I beg your pardon?

What is the freaking deal with all this Jim Morrison pardon stuff?

Seriously. WTF cares?

The guy was a spoiled-rotten-malcontent-drug-and-alcohol-addicted knucklehead who couldn't for a moment appreciate the lucky position he found himself in, who had a mediocre (at best) voice, and who possessed very little other redeeming value given his absurd behaviors. Further, The Doors were incredibly overrated (and still are) and didn't even have a bass player, for crying out loud!

And Morrison was a poet? Oh please. Give me a break.

The guy who writes cereal box blurbs for Kellogg is a better poet.

The worst Hallmark-card writer on his worst day is a better poet.

Whoever it is who writes those roadside Burma Shave rhymes is a better poet.

Who cares if Jim Morrison is pardoned or not? Who cares he was ever convicted of anything in the first place!?! Who will sleep better knowing he's been pardoned? WHO CARES?!?!

Really?

Nope... I just don't get it.

An update to this ridiculous story.

Someone just has to step up!

What we are witnessing almost universally in USA politics is a complete lack of will, an inability to demonstrate honesty and integrity, to say what has to be said to get things turned around instead of just to be re-elected. Almost no one seems to want to step up.

Instead, almost all politicians turn to pandering in order to be re-elected as their primary goal as office-holders, regardless of the shallowness and transparency (the bad kind) of the pandering remarks and positions they offer and take.

At some point people will have to step up and step into these offices at all levels, speak the truth, and take the consequences, which will mean term limits virtually by default, as recently happened with Alan Grayson in Florida. Sure, Grayson was a bomb-thrower and a loose cannon, and behaved somewhat callously toward his opponent during their campaign, but while in office he told the truth. Anyone who does as Grayson did will almost assuredly be as hated as Grayson was and be voted out of office after one term, as Grayson was, but they will have behaved honorably by speaking truthfully and acting honestly about what needs to be said and done. This is true for the US Presidency on down to City Comptroller.

John McCain, as one example, has made a career out of being a senator simply by blowing in whatever direction the wind points him in order to be re-elected and to continue and further his career. That he contradicts himself constantly, and there is abundant video tape to prove this, seems not to matter, to anyone, let alone to him.

Moreover, "the American people," who candidates and politicians are so fond of saying they understand so thoroughly, will at some point just have to stop acting like self-interested, wishy-washy wind-blown goofballs who on the one hand readily accept and use the obviously Socialistic medical and retirement payments they receive from the Socialistic government they lambaste, and on the other claim for all to hear that they hate Socialism and just want their government back, their country back, and their freedoms back.

Huh?

Even as these "American people" screeched and squealed, they voted Bush 43 back in for a second term while he and his cronies weakened the Bill of Rights, the economy, national security, and pretty much everything they touched and simultaneously strengthened the stupidly wealthy to be wealthier still. Who's more stupid?

Yikes.

And now these same "American people" are about to have these same folks back in power who are actively claiming they want to return to doing the same things they did before (QED), and, in so doing, they again ensure their careers as politicians, again ensure they can pander to a willing throng, and again ensure that these same goofballs who keep electing them will go back to gratefully accepting the public handouts and to keeping silent about the government, the country, and the liberty they now think they have back.

But we can't go back to that!

In at least one aspect, the Tea Parties are right (and I am as surprised as you to hear me say this), but I'll take it a few steps further: we will have to fix social security, and Medicare, and Medicaid, and it will take tough decisions and choices. We will have to draw down our military from around the world and use the money elsewhere as we find jobs for the returning soldiers. We will have to draw down our debt and stop wasting money, even as we spend money to help people who need help. We will have to learn to see that this "American dream" is a shared experience and not some oddly Darwinian every-man-for-himself. We will have to stop enabling corporations to ship jobs overseas and instead enable them to put people back to work here. We will have to vote career politicians out of office and continue to seek out and support people who will behave honorably and speak truthfully and accept the possibly term-limiting consequences of both behaviors.

And we will have to do all this very soon, otherwise, we will run out of time.

Someone just has to step up.

Everything you know is wrong...

It's time to forget everything you thought you believed regarding the end times.

Here is the truth of it.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Spelling doesn't spoil the spoiler...

Say it ain't so, Joe. We hardly knew ye.

Now go away so Alaska can miss you properly.

Tea Partiers will be abandoned...

If the Tea Party, which claims to be a grass-roots movement and was unarguably responsible for so many of the Republican wins in the mid-terms, sits still, sits passively by, while the Repos ignore, obfuscate, and angle their way around the essential things against which the Tea Party claims to stand, then the Tea Party deserves what it gets, is welcome to the Republican Party, and will lose any credibility it might have had.

That people are pissed is the real issue; the problem is at whom they're pissed.

