Xenesog

We’re going to come out and say this: flag lapel pins are kitschy. Making an American flag out of a cheap piece of metal debases it, and wearing one is a very hollow display of patriotism. If you want to show your love for this country, we recommend actually doing something to help it, such as volunteering at your local food bank.

And we think it’s a shame that ABC News wasted the first forty minutes of the last debate on crap like flag pins, especially considering the words climate and carbon appear nowhere in the debate transcript.

We here at xenesog feel little sympathy for Democrats in Michigan and Florida. Living in a state with a late primary, our primary vote has never played a role in the nomination process. The last round, we voted for Dennis Kucinich as a protest, but it was clear that John Kerry would get the nomination.

Yet, we’ve not heard once the mainstream media fret about how the residents of our state have been disenfranchised. Never once has our lack of influence the nomination process sparked national handwringing and anguish, accompanied by urgent cries to remedy the situation. We don’t understand what makes the residents of Michigan and Florida so special.

Of course, you could retort that our state could move up its primary earlier if it wants its residents’ votes to influence the nomination process. And we would agree with you. No sympathy should be extended to a state–such as ours–that chooses to hold such a late primary. But along the same lines, Michigan and Florida could (and should) have pushed its nominating contests later to comply with party rules if it wanted its residents’ votes to influence the nomination process. Both major parties have every right to make rules governing their nomination processes, and Michigan and Florida disregarded those rules, knowing what the consequences would be. We don’t think you should extend much sympathy to them, either.

There’s been enough written about Sen. Clinton’s 3 a.m. ad that we here at xenesog are reluctant to add to the discourse. We were, however, amused to learn of a parody of this advertisement run by one Laurinda Calongne, a Republican running for Congress in Louisiana. In the ad, Sen. Clinton has been elected president and Ms. Calongne is revealed to be the source of the nocturnal phone calls; she is calling to admonish Clinton for “running up the deficit with wasteful spending and putting it on the backs of our children.” Here is a YouTube video of the ad.

This advertisement raises two questions with us here at xenesog: First, we don’t see why Louisiana voters need to elect Ms. Calongne for her to harass a Democratic president at 3 a.m. In fact, if she is elected, she probably will be asleep at 3 a.m., since last time we checked, Congress generally conducts its business during the day. We think it would be better for Ms. Calongne to seek employment at a 24-hour grocery store, preferably during swing shift, so that way she can be well-rested to make her 3 a.m. phone calls.

Second, using a convenient tool provided by the Treasury Department, we see that since President Bush took office, the national debt has increased from $5.7 trillion to $9.4 trillion. The budget hasn’t been balanced since the (Bill) Clinton administration.

We here at xenesog don’t understand why Ms. Calongne has to wait until Sen. Clinton becomes president to direct complaints about large deficits to the White House. We challenge to Ms. Calongne to start making her 3 a.m. phone calls today. In case Ms. Calongne is reading this (which we admit is rather unlikely), the phone number for the White House switchboard is 202-456-1414.