The Daily Breakdown - 12.4.08

Ah yes, let the pettiness continue...with all the half-assed rambling going on that President-elect Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States, leave it to the most half-assed Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court to throw his three-quarters of a cent into the mix. Justice Clarence Thomas, best known as the premier seat-filler on the high court for maybe having only said four words the entire time he's been there, has asked the other Justices to consider a lawsuit that questions the citizenship of our soon-to-be 44th President. The matter has actually been scheduled for a conference tomorrow, leading me to wonder if the Supreme Court has ran the hell out of sensible matters to look into, and if so, why they are following the lead of the most disinterested stone-faced mute to ever occupy space in the highest level of our judiciary.

Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to facepalm...former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is mulling over whether or not to run for the U.S. Senate seat Mel Martinez is going to leave after 2010. While it seems by far and large margins that Jeb is the least repulsive of the Bush offspring, one has to be curious to his chances. His older brother is currently holding simultaneous spots as not only the worst president in the history of this country, and judging by the GOP's performance, a big time political liability, and you know that fact has weighed in on Jeb's mind. Sure, a 2006 Quinnipiac University poll showed that 57% of Florida voters thought Jeb was a good or great governor, but that very same poll had 59% of those same voters disapproving of the job Dubya was doing. I want to see a poll taken in the here and now, showing what not only the voters in Florida, but voters across the country think about the prospects of yet another Bush remaining in public office. I for one, welcome a day when the Bush political machine, if ever it could have been called such, finally sputters to a stop.

Closing out today's column with failure of a different sort, James Pischel's attorney, public defender Matt Graff, argued to the Supreme Court that Pischel had been entrapped, by a Lincoln police investigator posing as a 15-year-old girl, by the use of emoticons, even after Pischel had supposedly tried to break off online contact two months prior. Pischel was busted in June 2007 after trying to meet the girl for sex near a public park in Lincoln. So let me get this straight...some dipshit guy working as a state corrections officer gets busted for trying to hook up with a 15-yr-old girl, and he is going to blame the emoticons the cop used? Dumbass said he tried to break off contact online, and that's all well and good, but why the fuck did he go try and meet the chick? Never mind your Ps and Qs...maybe you should have minded your :)s or your ;Ds instead. What makes this an even bigger fail in my book is the fact Pischel had already served out his 1-2 year sentence, having been released in late-October. If they weren't going to pay this any mind then, what makes you think it's gonna hold water this time around?

The possibility of Bush being impeached? Yeah, you wanna buy a bridge with that?

Talk about blind faith. In the latest issue of The Nation, John Nichols writes of potential trouble in the wings for the (thankfully) soon-to-be former President George W. Bush. As is traditional, the outgoing President will be winging a few pardons here and there, and that's where the supposed trouble starts.

Mentioning constitutional framer George Mason's beliefs that impeachment would "surely" be in order if a president attempted to stop inquiry and prevent detection of wrongdoing within his administration, and that impeachment would be in order if a president were to pardon crimes which were advised by himself, Nichols writes of the obligation of the House Judiciary Committee to demand that Bush explain himself, should he pardon the usual cast of characters we have seen over the course of his eight years in the White House, such as Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, Josh Bolton, and on and on, etc.

Nichols concludes the blurb-style piece with the statement that the House should challenge any refusal of explanation by Bush of questionable pardons with articles of impeachment. Man, wouldn't that be a beautiful world, if only it would actually happen? Are we supposed to believe that even now, with a stronger Democratic majority in the House and Senate, that Dubya will ever be in the same room with a serious intent to bring about impeachment proceedings? For all the extra-constitutional hi jinx and flat-out lying us into a long and damaging war in Iraq, among items on a veritable laundry list of reasons why he should have already been impeached by now, do you honestly think now, in the final waning weeks of the Bush administration, this will be the thing that pushes the right button? Waiting until the turd turns white to remove it from the carpet hardly does anything to fix the stain underneath, nor does it do much to bolster one's reputation as a housekeeper. The boat done sailed, folks, and as usual, we're the ones left to tread the water in its wake.

Does this guy own a Farking calendar?

I know from personal experience, as a blogger and author, that sometimes I've encountered a slow news week or writer's block, where you just don't have that much to work with. Given the way last week went, as I was without power for over five days due to remnants of Hurricane Ike kicking Kentuckiana's ass, the inability to react to current events and post to the blogs was irritating, but I countered by writing up a 6,000 word or so piece, which we plan on releasing as an ebook in the coming weeks. Not only did I keep busy, but I managed to at least stay current.

More than I can say for some of the submitters to Fark.com, the popular website that collects news stories from all corners of the Internet, offering often hysterical comments next to the link. (In the interest of full disclosure, my May 15, 2008 article, "These numbers wouldn't even make sense if you were high" was submitted by a reader to the site, no doubt thanks to a reference to Fark in the article).

Today, in between football games and checking on my fantasy teams, I was perusing Fark (a daily ritual for me), when I saw the story of some clerk with a single-digit IQ accepting a $200 bill featuring President and idiot savant (sans savant) George W. Bush, giving back $50 in change on a grocery purchase in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. I thought this story sounded familiar...

...and for good reason, I would discover upon closer examination. The story in question was from June 1, 2007.

WTF? I'm guessing that not only does that Farker not own a calendar, but also is not very political, as there is a veritable treasure trove of stories, either involving John McCain's latest round of "What I meant to say was..." or Sarah Palin's newest asshat behavior (and trust me, folks, there is hardly a shortage of those going around). The fans of Fark would no doubt enjoy those more that rehashing some nonsense that happened over a fucking year ago.

Maybe Fark could use a "classic" or "archive" tag to go along with "stupid" or "asinine."