If the Tea Party isn't getting angrier daily with the mealy-mouthed lip service the Repos are engaging in, then they're drinking the Kool-Aid, not the tea, and the Tea Party-Repo marriage will end badly.

Real or not real; I just can't tell...

I read this article and I just can't tell if the goofball interviewed in it is for real or if it's just a spoof, a fake story, if he's making this up for publicity.

Seriously, if it is a real news story, if this person actually exists, and if he actually believes what he's saying, how could anyone with even half their brain functioning want to give their customers "their blackout?"

Huh?

He goes on to say that "people like to blackout?"

Really? Where have I been? What the hell is going on here?

Please, someone, explain this to me.

Dear Mr. Griffin,

Although I pretty much know that you will never read this, writing it made me feel better.

OK. I get it. Keith Olbermann messed up. He violated an MSNBC policy that attempts to maintain the appearance of impartiality.

Point taken. But do you or anyone else at MSNBC really believe that Countdown with Keith Olbermann is anything but fact-based opinion journalism? C'mon... even the most casual observer can see that Keith has a Liberal agenda.

Wow, there's a shocker.

Keith howls nightly at the right AND at the left (and occasionally at the moon), but he works from facts not from fantasy and he is always fair.

MSNBC needs to play fair as well, let his suspension be a lesson to him, and reinstate Keith Olbermann now.

Why?

Because MSNBC...

1. Cannot afford to lose him (because Rachel, Lawrence, et al., can't do it alone),
2. Can ill afford to lose viewers like me (and others like me),
3. Needs all the help it can get to balance out the right-wingnuts at Fox (and please be honest, this is what you do AND this is what they are), and
4. Must continue to offer perspective and proportion to the hyperbolic-far-right-leaning propaganda media-machine (because this is what it is) that lives across the road.

Thank you.

With kindest regards...

Mike

The devils you know and don't know...

The Christine O'Donnell debacle has been instructive in terms of who holds the power on the right versus who wants it.

After O'Donnell proved (again) that her right-wingnuttiness was replete, Karl Rove came out swinging saying she wasn't accomplished enough to be a senator. Sure, King Karl backed off this rare honesty the next day, after Rushbo, SaPal, et al., leaned on him, but Karl was right (yes, I said this) and the truth was out there: Karl Rove does not take the Tea Party seriously.

I'll say it again: Karl Rove does not take the Tea Party seriously.

A bell can't be un-rung and with Karl's comments we clearly heard a prelude to what is to come for the Repos in the months leading up to 2012: Karl (old-world Repo mastermind) and Sarah (Rush's hand puppet) will be at odds, will split, will push their own versions of the future of the Republican Party, and will end up fracturing the Republican Party to the extent that the Tea Party will become a legitimate force in American politics, and not just a far-right wing of the Repos.

As much as the old-world Republicans (led by Rove) say Dems are out of touch with the people who comprise the Tea Party (led by Sarah Palin), the Republicans are more out of touch with them because they're cynically using the Tea Party to their own ends and will toss the Tea Party aside as soon as they get what they want. QED

My prediction?

Sarah Palin will win the Republican Primary, Barrack Obama will win a second term (and Karl Rove will banish himself to a Pacific Island never to be heard from again... OK... maybe this last one is wishful thinking.)

Why?

Because Karl Rove was right about Christine O'Donnell.

If you don't vote...

...you can't bitch.

So on November 2nd... VOTE!!

100,000 in 3 weeks?

Bank of America (BOA) claims it has gone through 100,000 of its contested foreclosure documents in 3 weeks.

Really?

Let's break this down.

Let's give BOA the benefit of the doubt and say they worked on this 24/7. If so, and we have 504 hours in three weeks (21 days), they would have had to go through 198 documents per hour.

OK.

What if they only worked on this Monday through Friday, but did so for 24 hours every day? This is a total of 15 days, so this would be 360 hours, which means they would need to wade through 277 documents every hour.

Now let's get real.

Let's say BOA is like any other company that hates paying overtime, so they would have people work on this no more than 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. This is a total of 120 hours, so they would have had to verify a whopping 833 documents every hour to get through all 100,000.

Whatever the scenario they actually used, do they really expect people to believe anything they say after their credibility has been so completely hammered by their previous behaviors?

And, did they not find a single questionable mortgage document in all 100,000?

rrrRRR?

Wouldn't it make at least some sense to see if at least some of these 100,000 cases could actually be modified such that at least some of these people could stay in their homes and continue to make payments?

This way BOA could continue to generate revenue, which would mean stockholders could continue to be happy, and which would mean BOA could legitimately claim to be the "Bank of Opportunity" rather than appearing to be just one more opportunistic, atavistic US corporation.

And let's not forget that BOA wrote these $%#!ing mortgage loans to begin with, so don't they share some of the blame?

After all, a BOA is a snake that squeezes the life out of its victims. Coincidence? Hmmm...

Update: 10/25/2010
Update: 10/26/2010

The very definition...

