The Corn Beltway Boys

Tomorrow I leave for RAGBRAI. Good times, good times. I’ll try to get some pictures posted maybe during the week depending on my online access. It’s really a great time! If you head over to my site you will find some RAGBRAI photo albums of past years. If you take the time you can find a naked chick!! Heh.

Later taters!!

Dorf.

I don’t know if very many ultra-right wing nuts read this blog - perhaps they do, and I am hoping for some explanation from that very demographic. As any routine reader can discern I get my news and commentary from three very distinctive sources - The New York Times, NPR, and The Atlantic magazine. Two of those three are regularly subjected to polemical fulminations from the right wing (NY Times and NPR) and the third is regarded with little affection (The Atlantic).

I guess I’d to know what exactly your problem is with these news sources? David Brooks and Bill Kristol both write for the Times, and the Atlantic has (arguably) even less conservative “conservatives” in Andrew Sullivan and Ross Douthat. Why such vitriol for The Times? To be sure, who has written more ascerbically about the Clintons than Maureen Dowd?

I know that the editorial page leans HARD left, but that is such a small part of the journalism from the Times. I rarely read editorials that aren’t Op-Eds. True, NPR rammed a six month long series on “climate change” down my throat every morning, but again, it was only one segment among very good news coverage. What’s the big prob with NPR, yo?

Call me thin skinned over the Obama New Yorker cover — it seems to me that hard conservatives seem to want journalism that never questions conservative dogma or conservative leaders. Are you so thin skinned that you can’t handle an inquiry into whether any evidence actually exists that off-shore drilling will benefit the U.S.? Maybe that’s not your problem, but please, enlighten me as to what is!

To conclude, I can think of several countries that has media that doesn’t question its leaders, and those heads of state wear military uniforms.

I generally don’t name drop here on CBB because I feel the practice to be a tad pretentious.  However today I make an exception as a good friend of mine is in trouble and he needs our help  (but more my help because the letter was addressed to me after all).   Yesterday in the mail I received a packet from Leo, you all probably know him as Leonardo DiCaprio. Anyway Caprio was writing to make me aware that the polar bears are sending out an S.O.S.  As a side note, my money was on the dolphins to be the first animal to learn to use Morse code, but apparently the polar bears beat them to it.

It goes without saying the plight of the polar bear is being driven by the evil Bush administration.  According to Leo, in just seven short years George W. Bush not only caused global warming but also irrevocably changed the Earth’s climate.  That is unless you and I send $20 in a postage paid envelope to the Natural Resources Defense Council.  And it’s not just the good feeling you’ll have deep down inside (way deep down inside), but you will also receive a ‘Save The Polar Bear!’ canvas tote.

Sure I could send a 10 spot, but a letter expressing my feelings would probably go a lot further.  It obviously did for Leonardo:

Dear Mr. DiCrapio,

I wanted to let you know I appreciated your letter outlining how global warming is threatening to destroy the polar bears.  Of course it would have meant more to me if I gave a fuck, but whatever.  You go ahead keep chopping down trees to make your junk mail.  I can only assume you’ve invented some new way of transporting the letter from California to Iowa that doesn’t involve using fossil fuels?  Hey, maybe I could help you fight global warming while flying around with you on your private jet?  We could be the pioneers of jet-pooling.

I understand you might be a little disconnected from reality after becoming a huge celebrity by starring in romantic movie that was set against the backdrop of 1,517 people dying, but let me clue you in to how things are in the real America.  Times are rough.  I just sold my small business and had to get a real job (you should be able to appreciate how much a real job sucks…or maybe you don’t).  Gas prices are killing my budget.  Oh could drive less, but then I would also work less.  However as I am only a few missed paychecks away from going bankrupt, driving less to save a fucking bear in Alaska doesn’t rate very high on my list of priorities.   Instead my wife, four kids and I will continue to create a yearly carbon footprint that’s less than you could ever hope to have, but you go ahead and keep sending me your hypocritical bullshit.  It gives me something to blog about.

P.S. Could you put me in contact with a good director and producer?  I have great idea for a love story.  Picture this: It’s May 3rd, 1937.  A pair of star crossed lovers are preparing to board a transatlantic airship called the Hindenburg.  He is going to America to meet up with and marry his high school sweetheart.  She is penniless and only just barely made the trip after signing on to be a wealthy women’s personal assistant.  After three days of romance and sex the two lovers decide that once they land in America they will marry and live happily every after.  Then disaster strikes and their love goes down in flames, literally.  The Hindenburg crashes and burns.  He then lives a disfigured life pining for the lost love that went up in smoke. Here are some tag-lines I’ve come up with:

HINDENBURG (a poof on the movie Titanic)

-An explosive love story.

-Theirs was a fiery love…

Thank you and have a great day ,

Jeremie Jordan

…and by the way thanks for ruining the good name of Leonardo that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles spent years building.

