Midterm 2006 Victims (Part 3)

ROUND FIVE! LIGHTING ROUND! Hands on your buzzer please!

PA HOUSE DISTRICT 8:

DICK STEVENSON

Dick Stevenson needs more stuff on his main page. He's missing a dancing baby and a Denny's menu. Perhaps he needs some background .midi music.

PA HOUSE DISTRICT 15:

TODD HOCKENBERRY

According to Wikipedia.org, a hockenberry is a fruit from the genus rebublicanus staterepresentatatus identified by it's poor web layout and use of frames. Seriously, it's 2006! NO ONE USES FRAMES ANYMORE!

PA HOUSE DISTRICT 16:

SEAN RAMALEY

Sean decided that out of all the pictures he could have used for his main page, the one that made him look like John Mark Karr was the one to go with. The creepy pedophile vote is the oft overlooked swing constiuency in PA 16.

PA HOUSE DISTRICT 21:

LISA BENNINGTON

As Lisa is the only candidate for this seat (barring a surprise come from behind victory for perrenial write in favorite "I.P. Freeley"), she didn't put much effort into putting together a good webpage. Obviously, her and Todd Hockenberry share the same affinity for frames, although Lisa has shown great taste in going with the black & gold theme. Still, if her campaign wanted to show real yinzer identificiation they should have painted her up in team colors waving a Terrible Towel.

PA HOUSE DISTRICT 23:

DAN FRANKEL

I can only imagine what Dan's surprised about in his main page picture. Perhaps it's that the "Frankel Future" is a vast dystopia of crushing machine rule, in which humans are used as fuel for their nefarious ends. Perhaps he's just seen Ralph Cappy naked.

PA HOUSE DISTRICT 30:

SHAWN FLAHERTY

I already did Shawn back in April, so all I have to say is that the webpage is better this time around, right Linda?

DING

And with that sound, the lightning round is over and the score is 15 to 12.

We'll fill in the players later.

More in Part Four....

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Part Four? Seriously? God! I have friggin' work to do!

Tag(s): Election 2006

Midterm 2006 Victims (Part 2)

Before we get into the madness that I know you've all been waiting for, I just wanted to share a couple of observations about these webpages I've been perusing.

A couple of things become immediately apparent once you've look at at enough of them. First, candidates with more money have better webpages. So, the high profile candidates for Governor have some really good websites; third party candidates and candidates for lower offices do not. Second, younger candidates are more likely to have and/or have better webpages. This is obviously a generational thing.

Third, and most important of all, I feel: you must choose your colors carefully. There are really only two choices here: Red or Blue. Red means that you connect with the good old salt-of-the-earth time people, and not those damned heathen commies. Blue means that you connect with the working class and hippies. Chances are you'll want a bit of both.

You can choose White too, but only if you've hired the services of one of those cut rate web designers. Purple is OK, but only as a transition from Red to Blue... otherwise it looks a little "Mark Harris" ifyouknowwhatImean. Green means your a dirty, dirty hippy; yellow means that you are, in fact, color blind. Pink means that you've transcended Mark Harris and moved on to Liberace. Orange indicates that your site is under construction. Gray is reserved for economists turned politicians. I'm not sure what Indigo would mean, but if you know what that color is, you might as well just come out and choose Purple or Pink and stop trying to fool yourself. Choosing Black or Brown is race baiting and is viable only in Tennessee.

Anyway, onto
ROUND THREE: STATE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: 33RD DISTRICT

Eileen Watt



vs.
Frank Dermody

I must say that Eileen starts out with a distinct advantage by looking like the genetic spawn of Sally Field and Heather Locklear, while Frank looks vaguely like Dennis Hastert's younger brother.

To add insult to injury, a young Frank is pictured on the biography page in a suit that was obviously bought at a morgue firesale. If there are any pictures of Eileen in a suit that would cause America's Next Top Model to cry and abuse a designer, we'll never know. Frank's biggest problem seems to be that he has TOO MANY pictures, especially too many pictures of guys in wifebeater t-shirts.

Well... that and I think that if you read Frank's nearly illegible signature backwards in the mirror it says "So Dark the Con of Man." Despite her good looks (and obvious spunk), Eileen hasn't learned how to fit text onto one screen without scrolling. She's also a little text heavy; no one told her that the Internet is not for reading, but for things like the llama song.

I'm going to call this a DRAW. Both Eileen and Frank have to write "The Internet is not a big truck; it is a series of tubes." 1000 times until their webpages improve.

ROUND FOUR: STATE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: 20TH DISTRICT

Don Walko



vs.

