Clint Eastwood, American Icon, Learns The President Might Be A Democrat, Gets Riled Up

I've been trying to puzzle out just what Clint Eastwood said last night at the GOP convention -- he had a semi-angry argument with an empty chair, which he claimed an invisible President Obama was sitting in. 

"You see, back in those days, rich men would ride around in Zeppelins, dropping coins on people, and one day I seen J.D. Rockefeller flying by. So I run of the house with a big washtub and... hey! Where are you going? Anyway, about my washtub. I'd just used it that morning to wash my turkey, which in those days was known as a walking-bird. We'd always have walking-bird on Thanksgiving, with all the trimmings: cranberries, injun eyes, yams stuffed with gunpowder. Then we'd all watch football, which in those days was called baseball...

I'm thirsty! Ew, what smells like mustard? There sure are a lot of ugly people in your neighborhood. Ooh, look at that one. Ow, my glaucoma just got worse. The president is a Democrat??!!!

"Hello? I can't unbuckle my seat belt. Hello?  There are too many leaves in your walkway...

"We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere - like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.

"Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say.Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...

"Then after World War Two, it got kinda quiet, 'til Superman challenged FDR to a race around the world. FDR beat him by a furlong, or so the comic books would have you believe. The truth lies somewhere in between."

Oops, sorry, that was from Abe Simpson, not Clint Eastwood, though it's easy to get the two confused ...

Tampa's Convention of Dunces

Given the clumsy, clueless and mean-spirited 'debates' dumped out by the passing parade of Republican presidential candidates for much of 2011 and 2012, the final days of their selection of a candidate for president was never going to hold much credibility, was it?

The lack of honesty, ideas, plans and the abundance of denials that their party has stalled Congress for the last 3 years has been difficult to witness. I'm all for opening up a discussion of ideas about political policies - but it just has not happened. What's left is a precarious balancing act which signifies little other than the absence of ideas.

Perhaps it shouldn't be any surprise then that vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan hauled out a litany of distortions and deceptions while attempting to excite the folks in Tampa. Lies are what are cited in one report today (limiting the focus to just the five "biggest" ones):

"I’d like to talk, instead, about what Ryan actually said—not because I find Ryan’s ideas objectionable, although I do, but because I thought he was so brazenly willing to twist the truth.

"At least five times, Ryan misrepresented the facts. And while none of the statements were new, the context was. It’s one thing to hear them on a thirty-second television spot or even in a stump speech before a small crowd. It’s something else entirely to hear them in prime time address, as a vice presidential nominee is accepting his party’s nomination and speaking to the entire country."

And the most-repeated and lovingly embraced distortions from The Nominee himself, Mitt Romney, are likely to get repeated tonight too. 

As others have noted, it's just sad and weird that the only idea the GOP is pushing into the political field is simply - "We still don't like Obama and that's enough for us and should be for you too."

Dylan's 'Duquesne Whistle' Video Arrives

The newest album from Bob Dylan arrives next month, but today we have a new video from one of the tunes from "Tempest", called "Duquesne Whistle". The video director is one Nash Edgerton, who's had a long career as a stunt double in the "Matrix" movies and for Ewan McGregor in the "Star Wars" movies. So maybe that's why this video, featuring a young lady who drives a Gremlin, features her young male admirer who gets beat up for his single-minded romanticism.

This is a jaunty Bob Willis-styled tune, and Bob's voice is as gravel-bumpy as a forgotten road. I still so enjoy his work, and was recently diving back into his astonishing album from August of 1965. His musical creations have been a constant wonder during my lifetime. I'm quite glad we are both still here, exploring, playing and pondering life and love and everything else.

Duquesne is as fun to write and pronounce as Albuquerque.