Maybe, baby

Seven days out of the midterm congressional elections, and if you listen to the pundits, the Democrats look poised to capture the House, Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. likes to eff white women, Michael J. Fox is perfectly healthy, and Nancy Pelosi will relocate the speakers' office to a bath house in Dupont Circle.

But seriously, if the polls are even remotely accurate, the Democrats will win about 20 seats, switching control of the House of Representatives and really frustrating Dick Gephardt. In the Senate, however, it will be a much tighter fight, and will come down to 7 races. The Democrats need to win 6. Here they are, in the order that they first come into my head right now:

Knock 'em out the box, Rick (Pennsylvania)
Incumbent Rick "The Haircut" Santorum is facing Bob "I am so a democrat" Casey in the most gratifyingly lopsided contest of the cycle. Santorum has been in the Senate for 12 years and is trailing by double digits in most polls. It's all so sweet. Highlights of the last six years include Santorum claiming we had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Santorum saying women belong in the home, and Santorum using the phrase "man on dog" in public. See ya on the 700 club!
Prediction: Casey in a walk.

And it Burns, Burns, Burns (Montana)
Incumbent Republican Senator Conrad "I'm corrupt and I'm an idiot" Burns squares off against Jon "My last name ends in an R, not an S. Grow up" Tester in a very exciting race pitting a farmer (Tester) against a mental retard (Burns). Fun facts: Tester is family friends with Pearl Jam guitarist Jeff Ament, and responding to this question, "Conrad, how can you live back there with all those niggers?" Burns once said, it was "a hell of a challenge". Seriously.
Prediction: Tester by 4.

Take me to another place, Take me to another land (Tennessee)
Race baiting, incredibly negative ads, and it isn't even Massachusetts! Republican Bob "My daughter makes out with girls on Facebook" Corker and Democrat Harold "Hey, what are you doing later" Ford are going at it, and it has gotten very dirty. The RNC ran an ad bringing up Ford's tendency to date white women (apparently still a no-no in Tennessee), and has attacked Ford's politically corrupt family. It's all very weird because Ford really isn't black, but, whatever.
Prediction: Corker by 5.

What else can you show me (Missouri)
Stem cells and Marty McFly, oh my! Republican incumbent Jim "No" Talent is facing Claire "I'm much more attractive in my campaign literature" McCaskill. Talent beat the late Mel Carnahan's widow Jean Carnahan in 2002, so I hope he gets destroyed. Also, Jim Caviezel spoke Aramaic in a friendly campaign ad for a Republican ballot measure, so I'm pretty sure God is probably pissed off about that.
Prediction: McCaskill by two.

Got to get down to it, soldiers are cutting us down (Ohio)
Incumbent Mike "No clever nickname" Dewine is facing Sherrod "I know, my name sounds black" Brown. This has become incredibly uninteresting because Brown seems to be running away with it in a state where Republicans are incredibly unpopular and yet John Kerry still managed to tank. But that's another story.
Prediction: Brown by a bunch.

Shadows even the silver spoon (Rhode Island)
Incumbent "Lancelot" Lincoln Chafee is going up against Sheldon "Ironic last name" Whitehouse.
I have no interest in this race.
Prediction: Whitehouse by 7.

A wheel in the ditch, And a wheel on the track (Virginia)
My favorite race of the cycle by far, featuring a genuine villain, George "Johnny Reb/Macaca/How dare you accuse me of being Jewish" Allen and a genuinely bad public speaker, Jim "I may not respect women" Webb. The issues do not matter in this race anymore; it's all about who's a racist and who demeans women and whose mom was afraid to tell her son that she was Jewish and who speaks exclusively in football metaphors and who chews tobacco and who wrote dirty books and who uses the confederate flag as fashion statement and who is dumb as a bag of rocks. Politics. It's FANNNNNNtastic.
Prediction: Allen by 4.

So, the Dems hold their seats, even with a tight one featuring Bob "I know a guy who knows a guy" Menendez and Tom "My daddy was Governor" Kean in New Jersey, and pick up 5 out of 6 Republican seats, leaving Harry Reid as Minority Leader and some Republican presidential contender in the running for (barely) majority leader. It's just like early 2002 all over again, except the Dems will have the House, and Tom Daschle won't be involved, and George Bush won't be popular.

