S. automobile fleet. - voted to allow offshore oil drilling along Florida's coast. - voted to allow the Army Corps of Engineers to ignore global warming impacts in their water development projects. - voted against the repeal of tax breaks for Exxon-Mobil. - voted to support subsidies to ranchers and other users of public forest and range lands. - threatened to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when its scientists determined the black-tailed prairie dog may be endangered. - fought efforts to increase protection for endangered species and the environment in the Farm Bill.
Some would describe the Environmental community's response as mixed. DemocracyNow! hosted a debate between CBD's Kieran Suckling and the National Audubon Society's Brian Moore. Salazar sounds like a fox in the henhouse to me. As far as Obama picking him? Politics - "thanks for voting for me, Colorado; thanks for your support, West." Crappy pick for a crappy reason.
Sec. of Commerce: Bill Richardson - INC - He recently withdrew himself from nomination due to untimely questions about some of his contributors. Too bad. This may have gotten a decent grade from me.
Sec. of Labor: Hilda Solis - A - This from John Nichols of the Nation in his 2008 superlatives list:MOST VALUABLE CABINET PICK Hilda Solis: It has been a long time since the United States had a Secretary of Labor who had a record of walking picket lines. That's what makes California Congresswoman Hilda Solis, Obama's pick to fill this Cabinet post, so remarkable. ... She is the right person for this job, and her selection serves as the single best signal from Obama that he intends to serve as a pro-worker president. Let's hope that Solis is allowed to renew a Labor Department that has been neglected – and disempowered -- by Democratic and Republican presidents.
Sec. of Health & Human Services: Tom Daschle - A - I'm hopeful about this pick and Daschle's desire and ability to push progressive change in American health care. Perhaps the best way to highlight Daschle's liberal credibility is to point out the vitriolic reaction of the Christian Conservative Right: Daschle has a consistent pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, pro-judicial activist voting record. While in the Senate, Daschle voted against schools requiring voluntary prayer; voted no on banning human cloning; voted no to prohibit flag burning; voted no on school vouchers in Washington, DC; voted no on permitting drilling in ANWR and much more ... Daschle was a key leader in blocking Bush’s judicial nominees. During the 2003-2004 session, Daschle and his liberal cronies blocked 10 of Bush’s nominees from getting up or down votes in the Senate ... Daschle was honored by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) for being the “architect of the defeat of the Federal Marriage Amendment” in the Senate ... “Daschle can be expected to gut any pro-life, pro-family policies in HHS and will aggressively push his pro-abortion, pro-homosexual agenda,” said TVC Executive Director Andrea Lafferty.
Sec. of Housing & Urban Development: Shaun Donovan - B? - I haven't found much reaction online worth quoting. I don't know anything about him, but he hasn't sparked any outrage so far as I can tell and there are a lot of people on the internet looking to be outraged at something. I'll give it an ignorant "B".
Sec. of Transportation: Ray LaHood - C - WTF do I know (or care) about Transportation or Ray LaHood. Well I do take the subway frequently and drive on the Pike and I95 occasionally. And I do know that LaHood is a Republican from Illinois - from the same district Lincoln was from. Sounds like Obama killed two birds with one stone: a political pick (allowing him to present himself as bi-partisan) and another Lincoln connection to remind people that he's the next Lincoln. Didn't you hear? Obama's the next Lincoln. Anyways, environmental advocates Friends of the Earth had this to say: While his overall record on energy and environment issues is poor, LaHood has in recent years broken with many in his party to support crucial investments in passenger rail and public transportation, and he is a member of the Congressional Bike Caucus. These are reasons to hope that he may be open to the visionary transportation policy that is needed to move our country forward.
Sec. of Energy: Steven Chu - A - Alright, I'll give Obama one benefit of the doubt pick. I don't know Chu but he sounds alright. He won the Nobel Prize in physics. Andrew Revkin, award-winning science reporter with the New York Times, had this to say on DemocracyNow!: [Chu] knows the science, and he knows it pretty deeply, and he knows how hard it is to get sometimes an idea from a laboratory and to become the new norm for energy ... in the last five years or so, Dr. Chu went to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to create—and he came there with this—his mandate for that lab was that energy is our new frontier. And he started to develop programs there that are very much aimed at trying to sort of have big breakthroughs on non-polluting forms of energy that we’ll need as the world heads toward nine billion people, more or less, with everyone wanting a decent life. We need more energy than we have now, even if you set aside the climate problem. But when you add the climate challenge with these building greenhouse gases, that creates this even bigger imperative. So he’s got the—he clearly has the grounding in both the science and how the science has to translate into products. You know, how do you interface with private sector? How do you make this all happen? So I think the combination shows some possibility of breaking through.
