Lionel Hutz would be proud

The Supreme Court today agreed with a man who wanted a statement his ex-wife gave to police not allowed as evidence, since he has the right to challenge witnesses. He can't challenge his ex-wife since he killed her. I'm no elitist lawyer but does a statement in a police report make someone a witness?

Also interesting in the Supreme Court recently:

-No death penalty for child rape
-Large reduction in compensation amount for Exxon-Valdez spill
-Agreed to hear case on whether muslims can sue gov't officials for being imprisoned after 9/11
-Turned down an Exxon appeal to stop an abuse case
-Re-affirmed Gitmo detainess's habeus rights

Surprise

There's not much thrill left to be had from bush admin scandals. Every new scandal coming out is something that has been mostly common knowledge for years. Today the big news was a report about the DOJ basing hiring on ideological and political criteria. Nothing new here, when Monica Goodling testified during the Alberto Gonzalez hearings she admitted as much. All this report does is shed light and offer some hard data as to the extent of it. What new scandals could there be that aren't already commonly accepted? Waste and fraud in military contracts? circumventing domestic eavesdropping laws? hiring glaring incompetents based on personal loyalty? understaffing and underfunding most of the federal domestic agencies? toerture-er-enhanced interrogation? lying and exxagerating about Iraq intelligence? Will we find out that he had a strong personal desire to take Saddam out and pushed us into war? You mean to tell me he is holding hundreds of people for years indefinitely?

It all reminds me of that sitcom that had two coworkers who hid their romance from the others, and then give an anti-climactic confession since everyone knew already. You know the one about that one family? It had the fat and dumb guy with a hot wife? That one where they would learn a valuable life lesson at the end of the show?

There will be Blood

For Oil

The 11th sign of the apocalypse

The republican nominee is the first out of the gate to come out with a bold energy proposal. Granted he was propsing more offshore drilling the week before, but maybe the backlash from the gas-tax-holiday and drilling was instructive to him. Will it be a 'Uniter-not a-Divider' moment?

I came I conquered I vacationed

A G.W. Memoir

BFF

The Bush administrations fixation on abstinence and faith-based cronyism was the subject of a hearing in Congress this week. You may remember the Best Friends Foundation, which was one of the questionable recipients of government grants under investigation.

Kids 3, Police 9

My loyal readers will know that there's no bigger threat to the American way of life than underage drinking. We simply cannot allow children under 21 years of age to imbibe alcohol in any non-cough medicine form. All the ugliness of the Riversplash incident here in Milwaukee could have been avoided if the purveyors at the festival were more vigilant in keeping out youngsters. Good thing that the police stepped in when they did. Who knows how much hooting and hollering and shooting oneself in the foot would have gone on had they not.

Police in Mexico are now following our lead in stamping out the underage drinking menace, with a raid on a Mexico City nightclub. A few kids and officers died, but it was worth it if it makes kids think twice before gathering at social events with alcohol. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Next on the list should be a clampdown on all the American kids going to Tijuana from California.

Let the baby have his way, hint hint

In the early days of the bush 43 debacle, the newspapers usually forshadowed his actions by quoting 'White House officials' saying the president is probably going to do this or that pretty soon. The pattern is coming back in this NYT article. Bush is 'urging' Congress to allow oil drilling offshore and in ANWR. Some 'officials' are quoted, and the WH press secretary also hinted, that bush is 'seriously considering' using executive action to allow said drilling. Translation: if bush doesn't get his way with Congress, he will go ahead and allow these things by executive order.

No shame

Yes, we all have noticed that gas prices are high. Not one to see a golden opportunity wasted, president bush has 'demanded' that Congress lift the 27 year old ban on offshore drilling. It's been a while since heyday of bush's demands to Congress. Back in the day it was a sure fire way to get Congress to pass anything bush demanded of it. Invade someone? Done. Broad new spying powers? Done. Tax breaks for your buddies? Done. Legalize torture and include retroactive immunity for war crimes to the executive branch? Done.

If the democrats currently in the majority there had half a brain they would realize that those times (should) have passed, the public mood has changed. The president is no longer a valiant crusader keeping us safe from the evil Islamist minions. No longer a hero, bush is now a laughingstock at best.

Under the guise of helping ease the high fuel prices, bush is trying to use his bully pulpit one more time to demonstrate his contempt and disdain for Americans, using a real problem, high energy prices, to push through a fake solution to line his friends and supporter's pockets at the expense of the country's coastlines. Allowing offshore drilling will not help with gas prices. Any oil from this drilling is a decade away from getting to the world market, and isn't enough to make much of a dent anyway, even if we did have the refining capacity for it and a way to keep it in domestic use only.