Friday News Roundup

- President Bush has abandoned his Iraq mantra, "Stay the course", in favor of the new slogan, "Make your peace with God now". Do not be surprised if he and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld soon relocate to Guyana and buy large quantities of Kool-Aid.

- The Cardinals went up 3 games to 1 on the Tigers yesterday, utterly bumming me out. But, since I've watched exactly one pitch of this series, at least I don't have to have it shoved in my face. Oh, here's something I never knew -- David Eckstein is scrappy.

- The wheels are fully coming off for Republican candidates everywhere. Highlights include:

- Michael J. Fox flipping and flopping and dealing a potential death blow to Jim Talent in the US Senate race in Missouri, resulting in Jim Caviezel speaking in Aramaic in a response ad. No joke.
- Married Nevada Gubernatorial candidate and current Congressman Jim Gibbons tried to sleep with a Las Vegas showgirl, then tried to bribe her not to tell her story, then it was discovered he has had an illegal nanny.
- And my absolute favorite, from Macaca himself, George "I put the Jim in Crow" Allen put out a press release attacking Jim "I need public speaking lessons" Webb by quoting sexually tinged passages from Webb's novels. Webb responded by saying, "What, are you an idiot?" Allen followed up by saying: "Oh, you remember all those times I insulted blacks? And wore confederate flag pins? And hung a noose in my office? And put a deer's head in a black family's mailbox? You remember all that? Ok, that doesn't matter because I was acting in a one man play, "Racist Like Me".

- Hey, Jim McGreevey is back in news! The New Jersey Supreme Court yesterday decided that gays can legally marry in New Jersey. Whoa! Won't that destroy the moral fiber of the Garden State? Haha, we're talking about New Jersey, never mind.
Anyway, McGreevey said that he would marry his boyfriend if the courts allowed it. I hope McGreevey and Michael Strahan will live happily ever after.

Thank you, Chuck Norris

The Chuck Norris facts have been bouncing around for over a year by now, and they even spawned Jack Bauer facts, Jose Valentin's moustache facts, and probably others. And Chuck has taken it all in stride, responding humorously when asked about them and graciously not karate chopping his inquisitors.

But now, Chuck has become a scribe for World Net Daily, and in a column this week, he discusses the Chuck Norris facts, their relavance, and of course, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Wait, what?

That's right, folks, the star of Sidekicks, Invasion USA, and Missing in Action III is a full on proselytizer. He has always been a staunch conservative, joining the A list of celebrity Republicans including Bo Derek and the wife from Everybody Loves Raymond, but apparently aside from loving low taxes, Walker Texas Ranger also loves the healing power of Jesus Christ.

The money quote (if there can be one, this article is gold, baby!):

"...Alleged Chuck Norris Fact: "Chuck Norris' tears can cure cancer. Too bad he never cries. Ever."

There was a man whose tears could cure cancer or any other disease, including the real cause of all diseases – sin. His blood did. His name was Jesus, not Chuck Norris.

If your soul needs healing, the prescription you need is not Chuck Norris' tears, it's Jesus' blood..."

Amen, Chuck. Amen. If that's not a billboard, I don't know what is.

So the message from Chuck seems clear: All you cancer, multiple sclerosis, ALS, and leukemia patients out there: Stop fucking!

Square one, my slate is clear

Now that baseball season is over, I can return my focus to important things again, like Congressman sleeping with pages, hilarious pictures of celebrities, dumb CNN headlines, and Mike Tyson. It feels so good to be back in my wheelhouse.

My favorite story of the week: according to nerdly New York blogger Ben Smith, Republican Senate candidate John "Don't call me Leo McGarry" Spencer, running against Hillary "Marriage of Convenience" Rodham Clinton, called Clinton ugly in the 60's, wondered how Bill ever married her, and claimed that she had had loads of plastic surgery. To which Bill Clinton responded, "Yes, you are correct sir! Hi oh!"

