It’s funny, dubya’s supposed strong point was that the “average Joe” would want to “have a beer” with him (despite the fact that dubya was supposedly on the wagon, and, as far as I remember, he never had as much as an O’Douls with any average Joes). Now Obama goes and has a beer (a Bud Light, too, which, sadly, is both disappointing and appropriate; woulda been funnier if he’d had a Colt 45 and lit up a Newport) with “average Joe” Biden, “average Jim” Crowley, and of course Big Man on the Harvard Campus, Henry Louis Gates, and Fux News makes fun of it. Go figure.

I thought Gates had the best line of the day, discussing how he enjoyed meeting Crowley at the White House:

“We hit it off right from the beginning. When he’s not arresting you, Sergeant Crowley is a really likable guy.”

So hopefully we can all put this incident behind us, and get back to more important things, like the fact that Michael Jackson is still dead. Oh, President Obama, by the way, if you’re planning on inviting me over for a beer, I’ll take a bottle of Cave Aged Three Philosophers. Light beer is for old men.

Just as I was considering trading in my old clunker of a van for something more fuel efficient (something with a gas tank that doesn’t leak would be a good start), it turns out that the “Cash for Clunkers” program is out of money and is being suspended. Well, shit. Hey, I don’t need $4500 for a new vehicle; just give me a few hundred bucks for a new gas tank.

Had some heavy rain and thunderstorms that ran through the area at about 2:30 this morning, which got the dogs all shook up. Just as we’d recovered from that (and I’d finally gotten back to sleep), Granny got home from her trip to DC at about 3:45 or so.

She came in, knocked over the step ladder in our bedroom (did I mention the house is a bit on the disheveled side?), picked it up and dropped it a few times (sounding a bit like Fibber McGee opening the closet door in the process), said “sorry” a few times, and then turned around and walked out. So I wound up with a terrified, 60 pound panting dog sitting on my chest. As we all got calmed down (and back to sleep) again, the alarm went off, and it was time to get up and face the day.

Should be a great one. I wonder what’ll fall off the car today?

Granny is on a bus somewhere in the vicinity of Washington, DC right now, on her way to lobby for Single Payer Health Care, before a rally in Upper Senate Park at 1pm, in an effort to counter millions of insurance industry lobbyist dollars with the voice of “the people,” and to celebrate Medicare’s 44th birthday. “The people” come to DC in buses, while the lobbyists arrive in stretch limos, trailed by busloads of money. I’m sure you’ve all heard about today’s activities, because they’re being so well covered by the media. Right? Or at least all the usual “progressive” outlets. Right? No?

So, here’s what Granny’s schedule is like. She worked yesterday, leaving the house at about 7:15am, and getting back home at around 8:00pm. The bus for DC left at midnight, and is scheduled to arrive at 8am, give or take. Then a day full of trying to talk to our congressional “representatives” (or at least their staff), a rally at the park, and then back on the bus at 6pm or so. If traffic isn’t too bad, they should get back here by, oh, 1am or so. Then it’s up and at ’em for work again Friday. She should be in a great mood by the end of the day. I think the dogs and I will just lay low, and try to stay out of the way.

I’m always kind of torn about these things. On the one hand, resistance seems futile. They ignored millions in the streets around the world when it came to invading Iraq, and I don’t get the feeling that the will of the people matters one whit to most of our public servants in Albany and DC when it’s up against millions of dollars in bribes from lobbyists. But, on the other hand, I think they want us to think it’s useless to try and do anything, so we’ll just shut up and take it.

“Here, here’s an iPhone. Go be happy playing with that, and leave the grownups alone.”

I admire people who really get into trying to do the big work, even if it seems like a Sisyphean struggle.

Speaking of Sisyphean struggles, our cool summer has finally turned hot and humid (no, not 116 degrees hot, thankfully, but too hot more my liking). Tuesday was one of the hotter days, and as I left work and began to trudge across that hot asphalt to my car, I noticed the front passenger tire was flatter than a pancake. Oh great.

Changing a tire in my work clothes in 90 degree heat and 90% humidity, after a long day of work didn’t seem very appealing to me. Fortunately, having been there, done that before, I keep a little air compressor in my trunk. So, I was able to pump up the tire and get it back home (good thing I live close, as I could hear the air rushing out, and it was damn near flat by the time I drove the 1.1 miles home).

