Just to demonstrate I haven’t watched television since 1957

It’s a pretty boring week–health care and Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Now don’t get me wrong, they’re very important…but they’re about as exciting as watching watching a brick pile. Will the public option be watered down so the health insurance companies can continue to make obscene profits? Will there be any meaningful attempts at lowering costs? Will that happen before 2013? Then there’s the Sotomayor hearing. First of all, there’s no way she will not be confirmed. Even the Republican senators seem resigned to that–they don’t have the votes to deny confirmation. There’s nothing in Sotomayor’s record that paints her as a flaming liberal–or even all that liberal at all. The more I hear, the more like a centrist she seems to have behaved. Now that might change. Lower court judges have to follow the rules, while Supreme Court justices make them. But sometime ago when Obama said he wanted a centrist court, I took that as a clue that he would appoint centrist judges. Not that that would center the Alito court very much, if at all. But it would make Obama more likable to the right-wing–except that it won’t make up for his being (sarcasm alert) an America-hating Muslim who isn’t even a natural born citizen. (Already one soldier is refusing deployment on the grounds that Obama isn’t really President--I think his request should be granted–on the grounds that he qualifies for a Section 8 for denial of reality.) So where does that leave the Republican grilling? Why back at the Rush Limbaugh barbeque. Rush says that Sotomayor is a racist, so let’s pull out our racial bonafides and prove we’re just as big a bunch of yahoos as the Rushster is. Or Pat Buchanan.
So Tom Coburn makes a cute Ricky Ricardo reference, pronouncing “explaining” as “‘splainin” like the Cuban bandleader did. Except that Desi Arnaz was “zaggeratin” his accent. And he wasn’t a Puerto Rican, but a Cuban (but what the hell, all Hispanics sound alike, don’t they?) And it was HIS OWN accent he was mocking. There was another “Hispanic” popular a bit later, José Jimenez. Only he wasn’t a Hispanic, he was an American of Hungarian-Jewish descent named Bill Dana. Very popular in the 60s with Anglo audiences. When Spanish-speaking groups began protesting his performances, he found out just how funny they thought he was. Dana publicly dropped the José Jimenez routine (in 1970) and about 12 years ago was honored by National Hispanic Media Coalition with an award celebrating what his act of disavowal did for the Hispanic community. But that must have been after Tom Coburn stopped watching TV. He still thinks “I Love Lucy” is the bee’s knees.
I suppose we should be glad he didn’t decide to channel Cheech Marin…

Ooooo too late to use, NEW PHOTOS OF SANFORD’S MISTRESS

BTW–I’ll be at Otakon in Baltimore this weekend. If you’re attending and you see someone with glasses in a purple “I NEED INTRAVENOUS CAFFEINE” T-shirt–say hi–it’s me…

Perhaps it was auto-erotic asphyxiation?

It does sound a little strange, doesn’t it? Arturo Gatti, welterweight champion, has a knock-down drag-out fight with his wife, pushing her to the floor and bruising her on the elbows and chin and then the next morning he’s got a purse strap around his neck and has turned blue. Word has it they were always fighting–in this instance about Amanda Rodrigues, Gatti’s wife, wearing clothes that were too revealing–is she the model? I can’t seem to get this straight–and other times over allegations of infidelity–probably both ways–and were, surprise, surprise, in the process of separation. A marriage not exactly made in heaven.
The police are charging Amanda with the murder–now, I can’t see how a boxing champion could manage to get strangled by his wife UNLESS he was already unconscious–and he was supposed to be very drunk that night. And the police think it’s fishy that she could be in the same house as he was and not notice that he was dead–but if she’d had this battle royale with him early in the evening, I could see her locking herself in a bedroom and not emerging till the next morning. However, the idea that someone would wander in and strangle him–with a PURSE STRAP–does make things rather interesting and makes you ask, if it wasn’t her, didn’t she HEAR something?
On the other hand–we have here the spectacle of Vice Presidential assassination squads and illegal surveillance on American citizens, which no one in Congress seems to have heard about despite the CIA saying that of COURSE they had been informed. It can be taken for granted that Cheney lied–but to be fair, Dick Cheney has demonstrated over and over again that he has no concept of objective reality, so you really can’t say he’s LYING when he doesn’t tell the truth because he’s brain-damaged–but the CIA are experts in prevarication. It would be easy for the CIA chief to report something to Congress in such a way that nobody really knows what he’s talking about. “Oh, we’ve also instituted surveillance on a number of terror suspects in the United States,” buried in a laundry list of actions of such mind-numbing detail that no one thinks to ask–what KIND of terror suspects? On the other hand, Congress had been reduced to a rubber stamp organization from Sept. 12, 2001 until January 1, 2007. This wasn’t simply because of the party of the Administration holding majorities in both houses, it was because the Democrats were at first as gung-ho as the President about kicking Islamic butt, whether it was the right butt or not, and later on, were cowed by their own acquiesence and scared by the apparent popularity of the President and his Iraq war. Only after Bush demonstrated how totally out of his depth he was in the wake of Hurricane Katrina did the Democrats acquire enough backbone to stand up to him–once in a while. Hell, Obama still doesn’t think that the alleged illegalities and abuses of power by Bush, Cheney & Co. should be investigated because the rules of the game say that you don’t go after the previous administration. I mean, it’s poor sportsmanship to complain about someone cheating after the game, even if you have videotape that shows they were offsides on every other play, right?
But we’re not talking about a football game here, are we? Ler’s hope Attorney General Holder has the backbone to at least appoint the special prosecutor he’s thinking about…

