Late Random Thoughts

Note to tv newsie editors - Jeremiah Wright is Reallllllly Boooooring. Really.

Why no live footage of the big Marine - Taliban battle in Afghanistan this week? What ever happened to Ashleigh Banfield? She would go. I guess the North Carolina primary is more important.

Why is Slate's web site so slow? I always forget, then remember why I don't read it more often. I'm onto Drudge.

From the I'm Old, Not Dead Department:

So my wife won't think I'm the only weirdo who thinks that Nancy Pelosi is kind of hot, Fancy Nancy comes in at No. 4 on The Hill's list to the 50 Most Beautiful People in Washington, DC our nation's capital. There's something about those Catholic girls.

Sweet Caboose!

Check out this Arab pregnant man.

Pregnant Man Abdullah with Husband Ahkbar and Sister-Wife Condi.

From the Don't Know Whether to Laugh or Cry Department:

"You know, I'm really not interested in policies that are long on rhetoric and short on results. I think the taxpayers, as well as the people we're trying to help, need to know our strategy is well-defined, with clear goals, and we hold people accountable."-- George W. Bush

"No Barney! We're fighting the Moslems, not Mormons!"

What is the government doing by taking all of those Mormon kids away from their mothers? Based on an apparent hoax by a 30 something year old crazy woman, posing as a 16 year old unwilling Mormon bride, the State of Texas has arrested over 400 kids and locked them up in some kind of convention center. Where is the probable cause? Where is the due process? Where are the family values? Where is the freedom of religion?

Not in Texas.

Texas Police Diversity Training Film
Buy it Here!

Talk about state terrorism. You want to terrorize me? Don't threaten to shoot me or electrocute me. Threaten to take my kids away. That's what terrorizes me. That's what is happening in Texas.

It turns out that 5 teenage girls in that renegade Texas Mormon group are either pregnant or have a baby already. That's out of 418 kids (now reported as 435 kids - they can't even count them correctly) the state took into custody. Teen pregnancy! Well, we better hurry up and get the rest of those girls away from their parents and into foster care! Then we know they'll be safe. I'd sure feel secure knowing that my kids were safe in the bosom of the Texas foster care system. Note to literalists - not really.

I Need Foster Care!

What this is really about is that the government has a vendetta against the FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, for forcing young teenage girls into arranged "marriages." Jeffs was convicted of "rape by accomplice" after arranging a religious marriage between a 14 year old girl and her 19 year old cousin. The young groom is now facing charges as well.

Warren Jeffs

That was certainly bad. That's why he's in jail. But what it has to do with the 436 kids taken from their mothers has not been made clear. Nobody has been arrested for anything and not a single child has been alleged to be abused. So what's up?

But onto a group that suffers no police harassment -

More Swinger news!

We continue to keep our ear to the ground for more info about the Swingers alleged to be in our area. Keep in mind that I have no idea if any of this is true.

• Another Secret Swinger Signal - put a box of Tide in your window. Though I'm not sure what happens next.
• Apparently there are a couple of "urban" young men who will "host" a Swinger party at the Swingers' homes. Word is that the guys pair up with the ladies while husbands watch. This one really kind of freaks me out. No word on whether the guys get paid for this. The hosts I mean.
• Reported ATL Swinger neighborhoods include Laurel Springs, Three Chimneys, Windermere, and St. Ives.
• The is an introductory course available online (absolutely free!) for new Swingers at http://www.swingersvillage.net/, apparently hosted by Shannen Doherty.
• I even found a Swinger resort on the internet http://swingermarbella.com/en/about-us/. (I hope it's not true that the IT guys can see everything I do on this PC.)

Random TV Land Observations:

Who is Kimora? She may be a nice person, but in the print ads she looks like a Vegas hooker in that gold dress. And why does she have a tv show?

Love 30 Rock and The Office these days.

I hope James wins Survivor.

Hillary Wins PA By 9%

Obama Continues To Close The Deal

Congrats to Hillary for a good win in Pennsylvania. Tally in PA as of 10:30 am EST Thursday is:

Clinton: 54.6%

Obama: 45.4%

That's a pretty solid win for Hillary. But what does it mean for the overall contest?In the days before the PA primary, it was painful watching the tv people try to peg some sort of over/under point for expectations that would determine whether Hillary's margin of anticipated victory would be "enough" to keep the contest alive. This sort of game is mystifying to me. The chatteratti couldn't seem to make up their minds on what the magic number should be. The idea of basing it on actual math didn't catch fire anywhere. Is it just a matter of "winning" if you do better than the very last "conventional wisdom" estimate of your vote tally? How about saying that if she closed the delegate count by 50 or 100 delegates, that would really make the race close enough to matter?

No, that will never do, because everybody knows that the race will not become close. Obama is cruising to victory and everybody knows it. But there is this pretending going on that somehow the "Super" delegates to the Democratic convention will all get together and decide to nominate Hillary anyway. Why is this story alive?

For this scenario to be viable, there is strongly implied that the party insiders have a pre-existing desire to give the nomination to Hillary instead of Barack, and that all Hillary has to do is give them a straight faced excuse to do so. Is this true? Is there this quasi-plan to get Hillary nominated? I doubt it and I hope not.

