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?
Showing posts with label President-elect Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label President-elect Barack Obama. Show all posts
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
The Daily Breakdown - 12.2.08
So, according to all the cable and network news sources, the United States is now "officially" in a recession, and has been for about a year now. Absolutely fucking fascinating. Yeah, making it "official," that was the key...now everybody is going to figure it out. We've known this for months, as the housing market was bottoming out, as every arrogant banking group was lining up to get a bailout so they could keep their big-time salaries, bonuses, and stadium naming rights. Yeah, things might have been rough, but now it's "official," so NOW we can say comfortably that the economy is spiraling down the porcelain? You may now facepalm thusly.
In somewhat related news, Ford CEO Alan Mulally, Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli, and GM CEO Rick Wagoner all announced they would work for $1 a year as they approach Congress with their new plan to beg for a $25 billion bailout. How droll. Maybe they should have taken this dramatic bullshit gesture well before the car went off the cliff, pun intended. Even now, a buck a year is overpriced for these three men, and the bottom line is any bailout, in addition to actual honest-to-god oversight (like any of us expect THAT to happen), the bailout needs to include the resignation of all three men, with replacement scouting to take place somewhere in the incorporated city limits of competence.
Meanwhile, it was reported by British news that President-elect Obama is buying his wife a $30,000 diamond ring. Puppy be damned, pal...how bad did you fuck up to warrant that?
It was announced today that even more material was being made public from the Nixon administration, shedding more light on Watergate and Vietnam, among other things. The release consists of 200 hours of audiotape and more than 90,000 pages of documents from 1972-74. Holy cow, this guy releases more posthumous material than Jimi Hendrix. At the rate this is going, we should have a better picture of the scope of Dubya's dry fisting of this country sometime in 2071...
Meanwhile, a trio of enterprising people in Ohio found themselves in hot water after a raffle went bust. Christopher S. Johnson, 33, an academic adviser at OSU's School of Nursing, Rusty Blades, 42, a real estate agent, and Vanise Dunn, 31, an employee of Franklin County Children Services and apparent part-time prostitute, were all nabbed after putting together the raffle, at $10 a ticket, on Craigslist, to spend an evening with a prostitute. Even sadder is the fact that Dunn has been employed as a child sex-abuse caseworker with Franklin County Children Services since 2000. Fuck, man, doesn't that job pay anything? Johnson was charged with promoting prostitution and given $25,000 bail. Blades, who was providing the house where the "prize" was to be collected, with also charged with promoting prostitution and given $50,000 bail. Dunn, who was named as the prize, was charged November 12 with allegedly soliciting a vice detective in a presumably different incident. Not that I'm against entrepreneurship or anything like that, but the most outrageous part of this is the idea that Dunn is on paid leave since her arrest, while the agency looks into whether Dunn violated any of its policies. What in the name of holy damn is there to figure out? You got someone charged with at least one sex crime, albeit the lowest level possible, realistically, and you're still letting her draw a paycheck as a sex abuse caseworker, for children?
In somewhat related news, Ford CEO Alan Mulally, Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli, and GM CEO Rick Wagoner all announced they would work for $1 a year as they approach Congress with their new plan to beg for a $25 billion bailout. How droll. Maybe they should have taken this dramatic bullshit gesture well before the car went off the cliff, pun intended. Even now, a buck a year is overpriced for these three men, and the bottom line is any bailout, in addition to actual honest-to-god oversight (like any of us expect THAT to happen), the bailout needs to include the resignation of all three men, with replacement scouting to take place somewhere in the incorporated city limits of competence.
Meanwhile, it was reported by British news that President-elect Obama is buying his wife a $30,000 diamond ring. Puppy be damned, pal...how bad did you fuck up to warrant that?
It was announced today that even more material was being made public from the Nixon administration, shedding more light on Watergate and Vietnam, among other things. The release consists of 200 hours of audiotape and more than 90,000 pages of documents from 1972-74. Holy cow, this guy releases more posthumous material than Jimi Hendrix. At the rate this is going, we should have a better picture of the scope of Dubya's dry fisting of this country sometime in 2071...
