Since Last I Poli-Blogged

So, aside from the past few days, for the past two months I’ve theme-blogged about nerd culture and rock music.  That means I’ve barely mentioned politics (by Todd standards).  Did I miss anything during those two months?

Back at the beginning of May, Iran was seemingly united beneath its mullahs and authoritarian president, Obama hadn’t sided with Chavez or any other law-flouting Latin American presidents in any political upheavals down there, the U.S. was not on the verge of adopting socialized medicine, carbon emissions weren’t directly regulated, everyone was hopeful the mountains of “stimulus” money would be spent wisely, there were no (intentional) comedians in the Senate, Iraqi cities were full of U.S. troops, the state of California was still paying its bills, North Korea hadn’t threatened to launch missiles at us yet, and Mark Sanford was sort of my early favorite for a 2012 presidential candidate due to his combination of fiscal and moral sobriety.  How are we doing since then?

Well, details aren’t important.  I’m sort of a philosophical big-picture man anyway.

•••

I like the general anti-government bent of the Tea Party protests, for example, more of which occur today — and the organizers have been challenging Obama to debate at one of them about the proper role of government, if not today then perhaps at the big DC Tea Party scheduled for September 12, which I may well attend.

Since celebrities sometimes crop up at these things, maybe Obama could debate former SNL star and handstand expert Victoria Jackson, who has called him a communist.  Her Christianity has blinded her to a potential ally, though: She laments the possibility of the Fairness Doctrine ridding the airwaves of conservatives and leaving us with only Howard Stern — but he was calling the Democrats communists before she was, and out of much the same fear of government interference in speech.

In any case, happy Fourth of July to the whole nutty lot of you — and I notice that the last patriotic U.S. holiday mentioned on this site, Flag Day, was also the occasion of the fiftieth ToddSeavey.com blog entry to mention my girlfriend, Helen Rittelmeyer, which works out to over one mention per week since we first started dating.  If, today notwithstanding, I’m trying to move toward shorter, more frequent posts, you will either hear about her even more frequently or find that I can’t squeeze her in as easily when I’m making one-sentence cracks about Joe Biden or whatever, which might just spare her embarrassment.  We’ll see.