Most popular boys' baby names by state reveals cultural trends, also that Florida continues to amuse

Just when you thought the government was so mired in scandal they couldn't do anything right, the Social Security Administration went and released the list of the Most Popular Baby Names for last year. THANKS A LOT, OBAMA.

(Note that this only includes babies who obtained Social Security numbers, so those weirdos who live off the grid and stockpile Franks N Beans in their garages won't be included but they all probably have names like Apocalypto and Jehezerith anyway so who cares.)

I went ahead and made a little map of the boys names because they were more interesting.  Check out the regional variations!

I don't know if you can read the tiny little caption or not, but I'll go through it mostly.

WILLIAM is popular in the South and a couple of Western states.  It's popular in the South because it sounds old-fashioned without being weird.  Will is the kind of guy who likes college football and cigars, so it goes with the South.

Your Mountain West states (plus Nebraska and Oregon) went for LIAM.  Liam's not bad, I guess, although I will always associate it with the guy from Oasis and so I always expect Liam to be a drunk asshole.

MASON was popular in your Great Lakes area, the Maine-Vermont part, whatever that's called, a couple of Midwest states, and, unaccountably, Louisiana.  I can't think of what Louisiana and Maine might have in common except tourists go there to eat shellfish?  That doesn't explain Mason.

MICHAEL was big in New York, New Jersey, and Delaware.  Obviously because of Michael Bloomberg. 

In Florida, and only Florida, the most popular boy's name was JAYDEN.  Of course.

TK's Year in Review

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TK's 2012 Election Prediction Special

Barack Obama will win re-election.  His electoral vote total, I'm gonna say, um, 303 or 310.  I don't even know if that's mathematically possible, I'm just feeling numbers here.

Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy will muse about whether this means Obama is Dictator for Life now and also where should we turn our Bibles in.

Chris Matthews will say something stupid.

CA ballot propositions:

Prop 30, the Bail Out the Legislature For Years of Fucking Up By Holding a Gun to Schoolchildren's Heads Act, will pass, by a very small margin.

Prop 31, the Fuck Up the Budget Every Two Years Instead of Every Year Act, will pass, I guess.

Prop 32, the Kill All Unions Act, will fail.

Prop 33, the Something About Auto Insurance Act, will pass.

Prop 34, the No Way Are People Going to Vote to End the Death Penalty Act, will fail.

A note about this one: I am aware that the last round of polling showed this one passing.  I don't buy it.  The death penalty has always had broad popular support because people like revenge.  I just don't see enough people voting for this.  Hey, hopefully I'm wrong, but we'll see.

Prop 35, the Something About Human Trafficking Act will pass because people don't like humans or traffic.

Prop 36, the Fix Three Strikes and Stop Putting People Away for Life for Stealing Pizza Act, will definitely pass because (a) it's totally reasonable (b) even District Attorneys are for it and (c) George Gascon's hair is in a commercial against it.

Prop 37, the Everybody Freak Out It's Genetically Modified Oh No Act, I think will pass?  Not sure.  OK, I have to pull the trigger so yes, it will pass.

Prop 38, the Rich Lady Who Wants to Take Down Jerry Brown With a Competing Tax Measure Act, will not pass.

Prop 39, the I Didn't Even Know There was a Prop 39 Act, will either pass or fail but nobody will know or care.

There are apparently some local SF ballot propositions too?  I think? Wake me up if any of them involve recycling poaching.  SPEAKING OF THE DEATH PENALTY.

Republican National Convention Schedule of Events

MONDAY

Virtually all convention activities scheduled for Monday have been cancelled due to Hurricane Isaac. Pat Robertson will hold a briefing at 6 pm to explain "Why This Hurricane Doesn't Represent God's Wrath When Hurricanes That Hit Democratic Stuff Always Do".

TUESDAY

The convention proper will kick off with the ceremonial Execution of a Mentally Retarded Inmate. Rick Perry will push the button. Cocktails and heavy apps in the Guillotine Room to follow.

National anthem sung by Ted Nugent, followed by "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang".

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus will give a speech entitled "How to Pronounce Reince Priebus".

Roll call for nomination of president of the United States. Opportunity to wear tricorner hat and wave snake flags. Please keep sidearms holstered during the nomination. There will be an opportunity for Yosemite Sam-type dancing and firing weapons outside following the nomination.

Rick Santorum will speak on "A Woman's Place Is In The House. And the Backyard! And the Minivan! And Maybe In the Secretarial Pool if Her Husband Gives His Permission!"

Gov. Nikki Haley, R-S.C. will give a speech entitled "Is It Hot In Here? No, It's Just Me! The Global Warming Myth".