Not feeling like dealing with it that night (and not wanting to put the crappy spare “donut” tire on), I decided to take my van to work yesterday instead (the one that just cost me $300 to fix). As I left at the end of the day, it was drizzling lightly, so the parking lot was wet, but not underneath the van. Except for a spot towards the back, and in the middle, where something was dripping. Groveling under, I could see (and smell) that the gas tank (which Granny had just filled the day before) was leaking. Oh goodie.

So, back home I went. I put some air in the car tire so I could get it into the garage, looked all over hell for my expensive floor jack (which has apparently disappeared), before using the crappy scissors jack that came with the car (sweating – and swearing – the whole time), yanked the tire off and ran it down to the tire store, and spent about $100 for a new tire, then went back home and put it on. And parked the van on my lawn, so as to kill the grass rather than the driveway.

So, now I have to deal with that. A quick look online tells me that a new gas tank will cost me $200 or so (assuming I put it in myself, which would be a royal pain in the ass). God only know what it’ll cost to have somebody else do it. I’m hoping it’s leaking at the seam, and I can get away with keeping it half full (or half empty, depending on your outlook on life).

This is at a time when I really need the damn van, too. Last weekend, I ripped the kitchen sink, base cabinets, and counter top out of the kitchen. I put a utility sink in temporarily, but life w/o a kitchen counter is a royal pain in the ass, and everything that was once in the cabinets is now scattered throughout the house. It sucks, and I need to go buy cabinets, plywood…well, lots of shit that won’t fit in my Hyundai.

Now, I’m not exactly a “Type A” personality. If I go to the grocery store and the post office on the same day, I consider it a major accomplishment. So I find having to deal with all this stuff while also going to work and being a good little citizen-taxpayer a bit overwhelming (I also have a bit of a “cheap” streak in me, and that doesn’t help either). All I really want to do right now is go back to bed.

But I guess I better go to work instead.

The Chicago local Fox station reports that evolution is making women more beautiful, because the hot babes are reproducing more (sorry, ladies, the men are staying just as ugly as ever, but you’ve always got the Jello-Joweled Triad of Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck to lust after). Now, I know what you’re thinking: I thought evolution was a myth, right? And even if it isn’t, doesn’t it take, like, millions of years for a series of minute mutations to become noticable? And does this mean that good-lookin’ women are really just mutants?

I think we can attribute the mutant beauty gene to a combination of three technological advances of the late 21st Century. First, there was the development of video cameras (especially the night vision ones), making it possible for celebrities and other “hot” women to make home sex tapes, therefore encouraging them to copulate more frequently. Next came the Internet, providing a mechanism for the proliferation and sharing of home sex videos, thereby encouraging more frequent copulation. And, finally, came the tanning bed, favored by those who want a year-round tan without all the messy spray paint (and who are, by definition, beautiful).

Tanning bed radiation (recently moved into the top cancer-risk category, alongside arsenic and mustard gas) infused into the bodies of these frequently copulating “beautiful people” has accelerated the rate of genetic mutation, rapidly spawning a new race of beautiful young women. I say young, because, sadly, most of them will get cancer and die at an early age, leaving behind beautiful, cancer-riddled corpses.

We, the Ugly People, who have eschewed the use of tanning beds all our lives (believing that popping yourself into a toaster in order to get a tan in February is, well, pretty fucking stupid) will be consigned to living in a world full of beautiful, young, terminally ill, frequently copulating (and pretty fucking stupid) women.

Unless President Palin can straighten this mess out, of course.

No public healthcare option for you, America. At least, not if the Senate Finance Committee, led by the intrepid insurance industry lackey US Senator from Montana, Max Baucus, and his gang of six “bipartisan” (note, bipartisan in this case means “in the pocket of the medical/insurance/pharmaceutical industrial complex”) Senators have their way. And I bet they will. It’s now all about passing “something” and declaring victory (except for Republicans, of course, who get to fuck it all up, and then bitch how bad a job the Democrats did when “the public” gets screwed over yet again). Time to buy some shares of Schering-Plough, AIG, Aetna, Amgen, Blue Cross….well, you get the idea.

