Year: 2008

Editorial: In defense of Senator Debbie Stabenow

I am not writing this to defend the actions of Senator Stabenow’s husband.  The actions of Thomas Athans were deplorable.  If I were the senator, I would be seeing a lawyer and relieving this man of his burden of marriage.

However because the story of Thomas Athans has become the catalyst of great political fodder and blogger ridicule, and outright mocking by those of opposite political ideology.  Because of this sort of nonsense, I am writing a simple defense of Senator Stabenow as a Senator of the State of Michigan.  

I am quite aware of Senator Stabenow’s political stance, However, I am also aware of her performance in the Senate.  I can personally testify to her consistency in addressing issues brought before her.  I have personally e-mailed TONS of issues, brought to my attention by the John Birch Society, to Senator Stabenow’s office.

Senator Stabenow’s office was always faithful to reply to my e-mails to her, sometimes, the replies were even personal, and not a computer generated response, even though I am sure that some of the issues brought to her attention were in direct opposition to her political stance.

Further, of all the political representatives in my local area, other than one other political official for my local area, Senator Stabenow was the ONLY political official who responded to my e-mails, sometimes Senator Stabenow would reply to me personally via United States Mail, Even though she did not have to.

Therefore, I feel that this smearing by the Republican and Conservative Bloggers is just unwarranted.  We are not dealing with a seedy politician here.  We are dealing with a very nice woman, who has a husband who is an idiot.

I think that the Blogosphere needs to take a step back and leave this woman to sort out her own affairs.  I hope that she will do the right thing in the situation regarding her husband.

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D'OH! April Fool's Edition….

Oh Man… this had to suck….

Via the WaPo:

An "in memoriam" ad about a former U.S. ambassador that was placed as an April Fools’ Day joke backfired yesterday.

A photo of Edward M. Gabriel, a very much alive international business consultant who was the U.S. ambassador to Morocco from 1997 to 2001, topped an ad on Page B8 in yesterday’s Washington Post.

In language reminiscent of the movie "Brokeback Mountain," the $322.20 ad said, "Though I no longer have you as my partner, this day will always be OUR anniversary. . . . I could never quit you."

The ad was taken out by J. Peter Segall, a public relations executive and lawyer. Segall is paying for a retraction in today’s Post. Segall said last night that he is a mature man who made an immature mistake.

"As I said in a correction that I hope is published [today], I engaged in a very stupid and ultimately cruel April Fools’ joke against a man that has been my best friend for 30 years, and I deeply, deeply regret it," Segall said. (The retraction appears on Page B7.)

There’s a song here:

Oy…. Good going meatball! Rolling Eyes

Detroit has worst High School Drop out rate

 and… on the home front:

Article: Study: Detroit Gets F In Grad Rate (via WXYZ-TV)

Seventeen of the nation’s 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50 percent, with the lowest graduation rates reported in Detroit, Indianapolis and Cleveland, according to a report released Tuesday.

The report, issued by America’s Promise Alliance, found that about half of the students served by public school systems in the nation’s largest cities receive diplomas. Students in suburban and rural public high schools were more likely to graduate than their counterparts in urban public high schools, the researchers said.

Nationally, about 70 percent of U.S. students graduate on time with a regular diploma and about 1.2 million students drop out annually.

"When more than 1 million students a year drop out of high school, it’s more than a problem, it’s a catastrophe," said former Secretary of State Colin Powell, founding chair of the alliance.

Hmmmmmm… You don’t think it is because of that Socialism that I blogged about a while back do ya?

Thinking

Of course, our Liberal Government here in Michigan and in Washington D.C. will throw more money at it and institute more entitlement programs for the problem. More Band-aids to fix the leaking dam.

Of course, the Right Wing, Christian, "Let’s take America over for Jesus Christ!!" Zealots will say, "See? this is why we need Christian schools!!!!" I got news for you, I dropped out of a Christian School, Because I was 18 years old and I wasn’t learning anything. Yes, I admit it, I have A.D.H.D.  But Honestly? As someone who spent almost all of my young life in Christian Schools, the Majority of them are ran by unqualified feckless imbeciles, who wouldn’t have a clue as to how to be a teacher.

Oh, the stories I could tell about my experiences within the realm of "Christian Schools"!  It would be enough to make a liberal squeal with glee.    

I was in a school, the last one that I was in, before I quit, that used the program called the "A.C.E. Program".  A very nice program for people, who don’t have learning disabilities. Not to mention the theological indoctrination or as some would call it, Mind control. While praised by many within the Christian Community, I had a well-known Baptist Minister admit to me, that ACE wasn’t for everyone.  It is for those so-called "Perfect Children", you know, the ones who don’t have any learning disabilities, or as I like to call them, "The Beautiful People".