How often have you started a point you were going to make with a line like this, “I read somewhere once that [blah, blah, blah]. ” THIS NY TIMES ARTICLE discusses how tricky our memories are and why we say things like that. Basically, it points out that we can remember information, but frequently we forget where we got the information. For instance, you know what the capital of Texas is, but likely you have forgotten when and where you first learned it. The article goes on to point out that this very trick of memory is what allows the “Obama is a Muslim” rumor to persist. If you keep encountering this information, eventually the pathway is strengthened and you might not even remember that it was false.

How many mouth-breathing Americans are just going to look at the cover of the New Yorker, remember that their cousin Izzy down in rural Arkansas sent him some forward awhile back about Obama being a Muslim? Certainly this fine specimen of a human isn’t going to actually read the New Yorker. No, he or she is far too busy watching Dancing with the Stars or going to Monster Truck Rallies to be bothered with READING words and stuff.

As a CBB writer, I appreciate good satire perhaps more than most — considering the dearth of satirical posts unleashed upon the world at my hand. But the New Yorker cover may do considerable unjust harm to the candidacy of a presidential hopeful. I don’t think I’ve done any such thing to anybody just to get a laugh. Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic hyperbolizes that the outcry from folks like me is the “death of humor.” Yikes. If THAT cover was pinnacle of humor then I won’t be attending the funeral nor sending flower money.

The cover was and is tasteless and inappropriate.

[note: I am not going to reprint the cover here, since I don't want to pass the image along. I would hate to the butt of an irony].

We send the money to Washington only to have them send it back to us. Seems to me there must an easier way for me to spend my own money (not to mention cheaper) than funneling it through politicians:

Democrats Are Weighing More Tax Rebates, Pelosi Says

July 15 (Bloomberg) — Congressional Democrats are considering a second round of rebates to taxpayers, saying the benefits of the first checks sent to more than 100 million households this year are being eroded by rising energy prices.

“We will be proceeding with another stimulus package, and we once again hope we will work in a bipartisan way,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said after House Democratic leaders met with a group of economists to discuss the spreading housing crisis and rising gas prices.

I am not a huge hockey like Jaques, but I’ve gone to quite a few Iowa Stars games in the last few years.  I enjoy the AHL level of hockey and was disappointed to here that the Dallas Stars were pulling their affiliation with our Iowa franchise.  However I have to be honest, I really like the new nickname and logo to go with our new team which is associated with the Anaheim Ducks.

What’s the feelings of the CBB readers?  You like it?  Hate it?  Don’t care?

Remember in THIS POST when we talked about the CBB Lounge the characters inhabiting it? Well it’s time for it to become a reality. I propose we we meet some evening in the very near future at IrishWalsh’s joint - Mickey’s Irish Pub in Waukee. Here’s the address:

50 E Laurel St
Waukee, IA 50263-8299
Phone: (515) 987-9604

Alright CBB regulars… when we gonna meet for some political discussion and low-brow humor? The first round will be on me.

This guy is a tool… big time…

WASHINGTON - In a shocking blast at Barack Obama that was caught on tape, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said, “I wanna cut his nuts out.”

He made the astonishingly vulgar remark as he accused the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee of giving moral lectures to African-Americans.

“See, Barack [has] been talking down to black people . . . I wanna cut his nuts out,” Jackson said.

As far as I see it.. this can only help Obama. If most independent moderate type folks are like me, they don’t really have a high opinion of the adulterous reverend and this can only help our opinion of Obama.

Now, the cynical person in me is going to assume it was staged the entire time just to give Obama a broader appeal. I know.. probably not the case, but we are talking about politics.. Nothing surprises me.

So you know how when cell phones are on vibrate, they aren’t necessarily silent?  You can still hear their morse code of buzzes and hums.  While I was in a restroom the other day admiring the tile work around the urnal I was using, fellow restroom occupant was in the stall next to me doing his business.  Then a loud buzzing sound started going off.

“Senator Craig?”

I assume it was the man’s cell phone, because the buzzing was followed by the faint sound of tapping.  What the hell would you be texting someone while droppin’ a deuce?  You think people driving while talking on a cell phone is bad.  Men’s bathrooms are already unclean, but just wait until cell phone usage while on the toilet become common practice.

Tehran, Iran [CBB] — The Iranian military intended to send a strong message yesterday to the U.S. and Israel by conducting excercises near the Iraqi and Afghanistani borders using its famed mounted “camelry,” a form of Desert Cavalry mounted on camels and dromedaries. The elite Crescent Guard rides the dual humped dromedary, while the regular Camelry-man rides a modest one hump model. The exercises involved the soldiers charging near the border with scimitars upraised at speeds reaching as high as 30 miles per hour while screaming out fearsome war yips and yowls.

The posturing from Iran is in direct response to rumors that the Israelis or the U.S. may use bombing strikes against suspected uranium enrichment sites. Gen. Rashid Malmoud was quoted, “The American cowboys are no match for our camelry, and Israel will be crushed under large gangly hoof if they violate Iranian sovereignty.”

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice issued a statement that the U.S. has contingency plans should the Iranians use their Camelry against U.S. interests. She further added that those contingency plans should “drastically reduce the price of a good camel-hair sweater or sport coat for Americans.” She then quipped, “provided that is that you don’t mind the hair a bit singed.”