Rusty’s Blog

I share concerns about President Barack Obama that some of my Republican and Libertarian/libertarian friends have. High among those concerns, I don’t expect the trend of irresponsible government spending to be curbed under his administration, especially with a possible Democratic super majority coming in the U.S. Senate. I have a philosophical aversion to any party having that much power, and that goes for Democrats too. This prospect does worry me some.

But ultimately, I was unable to look at the past eight years and say, “hell yeah, give me some more of that.”

Not to dwell for too long about just what “that” was, but I believe that as a highly narcissistic country we elect presidents that are symbols of what we think we are or aspire to be. The past eight years demonstrated that symbolism is important, even though it may seem superficial.

And for the past eight years, America the symbol has been a belligerent drunken uncle. He’s blood and you love him. As such, you’d do almost anything for him, even if it means bailing him out of jail after his fourth DUI. You want him to dry up and get on the straight and narrow, you really do. But you resent him and are mortified by his behavior.

I don’t know which relative President Barack Obama will turn America into, but I know at least we won’t be that guy anymore. And even if he makes some decisions I disagree with, I will at least know he didn’t make them because a buddy bet him five dollars he wouldn’t.

He’s a symbol that says we’re optimistic about our future; that we value deliberation and intellect; that we can disagree without hating each other; and that we can do some good in the world without a drunken brawl breaking out. That was enough reason for me to support him, and trumped all of my other concerns.

It’s why I feel relief today and not panic, even though the world offers us many reasons to panic.

Not too long ago, Amber and I took a landlord from an apartment building we used to live in to court — magistrate court, to be specific. We have yet to write much about this encounter, but probably will someday. That’s not what this post is about.

This post is about clown parades.

Magistrate court is a clown parade: an endless source of amusement, sadness and unsettling epiphanies about how miserable, stupid and unfair life can be.

In magistrate court, people frequently forgo the services of an actual lawyer to sue and defend themselves against lawsuits. With rare exception, these people have not the slightest idea what they’re doing. They fill out forms incorrectly, they speak out of turn, their arguments (if you can call them that) trail off into tangents and they are reprimanded by the judge and bailiffs over-and-over again.

Sometimes people just can’t afford a lawyer. Sometimes people have seen enough episodes of Law and Order to think they can get by against an actual lawyer. Regardless of the reason, where magistrate court stops being amusing and morphs into the macabre is people often will torpedo a legitimate claim with their ineptitude.

In one case that came up in court before ours, a man appeared to have a legitimate beef with his landlord. I don’t remember the details of the case, and they’re unimportant now. The man was suing the landlord for probably a couple of thousand dollars. When the judge asked him to explain how he came up with the number, the man just said something like, “that’s what seemed about right.” Not surprisingly, he was lectured by the judge and the case was thrown out.

I was reminded of this clown parade by another one that’s been unfolding this week.

President Bush, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake asked Congress for $700 billion this week to bail out some failed private investments.

When asked for a justification for this number, a Treasury spokesperson said, “It’s not based on any particular data point. We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

Now, if that poor sap in magistrate court is required to provide a reason to ask for a couple of thousand dollars, one would think that the president, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve would need to provide a reason when asking for $700 billion.

Apparently not.

First, this note was posted in our apartment complex this morning:

Click through to read the full text of the note, it’s hilarious. We have a neighbor who lives on our floor who lets his stupid dog go on bathroom breaks without supervision. This is problematic because he’s breaking leash laws and illegally not cleaning up the dog’s pooh, but is even more problematic because the dog has gotten lazy and no longer walks all the way to the grassy area in the parking lot before dropping a bomb. I’m amazed I haven’t stepped in a pile already.

Next, we saw this license plate on our drive to work today:

That’s going to look pretty stupid if Obama loses. Like getting a Microsoft Zune tatoo. For more fun with license plates, see this thread at Drifting Through The Grift.

And finally, my Florida-Tennessee tickets arrived today!

I wrote some about this game over at Rocky Top Talk.

If you need game tickets, you should buy them from Larry at Take Me Out Tickets. I priced these out at Stubhub as well, and the overall price was $35-40 cheaper for equivalent tickets since Stubhub has extra fees and you pay shipping. Plus he’s local and a lot of you already know him, so you’ll get better customer service. And no, I didn’t receive anything to plug the site.

Larry Kudlow: I want to start with this, an oddball question. Senator McCain says it’s too pristine to drill, Senator Obama says the drilling won’t work. What is your response to this? How do you fight back?

Sarah Palin: Well, it will work. And Senator McCain is wrong on that issue.

Just throwing that out there.

We got here to watch the DNC about ten minutes ago when Bill Richardson was finishing up. Stevie Wonder is singing now. Obama is expected to speak around 10, with Al Gore going on sometime between now and then. I’m blogging from my iPhone, so expect many typos and non-sensical word choices.

As you may or may not be able to see, Amber is sporting her I (heart) Obama t-shirt. Grayson and a friend are here, and Jen might be coming later. The crowd is already dense. Manuels accounted for this with an abridged election night menu.