Meanwhile, a trio of enterprising people in Ohio found themselves in hot water after a raffle went bust. Christopher S. Johnson, 33, an academic adviser at OSU's School of Nursing, Rusty Blades, 42, a real estate agent, and Vanise Dunn, 31, an employee of Franklin County Children Services and apparent part-time prostitute, were all nabbed after putting together the raffle, at $10 a ticket, on Craigslist, to spend an evening with a prostitute. Even sadder is the fact that Dunn has been employed as a child sex-abuse caseworker with Franklin County Children Services since 2000. Fuck, man, doesn't that job pay anything? Johnson was charged with promoting prostitution and given $25,000 bail. Blades, who was providing the house where the "prize" was to be collected, with also charged with promoting prostitution and given $50,000 bail. Dunn, who was named as the prize, was charged November 12 with allegedly soliciting a vice detective in a presumably different incident. Not that I'm against entrepreneurship or anything like that, but the most outrageous part of this is the idea that Dunn is on paid leave since her arrest, while the agency looks into whether Dunn violated any of its policies. What in the name of holy damn is there to figure out? You got someone charged with at least one sex crime, albeit the lowest level possible, realistically, and you're still letting her draw a paycheck as a sex abuse caseworker, for children?
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Mississippi Burning II: Dumbass Boogaloo
What an absolute shock this story was when I found it. Not even a week after the presidential election, and already, the red states are showing their asses in small, yet remarkably unrefined ways. WLBT TV reports on officials at Puckett Attendance Center telling a woman's daughters that they were only allowed to mention President-elect Barack Obama in history class. Not in any other class, nor in the hallways, but only in history class. No word on whether or not this mysterious decision applies to the cafeteria, the buses, or the parking lot. Only in red state Mississippi, where yes, they did go for Sen. John McCain, could politics collide with limericks in just this fashion:
"There once was a school in Puckett,
that didn't like the election and said fuck it..."
I'm not exactly a poet laureate, so I'll allow you to finish it, if you can. Hell, email me your best shot, and I'll reprint it here.
Naturally, when the girls' mother called the school, rightfully so, with a little "what the hell?," no explanation was given, nor was any school official ready to speak with WLBT when they called for some answers. Personally, I don't think any explanation is needed. Mississippi is a state full of hicks, always has been, always will be, and you'd be hard pressed to argue, based on the actions of the apparently bitter muckety mucks at the Puckett Attendance Center.
"There once was a school in Puckett,
that didn't like the election and said fuck it..."
I'm not exactly a poet laureate, so I'll allow you to finish it, if you can. Hell, email me your best shot, and I'll reprint it here.
Naturally, when the girls' mother called the school, rightfully so, with a little "what the hell?," no explanation was given, nor was any school official ready to speak with WLBT when they called for some answers. Personally, I don't think any explanation is needed. Mississippi is a state full of hicks, always has been, always will be, and you'd be hard pressed to argue, based on the actions of the apparently bitter muckety mucks at the Puckett Attendance Center.
Now the questions begin
Well, I guess I put it off long enough. Then again, with scores of other writers and journalists weighing in on Tuesday's historic elections in today's Sunday newspapers, it's not like I'm waiting until February to really get started on dissecting Sen. Barack Obama's rise to become the President-elect of the United States.
It's fairly obvious to see how Obama won this election. Organization, fund-raising, staying on message, and avoiding the destructive attack tone of campaigning were points of order the Obama team clearly understood better than the slipshod McCain team. From the selection of an utterly unqualified and borderline incompetent running mate, to a stubborn insistence on attacking personal associations that McCain himself was just as close to, the Republicans could not have done a better job of laying down in the road as rush hour was beginning. The party's collapse into chaos has been striking, and more than a little fun to watch, as I haven't seen this much feeding upon itself than the time the four cannibals got caught at a REALLY long red light. If Sarah Palin is really being touted as the new face of the GOP, expect a lot more of the same four years from now. Whackjob, which is closer than most people understand, was more generous than I would have been, and is a lot more generous than I have, in fact been.
As for our new President-elect, the critics, bloggers, and journalists have been quick to start questioning whether or not change is really coming. Come on, people...it took a grand total of three days for me to see a commercial touting a Barack Obama commemorative coin. Made me wonder how many John McCain coins that company had to melt down on Wednesday morning, and how appropriate a term is melt down, considering how the last five or six weeks of the McCain-Palin, or Palin-Voices in her head campaigns went.
Granted, I can admit to a little skepticism. Some of the financial all-star team advising Obama throughout the campaign were already more than a little suspect, given their past roles in the deregulation of the financial industries that played a large part in getting us to the state we're in now. Paul Volcker? Robert Rubin? Larry freakin' Summers? I cannot argue against bringing in people with experience, but sometimes you simply need to hire new guards to work the room, not the guys who helped case the joint in the first place.
Much was made of President-elect Obama's first press conference last week, in which there was some fluff material about the selection of the new dog (or dogs, possibly) for the Obama children, and a humorous moment when Obama made an offhand joke about the reputed fondness for seances by former first lady Nancy Reagan, which Obama later said he called and apologized for. Me personally, I would not have done that. Not that I am entirely an unapologetic person, but let's get serious people, seances? I notice none of them included getting in touch with her husband's mind, after it went off to the great unknown during his second term.
