Oh, Wow

We saw a house today.

That’s all I can say about it.

Okay, I can say a little more.

It’s over in Charlotte Park and has a front porch and a fireplace and a huge, friendly kitchen.  And there’s a fenced in back yard and a screened in porch.  And a secret passage between the bedrooms.

And dancing girls.

Okay, not really.

But it’s too expensive, I think.  Priced too high for the neighborhood and most definately too expensive for me.  And I don’t think it’s been on the market long enough for them to be desperate enough to meet me half way, I don’t think.

Oh, Those Conservative Elites

It was little surprise to hear Robin Smith complaining about how people hate her because she’s not an elitist, because, you know, the conservatives are supposed to be the party of the every-day schmoes while the liberals are the party of effete wankers and atheists and pot smoking hippies and welfare cheats.

That is, of course, until one of the conservative talking-heads lets loose with how the Party really thinks of us folks living in the South:

The poorer Red Staters, meanwhile, are still getting abortions, raising criminal kids, doing drugs and generally failing to stay afloat. I exaggerate, of course. The book adds layers of explanation to this, including, critically, the impact of Bell Curve style assortative mating and social stratification. But this is the gist.

and

The newly working poor may also keep their sexual adventures, poor parenting, multiple spouses – and their wage subsidies as well. Who can say? Since GNP doesn’t actually condition the new money on any behavioral changes – they balk at reserving child credits for the married, for example – there isn’t much leverage for social improvement, and one fears that the scheme could end up as essentially a bribe for an electoral demographic the GOP increasingly needs.

I’m now proposing “We hate you; please vote for us” as the Republicans’ campaign slogan this fall.

Feel Good Fri… Er, Monday

I dare you to watch this and not fall a little in love.

An Afternoon of Movies

The boys were all lounging around my living room watching movies all afternoon–Eastern Promises, The Bank Job, and Rambo.  I feel as if I should be able to write you up something insightful and deep about seeing those movies all in a row like that–maybe tell you something about what it revealed to me about the state of men in America.

But instead, I will just say that all night, I kept having this dream where I walked into my bedroom and there, dressed in an exquisitely tailored suit, sitting in a beautiful brown leather chair was either Viggo Mortensen or Jason Statham, elbows on chair arms, fingers bouncing together in mock impatience.

I had no dreams of Sylvester Stallone.

Where For Art Thou, Bill Hobbs?

Is Bill Hobbs on vacation?

I ask only because it’s now July 14th and he hasn’t posted anything since the 10th, which means that, throughout this whole Robin Smith affair, he’s been silent.

I find this interesting, frankly, more interesting than folks yanking Smith’s chain, though that’s been fun.  It’s something to keep an eye on.  Why hasn’t Hobbs commented about this, either by coming to his boss’s defense or by attacking her critics?

It’s hard to know for sure from the outside, but you look for changes in the landscape to tell you about shifts in the plates, and this is the second subtle change in the landscape of the TNGOP we’ve seen in as many weeks.  First, Bill Hobbs did a lengthy “refutation” of my post over at his own site.  There was a day in the not so recent past when folks at the TNGOP would brush their critics off like so many pesky flies.  Oh, they might address their critics obliquely, but never, even would they give us the satisfaction of letting us be certain they were aware specifically of who was doing the criticizing.

And now?  Now we see Hobbs addressing his critics and we see Smith taking on hers.  It’s disconcerting to see them so openly playing defense.

So, that’s a change.

But second, we’ve seen time and time again Smith sticking by Hobbs.  Even David Oatney has said that Hobbs isn’t going unless Smith goes.  We know Smith has Hobbs’s back.

But does Hobbs have Smith’s?

The conventional wisdom is that Hobbs would lose his job if Smith lost hers.  But the question you have to ask, I believe, as you keep your eye on this is “Isn’t there one circumstance under which Smith losing her job would be good for Hobbs?”

And then you have to wonder if Hobbs’s silence isn’t calculated.

I mean, folks, really.  What kind of Communications Director would let his boss send a letter to the Governor–which the Communications Director at least knows becomes public record–that could so easily be reduced to “How can I possibly be racist? Some of my kid’s best friends are black”?  And what kind of Communications Director would then let his boss talk to the media about some grand conspiracy against her?

Maybe it’s as simple as a Communications Director who’s on vacation.

But I’ll be interested to hear.

More House-Hunting Thoughts

I am at the point where I’m certain Kathy’s tired of me, tired of driving around Nashville, and tired of the prospect of walking into houses that are so depressing you about want to cry.

There are roughly three kinds of houses in my price range–Right, but maybe not my thing; in needs of fixes I can’t do but still okay; and “people live like this?”  The ratio appears to be about 10, 20, 70.

We’ve walked into houses that smelled so bad we thought we would throw up before we got out of them.  We’ve been in houses with so much mold they made Kathy sick.  We’ve been in houses with kitchens in such bad shape they shake your faith in how the world works.

I think the most insidious part about this whole thing is that, after a while, you start to think “Hmm, well, maybe this is all I deserve.”  Not ‘all I can afford’ but ‘Okay, I’m just going to take the next non-shitty thing that comes along, even if I’m not in love with it, because wow, there’s some scary-ass sucky stuff out there.”

So, I don’t know.  It’s tough.