Not a lot going on yet, and my hot wings are here, so I’ll check back in later.

8:59 p.m. - Al Gore came on while I was eating. Mostly boilerplate, but some good applause lines. The first few minutes went over very well with home crowd here, though if tapered off a little toward the end. My favorite line that I remembered was something like “I’m all about recycling, but that’s ridiculous.” I’m fucking it up, it was a lot funnier when he said it. Change that, I thought his line about the best marketers often having the worst products was the best.

Now Michael McDonald is on. I’ve never understood why people are impressed with him.

Almost got in the first fight of the night already. Some jackass was standing in the isle bumping into Amber’s shoulder and I told him to watch it. He said alright, sorry, the muttered “fucking asshole” under his breath as he walked off.

Next up is Susan Eisenhower…

9:15 p.m. - Jen comments on Twitter that SE is straight out of 1956. I despise Wolf Blitzer, which isn’t news, but bears repeating. I wish they would switch the tv to cspan.

9:20 - Just realized I didn’t charge my phone battery today and it’s less than half full. Hopefully it’ll hold up.

CNN commentator just said this was the largest crowd he’d ever seen at a political rally. Thwn added “and I’m a football fan!” thanks CNN guy.

9:25 p.m. - Biden on now. He is squinty. Requisite blue collar folks references. Families, etc. He says they are going to let them speak tonight before Obama comes out. Interested to see how that will work.

9:31 p.m. - LOL at John McCain’s insistence that this is Obama’s night. Every hour on the hour.

LOL also at every speaker’s “we respect McCains service and all but his policies are whack, yo.”

9:35 p.m. - Elvis Obama has arrived in Invesco Field.

9:47 p.m. - I thought the White House-themed set was going to be really obnoxious, but I barely have noticed it. I guess the liberal media is doing a good job hiding their dumb idea.

We went ahead and asked for our tab to try to beat the rush after Obamas speech. Amber notes that it must be really hard to wait tables with a crowd like this. Yep. Tip well if you’re reading this.

9:54 p.m. - Wtf Dick Durbin is next?

9:57 p.m. - so don’t care about this fucking guy. Angels of unity? Really? I’d give him a FAIL stamp, but I want to withold my cliches for someone more worthy.

10:01 p.m. - movie with weepy music now. Guess they want people to chill to provide contrast to the impending crowd eruption.

10:03 p.m. - Obligatory heartland and no whiners references. This movie is pretty good on the whole though. Good laugh lines. Really like the segment with Barack and Michelle meeting each other.

10:13 p.m. - No, thank you, guy says to the tv.

10:15 p.m. - I think Michelle Obama would be the hottest first lady ever.

10:19 p.m. - “America is better than the past 8 years.”

Better than sitting on it’s hands while a city drowns. Wow, graphic and awesome.

10:24 p.m. - “I don’t think Senator McCain doesn’t care about what’s going on in the lives of Americans. I think he doesn’t know.”

LOL

10:30 p.m. - Thought he was going to say “rewards drunk driving.”

10:33 p.m. - In 10 years we’ll end dependence on foreign oil.

Thought when he said tap natural gas reserves that he was going to say tap that ass.

10:36 p.m. - This sounds expensive.

10:41 p.m. - Showed a McCain lookalike on tv.

10:45 p.m. - I’ve been guffawing every time he sticks if to McCain. The soaring language in the other parts is not doing as much for me.

10:48 p.m. - ok, this last part is good.

10:52 p.m. - I should say that the crowd is eating this up.

10:57 p.m. - Speech is over, phone battery is almost dead. Heading out, catch y’all later.

Amber had a doctor’s appointment this morning, so I took MARTA to work. I got off the train and made my way toward the office, white earbuds contrasting with my gray shirt and olive green cargo shorts, listening to This American Life on my iPhone. The picture of white hipster douchery could only have been more complete if a friend drove up in a Prius with an Obama sticker on it, stopped and suggested we should totally bail on work to go rock climbing. Or snow boarding.

As I’m about to cross the street, I see a former co-worker of mine from a past job. He’s spastic, but nice enough I guess. He has long hair, speaks with what sounds like a sort of British or maybe Irish accent and spells his name with a Z where an S should be. I ran into him at the same intersection a little over a year ago.

He stops me in the center of the crosswalk as I notice the signal turning from Walk to Don’t Walk.

”What are you doing around six o’ clock tonight?” he asks.

I remove my earbuds and lie.

”We’ll be out.”

”You will?” he asked.

He didn’t sound convinced.

”Yeah, we’re leaving right after work,” I said, not really convincing myself either.

”I’m going to call you this afternoon.”

And so the conversation ended as we both noticed our allotted time to cross the street had long since expired, and with a few more seconds we might start a riot. I was already self-conscience enough about my douchery, and didn’t need to be the guy standing in the center of the crosswalk blocking traffic. People who do that are assholes.

He called just now, but I didn’t answer the phone. He didn’t leave a voicemail. I’m vaguely curious what could be so important that he would stop traffic to tell me about it and ask me to show up after I hadn’t seen him in a year or so. But not that curious.