| Planned obsolescence |
[Oct. 22nd, 2009|11:59 am] |
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I hate the thought of buying a new computer just because the battery on this one no longer holds a charge. On the other hand, I also hate the thought of buying a new battery only to have the computer in general crash and burn three months from now. And what I really hate is the thought of buying a new battery, only to have the battery stop working three months from now, which seems to be what users on the Dell website suggest will happen. (Well, they say nine months, but I still expect better from a $156 battery.) And really I don't need something that lasts for four hours in any case; I just need something that won't shut off completely if my plug falls out. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 30th, 2009|08:34 pm] |
Over at Dreamwidth, Jadelennox posted an opinion on the Polanski case, the gist of which is that she can't believe other Hollywood folks are saying "let him go, it's not that big a deal". Mostly I agreed, but part of me felt (and posted), "Can't we just ignore it and let the law sort it out, as the law is supposed to?".
Except that then I read the actual petition signed by Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese and so forth, which refers to his crime as "a case of morals", as if we should recognize that different people might have different opinions about drugging and raping a minor. And i thought, "Sheesh".
Thus I offer a quote from actress Alison Arngrim, as reported by the NYTimes: "If Roman Polanski were a Catholic priest or a Republican senator, would these people feel the same way?" |
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| ZOMBIE FISH |
[Sep. 25th, 2009|02:29 am] |
In honor of being in the middle of The Middleman, I offer you: Zombie Fish can read your emotions. That link offers a summary; the original poster is viewable here, and I challenge you to read aloud the "Subject" and "Task" portions of the methodology without bursting into giggles.
It's honestly a really clever piece of scholarship, showing as it does that either (a) zombie fish can read your emotions or (b) scientists really, really need to remember to control for noise. |
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| Green Street Property Management (Philadelphia) |
[Sep. 19th, 2009|06:02 pm] |
Dear Green Street Property Management (A Signature Community):
I would like you thank you for sending us a check refunding our security deposit. Though we moved out on July 31 and you had, by law, thirty days to return the money, I am certain there was a good reason you weren't able to print the check until September 11th. And there's no doubt that it simply needed to sit in your office until the 17th, when the envelope is postmarked, in spite of the frequent calls and emails we had been sending you for the last two weeks.
All the same, and you may perhaps understand my confusion on this point, we would have preferred a check refunding the entire security deposit, not merely most of it but with $235 missing. I have no doubt, being a Pennsylvania landlord, that you are familiar with Pennsylvania law on this point, stating among other things that you must provide a list of damages. Indeed, you likely know that "[t]he law requires landlords to pay twice the amount of the security deposit if they fail to provide consumers with the list of damages along with any refund due" (http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/consumers.aspx?id=405). So I am certain that this was an oversight on your part, just like the oversight that you also failed to refund the overpayment on the last month's rent, as you said you would when I mentioned in June that we had accidentally sent the check.
As these are all simply some of the easiest of mistakes to have made, I am certain you will have no trouble getting us the remaining money relatively immediately. Only a group of lawbreaking vile money-grubbing thieving jackasses would do otherwise, and surely that isn't you?
Yrs etc.,
Tahnan |
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| Doooooooom |
[Sep. 14th, 2009|01:07 pm] |
There's something deeply amusing about the fact that in a few weeks, Philadelphia is about to go to its "plan C 'doomsday' budget".
Well, it would be amusing, anyway, if the "doomsday" budget didn't mean firing 900 police officers, deactivating fire engines and paramedic units, reducing garbage collection, and closing the public library. Mayor Michael Nutter calls it "devastating to the City", and the president of the city council, in an official statement, calls it "among the most distressing documents I have encountered in my entire time in Council" and says that "this revised Plan is terrible. It is cruel. It dashes the hopes for a vital, thriving City"—but of course, also recognizes it as necessary if the state government doesn't approve certain emergency funding measures.
I haven't seen much of Mayor Nutter, because I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to local politics while I was in Philadelphia, but I like what I've seen of him. He seems competent, enthusiastic, and genuinely interested in making Philadelphia a great city. (This is in sharp contrast to the mayor when I last lived in Philly, during a garbage strike and the bombing and burning of an entire city block; these admittedly may not have been his fault, but it's what I think of when I think of Philly city government.) It seems to me that not only is Nutter interested in making Philadelphia a better place, he's capable of it. I really hope that he's able to succeed, and I hope that the state government gives him the resources he needs to do it. |
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| Breaking news: Republicans Hate Obama |
[Sep. 8th, 2009|12:19 am] |
The New York Times writes that, now that Obama has released the text of tomorrow's speech:
After reading the text on Monday, even Jim Greer, the Florida Republican Party chairman who last week accused the president of seeking to use the speech to foist "socialist ideology" on schoolchildren, said he could find nothing to criticize in its text.