To be fair, despite how much of a sex symbol he has become (to myself included), the late 60's early 70's were not the heyday for Bill/Hillary attractiveness:


I'm not sure how a guy like that ends up sleeping with thousands of women (except that one intern, that was just cigars) but times change. Bill now looks like an elder statesman, and Hillary now looks like this:

And two steps back

It took me a while to come up with the words to describe how I felt about the Mets loss to the Cardinals on Thursday night. The feeling at the stadium (up until the 9th inning) was incredible; waving towels, non stop Lets Go Mets chants, and all 55,000 of us were on hand for the greatest catch in baseball history. Sadly, because of the weird angle where are seats were located, I couldn't actually see the catch, but I heard it and felt it and saw two curtain calls for a defensive play, something I have never seen before.

But, one of the Brothers Molina came through in the clutch, hitting a just over the wall home run off Aaron Heilman (and over Endy Chavez), and Carlos Beltran forgot his job is supposed to be to hit baseballs and struck out looking to end the game. The entire sequence took about 20 minutes. Very shocking and yet anticlimactic. I have never felt anything quite like it.

The skies opened up as we left Shea stadium for the 7 train, and the wait to get to the train platform was equally sad and soaked. It was horrible. One of the most depressing scenes I have ever been a part of, with thousands of Mets fans asking the same question, "Why didn't he swing the bat?" We made our way onto the train, and finally back to Manhattan, where I watched Endy Chavez's catch on ESPN for the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth times. Quite a catch.

Next time.

One step up

I apologize for the recent slew of Mets related posts. If there is a World Series berth, I won't say there won't be any more, but they will decrease as my nervousness level right now is somewhere between Bush on 9/11 and a guy whose condom just broke with a prostitute. My stomach is doing things I didn't think it was capable of. And I'm about to make it worse by traveling to New York tonight, for about 18 hours, to go to Shea Stadium and watch Game 7. Oh boy.

Huge game last night by John "The Main Man" Maine, and predictable frightening performance by Billy "Uh Oh" Wagner, who continues to drive me closer and closer to an extremely premature heart attack. It was good to see some balance in the production, as well, with Reyes, LoDuca, and Green getting it done and Delgado and Beltran able to relax a bit. But what the eff is up with David Wright?

The Mets haven't played a Game 7 since the 1986 series, which of course they won. And they were down in that game until Ray Knight came through with a homerun and further cemented his name in Mets lore. I will be in Section 21 of the Mezzanine tonight, the familiar level where I watched Todd Pratt beat the Diamondbacks and Benny Agbayani beat the Giants. And tonight, I will be there to watch Wright and Reyes and Delgado and Beltran write the next chapter in team history.

It's not dark yet

The Mets took a bad loss last night in St. Louis, putting them on the brink of elimination with Game 6 to be played tonight. As a Met fan who lived through years of futility bookending two years of postseason hijinks in 1999 and 2000, this is a familiar feeling. They (although a completely different team) won games 4 and 5 against the Braves in the NLCS in 1999, and had dramatic series wins against the Diamondbacks in 1999 and the Giants in 2000. But despite those heroics, they haven't gotten over the hump of facign eliminiation and then winning the series since another Game 6, the Game 6, in the World Series in 1986.

I think Met fans everywhere are channeling that team, that team that avoided Mike Scott in a potential Game 7 against the Astros, that team that had the swagger. The team that came back from down two, two outs on an October night. Carter, Hernandez, Wilson, Strawberry, Gooden, Orosco. Heroes and tragic heroes. Bad guys and good guys. It's Game 6. The Mets have won two pretty big Game 6's before. Right now, they just need one more.

Fade into Bolivian

Oh, it's so on. Mike Tyson is planning "Mike Tyson's World Tour", where I'd imagine hilarity will ensue. When pressed for details, Iron Mike said that some fights on the tour might involve... Wait for it... Women!!!!! Thats right!



Oh my god how is it possible that he keeps getting more entertaining? Is there a precedent for someone who continually completely surprises the entire population of the world with everything single thing he does? At this point we should expect every next wacko move he makes, but I gotta be honest, he keeps me on my toes. Here's hoping for kangaroo boxing next!