On the bright side, Sgt James Crowley, Professor Gates, and President Obama are gonna sit down and have that beer this week. Who’da thunk it, two black guys and a white guy have a meeting in the White House, and the white guy isn’t the one who’s president. I certainly hope everybody plays nice.

Personally, had the cops showed up at my house under the same circumstances, I’d have been nice and polite, said “sir” a lot, and thanked them for their time. At least, to their face. I may not be a black guy, but I’ve been a guy with a beard and long hair on many occasions, and have been hassled for crimes like going to my car after work, driving with NY license plates in Toronto (got “pulled over” by two cops on foot – how embarassing – and had my car – and person – thoroughly searched – i.e., groped; they told me to “try Florida next time”), and carrying a cooler across the street in Georgia (from the store to where the car was parked). I always get my bags searched by security and customs, and I’ve been followed around stores for looking (I guess) like a shoplifter (not so much now that I’m old though).

So, yeah, not sayin’ it’s the same as (or even close to) growing up as a black man in America, but I’ve been hassled by the man, man.

In none of these instances did I start hollering at the cops. This is mainly because I didn’t want to go to jail or get shot (plus, on the odd chance that somebody did force their way into my house and is now in there with a gun, I’d kinda like the cop to make sure I was OK before he left).

Now, do I have the right to holler at the cops in a non-threatening manner while standing on my own goddamn front porch without getting arrested? I certainly do. Or should, at least. And are the cops obligated to respond in a timely manner next time, when they get a call that somebody really is breaking into my house? Yes, theoretically (it’s kinda like yelling at the waitress about your food; I don’t recommend it, unless you like the taste of spit).

For better or worse (and the cops do come in pretty darn handy when you need ’em), cops have guns and the legal authority to arrest and/or shoot you (which is a good thing, if you’re a criminal, but a not so good thing if you’re just a regular person having a bad day ‘cuz you’re tired after coming home from a long trip and all you want to do is take a nap, and the goddamn door won’t frickin’ open and after you finally get inside somebody comes bangin’ on your door telling you you gotta prove who you are and get outta the goddamn house NOW!).

So, they win (doesn’t much matter to me whether they get suspended – if that – after they pump me full of lead, or after I spend a night in the slammer the charges get dropped). No matter how shitty my day’s going, they have the ability to make it a whole lot shittier. Cops are cops, and they demand a certain amount of respect, whether they’re legally entitled to it or not. It might suck (especially if they’re snotty about it), but life sucks and then you die (an event I prefer to put off for as long as possible).

Besides, I don’t really like getting hollered at, and figure the cops don’t much like it either. Plus, did I mention they have guns?

But, I’m not a Very Important Person. VIPs also demand a certain amount of respect (entitled or not). I’ve had plenty of them go into great detail – often screaming – telling me how important they are when I’m unable to, for example, pull a new A/C compressor out of my ass. I must admit, the thought of smacking them over the head with a pipe wrench did cross my mind. But, I’m not a cop and don’t have the legal authority to shoot and/or arrest them (which is probably a good thing, or I’d have left a long, bloody trail of self-important pricks in my wake), and yelling back really isn’t an option when you’re just a peon.

Though you can leave a dead pigeon to rot in their duct work. 😉

So, Caribou Barbie has finally left the building. She should do well on the Republican lecture circuit, where she can feed the wingnuts plenty of red meat, served with a liberal (please excuse the expression) helping of folksiness. She should do great, as long as she’s got a script. Good for her, I guess. For somebody whose career clearly should have peaked at being mayor of Wasilla, she’s certainly come a long way. I kinda doubt she’ll ever run for national office again, but you never know. If she does the work and realizes that you can’t just come up with some beauty pageant bullshit answers (only Dubya was able to get away with that), you never know.

But, if she was smart and hardworking enough for that, she’d probably have made it as a sportscaster and not had to fall back on public service. Hopefully the Palin Tour will make its way to a high school auditorium near you. If she comes to Syracuse, we can show her our Golden Snowballs.

Today on Press the Meat, it’s a full hour of Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Watch, as Gilligan Gregory asks, “do you think cops are stupid, too?”

On Faze the Nation, Bob Schieffer has David Axelrod, the pathetic Gov. of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, and Historian Douglas Brinkley.

