Two years ago I let  you into my life a little bit and told you that I was joining my friend’s tech start-up.  Well last Thursday we completed the sale of the company. I could stay on if I wanted but after two years at a start-up I’m drained.  I’m going part-time while I try to find another legal job - one where I’m not the only lawyer.

I’ve been on vacation since the sale and while I wish I could tell you that I had some grand realization about my future I can’t.  The sale gives me a nice monetary cushion while I find other work but it’s nothing to retire off of.  My writing gigs will help float me too but don’t look for me to do it for a living any time soon.  

I have a weird relationship with notoriety.  I remember being horrified in high school when I found out that there were people who knew who I was while I didn’t know them.  I like to control who knows me - it’s an odd thing but it’s a thing nonetheless.

But I did want to let you guys know about this because it’s a really big deal to me.  I don’t know what the future holds but I hope that we can keep talking.

-Bobby

th-eats-blog:

For some Peruvian flavor…

What I Ordered: Half pollo a la brasa (rotisserie chicken) and french fries

Over at Progressive Boink, Jon Bois used to do a weekly Lunch Judgment that has only now made appearances when he damn well feels like it. We’d all put our lunch submissions in the…

Everyone should follow my example; it ends in deliciousness

Quite happy with my Game of Thrones house sigil

A lot of people have had a lot of intelligent things to say about President Obama’s justification for allowing extrajudicial murders of U.S. citizens in the War on Terror.

My thoughts on judicial involvement in war are summed up in Robert Jackson’s dissent in Korematsu v. United States.  He admitted that judges do a terrible job of judging military decisions during emergencies.  But once such emergencies are over, a court can examine the constitutionality of the military’s ongoing actions.

Korematsu was decided in 1944.  In 1945 Japan lost World War II, they signed a peace treaty with us, and hostilities ceased.  As did the internment of Japanese citizens like Fred Korematsu (that’s right, his name was Fred, that’s how American he was).  

But the United States got out of the business of fighting wars that end.  We decided that we’d launch ones that lost decades and cost trillions. And the president never got Congress to declare war on terror like it did on Japan in 1941.  And there’s nobody to sign a peace treaty with.

Welcome to the era of the unending military emergency. Until Americans are willing to end the War on Terror then they’re stuck with extrajudicial killings of citizens.  In the current political and media climate, I don’t think that’s possible.  

New York is an inherently stupid place.  You saw that during Hurricane Sandy, who the fuck puts all this stuff on an island so easily flooded?  Everyone here works too much and pays too much and drinks too much.  I won’t lie; I think about leaving a lot.

But last night I was in P.J. Clarke’s watching the Heisman ceremony and drinking a beer when a Christmas song came on the sound system.  I forget which one.  But it slowed everything down and made the moment seem timeless, like I could be doing the same thing fifty years ago.  It’s odd how, if only for a few brief moments, the city makes sense once in a while.

Yesterday I remarked to a friend that I was amazed I was still gaining followers headed up to a heated election.  Today I realized that any Republican followers that I had yet to antagonize away were waiting until the day after the election to unfollow me.  I can’t blame them.  If Twitter had existed back in 2004 I would have unfollowed any Republicans in my feed.  See, in 2004 I worked for one of the Kerry campaign’s vendors and put my heart and soul into it, only to see it dashed.  So I know how it feels to be you right now. And while I come across as a sneering jerk online I am, in fact, a big old softie.  I want to help you feel better.  So here’s how you should cope with Mitt Romney’s loss:

1.  Disengage from politics for a bit.  Approach politics like you’d approach a girl that just dumped you.  Ignore it and focus on your non-politics hobbies.  After the 2004 election I quit that job and did my best to ignore what was happening on Capitol Hill for a while (at least you still have a Republican House, after 2004 I had nada).  You’re well-advised to do the same; it’d just make you angrier/sadder.

2.  Keep in touch with Democratic friends.  This might surprise you, but in real life I have Republican friends.  I just never talk politics with them.  I suppose some light ribbing may be in order after last night, but you can probably spend time with your Democratic friends without them rubbing a loss in your face.  And if they do then they’re probably not very good friends.

3.  Stop saying America is doomed.  It’s not.  America is resilient as fuck.  In 2004 I was convinced the country was going to hell.  And hey, look at Bush’s second term.  Pretty much everything that could go wrong did.  Except we’re all still here, you can still watch football and drink beer on Sundays, you can still see pretty girls in sundresses when it’s spring, you can still get like 20 different types of peanut butter at the grocery store.  The things that make America great are pretty tough to get rid of.

4.  When you start following politics again, remember what it’s like to lose.  I was amazed at how confident Republicans were and nervous Democrats were yesterday.  They were like that because Republicans haven’t gotten their hopes up only to see them dashed in a really long time.  Nobody really thought John McCain or Bob Dole would win.  Even HW seemed pretty doomed by the end in 1992.  That makes Gerry Ford the last candidate to let you down, nearly 30 years ago.  Meanwhile there was a solid 2-hour period in 2004 that I was convinced I’d have a job in the Kerry White House, so I knew not to celebrate until the fat lady sung.  Remember to temper your enthusiasm heading into the final weeks of 2016 with the knowledge that you still can lose.

NEW ENTRY:

5.  Don’t say the American people are stupid.  I remember looking at this after the 2004 election. Not everyone who votes against your candidate is dumb.  Some are.  But the people who usually decide elections (swing voters) simply don’t have a lot of time to think about politics. The campaigns have to be able to make a 30-second pitch to these busy people who have families and bills and crippling porn addictions to think about.  Barack Obama ran a campaign that did a better job of reaching these busy people.  They’re not dumb.  They just tuned out your bullshit, just like they tuned out my bullshit in 2004.