Sec. of Education: Arne Duncan - C+? - I don't have kids and haven't been involved in any type of organized education for about 14 years. I don't know who Arne Duncan is. Here's another DemocracyNow! debate (which seems more like a tepid conversation really). Lefty Fireballer Greg Palast "slams" the pick.
Sec. of Veterans' Affairs: Eric Shinseki - A - because he was right. From DemocracyNow!: Shinseki made headlines in February 2003 when he testified before Congress that the US would need several hundred thousand soldiers to stabilize Iraq after the invasion. At the time, Shinseki was Army chief of staff. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other high-ranking Pentagon officials publicly rebuked him, while insisting that Iraqis would welcome the Americans as liberators.
Sec. of Homeland Security: Janet Napolitano - C - Napolitano appears to be drawing an array of reviews from all sides. This liberal calls it a "terrific choice" and this conservative rag doesn't like it. This liberal academic is concerned about her, saying "on the state level, she pushed some of the most right-wing agendas on immigration enforcement. She went full speed ahead with the Bush agenda to move immigration enforcement from federal to local hands." And this conservative Arizona blogger finds a silver lining in that her nomination virtually assures that AZ's 2 senators will remain Republican for another 7 years (not to mention that her replacement as governor will be chosen by AZ GOP Secretary of State). And of course, centrist PA governor Ed Rendell said she'd be perfect for the job because she has no life. So, is she a hawk? Relativity strikes again. I'm thinking I would have preferred a less hawkish person - with a life - to head security of my homeland. But then again, do we even know what Obama has in store for the Homeland Security Department?
United Nations Ambassador: Susan Rice - C - According to DN!: She opposed the US invasion of Iraq but has advocated for military action in case of humanitarian crisis. Two years ago, Rice co-authored an article advocating for US attacks against Sudan. She wrote that the United States should consider unilaterally striking Sudanese airfields, aircraft and other military assets. Rice wrote, “If the United States fails to gain U.N. support, we should act without it.” Is that really the best Obama could have done in selecting his ambassador to the UN? Really? Maybe not as bad as Bush picking Bolton, but not great.
Environmental Protection Agency: Lisa P. Jackson - C? - I know nothing about Jackson but it appears that she's getting mixed reviews from "the left" - mixed between wary and negative. This isn't exactly a glowing report from the Huffington Post. Nor is this from dailykos.
And roughly 3200 words later, there's your report card, Part One. Coming soon: Part Two - Cabinet Rank Members & Top Officials. Find out the VTK take on such fantastic/outrageous selections as Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, National Security Adviser James Jones, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, and National Economic Council Larry Summers.
. It's been an eventful year, an historic year, a year deserving of a review. It's an overused convention - the end-of-year review - but that's no reason to completely avoid it. Among other newsworthy developments, I published my graphic novel (and schlepped it shamelessly), the Boston Celtics won the NBA Championship, and Obama won the US presidency. Here are some highlights from the 82 VTK posts in 2008:
January 04 Post - The new year kicked off in frigid fashion on Von Trapper Keeper with a scientific discussion in the comment section about the temperature/water saturation point in my room - a discussion that soon grew to include references to Herman Melville, Malcolm Jamal Warner, Father Geoghan, and Brutus the Barber Beefcake. Only in VTKountry.
Update - Thanks to my free Massachusetts health insurance, my respiratory condition is now properly medicated.
January 22 Post - The year quickly intensified for this sedentary blogger when I went down South for one of the weirder bachelor parties I've ever been a part of (or heard of). A bizarre practical joke gone awry set the tone for a bone bruising physical challenge weekend that required weeks of recovery. In a portent of things to come in 2008, the good guys won.
Update: the story of the practical joke became legendary amongst the NYC contingent, with the description of my reaction to it being the punchline element. Several of them introduced their friends and parents to me at the wedding two months later.
March 07 Post - 2008 announced its intention to be a riveting electoral year early, with the Democratic Primary dominating the news deep into the first half of the year. It didn't take long for my dislike of Hillary Clinton to turn to disgust. This post came after the OH/TX primaries/caucus when Hillary was essentially mathematically done but was clearly going to drag it out until the bitter end. And it did get bitter. It wasn't clear at the time, but the protracted battle turned out to be the best thing for Obama. This post reprints the analysis from dailykos.org, which was probably my most visited website of the year (it also morphs into an interesting debate about wikipedia in the comment section).