"In its current form, it's fine," Mr. Greer said in an interview. "But it remains to be seen if it's the speech he's going to give." Seriously? First it's "omg omg the president is going to BRAINWASH OUR CHILDRENS", and then when it's clear that he's not, it becomes "oh, well, all right, not so bad until it turns out he TOTALLY LIED TO US AND REALLY WILL BR—"...you know, it's such a stupid comment that I can't even finish it.
I know there are probably a few Republicans who might be reading this, so I won't say "I hate all Republicans". But I believe I feel safe saying "I really hate Republican leadership", and to anyone who is a Republican and reading this, do you think you could fix your [censored] party? Thanks so much. |
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| A mysterious "See results for..." from Google |
[Aug. 15th, 2009|04:42 am] |
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I'm used to Google offering to show me results for related searches; I very rarely, if ever, want those results (unless I've misspelled something), but it's genuinely innocuous. But can someone explain this? (Just in case Google is set up differently for you and all those ampersands don't force the page to display what I got: I searched "family album" (not in quotes), and it asked if I wanted to see results for "littlewoods", which as phrases go isn't all that close to the original, other than being the same number of letters.) |
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| The world; hatred thereof |
[Jul. 31st, 2009|11:26 pm] |
Right now, the good things in my life enumerate:- My wife
- My two cats
- The two friends who are putting us up for two weeks. (The other two aren't here right now, so screw 'em.)
- The fact that I am not in Philadelphia
Everything else can go to hell, except possibly not being in a car any more. If you're one of the people who ought to be a good thing in my life, check back in a day or two. |
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| grf. |
[Jul. 30th, 2009|10:11 am] |
Why, no, the woman who called moments after I sent email at 9pm last night, saying that she'd be here at 10am to get the couch, hasn't called or shown up or otherwise contacted me yet, making me exceedingly glad to be awake at 10:10am after not being able to fall asleep until, and I can time this fairly exactly, 5:10am. Why do you ask?
Also: why the devil is WinSCP showing all my remote files as timestamped an hour after their actual timestamps? |
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| Still not in love with humanity |
[Jul. 29th, 2009|06:20 pm] |
The apartment is clean. It still has a desk, a sofa, and two chairs in it that really ought to be anywhere else.
And I've just discovered that I have opinions about elegance and aesthetics in word search grids. Lord help me. |
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| Losing faith in humanity |
[Jul. 29th, 2009|02:58 pm] |
It's 3pm.
The woman who said she'd come take the couch and chairs at noon has yet to arrive bailed.
The people we hired to clean the house at 2pm have yet to arrive arrived at 3:30pm.
I've got email, a cell phone, a home phone, and a doorbell. It's not that hard to reach me, damn it. Where the hell are these people? |
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| Lack of Flashback! |
[Jul. 28th, 2009|08:45 pm] |
The nice thing about sitting in an apartment with no companions but cats and no furniture but an air mattress is that I have plenty of time to catch up on my 80s videos. Fortunately, mtvmusic.com is helping (it's fascinating, isn't it? Suddenly even reality-show channels like MTV think they can somehow get into the music business). So just for the hell of it, I'll point you to four videos for which I feel no nostalgia at all, as I never saw them in the 80s, or 90s, or whenever they might have aired on a music television channel, when such things existed.
Given that many people my age can still do the "same as it ever was" dance that David Byrne introduced us to, it's hard to believe that this dance never caught on. (If I liked their music as much as I like this video, I wouldn't make people turn it off all the time.)
I didn't know this song until well after it came out, and it's pretty mournful anyway, but the video turns it into an incredibly sad funeral dirge. (Also from the artist, the worst hospital, medically speaking, in any video since the St. Elsewhere doctors moonlighted in "Good Loving".)