And of course, you can submit questions (anonymously or otherwise) at the top of my Tumblr.  I’m here to help

-Bobby

rachelinbrooklyn:

organizingthesoup:

meredithbklyn:

ALL NYC TUMBLRS to the

ELECTION EXTRAVAGANZA 2008!

Coppersmith’s on 9th Avenue and 53rd Street.

Come enjoy every news channel you can think of on big screen TVs, 2 for 1 burgers, and have your choice of RED Stripe or BLUE…

Hey that’s me!  Oh and in case you enjoyed my 2010 election coverage I have bad news.  Or if you hated it I have good news.  I made plans with someone tonight and (barring her flaking out) I won’t be on Twitter much.  Proof that somehow, in the past two years, I’ve made myself attractive to the opposite sex.

Anonymous asked: Watching in real time from the situation room a US Embassy get bombed and DOING NOTHING about it makes Obama the biggest piece of shit in America. Get real. Thank god he is history. Landslide win for Romney.

This guy, everyone (his version of the Bengazi incident has no basis in fact, btw).

Mitt Romney is a piece of shit.

I’ve said this a lot over the past year or so, but I really want everyone to know the exact reasons why he’s a piece of shit.  Let’s take a look at his biography:

Mitt Romney is a piece of shit because he held down a gay classmate and cut his hair.

This was the first evidence we had that Mitt Romney is a piece of shit.  We all do dumb stuff in high school and lord knows I’m not innocent of bullying someone who might have been gay.  But Romney just blithely dismissed this as teenage shenanigans when it’s something that he actually should have felt bad about.  First of all, it displays a total lack of empathy.  Moreover, it shows that, if he were president, then anyone who is considered by him to be an “other” (black, Latino, gay, hippie, whatever) doesn’t have a seat at the table.

Mitt Romney is a piece of shit for acting like he had to go on a Mormon mission to France instead of enlist in the military during Vietnam.

What Mitt Romney did was above board; like a lot of college-educated young men he took deferments until he drew a low draft number.  My dad did that too.  But my dad never acted like he wished he could have been in Vietnam if fate hadn’t intervened.  That’s how Romney acts.  Really?   He would have been on the front lines except he had to chill out in France to help his religion?  Is that what we want in a president?

Mitt Romney is a piece of shit because he went to Bain after law school.

Going to Bain after law school doesn’t make you a piece of shit.  Heck, nearly everyone I went to law school with went straight to the private sector; student loans don’t pay themselves away.  But, again, don’t we want more out of our president?  President Obama was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review; he could have gotten any job he wanted.  Instead he went to Chicago to help out poor people.  He didn’t pay back his student loans until he got a book deal.  The already wealthy Romney just sought to make more money.  Shouldn’t we have a president that seeks to help others instead of himself?

Mitt Romney is a piece of shit because he never created a job at Bain.

For the last time, Mitt Romney didn’t work in venture capital.  Venture capital isn’t as lucrative as private equity because you have a larger failure rate in venture capital and it’s only rarely offset by an early investment in a company like LinkedIn or Facebook.  Private equity, what Mitt Romney did do, was all about using your investors’ money to load a company with debt, pay yourself fees to tell people who to fire, and making sure that the debt is serviced by anyone but your investors.  Any jobs created by a PE firm are ancillary to the firm’s goals.

And this does not bode well for a Mitt Romney presidency.  He’s used to answering to his investors and operating on razor margins.  That means he’ll govern from his base with the goal of winning another bare majority in 4 years.  In other words, George W. Bush 2.0.

Mitt Romney is a piece of shit because he didn’t pay his taxes.

Oh, he paid his taxes.  Just not the taxes that you pay.  The fact of the matter is that it’s impossible for the U.S. to grab every bit of income that is generated domestically as long as people are smart enough to handle transactions offshore.  So it was perfectly legal for Mitt Romney to park his assets in the Caymans.  But, again, do you want someone who does this to be your president?  Shouldn’t we expect more of the commander-in-chief?

Mitt Romney is a piece of shit because he doesn’t believe in anything except Mitt Romney.

It’s amazing how he’s basically gotten a pass on going from pro-choice in an effort to beat Ted Kennedy to being pro-life with Paul “Forcible Rape” Ryan as his running mate.  He wanted to stop global climate change before that came an albatross in a Republican primary.  He implemented the exact same health care reform plan as the president and is now haranguing President Obama for passing it.  

Mitt Romney only believes in one thing; that Mitt Romney should be president.  And he will do whatever it takes to become president.  Which means entering the dirty pool of birtherism and castigating his opponent as the other.  And how will President Romney govern?  Look back at the section on Bain.  He answers to his investors.  The base, the Koch brothers and Shelly Adelson.  Not you.

Mitt Romney is a piece of shit.

I could go on and on.  The point is this.  Mitt Romney is a self-serving asshole who only looks after people like himself and doesn’t know the first thing about the public good.  As we’ve seen in the past week, government can be a massive help to people in a time of need.  Mitt Romney’s never had a time of need or displayed the empathy necessary to help anyone in their own time of need.  He is a piece of shit.  If you want a piece of shit president that’s your prerogative, but on Tuesday I’m voting for the guy who isn’t a piece of shit.

-Bobby

cuntymint:

shialabeowulf:

I gasped too many times.

I need to remember these.

(via rematiration)