I Am Incredibly Important
Ana Marie Cox outlines “The New D.C. Status Symbols”:
Other towns may measure status by your address, your alma mater, your income, or your shoes, but in political Washington right now there is only one barometer of anyone’s importance: How close are you to Obama? Here’s how to tell.
One sign:
You have something to do with the Center for American Progress. Founded by John Podesta in 2003, it started out as a kind of home for Clinton administration alumni. As Podesta’s relationship with Obama has grown (he’s now head of the transition), it’s become one of the only local institutions with a direct line to the future residents and staff of the White House.
It’s true. The influence of this blog and it’s humble author cannot be overstated. This is why come spring Obama is actually going to require the death penalty for anyone who spends March watching college basketball players fail to score against slow, inept defenses and praising them for their “teamwork” and mastery of the “fundamentals.”
51 Responses to “I Am Incredibly Important”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
January 11th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
How about you tell your pal Obama to get those war crimes tribunals going?
This is why come spring Obama is actually going to require the death penalty
…Or maybe not. At least here in New Jersey, we civilized citizens abolished this immoral punishment.
January 11th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
I must respectfully disagree on any use of the death penalty. However, I am open to compromise on the use of waterboarding.
January 11th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Was this post approved by Jennifer Palmieri?
January 11th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Will Obama also require that those close to him learn the difference between “it’s” and “its”?
January 11th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
I suspect this is a small over-reach by MY.
Craig Robinson, two time Ivy league player of the year at Princeton, is Michelle Obama’s brother. And nothing defines any successful Ivy basketball team like “teamwork” and mastery of the “fundamentals.”
January 11th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
The death penalty for anyone who spends March watching college basketball players fail to score against the Wizards?
January 11th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
By that standard, Caroline Kennedy might as well have already taken the oath of office.
January 11th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I look forward to the implementation of “Baria Law” and justice served upon the slackers who gave us the BCS and the Designated Hitter. Off with whatever. Viva la ONE!
January 11th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
“this blog and it’s humble author”
Really? You went to Harvard dude. Jesus Christ.
January 11th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Still mad about not making varsity, huh.
January 11th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Step back from the keyboard. No drinking and blogging.
January 11th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
What’s going to be the penalty for listening to music that isn’t terrible?
January 11th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Re Matthew’s comment “this blog and it’s humble author ”
—————
Who has a lot to be humble about.
How about a forecast? Will Obama winning the Presidency turn him into a ball hog when he’s on the basketball court?
January 11th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Here’s my Center for American Progress backgrounder.
You know what would be fun? If MattY could list the top five CAP papers that he believes are resistant to being mercilessly ripped apart. Then, we could illustrate to him all their leaps of logic and so on. Is there anything they’re written that’s intellectually honest?
Bear in mind that people at the intellectual level of a Jennifer Palmieri and a MattY will soon be making policy for the U.S.
January 11th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Craig Robinson, two time Ivy league player of the year at Princeton, is Michelle Obama’s brother. And nothing defines any successful Ivy basketball team like “teamwork” and mastery of the “fundamentals.”
Not to mention that Robinson coached Brown the past two years and coaches Oregon State this year.
Not that Oregon State has any chance of making the Tournament - they started the season losing their first 4 games, including against Howard and Yale.
January 11th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Re 24AheadDotCom’s comment “If MattY could list the top five CAP papers that he believes are resistant to being mercilessly ripped apart. Then, we could illustrate to him all their leaps of logic and so on.”
——————-
1) Pretty brave words from the faction which:
a) elected 3 Republican Presidents who personally signed off on $9 Trillion in federal debt while claiming they were “fiscal conservatives”
b) Elected President George W Bush who Allowed 19 goatherds from a primitive country to bring down the World Trade Center Towers, a wall of the Pentagon and who is leaving office with the leaders of that enemy still out there.
This while being Commander-in-Chief of a nuclear superpower which spends more on defense than the next 25 major military powers combined
c) Oh — and that same President also sent 4000 US soldiers to their deaths in an unnecessary $2 Trillion war to seize nonexistent nuclear weapons
d) Plus 24’s dumbfuck leader allowed his rich buddies to bring the US economy to the point of collapse
2) The entire world –and a majority of US voters — know that the right wing consists of (a) the dumbest fucks on the planet, (b)shameless whores who will tell any lie in the course of kissing the asses of the rich and (c) people who betray America for the sake of special interests while at the same time waving the American flag.
3) Why does 24 think any of us should give a shit what he says?
January 11th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Here’s my Center for American Progress back–
Your ideas are intriguing to nobody and we wish you to stick your newsletter up your ass.
January 11th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
I assume this means all press releases from the Obama White House will include typos and bad grammar.
They already include complete ignorance of the situations in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
January 11th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
LOL! That will be worse than the past 8 years because. . .?
