Tim Russert - Martyr

Throughout history, there have been men and women who died for a larger cause. Martyrs. Heroes. Legends. The deaths of these people often united a religion, or a movement, or a country to reach greater heights than it could ever have achieved with that person on earth. The death of one’s leader can so unite a group that all former differences are put aside in sadness, memoriam, celebration, and soon after, triumph for said cause. There has been much written recently about the life and death of Tim Russert. Tim Russert would be the first to tell you that he wasn’t fronting any cause; that he was simply the country’s moderator and nothing more. But in the wake of his death, in talking with many friends and family members both Democrat and Republican, it is clear that Mr. Russert has united us all, just in time for an election.

Elections were his specialty, his busy season, his bread and butter. In this, a very important American election, it seems safe to assume that what Mr. Russert would have wanted more than anything is for this election to be a civil, intelligent, and open conversation about the issues most important to the American people. Last weekend I was a part of the most civil, intelligent and open political conversation in the history of my family. Generally we may not agree on much, but we could all agree that a great voice was lost. A voice of the people and for the people. And when our conversation shifted from Mr. Russert to politics at large, I found that there was a polite, respectful tone to each of our positions. We debated rather than argued. We respected each others’ opinions. We had intelligent and worthwhile conversation.

On the day of Mr. Russert’s death I spoke with friends - some liberals, some conservatives - who were quick to point out that they don’t usually feel much for the death of a celebrity or public persona, but they felt sad today. “A good man.” “An honest broadcaster.” “One of the last true journalists.” These are things I heard from people who argue on a daily basis. These were words written because in Mr. Russert they saw their father, their favorite teacher, their neighbor, and somewhat strangely for a television personality, their friend.

With his middle-class roots and down to earth style, Tim Russert reminded us of home. Like most martyrs, he came from little and rose to lots. Like most martyrs he was important in life. And like most martyrs he will be essential in death. Essential for the continued inspiration of those who watched him work for the last two decades and essential for future students to watch in political science classes in colleges and universities across the country. And while he may not have been a martyr for Republicans or a martyr for Democrats or a martyr for Christianity or Judism or capitalism or any one cause over another, he is indeed a martyr. Tim Russert is a martyr for a past time. A time when Lincoln and Douglas debated fiercely seven times in one year, yet remained respectful and eloquent. Or a time in the not so distant past when geniality in politics was not seen as weakness or honesty as bad strategy.

Mr. Russert may not be a martyr in the traditional sense of the word, but his death has united all of us in at least the notion that a great man has been lost. We mourned, memorialized, celebrated. And now we can hopefully triumph in the notion that politics shouldn’t be about slander, sound bytes, or slinging mud, but rather about honesty, transparency and intellectual discourse. I'd say it's the least we can do for the last great leader of objective journalism.

Alo?

Blog Update

Mr Manson is still alive and doing reasonably well -- when pressed over the phone he had "no comment" as to why he has neglected Organized Dissent. Check back soon though, he has promised some overly liberal posting in the very near future.

go jayhawks.

And madness ensued...

Good evening,

I have no topic to discuss tonight. No angry subject got me in a tizzy, no crazy sporting event got me all riled up. Just me, ready to rant with nothing to talk about. I've already left two messages on friends' phones. Both were long, both made little sense. And this, in all probability, will make less. I honestly have no topic of interest. The Democratic and Republican campaigns are basically news-less these days. Nothing interesting there until Ohio and Texas on March 4th. The NFL season is over, but I still can't believe the Giants are champs. Can you believe it T-Y and K? The NBA had its All-Star weekend, and no fireworks there. Unless you count Dwight Howard's fake dunk. I'm sorry, but it just wasn't a dunk. Yes, the Superman suit was funny. Yes, he got high up in the air. And yes, what he did was relatively impressive. Still, not a dunk. In order to dunk the ball you have to be able to touch the rim. In this case, he was not able to touch the rim. Back when me and my friends used to play basketball every day, we'd try to take off from far distances and dunk the ball and many times we'd end up doing something looking just like what Howard did. Wait, did I mention this was on an 8 foot rim? But if you figure that Howard is 7 feet tall and has a huge wingspan and you translate his height versus mine and his ten foot rim versus my eight foot rim and it's gotta be a similar situation. I could get my hand well above that 8 foot rim and would inevitably end up throwing the ball at the rim at the very last second, just like Howard did, and try to sell it to my friends as a dunk, just like Howard tried to sell it to the crowd. I'm sorry, my friends would not have fallen for that. I still can't believe all five judges did.

