So the Democrats managed to get a cloture vote on their health care bill in the wee hours this morning (not a single Republican voted for cloture, so tell me again why the Democrats spent so much time kissing their asses). There are some more delaying tactics by Republicans in store, but that was the big one, and unless Joe Lieberman decides he wants to feel Harry Reid’s lips on his ass one more time, the bill should pass later on this week. It’s a piece of crap, but maybe something less crappy will come out of conference (but probably not), and then the President will sign it with much fanfare. Insurance companies will pretend to be all bummed out as they count their profits, Republicans will slam Obama and the Democrats from now until 2012, and Joe Lieberman will smile that stupid fucking smile of his as he cashes his insurance industry bonus check.

Winter officially begins today (at about 12:46PM where I’m at). That means we lose another couple seconds of daylight today, and things start improving (slowly) tomorrow. Seems like the days get shorter a lot faster than they get longer.

I’m doing my laundry yesterday, and I get informed that I’m doing it wrong. You’re supposed to put the water in first, then the detergent, and then the clothes. This is clearly ridiculous, of course. It’d be awfully hard to judge how big of a load to choose, and then you’d have to, like, sink all the clothes. What a pain that would be. I mean, maybe back in the olden days when you had to use soap chips or something, but with liquid detergent there’s just no need to “premix.”

For you folks who are digging out from under all that snow this weekend, good luck. We got a few snow fluffies overnight here, but nothing worth getting the shovel out for. Have a good Monday.

I’m kinda beat from ongoing kitchen renovation (yeah, I know, it seems like it’s been going on forever), so I’m only gonna look at what my be interesting today. Believe it or not, Press the Meat could be very interesting, with White House shill David Axelrod and Howard Dean. Sadly, it doesn’t look like they’ll be on together, and that’s too bad ‘cuz I’d like to see Dean ream Axelrod out over health care. Tavis Smiley is also on, and I’ve always liked him, even though we don’t get his radio show in my market. I suppose I should mention that Mornin’ Joe, closet queen Ed Gillespie, and creepy little Markos Moulitsas are also gonna be on.

Faze the Nation has Sherrod Brown, who’s OK, but also three people who make me want to take a sledge hammer to my my teevee: Lamar Alexander, Olympia Snowe, and Mary Landrieu. They all nauseate the hell out of me.

Fux Noise has Amy Klobuchar, who’s OK, but also St. McCain and that piece of shit from North Dakota, Kent Conrad,

Nothing worthy of note on the Goebbels network.

At CNN, Fareed Zakaria has the former scientific brain of Microsoft, Nathan Myhrvold, who claims to have a new approach to solving global warming. Plus, Vali Nasr, advisor to the Obama administration, discusses a new way to fight Islamic terrorism – with capitalism. I guess he figures the capitalist version of health care would kill all the terrorists faster then our military can.

We’re trying not to laugh (too much) at all the places that don’t usually get snow having a couple of feet dumped on them, while we get nothing. There’s enough snow on the ground to make things look pretty, but so far this season we’ve gotten a piddly seven inches – way, way, way below what we usually get. Maybe this will be the winter without snow for us. I can live with that.

The President announced a “major breakthrough” on Climate Change yesterday. As far as I can see, it doesn’t actually do anything. And that’s fine, I guess (if it’s not too late already, nobody’s gonna actually do anything to make a difference before it is too late). I think we’re missing out on creating a lot of jobs in the Green Sector, but what the heck. I’ll be dead before it all gets too awful bad, I guess. And Syracuse might even become a seaside tourist resort if ocean levels rise enough. At least for a while. For a long-term idea of what’s in store for the Earth, you only have to look at or sister planet, Venus. Venus is about the same size and mass as the Earth, and was once thought to be a lot like our planet, with oceans and everything.

