I don’t know how long this file will be available because I haven’t viewed things on this site before, but this is excellent. It starts off a little slow, but is damn good by the end.

http://media.putfile.com/OlbermannSwings

I don’t really have much else to say on the subject of the death of William H. Rehnquist. Oh, fuck. Bush gets to appoint two members to the supreme court. This will change the way we live in this country for decades. This is more proof that politics matters. If Al Gore had won re-election in 2004, he wouldn’t be appointing John Roberts to the supreme court (and possibly as chief as some pundits have speculated this morning). You can guarantee that Gore’s Chief Justice would be far to the left of whoever Bush appoints, even if he appoints Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales is probably the least disastrous potential candidate for those of us on the left.

The following may seem obvious as hell to most of you, but it took me three or four years in my late 20s to early 30s to figure it out. I won’t bore you with the details of my personal psychology, subcultural identity, and other factors that made this less than obvious to me. But here it is: You can be shrewd and skeptical without being cynical. You can be passionate and idealistic without being naive. I struggle sometimes with finding the right balance. I think, particularly, because it’s hard to be funny (or at least my kind of funny) without seeming cynical. So even though in this early part of the endeavor, this space is a way to force some discipline on myself and try to write something everyday, I can’t promise that it’ll always be high minded, nor can I promise it’ll be catty and funny. It’ll probably be each one from time to time.

I do plan to write a little mini essay in the coming few days that will quickly cover some U.S. political history and compare some things in our past to some things we’re living through. I’m doing a bit more research, since U.S. history isn’t my specialty.

I just got around to watching Trent Lott’s recent appearance on The Daily Show. It looks like he’s pulling a Bob Dole, but doing it before he actually retires. This Trent Lott spent his time talking about how the wings of both parties need to be reigned in and other bipartisan niceties. He highlighted all of the behind the scenes working he did with Bill Clinton during the 90s. He played along with Jon Stewart’s jokes. It was an amusing interview and actually kind of made me want to read his memoir, Herding Cats

I think I’d be really irritated, though, if I got the book and it turned out to be a load of self-serving crap. I think I’ll try to find a couple of reviews.

I finally decided to turn this domain into a blog. I plan to draw some kind of distinction between the content on this page and the content in my livejournal. Likely, the livejournal’s gonna go friends only and become more focused on my personal life, with this one focused more on politics, policy, musings about the world, etc.

We’ll see.