...of irony.

Hello!?! Is anyone out there?

I have lately come to realize that another side-effect of the social networking craze affects people who check email often and is affected by people who don't. Allow me to explain.

Even before the days of Facebook and Classmates and Twitter and Whatever, when having only one email address was the norm, these folks might take weeks to respond to any email message sent to their lone email address.

But now with many forms of email and messaging available via all their social networking pages, these same folks are, oddly enough, just as disinclined to respond quickly (if at all), so the problem is multiplied as more senders have more avenues to capturing more recipients' inattention.

Sending four messages to a person who normally doesn't check email regularly anyway simply gives that person three more opportunities --- and perhaps three more reasons, three more rationales --- to be disinclined to respond. If you talk to a deaf man who can't read lips, he can't help you; if you yell at him, he still can't help you; if you yell at him multiple times, he still can't help you.

My admittedly bordering-on-obsessive behavior when it comes to checking and answering email (and this is my problem, I admit) simultaneously does and does not scale well in a socially connected world populated with routinely disconnected people.

It does because I'm made for this era. It doesn’t because others aren’t.

Either everyone who doesn’t check email regularly has to come around soon, or I do.

Which do I think is most likely? Hmmm... let me think about it and I’ll send you an email.

Say so long to Summers...

Not that my opinion matters one whit, but I've never liked this guy.

From the time he got into all that trouble at Harvard, I never liked this guy. He seems like a pompous jerk who has issues with women.

He treated Brooksley Born like crap when she tried to blow the whistle on the pending derivatives mess --- and she's probably forgotten more about derivatives than Mr. Summers will ever know.

And now that Elizabeth Warren has been appointed --- yet another wicked smart woman Mr. Brilliance doesn't think much of --- he's heading home like a pouting child taking his football with him. What a jerk.

So long Mr. Summers. No one is going to miss you. Don't let the exit door hit your ass as you walk through it. Harvard is just so lucky to have you back.

Which Christine O'Donnell is witch...

The media dust-up that will no doubt blow in from Bill Maher's recent revelation (you've just gotta love this guy) will completely cloud the real point here: Ms. O'Donnell will be simultaneously forgiven and damned for her past by those who claim to be her supporters, and it's precisely this brazen hypocrisy that is at the heart of her weirdly flawed fall to fame.

It takes one to know one, after all, and we've probably all behaved hypocritically at times in our lives, especially during our misspent youths; however, O'Donnell's brand of it is special; it's like no other; it's positively stunning; and... wait for it... it's on videotape.

I never thought I'd ever say this, but Karl Rove is entirely correct in calling this woman's sincerity into question (even though he's not exactly a beacon of sincerity himself). And I love that Karl's now suggesting Ms. Palin campaign for Ms. O'Donnell. Riiiiight.

That she can so boldly make the claims she's made, then follow them up with equally bold claims that espouse the exact opposite viewpoints is just astounding, but it shouldn't be at all surprising because she's nothing but a political loser, a professional campaign joiner, a rank opportunist who's now transformed herself into her latest avatar, a Sarah Palin clone who is pandering to Ms. Palin's base just so she can win an elective office she has absolutely no inherent ability to hold (just like her mentor).

"We the people," my ass. It's completely clear from her record that this young woman will say anything, about anything, to anyone. But who knows, maybe she's under a spell she cast on herself back in the good old days of the 90s, when the odd admixture of abstinence, religious fervor, masturbatory fear, and witchcraft took up much of her clearly short attention span. I mean really... did she not understand the concept of videotape back then? Does she now think it will all magically disappear? This woman doesn't have skeletons in her closet, she has an entire bone yard!

So you go, Christine! Keep on bewitching all those mesmerized Tea Partiers into believing your B.S. But if you don't stop with the blatant hypocrisy, they just might realize you're jerking them off and will abstain from you.

And then... twinkle, twinkle, POOF!!! ...your political career will disappear like Darrin Stevens' pants.

Elizabeth Warren gets the nod...

This story heralds great news for US citizens (notice I didn't say "consumers") who have been pushed around and generally abused by the credit industry for far too long.

To say Elizabeth Warren is wicked smart doesn't begin to describe it. She excels at plain speaking. She translates gobbledygook into simple, easy-to-understand statements. She is the right person for this job.

When he interviewed her on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart famously said, "I know your husband's back stage, but I still wanna make out with you."

She has this effect on people. She speaks so confidently and so logically that it's nearly impossible not to be drawn to her intellect, her reason, but most importantly, her reasonableness.

Doris Kerns-Goodwin has a similar effect on me. Whenever she appears on a program, I listen intently and always come away wiser for the time spent. These women each understand their respective fields and can express this plainly, without hesitation.

The financial industry is not happy about Warren's appointment, and with it, having their way with all of us just might become a bit tougher for all of them.

We can only hope.