The Freepers are having fun with a snap of Teddy Kennedy telling his fans that he will run for re-election to the Senate. Most normal people would be ashamed to have a drunken poltroon like Teddy representing them in Congress but apparently the majority of Massachusetts voters (legitimate and illegitimate) have no such qualms.
In the rift between Congress and the Justice Department, Americans side overwhelmingly with law enforcement: Regardless of precedent and the separation of powers, 86 percent say the FBI should be allowed to search a Congress member's office if it has a warrant.
That view is broadly bipartisan, this ABC News poll finds, ranging from 78 percent among Democrats to 94 percent of Republicans.
Can you say "out of touch," kids? I knew you could!
STREISAND. Gearing up, as we all know, for yet another another another another of her final and for ever friggin' farewell tours. Or comeback again tours. Or return from the unemployed tours. Or make another few bucks tours. Or this-is-for-sure-my-last-shot-and-after-this-you-won't-ever-have-Yentl-to-kick-around-again-because-then-I'm-off-into-the-sunset-yet-once-more tours. Oy, how many times can people hear her yodel "People."
I think I heard part of it once. Then I began to gag.
Go back a few years. Remember her first heralded farewell schlep around the country where in N.Y.C. she worked the Garden and pocketed millions and guaranteed this was It and she was finished . . . over . . . done . . . history? Then, remember, a few minutes later, yet another positively, absolutely, definitely, final forever and ever bye-bye/ta-ta/so-long/adieu/auf Wiedersehen swan song? Being resurrected more often than Al Gore earns her fortunes. This gambit is the musical concert equivalent of a stock market pump 'n' dump.
Or maybe just a hot steaming dump?
The woman's itching and twitching.
I believe the precise terminology is twitchy.
Misses the action. Just opining on her Web log isn't enough. And you've already heard that she and the husband are possibly not as wildly ecstatic as might've been in ye auld courtship era.
Maybe he found out why Hillary banned her from the White House?
She's had fat injections in the face.
They extracted it from her head.
She's had a face-lift.
With a crane.
Now she's had enough with mulching rosebushes, getting manicures, monitoring the husband and doing ashrams.
She obviously meant "telling the gardeners how to mulch the rosebushes".
She wants back in the spotlight.
It'll take a searchlight to illuminate the whole blimp.
... But here's what you don't know: She'll do 20 nights, 10 cities. They're talking about tickets being - ready? - $750 per seat. That's more than most humans would pay to see The Man From Galilee if he came back.
But she's the secular humanist equivalent!
Be on the alert, the runaway barge may be headed to your town. You can click through if you would like to see a snap of Babs when she was 19.
Howard Fineman uses his column at Newsweek to pump some much-needed drama into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, but instead reveals how desperately dull their prospects outside of Hillary Clinton truly are. The candidate Fineman highlights in his look at the Anyone But Hillary sweepstakes is Senator Chris Dodd, a man who exists to make Joe Biden look exciting...
New York’s last Katrina evacuees prepare to depart (under duress) from the JFK Airport Holiday Inn.
This winter, FEMA put up over 300 Hurricane Katrina evacuees in New York City hotels. Almost all of them have gone back to their lives, their jobs. But not Theon Johnson. He’s currently sprawled out watching Halloween 5 on one of the two full-size beds in his room at the JFK Airport Holiday Inn. He is one of four evacuees still living in a hotel in the city.
The others left in February and March, when, after spending more than $500 million, FEMA stopped paying for hotel rooms housing some 40,000 evacuees across the country. That left many scrambling for places to live. But thanks to the city’s squatters-rights law, evacuees here were safe. Their rooms weren’t paid for, but since they’d been in them for more than 30 days, the hotels couldn’t just kick them out. Only a judge’s order could evict them.
And Johnson, 49, isn’t that motivated to leave. For one thing, AMC’s in the middle of its “Thrill Me” marathon. Next up, Gothika. “Halle Berry,” he says with lazy lust. These days he’s usually up all night—it’s hard to sleep on an empty stomach. When he has to, he’ll go outside and beg for change, but he doesn’t really like that too much. Most days he just showers and gets back in bed, showers and gets back in bed. Once a week he and another evacuee, a diabetic named Larry, walk to a church off the Van Wyck and get canned goods. When Johnson’s caseworker, Sharon, comes around, she gives him some bus passes and maybe a few bucks, but she’s getting frustrated. “They sit around on their butts watching TV. There’s only but so much I can do if they’re not willing to help themselves.”
Indeed. Oh, here's the good news:
Attorneys with the Legal Aid Society have been negotiating a buyout deal for Johnson and the remaining evacuees, and expect a settlement—he heard about $1,200—imminently. He says he’ll use the money to get a room for a few nights and have some fun before flying back to his little house in New Orleans’ Third Ward. But for now, Gothika’s on. “Halle Berry,” Johnson says. “Halle . . . Berry."
A transgender woman is alleging discrimination against a state trooper who called her “buddy” and “guy” and arrested her after she was caught speeding, flipped off the trooper, then stepped into traffic on Interstate 495.
Clairese Renee Morgan of Malden has filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and wants troopers to go through mandatory training in transgender issues, according to Bay Windows newspaper.