Bill Stalter

I imagine a conversation at the Walko headquarters going something like this:

Look, Don. People are pissed about the pay raise. We need a picture for the front page of the website of you looking like a statesman and maybe another picture of you pressing the flesh with constituents. It'll make you look good.

I also imagine a conversation at the Stalter headquarters going something like this:

Billy boy, people are pissed about the pay raise. We need a picture of you for the front page of the website of you looking like a fifth grade science teacher. *FLASH* That'll work. Oh, and can we make the state look slightly askew? Thanks.

This I'll give to Bill: his family is much more attractive and I think that they took the portrait at a bar rather than at Olan Mills. I'm pro-families in bars.

However, Walko has the late Mayor in one of his pictures; I'm pro-late Mayors.

But, in the end Don has more real information on his page and less filler... and it looks less like I designed the site. So the winner for this round is DON WALKO.

BONUS ROUND: STATE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 22ND DISTRICT

I know it's inappropriate to talk about a candidate like this, but Chelsa Wagner is kinda cute in a Rachel Ray kinda way. I'd totally caucus with that, and fortunately for her, Michael Diven doesn't seem to have a webpage.

More in Part 3. ..

Tag(s): Election 2006

Things Discovered in the Series of Tubes

The Internets have changed the way that politics happens. For example, even five years ago only a handful of people would have seen this video:



Or worse, this video:



Perhaps it was better that way.

Tag(s): Election 2006

Midterm 2006 Victims (Part 1)

As we are rapidly approaching November 7th and I am horribly behind schedule on my midterm madness coverage, I figured I should get on the ball and start pwning the 1337 'net skillz of those that would run for public office.

There are a lot of campaigns in and around Western PA that I want to focus on, so, in order to save some time, we're going to forgo the traditional one-post-per-candidate and skip right into the steel cage of death match.

SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! TWO POLITICIANS ENTER; ONE POLITICIAN LEAVES! SEE IT LIVE!

With that, we'll start at the bottom and work our way up:

CITY OF PITTSBURGH COUNCIL DISTRICT #1

If this race was, in fact, a real steel cage of death match, this should be a battle royal. We got ourselves five, count 'em, FIVE candidates for the seat on City Council left vacant by His Lukey-ness. They are, in no particular order, Darlene Harris (D), Joe Lucas (R), Kevin T. Donahue (I), Steven Oberst (I), and Dave Schuilenburg (I).

Notice the use of the word "should". In reality, I could only find one candidate for office that bothered to put up a website. [C'mon folks! If I can do it, so can you.] So, without further adieu:

DAVE SCHUILENBURG

Those of you that aren't follow the topsy turvey world of City Council District #1, Dave is the Canadian. Seriously: the dude is a terrorist loving, pot smoking, prescription drug importer... or at least that's what Fox News tells me. Now, I could delve into my bag of Cannuck jokes and pull out a couple of gems about maple syrup, hockey, and Labatts... but that would be distasteful, eh? Besides, there are better things to make fun of on Dave's website.

For example, I'm not quite sure how I feel about the "Ask to Meet Dave" page. It sounds really creepy, and the picture on that page does nothing to assuade my fears. In fact, I have this strange feeling that Dave is standing outside my window watching and waiting for me to go to the bathroom. I mean, why else would there be a "Request a Visit" check box at the bottom.

Sadly, Dave's webpage is lacking both photos and endorsements. He promises that they are "Coming soon," but with about a week to go, I'm not expecting much. Of course, I don't expect much from City Council candidates.

But the winner by default in 1st District is DAVE SCHUILENBURG.

STATE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: 42ND DISTRICT

IN THIS CORNER: ALL THE WAY FROM MOUNT LEBANON PENNSYLVANIA WEIGHING IN AT 170, DEMOCRAT KICKING POUNDS:

MARK HARRIS

AND IN THIS CORNER: ALL THE WAY FROM MOUNT LEBANON PENNSYLVANIA WEIGHING IN AT 170, REPUBLICAN KICKING POUNDS:

MATT SMITH

Wait... or is it the other way around? Seriously, I'm not even sure that Matt and Mark aren't the same person. I mean, they both have the same awkward picture on the first page of their website. I really can't tell white creepy looking politicians apart anymore.

Matt (or is it Mark's) website seems a bit less busy though; Mark (or is it Matt) just needs a couple of web polls, a list of links, and the current iTunes track, and me'd have a MySpace page: OMG MATT TOTALLY DISSED ME, WTF! and what not. Mark does seem to have an unhealthy persecution complex, and devotes a whole lot of the site to implying that Matt's supporters vandalized his signs. Personally, it's probably terrorist, or the gay mafia, or brown people.