Almost everything The Eurythmics recorded was weird and moody, and their videos matched. I mean, pretty much every Eurythmics video was creepy: Annie Lennox as a kind of dominatrix CEO who ends up in a field with cello players and cows; Annie Lennox stalking the moors in a cloak; Annie Lennox as some sort of robotic...you know, I don't even know what the "Missionary Man" video was about. Anyway, it's all creepy and strange and possibly avant-garde, except for their one unmitigatedly boppy song, in which the only creepy thing is the leopard Annie Lennox is wearing. (I suspect that Dave Thomas Stewart was probably pretty creepy in his own right, when he wanted to be, but being creepy near Annie Lennox is like trying to be tall near Yao Ming.)
And finally, a version of a song I didn't even know existed, because in America it was the Go-Go's version that got airplay. But apparently it was cowritten by a Go-Go and a Fun Boy, and overseas it was the version by the Fun Boy and his two companions that everyone knows. It's not really a cover, because it's his song too, but it's definitely different.
Anyway, enjoy. Tell Drew Barrymore and her mascara ad that I said hi. |
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| MeMe Roth, taken down a size or two |
[Jul. 26th, 2009|01:16 am] |
If you watch television reports on the horror of obesity, you've probably seen MeMe Roth, who's an anti-obesity activist performance artist. She's the "president and founder" of "National Action Against Obesity", which as far as I can tell means "I wanted to appear on national television, so I formed an organization I could represent, which consists solely of me but thereby lends me credibility". The fact that she's more performance artist than activist can be seen from the issues she chooses; in addition to being something of a go-to talking head whenever Fox or CNN needs an anti-obesity "expert", she was profiled (and fortunately ridiculed) on The Daily Show for crusading against cupcakes at elementary school birthday parties, she compared eating to sex crimes....
At any rate, she was recently interviewed on Fox by Stuart Varney, who I know nothing about but gather is fairly conservative. Nevertheless, if you have the sanity points to sit through MeMe's blathering, it's worth seeing the interview, insofar as it opens with him saying, "Why are you so intent on discriminating against women over size 18?"
A few other highlights, if you can't stand to watch it (and who could blame you?): "Do you realize the hurt—I'm serious, you're laughing—do you realize the hurt of what you do? There are many, many people in this society who suffer from, I think, one of the most hurtful forms of discrimination. They are made to feel terrible, they're made to feel that they look awful because you say that they're overweight. And now you come along and you hold up a huge big pair of pants and you mock people, you're laughing at them. That, madam, is disgraceful and shameful, and you are the source of a great deal of hurt and real personal unhappiness." And at the end of the interview, he says to her, "I'll give you a chance to mock people again. You still got that size, large-size pants? Would you like to hold it up again, and mock people, and laugh about it?" And blithely, either not understanding that he's suggesting that what she's doing is terrible or else not remotely caring, she says, "I would absolutely do this." (To which he responds, "Well, you're not, because we're out of time. This is outrageous.")
It is, as Colorwheel said when I mentioned this to her, a shame that Roth gets any media attention at all. But man, it's nice to see someone just outright call her on how awful she is. |
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| Things you didn't know (or care) about me |
[Jul. 25th, 2009|02:17 am] |
For a while starting last fall, I rather suddenly became fascinated by knotwork designs—the Celtic sort, as opposed to macramé or other actual ropework. I've let it lie fallow for a while, though it's a good way to doodle when the need arises (I don't doodle as much in class as I used to, now that I'm, you know, leading it rather than sitting through it).
At any rate, a very small sample of some designs, nothing especially original and of course you can see the lines from the graph paper, because I still need graph paper:
( Just for the sake of the images )
All of which are at my Flickr photostream, along with a few new pictures of the cats. |
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| My high school; big numbers |
[Jul. 7th, 2009|04:52 am] |
Two entirely disparate topics for one post. Those who don't want to read about my ruminations on my high school and its religious nature, i.e. most of you, should just go straight to "Who Can Name the Biggest Number?" by Scott Aaronson (who claims to be a professor at MIT but who, based on the picture on his home page, is clearly actually David Duchovny). It's mathematical in content, though written perhaps for the layperson, but if you're anything like me you'll find it utterly compellingly fascinating.
All right, on to dear old Westminster, hidden behind a cut tag.
( C'mon, you don't want to read this. Seriously: big numbers! How cool is that? ) |
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| Moving |
[Jul. 4th, 2009|05:28 pm] |
I'd like to take a moment to remind everyone out there that academia is one of the worst ways to try to make a living. An unemployed ordinary person who wants to move will do one of the following:
(a) Stay where he is until he finds a job, and then move to wherever that is;
(b) Move to where he wants to be, and then look for a job there.
