Dr. Frank's What's-it

So are you say sociologist are a blessing or
curse to CDC? ;)

Maybe both?

In a purely diposer of social disease sort
of manner...if that makes any sense?

doh...meant disposer

Don't you think it would be better if we were closer to equal? At least while we were in the communism stage our new leaders would be up front about controling everything instead of just *pretending* that anyone else has any say.

my doctor.

i can't wait to read your book!!! i am on needles and pins! you have to personally autograph my copy! i assume that the first edition will be hardback, right? anywhere else i can find info on this? i just know it will be brilliant!!! WOW!

luke black

Dear Mr. Portman,

What do you have against Poland Springs bottled water?

I'm just curious.

Thanks,

Edward "Ted" Miller

This site is wasting away to nothing. For the love of God, don't let it eat itself entirely.

http://www.mp3.com.au/TheMrTExperience/

apparently there is another "the mr t experience" - brought to you by a "real audio" search

the influences alone...

yikes...that's all i can say.

Frank,

There's a really simple script I can send you to prevent your page from going blank, (like it's about to do right now), when you drop off the face of the blogosphere from time to time. Let me know.

Got a chance to preview the new Green Day album and the only thing I want to know is, when did these guys decide to become Bad Religion?

Forgot one more thing.... Saw the videos too... Billie is looking a LOT like Michael Smith these days.....strange.

Correction: Robert Smith....I am sooooo bad with names. :(

Eyeliner doesn't always have to be a bad thing. Even Mike Ness used to wear eyeliner back in the 80s. I think they've just adopted a more late 80's look. What's wrong with Bad Religion (not that they wear eyeliner)? Musically they aren't that far from Green Day...maybe I don't see whatever is pissing you off because I like both of those bands though. Did you read what Billie Joe said in Spin this month? Cheers to him for respecting people's right not to vote. Everyone else in print and recorded has felt the urge to be all "Rock the Vote"ish and against Bush, etc. I thought "American Idiot" was a good song. Billie Joe always comes through for me. I love Green Day. Why do people have to get stipid when a band adapts? Like when Rancid made "Life Won't Wait" they used to talk about the varieties of music they enjoyed beyond Epitaph's line up. There had always been hints of this stuff in their music before, but when that album came out people got all stupid and were like 'where the hell did that come from' like they turned into a totally different band. What the fuck?

I kinda liked the "American Idiot" video myself. Billie is still putting out the catchy hooks after all these years. It should be an intersting album. It certainly should make anyone who analyzes lyrics think. Whether or not you agree with everything they're saying, one positive thing is that at least a few people may be inspired to either get involved or at least figure out where they stand on things.

I also await Doctor Frank's New book with anticipation, and fervor. It's been awhile since a book has really piqued (Spelling?) my interest to this degree, and I've been telling every bookworm I know to be on the watch for it. The good Doctor is one talented songwriter so I'm intrigued to see what his take on the modern novel will be like.

For all the abuse Green Day garnered for being fake punk sellouts, i have to say they are not at all. They are pretty thoughtful people who make some good crankin rock n roll. They have a soul, and I'm proud to claim them as fellow gen x'ers.
Lord save us from the fake neo hair metal we now have disguised as emo, garage rock or any other misnomer you'd care to add.

"Everyone else in print and recorded has felt the urge to be all "Rock the Vote"ish and against Bush, etc."

And therein may lie the problem, Terry.

Conformity of dissent is lame. As is punk elitism.

Like it friggin matters. As if they have the kind of juice to decide national elections. Don't make me laugh.

JB your comments are so vague I have no idea what you are saying. It sounds like you are interpreting my compliment for Billie Joe as an insult. I'll explain it for you again.

Them government is fucked up. The electoral college is going to select whoever they like to be the leader reguargless of the wishes of the people they are supposed to represent. Often this is the reason people choose not to vote rather than this "Conformity of dissent" "punk elitism" that you mentioned. Voting is a waste of time because even your vote doesn't actually acomplish anything. I am not trying to say that Billie Joe alone among the super famous celebrities was bright enough to understand this point of view (he didn't say whether he votes or not, but he probably wants the kids to decide for themselves anyway), I was just pointing out that he is the first one I have seen making the direct statement that not voting is NOT equal to apathy as they like to say on the news.

Sociologists don't hegemony make; guns do.

"And therein may lie the problem, Terry"
K-POW! (terry's head gets blown off)
*roll credits*

So...the best way to fix something is to keep doing the same stupid thing in the exact same way that didn't work out the last hundred years?
You guys are clever. You should run for an office.

hey terry, that wasn't a personal attack. that "therein lies the problem" line reminded me of a clint eastwood one liner. i don't really want to blow yr head off. but make my day! punk!

"The electoral college is going to select whoever they like to be the leader reguargless of the wishes of the people they are supposed to represent."

I hear this all the time, and it really isn't true. The electoral college does not give its votes to whomever it chooses.

If you're interested, there's a fairly unbiased history of the EC, with pro and con arguments, at the Federal Election Commission's web site: http://www.fec.gov/elections.html
Look for "A Brief History of the Electoral College" under the Electoral College heading. The part about "faithless electors" in the "cons" section is especially relevant.