Which are the real reasons why we need a big, deadly, straight wall along the border with Rossyln Farms.

Matt's photos are a bit more upbeat (although it looks like they were taken with a disposable camera) and involve more than just sign destroying.

So, the winner in the 42nd District is MARK SMITH, no, wait, MATT HARRIS... MATT SMITH.

More coming soon in Part II...

Tag(s): Election 2006, Dave Schuilenburg, Matt Smith, Mark Harris

Gridlock: On the Protection against Faction

There's a part of me that never left the political science department at Bureaucracy University.* This is the part that's still has a soft spot for Montesquieu, Mill, Madison, and other political philosophers that don't begin with "M". This is the part that understands things like separation of powers and dialectical materialism. This is the part that understands, as Mill and Hegel did, that conflict is not necessarily a bad thing, but can result in a form of creative destruction. Most importantly, this is the part that understands the value of gridlock - the complete inability to move a political agenda forward.

In the last six years we've seen what, back in a more politically attuned age, would have caused people to flood into the streets in violent mobs: wars, curtailment of civil liberties, increase of cronyism and nepotism, corruption, and, above all, incompetence at the highest levels. At the same time we have seen complete and total domination of one party at the expense of the other and at the expense of the good of the people that they supposedly represent and govern. I would go so far to suggest that these represent the hallmark of tyranny. And while others may try to make excuses for it, a tyranny of the majority is still tyranny.

In The Federalist Papers, Madison discusses at length the danger of faction. He argues that the remedy to the problem of the most egregious examples of faction, the tyranny of the majority, is a republican form of government with sufficient checks and balances [Federalist #10]. He says, "A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party." The only solution is to mitigate the effects of faction, by a division of the governmental structure into branches and bicameral legislative bodies.

So, while the Founders here never contemplated the rise of organized national political parties, the sentiments can be extrapolated just the same: the domination of any one faction needs to be mitigated. Majority faction must be checked in order to secure the rights of the minority. This, however, has not happened: one party, on faction, has now come to dominate all three branches of government. The result is exactly what Madison predicted: the mischiefs of faction.

The point is this folks: gridlock - for lack of a better work - is good.

Gridlock crushes a rampaging majority.

Gridlock slows the trampling of rights.

Gridlock allows compromise and clearer heads to prevail.

Gridlock, that dirty word that politicians rail against, will save this country from the unintended consequences of its own desires.

So on November 7th: vote for America; vote for gridlock.

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* Go Fightin' Triplicates!

Tag(s): Midterm Elections, Gridlock

The 411 on 311 ($1.99 at 7-11)

[Yesterday's post was deleted by a State Senate clerical error. ]

I'm of mixed mind on the new City-wide 311 information system.

In its technologically advanced format, Ravenstahl's Response Line allows city residents to register non-emergency concerns, ask questions or make comments by dialing 311. Operators will log the concerns, assign them a number for future follow-up and forward them to the appropriate departments for action.

Two years ago, at the height of the city's financial crisis, former mayor Tom Murphy closed the former service center to save money. The late Mayor Bob O'Connor started the process to reopen a service center, and Mr. Ravenstahl continued the project when he took office Sept. 1 after Mr. O'Connor's death.

Mr. Ravenstahl said he isn't concerned that the system will be overwhelmed with calls about unfilled potholes and unpaved streets. He said he wants to know about all of those situations so the city can deal with them in a timely fashion, regardless of the city's tenuous finances.

OK, so on one hand the new 311 system will reduce the calls that I receive from people in the City (and parts of the County) that think I do everything. On the other hand, however, I will now be inundated with calls directed to me by a phone system that thinks that I do everything.

So, of course, I'm concerned, ever if Hizzoner is not.

Now, there's going to be a big difference, of course, between "taking appropriate action" and "solving the problem"... but I doubt that the general public understands that nuance and there's always going to be some level of bureaucratic leakage in getting anything done. We have TPS reports to fill out.

There's also that whole thing about redistributing limited resources across an increasing number of problems. At least when we didn't know about the problems, we didn't have to solve the problems. Now we have to solve the existing problems and the new problems.

But that's just my gripe as a bureaucrat; my gripe as a citizens is that people like me are going to be trying to solve my complaints.

That's scary.

Tag(s): 311

Report: 83% of Americans don't Understand Satire

(Reuters) - Carnegie Mellon University researchers announced the results of their three year, seven and a half month, four day, twelve minute and thirty-three second study of the state of satire in the United States.