And Sometimes, Sarah, Your Reasons are THIS obvious

Normally, I dislike posting on the same topic twice in a row (heck, I’d prefer to have at least two weeks) but an item was brought to my attention by my most faithful reader, i.e., the wifey, who forwarded this item from the Publisher’s Marketplace newsletter–Publisher’s Lunch Deluxe?–not online for non-members, so forgive me if I quote the whole thing:
“A Publishing-Centric Observation on Palin’s Resignation
“While we wouldn’t pretend to know the cause of Sarah Palin’s resignation from office, we have realized at least one effect: the size of her book advance will probably never be known publicly as a result.
“You may recall that attorney Robert Barnett submitted exclusively to Harper, helping ensure that Palin’s advance (despite some wild speculation in the press) would remain private initially. At the time it was presumed that the advance would be revealed subsequently when she disclosed her income as required by Alaska’s laws every March.
“But the Alaska statue would appear to require disclosure only up until when she leaves the governor’s office (“after leaving office, a former public official shall file a final statement covering any period during the official’s service in that office for which the public official has not already filed a statement”). So unless Palin has already received her first advance from Harper, or takes another public office within the next year or so, her advance is likely to remain private.”
Naturally, if her advance became public record, there’d be no way of hiding it once she began her presumed presidential run. Of course, presidential candidates normally disclose financial statements, but La Palin evidently figures she could get away with submitting only her 2012 statement. We don’t have any idea how much HarperCollins paid or will pay her, but the word on the street is that it is several millions. She may need a new strategy for making believe she’s just one of the people, after all, how many just-a-hockey-moms have a couple of cool mil in ye olde checking account, hmmm? Perhaps that rambling incoherent resignation speech was really meant to draw attention away from the real reason after all. When in doubt, follow the money.
Here are a few links from earlier this year discussing the need for disclosure:
Hillel Italie, AP via Seattle Times:” If terms of the book deal aren’t leaked by next spring, at least some of the details will be revealed in Palin’s next financial disclosure forms with the Alaska Public Offices Commission. Income next must be reported on March 15, 2010. However, if she isn’t paid in full by Dec. 31, some income may fall over to the next year’s report.”
The Common Progressive: “The actual amount of the advance that Palin is being paid was not released as public information, however the information will eventually become public as Palin will be required to disclose the earnings as income on her state disclosures. The figure is widely believed to be in the millions at a minimum. “

This just in from Moosylvania–Palin Skedaddles

Something tells me that Sarah Palin’s dustup with Dave Letterman didn’t quite have the salutory effect she wanted it to have. Sure, she made the headlines–for looking like an idiot–and his ratings went up a couple of notches. The media can be just so mean to poor little Sarah. So taking the advice that “when the going gets tough, the tough get going,” she decided to quit being governor. I’m not sure that that is exactly what that saying was supposed to mean, but that’s the way Sarah saw it. After all, she wants to get down more to the lower 48 as the Alaskans call it to have a greater visibility on the national stage in preparation for her presidential run in 2012. She has a book deal with Rupert Murdoch and there’s speculation that Fox News would love to have her spreading innuendo about godless liberal socialist fascist Muslims. There’s also speculation that there may be more ethics probes on the way and more than a few people have suggested that perhaps there is a family matter that needs to be handled before it becomes an issue. I’m rather hoping that she’ll confess to being one of Mark Sanford’s earlier dalliances–you know, the ones that he claimed not to have crossed some undefined line in? Rumors all of it–Sarah just got BORED and when Sarah gets bored, she quits and leaves her mess behind for someone else to clean up. She’s done it before–quitting the chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. I wonder if she would have quit the Vice Presidency had McCain won? After all, being VPOTUS is supposed to be a terribly boring job–it was once famously described as not being worth a bucket of warm spit–only it wasn’t spit that was warm. That’s changed since Dick Cheney turned it into the actual power behind the throne, but Joe Biden seems intent on moving it back to its rightful place. Still, Bill Kristol thinks it might be a brilliant move–a certain sign that it is anything but. I’ll go with Karl Rove on this. Sarah, dear Sarah, what are you thinking? Of course, I’ve now become one of the bloggers she may be threatening to sue, like Shannyn Moore from the Huffington Post Nice of her to make that threat on the 4th of July weekend, when we celebrate the freedoms of the United States–like freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Today’s cartoon is an homage to Rocky and Bullwinkle. Back when I did my original Palin treatment, I’d planned on sticking Bullwinkle in it, but there just wasn’t enough room to do justice to the mighty moose. I obviously knew I would need to use him further on down the line Invader Zim and Gir have joined the party celebrating Sarah’s resignation–after all, what could be better than a room with a moose if not a room with a herd of moose?

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ABOUT MEH

Cartoons and text by Greg Uchrin (aka Gregorius alexandrinus), with the able assistance of Fred and Bert Squirrel, with special appearances by George Dymme. Published once a week on Mondays.

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