(NOTE: Shuttle busses from convention site to Deja Vu Showgirls are NOT endorsed by RNC.)

WEDNESDAY

Remarks by Unnamed Romney Campaign Staffer on "Our Anglo-Saxon Heritage; Let's Work to Preserve It!"

Rep. and Senate Candidate Todd Akin on "How To Tell If You Have Been Legitimately Raped Or If You're Just One of Those Fakers, You Whore."

Todd Akin pushed offstage.

Sen. Rand Paul on "Why Doesn't Obama Look Like Us? Hint, Hint".

THURSDAY

Sen. Marco Rubio on "Los Republicanos Son Muy Buenos". Your gardener or maid will be on hand to assist with translation.

Rep. Lamar Smith unveils plan for new "Happiness Fence" along US-Mexico border.

Rep. Steve King will speak on "There's Something About Obama That's Different from You and Me and Romney But I Can't Quite Put My Finger On It".

Remarks by Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney.

Lighting of cigars with $100 bills.

Closing National Anthem: "Beloved Isle Cayman".

Hahahaha oh shit

This story is fucking hilarious:

NRA official: Obama wants to outlaw guns in 2nd term

A top official with the National Rifle Association said Friday that President Obama will move to "destroy" gun rights and "erase" the Second Amendment if he is re-elected in November.

While delivering one of the liveliest and best-received speeches at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said the president's low-key approach to gun rights during his first term was "a "conspiracy to ensure re-election by lulling gun owners to sleep."

"All that first term, lip service to gun owners is just part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment during his second term," he said.

"We see the president's strategy crystal clear: Get re-elected and, with no more elections to worry about, get busy dismantling and destroying our firearms' freedom, erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights and excise it from the U.S. Constitution."

Holy shit, DON'T YOU SEE IT? The fact that Obama has done nothing at all to restrict gun rights is a dangerous sign that he certainly will do so in the future!!!!

I note that Wayne LaPierre hasn't yet begun his second career as a ballet dancer in New York City. The fact that he hasn't IS A NEAR GUARANTEE THAT YOU WILL SEE WAYNE LAPIERRE IN A PRODUCTION OF SWAN LAKE BY NEXT SUMMER.

I'm also curious about this power the President has to erase constitutional amendments at will. Seems like someone would have taken advantage of that power by now.

Are Yahoo comments gone forever or what?

We all know about SFGate comments. But did you ever check out comments on Yahoo news stories? They made SFGate commenters look like a Mensa convention. They were truly the ugly id of the Internet. No story, no matter how innocuous or heartwarming, could escape their wrath. "Miracle baby survives crash" would inevitably devolve into a shitshow about Obamacare, and God forbid if the baby was African-American. Wonder whether racism is still a problem in 21st-century America? Peruse the Yahoo comments, and wonder no more.

UNTIL A COUPLE OF DAYS AGO.

I stopped by Yahoo to get the brain-damaged racist perspective recently and the spot where "3,045 comments" used to be was an ominous banner that said:

"We're having problems with Reading Activity and Commenting features on our site. We're working to re-enable them as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience."

Oh, we're having problems with the Commenting features, all right.

I immediately knew that was it; Yahoo had finally had enough of being known as the Sinkhole of American Idiocy. FAREWELL, YAHOO COMMENTS. WE WILL MISS THY OVERT RACISM AND RAMPANT MISSPELLING.

Maybe Yahoo Answers can tell us more!



Good, now we'll get to the bottom of this. Tell us, Yahoo Answers answerers!



Oh. That's why.

UPDATE: It looks like they're back on. Never mind.

Hank and the First Amendment: A Primer

To no one's great surprise, ESPN and Hank Williams have parted ways after he compared Obama and Boehner playing golf to Hitler and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu playing golf. Just as well; we've been subjected to that retarded "Are you ready for some football" song for 20 FUCKING YEARS. About damn time to shake things up.

Anyway, Hank immediately played the Victim Card:

"After reading hundreds of e-mails, I have made MY decision," he wrote in a statement on his website. "By pulling my opening Oct 3rd, You (ESPN) stepped on the Toes of The First Amendment Freedom of Speech, so therefore Me, My Song, and All My Rowdy Friends are OUT OF HERE. It's been a great run."

No.

Here's what the First Amendment actually says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

First phrase: CONGRESS shall make no law. Not ESPN shall make no law. The First Amendment is designed to keep the GOVERNMENT from telling you what you can and can't say, not ESPN or any other basic cable network. Or your employer. Or your Mom. Or any other non-governmental body. Hank Williams Jr. and ESPN had a mutually beneficial business relationship. When ESPN decided that it would no longer be beneficial, they cancelled it. I have no idea what kind of contract ESPN and Bocephus had, but I'm sure it didn't contain a provision saying that "ESPN will not terminate its relationship with Williams Jr. because of any retarded thing he says in public." But there's not First Amendment involvement here at all.