As the first full week of the Obama-elect era winds down, I do find it promising that his transition advisers have compiled a substantial list of Bush administration moves that could be reversed, overturned, or simply tossed on the leaf fire out back. Key on this list are matters involving climate change, stem cell research, and reproductive rights. While I'm sure the religious nutcake factions of the right-wing are wringing hands, gnashing and weeping, and maybe even going to the Florida extent of praying and fasting on courthouse steps (we all saw how well that worked for those nimrods, in their hopes of getting an abortion opponent in the White House), the crucial matter is climate change. Anything our next president does in that neighborhood should start with tackling a repeal of the Clear Skies Act, and working with Congress to overturn the rollbacks enacted on the Clean Air Act.
I congratulate our new President, and I sincerely wish him the best of luck in the pursuit of his agenda, as most anything would be an improvement on the last eight years, just so long as he doesn't allow the ghosts of administrations past to whisper too loudly in his ear. We the people apparently craved change, as evidenced by the vote (for the record, I voted for neither Obama or McCain), but the bottom line for your next four years will be how you tread the very fine line between change we can believe in and just more of the business-as-usual politics this country settled for throughout this decade.
It's fairly obvious to see how Obama won this election. Organization, fund-raising, staying on message, and avoiding the destructive attack tone of campaigning were points of order the Obama team clearly understood better than the slipshod McCain team. From the selection of an utterly unqualified and borderline incompetent running mate, to a stubborn insistence on attacking personal associations that McCain himself was just as close to, the Republicans could not have done a better job of laying down in the road as rush hour was beginning. The party's collapse into chaos has been striking, and more than a little fun to watch, as I haven't seen this much feeding upon itself than the time the four cannibals got caught at a REALLY long red light. If Sarah Palin is really being touted as the new face of the GOP, expect a lot more of the same four years from now. Whackjob, which is closer than most people understand, was more generous than I would have been, and is a lot more generous than I have, in fact been.
As for our new President-elect, the critics, bloggers, and journalists have been quick to start questioning whether or not change is really coming. Come on, people...it took a grand total of three days for me to see a commercial touting a Barack Obama commemorative coin. Made me wonder how many John McCain coins that company had to melt down on Wednesday morning, and how appropriate a term is melt down, considering how the last five or six weeks of the McCain-Palin, or Palin-Voices in her head campaigns went.
Granted, I can admit to a little skepticism. Some of the financial all-star team advising Obama throughout the campaign were already more than a little suspect, given their past roles in the deregulation of the financial industries that played a large part in getting us to the state we're in now. Paul Volcker? Robert Rubin? Larry freakin' Summers? I cannot argue against bringing in people with experience, but sometimes you simply need to hire new guards to work the room, not the guys who helped case the joint in the first place.
Much was made of President-elect Obama's first press conference last week, in which there was some fluff material about the selection of the new dog (or dogs, possibly) for the Obama children, and a humorous moment when Obama made an offhand joke about the reputed fondness for seances by former first lady Nancy Reagan, which Obama later said he called and apologized for. Me personally, I would not have done that. Not that I am entirely an unapologetic person, but let's get serious people, seances? I notice none of them included getting in touch with her husband's mind, after it went off to the great unknown during his second term.
As the first full week of the Obama-elect era winds down, I do find it promising that his transition advisers have compiled a substantial list of Bush administration moves that could be reversed, overturned, or simply tossed on the leaf fire out back. Key on this list are matters involving climate change, stem cell research, and reproductive rights. While I'm sure the religious nutcake factions of the right-wing are wringing hands, gnashing and weeping, and maybe even going to the Florida extent of praying and fasting on courthouse steps (we all saw how well that worked for those nimrods, in their hopes of getting an abortion opponent in the White House), the crucial matter is climate change. Anything our next president does in that neighborhood should start with tackling a repeal of the Clear Skies Act, and working with Congress to overturn the rollbacks enacted on the Clean Air Act.
I congratulate our new President, and I sincerely wish him the best of luck in the pursuit of his agenda, as most anything would be an improvement on the last eight years, just so long as he doesn't allow the ghosts of administrations past to whisper too loudly in his ear. We the people apparently craved change, as evidenced by the vote (for the record, I voted for neither Obama or McCain), but the bottom line for your next four years will be how you tread the very fine line between change we can believe in and just more of the business-as-usual politics this country settled for throughout this decade.
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