You may be happy having a president whose favorite book is “The Hungry Caterpillar” but that doesn’t go for many other people.
January 11th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Let me guess: you voted for John “Iran is training Sunni terrorists like al-Qaeda” McCain?
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/18/mccain-iran-al-qaeda/
January 11th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
It would be cool if you can show-off and post a camera phone picture from your seats at the inauguration, where you can see Barack Obamas’ eyes.
January 11th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
No, Hack probably voted for the Barackstar, he’s just an asshole who thinks he’s smarter than he is and acts up on the intertubes. I used to think was wasted when he would start up with that shit, but then he occasionally tells everyone how he’s a tea-totaler so that’s not even an excuse.
January 11th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
As a Columbia grad (’62) recently retired after teaching English basics to college students for 41 deliriously happy years, I well recall the valedictory delivered (in Latin) at Columbia that referred to the “miseros Harvardianos” who got their diplomas in English, not Latin. Half a century later, Harvard is still downmarket.
And fond as I am of Mr. Yglesias’s general political views, I really despair of his literacy in English, Latin, whatever. Evidently, getting admitted to Harvard is like getting into Beijing University: Once you’re in, no further learning is necessary.
He reminds me of the scene in Truffaut’s Jules and Jim where an anarchist, painting a slogan on a wall, runs out of paint. He slaps his hapless girlfriend, holding the paint bucket, and snarls: “Idiot! Now everyone will think anarchists can’t spell!”
You would think that CAP, and The Atlantic before it, could have found some wretched, otherwise unemployable English-major grad to proofread his stuff before he posts it. Evidently that would move him from a profit center to a cost center.
From the right wing, we expect subliteracy. When we find it on the left, especially from Harvard, it’s a painful reminder of how much work we still face.
January 11th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
I am all in favour or favor of the death penalty, despite my Canadian roots, for anyone who writes for a living, who misuses “it’s” for “its”.
January 11th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
# Notorious P.A.T. Says:
Let me guess: you voted for John “Iran is training Sunni terrorists like al-Qaeda” McCain?
Obviously you’ve never read anything I’ve posted here or on the old blog.
For your edification, John McCain is a senile war mongering lunatic.
The problem with Obama is that he’s “Bush Lite”.
# Ed Marshall Says:
No, Hack probably voted for the Barackstar
Obviously you’ve never read anything I’ve posted here or on the old blog.
I’m an anarchist. I don’t vote for assholes.
“I used to think was wasted when he would start up with that shit, but then he occasionally tells everyone how he’s a tea-totaler so that’s not even an excuse.”
What “shit” would that be? The stuff you don’t have an answer for?
Care to explain to all us dummies HOW Obama is going to solve the Iran problem within the next four years WITHOUT going to war when he says he will not accept ANY centrifuges on Iranian soil and Iran says they will NEVER give up enrichment? I’d really like to hear that one.
Or are you assuming he will just fart around with “diplomacy” and then hand off the problem to his successor, like Bush has done? And therefore I assume you think the Israelis will let it go for the next four years as well?
C’mon, take your best shot at explaining HOW Obama is going to solve the Iran problem, if you think you know better than me.
January 11th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
You seem to place an incredible degree of faith in the sincerity of our political class and it’s inevitable FP boilerplate pronouncements.
That’s not how things work. You remember how positive you were that 43 was going to attack Iran before the election? Outside of some sort of outrageous provocation nothing is going to happen to Iran in the near term. It’s not in the cards. Even if McCain was incoming it probably wouldn’t be in the cards.
January 11th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
I wouldn’t cross the attack on Iran off the charts just yet. At this point one must assume the Gaza attack is in part an exercise in stirring the pot in hopes of getting a reaction. A terrorist reaction somewhere. There is a Pandora’s Box of possibilities that could follow. All in the favor of radically heating up the now low level war with and among the players all over the Middle East and beyond to South Asia and India.
Obama isn’t in the White House yet.
January 11th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Good jobs by Don Williams and Notorious P.A.T.! Instead of having a brain, they just engaged in a tuquoque argument, without realizing a) that it was a tuquoque argument, and b) the extent to which the tu part doesn’t apply.
That’s truly CAP/MattY/TP-level thinking right there.
January 11th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000
ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or 20% of the world’s population.
They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
Literature:
1988 - Najib Mahfooz
Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1994 - Yaser Arafat:
1990 - Elias James Corey
1999 - Ahmed Zewai
Economics: (zero)
Physics: (zero)
Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad
TOTAL: 7 SEVEN
______________________________________________________________________________
The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000 FOURTEEN MILLION
Or about 0.02% of the world’s population.
They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World
Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1! 994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin
Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Bu! rton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charle S Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Sidney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger
Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel
Medicine:
1908 ! - Eli e Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abra ham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
198! 9 - H arold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis
TOTAL: ONE HUNDRED & TWENTY NINE !