(Of course, over the years, courts have added a number of exceptions to the seemingly plain "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech." It's illegal to threaten to kill someone, for example, even though that's a law abridging the freedom of speech. But that's neither here nor there.)

Oh, one more thing: I fully support Hank's right to say whatever the fucks he wants. If he wants to say Obama faked the moon landing and is secretly a Chinese spy, go for it. I'm just saying that ESPN firing him has nothing to do with the First Amendment, despite what he says in his oddly capitalized email.

This Week in San Francisco in Verse

Haight and Fillmore, burning bright!
The whole damn building's done for
Haighters, no condoms for you tonight
Walgreens is no more

Lee and Yee and Avalos
Herrera and some scrubs
We got more mayoral candidates
Than fully licensed pot clubs

Anonymous done given up
BART protests served no use
Now they can go on back
To hassling Tom Cruise

Giants took an early fall
The playoffs are no more
You could give them a tub of rohypnol
And they still couldn't score



Obama came to the peninsula
To get some cash from plutocrats
I don't care who the Repubs nominate
I just wish there was a Democrat

OMG! Heat wave! Everybody freak!
90 degrees and clear!
I know it seems unique as fuck
But it happens every year

Lyric Deconstruction: "American Ride"

Toby Keith, 2009

Winter gettin' colder, summer gettin' warmer.
Tidal wave comin' 'cross the Mexican border.
Why buy a gallon, it's cheaper by the barrel.
Just dont get busted singin' Christmas carols.

By this point, about 24 seconds into the song, you're probably thinking "Oh no, here's some more Toby Keith retarded bullshit," and you're partially right. It's difficult to put a charitable spin on "Tidal wave comin' cross the Mexican border." And if you have any reports of anyone being arrested for singing Christmas carols, do forward them.

That's us, that's right
Gotta love this American ride.
Both ends of the ozone burnin.
Funny how the world keeps turnin.
Look ma, no hands.
I love this American ride.
Gotta love this American ride.

I feel like I really don't have to explain that ozone degradation and the rotation of the Earth are two widely disconnected phenomena. I mean, we could lose the entire ozone layer - indeed, the entire atmosphere - and the world would keep turnin, for billions of years. It's angular momentum, a widely-understood property of physics. So it's really not that funny that the world keeps turnin. IT'S NOT FUNNY AT ALL.

But wait! You have to see the video to appreciate this song. I mean, it's a terrible video, but it makes clear that this song is an equal opportunity hater.



There's a fascinating scene that begins around :40. We see the classic American Gothic couple, only they're getting foreclosed on! And what's replacing the family farm? Big box stores!

Now wait a minute. Isn't the guiding principle of unfettered capitalism that you should be free to do whatever you want with your money? So if you're Best Buy or whatever and you want to buy a farm and put up a store there, you should be able to, right? So what's the problem, Toby Keith? What are you, some kind of socialist?

Momma gets her rocks off watchin' Desperate Housewives.
Daddy works his ass off payin' for the good life.
Kids on the YouTube learnin how to be cool.
Livin in a cruel world, pays to be a mean girl.

I guess this is more or less the standard kind of workin-hard-to-make-a-buck-my-wife-don't-understand country music stuff. Hard to have any problem with that.

Chorus

At this stage in the video, we are presented with two interesting animated images. The first is Pat Robertson riding George W. Bush like a horse. Let's set aside the extremely disturbing aspects of this tableau and try to divine what's implied here - that Bush was a tool of the Religious Right? Meh, he certainly had that potential, and God knows what would have happened, but 9/11 kind of took the focus off those nutbags.

The second image is Obama being carried aloft by Wall Street bankers. Hard to argue with that. In fact, that's probably the most straightforward and accurate political commentary in the whole thing.

Poor little infamous, America's town.
She gained five pounds and lost her crown.
Quick fix plastic surgical antidote.
Got herself a record deal, can't even sing a note.

Hmmmm. Well, Dominique Ramirez, Miss San Antonio, did, in fact, lose accuse pageant officials of taking her crown when she gained weight. But I have no information that she got herself a record deal.

(I initially thought this was a backhanded slap at Carrie Underwood, another former pageant contestant who got herself a record deal. But I think the consensus is that she's a perfectly fine singer, although, I confess, I'm not really down with the Nashville gossip.)

