Wednesday, July 30, 2008

"...Instead Of Being Arrested"

The best line I've heard about US Senator Ted Stevens, 84, and the 7-count "Failure to Disclose" felony indictment  filed on him Tuesday by a federal grand jury came on this morning's The Bill Press Show,  but not from Bill Press.  Press said he got it off some blog, so the credit for this goes to the blogger whose post Press used to get a laugh, but who he failed to identify.   But, whoever it was, they came up with a beauty:

"Here's a guy so corrupt that even the Bush Justice Department had to charge him."

The only part of the Stevens' story I don't like is this, as reported in the  The New York Times this morning:

Mr. Stevens was informed of the indictment through a telephone call to his lawyer on Tuesday morning and was allowed to surrender instead of being arrested.

I think The Honorable Mr. Stevens deserved to be handcuffed and dragged out of the Senate chamber by at least 6 burly US Marshals.  Doesn't the word "felony" mean anything in this country, anymore?

In his own defense, and, again from The Times, Mr. Stevens said in a statement, "I have never knowingly submitted a false disclosure form required by law as a U.S. senator.”

Since ignorance of the law is not a defense for having broken the law, Sen. Stevens will, of course,  lose if his defense comes down to the word, "knowingly". 

And, if he loses, he will be missed.  Not to mention his November re-election hopes just got a little bit dimmer and if he loses that race we'll miss him as well.  So it is in the spirit of missiness that we present one of the great floor speeches ever delivered in the US Senate, remarks by Senator Stevens when he was only 82. 

It's a classic.  You know it, you love it, and it is and will forever be the way we remember the Honorable Ted Stevens.  Ted, we hardly knew 'ye.

(As recommended by Wonkette, you should CRANK IT!!!)  

© 2008 Richard Kincaide. All rights reserved.

Monday, July 28, 2008

McCain Takes High Road Again




Another stellar example of Insane John McCain making crap up. From today's (Monday, July 28, 2008) New York Times:


Over the last two days, his (McCain's) campaign has strongly implied that Mr.
Obama declined to meet with wounded American troops at Landstuhl Regional
Medical Center in Germany after he learned that he could not bring television
cameras along.


“I know of no Pentagon regulation that would have prevented
him from going there, without the media and the press and all of the associated
people,” Mr. McCain said in the ABC interview (on This Week).


Mr. Obama, who visited wounded troops in Iraq without notifying the news media, and has visited injured soldiers in the United States, said he was not traveling with an official delegation and did not want to politicize the visit.


Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, who accompanied Mr. Obama to Iraq, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Mr. McCain was “treading on some very thin ground when he impugns motives, and when we start to get into ‘you’re less patriotic than me, I’m more patriotic.’ ”



Thank you, Senator Hagel and how often do we applaud what a GOPer says?

What the Obamas ought to do is, without comment, distribute a picture of the candidate visiting the wounded.


In other news, the Chicago White Sox suck and I hate them and everything they stand for.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

You Can Do That?

We're going to start a new thing here at Everybody called "You Can Do That?"

Now, since my formal training in The Law consists of  my having watched Judd, For the Defense when I was little, and 12 Angry Men when I was not, all I can do is post important legal questions here at Everybody and hope for the best.  I do know of at least a couple of lawyers who check in here from time to time so let's see if this works...

We are, by now, all familiar with this article which appeared in the July 11, 2008 edition of the  Los Angeles Times which we excerpt here:

In his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For," McCain wrote that he had separated from Carol McCain before he began dating (Cindy) Hensley.
"I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs would allow," McCain wrote. "I was separated from Carol, but our divorce would not become final until February of 1980."
An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his court petition that he and his wife had "cohabited" until Jan. 7 of that year -- or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley.
Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.

So,  with respect to the statement in bold, the question is: You can do that?  Legally, I mean.  You can get a marriage license to marry Woman B while you are still legally married to Woman A?  That doesn't seem very "Family Valuey" to me, but who am I to question the good people of Arizona?  If that's the law there, that's the law there.  But is it?  If it is not,  McCain's a fraud.   And a lawbreaker.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

On Democommie™™™™™

It's pretty rough and tumble on von Ebers' blog right what with a troll on the loose and all.  A troll trying to take on democommie™™™™™, no less.  Not a fight I would relish were I he because the fact of the matter is that democommie™™™™™ is one of the great posters in the Age of Blog.  I'd venture to say that if the GNP of our Nation were dependent upon the wit and cleverness of the American people, with guys like democommie™™™™™ on our side we'd be telling the Chinese to, "Suck it!  Suck it hard!" 

If I had to give demo™™™™™ a proper introduction, it would go something like this:

 

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Holy Malapropos

Here where I live, if you overshoot on the dial while trying to tune in the local Air America affiliate and instead wind up listening to the next station to the right of your intended target, you find yourself listening to religious programming of the most odious sort.