Update: Clinton lost, Obama won, Clinton parlayed her strong primary challenge into a Secretary of State post. So much for change. More on the Obama Cabinet later. March 19 Post - The original video was removed by youtube, but here's an abbreviated clip of my favorite musical interlude of the vtk year:
Update: This fella's been taking time out to get close to the lady in 08. Thanks for the tip, Trouble Funk.
June 13 Post - "game four aka fucking awesome" - This wasn't the post after the Celtics won the title, but it was the post that recapped the moment that the Celtics grabbed the title by the balls and refused to let go. Ray Allen's layup in game 4 gave the C's a 3-1 lead in the series and set the table for their 17th championship. It was a thrilling year for the Celtics and beating the Lakers in the Finals was a dream ending.
Update: I've been wearing green laces in my Stan Smith sneakers since June to celebrate the C's title.
July 10 Post - The Obama Bubble burst rather quickly for progressives. After the Left, "the base", the grassroots progressives got him the nomination, he promptly turned his back on them (us). Not 24 hours after he officially got the nomination, he was waving the zionist flag in front of AIPAC. A month later, he made the shameful flip-flop on the FISA vote written about in this post. A heated debate on the significance of this vote followed in the comment section.
Update: Anyone who was troubled by this vote back then (and many who were untroubled), has not been surprised by his cabinet selections (and the Rick Warren face-slap) since Election Day. Obama's no liberal. More later.
September 23 Post - The long, long, awaited publication and release of my graphic novel, Business Casual Stag Devil Death Boy.
Update: If you read this blog, you're sick of me talking about it. As am I.
November 4 Post The story of the year obviously, and deservedly, was the election of Barack Obama as president of the US of A. It dominated the news, our attention, and this blog. I was on dailykos all day long for months - tracking polls, analyzing trends, stories, factors, Effects, etc. Despite my problems with Obama's post-nomination flip-flopping and my prediction that there would be more to come in that regard were he to be elected, I voted for him and urged everyone I knew to do so too. And would do so again. A McCain Palin Administration would have been a nightmare. I poured all my anxieties (rational and irrational) into a pre-election paranoid top ten post. Then, on November 4th, I began a long and nervous 12 hour live-blog of Election Day at noon. It turned out to be a great day. We elected a black man as president of the US, just 44 years after the Civil Rights Legislation was signed by LBJ. Amazing. Some of us felt an unfamiliar wave of pride in our country and, even if we knew he'd be governing from the center, we allowed ourselves to savor the feelings of hope and change. The day after the election, I wrote an op/edy victory post in which I said that, while I'd often suggested that the work for progressives to hold Obama accountable started the day after the election, I'd make an exception and postpone that work because it truly was a day to celebrate.
November 5 to December 31 - Obamamania. The Cult of Barack grew and grew as he cast aside the Left and kissed the ass of the Center Right. I'm Abe Lincoln! I'm Abe Lincoln, screamed Obama. Say it with me. I'm Abe Lincoln. I'm assembling a team of rivals. I'm "from" Illinois. I'm going to be sworn in on Lincoln's bible. I'm practically a Republican. I'm Abe Lincoln! Your favorite president ever? Just think of him when you think of me. And if it's not Abe Lincoln, then listen to how I channel JFK in my speeches. Or listen to how I praise Ronald Reagan. I'm a great president already and I haven't even stepped foot in the Oval Office yet.