Plasma gettin bigger, Jesus gettin smaller.
Spill a cup of coffee, make a million dollars.
Customs caught a thug with an aerosol can.
If the shoe don't fit, fits gonna hit the shan.

I have to confess, when I first heard this, I thought "I, for one, am glad that plasma is widely available! It's a valuable life-saving tool that doctors in emergency situations use every day!" Oh, wait, he's not talking about that, is he. Oh, he means TVs.

Well, so what if TVs are getting bigger! That's progress!

I won't even bother with the frivolous lawsuits thing. Yawn.

The last line is completely impenetrable, and I assume the songwriters just ran out of gas at the end. Just as I have here.

Chorus

Fox has now completely Onionized itself

From Fox Nation (via Dave Weigel on Slate):



I normally wouldn't even touch this because, hey Fox News and all, but it appears that they have finally rounded the corner into complete and total self-parody and I thought I'd just leave this here as a marker of that event.

This cracks me up, obviously, and not just because it's a transparently racist sop to hardcore conservatives but also because WHEN DID CHARLES BARKLEY AND CHRIS ROCK START RAPPING? God, I hope they aren't rapping.

Also, just because everyone loves a good counterfactual, can you imagine if NPR ran a headline like "George Bush's redneck hootenanny fails to stop terrorism" or "Dick Cheney's wild gunfire party fails to prevent fellow plutocrat from getting face half blown off"? I mean, I think NPR would be a lot more entertaining if they did that, but no, you can't imagine that.

But hey, "fair and balanced"!

The Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory

In 1977, Jimmy Carter used the Philadelphia Experiment to travel back in time and take two dinosaur eggs from fellow Illuminatus Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello home. He put one of the eggs on the Roswell UFO and sent it to England and stored the other one in a janitorial closet in the basement of the Washington Monument. One of the eggs hatched in 1926 and became Queen Elizabeth II.

Years later, Franklin Roosevelt and the Bilderberg Group engineered Pearl Harbor to benefit International Paper, who would make the ration books used during the war. It was around this time that Moses appeared to L. Ron Hubbard and gave him a microfilm that contained all Scientific Knowledge in the Universe. Unfortunately, Hubbard ate part of the microfilm, thinking it was blotter acid, and mistranslated the rest. This would be the basis of Scientology.

After the war, David Rockefeller and the Trilateral Commission invented Jell-O as a mind control substance. When Jell-O proved ineffective, they switched tactics and began implanting subliminal messages in episodes of “Gunsmoke” and in Petula Clark albums. John F. Kennedy accidentally learned of the backward making operation and so Dean Martin was sent to kill him. Dean Martin is an alien. Lee Harvey Oswald just happened to be there. Jack Ruby accidentally shot Lee Harvey Oswald when he was supposed to shoot the startled-looking guy next to him, who was also an alien. This has nothing to do with the rest of this stuff; it was just some unrelated alien-on-alien violence.

Whoops.

In 1961, the second dinosaur egg hatched and Obama was born. Ironically, the egg had just been with Rockefeller in Kenya when Rockefeller was there on safari, but the egg actually hatched in the main galley of a TWA flight from Kinshasa to Montreal. When it was later learned that there may have been some alien egg residue left on the plane, it was shot down when it was flying as TWA Flight 800. The Masons decided to have a Hawaiian birth certificate prepared because the original plan was to make Hawaii and independent kingdom and Obama would be the King of Waikiki. This plan was abandoned when that title was used for a 1978 Burt Reynolds comedy that flopped at the box office.

The moon landing actually happened just as NASA reported. However, Neil Armstrong lost the film on the way home and the whole thing had to be recreated. To do this, all the Apollo 11 astronauts actually went right back to the moon and filmed the whole thing over again. There were also some aliens there too.

Most of the main Illuminati and aliens were running AT&T. They wanted AT&T broken up because one of the aliens spilled a full glass of wine on Nikola Tesla at a party in Hoboken in 1981 and there was a whole big thing about it and everyone was pissed. This ruined Tesla’s plan for him and Regis Philbin to control people by using high-intensity microbursts. Later, Tesla and Philbin invented a new people control technology, but it has only a short effective range. They are currently planning to install 726 mind control boxes in San Francisco to test the new technology.

Caution: Mind Control Box. (Photo courtesy of the SF Appeal, which is controlled by the Bohemian Club and Italian Freemasons.)

Flouride is perfectly harmless and is effective at reducing tooth decay. However, the Council on Foreign Relations spread rumors that it is harmful pretty much just for kicks.

In 1982, Obama died in a Coca-Cola and Pop Rocks accident. He was replaced by an identical, but slightly less cool, copy.