What next? Okay, how about movies? Everyone should see Gone, Baby Gone. Great movie. And am I the only person in America that was just annoyed at little Juno for that whole movie? Seriously, I just didn't like her. I hope she loses, big time. That's all for movies.

And now, a word about frogs. I'm not a big fan of frogs or anything, but I have nothing against them. I don't think they're gross, but I don't want one for a pet either. I didn't like when the sky rained with them in the movie Magnolia. I did, however, really enjoy a picture I saw of the craziest looking frog. True, anything that lived millions of years ago usually looks pretty insane compared to its contemporary counterpart, but this is a bit much, don't you think?

Now that's a "normal" frog there in the foreground, and that big fat beast in the background is its ancestor! They say it was the size of a bowling ball!!! Imagine walking through the forest and running into that thing? Then imagine it standing like eight feet away from you and having it lash its tongue in your direction, coming up just a few inches short. Now imagine, after his tongue is firmly back in place, him looking you right in the eye and saying, "C'mon, baby..." in a deep Southern voice. I bet you'd run faster than a guy with his dick on fire headed towards a waterfall. Great picture though, isn't it?

The quick vote on CNN.com tonight reads: "Britney Spears' parents in control: Is she on the road to recovery?" Seems newsworthy. What's your vote? You can punch it in while I take a moment to induce vomiting. Ahh, that's better.

In other news on CNN, Cher has committed to 200 live shows next year in Las Vegas. My God. She's 61. She will have 18 dancers on stage with her. She's going to have a new studio album coming out. And she looks like a CGI character from the movie Beowulf. If you're wondering why she's back....well, I'll let her tell you: "It's like an artist, it's like, when was it time for Picasso to stop painting? He had enough paintings, I'm sure, at a certain age. Why didn't he just stop? I guess because he really liked it, and it was some part of his life. You don't want to give up some part of your life that's that important." Cher and Picasso, two peas in a pod.

Okay, I'm really stretching here if I'm talking about Cher, so I'm gonna sign off before losing any more respect for myself. Truth be told, I just really wanted an excuse to post a picture of that crazy dino-frog. That's just nuts.

Big Tent Falling

What in the world is going on with the Republican party? Four years ago they were the "big tent party." You could hardly tune into a cable news show without a Republican Senator, Congressman, Governor or operative telling you that they take all kinds. That if the Democrats don't want this type of person, or that type of voter, the Republicans would happily welcome them in. "We're open and we're accepting all applicants." How things have changed. And in such a surreal way. Aside from Republicans losing control of Congress and President Bush just nosediving in all possible public confidence categories, there was still the assumption that the Republican party, the party of cohesion, organization and voter turnout, would get things together by '08 and bring forth a viable and formidable candidate. Then the candidates appeared for the first time, all twenty-seven of them. And of all the men that started out to get the nomination for the party, none seemed to fit the mold just right. Still, most thought that by the time things were widdled down to less than a handful of candidates, the party would rally behind the front-runner, choose a nominee early as they always do, and support that candidate to the hill. But here we are, the day after Super Tuesday and this has yet to happen. And it may never happen at all.

There have been grumblings that the far right does not like John McCain for quite some time. In fact, grumblings is a giant euphemism. There is a strong dislike that sometimes bubbles over into hatred for the man. He supports campaign finance reform. He didn't sign on to Bush's first few tax cuts (although he has signed on to all the rest and talks incessantly about making them permanent). He's soft on immigration. And last, but probably most infuriating and least likely to ever be forgotten, he bashed the Christian right eight years ago for being "agents of intolerance."

Who knew they'd never forget? But before we get to them, let's talk for a moment about right wing radio and their views on McCain. For people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, one would have thought that nothing was more important to them than the Republican party winning every election in every town and every state, every time. I always viewed them as crazy, but they were nothing if not party loyalists. Now, it's no secret that Limbaugh doesn't like McCain. He doesn't like each and every point where McCain has swayed from his party. So Limbaugh backing Romney and taking shots at McCain was really no surprise this election season. What has been unexpected is the level to which the right wing crazies are going to destroy McCain, and therefore their own party. Limbaugh openly dislikes McCain, but he hasn't said flat out that he wouldn't vote for him in a general election. He just won't vote. Ann Coulter, on the other hand, (who if you don't know is the tall, skinny, venom spewing blonde who is against all things left of center) has come out publicly and said that if McCain wins the nomination she'll vote for Hillary! Let me say that one more time: Ann Coulter will vote for Hillary Clinton!!! Don't these people care at all about the party they've been backing for... X number of decades? Maybe they only care about themselves and their totally narrow-minded views??? Or maybe, just maybe, they're being shown for the the people they are: opportunists who care only about the ratings their hate generates on talk radio and the profits their books make through outright lies. Money matters more than party. Limbaugh, Coulter; true colors: check.