At Fux News Sunday, Weaselface Wallace has WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, and then Krazy Jon Kyl will be on to tell us how he plans to fuck over health care reform. Plus the usual fuxheads, of course.

Over on the Goebbels network, George Snufalufagus has Sen. Kent Conrad, of ND, and Jim DeMint will be in to tell us how he’d rather take down the Obama administration than do what’s right for the American people. Plus, a Roundtable with George :jerk: Will, Donna Brazile, the fourth Gabor sister, Arianna Huffington, groping victim David Brooks and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman.

At CNN, Fareed Zakaria speaks with someone on the ground in Tehran to find out what the hell’s going on over there. Plus, Nouriel Roubini said last week that the end of the recession is near, and Fareed will ask Roubini, billionaire Mort Zuckerman and Harvard historian Niall Ferguson if it really is or not. Then most powerful woman in France gives us a European’s perspective on the financial crisis. Not sure who that is. Carla Bruni, maybe?

Later, on 60 Minutes, it’s a bunch or rerun segments, so who cares?

Have a good Sunday.

Just in case you thought you’d heard it all about Dick Cheney, it turns out he was trying to get The Shrub to send the Army to Buffalo to round up the Lackawana Six. Imagine that. That’s about as disturbing a thought as I can think of. The next step would be tanks in the streets to quash protests.

CNN President Joe Klein showed a lot of courage in declaring the Obama isn’t a citizen story dead, and that there was no need to keep debating it, because there isn’t anything to debate (like any good conspiracy – fake moon landing, “chem” trails, 9/11 controlled demolition – any facts which would point to a non-conspiracy are obviously faked, and if you believe them, then you’re at best pathetic and naive, and at worst part of the conspiracy yourself). That courage didn’t last long, of course, and Klein took a step or two back.

For his part, Lou Dobbs managed to work up a case of righteous indignation, declaring that

“limp-minded, lily-livered lefties” who attacked him only because he “had the temerity to inquire as to where the birth certificate was and why the president of the United States would not turn over that birth certificate to the national media and end the noise.”

You’re a great American, Lou. Shoulda gone with “limp-wristed” though.

The only question I have, is how do the “serious” news types decide which wacko conspiracies are taboo and should never be discussed (like the Downing Street memo, Sibel Edmonds, no WMD, etc), and which are legitimate topics of discourse (Obama is a Kenyan, Obama thinks cops are stupid, Obama is a liberal, etc). Beats me. That must be something they teach in Journalism School these days.

Apparently, there’s a 50-mile stretch of highway along nearby Cayuga Lake where they hold an annual “50-mile Garage Sale” weekend. I’m not a garage sale maven, so I’d never heard of it, but apparently everybody has lots of fun, and people cook up and sell chicken, hot dogs, burgers and whatnot. Well, the Cayuga County Dept. of Health has decided they need to “protect the public” this year, by forcing everybody who wants to grill up food to get a temporary food permit.

How will this protect the public? Well, the application includes a 19-point checklist for “safe food handling.” That’s about it. I suppose they could just make the checklist available to everybody, but then they couldn’t charge the $30 application fee. Not that it’s all about money or anything.

Oh, well. Getting a late start to the day, so I reckon I’d better get going. Have a good one.

Congratulations to anybody making minimum wage (well, I wish you were making more, but you know what I mean) for the raise you’re getting today: a bump of 70 cents, up to $7.25 an hour. That’s, like, 10.5%, which sounds good. Of course, that whole percentage thing was invented by the rich folks to make the peasants think they were being treated fairly. You know, where everybody in the company gets, say, a 3% raise, so it must be “fair,” since everybody’s being treated equally. As if somebody making $100,000 getting a $3,000 raise is “equal” to somebody making $17,000 a year (which is close to a buck more than the “new improved” minimum wage) getting a $510 raise. Still, when it comes to pay, more is always better than less.