The whole idea is simply a shameless ploy to trick the country into a non-solution designed to enrich his old oil buddies and his VP's company. Is it January yet?

McCain update

I like this McCain video

You say tomato

John Stewart: "...40% of evangelicals are voting for Obama..."

Ralph Reed: "I don't think that's supported by the polling data...McCain is getting about 60 to 65 % of the evangelical vote..."



FBI Special Agent Beth Jordan: how about you pick me up at 7:45?

Harry Dunn: Well I have a few things to do how about quarter to eight?

Fine n Dandy

So today McCain said "That's not too important," McCain said, when asked by host Matt Lauer if he could better estimate when U.S. forces would come home. "What's important is the casualties in Iraq," he said. "Americans are in South Korea, Americans are in Japan, American troops are in Germany. That's all fine."

So the secret to winning is to just stay there until nobody tries to kill us anymore, at which time it will be ok to stay. Since we have troops stationed in former war zones that means it would be best just to wait this one out and keep this war going until they tolerate us.

He also forgot to mention the other former war zone American troops are still in...Iraq....

You should have that obstruction removed

Look here for details on the two times this week republicans have shut down two senate hearings. A few years ago we were hearing about the nuclear option, and now this? Ready to remove the option of filibuster from law when they were in power to stop those obstructionist democrats from blocking things the president wanted, and now using it themselves more than ever and more.

Let's talk about boobs and butts and stuff

she held her mammary glands against me for 5 seconds

I thought I was rich but they told me no

Twice today (that I've noticed) people made comments in the news saying that making $200K isn't really all that much. It's one of those things that hovers in the background, usually said with that fatherly homespun wisdom style that gets people to start nodding in agreement before they even hear what is being said. Never emphasized as the main point but casually dropped in the sentence. Listen to fox news or a GOP speech and you probably will hear it. After working in in every so often for years and years, it starts becoming that 'conventional wisdom' that everybody knows and doesn't need explaining.

It plays on people's, or should I say folks', fantasies and aspirations and what they want to hear -Yeah, it isn't that much money really, and if it's not that much money then maybe I will make that much someday. It's the only way the GOP, whose tax policies shift the tax burden down the economic spectrum, can get people on that low end to tolerate and even support and vote for those policies based on a wish that one day they will have it made and get Uncle Sam off their future selves' back, at their present selve's expense. If it can get a former hippie democrat to believe it and base their vote on it it can convince anyone.

For the record, less than 4% of the country makes over $200K in a year.

Panties and Farts

If you answered 'What are things a Congressman has talked about in Congress' you are correct. Panties and elephant/buffalo farts; in Congress? Really? Meet Dana Rohrabacher -R California

Rain

After this weekend of rain and flooded streets and yards everywhere, what else could happen? An artificial lake could get so high it drains away.

Better, faster, and 1/2 price

You've probably heard already but there a new faster iphone coming out that till be half the price of the original

Tenacity

You heard a lot this primary about how hard Hillary Clinton works. How she never gives up and keeps campaigning till the bitter end. She liked to claim that's why 'hard working white americans' vote for her. One of the reasons she gave for staying in so long was that she wanted to stay in until all the states had voted to make sure 'every vote is counted.' It was the same reason she gave for counting all the MI and FL votes, which I won't get into here. More on that and Hillary another time.

For all the hype around her hard working and sticking to it, she still could learn a lot about that from Kucinich. The irrepressible Congressman is trying to start an impeachment of GW tonight in Congress. (Video) Belittled, berated, ridiculed, and scorned by nearly everyone, he is still plugging away.

Let the free market decide

Over 100 countries have signed a treaty that bans the use of cluster bombs, George Bush and the US govt disagree. In addition to not signing it, we didn't even show up at the talks about it. Among the handful of countries not to sign the treaty, a common trait was being home to companies that manufacture them.

This is nothing new for the country with the largest military budget in the world and the most WMD's, we have been stubbornly against common sense civility before GW came to town. Bill Clinton passed on banning land mines, and when a vote on cluster bombs came up in the Senate in '06 out of the 3 current candidates, Obama was the only one that supported banning them. The issue came up at that time largely due to Israel's use of them in Lebanon in the last days of the fighting. The Red Cross came out against them. Our PR department opened up an investigation at the time (a probe as some would call it), to make it seem like we cared, meanwhile OJ is still investigating who the real killer is.