… some of the ideas that have been proposed recently seem like someone was just trying to see how crazy an idea they could get away with. Like billions in dollars in bonuses being handed out by companies that were about to go bankrupt. WTF? Are they just trying to demonstrate conclusively that they own the US government, media, and us?
Sometimes things get so hypocritical in politics that you can’t figure out where the cycle of hypocrisy begins or ends. Deceiver.com has an interesting article wonderfully titled “Alabama Anti-Gambling Task-Force Chief Wins Jackpot, Resigns. Then Things Get Weird.”
It seems that David Barber, the head of the Alabama Task Force on Illegal Gambling — yes, the person who is in charge of keeping gambling illegal in Alabama — somehow managed to win a jackpot at a casino in next-door Mississippi. He resigned, even though gambling is perfectly legal in Mississippi.
But that just opened up a new can of worms. It turns out that the Mississippi casino involved is operated by the Choctaw Indians, who needless to say have a vested interest in keeping gambling illegal in Alabama. In fact, remember convicted influence peddler and lobbyist Jack Abramoff? According to a 2002 Senate Indian Affairs report, he boasted that the same Choctaw Indian Tribe spent $13 million to get Bob Riley elected the governor of Alabama, in order to keep gambling illegal in Alabama (I guess there’s a reason why the Alabama dictionary lists “Corporate Free Speech” and “Quid Pro Quo” as synonyms).
So to sum up. The governor who created the task force to keep gambling illegal in Alabama appoints David Barber to head it. Barber is caught gambling in a casino in Mississippi. It turns out that the casino owners donated massive amounts of money to the governor in order to keep gambling illegal in Alabama.
But it is all better now. The new head of the task force is former District Attorney John Tyson, who doesn’t gamble. But is it a surprise to anyone that as soon as he was appointed to the position, evidence appeared that while District Attorney, Tyson protected one of his underlings who was arrested on child pornography charges while running the county’s Child Advocacy Center?
“Tomorrow night, President Obama will give his State of the Union address. The White House says the speech will focus on American jobs. So, I guess he’s going to talk a lot about India.” – Jay Leno
“Focus on jobs. This is going to be the shortest speech in history. ‘Hey, there aren’t any. Thank you. Good night.'” – Jay Leno
“Well, tonight in Washington, President Barack Obama gave his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress. Joint session sounds like more fun than it is.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“The speech tonight was pretty much the same thing we hear over and over again, asking us for patience and a willingness to sacrifice, things we are totally unwilling to do as Americans.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“But then after the president spoke, the Republicans gave their rebuttal, during which they pointed out that Obama has repeatedly failed to solve any of the problems they created under President Bush.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Neither one of these parties cares as much about the country as they do about being the one who gets to run the country. It’s a big waste, and it’s a big waste of air time that could be better spent on celebrities ice skating or conveyor belts of love, things like that.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Wal-Mart announced it’s cutting over 11,000 jobs. Wal-Mart said it’s cheaper to fire people in bulk.” – Jay Leno
“That’s an amazing amount of people: 11,000 jobs. The problem is they made the announcement in English, so everybody kept showing up for work.” – Jay Leno
“President Obama has now been called for jury duty in Chicago. I think he should go. I mean, the economy is in bad shape. We could use five bucks a day. Every little bit helps.” – Jay Leno
“Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that California can save money by no longer incarcerating illegal immigrants and just sending them to Mexico instead. Well, actually, today, the immigrants had three words for Schwarzenegger — ‘I’ll be back.'” – Jay Leno
“More problems for Goldman Sachs. Did you know the tax rate it paid on its profits last year was 0.6 percent? And of course, the CEO of Goldman Sachs was furious when he heard this. He said: ‘What? When did we start paying taxes? This is ridiculous.'” – Jay Leno
Three new studies from Tufts University show that we can generally identify people as either Republican or Democrat simply by looking at photos of their faces!
Subjects were able to identify the political party of US Senate candidates from previous elections based on black and white photos of their faces. But even more amazing, subjects could identify the political affiliation of college seniors based on their yearbook photos. The third study showed that these judgements were based on perceived traits — photos of people who were judged to be warm, likable, and trustworthy were identified as Democrats, while photos of people who were judged to be powerful, dominant, and mature were judged to be Republicans.
Furthermore, previous studies show that such judgements can even determine the results of elections. A study from a year ago showed that people could pick the winner of an election just by looking at a photo of their face.
In one study, children as young as five years old were shown photos of the two leading candidates in an election, and asked to pick which one they would like to be captain of their boat, and they were able to pick the winner of the election. In fact, children were able to predict the winner of an election as well as adults (so why don’t we allow children to vote?)
These study results seem to be universal, regardless of country, regardless of whether the election is local or national, how familiar the candidate is to the subject, whether or not the candidate is the incumbent, or their gender, race, attractiveness, or age of the candidate. Furthermore, candidate appearance is a bigger influence to voters who don’t have much political knowledge, and who watch television more than average.
I guess there is a reason why we use the word “free” to mean two different things. Or as the geeks like to put it, there is “free as in freedom, or free as in beer”. But I get the feeling that free speech just got a lot more expensive.
Republicans hypocritically oppose Obama’s balanced budget law, which he proposed in the state of the Union address:
The Senate took a vote on requiring Congress not to pass legislation that it can’t pay for. All 40 Republicans voted no.