Speaking of that guy, (that is if you caught the reference…) Did you know that he grew up in Church? Boy, do we have quite a bit in common!

Anyhow, there’s the story about the crap schools in Detroit. Thank God, I never went to them, Well, except for Higgins and that was only for a year or two.

Elizabeth Edwards uses her Cancer for Political Gain…

Just like she and John did with their dead son.

Go read it

I personally think it is sick and disgusting to use something of this nature as a means to make a political statement. Just like the congress did with the SCHIP nonsense. In reality Mrs. Edwards is a wealthy woman who does get the best care out there. Their talk of "Two Americas" and all that other nonsense did not fly with me. I mean, ever see the house that John Edwards owns?

Other reactions Here

Hillary Clinton fired from Lawyer Job

This juicy bit of info came out yesterday and I didn’t get chance to Blog about it.

This comes via the guys over at HotAir.com.

An Article by Dan Calabrese basically removes any varnish off of Hillary Clinton’s Lawyer days. Calabrese quotes Jerry Zeifman, a life long Democrat as saying the following:

Quote:

As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying.

The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.

Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

It is being reported that this isn’t really news, however, it is the first time that I have heard of it. So, far only Conservative Blogs are talking about it, I haven’t seen any movement by the bigger Blogs, but if this did catch fire, it could spell the end of Hillary Clinton. Because basically, she’s used her years as a lawyer to say she is ready for the White House.

Zeifman goes on to say at his website:

After hiring Hillary, Doar assigned her to confer with me regarding rules of procedure for the impeachment inquiry. At my first meeting with her I told her that Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino, House Speaker Carl Albert, Majority Leader “Tip” O’Neill, Parliamentarian Lou Deschler and I had previously all agreed that we should rely only on the then existing House Rules, and not advocate any changes. I also quoted Tip O’Neill’s statement that: “To try to change the rules now would be politically divisive. It would be like trying to change the traditional rules of baseball before a World Series.”

Hillary assured me that she had not drafted, and would not advocate, any such rules changes. However, as documented in my personal diary, I soon learned that she had lied. She had already drafted changes, and continued to advocate them. In one written legal memorandum, she advocated denying President Nixon representation by counsel. In so doing she simply ignored the fact that in the committee’s then most recent prior impeachment proceeding, the committee had afforded the right to counsel to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

I had also informed Hillary that the Douglas impeachment files were available for public inspection in the committee offices. She later removed the Douglas files without my permission and carried them to the offices of the impeachment inquiry staff — where they were no longer accessible to the public.

Hillary had also made other ethical flawed procedural recommendations, arguing that the Judiciary Committee should: not hold any hearings with – or take depositions of — any live witnesses; not conduct any original investigation of Watergate, bribery, tax evasion, or any other possible impeachable offense of President Nixon; and should rely solely on documentary evidence compiled by other committees and by the Justice Departments special Watergate prosecutor.

If any of the above is true, Hillary Clinton could be in deep trouble should this story begin tread water among the main stream media.

Ed Morrissey on this:

The right to counsel is considered one of the inviolable tenets of our justice system. It doesn’t speak well of ambitious attorneys working on a highly-charged political investigation that she wanted to deny someone the right to an attorney. Small wonder Zeifman questioned her ethics.

If all she did was to propose that as a tactic, that would not make it terribly concerning — but she did much more than just spitball ideas. When informed that public evidence showed a precedent for the right to counsel, she absconded with the files to eliminate the evidence. Does that remind anyone of later incidents in the Clinton narrative, such as the billing records for the Rose Law offices and the 900+ raw FBI files on political opponents of the Clintons?

For the sake of the Democrats and for the sake of this election, I am hope that this story just dies off and goes away. I mean, the Democrats have enough trouble right now as it is.

Should be interesting indeed.

Others: protein wisdom, TBogg, Power Line, Doug Ross, Stop The ACLU, PoliGazette, Pat Dollard, North Star Writers Group, NewsBusters.org, QandO, Secular Blasphemy and Digg (via Memeorandum)

Sorry for the lack of posting….

I posted some, in the early hours of April 1, But other than that. I didn’t post much at all.

I’m still wrestling the Days and Nights being mixed up thing.

I went to bed last night at like 12:30 and now I’m back up at 3:30 A.M.

So, I apologize for the spotting Blogging here.

Hopefully, I can get this crap straightened out.

One of the half a million reasons I think Joe Scarborough is an Asshat….

Transcript: (via Media Matters for America)

From the March 31 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

SCARBOROUGH: You know, Willie, the thing is, Americans want their president, if it’s a man, to be a real man. They — 1984, I remember Ronald Reagan goes to South Boston. He holds up that beer mug —

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.

