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?

The Daily Breakdown - 11.20.08

Wow. That's really all I can say at the moment. It has been a whirlwind two weeks and change since election day, and the history just keeps on coming. First African-American president elected, women running for both president and vice-president this time around, an expected first African-American attorney general, and now, on top of it all, the good people of Silverton, Oregon saw fit to elect Stu Rasmussen back into the mayor's office. Rasmussen, who served two terms as mayor after winning elections in 1988 and 1990, and had served the last four years on the city council, gained 52% of the vote to defeat incumbent mayor Ken Hector (39%), and in the process, became the first openly transgender mayor in the United States. Just waiting for the headline where Rasmussen becomes the first mayor in U.S. history to resign from office for sexually harassing himself...

Federal agents and local police raided three "tanning salons" and arrested at least five people in the Seattle area Tuesday as part of a two-year investigation into what they say were fronts for prostitution. The King County Sheriff's Department, Seattle Police, the Internal Revenue Service, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement coordinated raids on five homes and businesses, arresting the owners, who had been indicted on charges of conspiring to transport women for prostitution and conspiring to launder the proceeds of the alleged brothels. Uh, yeah...whoopty damn. Why did it take four agencies two fucking years to figure out whether or not these businesses were selling pussy along with unlimited tanning packages? Makes me wonder how many of the law enforcement personnel who labored on this, ahem, bust look like George Hamilton now? Guess there is a happy ending for sunburn after all. Just don't ask where the lotion was applied...

I'm loving this...McDonald's, in addition to actually applying for patents in the U.S. and UK, claiming that their sandwiches, and the production method thereof, is "intellectual property," is also crusading to create the image their food-type products are healthy. Notable hilarity in this effort includes a slaughterhouse visit, to not only show the humane way the chickens are treated before the ax comes down, but to prove the McChicken nuggets actually contain chicken! Even funnier, and slightly more awkward than that, McDonald's is trying to rehab the image of their fries as healthy. Yeah, the fries. The fries that contain 380 calories, 270 mg of sodium, and a color preservative. Oh my McFucking God...

As first mentioned by Wonkette.com, Wall Street Journal deputy editorial page editor and long past brain damaged jackhole Daniel Henninger had his two cents' worth as to the cause of the financial crisis our country is in: "This year we celebrate the desacralized “holidays” amid what is for many unprecedented economic ruin — fortunes halved, jobs lost, homes foreclosed. People wonder, What happened? One man’s theory: A nation whose people can’t say “Merry Christmas” is a nation capable of ruining its own economy." It's official. The Wall Street Journal needs to change their name, because if the best one of the low foreheads in charge of the opinion page can do is blame the so-called "war on Christmas" on the financial crisis, then the WSJ no longer has any business whatsoever covering Wall Street, or much of anything involving real reporter-type shit anymore. Ever. Period. Also, since it costs more to make a penny than it's actually worth, we have a more realistic take on what Dan Henninger's idiotic fucking ramblings are worth. Merry Christmas, you fucking moron. There, are you happy now, Henninger?