For whatever reason, though, CO₂ levels rose to a point of no return (about where we’re at right now), and a “runaway greenhouse effect” resulted in the planet growing warmer and warmer. Now, Venus’ atmosphere consists of about 97% carbon dioxide (and shiny clouds of sulfuric acid), with an average temperature of about 460 degrees Celsius (almost 865 degrees F, making it even hotter than the planet Mercury, even though Venus is twice as far from the Sun). The oceans have long since evaporated, and the water molecules dissociated into hydrogen (which was carried off into interplanetary space by the solar wind) and oxygen (which helped to make even more CO₂). The planet’s surface is basically desert and rocks. With no vegetation to absorb the carbon, the atmosphere is so dense that the surface pressure is 90 times higher than it is on earth (which would make walking around a little difficult – even if you didn’t mind the 800 degree temperatures).

I don’t know how long it’ll take for the oceans boil away (hell, we haven’t even finished melting the polar ice caps yet), but it sounds like a pretty miserable future, so I guess I’m glad I won’t be around to see it (other than for curiosity’s sake; I hate to miss the end of the movie). I feel bad for the kids and grandkids and their kids and grandkids though.

That’s all assuming we don’t manage to kill ourselves off some other way first (or get hit by a meteor or something).

Happy Holidays!

Complicated stuff like politics and health care reform and Jesus and stuff can be pretty hard for simple folks like me to understand. So, when I want something explained in more detail, I go to the experts – like Chuck Norris. And Chuck explains that had King Herod been an evil Mooslam like Barack Obama, there might have been universal health care in Judea. And Mary, armed with an affordable health care plan, clearly would have sought an abortion (I mean, do you really think Joseph bought the whole “I’m a virgin, Joe. I swear I don’t know where this thing came from” line?). So, Jesus would have never been born (because, while God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and could magically impregnate a human woman, he couldn’t have prevented an abortion), and the world would have missed out on the last 2,000 years of peace, love, and understanding (not to mention the Crusades). Even worse, we wouldn’t be getting a day off next Friday (holy crap! It’s next Friday?), and there would be no Black Friday and economy-stimulatin’ holiday shopping season. So, clearly, health care reform is very bad, and not the sort of thing Jesus and his dad would ever get behind. Thanks, Chuck. You da man!

Not that God needed the push, but the Family Research Council held a “prayercast” last night, and prayed to God that the health care filibuster be a success (they had to to all pray together, because, when it comes to health care, God doesn’t support “single prayer”). The usual pious and mentally sound congresscritters were on hand, including crazy Michele Bachman, Jim DeMint, Sam Brownback, and even one Democrat, Rep. Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, who, in a pre-recorded video message, told the crowd:

“You know, the power of prayer knows no bounds,” said McIntyre. “The true source of power is not found in the halls of congress or the chambers of the Supreme Court or the Oval Office of the west wing, but rather on our knees at the throne of grace.”

The “throne of grace,” of course, is located in a mens room at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport.

Fortunately for God, Jesus, and Chuck Norris (not necessarily in that order) Ben Nelson is doing the big work on their behalf, threatening to filibuster health care reform if he doesn’t get a “Stupak-like” amendment – even though there seems to have been some sort of “secret” compromise.

In other abortion-related news, a judge in Oklahoma could decide today on whether to allow a law to go forward that requires the posting of information online about women who get abortions in the state. Hey, what could be wrong with that? No word on whether Oklahoma is considering a law that would post information about men seeking treatment for erectile dysfunction or not. I’m guessing no.

Well, it’s pretty damn cold out there this morning – in the single digits and still dropping a bit – so I reckon I’d better get it in gear and get going. The good news is that the mass of cold air that’s hovering over us is supposed to block that big storm heading to the Northeast, so we should miss out on all the action. I can live with that.

The House barely (217-214; they have funny rules in the House – whoever gets the most votes wins) passed a $154 billion jobs bill yesterday. It was (of course) opposed by every Republican and 38 Democrats, on the supposed premise that it just costs too darn much. For those keeping score, that’s about half of what the war in Afghanistan is projected to cost in fiscal year 2010 alone, or less than 5% of the estimated cost of the combined Iran/Afghanistan wars since 2001 (about $325 billion a year through FY 2010). I don’t recall any “deficit hawks” squawking about that, though (the liberal media probably just didn’t report it).

