My 4-year old daughter\’s take on James Carville while watching \”Meet the Press\” yesterday:

Her: \”He looks like he\’s the boss.\”

Me: \”Why do you say that?\”

Her: \”He keeps telling everyone else what to do.\”

There are 20 year veterans of print journalism that can\’t put things that succinctly.

It appears that I\’m getting a lot of sympathy due to Jessica Alba\’s appearance in this orgasmic pro-Obama video. (See: Sykes and Shark and Shepherd)

While it\’s flattering to be recognized as the state\’s leading Albatist, (Albologist?) her support for Obama in no way changes things between us. In fact, had she shown up in a pro-McCain video, you may never have heard from me again, as I would have suffered a heart attack. After all, this is the woman who chose to star in \”Good Luck Chuck\” – is that supposed to be a sign of her judgment? As they always say, true love knows no ideology. Or stalking, for that matter.

Clearly, I think the thing with Jessica that gets overlooked the most is her impending virgin birth. I don\’t see any way she can be pregnant, since she has yet to respond to my hundreds of e-mails – many of which contain tastefully done photographs of me re-enacting scenes from \”Three\’s Company.\”

It appears that my Mr. Furley scarves may have gone to waste.

From Overlawyered:

\”The mother of a teen killed by a drunken driver was standing at his casket during his wake when lawyers Robert D\’Amico and Jimmy Burchfield sidled up next to her and offered their services.

Kathleen Gemma filed a complaint with the Supreme Court\’s attorney disciplinary board, saying the two should have left her alone while she was saying her last goodbyes to her son Anthony Gemma. Gemma said one of the lawyers talked about his billboard.\”

Ironically, the website for their law firm contains this slogan:

We\’ll Take Care of You Like Family Would

(Providence WPRI, February 26)

So it\’s official: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and that Frenchie that won Best Actress will be coming to Wisconsin to film the movie \”Public Enemies.\” This shouldn\’t be all that important, but it does seem pretty cool – especially since I have an inexplicable man-crush on Christian Bale.

Anyway, let\’s hope this is a sign of things to come for big-time movies in Wisconsin. In fact, this afternoon, there\’s another big Wisconsin project that has been announced:

Finding Nemo 2: Nemo Closes Wolski\’s

As we get closer to the general election, a lot of names are being thrown around as John McCain\’s possible running mate. This includes Wisconsin\’s own dreamy Paul Ryan, who was named as a contender by columnist Bob Novak on \”Meet the Press.\”

Conventional wisdom says that McCain has to pick someone strong on the economy, young, and from the Midwest – which is where he needs to shore up his support. This is why Ryan is such an attractive choice.

Another possibility is Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, a young Republican in a blue state. But after seeing him on the Sunday morning shows last weekend, it occurred to me that I can\’t possibly support the candidacy of anyone with a mullet like this:

I mean, I realize it\’s Minnesota and all, but are we picking a Vice President of the United States or the Grand Marshall at the State Fair? It appears in this picture that Pawlenty is doing his famous \”You might be a Vice Presidential candidate if…\” comedy routine.

Another favorite seems to Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who endorsed McCain during the Florida campaign. I was reading up on Crist in the Almanac of American Politics, and came across this crazy passage, related to his initial run for governor in 2006:

Below the surface of the campaign, and perhaps driving its themes, were persistent rumors that Crist is gay. A bachelor, Crist was divorced in the early 1980s after a seven-month marriage. At several public events, Crist was asked if he was gay and denied it; the issue did not get much attention in the newspapers, despite determined public efforts by the Reform Party candidate. […] The sleazy disclosures didn’t stop there. Shortly before the September primary, Crist had to confront an 18-year-old paternity claim after sealed records were anonymously faxed and emailed to various reporters; Crist had denied the claim at the time and had relinquished any parental rights to the child, who was put up for adoption. Thus the 2006 Republican primary election will go down in the annals of dirty politics: here a candidate was attacked both for being gay and for fathering a child out of wedlock.

Ah, yes… Florida. Where a candidate can be \”attacked\” for being gay. Perhaps they objected to his plans to raise revenue through a statewide Oscar pool.