Announcing the findings was Dr. Karl Gruber of the Institute for Mathematics, Creative Writing and Public Policy (IMCWAPP) at CMU.

"It is disturbing that in the current climate of fear, unrest, cynicism, irony, pathos, puns, and litotes, currently 83% of Americans cannot recognize satire when compared with actual real life events," said Gruber.

Gruber heads a team of eleven researchers at IMCWAPP, dedicated to finding the disconnect between perceptions and reality.

"It started out as more of anecdotes: stories of people burning copies of A Modest Proposal after finding out that it called for the eating of babies. Then there was the instance in Alabama where, after reading a compendium of the works of Alexander Pope, two Senators put forth a bill mandating 25 yrs to life for Lock Rapists. And of course all the politicians that go on The Colbert Report"

"My colleague Dr. Frank M. Arouet and I set about to test people's responses to satire in a controlled environment. The results were surprising."

According to the study, 83% of all Americans were unable to correctly identify obvious pieces of satire from talk radio. Further, 64% of those that incorrectly identified satire as actual opinion, when solicited, gave money to the supposed cause or were sold T-Shirts with satirical opinions. A further 20% went to rallies on said satirical opinion and, in one instance, a man actually set himself on fire.

"I mean," says Arouet, "I knew people in this country were dumb, but I though 'Blue Collar Comedy' Dumb not 'Dumber than a bag of ball peen hammers' Dumb. Heck, we could have completely made up our research and just asked for more funding."

Gruber and Arouet announced that they will be continuing on their $340 million study from an undisclosed hotel in Aruba, where they will conduct indepth research on the number of salt grains that can fit on the rim of a margarita glass.

Tag(s): Satire

Congress Critters

Now, I'm not a fan of Congress Critters generally speaking. In fact, if this blog were a comic book, my arch-nemesis would be Senator Payne or Congressman Destruction or perhaps to a lesser extent Delegate Death, who would only do battle with me in American Samoa, Guam, the US. Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia.

Delegate Death is not expected to be a big sell when the action figures come out.

However, if you want to raise your level of ire about the current 109th Congress to a point where blood will shoot out of your eyes and make flames shoot out of the side of your head, take a look at this article in Roling Stone. If you're too lazy to get to even through the first paragraph, here's the second and it pretty much sums up the tone of the rest of the article:

These past six years were more than just the most shameful, corrupt and incompetent period in the history of the American legislative branch. These were the years when the U.S. parliament became a historical punch line, a political obscenity on par with the court of Nero or Caligula -- a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater, a Burkina Faso with cable.

Makes the whole "Do Nothing" 80th Congress look like a regular pillar of legislative excellence.

Tag(s): Congress, Corruption

Friday Metablogging

Every now and then, I click on the little Sitemeter icon down at the bottom of the page, just to check up on my guests, make sure their drinks are filled, and look at their invitations. I'm always glad when people decide to stop by and take advantage of my eHospitality, but I'm equally curious as to how they actually got here. We're not exactly a Stuckey's on the Infotainment Superhighway.

The vast majority of my guests here come from parts unknown, which means that, frightening as it may seem, people actually have me bookmarked and check me regularly. Shame on you people for encouraging me.

The next largest chunk of visitors are referred by the good folks there on your right. Some of whom are witty, insightful, and more than marginally attractive and Fester.

After that, everyone else is referred here by various search engines, hitting on the terms "Angry," "Drunk," "Bureaucrat", "Angry Drunk," and "Beaurocrat." Most disturbingly of all, however, is that some people are actually searching for the terms "Angry Drunk Bureaucrat", which means that either (a) somebody's looking for me and can't find me or (b) there is significant interest in the field of Angry Drunken Bureaucracy.

It's a growth industry, apparently.

There are, however, some other searches that leave me... well... baffled, curious, and scared. For example:

I can only assume that the person searching on Knoxville Municipal Boundaries, merely got lost and ended up here because at some point I talked about all three concepts.

The link from the Wearing My Polo search led to a post on a business casual Friday, although my hope is that someone thought that I was some sort of expert on male fashion and had pictured me as some ripped demi-god, instead of the short, stocky troll from accounting that I am.

This site, for some reason, is your current #1 Google Search hit for the phrase "The hills are alive with the sound of crap" for reasons I do not wish to explain, nor have the time so to do. It immediately brings to mind visions of Maria Von Trapp at a cholera outbreak.

That's a phrase, by the way, that I'm also sure to be the #1 Google hit.