Howard Dean had a pretty heated discussion with Tweety and Mary Landrieu last night over Dean’s “kill the shitty Senate health care bill” position. This part was really the most telling:

[Landrieu] accused [Dean] of wanting to eliminate insurance companies. “Nonsense,” Dean interrupted.

“You would not let us choose another program,” he argued. “You forced us into the insurance industry. We don’t want to be forced into the insurance industry. You took away our choice. That is wrong!”

“That is not true. You never had that choice to begin with,” responded Landrieu.

Well, there you go. You never had a choice and you never will. So STFU. Reasoning so simple, I’m surprised they didn’t use it to keep abortion illegal.

I’ll tell ya, my Senators aren’t perfect (the big news this morning is that Chuck Schumer was asked by a flight attendant to put his cell phone away, and he “muttered something” – we don’t officially know what, but we’re pretty sure it was “bitch” – under his breath after she walked away. A dick move, to be sure, but not exactly shocking; goodness knows I’ve never muttered “bitch,” “asshole,” or “fuck you” under my breath at anybody who was inconveniencing me by doing their job 🙄 – that bitch Park Ranger in New Jersey that confiscated our beer and gave us a $150 ticket comes to mind), but at least Schumer and Gillibrand aren’t Joe Lieberman and Mary Landrieu (or Ben Nelson, Max Baucus…).

Breaking news: Tiger Woods’ wife is reportedly going to file for divorce. I’m surprised. I really thought those two kids were gonna make it.

It looks like the video feeds from our brave, unmanned Predator drones flying over Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are being hijacked by “insurgents” using cheap software you can get off the Internet (though I wouldn’t recommend you download it at the moment, unless you want a one-way trip to Guantanamo Illinois). Now the Pentagon says, “oh, well, I guess we better encrypt that shit,” which you woulda thunk was kind of obvious, no? If it was me, I’d have some unencrypted feeds out there running loops of the drones flying over, like, the other side of the country from where the real ones are at. Kinda fool ’em, you know?

“Mahmoud, is that a drone up there in the sky?”

“No, Akbar, it can’t be. I have the live feed here, and they are flying over Krapistan now. Or maybe New Jersey – hard to tell.”

“Ah, praise Allah. Must be a weather balloon. Set up the rocket launchers.”

Speaking of drones, Granny is venturing out into this 10 degree (and dropping) morning, heading over to the local Air Base to join the Syracuse Peace Council in protesting the fact that the Air Force (the “Boys from Syracuse,” which had previously flown A-10 “Warthogs” in Gulf War One, and most recently F-16s) is now flying our version of unmanned drones – the bigger, better, more heavily armed “Reaper” – in combat air support missions over Afghanistan. I suggested a sign that says, “More Cowbell!” but I guess that’d just confuse everybody.

One of my hobbies is filling out online surveys. I fill ’em out and get points, and when I accumulate about a billion points, I get to pick out a crappy little “prize” (the prizes used to be a lot better than they are now – that’s how I got my little atomic-clock-synced travel alarm clock that I never use ‘cuz I never travel, and my wireless indoor/outdoor weather thingie with an atomic clock in it that sits on a shelf in my kitchen next to the travel clock, because there are only four other clocks – or things with clocks built into them – in my kitchen). I’m not in it for the prizes, though; it’s a really good way to kill time waiting for the day to be over.

Anyhow, I took one the other day that was all about a print ad for some “clinical strength” deodorant, and whether I’ve ever used/needed “clinical strength” or “prescription” deodorant. And I thought to myself, “there’s such a thing as prescription deodorant?”

I mean, no offense to anybody with chronic perspiration control problems (CPCP), but how bad do you have to sweat before you go get a prescription for it (and who wants to be the next person to sit in that guy’s chair in the waiting room)? And what, exactly, do you put it on (the prescription, not the chair)?

