Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Springtime in Knoxville

By Brendan Loy

Hey, I thought of something non-political that I can blog about: pretty pictures! Those always work. :)

As a follow-up, sort of, to my shiny old cars post, here is my promised photo gallery of "Springtime in Knoxville." A few highlights:

That's Neyland Stadium in the distance in that bottom picture, and the Tennessee River on the left... in case you were wondering. The middle picture is of Knoxville's Krutch Park. And the top one was taken from a downtown parking garage. Those white trees are gorgeous (though they aren't white anymore; they turned green a couple of weeks ago).

Anyway, again, the full album is here. It starts on March 6 and continues through April 9 (and I'll add to it if I take more pictures that belong in it). Nothing photographically spectacular, IMHO, but some nice pictures anyway. It's truly a beautiful time of year here.

Wanted: random blog topics!

By Brendan Loy

I've gotten more than 10,000 hits today, the bulk of them coming in via last night's Sullylanche, directly or indirectly. Normally, when I get a big new influx of traffic like this, I make a special effort to live up to my sub-moniker of "hyperactive blogger," posting as much new material as possible, so as to give the new visitors a reason to become regulars. Unfortunately, although I have several new political posts swirling around in my head, my brain has turned to mush this evening and I have no motivation to actually write any of them. (Stay tuned, though, for thoughts on Pennsylvania's implications, Hillary's 9/11 exploitations, and my Obama-fatuations!)

Meanwhile, I find myself strangely unable to think of anything non-election-related that I particularly want to blog about. The Pope's visit to America? Interesting and important, but I haven't been following it so I don't really have anything to say about it. Time magazine's Iwo Jima/global warming cover? Meh. Seems like a tempest in a teapot to me (notwithstanding that my grandfather was a Marine in World War II, and I revere what those guys did... but still, who cares about a stupid magazine cover?). The Yale abortion art project? It's a fake.* A judge telling J.K. Rowling her books are "gibberish"? What's to say, other than "Heh"? (Can you tell I get most of my news from Drudge?) And nothing's really caught my eye in the world of sports, or any of my other pet blog topics. (Although, hey! fUCLA's Kevin Love is going pro! I'm shocked, shocked.)

So, I'm turning it over to y'all. What non-election-related topics/items should I be blogging about? Serious suggestions are welcome, though I'm thinking especially of frivolous stuff. Like, have you seen any interesting "news of the weird" type stories lately? How about funny YouTube clips? (A sequel to my Captain Vegetable post, perhaps?) Suggest something in comments, and maybe I'll post it out of sheer desperation! ;)

In the mean time, and in the spirit of utter randomness, here's yet another Makem & Clancy YouTube clip, of yet another one of my favorite songs to sing to Loyette: "The Mermaid."

(New readers who wonder why I'm posting a video of Liam Clancy and the late great Tommy Makem -- or who they are, for that matter -- click here, and for more, here.)

*UPDATE: Upon further review, the Yale art/abortion thing may not be fake, after all. Or, it may. The university says she says she didn't do it. But she says she never said that, and that she did it, and that the university is lying. But the university says she told them she'd say that if they said she said she didn't do it. (Got all that?) So, who's lying? My money's on her. It's all part of the "art." Regardless, the whole thing is disgusting and pointless.

A very Republican Democratic debate

By Brendan Loy

David Brooks offers his take on last night's debate, under the headline "No Whining About the Media." He thinks it was fantastic.

He's in the minority, of course, among the commentariat. But it's easy to see why a conservative commentator would be pleased with the debate (as demonstrated by the veritable glee over on National Review Online last night). First of all, the questions were stacked in such a way that the candidates' answers were chock full of sound bites that John McCain can use to great effect against either candidate in November. (I still Barack Obama's long, rambling, noncommittal answer on the Iran-Israel question may have well and truly lost him Florida.) [UPDATE: In comments, Sean Braisted scolds me for buying into the Florida-as-Israel meme. He's got a point! ... Bad Brendan, listening to Clinton/MSM spin! Bad!]

But secondly and perhaps more importantly, when the moderators finally finished asking things like "Does your pastor love America?" and got around to asking policy questions, they were largely policy questions that Republicans care about, framed in ways that Republicans would frame them. Will you pledge not to raise taxes? How would you change affirmative action to prevent reverse discrimination? Will you still withdraw from Iraq even if the grownups tell you not to? Don't you think gun control violates the Second Amendment? If Iran nukes Israel, will you pledge to nuke 'em back?

Now, there's nothing illegitimate about these questions, as such. (As for Charlie Gibson's fuzzy capital-gains math, well, that's another story.) What's problematic is that they were being asked in a Democratic debate, ahead of a primary in which Democratic voters will choose between Democratic candidates, presumably based on Democratic issues. Issues like, well, this list of topics, created by a Daily Kos diarist. We can nitpick the exact topics, but I mean, really: how many Pennsylvania Democrats are going to be choosing between Clinton and Obama on the basis of who is more committed to keeping the capital-gains tax at current levels? And yet those sorts of issues -- ones that most Democratic voters simply don't care that much about -- absolutely dominated the debate.