This Is Not News

Barack Obama is definitely finishing a better week than the one he had last week, when a research memo criticizing Hillary Clinton managed to be personally insulting to both Clinton and many Indian-Americans. His speech at the Take Back America conference was well-received, and yesterday and today he’s been emphasizing good-government issues such as public disclosure of earmark requests and executive branch lobbying reform. After the Take Back America speech Andrew Golis at TPM Cafe did what I think is a good job of explaining why Obama and John Edwards seem to appeal to two different segments of the progressive movement, echoing an earlier post made by Ezra Klein. Edwards has taken the lead on making pretty bold policy proposals, and that tracks with what I remember of his 2004 campaign as well. Obama is talking more about the process of politics and the culture of government, but seems much quieter on the big policy moves. Golis says that Obama seems to be working from the idea that the policy changes progressives want won’t happen until the way we do politics changes – and when you think about how hard it is to get programs that many Americans agree with enacted into law, that seems a pretty strong argument. And the transparency/reform measures he’s pushed today fit there as well.

now, whether that’s a message that catches on enough to a) get him elected and b) give him a mandate to push through the kinds of changes he wants to make, I can tell you I have no idea.

Do you know what one of the best parts of my day is? My daughter says “Yippee!” In fact, she says it a lot.

“We’re going to the store.” “Yippee!”
“Here’s your milk.” “Yippeee!”
“Let’s go walk to school.” “Yippee!”

No big deal, just tosses it into the conversation and then skips along her merry way.

Now I sit here for a few minutes, thinking about how wonderful it is that someone can look out at the world and think it’s worth a “Yippee!” and have no reservations about sharing that feeling with the rest of the world. And after a moment or two of that, my brain moves on to “You know, maybe Ralph Waldo Emerson was on to something in ‘Self-Reliance’ when he says we should say what’s on our minds and not be concerned about how it affects other people or what they’ll think.” And it occurs to me that it wouldn’t be “Yippee!” all the time, but still, there’s something to be said for letting loose.

There’s also something to be said to harnessing the raw power of five year olds and solving the energy crisis, but that’s another point.

I have several ideas for longer posts marinating in my head, and a to-do list that ain’t getting any shorter. My sleep cycle has gotten totally thrown off track and I start teaching again in less than a week. There is a full case of Snapple and a full 2-liter bottle of Coke upstairs in the kitchen, and part of my brain is seriously considering attempting an all-nighter to catch up.

So when you see a post tomorrow that reads as nothing but a string of

‘ong’NB’BNI’ g9]JFwht]9-4TUgjgn;kg;G

you’ll know that I’ve decided to put my head into my writing in a whole new way.

Spent the day visiting with various college friends, many of whom I’ll see again next week at a wedding. Remind me to have a word with either the Yahoo directions folks or PennDOT about the direction of Germantown Pike – that led to about 20 minutes of wandering around trying to find an Outback Steakhouse. Regardless, it was good to see people and spend some time away from the keyboard and the yard. Not necessarily in that order.

The unintentional comedy highlight of the day had to be Alex, upon realizing we had not packed the specific yellow pencil that she wanted, wailing for at least fifteen minutes: “I want to go home! I don’t want to go to New Jersey!”

OK, so the Jersey tourism board won’t be calling us any time soon. Still, you gotta find the humor in the tantrums where you can.

Last baseball post for a while, I promise.

The Phillies managed to sandwich losing 2 out of 3 to Kansas City with two three-game sweeps, so I can’t complain too much about that. They’re now tied for second in their division, and only two game behind the New York Mets. They were eight back a little more than a week ago. It’ll be interesting to see how the team deals with the injuries that have affected the pitching staff, but it looks like they’ll at least make a race out of it.