Some quick hits:

- Chicago White Sox infield Juan Uribe is wanted in the Dominican Republic for shooting a guy, continuing the long line of guys with last names that start with Ur shooting guys. Next on the list? Keith Urban or Steve Urkel, or possibly Stefan Urquel.

- Kim Jong Il (New nickname "The Illest") is preparing another nuclear test. You know what that means! More bad puns and photos like this:

- And finally, in simply horrifying posthumous Crocodile Hunter news, Steve Irwin's 8 year old daughter Bindi is getting her own wildlife show. Several scenes were filmed before Irwin's predictable death-by-stingray. Here's the money quote from Bindi, "Some people think that I would be afraid of them, but I'm never ever afraid of an animal." Umm....

Hawaii 5.0

A topsy turvy weekend to be a New York Met fan, with Billy Wagner getting beat for the loss late in the game on Friday after a terrific game by Carlos Delgado and then Steve Trachsel showing everyone why his ERA is just below 5 with his "performance" on Saturday. But then, the lineup woke up on Sunday night just in time, they hit a bunch of home runs, and the game is now a best of three with Tom Glavine pitching tonight and two out of three games at Shea.

Now that baseball is out of the way, we can talk about more important things. Football! The Jets beat Miami in a squeaker yesterday. All right, I'm kidding. On to actually more important things: Natural Disasters! Oh, you know this is going to be good because the Bush administration has been so good at handling these in the past.

An earthquake struck Hawaii over the weekend (What? Now they're too good for volcanoes?) and it has been the lead story on most of the news stations and websites since. The toll: no fatalaties, some structural damage, and some power outages. All right, so how long until President Bush shows up on a pile of pineapples with a bullhorn and decries renegade tremors?

Once again, busy week for me. I'll be back in full force soon.

Baseball, Nuclear Brinksmanship, and Congressional Pedophilia (Or What I Missed On My European Vacation)

So, as usual, I go away for a little while and something extremely newsworthy happens. I went to a wedding in February and Dick Cheney shot a man in the face. I moved back to Boston over a weekend and Scott McClellan sweatily resigned. And now, I go to Europe for two weeks and the Mets sweep a playoff series, Mark Foley (R-eally? What are you doing after band practice? TTYL) resigns from Congress after being outed as a pedophile, and Kim "You're busting my balls, Hans" Jong Il fires off a nuclear test missile. That's it! I'm never leaving my computer screen again. For the record, I had a good trip but not a good flight back, where I was sitting next to a woman who looked exactly like Auric Goldfiner and snored like a chainsaw.

Let's break these stories down, one by one.

1. You better, you better, you bet

Oh lord. The Mets make the playoffs for the first time in 6 years and I have to struggle to find the games on in Scotland. I did manage to find one bar in Glasgow that was showing the game so I went (by myself) to watch Billy Wagner nearly blow the game and then finally get the winning strike out. So I celebrated, alone, and skipped my way out of the bar and back to my hotel room. They won the next two games, without my watchful eye, and are rolling on to St. Louis.

I'm less ecstatic than I was when they made the NLCS and World Series in 1999 and 2000. Maybe it's because they were almost expected to be playing this well throughout the season, maybe it's because I'm getting older and sports are not as important to me as they were then. Sadly, I think it's the latter, and I think it's less a sign of me growing up as a sign of me growing lame.

Regardless, Let's go Mets!

2. Before I use it, and lose my cool

Years of broken diplomacy by every single party involved has resulted in -- Hey!!! A nuclear test missile fired by Kim Jong-Il! Excellent. How's that war in Iraq coming?

So North Korea gives the US the ability to send John Bolton and his moustache to the UN to fuss and fret and bitch and moan and threaten sanctions and divert attention from congressional republican pedophilia and blah blah blah... To be honest, it got uninteresting after about six hours, but it did result in a lot of iterations of this image, from the best movie of 2004, Team America: World Police! Fuck yeah!



3. Tough boys, come over here
And finally, the story of the year if it hadn't been for Cory Lidle and perhaps one of the most bizarre political news items ever. Republican Congressman Mark Foley of Florida, after carrying on years of sexually inappropriate email and instant message conversations and God knows what else with underage congressional pages, resigns from Congress when the story breaks, then pretends it was all caused by an alcohol problem and being molested as a child. Wow. So illegal and horrible activity can be explained away by upbringing an addiction? Wait, what party are you a member of?