SCARBOROUGH: — in that South Boston pub, and everybody’s like, "He’s a real man," and I guess Barack Obama’s trying to do the same thing, too.

BRZEZINSKI: Stop it. Oh, come on.

SCARBOROUGH: Awful. Good Lord.

GEIST: He’s going to have to try a little harder than he did in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Saturday night —

SCARBOROUGH: Oh my God —

BRZEZINSKI: Really?

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, this is awful.

GEIST: — at the Pleasant Valley Rec Center. He went bowling, and let’s just take a quick look at it here. I guess I’ll just give you the final numbers. Started out nicely, got the Velcro shoes.

BRZEZINSKI: Looking good, looking good.

GEIST: But then he started bowling. The score you’re really after in bowling is 300; that’s a perfect score.

BRZEZINSKI: Oh, OK.

SCARBOROUGH: That’s perfect score.

BRZEZINSKI: Good, good, good.

SCARBOROUGH: But, you know, if you get 200, you’re a good bowler.

GEIST: Sure. You know what?

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah. Two-fifty —

SCARBOROUGH: You get 150, you’re a man —

BRZEZINSKI: OK.

SCARBOROUGH: — or a good woman.

BRZEZINSKI: Stop it.

GEIST: Out of my president, I want a 150, at least. Barack Obama bowled — well, you can see his form here —

SCARBOROUGH: Hee!

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.

GEIST: A 37.

BRZEZINSKI: Oh.

GEIST: That’s a three, next to a seven.

SCARBOROUGH: Baby, if you go to Altoona, Pennsylvania, on a Saturday night and you’re going to try to bowl —

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, that’s so dainty. Ugh.

GEIST: Get there, get there.

SCARBOROUGH: What a dainty —

GEIST and SCARBOROUGH: Oh!

BRZEZINSKI: A gutter ball, that’s like me bowling.

SCARBOROUGH: That is such a dainty release.

GEIST: If you’re the president, you want — you don’t want them to have to put those bumpers in the gutters.

SCARBOROUGH: Look, here we go, look at this. OK.

BRZEZINSKI: All right now.

[Scarborough squeals]

GEIST: Oh, it’s like a children’s birthday party.

BRZEZINSKI: OK, guys.

SCARBOROUGH: I’ve got a feeling he —

BRZEZINSKI: That was useless and stupid and [unintelligible].

SCARBOROUGH: — he didn’t go bowling in Cambridge that much. That’s a guy that’s been studying a lot of — reading a lot of books.

[…]

FORD: One thing I thought he did a great job of this week — he’s done a lot of great things but —

SCARBOROUGH: Not bowling.

FORD: No.

SCARBOROUGH: Have you ever bowled before, Harold?

FORD: I do, I have.

SCARBOROUGH: You ever bowl?

FORD: I’m embarrassed to say, but I do.

BRZEZINSKI: Harold, make your point.

FORD: My other point is just —

SCARBOROUGH: No, no, I’m curious. If you were running for president in Altoona, Pennsylvania —

FORD: They can walk him through —

SCARBOROUGH: He got a 37 —

FORD: — feed milk to him —

SCARBOROUGH: Harold, he got a 37 bowling in Altoona, Pennsylviania.

BRZEZINSKI: Oh, Harold.

GEIST: So sorry.

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.

FORD: He probably shouldn’t do that again, but I tell you, it showed a human side to him. I mean, it showed a very humble side to him.

SCARBOROUGH: Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

BRZEZINSKI: He is a politician.

SCARBOROUGH: A very human side? A prissy side.

BRZEZINSKI: Oh, stop it. Now, that’s just not nice.

SCARBOROUGH: Anyway, make your point.

FORD: He’s a heck of an athlete, by the way.

SCARBOROUGH: Is he really?

FORD: Actually, heck of an athlete.

SCARBOROUGH: It sure didn’t look it, the way that he was just —

BRZEZINSKI: Oh my God.

SCARBOROUGH: He was pushing it this way, right there.

BRZEZINSKI: You have to take it and run with it, Harold.

FORD: But he looked like — I mean, he looked like folks, he looked like an American. A Pennsylvanian — he looked like someone, day in and day out —

[crosstalk]

BRZEZINSKI: No, no, no.

SCARBOROUGH: He was bowling in his tie —

FORD: — except the bowling. The bowling hurt it.

BRZEZINSKI: Harold, take my advice.

FORD: The bowling — I mean, I thought it was 137. You sure it was 37?

SCARBOROUGH: It was 37. That is awful.

BRZEZINSKI: You have to — there is no way. There is no way out of this one.

[…]

SCARBOROUGH: So Harold, so Harold, though —

FORD: He’s my buddy. I can’t believe you make me laugh at –.