Not satisfied with his taxpayer-funded female hormones and laser hair removal, a convicted killer-turned-transsexual is again asking the state to pony up to complete his transformation into a woman.
Robert Kosilek, who is serving life in prison for strangling his wife, was back in federal court yesterday, again demanding that the state Department of Correction pay for his sex-change operation. ... Kosilek, 57, claims he is suicidal and needs the sex change for “medical” reasons.
A psychiatrist testified in federal court that Kosilek - who is now known as Michelle - will kill himself if the surgery is not allowed.
And the problem is what, exactly? It surely makes one pine for the days of "Old Sparky." Clicking through yields a fetching snap of "Michelle."
In short, Mexico is so corrupt, so oligopolistic, so rotting inside with the privilege of the rich that it has to send its poor and its potential political activists to another country. And on top of that, it tries to blame the United States for its own failures.
When I was in Mexico last fall, after dozens of visits over the years, people on every political and social level confirmed these accusations, complaining to me of Fox's failures. Forty families still own 60 percent of Mexico. There are no voluntary organizations, no civic involvement, no family foundations – and thus, no accountability, allowing corruption to flourish. Mexico gains $28 billion from oil revenue and $20 billion from immigrant remittances. There is virtually no industrialization, no small business, no real chance at individual entrepreneurship. Under Fox, it has created only one-tenth of the 1 million jobs needed.
Ah, but there are new voices of change, of reason, of self-awareness in Mexico, in place of the hoary anti-gringo rants: the beginnings of a transformation of the debate. The same week of the Fox visit, for instance, The New York Times ran a stunning article headlined “Some in Mexico See Border Wall as Opportunity.” It quotes men such as Jorge Santibanez, president of the College of the Northern Border, saying: “For too long, Mexico has boasted about immigrants leaving, calling them national heroes, instead of describing them as actors in a national tragedy; and it has boasted about the growth in remittances as an indicator of success, when it is really an indicator of failure.”
Other prominent Mexicans were quoted as saying, for instance, the formerly unthinkable: that a wall would be the “best thing that could happen for Mexico”; the “porous border” allowed “elected officials to avoid creating jobs.” ... This is European social democracy, this is American New Deal, this is real development talk, in place of the tiresome historical Mexican attitude that everything is the gringos' fault and they should pay for it. ... The fact that the free enterprise candidate for July's presidential election, Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party (PAN), is suddenly and unexpectedly surging ahead on his slogan of “My job will be to make sure you have a job” may show that the Mexican people are fed up. In addition, the fact that only 50,000 of the 400,000 Mexicans in the United States who were available to vote in the July Mexican elections have bothered to register can only indicate a generalized disgust with Mexican corruption and hopelessness, and perhaps even a turn toward American ways.
I'm not a big fan of European social democracy or New Deal development, but even that would be a miracle. The only problem is that if it happened, we would have to find some new hobby for our bleeding hearts. Maybe we could import Haiti?
A: Vincente Fox cared enough to only send the very best.
posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 11:20 AM -
Harry Reid, brothel inspector
A reader suggests that the previous post would be more evocative if we had a few snaps of Harry Reid getting some more freebies, er, inspecting the other Nevada state industry that was mentioned. This is somewhat difficult because of ole Harry's apparent confusion on the subject:
but a little digging found a fetching snap of Harry diligently on the job:
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid accepted free ringside tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission to three professional boxing matches while that state agency was trying to influence him on federal regulation of boxing.
Reid, D-Nev., took the free seats for Las Vegas fights between 2003 and 2005 as he was pressing legislation to increase government oversight of the sport, including the creation of a federal boxing commission that Nevada's agency feared might usurp its authority.
He defended the gifts, saying they would never influence his position on the bill and was simply trying to learn how his legislation might affect an important home state industry. "Anyone from Nevada would say I'm glad he is there taking care of the state's No. 1 businesses," he told The Associated Press.
Sure Harry, we believe ya! No word on whether he also got freebies at the Mustang Ranch. Of course, his big mistake was taking the tickets personally instead of having his kids do it, like he usually does.
Memorial Day is actually Tuesday, May 30, but today or any day it's worth pondering how much we owe to our service men and women. Take it away, Toby Keith.
And let's not forget that we all have a duty to protect their backs from the traitors in our midst - Ben Stein:
The media are like grave robbers, robbing you of the certain knowledge that your spouses gave their lives for something deeply worthwhile: human dignity.
Your loved ones' lives and deaths had as much meaning at the lives and deaths of every American who died for freedom from Valley Forge to the Battle of the Bulge to Cho-Sin Reservoir to the Cu Chi tunnels to the Balkans to Kabul, Afghanistan, to Falluja, Iraq.
And if the media doesn't know it, every other American does. This is a very difficult fight, but the ordinary American knows what your loved ones have done and respects them.
Your families, your loved one, your children have more respect than Sean Penn and Barbra Streisand and the Dixie Chicks all put together times a million. And the media like to criticize because they know -- in their hearts -- that they will never have the guts that the man and woman in uniform have. I think media envy of your loved ones' courage has a lot do with media mockery of the war.
To heck with them. Your husbands are the real stars. Your wives and kids are the real stars. They burn brightly forever as long as there are free men and women and the longing for human freedom burns bright in the human heart.
"It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out."
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