It's 100 days into the Obama Administration and we're not Sweden, yet? What the hell?

But that's not even the biggest news. The biggest news emanates from the specter haunting the extreme-right side of Capitol Hill and the ghost of Republican-past when 5-term Senator Arlen Specter, R-no-D-Pennsylvania, suddenly announced yesterday he would renounce the No-Longer-So-Grand Ol' Party and become – gasp – a Democrat!

Blood pressures among the right-wing plutocracy shot up immediately, representing an even bigger health threat than swine flu and sent Brush Limpbrow reaching for the meds - again. Former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman immediately announced he will give up his court challenges to the voters' will and move to Pennsylvania. No, not really.

"Benedict Arlen!" announced Shone Hinsanity, equating Sen. Specter's decision with a posh breakfast entre featuring poached eggs, Canadian bacon and an English muffin. No, wait, that's not right. He meant, of course, the senator's decision to switch parties should be treated as treason, punishable by summary execution.

For his part, Mush told his lemmings Specter should take John and Megan McCain with him.

Specter explained his decision by pointing out he'd been targeted as impure and due for forced retirement and re-training camp by the Confederates and, well, by golly, he just can't give up his Abolitionist stance so the only place for him is the safety of the extreme left-wing.

That's the reassuring and comforting thing about our nation's capital, these days. There's room for honest, intellectually respectful and open-minded debate and discussion. If Strom Thurmond was still around he would have, no doubt, led a walk-out of the convention.

Writing in a New York Times op-ed piece today, another (God-forbid) moderate Republican, Sen. Snowe of Maine, said Sen. Specter's decision should be a wake-up call for all broad-minded Republicans, the three or four who still exist.

"We can't continue to fold our philosophical tent into an umbrella under which only a select few are worthy to stand," Snowe writes. "Rather, we should view an expansion of diversity within the party as a triumph that will broaden our appeal. That is the political road map we must follow to victory."

Such heresy will not be treated lightly. Watch for Shone Hinsanity to repeat his assertion – and you just can't make up this stuff – "if anything, the Republican Party has moved to the left."

Almost lost in the circus was the news late Monday that Congress actually adopted a federal budget and with a distinct nod to the burgeoning swine flu health sorta-crisis left all the pork right in the budget for health officials to worry about.

No, wait, that's not right. You can't really get swine flu from EATING pork or from including pork in federal budgets. Besides, one congressional member's pork is another's bringin'-home-the-bacon for constituents. So, it's really nothing to sneeze at.

And finally, we would be remiss if we didn't mention the interesting piece published Tuesday in the NY Times, that bastion of extremism on the left, by one of its several regular conservative columnists, Ross Douthat. This young man, on a self-proclaimed mission to reclaim the GOP, asserted Republicans made a big mistake last year by running John McCain for president.

Douthat wrote Dick Cheney should have been the party's nominee. Seriously, he wrote that. Cheney's candidacy, he said, would have put the practice of torture front-and-center in the national debate where it rightly belongs.

"'Real conservatism,' in this narrative, means a particular strain of right-wingery: a conservatism of supply-side economics and stress positions, uninterested in social policy and dismissive of libertarian qualms about the national-security state," wrote Douthat. "He was for tax cuts at home and pre-emptive warfare overseas; anything else he seemed to disdain as sentimentalism."

And, to be honest, I agree. A Cheney-for-President campaign would have been torture.

Oh well. It didn't happen. We're back in reality where the dozen or so cases of flu across the U.S. will again dominate the headlines and where Shone Hinsanity will announce today, "100 days of Socialism Across America."

Is this a great country or what??

Much of the talk coming out of our nation's capital this week will be focused on measuring the first 100 days of the Obama Administration.

But, of course, measurement is an inexact science and so we're likely to hear all kinds of assessments, commentary, illusions, allusions, allegories & conspiracy theories.