An unemployed professor has neither of these options. We're not like accountants and programmers and salesmen and what have you; we don't have the option of looking for a job in May, and if we fail we look in June, and if we fail we look in July, and so forth. There is no searching until you find a job. There's the tenure track search around January, and there's the one-year positions around June (give or take a month in both cases), and that's it. So if a professor hasn't found a job by, say, July, he's not going to have a job for another year. And there's very little point in going to your favorite city and looking for a job there. No matter what city you're in, if it's of sufficient size, someone will be looking for an accountaint or a programmer or a salesman, but academia just doesn't work like that.
The upshot, for me and my wife, is that we don't really like Philadelphia at all and have no desire to stay now that my time at the University of Pennsylvania is over. Which means that right now we're packing so that we can move to...well. Boston unless I get a job elsewhere, in which case elsewhere. And that makes it really hard to plan, which is why we don't have a place to live in Boston (what were we going to do if we signed a lease and then I got a job in California?), or for that matter anything lined up there workwise. All we have is three weeks in which to pack up this apartment and drive the stuff, well, somewhere, and we'll kind of see what happens from there.
All things considered, this is far and away the worst year I've had since around 1995. |
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| The King of Pitch |
[Jun. 29th, 2009|01:55 am] |
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Lest it be lost in the shuffle: pitchman Billy Mays, who was born forty days before Michael Jackson, died three days after him. Man it's been a strange year. |
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| Stupid stupid everything at once things |
[Jun. 11th, 2009|08:04 pm] |
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He had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once. —Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere |
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| Anyway. |
[May. 27th, 2009|05:38 am] |
Though I expect they won't see it: just a note to Kate Guyton and Linnaea Stockall to let them know I'm thinking of them today. Hope all's well.
And that's all. No comments necessary, and you oughtn't post any sort of response on your own LJs, unless you happen to know Kate or Linnaea. |
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| Yikes |
[May. 12th, 2009|05:05 am] |
Today, I received my (first!) passport in the mail. And just now, I have bought plane tickets to Frankfurt.
I've been out of the country twice, both times to Vancouver. And I haven't given all that many conference talks. So this is both exciting—and increasingly very scary. |
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| Late night thought |
[May. 11th, 2009|04:32 am] |
With the upcoming Julie & Julia, based on the book based on the blog (side note: I hate her hate her hate her for being all famous just because she's got talent and stuff why can't I be famous), and of course Secret Diary of a Call Girl based on the book based on the blog, it struck me that movies-from-blogs may be the next Big Thing.
And what else has Hollywood liked recently? Well, Stardust and Coraline and the apparently-in-development Graveyard Book...
So it's obvious to me that if only a studio would make neilgaiman.com: the movie, it would break box office records! (This, incidentally, is why I am legally barred from coming within 150 yards of Hollywood.) |
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| CiSRA thoughts |
[May. 4th, 2009|05:59 am] |
All right, all right, I should get these down on metaphorical paper. I'm going to talk freely about the answers to the puzzles, so if that bothers you, go do the puzzles first or something.
( cut for extraordinary length and because mostly you don't care )
So, overall impression: There were a few nice standalone puzzles here and there, but overall I'm glad I didn't put too much time in it, and kind of sorry I put in as much as I did. |
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| CiSRA, revisited |
[May. 3rd, 2009|11:23 pm] |
The CiSRA competition having ended, I have any number of thoughts which I ought to get around to posting, but lest I forget, the two major lessons I learned are:
1. If there aren't any other particular constraints on either your clue phrase or your answer, you might as well make it unambiguous.
2. If the theme for your puzzle very nearly works but doesn't quite, maybe you're better off not using it instead. |
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| Ah, puzzles |
[Apr. 27th, 2009|04:45 am] |
Why can't I get a job solving puzzles all day? I suppose I have one, in some sense, but. Saxikath and I are now in fifth place in the CiSRA puzzle competition, not that we're competing for anything, but they're good puzzles. We're "Just a Couple of Hacks" (because Tah + Saxi = Taxi, taxis are hacks, get it?), and have gotten the exalted position of "fifth" by being one of the five teams who's solved six puzzles (and thus behind the team that's solved seven); fifth and not sixth by dint of my having hit on the right format for our sixth answer about fourteen seconds before the sixth-place team. And, you know, five hours behind plugh. Hi, plugh!