If you're sensing anger and disillusionment in my typing tone, you're on to something. The post-election day of celebration is long over and the holding accountable is on. As expected, Obama made his intention to govern from the Center clear shortly after he became president-elect. But the degree to which he planned to shut out the Left was a little surprising. The Change President stocked his Cabinet with Washington veterans from the Clinton Administration. The Peace President selected someone more hawkish than himself for his Secretary of State, and kept the Republican Secretary of Defense, currently presiding over two wars, on for another tour of duty. Cabinet selection after Cabinet selection we waited for our token liberal appointments - the scraps that would be tossed to us in gratitude for our support, to appease us. But pick after pick went to the Center or even to the Right. Behold: Obama and his Team of Rivals! Usually, a candidate will choose some representation for the sizable base that got him elected. But Barack Obama promised Change and that's what we're getting. Wait, what am I talking about. He selected Hilda Solis as Secretary of Labor. Thanks, Barack. America, here's your Team of Rivals:
Update: Ok, well, so I didn't quite get around to it. I was going to include a comprehensive report card of Obama's Cabinet selections, but when I laid out all 30 of them, I found that it was going to require more time and research than I currently have for this post (it takes a long time to write a post this long). The Report Card Post will have to be forthcoming. So, for the time being, feel free to consider me full of shit (if you didn't already). My major bitches are with the selection of Clinton and retention of Gates (noted above), the total bullshit selection of Salazar for the Interior, and the fact (read: my half-educated belief) that the most significant token liberal was Solis for Labor. The sum of these cabinet selections left me with unsurprised irritation. The real ire came when he chose Rick Warren to give the invocation at his Inauguration. This is nothing short of a completely unnecessary, completely political, completely insulting slap in the face of the gay community and all those supportive of gay rights. And if the selection was not insulting enough, he piled it on with his defense of it, in which he claimed to be trying to represent the diversity of the nation and beseeched us to disagree without being disagreeable. Fuck you. How's that for disagreeable. How about representing the diversity of those who got you elected rather than spitting in their faces while trying to represent the already-well-represented part of the electorate that didn't vote for you. Just politics? Yeah, I get it. I understand. Doesn't make it any less offensive. Why aren't more liberals outraged? They don't want to let go of that feeling of hope/change/pride that they've been floating on since November 4th? They don't want to leave the Cult of Obama?
There it is - the long-brewing bitch session. I'm not completely giving up on the Obama Administration before it even begins, but I'm not psyched. I'm going to the Inauguration again this year, and it would have been nice to be in a more celebratory mood about it. At least Obama/Biden is not Bush/Cheney or McCain/Palin. I guess I'll focus my celebration on the end of Bush/Cheney. For that reason alone, 2009, or at least 19/20ths of it, is going to be a great year. It's been a long eight years. And 2008 has been one of the best of them for VTK.
December 12 Post - On another positive note, the Celtics are still playing awesome. They started the season with the best record ever for a team with two losses and won a team record 19 games in a row.
Update: Am I worried that they promptly lost two games in a row on the West Coast, one to the Lakers? No. The Celtics aren't going to win them all, but they're going to win most of them in 2009. Happy New Year, VTKountry.
The World Champion Boston Celtics destroyed the Wizards last night for their 21st win - in their 23rd game. The 21-2 start is the best in the franchise's illustrious history. I think we can put to rest any concern about a post-championship letdown. The intensity is clearly still there - just ask Big Baby Davis (actual nickname) who was overwhelmed to tears during a timeout this week. The C's aren't lacking for emotion or drive. As Paul Pierce pointed out, you don't get remembered as a great Celtic if you only win one championship - even if you do set the record for best start to a season. These guys are hungry for # 2.
But they lost uber-sub James Posey! How could they continue to win? Last night, the usually insightful and entertaining commentator Reggie Miller said that Posey was the reason the Celtics won the Championship last year. With all due respect (always a preface for a statement of disrespect), that's complete bullshit. That's like saying that a good 8th inning set-up reliever on a baseball team is responsible for that team's success. Bullshit. Posey was a great sub, clutch shooter, staunch defender, good energy guy, character guy, etc, etc. But the reasons the Celtics won the Larry O'Brien trophy were named Pierce, Garnett, Allen, Rondo, Perkins (yes, Perkins), and the bench as a whole. And they're all still on the team, and all still playing well. Pierce, Garnett, Perk, and the bench have been very good, and great at times, but the specific reasons the Celtics are 21-2 and the best team in the NBA right now are in the backcourt - Rondo and Ray. Both players have elevated their games beyond last year's level of play and I'd put them up against any backcourt in the league, including Fisher/Bryant, Iverson/Hamilton, Williams/West, Paul/Peterson, etc. There are better guards in the league, but there is not a better starting tandem. Rondo's triple double last Friday put him in rarified Boston air: only Pierce and Bird have had games with stats that high in points/assists/rebounds. [here's a great breakdown of his skills from truehoop, making the case for Rondo as an all-star] And Ray's been the team MVP so far, shooting over 50% from the field for 20 points a game. He credits the continuing healing of his ankles for his success. If his ankles, and the other key body parts of the team, stay healthy, I think we'll be attending another parade this spring, and I'll be getting another Tommy Point for my flourescent green wig / geriatric sunglasses look.