SCARBOROUGH: But you say he’s a good athlete?

BRZEZINSKI: He’s a dancer.

[crosstalk]

FORD: He’s a heck of a basketball player.

SCARBOROUGH: Is he really?

FORD: Heck of a basketball player.

SCARBOROUGH: OK.

FORD: As a matter of fact, I spent a little time with his brother-in-law over the weekend who can also play.

BRZEZINSKI: I’d think you’d have a hard time against him —

SCARBOROUGH: How tall is he?

FORD: How tall is Barack?

SCARBOROUGH: Yeah.

FORD: Barack’s probably 6’2".

SCARBOROUGH: Really?

FORD: 6’2", 6’3", yeah. He’s a big guy.

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.

SCARBOROUGH: Well then, I better be quiet because —

FORD: Yeah, probably.

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah, I think you should.

SCARBOROUGH: I mean, I’m bigger than he is.

BRZEZINSKI: I still think you should be quiet.

FORD: You should reach out to a bowl-off.

SCARBOROUGH: I’ll challenge him to a bowl-off. But basketball — he looks like he’s in pretty good shape. I would just have to post low.

GEIST: Right.

FORD: And I’d throw him a pass on you, too. I’ve seen you. I think he could probably take you down the sideline on a post route.

BRZEZINSKI:
O

h no. Please don’t, don’t don’t don’t go there. You didn’t just do this.

[crosstalk]

SCARBOROUGH: Wait, wait. I’m sorry? You talking football now?

BRZEZINSKI: Guys —

FORD: I mean, that’s one sport y’all can still play at Florida —

[crosstalk]

SCARBOROUGH: I’ve got 5 yards.

BRZEZINSKI: Harold?

SCARBOROUGH: I’ve got 5 yards, bump and run. He’s not going down the field.

FORD: Oh, Joe.

SCARBOROUGH: You know what my nickname was in college?

BRZEZINSKI: Oh, Lord, help me.

SCARBOROUGH: The "Round Mound of Rebound." On the basketball court, you just go low and lean.

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah, well, 15 million Big Macs later, I don’t think that name applies, honey.

[…]

SCARBOROUGH: Let’s bring in right now David Axelrod, he’s chief strategist for the Obama campaign. David, we have to ask a question, what did you know, when did you know it —

BRZEZINSKI: And what were you thinking?

SCARBOROUGH: What were you thinking? Why did you allow your candidate to bowl a 37 in Altoona, Pennsylvania? America waits for your answer, sir.

AXELROD: Well, if you’re going to bowl a 37, Altoona’s a good a place as any, Joe. No, listen. I think it was tremendously insightful of the candidate not to try and show up any of the other bowlers there.

SCARBOROUGH: I’ll tell you what —

AXELROD: I mean, that’s the kind of political sophistication that you want —

GEIST: There you go.

AXELROD: What’s worse, I mean, listen, what made that worse was that right after that, Hillary Clinton revealed that she had bowled a 300 with the prime minister of Uzbekistan. So —

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, here we go.

[crosstalk]

BRZEZINSKI: Oh, that’s harsh [unintelligible]. David —

SCARBOROUGH: I’ll tell you what, that is some spin, my man.

BRZEZINSKI: No, you didn’t.

SCARBOROUGH: First of all, you say he got the 37. That’s why he gets the big bucks. He says —

AXELROD: So he didn’t bowl 10 frames, Joe. He didn’t bowl 10 frames, and as he’s proven, he’s a strong finisher.

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, OK.

AXELROD: So —

BRZEZINSKI: No. David?

AXELROD: Let’s put the whole thing in perspective.

From the 10 a.m. ET hour of the March 31 edition of MSNBC Live:

HALL: Well, Barack Obama — his friends say he’s a whiz on the basketball court and he can hold his own on the dance floor — and he’s got a gift, of course, for speaking. But one thing Barack Obama cannot do, and I think it’s official — he can’t bowl. Mr. Obama scored a 37 when he hit the lanes this weekend. And yes, he bowled all 10 frames. That’s impossible. Well, voters in Pennsylvania will give him some pointers for his effort.

I do sometimes catch his show in the mornings. But I think the guy is a fucking dick, quite frankly. Someone who picked on kids in school, a spoiled rich kid who thought he was something big. I would love to see nothing more than some beat the living fucking shit out of Joe right on the air, on his own show.

I honestly do not know how Mika Brzezinski puts up with it. I wouldn’t, I’d bitch and have his ass fired. He’s said so much offensive stuff to her, as a woman, it is unbelievable.

He’s the kind of Republican, that I cannot stand. The kind with the "I am better than you", Attitude.

Others: No More Mister Nice Blog, The Reaction, The New Republic, ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES and Gateway Pundit