And to top it all off (pun intended), Denny "Denny's" Hastert and his staff knew about these emails etc... for years and did nothing about it, with the exception of having an overly large meal, but Hastert does that anyway so it wasn't anything special. Like Nixon and Clinton, Hastert should have learned his lesson: "They get you on the come back" -- Coverups = bad. Foley should have resigned years ago to spend more time with his "family" or underage kids who didn't work for the Federal Government and the leadership could have washed their hands of it. But, no. Typical political arrogance. And it's all so sweet.

Enjoy the weekend folks. By Monday, I will have rediscovered my voice and will be funny again!

From outerspace

That's right folks, I have returned from the Foggy Dew. And I was already to do a, "Holy hell, look what I missed when I was away in Europe" post, and then, during my first day of work back yesterday, Cory Lidle crashes a plane into a building in New York. I suppose my Mark Foley jokes are going to have to wait until tomorrow.

The "What are the odds" conversations have been repeated already ad nauseum, but seriously, what are the odds? I had three messages from a friend, the first one being, "Plane hit a building in New York", the second, "It was Cory Lidle's plane!", the third, "Cory Lidle was flying the plane! Cory Lidle is dead! Cory Lidle is dead in the plane!" Just an incredible story; one of the most amazing that I can remember. A disgruntled Yankee, fresh off an embarrassing team loss and flapping off at the gums, crashes his plane into an apartment building in Manhattan and makes everyone get really scared for about 5 minutes.

The strangest part of it all is the back story; Lidle recently was featured in a Times article where he talked about how safe flying is and how there is a parachute in the plane to prevent accidents. I guess "flying into a building" doesn't really have too many safety precautions, eh?

Tune in tomorrow, where I will bask in the glow of a Mets victory, and tell stories of my travels and of the enormous news stories I missed while getting drunk in Scotland.

A fresh start over, different hand to play

Speaker of the House Denny "Jabba" Hastert (R-Tatooine) said today that he would dismiss anyone on his staff found to have covered up anything about Mark Foley (R-Nambla, ret.) and his conduct with Congressional pages.

While you're mulling that over, Moderately Effed reminds you to tune in to Moderately Effed TV tonight at 9 p.m. for another episode of our critically acclaimed retrospective, Republicans Who Ignore the Blinking Neon Arrow Blatantly Pointing Right at Them. Tonight, Quint narrates "Dick Cheney, Head of the 2000 Vice Presidential Selection Committee." That's tonight at 9 on METV.

In related news, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow today called the Clinton Administration's handling of North Korea "appeasement," calmly laying blame for our current, pants-shittingly scary situation on someone who left office six years ago.

And finally, noted hott femmale actorr Scarlett Johansson has this to say about relationships in the upcoming November issue of Allure magazine: "I do think on some basic level we are animals, and by instinct we kind of breed accordingly." In related news, I'm going to change my pants.

There was supposed to have been an Earth-shattering kaboom!

Day 1 of the North Korean nuclear age and we're all still here. That, I suppose, is a plus.

Fun fact: last year, Secretary of Ineptitude Condi Rice made light of North Korea's nuclear ambitions. "'I do think the North Koreans have been, frankly, a little bit disappointed that people are not jumping up and down and running around with their hair on fire,' she told The Wall Street Journal," writes the New York Times editorial board.

Smell that, Condi? That's every hair on my fucking body that's on fire. And I'm an Ashkenazi Jew. That's a lot of hair.

Senor Dusty, can I have your watch when you are dead?

So I'm sitting here, calmly enjoying some marijuana, and I hop onto the Internet to check something and I see this on NYTimes.com:


FUUUUUUUUUUCK. Why they gotta fuck up a boy's high, man?

But it's getting there

I am nearing the end of my European Vacation with a day and a half in Dublin, which at this moment is cold and dark with looming rain. I slept for about 12 hours last night, recovering from a week of work and Scottish nightlife, which can best be defined as alcoholic. It felt very much like the last several days in college; drink as much can you drink every night because you're leaving at the end of the week, and when are you going to see your classmates (colleagues) again? They are spread all over the world, in offices from Estonia to Shangai to Dusseldorf. So, how do we enjoy each other's company? Drinking. Sounds intuitive enough.