Anyway, I like solving puzzles, which is more or less the entire point of this post. |
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| Vista networking |
[Apr. 17th, 2009|09:17 pm] |
OK, I give up. Who here knows anything about networking in Vista? Because I don't, and it's starting to get stupid that every time my wife's computer tries to connect to our network, not only does she get no internet connection, but it crashes the network, insofar as my computer can no longer even see the network until hers stops trying to connect to it.
UPDATE: The exact same thing happens when I physically connect her computer to the (D-Link) router with an Ethernet cable. That is, she has an unstable connection to the device that comes and goes but never connects her to the Internet, and meanwhile my computer stops being able to see the wireless network. Similarly, if I physically connect my computer, it works fine until I connect her computer to the wireless, at which point etc.
I've just updated the firmware on the router (D-Link DI-624). I should also note that she has no trouble connecting to another wireless network that isn't ours, which suggests that the problem could be with the way Vista talks to the D-Link router. |
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| Things that make me extraordinarily happy |
[Apr. 10th, 2009|02:47 am] |
Some things that make me extraordinarily happy:
- Rachel Maddow speaking extensively on the GOP movement to Teabag the White House, i.e., to mail tea bags to Washington, D.C., in protest ofsome sort of tax thing or other.
- Puckishly gorgeous commentator Ana Marie Cox one-upping Maddow by discussing teabagging with her without breaking. ("Who wouldn't want to teabag John McCain?")
- But really, most of all: after I've had to bail on going to my cousin's Passover seder due to waves of nausea, and facing a second night without a seder, having friends set up a webcam so that I could join in their seder in Massachusetts. Seriously, thank you guys so much. You have no idea how much it meant to me.
(On the other hand, things that make me extraordinarily irritated: not being able to avoid a major spoiler for a TV show I'm ostensibly trying to follow, because it has political ramifications which therefore show up on things like the Rachel Maddow Show.) |
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| You really ought to give Iowa a try |
[Apr. 3rd, 2009|08:12 pm] |
One of the more adorable introductions I've read to a court decision:
This lawsuit is a civil rights action by twelve individuals who reside in six communities across Iowa. Like most Iowans, they are responsible, caring, and productive individuals. They maintain important jobs, or are retired, and are contributing, benevolent members of their communities.... Like many Iowans, some have children and others hope to have children. Some are foster parents. Like all Iowans, they prize their liberties and live within the borders of this state with the expectation that their rights will be maintained and protected—a belief embraced by our state motto.1
1The state motto of Iowa is: "Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain." It is inscribed on the Great Seal of Iowa and on our state flag. See Iowa Code ยงยง 1A.1, 1B.1 (2009). I mostly don't regret not becoming a lawyer, but I do kind of like reading court decisions.
(Also: one of the plaintiffs is named Otter Dreaming. Otter Dreaming!) |
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| Barron Lands |
[Mar. 24th, 2009|03:18 am] |
You may recall that, several years ago, I took a careful look at the prologue to T.A. Barron's The Great Tree of Avalon.
Are you as excited as I am that I've finally gotten the chance to read the first chapter of the sequel?
(Finally got some things transferred over to a more permanent website, from the webarchive of my MIT pages. Still playing with the colors though.) |
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| Farewell, O "Sci Fi" Channel |
[Mar. 17th, 2009|06:07 pm] |
I've complained about the idiocy that is the Sci Fi Channel before, and had it pointed out that "the people who run the SciFi Channel HATE sci fi".
But I had no idea how deep that hatred ran until I saw the news that they're changing their name to Syfy. Among other noteworthy points in the article:
1. The quote from the president of the channel—"We'll get the heritage and the track record of success, and we'll build off of that to build a broader, more open and accessible and relatable and human-friendly brand."—that shows he's a whole lot more steeped in corporate culture than science fiction culture.
2. The quote from one of the channel's creators: "We spent a lot of time in the '90s trying to distance the network from science fiction".
3. They'll be using the slogan "Imagine Greater", which they think "will resonate with both consumers and media buyers". It resonates with the prescriptivist in me, who looks at that and says, "Seriously? You're modifying a verb with an adjective?" (And I'm perfectly willing to accept that the second word in "run faster" is an adverb; I was even OK with "Think Different", in which the second word is still an adjective but is...I don't even know, it's just better than "Imagine Greater".)