I agree that the electoral college should be shown the proverbial door. If the state is North Dakota and 750,000 people vote for candidate X and 250,0000 vote for candidate Y then those numbers should carry over into the total vote count and not just give candidate X 5 points for winning the state. This can be skewed so that if Candidate X wins all of the small states ie:ND,SD,IA,ID,WY etc...and Candidate Y Wins NY and CA by the skin of his teeth, then cadidate Y is routing candidate X, even if candidate X has more total votes!!! Talk about retarded!!!!

http://weaselmanor.blogspot.com/
Everybody should check this out. Ben Weasel had done an extensive interview with the good doctor, reguarding the songwriting process,with the intent of releasing it as a book.
Since this never happened we get to read it in daily installments on his blog.
Enjoy!

Thanks, Kevin! That's a terrific interview.

I don't see anywhere else to post this. "Oh, Just Have Some Faith In Me" was on the first episode in the new season of Real World. I should be ashamed, though I have no idea what shame is. Anyway, it made my day hearing MTX in the background to a bunch of bratty 20 somethings.

The electoral college is not retarded. It's actually quite brilliant. I never realized it until the last election. You may not like who won, but all you have to do is look at this map: http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/cbc/map.htm This is not the "red state, blue state" map. It's a county by county break down. You can see by looking at it that the electoral college is a levelling of the playing field. It's a compromise, a balancing of power like everything else the founders tried to do. A balance between the powers of individual states. Even WITH the electoral college its basically the same states deciding who gets to be president every year. And WHY you ask should we chose our president based on who wins each state?? Because if you didn't, none of those red spots on the map matter. If your conception of "fair" is to have the election of the president decided by NY and LA, and to disenfranchise "fly over" country, then yeah, I guess we should do away with the electoral college. I'll admit, the whole thing never made sense to me until 2000, but now I am in awe of what I consider to be an amazing system. I think it does favor mass population--normally the person with most popular votes WILL win, but it gives voice to sheer land mass, the people holding the most of the area of the country, should they be of same mind and in different interest than those holding the most populous areas of the country. And once every 50-100 years or so, it will make a difference. That's a good thing.

Sadly, it has happened. The blog's digestive juices, lacking any content to work on, swallowed itself. Now we have but grayness and links to look upon.

Dave (not bug),

Why should landmass be important in determining elections? Representative democracy is inherently disenfranchising (especially in these days when the PotUS is given blank-check powers over all international affairs).

My system is to let people and companies buy a president. Whichever candidate raises the most money wins. The money goes into the treasury to pay off the national debt. Um.

Land mass is important because each local government, each county, each state, is an entity in and of itself that represents a group of people that deserves some form of voice regardless of how many people that state represents. The electoral college gives them a fraction of power on the state level. Ultimately, sheer numbers of people hold the most power...just look at how much power the blue areas truly have! Generally speaking they are the most densely populated areas of the country and the fact that it took all of that red to win demonstrates how favored to the popular vote the system actually. Yet, it takes into account that 50 states should not have to be ruled by a half dozen or so, just because the most people live there. What you have at work in the 2000 election is a dynamic that was being played out when they were drafting the constitution, and one similar to the differences between the North and the South that led to the Civil War. It's a battle between two different kinds of states with different political interests, and for various reasons those interests coincide with the states population. You have the more populous and urban states on one side, the more rural states on the other. The electoral college may not "solve" the problem, but it creates an amount of parity. It's like wrapping up the balance of representation between the House and the Senate into one election of one man. Rather tidy, I think.

And I'm fully aware of the disenfranchising nature of a representative republic. Its probably why so few people vote. While I may not always be fond of my representatives and the work they do, I think our form of government goes a long way towards keeping the government immune to the whims of the impassioned masses, which seems to be the intent of chosing a republic in the first place. This seem to be especially good today as we seem to be a country with emotional ADD. We're all up in arms over something one minute, then apathetic about it the next. We're more like the adults on South Park than I'd like to admit. Come to think of it, that's a great example. Imagine the whole country is South Park. Now, give the country a democracy or some form of government that gives each citizen a far more direct way of voting on laws. What you are imagining is probably not too far from reality.

There's a very extensive, well-informed and interesting discussion of the EC over on dailykos.com. Anyone interested should take a look at it.

One problem that I have with your argument, Dave not Bug, is that the Presidency is the only office we treat this way. I grew up in California, which is an enormous, diverse state: rural and urban, Anglo, Latino, Asian, African American, coast and inland, leftist and reactionary. Can you imagine what people would think if we started giving Amador county or Alpine county extra votes for governor? Or if we assigned votes to counties and then had them vote in blocks, so if you won Santa Clara county by 2 percent you'd get all the Santa Clara electoral votes to yourself? It would seem absolutely crazy, and not a single state in the entire US does this -- even the ones that helped create the EC in the first place.

The EC was created because 18th-century communications made it hard for voters to learn about candidates outside their state, because the founders' sense of democracy was somewhat undemocratic by today's standards, and because the slave states wanted the 3/5 credit for slave population that they got in the House to translate into the presidential election. Pennsylvanians cast more votes than Virginians, but Virginia got more electors because slaves were counted for doling out Representatives. And, in fact, Jefferson beat Adams in 1800 because of the extra electoral votes credited to him by the 3/5 compromise.

Thanks for the site. Yes, those are all reasons for the development of the electoral college as was a fear of minimizing the electoral power of states with smaller populations. Obviously the EC has gone through several changes, a few major, and several minor over the years, and it has been a cultivated evolution that has led it in a different direction than its original intent, but I still see the current result as a good system that has some of its intended original effects in place which includes keeping us from too much direct democracy as well as a balancing of electoral power that gives the _potential_ to strengthen a "minority" candidacy in somewhat unique sitiuations such as 2000. Just my opinion that its a good thing, and uh, that's pretty much it. :)

I'm worried. Should I be worried?