Author: Jason

The Headbutt Heard 'Round The World

In Lego.

And how about that technique?

Impeccable. Experts in self-defense and mixed martial arts say Zidane’s head butt was a flawless demonstration of the form. He positioned his feet close to his opponent and stepped into the blow, contracting his abdominal muscles to curve into the attack. He was also careful to keep his chin down as he approached, which helped him land the strike with the top of his head as opposed to his brow or face.

Zidane employed a classic “forward head butt,” favored by street fighters in Europe and the United States. Also known as the “Liverpool kiss” or the “Glasgow kiss,” the forward head butt is used most often on an adversary’s face. The head-butter tries to smash the relatively hard bone at the top of his head into the head-buttee’s softer nose, cheeks, or jaw. Aiming for the mouth can do a lot of damage, but it can result in a laceration for the attacker. Likewise, it’s very important to avoid forehead-to-forehead contact.

SLANTblog: Weekend Without Echos

F.T. Rea over at SLANTblog has challenged the Virginia blogosphere to partake in a little experiment:

use the weekend of July 21-23 to show the rest of the blogosphere that it can be done. It would be a weekend vacation from copying, and piling on, and talking points … a weekend without calling everyone with whom one disagrees a “liberal,” or a “conservative,” as if those are dirty words.

For instance — for the Webb team it would mean a weekend without using the name, “Felix,” in your posts. For the Allen team it would mean three days without using the word, “flip-flopper,” in your posts. And, if you can’t write about those two guys without using those words, and words like them, maybe try writing about something else. Hey, I’m only talking about three days.

I’m game. As are plenty of others. You can even see a growing list over at Vivian Paige’s blog (Also the source of the sweet graphic above. Kudos, Vivian.)

If I post at all that weekend, it’ll be original. As I said in my comments over at SLANTblog, I like to think of this as a great opportunity for bloggers to introduce (or re-introduce) themselves to the blogosphere.

Kos On Democratic Primary Voters

Interesting…

Message to Dodd — Democratic primary voters like to support loyal Democrats. Looks like you just failed that very, very simply litmus test.

Says the man who backed holiday Democrat James Webb over lifetime Democrat Harris Miller.

Why are “progressive” Dems who scream about appealing to the middle attacking Joe Lieberman so hard when he’s one of the more moderate sitting Democratic Senators?

Ah, single issue…

Campaigning On MySpace

So last week I mocked some guy running for Reno city council for having a MySpace page for his campaign. Well, it seems I didn’t really have to look nearly to the other side of the country for a campaign in MySpace.

James Webb is doing his part to cater to that elusive 14-23 year old voting block that just LOVES MySpace and the half nekkid girl spambots that infest it.

Maybe I’m just behind the curve and MySpace is in the same place blogging was a few years ago: shunned, mocked, considered utterly worthless for campaign purposes. Hey, blogging’s still viewed that way by a lot of folks. But still, MySpace? The webservice that gets in the news only when fourteen year old girls run off to meet up with their 20-50 year old BFF they met there? I dunno…

Oh well, at least George Allen has more friends on MySpace then James Webb.

Ouch: Allen 56% – Webb 37%

A new SurveyUSA poll in the VA Senate race puts Republican incumbant George Allen way up over Democratic challenger James Webb by 19 points. A breakdown of the polls is available here.

Only 80% of the people approached were registered to vote and only 54% of that 80% said they were going to vote this November. I’m sure some of those who said they didn’t intend to vote will eventually decide to (thus explaining the very low 3% undecided number) but just the same, that’s not a lot of interest or a whole lot of room for the candidates to maneuver. I fully expect it to get closer between now and then, but that’s only if the Webb camp can get its act together and start running like a professional, big league campaign.

350pm UPDATE: The Dem response to this poll seems to be that Allen’s been out there more as of late than Webb. Didn’t Webb just come off a primary win that gave him huge exposure statewide and beyond? Didn’t Webb’s primary performance get credit for his being within 5 points on the Zogby poll? So why does that performance and exposure not count now?