Tupac Shakur faked his own death to pursue his real interest in professional football scouting. He actually died under mysterious circumstances in 2007 after advising the San Francisco 49ers to draft Alex Smith with the first overall pick of the 2005 NFL draft.

The Debra Saunders Leap of Logic Watch

Sometimes I feel like I need to start a different blog just to deal with the inanities Debra Saunders spews forth on a regular basis. I will call it something like "Oh, Debra Saunders" or "You Are Such a Fucking Idiot, Debra Saunders" or "Debra Saunders is Wrong Again" or something like that but I would have to do every single column (with certain exceptions) and I don't have the time.

(The exceptions are that she and I are both opposed to draconian drug sentences, so I guess we can agree on one thing.)

Yesterday's column - "Obama tries to obstruct executions" - promised a bombshell! You mean the President of the United States is trying to keep individual states from enforcing the death penalty within their borders? WOW.

Except there is nothing in the story like that. Here's how it starts:

President Obama well may have begun another undeclared war - this time on states that try to enforce their own death penalty laws - on the dubious grounds that the Food and Drug Administration has not approved drugs intended to kill convicted killers.

Oh, hold on a second. "Well may have begun"? What the fuck does that mean? Did Obama begin a war on states trying to enforce their own death penalty laws? MAYBE! Does Debra Saunders drink childrens' blood from a chalice made from a piece of the True Cross? MAYBE!

Here's the evidence:

On March 15, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized Georgia's supply of sodium thiopental, the first drug given under the three-drug lethal injection protocol used in most of the country's 34 death-penalty states. The DEA also asked Kentucky and Tennessee for their sodium thiopental to aid its investigation. Why? The DEA referred me to the Department of Justice, which sent an e-mail declining to comment. News reports indicate that the feds had concerns that the drugs were imported improperly.

A-HA!!! That Bad Old Obama must have called up the FDA and told them not to let anyone have sodium thiopental, right? Because he secretly hates the death penalty, right?

Wait, what's this? "FDA helped two states get scarce execution drug"?

The Food and Drug Administration, which has long maintained that it has nothing to do with drugs used in executions, has quietly helped Arizona and California obtain a scarce type of anesthetic so the states could continue putting inmates to death.

The shortage of sodium thiopental has disrupted executions around the country. But newly released documents show the FDA helped import it from Britain.

Huh, so maybe the FDA was just doing its job with the shipment in Georgia, and meanwhile was actively helping other states get the drug. I guess Obama forgot to call the FDA when they were busy helping Arizona and California get the same thing.

The point is, when your worldview is that everything the president does is wrong and evil, you see all kinds of conspiracies where none exist. Never mind that Obama supports the death penalty. Why let facts like that get in the way when you can construct a fictional account of Obama somehow reaching down from the White House to stop executions in Georgia because he's secretly against the death penalty, I suppose, just like he's secretly a Muslim and secretly whatever else you want to ascribe to him.

If you object to the FDA's concerns about the importation of lethal injection drugs, that's fine. State your objections and the factual basis for them and move on. But for God's sake, Debra, no need to invent conspiracies that you can't support with actual facts. You "may well have" to stop listening to your Lizard Creature Overlords if they're feeding you this shit.

This blog post is at Threat Level Heather Grey

EXHALE. FINALLY. We are no longer at THREAT LEVEL ORANGE:

Starting Thursday, the Homeland Security Department will begin phasing out the nation's color-coded terror-threat system, ending it entirely by April 27, officials tell the Associated Press. The five-tiered warnings were created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The "national threat level" has not changed since 2006 -- yellow, or "elevated," the middle rating. For all domestic and international flights, it has been one level up at orange, or "high."

Well, thank God for that. I know I've been in a state of TOTAL PANIC AND FEAR since we went to Threat Level Orange in 2006. Oh, wait, it was yellow. Unless you're flying. Then it's Orange. Unless it's Delta. Then it's Red. Just kidding. I've been in a state of total panic and fear my whole life. The threat of being blowed up was a nice break in the day for me.

The whole Threat Level thing now seems like such an artifact from the Early Aughts when we were busy buying duct tape and plastci sheeting and alerting the authorities anytime someone in a turban was in front of us in line at BK. It was obviously part of the government's hamhanded attempts to keep us in abject terror all the time. It worked on some people! They're just watching Glenn Beck now.

Wait, I had another point to make. What was it. Oh, right, it's this: There is absolutely, without a doubt, going to be another terrorist attack in our lifetimes. That's because (1) there are terrorists, and (2) they're crazy and want to be on the news. Also, our foreign policy increases the risk of terrorism. Oh, that was stupid! ANYWAY, point being, there's no way to be 100% safe from terrorist attack, even though that's what we expect of our government and what we impliedly hope we're getting by subjecting ourselve to the ridiculous Security Theater at the airport and whatnot. Hell, you're more likely to die by falling than die in a terrorist attack.

