Billy and Joanne

I think that was her name. Anyhow, attempting to post an FLV file on my blog with this new plugin:

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It's Been A Long, Long Time

My latest 8tracks mix:

The Days Of Wine And Roses...And You

Feeling wistful about the end of summer? My latest 8tracks mix:

Excerpt

I'm not alone:

"But no front-runner in a presidential field has ever, we imagine, had as weak a showing as Rick Perry. It was close to a disqualifying two hours for him. And Mitt Romney remains, when all is said and done, a technocratic management consultant whose one term as governor produced Romneycare. He could rise to the occasion as president. Or not."

- Bill Kristol, in today's Weekly Standard editorial

Mitt, not Rick

Based on his dreadful debate performances, Rick Perry seems to have given little thought to the important public policy issues of the day. When Perry first announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination I was glad to have him in the field, and even a tentative supporter. I heard he was a "real" conservative, not a "compassionate" conservative (a term and a governing philosophy I've always abhored) like Bush. He was also confident, appealling, and good-looking, i.e. a lot of the thing one needs to be elected these days. Unfortunately, a lot of what we've learned about him since, combined with his debate performances, have given me pause. Right now (it is my belief) the only way for Obama to be re-elected next year is for the Republicans to blow it, and Rick Perry could blow it. Rather than get stronger as the campaign has progressed, he has gotten weaker, and seems smaller. He is unsure of himself and unable to defend his positions when challenged, even when his positions are easily defensible. Obama was not-ready-for-prime-time when he ran four years ago but the mainstream media camouflaged that fact. They are unlikely to give Perry the same protection.  Quite the opposite - the media will pounce on his every hesitation or misstep. Furthermore, I now have doubts about his conservative bona fides. He seems much more a crony-capitalist than a free marketer.  Is crony-capitalism what we want at a time when crony-capitalism is one of the big reasons we are failing as a nation? Washington D.C. needs to be purged, and the way the federal government operates needs to be dismantled, not reinforced. I doubt Perry has the ability, let alone the desire, to do this. His inability to articulate conservative positions tell me he has spent little time thinking about these things. It seems more likely to me that Perry has done what it takes to seem conservative because that is what is needed to get elected and to succesfully govern in Texas.

So here is a sentence I thought would never cross my lips (or type in a blog post): I am pulling for Mitt Romney to win the GOP presidential nomination. Now, for a lifelong conservative like myself, one who is hoping for a revolutionary reversal back to the principles of limited government, Mitt Romney is totally inadequate. He is a wishy-washy, flip-flopping, often liberal-leaning conservative-manqué, someone whose only true conviction is that he should be president. But since the only other person currently in the field with a ghost of a chance to win is Rick Perry, I'm throwing in with Mitt. Mitt is smoothness personified, he can think on his feet, rarely makes a gaffe, and is palatable to the independents that are currently so dissatisfied with Obama, much more palatable than Perry. Now, Mitt Romney is never going to lead a revolution (though one could possibly be forced on him from below.) But that is not the primary issue at hand. The main issue at hand, in my opinion, is to defeat the incompetent putz who curretly sits in the Oval Office. In every head-to-head poll against Obama, Romney outperforms Perry. Since Mitt Romney is more likely than Perry to defeat Obama, Romney is my man, at least for the time being.

God help us all.

The Way You Look Tonight

My latest mix from 8tracks, a set of jazz piano instrumentals, using their new Wordpress shortcode plugin. Listen to it below or listen to it at the 8tracks site here.

The Way You Look Tonight from dcalobrisi on 8tracks.

Stoner

I wrote about John Williams' masterpiece Stoner just a month or so after I began this blog. I had this to say about it:

I read Stoner this summer and was immediately convinced that it’s one of the great American novels of the twentieth century. Williams’ quiet, spare prose about the life of an unremarkable man who teaches English at a university does not seem to be the stuff of great novels. I tried explaining the storyline to a friend of mine, who scoffed at my description – not for him, thanks. The problem is that a mere outline of the story is utterly insufficient as a description of the book. All I can say is, read it. The cumulative effect of Williams’ storytelling is powerfully moving and, in the end, heartbreaking. It is a tragedy but one with ameliorative effects. One gets the sense that Williams’ point is that we all live tragic lives, or at least lives that will be visited by tragedy. It’s how we handle those tragedies, how we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off, that matters. In the end, we’ll find a way of understanding the disappointments, we’ll throw bitterness and self-pity off, and we’ll find a sense of, perhaps not peace, or even contentment, but acceptance.

In a post at Commentary Magazine literary blog today, D. G. Myers has a much longer (and better) discussion of the book. His take on it is similar to my own:

Stoner takes an outwardly nondescript life, the sort of life that many of us want to escape into fiction, and demonstrates that the real drama of human experience is in the daily refusal to escape, the uninterrupted renunciation of extreme situations, the muted decision to stay and do some good. It’s hard to make such a book sound very exciting. That Stoner is exciting — unexpectedly so, and incredibly moving — is the true measure of Williams’s achievement.

Stoner is a deeply moving book (as is Williams' follow-up to it, Augustus, which I discuss in greater detail in the post linked above) and Myers' discussion of it gets very close to the heart of why. He sums up by saying, "[Stoner] will remind you why you first started reading novels: to get inside the mystery of other people’s lives. And perhaps that is the final cause of all good fiction." Read the entire discussion, and if you like great fiction, read Stoner. It was one of the most illuminating literary experiences of my reading life.