Is Fidel Castro Benjamin Button?

He may have to be if you buy what Hugo Chavez says about him:

Remarking on the former Cuban president's health for the first time since their latest meeting, Chavez said Castro was "much better than all the times I've visited him in the past three years, two and a half years."

On one-trick ponies and political erectile dysfunction

Excellent piece from Giancarlo about the utter ineptitude of the Diaz-Balart brothers:

Now with a Democratic President and a strong majority in both houses of Congress, the Diaz-Balarts have entered a dark realm known as — no, not the Twilight Zone — absolute political irrelevance. To put it bluntly, the Diaz-Balarts suffer from a severe case of political erectile dysfunction and no amount of Viagra can help them.

There is no clearer example of the Diaz-Balarts’ impotence than their inability to influence yesterday’s 245-178 House vote in favor of a bill which included, among other things, the lifting of restrictions on family visits and remittances to Cuba — their one-hit wonder issue that really never was a hit. Lincoln Diaz-Balart spent days pompously claiming to the South Florida media he had the power and votes to shoot the measure down. But when it came time to vote, both Lincoln and Mario’s political erectile dysfunction kicked in and were unable to do anything. As noted before, the bill passed with a wide margin.

Bobby Jindal the NBC page

Score. Somebody finally put up a video to YouTube about Bobby Jindal's impression of Kenneth the NBC page in last night's Republican response to President Obama's speech.



According to Beth Reinhard, Jindal's less than stellar performance on national TV is good news for Charlie Crist and his 2012 aspirations. Beth calls Jindal's tour de force, "goofy," "unpersuasive," "nervous and insecure." We have to agree.

Best speech headline

TIME: "Obama Gives Team America a Pep Talk"

Twittering from the floor

Dana Milbank was following lawmakers' twitter feeds last night. Here are the best twitter updates from the floor:

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.): "One doesn't want to sound snarky, but it is nice not to see Cheney up there".

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.): "I did big wooohoo for Justice Ginsberg," misspelling the name of the ailing Supreme Court justice.

Rep. John Culberson (R-Tex.): "Capt Sully is here -- awesome!"

And best of all.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.): "Aggie basketball game is about to start on espn2 for those of you that aren't going to bother watching pelosi smirk for the next hour." A few minutes later, a correction followed: "Disregard that last Tweet from a staffer." Sure, buddy.

Bobby Jindal

The consensus seems to be that he did a dead-on impression of Kenneth from 30 Rock last night.

The things that impressed me about the speech

I've done some TV pundit work, and it is not all that fun. I was on a Spanish TV show after McCain's speech at the Republican Convention, and, for the life of me, I could not come up with anything thoughtful to say about the speech. I probably looked like a stuttering fool. I'll leave most of the punditry to those poor souls on TV tonight.

But there are two lines that really impressed me about President Obama's speech tonight that I want to quickly sound off on.

The line about every American needing to go to college was extremely courageous, more so coming from a Democrat. This is a subtle acknowledgment from the president that our economy should depend on white collar jobs. That is the only way we'll compete in the global economy. The alternative to this would have been to adopt protectionist, populist language to please some in the Democratic base. I'm glad the president didn't go that route.

A complement to that line was the reference to reducing agriculture subsidies, which will also require a lot of political capital. We should be helping small farmers, but we shouldn't be subsidizing large agriculture firms.

And finally, is it me or does Bobby Jindal sound like the love child of LeVar Burton and Christopher Walken?

10: 37 p.m. UPDATE: Better yet, from my friend Kate: I "had no idea Bobby Jindal was really Kenneth from 30 Rock."

Geopolitical Summit

I got a chance to see Fareed Zakaria's talk at the FIU geopolitical summit today. I wanted to see some of the other speakers, especially Francis Fukuyama, but I may have totally forgotten that thing was today until it was too late. I'm not going to write much about it, but I will post some blurry photos below.

There was one point he made that I found astounding. Zakaria cited a Pew Research study that found that out of 44 countries polled, the United States ranked last in support for free trade from the public. That's a scary statistic, but not all that surprising. The problem is I can't find the study anywhere now. In fact, most studies I've found all show that the American public still feels free trade is a good thing. But they're a little dated, so who knows.

Has anybody seen the study he's talking about?

This I believe

I believe that, if on your first day at work you come close to committing the cardinal sin of your profession, you should probably reevaluate your career choices. I believe that new Miami Herald columnist Jackie Bueno Sousa, who is skating dangerously close to the thin ice of plagiarism, should do just that.

Sousa’s inaugural column ends with a short restatement of her values. And there is nothing really wrong with that--everyone, including myself, is convinced someone else cares about what they believe. The problem is that Sousa's little device and at least one of her beliefs are clearly lifted from Crash Davis’ brilliant speech in the movie Bull Durham.

This is Kevin Costner's speech [avert your eyes if you're offended by profanity]:

I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap.

I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe that there oughtta be a constitutional amendment outlawing astro-turf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft core pornography, opening your presents on Christmas morning rather than Christmas eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.

And this is Sousa's:

I believe that Main Street is as responsible for the current economic crisis as Wall Street. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone; that NFL play rules are beginning to coddle quarterbacks; and that all elected officials should be subject to term limits. I believe that man really did land on the moon; that history will redeem George W. Bush; that life begins after conception but before birth; and that nature will destroy us before we destroy it.

Yep. The Lee Harvey Oswald line is identical to the line from Bull Durham. A lot of people believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, so the line by itself doesn’t prove a lot. But when you put the lines in context, you see a different picture. The cadence of the two paragraphs is practically the same, and so is their general subjects—the mixture of politics and sports, the complaint about the erosion of certain values in sport. Sousa switches baseball for football--yeah, that's clever. There is no doubt that Sousa’s beliefs, or at least in the style in which she sought to convey them, were “inspired” by Crash Davis. And we know one belief in particular is either stolen from Bull Durham or the result of a major coincidence.

Somewhere in her column, Sousa informs us that "[i]t all goes back to our beliefs." Maybe one day she'll tell us what her beliefs are, instead of parroting those of a semi-fictional, minor-league catcher.

Now, take it away, Crash:



share this: facebook