But it's not just the talk show crazies. The Citizens United Political Victory Fund has bankrolled an ad in which a number of positions are shown on the screen in front of Hillary Clinton's face, but at the end her face moves left and you realize they've been talking about....John McCain? Hillary=McCain is the point they're trying to get across. McCain is a liberal, they're saying. My question, from a completely pragmatic point of view is this: Why now? Why a day after McCain took total control of the election by gaining the most delegates on Super Tuesday do you run an attack ad against him? If you're bashing your frontrunner, what possible good will this do for your party in November? Even with Mike Huckabee winning a few states last night, there's still no chance he gets the nomination, so what are you fighting for at this point if not to destroy your own party from within?

As for Huckabee, what he was able to do last night was largely the result of people who think it's more important to vote for a good Christian than a good potential president. And this brings me back to McCain "insulting" them back in 2000. They're willing to sacrifice the party as well, but they do it because they don't answer to party loyalty, they answer to a higher power. This portion of the electorate has brought many victories to the Republican side, but for the first time in 28 years, the Republican candidate for president is not going to be the one endorsed by the Christian Coalition. And they don't like it. So rather than be adults, rather than engage in the political process as it is, as opposed to the way they'd like it to be, rather than think about things in a rational, common sense manner, they have decided instead to show their true colors as radicals. These people aren't about family values and they never were. John McCain was right, they were always agents of intolerance. Intolerant of you, of me, of anyone who's not at their church every Sunday sharing exactly their views and exactly their God. They don't really care about the Republican party. They never have. All they care about is that every baby gets born and that gay people don't get any of them. They will burn the Republican party to save it, much the same as God was forced to destroy the Sodomites in the book of Genesis. Wonder if they were gay too or that's just a coincidence....? Moving on.

So what does this mean for the future? We'll have to wait and see. Wounds may well be slashed so deep between now and November that the Republican party may splinter completely. Or McCain may become president and push the interests of the Christian Coalition so far to the back burner that the last 20 years become an afterthought in American politics. Or a third party candidate may jump in the race, siphon votes from McCain and put Hillary or Obama in office, essentially out of spite. In a time of turmoil the Big Tent Party has turned on itself, stopped accepting applicants and starting looking out for number one. Burning the village to save it; sounds an awful lot like 'taking my ball and going home' to me.

Giants win the Super Bowl!!! Giants win the Super Bowl!!!

The Giants are Super Bowl Champions!!! As many of you were told last night, this can best be summed up with a resounding Holy F*cking Sh*t!!!!! Unbelievable. I mean, I just can't believe it. This is sweeter than beating the Broncos in '86, better than bouncing the Bills in '91. The 2007 Giants beat an undefeated team for the most shocking upset in New York Sports history! Now all those arrogant Pats fans have to sit on this for an entire year. Your year of history was stolen and the team that will be remembered from 2007 isn't the Pats, it's the Giants. THE GIANTS! GGGGGGGGGGGMMMMMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNN!!!!!!



The big one for the madman!

Lots of thank yous....

Play of the decade!

Aww....boo hoo

The guns!!!

Para la gente

Hola todos,

Conozco a una chica que tiene problemas con la lengua Espanol. Ella trata y trata pero no puede aprender todas las palabras. Cuando ella quiere decir algo, algo diferente siempre sale de la boca. Las palabras estan mezcladas. O la pronunciacion no esta correcta. O no es la palabra correcta en el primer lugar. Pero, esta bien. Esta bien porque cuando ella haga amistakes, sus ojos ensanchan. Sus senos tiran. Y su cara consigue un poca roja. Esto es la cosa mas mona que el mundo. Lo hace me rio. Sonrio por dias despues. Pero no sonrio porque ella haga amistakes. Sonrio porque la mirada en su cara durante esta momento es inestimable. Me gusta ella como un bebe se gusta bizcocho.

Suenos dulces bonita....

Won't the real New York Giants please shut up? Please shut up. Please shut up.