So what are we replacing our Threat Level Peach system with? Obviously, we won't want to scare people or anything, right? Right?

The Obama administration plans to replace the widely mocked color-coded terror warnings with a simpler, two-tier system: “imminent threat” or “elevated threat,” with more detailed information.

Oh, that's just fucking great. Now we have two choices: "Elevated Threat" and "You Are All Going to Die So Say Goodbye to Your Loved Ones Right Now." Much better.

And in today's distressing polling news

About a third of the people polled by Time magazine think Obama's a Muslim. 46% of Republicans do. Wrap your head around that for a minute.

(It occurs to me that there's probably a huge amount of overlap between people that think this and people who thought Obama was under the thrall of Jeremiah Wright. You can't have it both ways, people. Either he's a Wright-Christian or a Muslim. Pick your poison.)

(You know what else about the whole Jeremiah Wright thing? Who the fuck listens in church? You and I both know Obama was sitting there going "Just 25 more minutes and I can get home and watch the fucking Bears. Oh God will this guy ever shut the fuck up.")

Muslims have to pray like 6 times a day and there's a whole thing with a rug and pointing towards Mecca and whatnot and do you think for a second that the President of the United States could get away with this without someone noticing and going "Oh, hey, I wonder why the President kneels down on his little rug with the Presidential seal 6 times a day. What's up with that?" The White House Press Corps is so far up his ass that they can report on what he had for breakfast based on personal observation from inside his duodenum. You think they're going to whiff on him worshipping Allah? Bitch please.

Personally, I don't want my President to be any religion at all. The last thing I want is for the one person who can destroy the planet to believe that the Afterlife is a good place to be. Fuck that, I want him to think that This Life is the best and should be preserved at all costs.

That being said, my best guess is that, religion-wise, Obama is probably like a lot of guys his age who went to Columbia undergrad and Harvard Law - basically agnostic, but goes to church because it's expected in his social circle. And if I'm right, FINE BY ME.

I guess we shouldn't be surprised. 48% of people believe in ghosts. LOOK OUT WHAT'S THAT BEHIND YOU!?! Just kidding, there's nothing behind you. 23% of people believe in "witches," whatever the fuck that means.

BUT WAIT! It gets even better! I love this shit:

When Americans are asked to identify the country from which America gained its independence, 76% correctly name Great Britain. A handful, 2%, think America's freedom was won from France, 3% mention some other country (including Russia, China, and Mexico, among others named), while 19% are unsure.

19% are unsure! Love it. That roughly correlates with the 18% who think the Sun revolves around the Earth. Teach the controversy, I say!

Why am I blathering on about this? I don't know. Let's go get a drink. It's Friday.

Here are two activities you should do if you live anywhere near SF

So last night The Wife and I had Grown-Up Night, which means we went to dinner and the theater. They were both great.

Dinner was at The Corner, 18th and Mission. I gotta warn you ahead of time, the menu is somewhat unconventional, but trust me, this is a good thing. Like, there's not the usual beef short rib and flatiron steak and roasted chicken that everyone has. Instead, there's shit like rabbit or sole w/ fennel sausage or chicken thighs, interesting stuff like that. The waitress (who was just as much of a hipster as you'd imagine for a restaurant at 18th and Mission - in fact, the whole staff looked like Vice Magazine) totally tipped us off that the apps were huge, so we just got a couple of those. The Wife had poutine with beef cheeks and some kind of cheese that starts with an "h" like "hourumi" or "hurami" or something like that. It was fucking killer. Poutine's like the national dish of Canada or something and I can see why because it's basically like this thick gravy and meat poured over french fries and it's a good cold weather dish and as you know, it's always about 20 below in Canada.

I got the pork shank over cheesy hashbrowns with some kind of wilted green in the middle and a poached egg on top. THAT'S NOT A LOW FAT FOOD. But man, was it good. Not so good was burping up pork the rest of the night but that's kind of my fault for eating too fast.

Both the apps we got (which were entree-sized, at least for us) were like $11 or $12. 2 glasses of outstanding pinot for $10 each. I almost went for the PBR tallboy for $2 but that's too predictable. 7 out of 10 stars WILL DO BUSINESS AGAIN.

(Confidential to the Corner - do something about your fucking website. The "menu" pages are all blank and it hasn't been updated since May. Seriously, this is SF and your web game has to be on point. Really, I'm not kidding, deal with it.)