So of course I jinxed all of this by ordering tickets for a game in September. My brothers and my mom are going to go to a Sunday game. After several rounds of negotiations, we found a date that worked for everyone and narrowed down where we wanted to sit. There was an entire close-but-in-the-outfield vs. higher-up-but-in-the-infield discussion that took more effort to resolve than some multinational trade agreements. I give credit to the Phillies’ phone operators for not just hanging up on me when I said “OK, I need seven tickets, and there are a total of eight sections in the ballpark that we would like to sit in.” And they actually got us pretty close to where we wanted, so I’ll have a good view of whatever heartbreaking play extends my losing streak.

I’m telling you, I see them win a game in person, I’ll almost be OK with them missing the playoffs. Almost.

The Phillies have apparently decided to reinforce their bullpen by bringing back Jose Mesa, their former closer who fell down on the job a few seasons back and whose ERA is currently over 12. So he’s incompetent and he conjures bad memories for Philadelphia fans. Of COURSE you would sign this guy to a contract.

It’s enough to make me think Pat Gillick wants to be fired. Tonight’s shellacking at the hands of the Kansas City Royals doesn’t help matters. Sheesh.

Over the last week, I have been ripping up old grass in my back yard and using a tiller to loosen up the soil so that I can spread it around and make it more even. This has involved a lot of me picking up a small clump of grass from a pile of such clumps and trying to shake the loose dirt back onto the ground. (I have filled dozens of bags with these sod clumps, and tried to figure out a way to make an effective “Kneel Before Sod” joke. I have not been successful.) During this process, it occurred to me that I didn’t necessarily have a full grasp of what made dirt dirt, as opposed to dust or sand or what have you. After some fiddling around on Wikipedia and the rest of the web, I found soil-net.com. I have, er, just started digging in to the site, but there’s a lot of interesting information there to help remind us that when we’re shoveling that soil around, we’re sticking our hands right into decomposed organic matter combined with mineral particles.

Thank you to all who serve or have served in the nation’s armed forces.

Thank you to all who have given their lives in that service.

I don’t have much else to say today, but readers may find the site for Arlington National Ceremony worth a look, especially the Ceremonies and Historical Information links.

The Boston Red Sox are 11.5 games ahead of the New York Yankees in the American League East, and I must confess this makes me quite happy. (Although it could be a setup for a major gut-punch collapse, in which case, won’t that be a story and a half.) Part of me feels bad when I celebrate the Yankees losing. I went to college in the Bronx just as the Yankees were getting this current dynasty together, and there was a lot of happiness on campus when they won the World Series in 1996. Plus I have family members who are huge Yankee fans. So why the antipathy?

I gotta say it probably comes down to George Steinbrenner. Back in 2001, the Yankees were in Game 7 of the World Series with a lead in the ninth inning, but the Arizona Diamondbacks came back to win the game. Afterward, Steinbrenner said something to the effect that this was an unacceptable failure and he would make sure it didn’t happen again, and over the next few years the Yankees went from being in the group of league-leading payrolls to way ahead of everyone else. There’s something about that sense of entitlement that bothers me, the idea that if you do not reach the absolute pinnacle you are a failure because by rights you should be at that pinnacle. There must be some midpoint between accepting mediocrity and being hypercompetitive, but Steinbrenner hasn’t found it. So while I know it is horribly unfair to the many Yankees fans and personnel who realize that hey, some of those other teams are pretty good too, I enjoy it when George has to watch another team celebrate.

Besides, I’m a Phillies fan. It’s not like I’ve had a whole lot to celebrate for the last 13 seasons.

I’m not exactly sure what this says about Internet discourse, reading comprehension, pervasive marketing, and overall cynicism. But this story and discussion thread over at Newsarama is well worth reading. Apparently the Franklin Mint – the folks who’ve brought us so many pewter chess sets over the years, one piece every other month – is taking a bunch of quarters and “enhancing” them with images of the Silver Surfer from the upcoming Fantastic 4 movie. People who find these quarters can then enter a contest or something. As you can probably tell from reading the story, the initial details were sketchy and had to be updated later. But it did not take long for folks to start complaining about the government participating in a movie promotion. Now, I can’t quite blame anyone for getting the Franklin Mint and the U.S. Mint confused – but doesn’t it say something that people would have such an easy time believing it?