We like to assess our presidents at the first 100 days because, well, an American football field has 100 yards. In Canada, they measure a prime minister's first 110 days and in most Latin American and Europe nations, where they play futball, national leaders are measured for their first 100 to 130 days or 91 to 119 days, if one measures in metric.

No, wait, none of that is correct.

The 100-day benchmark goes back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first administration when he promised to meet with the Congress for 100 days and adopt a New Deal for Americans to help bring our nation out of what pundits at the time were calling an "economic downturn." Congress passed everything Roosevelt asked of it in those first 100 days. Even Republicans voted for FDR's ambitious legislative agenda, after which they immediately started to undo everything they'd just passed.

Most national polls indicate Americans are, generally speaking, very pleased with President Obama's first 100 days, which has seen a whirlwind of domestic and international activity, a new First Dog and an overwhelming sense that adults are finally in charge of The White House. President Obama, to mark the passage of his first 100 days in office, announced he will take a nap…but only for 15 minutes.

According to polls, the American people overwhelmingly approve of President Obama's job performance in his first 100 days. An ABC-Washington Post poll released yesterday indicates the Obama approval rating at 69 percent. A poll conducted by the Pew Center for Research indicates a 73 percent approval rating, including a 46 percent approval rating by Republicans. The ABC-WaPo poll suggested only 36 percent of Republicans think Obama has performed well in his first 100 days.

Speaking of polls, that same ABC-WaPo poll indicates only 21 percent of Americans today identify themselves as Republicans and most of those are angry white guys who live in the South (okay, I made up that last part…kind of.)

But none of the matters, really, it's all ephemeral, little more than fodder to help us pundits protect our phony-baloney jobs.

There are REAL problems out there.

In case you missed, Conde Nast's Portfolio magazine published last week the self-confessed account of the wife of a top U.S. banker who complained of all the adversity she's faced since her husband's bank received money from the federal government's Troubled Assets Relief Program or TARP.

This TARP-wife, who doesn't reveal her real name, says people just don't understand how tough it is for Wall Street banker families, these days.

The magazine quotes her: "I haven't even looked at spring clothes; God forbid someone catches me out in something new. Keeping up with fashion seems somehow decadent in this new era, like getting Botox injections or catered dinners. Like so many others, I'm shopping in my closet. I've bought exactly two things this year—makeup and panty hose. If I buy a present for someone, I have the package sent to their home. I don't want to be spotted climbing into a taxi, laden with Bergdorf Goodman shopping bags."

I was reading this piece as I was standing in line for lunch the other day at the soup kitchen so I would have enough strength and energy to go stand in line for my unemployment check. Yea, socialism is a bitch, man.

Oh, and the New York Times reported yesterday the average salary paid to employees to Goldman-Sachs in the coming year – AVERAGE salary paid to ALL Goldman Sachs employees – will be just shy of $600,000.

Happy days are here again!!

Because it's Earth Week, most of the discussion coming out of Washington this week has been about torture.

What's that you say? MOST of the discussion coming out of Washington in ANY is torturous. Well, yes, of course, but with the release by the Obama Administration earlier this week of four key memos from the Bush Administration's legal staff saying, in essence, "torture, schmorture, give ‘em the screws," politicians of every stripe have been lashing us to within an inch of our lives on the third degree of bombast and hyperbole.

("Been injured in a political accident? Call the law firm of Bombast & Hyperbole. Real Lawyers will answer the phone.")

Most of the debate, surprisingly enough, has been centered on the efficacy of the Obama Administration's decision to release the torturous memos, followed closely by debate over the effectiveness of said torture.

It's become pretty common practice over the last eight years to not talk about torture but rather, as politicians and reporters, use euphemistic phrases such as "enhanced interrogation techniques" or "extraordinary rendition." Torture is, of course, illegal both in U.S. and International Law.

