Ruh-roh...

Hey, Spitzer: don't do that.

Tightness Reigns in Southwest Florida

Local candidate, Margaret "Dee" Sulick, chalked up a victory in the hard fought race for Naples, Florida City Council last night. When reached for comment, Councilwoman Sulick stated, "It's great. We worked so hard and I had a lot of support. We even did it without the endorsement of the paper!" Her last refers to her suspect lack of support by local rag the Naples Daily News, which endorsed Dorothy Hirsche, a local business owner, despite Mrs. Sulick's many years of experience on the local city planning board and overwhelming mandate by the populace. To reach Mrs. Sulick for congratulatory purposes and more information on her platform, please see her website.


Disclaimer: Reporting not necessarily fair and balanced.

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This is hilarious: I want to buy corn dogs from Obama and give Hilary and Giuliani a bib. Way to kick it unbiased, New York Times. I'm throwing a TU for the humiliating stock footage, though it did make me laugh. [More complaining; self-promotion.]

1st Clinton Tighten-Up?

How dare you insult the Dark Lord of the Sith...

New York Hates My Boobs

In the New York Post I read that, according to a legislative study, the City has 26% fewer facilities offering mammography as compared to the number it had in 1999. The congressman who commissioned the report also noted that women have to wait anywhere from 5 weeks to 6 months for an appointment because Medicare isn't reimbursing the clinics well enough and then the clinics are opting out of the service. Seriously, En Why See. What gives? If 1 in 8 women develop breast cancer in the course of their lives, then I probably have a better chance of getting sick than I do of getting a date in New York anytime soon and that makes for 100% unhappy Minna. Tighten up, City, and start paying up especially before I'm kicked out of the Columbia student insurance tent. Apparently the concerned congressman is introducing a bill to increase payment so let's keep our bra straps crossed because, spake the rt. hon. Rep. Weiner, "Raising the reimbursement rate will ensure that women have increased options to protect their most important asset................their health". No (Victoria's) secret there.

VP Finds New Way of Ignoring Iraq Disaster

It's a fact universally acknowledged that the world is a better place when Chaney is not awake, i.e. temporarily on leave from sucking the joy, love, and laughter from God's children. With that said: look alive, Veep! I'm not privy to the thoughts and feelings of the Iraq commanders that you're reportedly teleconferencing with here, but I'm pretty sure they're not getting an ultra strong "your government is here for you" vibe at this moment. Even if you ARE checking your Blackberry, then a least lift one of those chins, no? You're being out-done in the We Mean Business Dept. by your boy there and that's enough to jerk anyone into attention.

Tighten up, man, tighten up.

The Justice Department scandal

Paul Krugman (behind the NY Times firewall) provides the latest details:

Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny.

Krugman goes on to say that Karl Rove is probably behind this, as he has a history of using phony prosecution against Democrats during election cycles.

How can this be? How could the Bush Administration have allowed 67 Republican to be prosecuted during the last six years? I thought these guys were supposed to be cutthroat political partisans who will bend every institution of government to support their political agenda. And yet here we have 67 potential congressman, columnists, and direct-mailing gurus cut down in the infancy of their political careers, all because of some notion of blind justice? Why isn't this tally 365 Democrats, 10 Independants, and NO Republicans prosecuted?

Come on, BushCo.: tighten up, you bunch of pussies.

(h/t the Daily Dish)

10 bucks says they're all from Orange County, California

One consequence of my not having cable TV is getting all reacquainted with late-night talk show high jinks. Conan O'Brien - funny! Carson Daly - still there! And Jay Leno is still doing that Jay Walking bit where randomly selected pedestrians fail to name the capital of Germany or recognize pictures of Condoleeza Rice. This is a spectacular way for me to feel superior to others while sitting in my not-unmessy living room, watching TV with a jar of Peanut Butter & Co White Chocolate Wonderful. "Ha ha! You sad waste of sorority membership fees! "Old Hickory" was a president, sweetie, not a clock! Ha ha!"

Less funny (though by no means a blow to my superiority complex) is knowing that those people, when bunched together into a quantifiable demographic, equal this. If this ACNielsen poll is to be believed, many many American internet users have never. Heard. Of. Global. Warming. Not "don't accept the overwhelmingly convincing evidence of". Not "too busy watching FOX News to really worry about". No! Never heard of! That is some serious shit that needs immediate tightening!

I call for a federal intervention whereby suspected concentrations of obliviousness are immediately papered with those photos of polar bears stuck on fucking floating BITS OF ICECAP. No no, wait, better: replace polar bear with baby bear Bush and let him float along until he gets to Kyoto or someplace with SYMBOLISM. Not that he'll get it.

Israeli Defense Minister:

Tighten your shit up!

LONDON - Embattled Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz faced fresh criticism Friday after newspapers published photos of him trying to watch military maneuvers with the lens cap still on his binoculars.

Peretz was inspecting Israeli troops in the Golan Heights, near the Syria border, along with the Israeli army's chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported.

The photographer said Peretz gazed through the capped binoculars three times, nodding as Ashkenazi explained what he was looking at, the British Broadcasting Corp. said.

Playing dress up is for kids

When I was a lad, I used to like to put on my Superman pajamas, run around the house and pretend to fly, see through walls, fuck Lex Luthor up, and so on. I have it on good authority (read: my mom) that it was adorable. At the bare minimum, it was socially acceptable. And do you know why? Because I was six goddamn years old and not the leader of the free world!

George W. Bush, on the other hand, is the leader of the free world, at least by a technicality. And while he should be satisfied with this title and its accoutrements, since there are few left in the world who would entrust to the president's care his or her pet hampster, the younger Bush clearly strives for more, alternately by imagining himself the heir to any number of his more esteemed predecessors and by playing dress up. The most infamous example is of course the time he pretended he was a fighter pilot, complete with helicopter depositing him on an aircraft carrier and cock-of-the-walk strutting and preening. With all the ridicule heaped upon Bush, you might think that he would put his dress up days behind him. However . . .



. . . you would be wrong. The President has decided now that he'd like to pretend to be a scientist, and has been indulged with a white lab coat with his name embroidered on it, four lab assistants (one of whom is Horatio Sanz's father), three jars of beef jerky for experimentation purposes (and snacking!), and, of course, a toy car that the president can play with and make "vrooooom" sounds with his mouth.

Telling the president to tighten his shit up is like telling the sun to revolve around the Earth. So instead I will implore Republicans everywhere to tighten it up. Before you mock John Kerry windsurfing or wearing a space suit, or Michael Dukakis in a tank, please get your own party's house in order.