Back when I dropped out of college the first (or was it the second?) time to get out into the “real” world, and worked in a foundry, I think I was making $6.35 an hour by the time I quit and went back to school (I was, of course, destined to drop out yet again). I had more actual money then than I do now (of course, I was also working 68 hours a week, so there was a lot of OT in there). My rent was $90 a month, cable was $8, gas was about a buck and a half a gallon (not that it mattered, since my Chevette never seemed to work), and I hadn’t acquired a taste for expensive beer yet (I just had to pound quite a few down so I could pass out by 9:00 or so, in order to get up and get to work by 4 AM). I was too damn exhausted all the time to spend any money. Ah, those were the days.

Thankfully, I didn’t have any kids or anything. I don’t know how people with families manage to work so many hours. At least I was able to work all in one place and it was a union job, so I got overtime and benefits. If I’d had to go from one minimum wage job to another one, where my only “benefit” was a free happy meal, I’d have been pretty miserable. And “uniquely American,” of course.

Oh well, time to head out to face the day.

I didn’t watch the President’s presser last night. I’m glad he took his case for health care reform “to the American people,” though I don’t really know what they have to do with it. Nice to keep ’em in the loop, I guess. From what I’ve read this morning, health care wasn’t an interesting enough topic, so the intrepid press moved along to more important things, like what if Obama got caught trying to break in to the White House (which is an easy question to answer; they’d claim he wasn’t born in this country and ship him off to Guantanamo, where he would reluctantly have to agree that they have a right to keep him there indefinitely without a trial).

I guess the serious urinalists are all atwitter (so to speak) over Obama’s outrageous claim that the Cambridge police acted “stupidly” when (according to the police report) they arrested somebody at his own home

“…after exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior, in a public place, directed…at a police officer…[that] caused citizens passing by…to stop and take notice while appearing surprised.”

Well, shit. Nothing stupid about that; I’m surprised they didn’t cap his ass. Oh, I know what you’re thinking….

You didn’t realize your home was a public place, and you were unaware of the law against “loud and tumultuous behavior.” But, damnit, people took notice and looked surprised! Shameful. Ignominious.

Damn that Obama! Well, whattya exect? Them people always stick together.

Harvard people, that is.

Another great victory for the United States – this one in the war on poppy seeds. Yes, our great military might was used to take on 300 tons of poppy seeds, and we have prevailed. Oh, I know, the Taliban use the money from heroin to fund their nefarious activities and all that, but if that was your means of putting food on the table for your family, how do you think you’d feel about Uncle Sam right about now? You wanna put a dent in the heroin trade? Give it away for free – along with free health care and drug rehab for anybody that needs it. Yeah, I know, that’s crazy talk.

Speaking of crazy talk, the “Obama’s not a citizen” loonies (apologies to the Canadian dollar) just won’t go away. Tweety bugs me most of the time, but I have to give him credit for smacking down California Republican John Campbell (not that this will have any effect on the birthers, of course).

If only somebody would straighten out Lou Dobbs.

Both Fox and ABC “news” seem to think that Obama’s Surgeon General nominee, Regina M. Benjamin, is too damn fat for the post. Oh, plus she’s black, and a woman, too (not that that has anything to do with it). Instead of some numbnuts wearing a “no chubbies” t-shirt, Neil Cavuto ought to get Maron on as a fat police representative. At least he’d be funny.

Dan Rather’s lawsuit against the once reputable CBS marches on, and Rather won major victories yesterday, including access to some 3,000 CBS documents, and the restoration of a fraud charge that had previously been dismissed. Give ’em hell, Dan.

Stephen Baldwin is filing for bankruptcy. I think you missed the whole Jesus thing by about ten years, Steve. It just doesn’t pay like it used to. A liberal conspiracy, no doubt. I recommend you go gay and then pray your way out of it. That should get you even more attention than being on (and quitting) “I’m a Washed-Up Minor Celebrity, Get Me Outta Here.” Well, you know the new Republican motto: Winners always quit, and quitters always win.

Surprise, surprise. The US Insurance industry is cherry picking data from a poll on health care in order to build a case for reforming our health care system so that they keep making huge profits off other people’s misery.

As Congress debates whether to enact shitty health care reform, really shitty health care reform, or no reform at all, President Obama will be hitting the airwaves with a primetime news conference at 8:00 (EDT) tonight to lobby for the just plain shitty option. Hopefully they’ll ask him something important, like whether he can prove he’s a US citizen or not.

Well, I see by the old clock on the wall, it’s time to head out into the world for another day. See ya.