After leaving Glasgow in an Easyjet plane that looked like it was painted by Fisher Price, I had my brief sojourn in Belfast, which involved me walking down two streets, getting directions from a Christian book store, buying a candy bar, and taking a cab to the train station, where I slept for the majority of the two and a half hour train ride to Dublin. The scenery that I did see was pretty amazing, but it felt a lot like watching television; I saw this wonderful water and greenery and knew that I couldn't reach it. With the weather the way it is today, I think I'm pretty much relegated to pubs before I shove off to London tomorrow.

So before my day starts in James Joyce style, I figured I would give an update to my loyal readers who have been wondering about my whereabouts and adventures in Europe. It certainly has been an adventure; I've done some stupid things, I suppose as usual, and all in all have been heavily straddling the line between responsible and completely irresponsible. Last night, I spent about an hour trying to find an American baseball game on television, which was met with disgust and ridicule by the bartenders and bouncers that I came across. It was strange; for one of the first times in my life, I felt alien and alone. Typical American hesitation to adapt, I guess.

In a pub yesterday evening, I noticed something about Guiness that I have never noticed before. It's possible I had not been attentive or maybe the property doesn't transmit itself across the Atlantic Ocean, but as the first pour of the pint settled and the head shrunk, the bottom of the pint glass morphed into a lava lamp, as the beer revolved over top of itself violently. Did it take coming to Ireland to finally see it?

Be home soon.

Too bad, McClane. I kinda liked you.

Help!!! Congress is running around molesting our sons!!! Who's going to save us? Wait, who's that? Off in the distance...it's...oh my god it's...

ANDERSON COOPER! In a picture whose caption can only be, "When the lights go out, the boys at Bagram begin a whole different type of mission." Usually I take my news without the side of porn (unless it features Nancy Grace), but no longer. Thank you, cnn.com, for allowing me to consolidate my dual online hunting streams into one.

Meanwhile, back to the fact that our Congressmen are engaged in a wholly new type of pork-barrel politics...the hottest incarnation of Satan this side of Eva Braun, Ann Coulter, takes it upon herself to defend poor Mark Foley, however meekly. She writes, "Foley didn't claim he was the victim of a 'witch-hunt.' He didn't whine that he was a put-upon 'gay American.' He didn't stay in Congress and haughtily rebuke his critics. He didn't run for re-election. He certainly didn't claim he was 'saving the Constitution.'"

Yeah, you bomb-throwing skank, Foley really took the manly route by resigning immediately, discovered a drinking problem, and running off to a treatment center. Denny Hastert practically drove him there. Ladies and gentlemen (aww, who am I kidding...the only person reading this is Quint himself), another non-scandal from your 2006 Republican Party!

You cannot kick-start a dead horse

I love that Quint titles his posts with song lyrics, so I'm copying him. Of course it has nothing to do with anything in the post. Who cares? It's my blog. (Temporarily.)

Just got done with a long day of atoning for all the inappropriate things I'm going to do in this upcoming year. That was fun. If only the Bush Administration could do that before each year...do you think they'd be into that? Admitting wrongdoing before they even do it? Probably moreso than admitting it after the fact. It seems somehow less binding when you do it beforehand. For instance, if they would atone now and then in two months launch a nuclear strike on Iran that doesn't wipe out any nuclear facilities but kills 100,000 people, they could just say, "See? We told you we might mess that up." I like this idea. Where's Rove? Get that fucker on the phone.

Anyway, I got home from temple this afternoon to find the following e-mail in my Inbox:

-------------------------------------------
To: terratiburon@blogger.com
From: mark.foley@house.gov
Subject: Missing you...

Dear PK,

Can't stop thinking about the summer...when can I see you again? Maybe you can cum down for a weekend and do some work. :) I still have the outfit I bought for you...

:*
-Mark
------------------------------------------

There were some pictures attached but I won't bother sharing them. Anyone know what this is about? I think he accidentally sent this to me instead of someone else.