A similar rule was in place during the Clinton era, when the deficit was eliminated altogether. Republicans — you know, the ones who claim to have the high ground on fiscal responsibility — scrapped paygo in 2002. Soon after, GOP policymakers stopped trying to pay for their policies, and Republicans quickly added $5 trillion to the national debt, and left a $1.4 trillion deficit for Democrats to clean up.
Just a few years ago, a handful of Senate Republicans — Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, George Voinovich, and John McCain — argued that paygo should be brought back. They were unsuccessful in persuading their Republican colleagues at the time, and yesterday, they voted with their Republican colleagues to reject the idea that they’d already embraced.
And that, in a nutshell, is why the notion of bipartisanship with a failed and discredited minority is so hard to take seriously. GOP lawmakers are so reflexive in saying “no” to everything, they end up opposing ideas they support, and at that point, reason has no meaning.
Since when is one parent complaining about a book enough to get it pulled from schools?
In seemingly unrelated incidents, a Virginia school district has yanked Anne Frank’s famous diary off its curriculum and shelves, because of a short passage about genitalia:
There are little folds of skin all over the place, you can hardly find it. The little hole underneath is so terribly small that I simply can’t imagine how a man can get in there, let alone how a whole baby can get out!
But if that weren’t silly enough, a school district in Southern California has pulled the Merriam Webster dictionary from all school shelves because (I’m not making this up), it has an entry for “oral sex” (defined as “oral stimulation of the genitals”).
Both incidents were caused by a single complaint from a parent.
Jon Stewart points out the ridiculousness of Democrats trying to please the Republicans:
My favorite part was the “Descent of the Democrats”.
In a wonderfully ironic twist on the recent Supreme Court ruling, an actual corporation has announced it is running for Congress. Why not? If corporations have all the rights of people, why can’t they run for public office? Murray Hill even have an “official” campaign website, so it must be real! Watch their campaign video:
UPDATE: More on this in the NY Times.
“John McCain’s wife and her daughter, Meghan, have posed for pictures endorsing gay marriage here in California, although Senator McCain – well, he’s still very traditional. He believes marriage should be between an older man and a really hot-looking younger woman.” – Jay Leno
“Actually, I saw John McCain today. He and John Edwards were at the same store. They were both buying diapers, but for different reasons.” – Jay Leno
“As I’m sure you know, John Edwards has finally admitted he’s the father of Rielle Hunter’s baby. There’s a shock. Who saw that coming? Given how long it took him to admit it, the kid is now old enough not to vote for him.” – Jay Leno
“Actually, John Edwards said today he’s going to help raise the little girl. He said he’s looking forward to teaching his daughter everything he knows about hair care products.” – Jay Leno
“And learning more and more about the new Massachusetts senator, Scott Brown. Well, you probably know this. Back in 1982, he posed naked for Cosmo. Yeah, isn’t that amazing? He’s got it backwards. First you get elected to the Senate, then you get caught with your pants down. It’s the other way. He seems to be very confused.” – Jay Leno
“Well, this is kind of embarrassing. At a speech to school kids in an elementary school in Virginia, President Obama used the teleprompter. He had a teleprompter set up to talk to the kids. The topic of the speech: Never taking the easy way out by bringing a cheat sheet to school.” – Jay Leno
“Congratulations to the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints. They’re going to the Super Bowl. The Saints beat the Vikings. Former President George Bush Sr., he was at the game. Now, his son George W. was invited. But you know him, when it comes to New Orleans, he’s always, like, two weeks late.” – Jay Leno
“It’s Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff’s birthday today and he celebrated, spent the entire day waving to Sarah Palin.” – David Letterman
“Ysterday President Obama met with a group of mayors at the White House and he told them he was glad not to be running a city during this recession. Yeah, it’s all part of Obama’s new campaign slogan: ‘Sucks to be you, bitches!'” – Jimmy Fallon
“Today President Obama was focused on bringing tough new regulations to banks. He said ‘If these folks want a fight, that’s a fight I’m ready to have.’ This explains why when President Obama tried to use an ATM today, it just spit out a receipt that said ‘F U.'” – Jimmy Fallon
“They’re having the auto show in Detroit. They’ve got a lot of concept vehicles. They have something they’re calling the NBC concept car. Are you familiar with this? You push a button or throw a switch or something and the wheels come off.” – David Letterman
“You guys following the big health fight? It’s not going well for the Democrats at all. Nancy Pelosi said yesterday that the House doesn’t have enough votes to pass the Senate’s bill. A few more elections and the House won’t have Nancy Pelosi either.” – Jimmy Fallon
I keep giggling over the latest post from Andy Borowitz:
Instant Poll: 90% of Republicans Who Did Not See Obama’s Speech Disagree With It
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address has already gotten a big thumbs-down from one key group of voters: Republicans who did not see the speech.
According to an instant poll conducted by the University of Minnesota’s Opinion Research Institute, 90 percent of Republicans who did not see the President’s speech strongly disagreed with it.
Additionally, 95 percent of Republicans polled agreed with the statement, “If I had seen the President’s speech, I’ll bet I would have hated it even more.”
Davis Logsdon, who supervised the poll, said there were certain difficulties in polling Republican voters: “Many of them would not let us finish asking the question before answering ‘No.'”
As I pointed out yesterday, the downside for corporations of making it legal for them to spend unlimited amounts of money on electioneering, is that their competitors will be doing the same thing.
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