"Welcome to our orientation session here Abu Ghraib detention facility, all you lucky guests. We trust you had a truly extraordinary rendition to reach our little corner of paradise. Now, I know you've all heard stories of what takes place here and I can assure you we are not interested in water boarding any of you. No, no, forget about all that. What you will experience will be a delightful afternoon of simulated survival swimming…"

House of Representatives Minority Leader John Boehner, Extremely Tanned R-Ohio, actually used the word, "torture," much to the chagrin of AM Talk Radio, but said the Obama Administration should not have let the world know that's what the U.S. has been up to for the last eight years.

He said it was (his word) "inappropriate" for President Obama to release Bush Administration legal briefs justifying whipping prisoners in their legal briefs because release of the information only "denigrates" the U.S. in the eyes of the world. Politicians have been using their fingers a lot, lately, to hold up the international sign of parenthesis.

Boehner said the whole discussion was just a side show and no one should be discussing how this great nation, this beacon of freedom and democracy, this shining light of virtue and human rights tortures its prisoners.

The World Torture Federation, the WTF, immediately responded to Leader Boehner's comments with a terse statement: "WTF, who's zoomin' who, here?"

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-sorta-Connecticut, said he was originally against torture but changed his mind and supported it, is now against it but may be for it at some future date, after which he will again oppose it.

Meanwhile, former Vice-President Dick Cheney piped up from an undisclosed location to say, "Hey, wait a minute. Torture works! And it's fun for the whole family!" Or something like that. Sweet.

Startling absent from the discussion, so far, is any serious rumination in the first place on what happens to the moral fabric of a nation and government - once considered so virtuous – when it sinks to torturing prisoners.

Fortunately, President Obama ended the practice of torture within moments of becoming Leader of the Free World but still doesn't want anyone on Capitol Hill to look too deeply into our recent replay of the dark ages because, well, Lord only knows what might turn up.

And he's right. There's no sense in coming clean, apologizing and making amends while we're still locked in bitter debate how well torture works!

As the great moral philosopher John Lennon once quipped: "You say you'll change the Constitution. Well, you know we all want to change your head."

Good Day and Welcome to Earth Day, the 2009 Edition!

Folks the world over are waking up to the startling news that unless we do something to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide we in (mostly) the northern hemisphere artificially pump into the atmosphere we could wake up on Earth Day, 2109 to discover Earth resembles Venus.

"What?" you ask. "There's no life on Venus? It's too hot? There's no water because it all dried up? Oh, well, what the hell? Earth was good while it lasted!"

The Congress of the United States is doing its part to reduce the amount of CO2 pumped into the air. Members have promised to be quiet today, breath very lightly and to avoid all bombast and hyperbole to an effort to reduce hot air flowing out from underneath the Capitol dome.

Ha! Yea, that's a good one! The EPA (Extreme Politicians Askance) reports more hot, often toxic air leaks out from under the Capitol Dome in a single day than from all the world's coal-fired electro-magnetic, hyperbolic, noo-cler generation plants in a week. (Okay, not really, made that up.)

Seriously, the House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee is holding hearings this week on the proposed Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. Proponents of the so-called ACES bill (I swear, that's what they're calling it) say it will create thousands of new jobs, put the nation on a path to energy independence ("don't carbon-exhaust on me") and reduce climate changing pollution. Opponents, tied mostly to the oil and coal industries, say it unfairly taxes the oil and coal industries, is "government-centric" (their phrase) and will destroy jobs. They have a point. One can't help but notice a lot of legislation coming out of the Congress is "government-centric."

All that is well and good but from London (that's in the U.K., not Connecticut or Kentucky) comes the real skinny on global warming and climate change: it seems…er, well…let's be blunt…fat people are as responsible for global warming as cow flatulence.

The CNN reported the story with this headline: "Thinner is better to curb global warming, study says." (You just can't make up this stuff.)

It seems the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (football team nickname: "the Fightin' Dengue Fevers") has published a study showing fat people contribute more to global warming than skinny people.

That's right. Forget about cow flatulence or coal-fired electric plants or a gazillion cars on the road all at the same time. Its fat people – or as we will politely refer to them, our "enthusiastically calorie inclined" brothers and sisters – who contribute a ton to global warming.