The Jews are not promoting brain washing the children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims!
The Jews don’t hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics or blow themselves up in German restaurants. There is not a single Jew that has destroyed a church. There is not a single Jew that protests by killing people.
The Jews don’t traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.
Perhaps the world’s Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.
Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel ’s part, the following two sentences really say it all:
‘If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel’ -Benjamin Netanyahu
January 11th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Oh.
January 11th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
I don’t know what sort of filth decided to hijack Hack’s name, but you really don’t know what you are talking about. No Jew has destroyed a church? Not a single Jew that protests by killing people? Those would be some good fucking people I guess. That’s not really the way things work. See the JDL for example. Israel is actually a hub for sex slavery, I’m not gonna be you and try and blame that on Jews it’s just a fact.
Wherever you cut and pasted that from, it’s incredibly ignorant. If you have a sense of shame you will try and educate yourself if for no other reason than not to embarass yourself in your efforts at re-education.
January 12th, 2009 at 12:00 am
How do you argue with someone who thinks Henry Kissinger legitimately counts as a proponent of peace?
That doesn’t look like Roman numerals to me.
January 12th, 2009 at 12:02 am
So you don’t think that Jennifer Palmieri resides on a higher intellectual level than George “I’m not good at reading big long reports” Bush? Ok.
I thought “literacy” referred to the ability to read and write, not the ability to spell perfectly. To quote Richard Feynman: “I thought the purpose of language was communication”.
January 12th, 2009 at 2:32 am
Do you guys think I.B. Singer deserved a Nobel? Or Nelly Sachs? Who is Nelly Sachs?
January 12th, 2009 at 3:02 am
Wrong: Abdus Salam, Pakistani (1979) — a glaring omission, considering that you listed the two people (Glashow and Weinberg) with whom he shared the prize.
Also, Niels Bohr was half-Jewish, and Max Born converted to Lutheranism. I don’t have time to go through the rest of the list, but your agenda is obvious.
Now, I think Jewish people have every right to feel proud of some other Jews’ legitimate accomplishments. But, if you’re going to keep score, how far down into the basement does Bernie Madoff put you?
January 12th, 2009 at 6:41 am
I see that Matt’s thread has descended into Hell again. But I will remind everyone that Olivia Newton-John is Max Born’s granddaughter.
Lutheran Jews atill count as Jews for at least two or three generations, especially because they often don’t practice their new religion.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Unrelated to this post: but can someone explain why NRO insists on referring to Matt as a “Juicebox Mafioso”? The internet has failed to provide an explanation for this one.
January 12th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Unrelated to this post: but can someone explain why NRO insists on referring to Matt as a “Juicebox Mafioso”? The internet has failed to provide an explanation for this one.
It was coined by Noah Pollack I believe over at the nutters Commentary website. Martin Peretz helped spread the meme, which refers to the relatively young Matt and his relatively young friends friends Ezra Klein and Spencer Ackerman.
Basically it means that NRO and Commentary and some at the New Republic are afraid of these guys who are in reality nice, polite, harmless young men.
I just remember some anonymous commenters blasting Matt for moving from the Atlantic to CAP (wrong as they often are) and admire how he was able to parlay his new blog home into junkets to gullible nations like Switzerland and Finland.
January 12th, 2009 at 11:48 am
flyingv — From what I gather, someone commenting on either Chait’s or Peretz’s blog coined “Juicebox Mafia” to refer to MY, Ezra and Spencer. Peretz liked it so much that he adopted it.
When I first heard it I thought it was a mildly clever put down regarding the youth/inexperience/lack of wisdom of MY and the others (while disagreeing of course). But then Rea pointed out what I somehow missed, that it’s a double pejorative — “juice” for “jews.”
January 12th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Regarding the comment of Crawford @23 — would you prefer letter perfect blog posts from MY if he only blogged once or twice a day? Not me, and I suspect that goes for most of Matt’s regular readers. Prolific posting (and normally astute) with proligate spelling and grammar — that’s Matt’s charm.
January 12th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
The double pejorative is unfortunate, as I also find the term to be pretty clever. I was thinking about co-opting it to use for myself and several others in my company- we are early 20’s and everyone else is near retirement. As a jew I could probably use it anyway.
March 1st, 2009 at 5:43 pm
cialis
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
March 14th, 2009 at 4:57 am
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
xanax
March 17th, 2009 at 2:20 am
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
tramadol
March 22nd, 2009 at 5:53 am
tramadol
I want to say - thank you for this!
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:21 am
viagra
It is the coolest site,keep so!
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:53 am
I want to say - thank you for this!
buy cheap viagra
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:00 am
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
cheap brand pfizer viagra
April 9th, 2009 at 4:45 am
Thanks for the review! viagra