Given that this presidential election is all about racial, gender, and ethnic classifications, McCain should take these factors into account when picking a VP – especially if he\’s looking to win Wisconsin. The message from this campaign is that people are much more likely to vote for a candidate with their own ethnic background. Fair enough.

The Almanac mentions that Wisconsin is of 29.9% German ancestry, with the next highest being Polish at 6.5%. As a result, I fully expect this ticket come November:

This cold weather has been tough on all of us. But I just realized how hard the cold has been for those who don\’t have a voice. The ones who cry in silence. Namely, the plants in my house.

My wife was going around watering the plants on Saturday. They\’re all wilted and pathetic looking. I told her how cruel it was of her to just barely keep them alive throughout the winter. Basically, it\’s akin to waterboarding them. My house is now officially the Abu Ghraib of spider plants:

An evil corporate industry jacks its prices up – in some cases to four times their previous levels – to take advtange of a natural disaster/stretch of unforseen severe weather/attack on America and soak the people of Wisconsin.

Behold, the next enemy of the left…BIG SALT!!

Surely by Monday morning, Jim Doyle and Russ Decker will finally find something they can agree on and form a special committee to immediately investiagte price \”gouging\” by the evil purveyors of America\’s most popular food seasoning.

Or maybe, just maybe, they will take a deep breath and dispaly a rudimentary understanding of the basic laws of supply and demand that every kid is taught (or at least used to be taught) in their high school economics class.

What? Stop laughing! It could happen. Maybe when hell freezes over, which given the surrent state of weather in Madison could happen some time next week.

**UPDATE** The morphing of BIG SALT into liberal menace #1 continues. Today, they are ruining the environment. How long before they\’re blaming salt for so-called golobal warming?

I implore you to immediately stop working (unless you happen to be performing head cancer surgery on someone) and check out \”Stuff White People Like.\” It is absolutely hysterical.

It is kind of hard to navigate around, so I\’ll provide a handy list of links:

1-6 \”Coffee,\” \”Farmers\’ Markets\”
7-16 \”Having Black Friends,\” \”Wes Anderson Movies,\” \”Making you feel bad about not going outside,\” \”Non-profit organizations\”
17-26 \”Awareness,\” \”Microbreweries\”
27-36 \”Marathons,\” \”Not Having a TV,\” \”The Daily Show/Colbert Report\”
37-46 \”Netflix,\” \”Public Radio,\” \”The New York Times\”
47-52 \”Sarah Silverman,\” \”Irony,\” \”Living by water,\” \”Whole Foods\”
53-61 \”Apologies,\” \”Lawyers,\” \”Juno,\” \”Toyota Prius\”
61-71 \”Knowing what\’s best for poor people,\” \”Expensive sandwiches,\” \”Recycling,\” \”Being the only white person around\”

I almost coughed up a lung reading through that.

I\’m getting sick, so I\’ll just throw out a couple lazy and moderately considered thoughts about American Idol this year:

Most of the white girls are total junk. Especially that pasty Irish illegal immigrant. I might vote against John McCain if his plan gives her amnesty. And if the \”Rock and Roll Nurse\” were singing in my basement, I wouldn\’t get off the couch to go see her.

It is impossible to watch a 2-hour Idol without TiVo. Paula Abdul should go to prison for stealing time from millions of peoples\’ lives that they will never get back. In the time she wastes, the nation could be learning things like \”how raising taxes on gas companies will make gas more expensive.\” For example.

The guys weren\’t much better, except for the dreadlocked Italian. The same week one Castro steps down, another steps up. He was pretty good.

Speaking of hair, this guy can dye it and style it any way he wants, but he can\’t hide the fact that it is fleeing his cranium. And I thought PBS had exclusive rights to Big Bird – how did Fox pull that off?

I really like Asia\’h, but I\’m getting a little tired of her whole \”my dad died two days before my audition\” schtick. Every time she mentions it, she justifies her going on to the audition by saying that he would have wanted her to keep singing. I\’m not really comfortable with people channeling the wishes of dead people, so let me make this abundantly clear – in the event of my untimely death, I want everyone I know to stop whatever the hell it is they\’re doing for three straight days and mourn the hell out of my death. I don\’t want anyone to do a damn thing. Now that you\’ve read this, you have legally entered a binding agreement. Sorry.