Then (after a brief stop at the Latin-American for some whiskey for me and some Stoli for her) we hied ourselves over to The Marsh for Dan Hoyle's show "The Real Americans." The show is based on Hoyle's travels in, for the lack of a better word, the "heartland" and he does a ton of characters based on the people he met. Now, of course you're thinking it's going to be smug and condescending but it's actually not. I mean, I don't think he had to invent the fact that people think Obama is a Muslim or whatever. And people in SF get treated just as badly, or worse, than people everywhere else. As you can tell, it caused a great deal of liberal urban coastal angst in me because we coastal urban liberals worry a lot about this kind of thing. Anyway, it's way more complicated than I can sum up here but we both loved it and it is totally worth seeing.

Then we went home and watched the Giants almost fuck it up in the 9th inning (and shouldn't Bautista be throwing BP or something until he can find the strike zone?). Exhausting.

The World Cup, explained for Americans

Soccer is a game in which a bunch of guys kick a ball around aimlessly for about an hour and a half. Sometimes, but not very often, it goes into a net and then someone takes his shirt off. This is called a "goal" and is to be avoided whenever possible. Soccer games usually end in scores like 1-0 or 2-1, although a 0-0 tie is the best.

Soccer is very popular in socialist countries like France and Japan because you don't win very often and the game is all about passing the ball to someone else - i.e., transferring wealth from those who have it to those who don't. Plus, people fake injuries a lot and fall down, just like they will when Obamacare takes over and everyone gets all kinds of free health care they don't need. Plus, it's boring, and anywhere that's not America is boring.

Every few years, all the countries in the world call home their players from Chelsea and Man U and form national teams. Then they have a big tournament called the World Cup. Predictably enough, it's not straightforward like March Madness. Instead, you can play like 3 games before you get eliminated. Stupid. Oh, and little bullshit countries like Paraguay win all the time. Germany's really good, which figures, since they make BMWs and fascism there. Brazil's really good, too, which also makes sense because Brazil is socialist too and no one has to work and they can spend all day playing soccer instead of working. France cheats. Shocker, I know.

San Francisco is full of foreigners and socialists, so everybody here pretends to like soccer.



See, they'll even stand in front of City Hall and pretend to watch France and something called a "Uruguay" play soccer on a big TV that's far away. They're really thinking about drugs and how much they hate God.

So everybody plays a lot of these games and the US usually doesn't do very well and that's about it. Football season starts in like 2 1/2 months, thank God.

Boring travelogue, Part 6: You're not going to believe who I ran into in Washington DC

I'm positive there's a totally fun part of Washington D.C. where the cool kidz hang out and smoke Gauloises and listen to Animal Collective and spend all day hanging out in the cafe with their iBooks posting snarky things about selfsame neighborhood to their blogs. Statistically, it has to exist. We just haven't found it. In D.C.'s defense, we haven't been looking very hard.

So from what I can tell, DC is populated mainly by extremely preppy people wearing laminated keycards around their neck and engaged mostly in Very Important Conversation. Then every 10 minutes a brazilian cops roll up and shut down the intersection you're trying to cross and a convoy of trucks and SUVs and limos goes by carrying a lot of Serious Looking Guys in suits holding assault rifles and maybe The President. This happens so frequently it's boring and annoying instead of exciting and interesting.

There's some Nuclear Summit dealio in town, so maybe this doesn't happen every day, just every day we're here.

I love museums and DC is basically Museumland, so we're loving that. Let me nutshell it for you:

Museum of American History: Great. Really interesting, well-designed exhibits. Most people just want to see Kermit the Frog and the Ruby Slippers from Wizard of Oz, but I didn't care so much about that. Surprisingly good food in the cafe.

Museum of Natural History: Yes, all those stuffed animals are real. The dinosaur exhibit is a great place if you like screaming kids.

Air and Space: I liked it better when I was 13.

Last night we met up with a friend of mine from college and had a 4-hour binge drinking session dinner at this place called Posto and it was good and everything and here comes the best part of the story and damn if you aren't going to accuse me of burying the lede but whatever. We're sitting at the bar and this guy is at the end of the bar like 10 feet away anbd he's wearing a suit like everyone else in DC all the time and my friend goes "You know who that is?" and I was looking at a different guy so I said no but then when I looked at the right guy HOLY SHIT GUESS WHAT.

IT WAS MOTHERFUCKING RAHM EMANUEL. Hand to God, I shit you not. Talking to some chick at the bar and having a glass of wine.

My friend looks at his watch and goes "It's only 7 o'clock. Why isn't he working?" I was kinda wondering the same thing. I guess he doesn't watch "The West Wing."