As a fan of the New York Football Giants, there are a lot of things that scare me about the upcoming week. The Super Bowl is six days away; we're playing an undefeated team; a team that beat us five weeks ago in what was our best game of the season; they have endless offensive options; their defense always makes the most timely stops; I could go on and on. But the day I've been worried about since early last week was tomorrow. Media day. I'm absolutely terrified of what these guys are gonna say next. They've been hamming it up since for the past week.

First there was the little pat on the back victory appearance at Madison Square Garden by Plaxico Burress and two other Giants the day after the win in Green Bay. Then, on Tuesday night, I literally switched from Lawrence Tynes on Letterman to HBO, where Osi Umenyiora was on Inside the NFL. And this is where it got a little hairy. Old Osi just had to let out that he feels Matt Light, offensive lineman for the Patriots, is a dirty player. Maybe not dirty all the time, but dirty when they played. Well, probably dirty all the time, but I can only speak for the time we played. Dirty here and there and STOP SAYING DIRTY OSI! Stop talking!

Then there's Antonio Pierce, who I absolutely love and who I generally love to hear talk trash, talking at the absolute wrong time. He's all over Mike and the Mad Dog saying that not only do they deserve to be there, they deserve to win. We're not just here to try and put up a good game, we're here to win. It sounds like just a little confidence when I write it here, but to listen to it....it was a masked way of talking trash to the Pats. And you could tell by his inflection that he wasn't really trying to mask it. I love Pierce because he's grown into our quarterback on defense and he calls good plays. He was the only one who sniffed out a screen against Green Bay that easily would have gone for a touchdown, if not for him pushing his way through two blockers and hanging on to Grant like his life depended on it until help arrived some 8 to 10 seconds later. The play summarized his career as a Giant, it epitomized what it had taken for his team to get where they've gotten this year and less than a week later he was finished talking about that and ready to talk about the Patriots. And talk he did. The good news: they probably weren't listening.

But they were listening a few days later when Plaxico decided to let the world know that the Giants recievers were just as good as the Patriots', better even. Oh, they heard that. They actually felt it. Randy Moss' hair stood on end. Wes Welker's biceps unwittingly curled. Dante Stallworth and Jabar Gaffney chest bumped at a gas station and had no idea why.

Lines are being drawn here. People are running at the mouth. The kind of verbal diarrhea that players look back on years later and say, "what was I thinking?" As a side note it should be mentioned that as all of this was going on, as the Giants were making appearances, talking to the media, popping up on late night TV, the Patriots were, that's right, practicing! This does not bode well. I was happy that they were coming in two touchdown underdogs. They could use the 'happy to be here with the great Patriots, but slightly confident that we know a little bit to at least hang in there'. You do that, then you go for the jugular. Now there can be none of that. There's no going back from you're dirty, we're going to beat you, our receivers are better, we're here because we belong. Now you've called out the champs, called down the thunder, and you have only to back it up. I just hope they can dial it back a little at tomorrow's all day meeting with the media. I hope that Coughlin can reel this thing in over the next six days and bring these guys back down to earth without damaging the confidence that has gotten them here. I hope that the ball is in Manning's hands, down six with a buck twenty-eight to go on the Giants 45. I'll take my chances with that scenario. I just wish that was good enough for my team.

Where have you gone Timmansonio.....?

Dear whatever readership still exists (all two of you),

My apologies once again for the prolonged absence. It's not that I'm lazy. I mean, I am, sometimes, lazy. But that is not the culprit this time. The culprit is pain. Anguish. Suffering. Ok, that may be taking it a bit too far, but I have been less than happy. You see, a couple weeks ago I hurt my back......again. This is the third time in as many years that I've had some kind of miserable, debilitating back injury and frankly the pain is never as bad as the depression. It generally makes me wonder questions like: if I make it to my 70s, will I be depressed all the time? Will I, as an old man, want nothing more than to jump out a window as opposed to feeling completely and utterly useless??? It's not a fair question, just as it's not a fair injury. This time around I did nothing to bring on this condition. I wasn't lifting a safe over my head or bench pressing my great uncle Lou or playing "Who can bend all the way over and come up with a cinder block using only his back muscles?" I was hardly even exercising. It was a Saturday and I went to the Y, got on the ellyptical (no idea how to spell that) machine for a half an hour, then went home and took a shower. Four hours later I was in blinding pain. I could hardly walk. And the following morning when I made the mistake of thinking things were better and tried to put on my socks, I screamed out in pain louder than William Wallace on the chopping block. And I wasn't yelling freedom.