I think Hillary is full of baloney, as far as having a legitimate chance to win the nomination. The Super delegates will not vote as a block. The two thirds of them, over 500, who have declared so far are split, but have tilted toward Hillary. But the recent trend is toward Obama.

So what is Hillary's plan? Basically to stay alive and hope Obama either wrecks or runs out of gas, while her campaign plants doubts that he can win in November. At the same time she is putting forth various premises that would seem to justify her getting the nomination. Like her fuzzy math on the popular vote, and multiple "if the rules were different I'd be winning" arguments.

"Can't close the deal." This is the Hillary phrase of the week. Obama just can't seem to close the deal, so the Super delegates should vote for Hillary. This is the kind of idiocy that drives people to not bother to vote.

First of all, what's up with all the newsies parroting the same phrase? Aren't they embarrassed when they do this? It may not be plagiarism, but it is copying.

Second, why is nobody pointing out the utter lack of logic with this idea. Hillary is further away from "closing the deal" than Barack. In fact, Hillary is the one who mathematically "can't" close this deal, while Barack is cruising along toward closing it very nicely. He's winning. When you're winning, you just keep doing what you're doing until you win. You don't change a winning strategy just to win faster.

It's a 50 state contest. Just because Hillary hasn't been eliminated by a skunk rule yet, doesn't mean that she's somehow not losing. She is losing. And she has no legitimate path to victory.This contest looks like it will go the whole nine innings. There's nothing wrong with that.

What Obama needs to do is to stop reacting to Hillary so much, and just boldly steal her thunder. All of this talk of working class Catholics not voting for Obama because he's an elitist is off the mark. It's not because he's elitist. Catholics actually love elitists! Think Kennedys, Popes, The Vatican, Notre Dame. His problem is that he's not talking about their issues.

Do you know what working class people, and Hillary's old ladies, are really worried about more than health care or variable rate mortgages or Iraq or NAFTA? SOCIAL SECURITY!!!! They are afraid of not having any money when they are old. Obama should dust off Al Gore's old "lockbox" and promise to stabilize the program and GUARANTY that social security will be there for all of us when we get old.

The Republicans are vulnerable on this issue because they have raided the Treasury for the last 7 years and failed to fix social security. This is the issue that Hillary's base will really care about. And Hillary, with her "eight years in the white house" and eight more in the Senate, hasn't done Jack Squat to make social security secure.

Obama needs to steal this issue and make it his own.

Working class Catholics going the full nine innings, while adoring their elites.

It's time to change the way politicians are dealing with social security. And Medicare, too.

Can we fix it? Yes, we can!
(Credits to Bob the Builder.)

Friday's Random Thoughts for April 18

I've realized that I'm going to have real trouble focusing on losing weight as long as I have this laziness thing going on.

I clicked on a headline that said, "First Look Inside Polygamist Compound," but there were no pictures.

Thursday on Morning Joe, Tim Russert blurts out that his son thinks Mika is a "cougar." They then discuss this briefly as a cute little conversation. Ummm. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but do they really not know what "cougar" means? If you need enlightenment, click here.

On an historical note, Germany seems to have succeeded in bringing it's eastern and western territories together nicely.

Kraut Cougar Queen Angela Merkel

Chancellor of Germany

I haven't watched the Philly Presidential debate yet. I was tired and I flipped to it just as Charlie Gibson was asking his first question. As he droned into his third inquisitive paragraph, I realized that I just wasn't going to make it. So I tivoed it for later. Apparently I didn't miss much.

Charlie Gibson. Only slightly less boring than George Stephanopoulis! What a duo. Was pairing these two "veterans" some sort of recycling statement by ABC?

Next time get Shuster and Zacharia!

Is oil expensive just because the dollar is weak? Is that what this is all about? Nobody seems to be running out of oil, so it's not a lack of supply. This weak dollar thing may have gone too far.

Remind me again the difference between fiscal policy and monetary policy? Which one does the Fed do? Does Treasury do the other one? Or is it Congress? What is our policy anyway?

While I don't know nothing about all that economy stuff, I sure do know a lot about Reverend Wright, Hillary's Grandpa, and Cindy McCain's cookies.

If China invades Taiwan, or Japan, or Hawaii, would we still keep the troops in Iraq? Wouldn't it be a hoot if they did it during the Olympics? We'd really be stymied then.

Remember the "nappy headed ho" scandal that got Don Imus shunned from the radio waves? Well, now when I'm driving around and listening to talk radio, my only choices are Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, or Neil Boortz. Nice going, sensitive liberals. You have nobody on your side on the airwaves of Atlanta. Unless you count NPR's Lois Reitzes playing classical music.

Jack Cafferty on CNN calls the Chinese "the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years." The Chinese government demands an apology, so CNN apologies to anyone who thought Cafferty was referring to the Chinese people, clarifying that he meant only the Chinese government! Hah! While I don't usually like smarmy apologies, I really loved this one. As my Aunt Amy would say, "They don't like him, he don't like them." Harmony!

Hooray for the Grouchy Old Man!

If you're a woman reporter at Bloomberg, your picture should be here.

Roundball Playoffs are here at last. Go Celtics!