I mean, I’ve been known to sweat (I am a real man, after all), and when I sweat, under my arms is the least of it. It gushes from my head, back, and (at the risk of revealing too much information) my naughty bits. When I was forced to spend that summer in DC, I felt like I was walking around with a 50 pound sponge shoved down my pants (and not in a good way).

But, whatever. An ad with a stick of deodorant in front of a sand dune certainly isn’t gonna make me any more likely to buy it. If you sweat that bad, about all you can do is let ‘er rip and try to mask the smell (hint: drink lots of water).

Oh, crap, it’s getting late here – gotta go. Have a good one.

OK, well, no “Public Option,” and no Medicare buy-in, but at least we’ll get some relief on medications with a new drug re-importation law. Ha! Gotcha! Byron Dorgan’s amendment may have had a majority of Senators on board, but only 51 of them, so it’s dead, Jim. It looked like there would be enough votes for cloture last week, but President Obama showed just how forceful a leader he can be if properly motivated, and the prospect of Americans (and the Federal Government) saving billions of dollars on drugs at the expense of Big Pharma losing a few bucks was enough to launch the President into action. Good job, Barry, but I think you can do more. Why not mandate medication for everybody or something? Not pot, though – legalizing and taxing marijuana is just plain silly. I mean, you can’t patent pot, so there’s no money in it for the pharmaceutical companies. Kinda makes you wanna break out your Lee Greenwood albums, doesn’t it?

In another of the “Great Moments of the Obama Administration,” looks like there’s a new Federal jobs program. This one involves sending more than 50,000 contractors to Afghanistan (that’s on top of the 100,000 or so already there). Not only will this add jobs, but some of them are sure to get killed, creating more openings. It’s a win-win.

Joe Lieberman told the Democratic caucus that he’s sorry (well, not actually sorry, but he has “regrets”) for being such a douchebag pain in the ass. And PA Senator Bob Casey was really, really touched (probably close to tears) by Joey’s words.

“One thing that he acknowledged, which was important, was how difficult this has been for people on both sides of it,” Casey said of Lieberman. “I was struck by how human that moment was….”

Gee. I’m really fuckin’ struck, too. All’s forgiven, Joe. I love you, man!

By the way, Tiger, you’ve got two hours to come up with some hush money, or I go public with our affair. You think your sponsors are a little uneasy with a golfer than can’t keep his 3-wood in the bag, wait until they find out you can only get off if you’re on all fours pretending to line up a putt. Just sayin’.

So, it appears that, with direct help from Rahm Emanuel, Joe Lieberman has managed to kill the latest version of health care reform that included a medicare buy in for some people age 55+. As far as I can tell, what’s left is a plan to force everybody to buy insurance with no provision to hold down premiums. Joe and his insurance company owners win. So, I think it’s time to just bullet in the brain of this so-called reform and give up. This is worse than doing nothing at all. I understand that Senate rules allow a minority of Senators that represent a tiny fraction of the population to have Caesar-like control of the process (unless Republicans are in the majority, in which case the rules are vastly different), so it’s time to do the only thing left – kill the bill and take your lumps at the polls in the next election. It’s time to stop protecting and apologizing for the White House. And of course it’s time to cut Lieberman loose. There’s really no point in having him caucus with the Democrats if he’s not going to vote with them. If the Republicans want him, fine. And if Connecticut wants him, good for them.