But again, the pain is not the problem. It's this feeling that I can't shake when I hurt my back. This old man-ish feeling. You start thinking whether this is how it's going to be. You start to question what you've done to deserve this, how you let things get so bad, who you pissed off to be twisted and tortured in this manner. The answer, of course, is nothing and no one. I usually start thinking about things like never playing basketball again, or any sports for that matter, or even being able to go for a jog when I feel like it. When I'm injured, I can't just throw on a sweatshirt and go out for a jog; therefore, when I'm old will it be the same way? I probably won't be able to jump up and go for a run when I'm 77 either. And therein lies the depression. It may not be enough for some people to be depressed about, but it's enough for me. And since I'm rarely depressed and the pain killing, muscle relaxing drugs do nothing but wind the spiral down further as my mindset chases it willingly, things tend to only get worse as time goes on. The lack of strength in the body leads to a lack of strength and will of the mind. Emotion runs wild. And not the kind of skipping through daisies emotion that usually accompanies a statement like that. Emotion runs wild in a negative way. When you start feeling like shit about yourself, you start to assume there's no reason others can or should like you. This is dangerous territory. Difficult to maneuver through the mind fields. Pun intended. One in this state is better left alone because contact with others often only makes things worse. Either you say stuff that you never wanted to say, and probably didn't really mean, or you spout off needy, lovey dovey stuff out of desperation for someone to say something back that resembles feelings for you. Either way, it's rarely pretty. But now, the lights have turned back on.

My back is not yet healed, but it is feeling much better. I no longer need the drugs that take the pain from my back and replace it with gunk in my brain. I am myself again. As such, I have returned to the blog to continue to rant about whatever crosses my path. I started this post by addressing you, the reader, but writing this was all about me. I needed to get the depths off my chest and pronounce that I'm back to normal. Whether anyone's listening or not. More to come....

Just when I finally pick a candidate

It all goes to hell. Well, not really hell. But not the way it was "supposed" to go either. It wasn't the fact that Obama won in Iowa that made me decide to vote for him in a few weeks. It was that speech. The victory speech he gave after the Iowa results were in. Three years ago Obama gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention that lit a fire under many a democrat. Put him on the national scene, made him famous. I later read the speech online and it was certainly impressive. But it was grand and general and designed to fire up the base of the party and it worked. Last week, though, it was the speech he gave after the Iowa win that ended up giving me the chills and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

It was not only smart and savvy and hopeful, but it was also pragmatic in some ways, it spoke to people on both sides of the aisle and it was outright inspiring. I actually started to believe there might be a politician out there who will do what he says he's going to do. (To be fair, I have something known in politics as raving TB - that's true-believerism) So I'm more inclined to favor a speech like Obama's than Hillary's robot like delivery and common sense attitude. So you can imagine my shock, which ran parallel to the shock throughout every major television news outlet, when Hillary WON in New Hampshire. It was supposed to be a coronation. It was supposed to be a blowout. A ten point victory at least. But the polls were wrong. People coming out of the booths lied (which is extremely odd in my opinion). And that's now known because the exit polls matched up with the pre-voting polls. Obama didn't win. People said they were going to vote for him, said that they did vote for him, but they voted for someone else. Interesting, those liars.

This race is far from over now. And in many ways it is again Hillary's to lose. I am feeling a little bummed out that I finally made a decision and then the guy lost, but there's a silver lining. On February 5 it will be Super Tuesday. For the first time in my life I will vote in a primary where my vote actually matters. In past years it was well decided by the time the Connecticut primary arrived, but not this time. There's the Nevada caucus. Then South Carolina. Then Super Tuesday. I'm excited to be involved in the process for once. I'm probably not gonna go volunteer or anything, but I might do a little selling. You may get a call, casual enough, from me asking how things are going. How life has been. What you're up to this weekend. Then....boom! Hit you with my political questions and badger you into voting for the half Kenyan, half Kansan. He can do it. And who knows, you can make it happen.

The Kenyan versus the Christian??

Well, it's settled out there in Iowa. Barack Obama has won the Democratic caucus while the Republican straw poll was won by Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Both are slightly shocking right now. Both would have been laffable less than a month ago. The madness and unpredictibility of the election of 2008 has begun. See you in five days in New Hampshire.

For the Democratic story, go here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010302982.html?hpid=topnews

For the Republican story, go here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010303824.html?hpid=topnews