If you'll pardon a quote from an actual science fiction TV show: "Weep for the future, Na'Toth. Weep for us all." |
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| Crossword Tournament - Final Results |
[Mar. 1st, 2009|04:56 pm] |
Pending any scoring changes, the results are up. Congrats to Tyler "Chicago Bulls" Hinman on the victory, and of course to Trip and Francis on their A-finals appearance. And congrats to Dan Katz, second in the B finals! (Curse you, Dan "possibly not actually human" Feyer! His minor lag on the seventh puzzle, which put him in a four-way tie for first, the tie being broken by times on the seventh puzzle, kept him out of the A finals and thus put him in the B finals).
Most readers of this LJ who want to know how other NPLers did are probably already looking at the rankings, so for the non-NPL-oriented folks, I'll happily report another top-ten showing for Katherine. And congratulations again to Erhard Konerding, who placed 94th in the pool of six hundred something competitors, and third among the rookies! (I don't know Erhard Konerding; it's just that Erhard Konerding is my favorite name on the list. No, totally lying. I know Erhard. It's also my favorite name on the list.) |
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| For those of us watching the ACPT from home... |
[Feb. 28th, 2009|09:38 pm] |
...Trip Payne and Francis Heaney are currently tied, minute-for-minute on each puzzle, for second and third place. (In first place: last year's C-division winner and current B-divisioner, Dan Feyer.)
Excluding Feyer, there're three B-division contestants clustered together at 17-19, one of them being Dan Katz, so there's a decent chance of seeing him in the B finals. (Go Dan!)
And fourth in the rookies: Erhard Konerding. (Go Erhard!)
Full (well, full-to-date) results at http://www.crosswordtournament.com/2009/index.htm. |
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| Sigh. |
[Feb. 28th, 2009|04:42 am] |
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Most of my friends list will be confused, and perhaps some will be as saddened as I am. And it's odd, because pictures of cute three and a half year olds, even those from a year ago, don't typically make me sad. But this one does. |
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| The state of Bobby Jindal |
[Feb. 25th, 2009|04:35 am] |
I know I'm not saying anything that hasn't already been said everywhere else, but nevertheless, a few thoughts:
- Barack Obama could probably read the D.C. phone book and I'd feel better about myself and my country. I'm glad he didn't, because there were some nice rhetorical flourishes in there—not just the part about how staying in school is an investment in America, but more particularly the times that he referred to the American public as "the people who sent us here". It's a nice reminder, to Congress but also to us, that these people are in Washington to represent us.
- Bobby Jindal. Wow. I'd never heard him speak before; I was mildly inclined to like him based on a profile a few years ago in the Brown Alumni Monthly. Halfway through his response, which I'm listening to now on c-span.org, I feel really condescended to. ("But Democratic leaders in Congress? They rejected this approach. Instead of trusting us to make decisions..." His tone makes it sound like he's explaining civics to a class of third graders.)
- "Wasteful spending". Like, oh, no, buying new cars for the government (heaven forbid we buy the product of a troubled major American industry!), and building a train "from Las Vegas to Disneyland" (yes, thank you for trivializing infrastructure), and "something called volcano monitoring" (got it, you don't know what it's for, and it sounds sciencey, so it must be something dumb, because why would we want to know when a volcano might erupt? Insert your own editorial cartoon here of Jindal wearing a toga and giving that speech in the forum of Pompeii). Won't they please just stop?
- Also, Rachel Maddow's reponse to Jindal invoking the reponse to Katrina is about right: "Um, ee-um, ahm, a, a ba ba ba ba ba".
- Maybe these responses always sound like this, but: Obama laid out policy goals and particular policies. Sure, Republicans might disagree with the policies, but Jindal isn't discussing the policies, he's going through this long spiel about how you should once again believe in the Republican Party, and how members of the Republican Party are willing to work for you, and we're restoring faith in the RepublicanTM brand. For comparison: Obama mentioned the Democrats as a party exactly four times; three of them were in the phrase "Democrats and Republicans" and the fourth in the sentence "That is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue." That is to say, while there may have been a few nods to party divisions ("I know there are some in this chamber and watching at home who are skeptical of whether this plan will work..."), not once did he explicitly contrast the two parties; he never called on Republicans to do the right thing, or thanked the Democrats for their work in passing the stimulus bill, or anything else that would make "Believe in the Republicans" a sensible response.
Also, was this really more important than new episodes of Scrubs? Sheesh! |
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