Some lost first year English major probably typed in the phrase "whan that april with its showres soote - what does this mean" at the 11th hour before a midterm paper was due, hoping for the Cliffs Notes to The Canterbury Tales, but instead got this place. This guy is probably failing and it's my fault.

I'm sure that there is a reasonable explanation and perfectly innocent story behind why a person from the UK reached this site via the search phrase "Berlin Sauna Rules what to wear", but I haven't come up with anything plausible yet. I can only hope that this person found what they were looking for on this site, and didn't end up inappropriately staring at some guy's shwanstucker.

To answer the person who showed up here wondering "What happens on Bastille Day", the answer is "What happens on Bastille Day, stays on Bastille Day... even if it means running backwards away from the Germans because you were laughing at their shwanstuckers in the sauna."

The most frightening search I've found so far has been "how to hurt a bureaucrat." I don't know what this sick, sick person's problem is, but I'll give him the answer anyway: check his blog every day, tell your friends, make sure that they tell their friends. Try to get the blog posted to some national news aggregator and sit back while his server crashes. That'll show him. Trust me.

And finally, I don't know what possessed a visitor to put these terms together. I have no idea what it means or what the visitor was hoping to discover. I don't know if there was a rodent problem, an acorn problem, or something that fell under some obscure pet lemon law. I don't want to think about it too much as it's causing my eyes to twitch and my brain to melt, but apparently, if you search on the phrase "Certified Preowned angry squirrel", you hit this site.

But the worst part is: The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat is only the #3 site for Certified Preowned Angry Squirrels. Here's hoping that this post bumps us to #1.

Stay tuned for more...

In Mordor where Santorum lies

Saw this over at JP's other place:

LEVITTOWN - Embattled U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the "Eye of Mordor" has instead been drawn to Iraq.

Santorum used the analogy from one of his favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien's 1950s fantasy classic, "Lord of the Rings," to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq into terms any school kid could easily understand.

"As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else," Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.

"It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S.," he continued. "You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States."

I think that Ricky has a point here as there are some stark similarities* between the Lord of the Rings triology and the GWoT/Iraq War:

• The War is against a faceless, ever present evil;
  
• The King resorts to a backdoor draft by remobilizing the Dead;
  
• There are a cast of characters that are seemingly useless (you're doing a heck of job Tom Bombadil!);
• They are being both led by a shifty, untrustworthy being that used to be human-like;
  
• Frodo and Sam are sent into Mordor without a clear plan, limited body armor, and no real exit strategy.
  

Of course there are some key differences as well. First, in the final section of the third book [the part that Peter Jackson fortunately left out of his bladder busting epic] the War of the Ring actually does come home for the Hobbits, despite all attempts by Gandalf to fight them in Mordor so they don't have to fight them in the Shire. Ricky probably shouldn't have skpped this part, by the way.

Second, the Chieftain of the Dúnedain has actual prior military experience, almost 70 years worth. Today, he'd be Bob Dole.

And finally: Sam and Frodo's "friendship" wouldn't be permitted in today's US Army.

Now, if Santorum was a real Tolkien nerd, he would have realized that there are many more stories within the Middle Earth story cycle that are more apropos to the current situation than just the War of the Ring.

For example, Eärnur the last King of Gondor, in his pride, accepted the challenge of the Witch-King, entered Minas Morgul, and was lost.

OK, maybe a better example would be Ar-Pharazôn the twenty-fifth and last King of Númenor. He usurped the throne, assailed Mordor and brought Sauron back to Númenor as a hostage, but Sauron seduced him promising power and eternal life, and persuaded him to sail on and attack Valinor itself. As punishment for this act, the island of Númenor sank beneath the waves of the Great Sea. Only a few of the Faithful of Númenor, including Elendil and Isildur, survived.

But probably the best example from Middle Earth comes from the first age, when Morgoth assailed and destroyed the two trees of Valinor, Telperion and Laurelin, stole the Silmarils, and escaped to Middle Earth. Fëanor swore an oath to recover the Silmarils, and many of the Noldor followed him into exile in pursuit of the jewels. Through a course of bloodshed and betrayal of the Teleri at Alqualondë, Fëanor and his seven sons returned to Middle-earth, and began a war against the Dark Lord which lasted throughout the first age. The lifes of many Deep Elves were lost but, in the end, it was the efforts of a Man that brought the host of the Valar to Middle Earth to utterly defeat the Dark Lord. In the process, however, all of Beleriand was destroyed.

Of course, Ricky probably skipped all that because of all that Man on Elf sex.

Seriously.

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P.S. I wrote post prior to seeing this. Great minds and all that.

Tag(s): Santorum, Lord of the Rings