You should not take this the wrong way. I find that there is religious programming out there which is not "odious." In fact, in my view, by its very nature, religious programming should be anything but. In reality though, the vast majority of what passes for religious discourse on the air is, as I hear it, nothing short of disgusting. And in the name of God, no less.

I almost shat myself when I heard a new low today. In the thirty seconds or so that I had the wrong station on, I listened (with a jaw growing slacker by the moment) as an ad played for a new book titled How Would God Vote? by one David Klinghoffer.

A quick check of the Amazon website this evening showed that the ad copy had been taken verbatim from the Amazon page devoted to How Would God Vote? which is good because it means that I can share it with you. And here it is (at least in part):

To anyone who takes God seriously, every election poses a radical question: Will we vote with Him, or against Him? The Bible is an unapologetically political book, Klinghoffer explains, and an extremely conservative one. Some political views offend God, and those views are mostly liberal. In short, the Bible commands you to be a conservative.

Bull. Fucking. Shit, it does.

The root word of "Christianity" is, if I am not mistaken, "Christ". Now, I haven't read the entire Bible, but I have read the entire Gospel (the four chapters of the Bible which is Christ's bio, essentially) and based on my reading I can tell you for sure that if God is in fact a goddamn conservative, he and His Son must have gone 'round and 'round. Maybe that's why the poor bastard got his ass nailed to a tree, in fact.

Just to name a few, there is no part of the Gospel in which Christ, as conservatives do, espouses tax cuts for the richest among us; in which Christ, as conservatives do, demands an unprovoked attack on another county; in which Christ, as conservatives do, says "Fuck 'em all" to kids without health insurance.

I am sick beyond my ability to effectively express myself of these miserable, bound-for-Hell, scales-still-covering-their-eyes, unholy sons-of-bitches who daily pervert my religion -- a religion which is, by the way, about nothing other than peace and justice and the well-being of the least among us -- by telling me I need to vote for a woman-hating, war-mongering, Keating Five thief like John McCain lest I incur the wrath of my God.

I find the words "conservative" and "Christian" to be mutually exclusive. I always have. In other words, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Or, if you prefer the Talking Heads to talking God: Same as it ever was.

And now for something completely different.

This story that's been gaining traction these past few days about Insane John McCain's little gorilla rape joke back in '86? It's been on my radar since Monday or Tuesday at the latest. My source? Wonkette. That's right. Freaking Wonkette. It has come to this: no longer do I get the important news of the day from MSNBC or Raw Story or the Huffington Post or CNN or CBS or NBC or the Detroit Free Press or The New York Times. It's freaking Wonkette. Oh, my aforementioned God. What has happened to American Journalism?

Finally, in regards to a certain Scotty Bowman story, the target of said story should realize that his friend was just kidding and may have in fact feigned an overreaction merely to get the anecdote out there because it is, after all, a pretty good story and he will feign from time to time just to get the good stuff in. Also, your story as been fully read and a response is being worked on. I just want to be careful in what I say. So, no bruised feelings, okay?

© 2008 Richard Kincaide. All rights reserved

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The Beauty Shot




In TV sports "The Beauty Shot" is what they call the wide-angle view of the entire venue you get from an up high camera.

Any shot from a camera in a blimp, for example. It's there to show you the grandeur that is the Arroyo Seco watershed on New Year's Day at the Rose Bowl rosebowl2-sm

so you can feel just a little bit better (or not) about how your team is getting its' ass kicked down below in The Big Game before they take you back down the Main Camera so you can actually see the ass getting kicked more, you know, up close and personal.

Pictures in today's LA Times show us how difficult getting that Beauty Shot at the Beijing Olympics next month could prove to be:

40812040

China's National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, is seen under polluted skies a month before the opening of the Olympic Games.

The clock is running for the start of the 2008 Olympic Games.

40811657

Traffic passes an Olympics countdown clock in Beijing.


It might just be me, but does this think look a little, I don't know, rickety to you?:

40811777 Construction workers erect scaffolding for an Olympics exhibit in Beijing. The city is putting final touches on Olympic venues.

Finally, here's a shot which has nothing to do with sports, pollution or TV, but which answers the question: "How long does it take to get the blood out of the cracks? 19 Years.

40812256

Workers clean Beijing's Tiananmen Square a month before the opening of the Olympic Games.

Monday, July 7, 2008

When You Can't Say Something Nice About Somebody, Say Something Else

Why should I struggle so to artfully express myself when others already speak from my heart?

Why?

Here's another outstanding example...