One of the reasons for this, according to the study, more energy is required to transport heavier people from doughnut shop to doughnut shop than thinner people and, therefore, more CO2 is emitted (assuming all heavy people use gasoline/diesel-powered modes of transportation).

Another reason is our enthusiastically calorie inclined brothers and sisters require more food than skinny people, therefore more energy is used and CO2 emitted to grow and transport the carbohydrates and starches that, in turn, contribute to…well…the expanding population.

(As Buddha is my witness, this is not made up.)

The CNN reports the study's authors suggest over 1 billion adults worldwide are overweight and about 300 million are obese. They say body mass index is, well, growing around the world mostly because today when people sit around the house they REALLY sit around the house!

The CNN further reports the study suggests a population in which 40 percent of members are obese requires 19 percent more food energy than a population which is only 3.5 percent obese…in round figures. That 19 percent increase in food consumption causes a 270 million ton increase in greenhouse gas emissions, according to the study, which did not directly address the problem of cow flatulence or flatulence in general but one can reasonably draw one's own conclusions.

As the immortal cartoon philosopher Pogo once quipped: "We have met the enemy and he is us…and he's chowin' down on a big ol' bacon-cheeseburger." Or something like that.

Ah, yes, it's Earth Week and that means politicians who normally eschew appearing even remotely like environmentalists for fear of being attached by AM talk radio will this week actually mention the phrase, "climate change," without giggling or smirking.

We used to celebrate and talk about this big ol' Spaceship Earth for just one day each year, Earth DAY, typically April 22. But because we seem to be rocketing into an environmental crisis of Biblical proportions, we've collectively decided to spend an entire week talking about environmental issues. I'm not sure but I think Hallmark may be behind this expansion in an effort to sell more tree-chewing paper cards and envelopes.

Even noted radio philosopher and carnival barker Brush Limpbow gave a nod to the climate crises on his radio show late last week. Typically, Mush will immediately dismiss such talk as being strictly the domain of tree-huggers, femi-Nazis and radicals but late last week Gush called climate change a "lying SOB sack of crap global warming." So, we're making progress…maybe not linguistically but progress just the same.

For his part, the Republican leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Honorable John Boehner of Ohio, suggested Sunday on one of the TeeVee Box talking heads shows global warming could be attributed to cow flatulation and human exhalation. Of course he would think that. Look where he works.

He stopped short of labeling the cow flatulence theory utter nonsense. He promised Republicans in the House will come up with a plan to reduce cow flatulence and suggested it will focus on reduced taxes for the extremely wealthy and increased defense spending.

Meanwhile, on the island nation of Trinidad, where steel drums may soon become lifeboats, President Obama's Secretary of Energy Steven Chu gave hemispheric leaders a dire prediction. Chu, a Nobel Prize winner for physics, knows a little something about science. He said cow flatulence has nothing to do with the problem.

He said the planet has already warmed .8 degrees centigrade (just over 32 degrees Fahrenheit) and that even if cows stopped flatulating today the amount of extra CO2 already in the atmosphere will lead – soon – to a built-in 1 degree centigrade (34 degree Fahrenheit) increase in global temperatures.

He went on to say most scientists agree we're likely to see a world-wide temperature increase of 5 to 6 degrees centigrade (41 to 43 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. To put that in context, Chu said, such an increase will mean landlocked ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic will melt, flow into the sea and cause as much as a 7-meter rise in the world's current sea levels. That's a nearly 23-foot sea level rise by the end of the century.

We won't be able to hear Tusk Limpbow call global warming a "lying SOB sack of crap" because his radio studio in Florida will be under 20 feet of water.

That's one way to fight pollution but it seems a bit extreme.

The good news is the cows in Eufaula, Alabama will get to flatulate on beachfront pastures.

As those immortal philosophers, The Beach Boys, once suggested: "Don't go near the water."

Happy Earth Week! Ride your bike to work or take a bio-diesel powered bus.

