TOBY PETZOLD

Because the Election of 2008 will be the next election to matter as none have ever mattered before, I will vote in the Republican primary. There is someone to vote for, not against, so no protest vote in the Democratic primary from me.

I don’t have a particular favorite, although I usually find myself rooting for Giuliani. I think he’d be a fine choice, but there’s a lot of negativity from some about his personal life. It may be a drag on him in the general.

I’d vote for Romney, if need be. McCain, certainly. In fact, I don’t know why McCain fell so far out of favor if it wasn’t the immigration thing. I trust him with my country, though. But candidates like Thompson, Paul, and Tancredo are not serious. And I’d never vote for Huckabee.

There are no Democrats I’d vote for in the general with the possible exception of Dodd. The rest of them are either communists, incompetents, or mentally ill. Can you imagine having to listen to Joe Biden for the next four or five years? Yecchhh!

My only resolution for the new year is to gain in perseverance.

Dream, formulate, execute, and conclude.

If you drink tonight, don’t drive drunk. Thank you.

My very spirit cringes at times like these when I realize how dead and isolationist are the Democrats and so-called “progressives” in this country.

There was a genuine kind of martyrdom met in Rawalpindi yesterday —but how is it anything more than some piece in the grand conspiracy of the Neocon Cabal That Rules All? Will this flawed, but essentially fearless, woman’s sacrifice be recognized and honored by women in the West? Is democracy so banal and mundane to us that its bravest proponents in the Muslim world can be brought down in blood and it is merely to shrug?

Democracy cannot win if its enemies are not first destroyed.

Musharraf needs to kill more bad guys. He needs to pile them to the sky.

Turns out, they don’t exist so much as eye candy as they do object lessons. Once there was cheesecake and beefcake, but now there’s people like Jamie Lynn Spears —a very tasty young woman, I might add— whose pregnancy is kindling for a moral debate throughout the country. Or so we are told. But I don’t know what’s so bad about her situation. She’s employed, right? The guy whose child she is carrying loves her and she loves him, so let the crazy kids get married or not. If they’re committed, great. If not, yawn.

Harry Reid is on the TV telling Ray Suarez that the War for Iraq is the “biggest foreign policy blunder in the history of this country.”

Where the fuck is this guy’s mind? Is he drunk? I think he’s suffering from some sort of dementia if he cannot understand how to make the transition from using the war as a political tool in the hands of anti-American Democrats like himself to finally admitting that he’s a lying, ineffectual piece of shit who’s never been right about anything.

The incompetence of Reid and the rest of the Eleven Percenters is a danger to the integrity of the Republic.

I’m starting to notice that I don’t know who the hell a lot of these people in show business are. Amy Winehouse? Hannah Montana? The last dozen or more people who have won some reality/talent show? This is an age of such artistic vapidity and turdliness that it can only be understood as a manifestation of my own personal psychosis.

Or do these things exist outside of me? Have I penetrated some existential frontier where other human beings give a monkey-flung handful of poo about Amy Winehouse and her drug abuse? When I know more about you as a fucked-up loser than as a maker of music, I’m not going to regret my indifference to either.

I’m done with hearing about shit I don’t care about in places online where I have no choice but to go. Fuck nonsense.

I am very sorry to hear of the too-early death of Dan Fogelberg.

His music helped to define a certain period of my life that was pretty painful, but I would never hold that against him, of course. I was a kid and he was a sad, but thoughtful, singer of some very beautiful songs. His music definitely had a big impact on my brother Jimmy, I recall. And one of the prettiest girls I knew in high school once told me that “Longer” was her most favorite song. It’s nice that I never forget to remember that whenever I hear it.

The horns from “The Leader of the Band” were the first strains of music to enter my mind when I heard the sad news tonight, so I should think that’s the power of art, my friends. Something noble and beautiful that survives and even justifies you.

What a good fate!

The reason people who steal my name in comment threads are such failures at it is that they aren’t smart enough to encompass the breadth of my mind. They are witless, artless stylometricians.

And the reason I don’t steal others’ names to deceive and talk shit? The thought never occurs to me.

That’s something the Internets never took from me.

The local Big Media newspaper has working for them a religion writer named Eileen Flynn. I really enjoy her stuff, when I happen to come across it, including her very interesting and ecumenical advocacy of celebrating the Advent at their site today:

Advent derives from the Latin word for “coming” and marks the beginning of the liturgical year. Some have said the four weeks represent the 4,000 years of darkness that preceded the birth of Jesus. Some say the Advent wreath is based on a pre-Christian fire wheel. The point is that Advent provides Christians the chance to start anew, to adjust their lives for the coming of the Christ child. Liturgically, the Christmas season begins Dec. 25.

I’m finding more and more Christians embracing Advent traditions. Converts to Catholicism, mainline Protestants, even nondenominational folks who long for rituals to deepen their spiritual lives are making a point to slow down and savor these weeks.

Sounds good to me, even if I don’t need to participate in those particular observances. I’m just happy that others still feel that they have some claim on those ancient rites. It strengthens the backbone against degeneracy and Islamofascism.

Check out her post. It’s got lots of interesting ideas.

Do it for Baby Jesus.

I am surprised at the big number of big names I know from George Mitchell’s report. Quite a few of the detestable Yankees, I’m pleased to note, including Roger Clemens, our local hero.

I think Mitchell’s right, though: call the culprits out on it and then move on. Because this isn’t like kicking Shoeless Joe Jackson out of the majors. Jackson was one of the men who did commit the ultimate crime in baseball: throwing the World Series. But what Clemens and the others did was long-term and systemic. Everybody’s known about steroid abuse in the MLB since McGwire and Sosa’s first passionate, get-a-room quality embrace during their record-breaking season of 1998.

As regards substance abuse in professional athletics, I remarked to a female relative earlier today that the only revelation more damaging than what these have been today would have been to learn that Lance Armstrong was, as the French have long insisted, doping during his magnificent run of championships. Such news would, quite frankly, devastate this town. That’s no joke, either. It would break a lot of hearts and I hope it is never found to be true.