I have to admit, I am sooooo jealous of Danny Noriega. I bet he gets all the chicks.

By the way, what are the the chances American Idol would have two contestants named Castro and Noriega? Somewhere in America, there\’s some failed contestant named Pinochet who\’s pretty pissed right now. In order to restore the balance of the universe, perhaps we need to support a murderous South American dictator named Chikeze.

Early favorites: Hippy Brooke, Syesha, and this guy. That Australian man candy will be out in the third round – bet on it.

While everyone still seems to be excited about a woman running for President of the US, an even more groundbreaking development has occurred in the world of Islamic terrorism – the terrorists have chosen Sharon Stone as their leader:

Extremist Islamic Terrorists Hail Their New Queen, Sharon Stone

After giving an anti-war interview to Middle Eastern newspaper Al Hayat, Sharon Stone is finally getting rave reviews. Sadly, they\’re not from the trades; they\’re from the terrorists. After visiting the region on a very Angelina Jolie-esque \”fact-finding mission,\” Stone told the paper she feels \”great pain\” thinking about the war in Iraq, prompting extremist leaders like Muhammed Abel Al to get downright gushy with praise: \”This lady is smelling and seeing the dangers for the future of America.\” It\’s not quite the same as getting a plucky pullquote from Jeffrey Lyons, but it\’ll do.

TERRORIST LEADERS APPLAUD SHARON STONE\’S ANTI-WAR REMARKS

This weekend, I watched the outstanding movie \”The King of Kong.\” It\’s about two men who compete for the world high score in Donkey Kong. Plenty of drama and insight into the world of competitive video gaming, especially among guys in their 40s who have been up to it since their youth.

One small side story in the movie deals with a man named Roy Shildt who calls himself \”Mister Awesome.\” This video, not included in the film, talks about the trials and tribulations of Mister Awesome. It is truly not to be missed. (And is mildly NSFW.)

(Thanks to Josh Modell at the Onion AV Club for digging this gem up.)

I went to see a talk by pop culture author Chuck Klosterman tonight at the UW Memorial Theater. I\’ve read a couple of his books, and thought he was worth checking out.

He made an interesting point when talking about fame, and how the bar has been lowered for who is now considered \”famous.\” This fact, I think, is indisputable – but he actually had a salient point linking it to blogging.

The point was this – when bloggers start a blog, they essentially declare themselves a public figure. Whether you have 10 readers a day or 10,000, you have made yourself \”eligible\” for fame. You are in the realm. As a result of this decision to live your life in public, you tend to think of anyone who has more readers than you do as more \”famous.\” If I get 100 readers a day, and my friend Jay gets 200, I consider him to be famous – and since there are millions of bloggers, there tends to be millions of people who are gaining both real and imagined fame in cyberspace. If that makes any sense.

He also made some other points worth mentioning. He commented on a strange phenomenon with regard to the presidential campaign: that you won\’t find very many Democrats that will say that Barack Obama is more qualified to be president than Hillary Clinton – yet you find a lot more Democrats who really want Obama to be president. A really strange disconnect, if you think about it.

I also agree 100% with some points he made about the internet and its effects on music. Basically, he said that too much music goes unappreciated in the era of CD burning and downloading. Back in the day, if you spent your hard-earned money on a tape, you would really put the effort into liking that album, since you invested cash in it. Now, you can get so much more music for free, it\’s hard to really feel any connection to it – if it doesn\’t hit you after one listen, you can always just move on to something else. This could spell the death of the complete album, and could dissuade artists from recording anything that takes repeat listens to appreciate.

Then I came home.

Prior to John McCain sewing up the Republican presidential nomination, there was a lot of angst about his conservative credentials from the right wing. Even now that he has the nomination wrapped up, conservatives (myself included) continue to gripe about his moderate views on certain key issues.

In essence, McCain has become a yardstick by which conservatives can measure their own ideology. Want to show all you blog readers how conservative you are? Just take some shots at McCain. Congratulations, William F. Buckley, that moves you to the front of the line. It reminds me of the Packer fans that paint their house, car, and dog green just to show you how much more of a Packer fan they are than you.