Barring any big news developments or new creepy VTK photos, this'll probably be the last post until after Christmas. I'm sure I'll cook up a good year in review, which hopefully will be more interesting than "Celtics Win! Obama Wins!". For those, and other reasons (yes you, BVM), it's been a good year. Happy Holidays, VTKountry.
Folks, if this Anything Goes attitude catches on, we won’t just be saying yes to learning guitar and Korean, we’ll be saying yes to socialized medicine, primate voting rights, and freaky three ways with the mailman and a mountain lion. So I guess it won’t all be bad.
This was accompanied by a picture of Colbert, in bed, between a mailman and a mountain lion! Not only did he steal my mailman/mountain lion image, but he took a few liberties with it. Who does Colbert see himself as in this fantastical tangent? Business Casual Stag Devil Death Boy? Paula The Pretend Punk Hottie? The Bubble? There's no pictorial or video evidence of his brazen plagiarism online yet, but I'll update this post as it becomes available. Kanye! Call me. I got your back. Let's take this Colbert chump down! He can't handle two wars at once. -- UPDATE -- VIDEO EVIDENCE -- UPDATE --
Aha! Big mistake by Colbert: he posted it on his website. He really is trying to start a war with BCSDDB. Doesn't he know? Doesn't he get it? See the video evidence starting at about the 11:45 mark of this video. Here are the screenshots:
Who the fuck does Stephen Colbert think he is? I'm with you Kanye: Who the fuck is Stephen Colbert.
. A bar can die but once: all bars owe God a death. Especially the Abbey. - Shakespeare
Wednesday night, the famed Abbey Lounge will close its doors after a local rock show for the last time. One of the finest dive bars in the Cambridge/Somerville area (in fact, exactly on the Cambridge/Somerville line) will soon close those doors for good - 75 years after they opened.
I didn't get in on the Abbey action until I moved to Boston in 2000. They were 67 years into their groove (rut?) at that point, yet I'm guessing my first impression caught me up pretty quickly. It was still a two-sided bar then - the bar was set in the middle of the building and served two separate rooms. You could pay for the show and go back and forth between both rooms, or you could go into the no-cover bar area and, if you angled for the right spot, see the bands between the opening in the bar where the bartenders served both rooms. Acoustics were not an issue - it was loud and non-exclusive. Friends of mine lived across the street and had semi-residency status. They gave me my first taste of the Abbey one night when we hit the non-cover side to hang with the locals. The memory of that first night at the Abbey would have been completely nondescript, were it not for a minor detail of my exit: as I left the Abbey, I had to jump over two separate sets of barf in order to get out of the bar. There was barf, then there was a small non-barf landing pad, then there was more barf. The options were: a) step in barf (twice); b) remain in the bar until physically thrown over the barfs (gamble on a few levels); c) execute the double-drunk-leap over the barf splatches. I dislike barf, so I choose c. My aim was true and I made it out. But it set the bar(f) on the Abbey Experience for the next eight years - anything short of barf-hopping was a sub-Abbey Abbey night. Since that night, I've seen many raucous bands there, been surprised by the lack of toilet paper in the bathroom on at least one occasion, and one time helped drink a twelve pack at the bar with a friend (who brought the twelve pack (as in, my friend brought a twelve pack to the bar, put it on the bar, and we sat at the bar and drank the twelve pack (while hanging out with the bartender (friends of VTK and said-friend will not find this abnormal)))).
So, yeah, the Abbey. Rock and Roll. Here's some rare footage of The Kinks playing the Abbey back in the 60's:
Oh no, wait, that's the Konks, a local band. I love the part in the video where you just see liquid (read: cheap beer) splashing up across the singer. The Konks will be one of the nine bands there Wednesday night for the "last blast" show.
There are all sorts of scarves and foam fingers. There are countless thundersticks and pom poms. There are even a handful of clackers and cowbells. But there's only one towel: the terrible towel™. The pride of Pittsburgh will be out in full force this weekend as the Steelers try to win their 6th Lombardi trophy. I was unaware of the history of the towel until I read Greg Garber's article on ESPN today. It turns out that what started as a ratings gimmick is now a 2.5 million dollar boon for a home for mentally disabled and autistic people. I'm pretty sure that trumps Kurt Warner's "faith". Sorry, Kurt. God's going with the Steelers in this one. And so is Obama, apparently. 
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