Two days past Tax and Teabag Day and the republic is still standing – I think, I haven't looked out the window yet.

John Madden is retiring from football, over 700 million Indians will take close to a month to vote in national elections and cheerleaders cut from their California high school squad get (baby got) back at their coach by, er, um, exposing her Playboy pictures, prompting her dismissal and after seeing the photos the following remark from her school board chairman: "frankly, my dear, I respect you a helluva lot more than I did before."

According to press reports, the biggest problem for the cheerleader coach was the distribution among the football team of her Playboy spread which prompted the quarterback to throw a few passes, the football coach to call an end around in spring practice and the offensive coordinator to install a new formation featuring wide outs.

The cheerleader coach apparently failed to block below the waist, prompting officials in the spring practice game to make too many calls for backfield-in-motion and holding.

Yea…yea…yea, back to politics. Sorry. Got distracted.

That thing about the republic still standing? That's conditional, it seems. Part of the republic wants to at least sit down for a while, if not run away altogether. At his teabag rally on Wednesday Texas Governor Rick Perry caused quite a stir by suggesting Texas should or would secede from the union.

Uh, Governor Perry, sir, with all due respect, do you have a history book handy? That's been tried before – a couple of times in Texas, actually. Didn't work out so well.

The biggest problems associated with Texas secession – apart from general apathy by the rest of the country – would be rendering much of the Bush Administration on foreign soil and therefore subject to possible arrest by Spanish prosecutors for war crimes and the fact that the Dallas Cowboys could no longer be called, "America's Team."

Wait, the Cowboy's haven't been America's Team in quite some time. Hell, they're barely Dallas's team at this point.

Speaking of football, the retirement of John Madden marks the end of an era. No more, "BOOM." No more All-Madden Team. No more Frank Caliendo. Yea, that's a shame.

Wait…how did we get back to football? Did you hear about the cheerleader coach in California who was fired when it was revealed she posed for Playboy? Oh yea, sorry, covered that. Just trying to keep you abreast of all the news.

Let's move on.

The 714 million voters in the Republic of Bharat, or India as we call it, began voting in national elections yesterday (which was two days ago in India) and will continue voting until May 13th using 1.4 million voting machines. That's enough to drive even Karl Rove nuts trying to figure out how to mess with it.

Can you imagine what would happen if American elections were spread over a month? Holy Crap, no one would be left standing at the end to claim victory! Heck, our national elections were over five months ago and some folks are STILL fighting about it. Our 2000 presidential election wasn't resolved until nearly a month had passed and our Constitution was nearly torn into pieces by the process!

Finally, in the really, REALLY important news of the day, it seems part-time actor and full-time celebrity Ashton Kutcher has punked CNN by winning his own contest to reach 1 million Twitter followers before CNN could reach that mark. The cable news network put out a bulletin some time in the wee hours of the morning saying Kutcher reached the 1 million twit mark while CNN could only reach 998,000 followers.

But Kutcher may end up foisted on his own petard because, let's face it, it's gonna be hard for someone with 1 million twit followers to punk anyone from now on. Somebody's bound to punk the punker.

The obvious initial question to now ask when the Twitteratti actually meet face to face (as we do on occasion) will be: "Ashton or CNN?"

I think it was ol' Billy Shakespeare who wrote something about sound and fury…which is actually pretty spot-on for the week we've just had.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Good morning, fellow Americans! And welcome to April 15th, the day we celebrate as "tax day" because it's the deadline for filing our annual contribution to the betterment of our nation through the construction and maintenance of important public works, through quality education for all, through provisions to care for our sick and elderly and to provide for our common defense.

I plan on spending thousands of dollars in tax savings and refunds by flying to American Samoa to file my taxes because I will have an automatic 11-hour extension on the deadline.

No, seriously, today will be a special Tax Day because happy and joyous Americans by the tens of twenties will gather on street corners and in public parks to celebrate being American through that great tradition as old as the republic itself: grumbling and complaining! About anything and everything!