Word of the Day: Quixotic

Let me get this out of the way first: No St. Patrick's Day bullshit here. I'm married to a girl from Ireland. Every day is motherfucking St. Patrick's Day in my house. No, let's talk politics! Oh yay.

Two days ago I was walking home when two guys coming the other way stopped me and jammed a flyer into my hand. It was for a guy running for Nancy Pelosi's seat in the House. I said, "Well, good luck with that," because Nancy Pelosi has about the same chances of losing an election in her district as Castro does in Cuba. They sailed past me. "Yeah, we need to get rid of that witch," one of them called over his shoulder.

When I got home, I looked the guy up. It's this guy, Summer Shields. He looked familiar, but I couldn't quite place him. Then I remembered where I'd seen him - in front of a big poster of Obama with a Hitler mustache, at Civic Center Plaza one day. That's the way to win votes in San Francisco! Oh wait, here's a picture:



This is what someone who's not electable in San Francisco looks like.

As it turns out, Summer Shields is a follower of Lyndon LaRouche. A taste of what that's all about:

For those unfamiliar with the range of his thinking, Mr. LaRouche also claims that the Queen of England “personally runs the military and intelligence services” of the United Kingdom, and recently suggested that “top circles in London, who are furious at President Barack Obama for flubbing the British demands to impose fascism on the United States,” may soon “attempt to assassinate the President.”

And so forth. Let me be out in the open here and say that I'm not a huge Pelosi fan and I don't think she's a particularly effective Speaker of the House. Even my Dad and I agreed that if we still had Tip O'Neill in charge, the health care bill would have been passed and signed about a month after we started talking about it. But that's beside the point. The point, which should be blindingly obvious, is this: You cannot march around SF with pictures equating Obama and Hitler and expect to be elected anything, much less unseat the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Maybe in Texas, but not here.

In other political news, Unfortunately-coiffed Meg Whitman is in a virtual dead heat with Jerry Brown in the governor's race. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that her TV ads are on every 30 fucking seconds and Jerry is doing his best to keep his candidacy a secret from everyone except his closest advisors. I don't know. Want to know why Meg can't win? Read this.

More proof we're truly fucked

I imagine it's possible to have a reasoned discussion about the federal budget. From what I can tell, though, there is no reason to believe that's going to happen.

I have to say that I'm more than a little apprehensive about the massive federal debt and the fact that Obama's FY 2011 proposes a $1.3 trillion deficit. I was equally apprehensive when Bush & Co. ran the debt up something fierce while claiming to be fiscal conservatives. We could have a conversation about why Obama has proposed the largest defense budget, even adjusted for inflation, since World War II, or talk about how we're going to have to eventually reign in entitlement spending. Those are all valuable conversations to have.

But we're not going to have those conversations. Yesterday, Obama said the following:

"You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices. It's time your government did the same."

Now, one rational response to this would be "Mr. President, how do you reconcile the need to make tough choices with the fact that your budget proposes the largest deficit in history?" That would be a good question, a valid question, a question we'd like to hear the answer to. But that's not what happened.

Instead, the Mayor of Las Vegas got pissed because, you know, why should the President pick on Vegas by discouraging people from blowing their college funds there? And I turn on my fave right-wing radio and it's the same thing. I hear a guy call in and say something to the effect of "My wife and I just got back from Vegas and we had a wonderful time and I'll be damned if I'm gonna let this President tell me how I can or can't spend my money."

The next caller was - I kid you not - a woman who emigrated from Vietnam and has spent her life building a business in Vegas and wants to know why Obama wants her business to fail.

When this level of breathtaking stupidity finds a place in the national conversation, we all have reason to despair.

(If you're one of the right-wingers who only comes out to comment and tell me how wrong I am whenever I write about something political, spare me. The point of this isn't that Obama is great and Bush is bad or whatever. The point is that people will willfully misconstrue anything.)

Obama wants cavemen to stare menacingly at you

As regular readers know, I'm a big fan of weird and even weirder advertising, but this one takes the cake.



WTF TIMES A MILLION. Obama asks Moms to return to school to what, become male loggers or serial killers? To study Cro-Magnon man? To join a freak-folk band? WHAT THE FUCK COULD THIS ILLUSTRATION POSSIBLY MEAN?

I hope I'm wrong about this, but it makes me think that Internet display ads are constructed entirely by computers. They select an image at random from their memory, assign it randomly to some text, and place it on various websites.

[Also, and this feels entirely like piling on, the fact that Pell grants are available for returning students does not, in fact, mean that Obama has asked Moms to return to school, any more than the fact that the U.S. Army owns helicopters means that Obama has asked teenagers to take rotary-wing flying lessons.]