Month: December 2003

Today’s Washington Post features a delicate little fluff piece entitled “Bush Campaign Tiptoed Into Arlington HQ” about, well, the fairly quiet presence of President Bush’s re-election campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.

“There is nary a Bush sign or banner in sight. In fact, there is virtually no way to find the headquarters at all without being directed by a building doorman through a set of double doors.
Only then does a single reception desk come into view outfitted with a few “Bush Cheney ’04” bumper stickers.”

Take a second look at these 2004 campaign bumper stickers, however. Why did the notoriously “fiscally conservative” Republican campaign even bother to create new stickers, when they’re effectively just reprints of those used in the 2000 campaign?
At least we now have a sense of how those $200 million in Bush campaign funds will not be spent: hiring graphic designers who can do more than italicize existing fonts.

Good news for you recently-unemployed types (all 3 million of you in the past few years). Have you caught yourself pining away for those days of 1998, 1999, and 2000, an era in which you safely pulled in semi-comfortable wages and found yourself ensconced in a middle-class lifestyle?
Well, start buying those Brita water filters and other disposable goods again, because the Bush Recession (which I think ought to have been called the Clinton recession, if you ask me) is almost over! This, according to statements made by job market analysts, as covered in the New York Times. Get ready to grin, Johnny Jobless, because here’s their optimistic lead-in:

“The restaurant industry has gone on a hiring spree over the last four months, suggesting that broader gains in the job market could be on the way…Some economists say that an increase in low-wage jobs, which include most restaurant work, indicates that the job market over all will soon bounce back. During the economic doldrums of the early 1990’s, hiring began to increase in the restaurant industry about six months before job creation began taking off. The striking fact of this economic recovery, like the previous one, has been how long it has lasted without igniting job growth.”

Not optimistic enough for ya? Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Sourpuss, what are those unemployment checks paying for then? Certainly not smiles!
What’s that, you say? You’ve exhausted your unemployment benefits after losing your job at the steel mill or the office-supply company? Well, you say you’re looking for work, but some of my blue-blooded friends think you’re not looking hard enough! Jobs, it seems, are looking for you!

The search for employees who view the restaurant industry as a possible career has at least one McDonald’s franchisee near Cherry Hill scouting for management recruits. Edward Baim, who owns 11 McDonald’s restaurants in southern New Jersey and Philadelphia, makes recruiting trips to local colleges and vocational schools and promotes jobs in the food industry whenever he can.
“It just boggles my mind when we see all these things on TV about people who are out of a job,” Mr. Baim said. “I can point to people in my organization that started as a burger flipper and are now making $70,000.”
He added: “Anybody that really wants to work could find a position. I’ve probably got two or three open right now.”

Now if only they were hiring good job market analysts.

First off, God has been promoted since he last penned a column for us (as a lowly intern, no less) here at low culture last month. That last round of vitriolic sniping was a bit harsh, we felt, but who were we to question His assertions? And again, who are we to nix the latest expression of His wrath, particularly when He functions as supreme being, editor, and comptroller?
Here, then, is God’s word, i.e. the word of God:
Thee Who Shalt be Smitten (on the Second Day)
by God, aka Yahweh, aka Allah, aka Buddha, et cetera
1. Rep. Nick Smith, R-Mich: Jesus Christ, Nick (fret not, believers, for I can take my Son’s name in vain without fear of retribution). Step up to the plate and let people know who amongst the ranks of House GOP leaders tried to bribe you a few weeks back with that ill-advised Medicare bill. Being omniscient, I know such activity is more or less commonplace, but I trust that you will do what is right. Besides, I can always spread the gospel to Bob Woodward (or Robert Novak), but I’d rather you take some responsibility for yourself before I have to come forward.
2. Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn: Give it up, Joseph. You were never going to get any major endorsements, at least not from anyone in any way related to the Democratic party. Try again in 2008, my friend, when Bush isn’t up for re-election and the Republican Party needs new leadership.
3. L. Paul Bremer, again: This is your second warning, Paul. Just because Israel has been excessively hard-line and undemocratic in its dealings with so-called “insurgents” in its “territory,” doesn’t grant the U.S. occupying force the rationale to emulate, in its own “territory,” the Israeli methodology, which has proven spotty, at best, in addressing the region’s incessant cycle of human suffering. Turn to some other models for how to stop the ol’ human-on-human violence.
4. Insurgents, Terrorists, Fedayeen et al: Seriously, cut this shit out. You’re primarily destroying the lives of your own “side,” which, last time I checked, wasn’t one of founding father Michael Collins‘s models for practitioners of “successful” terrorism tactics.
5. Michael Dell: Come on, Michael. While your sins aren’t nearly as bad as those listed above, please remember that I alone can create replicas in my God-like image. When you go around spawning low grade knock-offs like the Dell DJ, which has got to be the “falsest idol” ever in terms of my beloved iPod prodigy, you tempt fate, and risk a good hard smiting.

At the risk of pulling a Hitchens, I find myself–excuse me while I pause to catch my breath–finding some fairly salient points in the latest iteration of the National Review, Jonah Goldberg’s bastion of strident conservatism (the very same publication that used to host Ann Coulter’s mad rantings about the Arab world, e.g. pleading for the U.S. to “invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity”). You can imagine the horrible, haunting shame I feel right now.
Anyway, regarding Howard Dean’s impending, sure-thing nomination as the Democratic candidate in the 2004 Presidential Election, here is the contentious meat of the right-wing argument, courtesy of National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru:

“No word yet from McGovern, Mondale, or Dukakis. . . . Come to think of it, the Ds now have a candidate with McGovern’s foreign policy, Mondale’s domestic policy, Dukakis’s regional background, and Gore’s arrogance. How perfect is that?”

Of course, this is just a nonsensically reactionary bit of conservative giddiness…but it’s that last comparison that threatens to really pass muster. Howard Dean: the perhaps not unelectable, but unlikable candidate? Ponnuru goes into greater detail on this subject in “Can Dean Win?“:

“Will Dean’s personality wear well? Some people have said that he projects too much anger for the general electorate; arrogance may be the deeper problem.”

This seems to be the core issue. Was it really surprising to anyone that Should-Have-Been President Al Gore endorsed Dean yesterday? After all, they’re both aloof, robotic, smirking politicos, except Dean has the “benefit” of coming off as the aloof, robotic, smirking, and thick-necked jock, as opposed to Gore’s aloof, robotic, and smirking policy wonk.
These aren’t just my concerns, though. Listen to Dean’s own campaign staffers (as gleaned from The Note, by way of Howard Kurtz):

“The dirtiest little secret of the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination is that the pros running Dean’s campaign know full well that the criticisms of The Doctor being made by the press and his opponents are often spot on.
“They know he is regularly careless, volcanic, dismissive, self-important, mercurial, hypocritical, patronizing, and politically tone deaf.”

Shades of Dubya, but at least the Governor from Vermont has a so-called liberal heart, which I’ll take any day over number 43’s shameless prevaricating and born-again evangelicalism.