In a completely spontaneous and uncoordinated – absolutely NOT sponsored or encouraged in any way by any major news organization or ideological think thank – the Fox Populi will gather to yell and scream and get all lathered up because, well mostly, the guy they voted for last November didn't win the election.

As one local AM radio denizen put it, the day will be one to be remembered.

"It will be awesome," she proclaimed boldly. "The awesomeness will ooze to the streets."

The tea-baggers, as they've come to be known because of their penchant for dangling sacks of spirited rhetoric before our eyes, will make speeches and pump angry fists in the air. They will express dismay over taxes in general and Democrats in particular. They will decry pork and eat pork at the same time. In Texas, aging mediocre rocker Ted Nugent said he will bring his guns. That's always a great idea for public gatherings.

The Fox Populi – a Latin term describing a segment of the citizenry whose sole source of information is the fair-and-balanced Faux News channel - will wear three-cornered hats to show their relevance and dump tea on the ground in tribute to the Boston Tea Party of 1773. You remember the Boston Tea Party, of course, a great act of civil disobedience staged to protest the accumulation of great wealth and power in the hands of a single multinational corporation, the East India Trading Company. Sorta the AIG or Citi of its day.

But none of that matters, now, because the guys who were in office and let all that great wealth and power accumulate in the hands of powerful multinational corporations are no longer in office and have been replaced by guys and gals who want to slightly reduce that accumulation of great wealth and power and, well, we're just not sure we can really handle that.

They will shout, "Socialist!" "Fascist!" "Methodist!" "More Sugar!!"

They will decry, as that same local AM talk radio maven proclaimed, "the oppressive tax structure they are heaping down upon us!"

You know, the tax structure that will see taxes cut for 95 percent of Americans and increased for the wealthiest 5 percent.

Fortunately for us all, the greatest Marxist of all, Groucho, left us with a theme song for today's events, written by co-conspirators Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmer:

The dramatic rescue-at-sea of Richard Phillips, captain of the commercial ship Maersk Alabama; Wednesday is tax filing day; Thailand is burning down and millions of people unaccustomed to Sunday mornings flock to church on Easter with hopes the offering plate might accidentally spill into their laps.

But none of that is as important nor makes the headlines like the REAL news of the day: FIRST DOG IS SELECTED, IMMEDIATELY PEES IN THE PORTICO! (Okay, I didn't really see a headline like that, just made it up.)

The Obamas ended months of speculation when they selected a Portuguese water dog. A what? Yea, I know, me too: a Portuguese water dog.

And in other fun topics, those most loyal to former President Bush will gather this week in Dallas to brainstorm ways to make it appear his administration and leadership was successful.

No, wait, that's not right. They will gather in Dallas to brainstorm about stuff to put in his $300 million presidential library when it is constructed on the campus of Southern Methodist University, over the objection of nearly everyone associated with SMU except a few large alum contributors.

The tight inner Bush circle will have supper at the Bush's new 8,500 square foot Dallas home to ponder the 20 "most consequential decisions" of the Bush Presidency.

Could be an interesting conversation:

"Okay, decision number one: ignore intelligence warnings of an imminent terrorist threat to the U.S. mainland in the summer of 2001. No, let's move on.

"Decision number two: sit still, act like nothing is happening, continue reading My Pet Goat while the World Trade Center crumbles in the terrorist attack of 2001. No? Okay, what's next?"

"Decision number three: invade Iraq because it had absolutely nothing to do with the terrorist attack of 2001. Alright, makin' headway, here."

"Decision number four: cut funding to shore up levies in New Orleans. Yea, that was good one. Flooding from Katrina got everyone's mind off Iraq for a while."

"Decision number five: Ah, hell, let the bankers and investment brokers do whatever they want. They're buddies and the money will eventually trickle down to the street."

It looks to be a long evening.

But, hey, it's just like Bo Diddley said, "Mojo come to my house, ya black cat bone; take my baby away from home; Ugly ol' mojo, where ya been? Up your house and gone again."