Of course, all this hand-wringing about McCain will be short-lived. By the time November rolls around, Republicans will be so horrified at the prospect of either an Obama or Clinton presidency, they\’ll turn out in droves for McCain. The McCain campaign and its surrogates will do everything in their power to make it seem like the apocalypse will be upon us in the event a Democrat is elected.

As George Will has said, an election is about choosing the best person to lead our country – we don\’t have any \”right\” to choose someone that satisfies every one of our ideological desires. I\’d like a president that does my laundry, but I\’m not sure that\’s going to happen.

So here\’s a message to my fellow conservatives: You\’re conservative. We get it. But the game is over, and you now have a choice between McCain and Obama/Hillary. Take some time to think that over.

In the meantime, I have created a suggested ad for the McCain campaign to use in convincing conservatives to give him their vote:

I watched a good deal of the Roger Clemens/Brian McNamee testimony today, and I was most struck by how criticism of both men mostly fell along partisan lines. Republicans were generally favorable to Clemens (including my former congressman, Tom Davis of Virginia), while Democrats hammered Clemens, harping on his inconsistencies. Maybe Clemens is a big right-winger – who knows?

But I have to say that I am 100% behind the Democrats in this instance. I want to give Elijah Cummings a hug for the aggressive way in which he questioned Clemens. Massachusetts Rep. John Tierney blew holes a mile wide in Clemens\’ deposition interview.

I have no idea why Republicans would line up behind Clemens. Politically, that seems like a losing proposition, since Clemens\’ case is pretty weak. Dan Burton and John Mica embarrassed themselves. A few committee members had no idea what they were talking about.

A couple more points:

Apparently, we\’re supposed to believe that Clemens was taking injections, but they weren\’t steroids or HGH. And his wife was taking HGH, but he wasn\’t. And Andy Pettitte \”misheard\” on several occasions whether his best friend was taking steroids. And that after McNamee injected his wife with HGH, (which apparently \”horrified\” him) he kept McNamee on as his trainer.

A lot of attention was paid to McNamee\’s conflicting statements throughout this ordeal. While lies are never good, it appears McNamee may have been withholding information to protect Clemens. Clearly, he wanted to give as little information possible and let Clemens hang himself, which he did. So in that sense, the lies by both men were meant to benefit The Rocket.

This year seems to be the year where underrepresented groups break through in politics. We could have the first woman or African-American as president, which would represent a huge leap for gender or race status in government. Yet there\’s one group that is still woefully underrepresented in electoral politics – hot people.

As the old saying goes, \”politics is Hollywood for ugly people.\” People who may not necessarily deserve recognition for their looks can force their own celebrity by running for office. This theory shakes out nicely when one looks at the Wisconsin Legislature, which often looks like the Creature Cantina from Star Wars. (\”Senator Greedo, you have the floor.\”)

This weekend at the Defending the Dream Summit, I happened to meet Jill Didier, who is running for Mayor of Wauwatosa. Incumbent Mayor Theresa Estness has decided not to run again – presumably to spend more time hugging Michael McGee. I think it is fair to say, without reservation, that Didier would be an anomaly in the world of political looks. (Like how I said that diplomatically?)

I have no idea what a single one of her positions on the issues is, but she\’d have my vote if I lived in Tosa. She could be for mandating lawn elves in every Wauwatosa yard, and I\’d still vote for her, in the interest of having a smoking hot mayor. She\’d be like the exact opposite of Adrien Brody (an ugly actor breaking into the world of beautiful people).

So, people of Wauwatosa, this is your chance to help out a much-neglected political minority. Once this domino drops, it might provoke more hot people to come out of the closet and run for office – suddenly, the local news will become watchable.

Until then, though, Wisconsin is stuck with dreamboat beefcake State Senator Ted Kanavas as its sole political eye candy:

(Photo taken in 1983)

(Footnote: This post may make things uncomfortable if I ever run into Didier again, but it\’s not likely, so I\’m not worried. I\’m merely reporting the facts. Plus, she should be so thankful, she should make me the Tosa Secretary of Lawn Elf Administration.)