I couldn't come up "just the right words" to say regarding the passing of Jesse Helms ('cept for: "As a Christian, I wonder how he's liking Hell?") until I came across the following via our Friends at Wonkette:

http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/07/04/jesse-helms-american-garbage/

By Ken Layne


...Helms became the new, stupid face of the Republican Party, the party that left behind intellectualism and civil rights and took up the Southern Strategy of pandering to bitter white losers while actively working against that same white working class. Helms was the perfect hack, the kind of lifelong fraud who made his career on the ignorant resentments of the same people he screwed so hard by always representing the mill owners and the tobacco corporations. He was mean, cheap, petty and unloved. He was the ugliest kind of bigot and a stain on America. Anybody who says different is a liar.

Thank you, Mr. Layne. That's all for now.

Friday, July 4, 2008

Funeral For A Friend

I got the MLB.TV package for being such a great dad a couple of weeks ago and I can't bring myself to look away.  I checked in on 11 different games a couple of nights ago.  Right now, here on the 4th of July, I'm watching the Red Sox/Yankees.  The only thing I can say for sure is that Red Sox 1B  Kevin Youkilis is the ugliest man in Organized Ball ( OB).  In a Top Ten Ugliest Guys in Major League Baseball contest, he'd be #1 thru, like, 5. 

Anyway...

A "friend" has written to me inquiring as to whether I would mind if he posted, on the world-wide web, Back-in-the-Day tales from our shared yootz.  Tales which involve what were all very hellaciously good ideas at the time but which, seen in today's light  (now that we are parents and The Responsible Party and all, O.M.G.) have the potential to embarrass.

But, that would be true only of someone with pride and/or shame which, and I doubt I have to tell you this, would not be me.  Because, as you know: "Richie?  He don't give a f---." 

So, I'm okay with it as long as we didn't have sex.  We didn't, right?  Good.  (I'd been drinking and I don't remember the whole thing--our now better than 30-year relationship).

I think I'd go with the pseudonyms, though.  And none of that "Nick" and "Alex" crap like you suggested.   Sounds waaay too gay to me, buddy.

I want to be called, "Brock Landers." 

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

In Re: Footnote 23

Chicago attorney Dave von Ebers is a fine legal writer. As proof I offer The Meaning of Footnote 23: http://journalplagueyear.blogspot.com/2008/06/meaning-of-footnote-23.html 

In The Meaning of Footnote 23, von Ebers suggests that individual States may not be bound by the recent Supreme Court decision on the 2nd Amendment and, moreover, that the Court acknowledges this to be the case in Footnote 23 (talk about "burying the lead, eh?) of the Majority Opinion written by Justice Scalia (who I saw called "Scaligula" in a post somewhere a couple of days ago and which I will be stealing for my own personal use from now on).

I found The Meaning of Footnote 23 to be Interesting as Hell so I passed it on to someone else I know who happens to have a first-rate legal mind and he apparently thought it was Interesting as Hell, too, posting the following comment at Dave's Blog, Journal of the Plague Year:

 (I have bolded the best parts so you don't have to.)

I agree with you and I think the footnote is very important; your analysis is pretty much on the mark. Scalia has consistently raised the shibboleth of original intent against more egalitarian/pro social doctrines that have evolved from Constitutional interpretation over the last forty years because in most cases on a very simple intellectual level it works.


What the proponents of this tact fail to take into account is that the world at the end of the 1700s and before slavery's demise was not one of actual equality or one we would particularly want to live in. However Scalia and the remainder of his unholy four also know that if that cry of WWTDD (What would the drafters do) is to be their Excalibur-like sword cutting away the vines of social justice that grew out of the Warren years their analysis must be consistent with that doctrine. They must tie up the loose ends and your interpretation of the footnote is one fine example of this. Without consistency to their mantra their bold political agenda will be shown for what it is, nothing more than intellectually dishonest right wing hackery.

The footnote is there because it has to be.  Otherwise their orignialist claims would be a sham. However the import of the main decision is designed to be a hit to our national solar plexus so as to scare the states from ever realizing what leeway in dealing with gun violence is left to them in the footnote. The stun factor is the political component of the decision; it scares and puts the states off the track for awhile. The Unholy Four thus continue to pray that some operative of the GOP finds/manufactures an Al Sharpton/Obama gay sex tape and thus insures that they get their fifth justice so we can return to the good ole’ days of women in the kitchen, blacks tending our lawns and the one true cross governing our thoughts.

-------------

So, I think my friend is a fine legal writer also.  Everybody is impressed, to say the least.

What we have got here is two (2) outstanding legal minds in accord.  Everybody says, "Nuff said."

Meanwhile, wasting no time, the NRA has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn a local handgun ban based on this            SC(r)OTUS ruling.  Everybody wonders, will Footnote 23 come up when the case goes to court?