I somehow managed to miss President Obama’s media blitz last night. Apparently he was on both 60 Minutes and an Oprah “Christmas at the White House” with the Obamas special (that’s gotta really chap some freeper ass; dreaming of a white Christmas, indeed). From what I’ve read, though, he was wonderful, which is no surprise because he always does a nice job when it comes to speaking and interviewing and stuff. And, by golly, he’s apparently pretty darned miffed at those darn old Wall Street “fat cats,” puttng them on notice that he didn’t run for office to help them out (I guess he felt obliged to make that clear, ‘cuz you’d never know it from what his administration’s done so far). I’m mean, his administration is already employing as many Wall Street insiders as it can, so the rest of ’em are just gonna have to stand up on their own two feet (while trying not to fall off that big pile of taxpayer money they’re sitting on). And it was really, really hard for him to escalate that war in Afghanistan, but, hey by the end of next year, we’re gonna know how things are going, and whether we’ll be there forever, or just for another 25 years or so. All-in-all, he gives himself a solid B+, with the only minor blemishes on his first year being selling out universal heath care on day one, and that whole pesky 10% unemployment thing the Wall Street bailout inexplicably failed to do much about. Hey, Mr. President, c’mon. One thing I learned in those “grade yourself” type classes – always give yourself an ‘A’ no matter what. Hey, if you don’t love yourself, right? This is no time to be humble (save that for when a dozen mistresses come out of the woodwork to detail your philandering ways – oh, and if that actually does happen, you watch out, dude, ‘cuz Michelle aint no prissy little white supermodel, and you’re gonna lose more than your rear window).

Speaking of fooling around on your wife, I have a confession to make. I had sex with Tiger Woods, and am willing to spill all the salacious details for the right price (just a little tease: he’s a bottom). Conversely, I’m also willing to have Tiger pay for my silence. I’m not asking for all that much, really. A million (net), and I’ll keep my mouth shut (which is more than I can say for Tiger – oops, OK, but that’s all you get for free). I considered writing a tell-all book, but that would take a lot of time and effort, and I’m looking to cash in quick here. I need it by Wednesday morning at 9:00. I don’t want publicity – just cash.

Unlike me, though, Joe Lieberman (speaking of bottoms) loves being Mr. Fucking Important, and he’s just lapping up all the publicity from his “just say no” stance on health care reform. Now he’s told Harry Reid he’ll vote to filibuster any bill that includes anything resembling reform. It’s way past time to smack that whiny little ass down, though I don’t see happening. I’d not only strip him of his seniority and chairmanships, I’d move his desk to the third floor mens room, and move his parking spot to Silver Spring, MD. Let him ride the friggin’ Red Line in to DC every day – I’m sure he’d get a yuck out of seeing all the uninsured homeless people along the way.

Oh well, until Tiger drops a couple mill in my PayPal account, I guess I better get to work.

Today promises to be absolutely booblisious. For instance, on Press the Meat, it’s the chair the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer. Then things get really booby, with a roundtable of Mr Andrea Mitchell, Alan Greenspan, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, Mitt and the Magic Underpants Romney, and douchebag Jim Cramer.

The boobs keep on bouncin’ over at CBS, as Faze the Nation has sad sack Joe Lieberman, ferret face Mitch McConnell, Ben “worst hairpiece in the US Senate” Nelson, and Jay Rockefeller.

On Fux News Sunday, Weaselface Wallace has Judd Gregg and Claire McCaskill, plus one of the biggest boobs in the Federal Government, James Inhofe, and Ed Markey. Today’s fuxheads include idiot (but not savant) Bill Kristol and abortion that lived, Liz Cheney. Fux’s Power Player of the Week is Inez Tenenbaum, Chairman, US Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The Goebbels Network welcomes Wall Street’s the Obama Administration’s Larry Summers and shithead Eric Cantor. Plus George Snufalufagus hosts a “powerhouse” roundtable with George :jerk: Will, Bush mouthpiese Ed Gillespie, Arianna Huffington, John Podesta and April Ryan, Chief Washington Correspondent for American Urban Radio Network.

On CNN Fareed Zakaria has a “debate” on Global Warming between Danish author Bjorn Lomborg (author of ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist, which the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty cited for Fabrication of data, Selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation), Deliberately misleading use of statistical methods, Distorted interpretation of conclusions, Plagiarism, and Deliberate misinterpretation of others’ results), and Paul Krugman on global warming. Plus a panel discussion with a bunch of unnamed “stars.”

Have a good one.

For some reason yesterday, I set my Facebook language to German. I’d been playing the German versions of the South Park Dreidel song and Mr. Hankey der Weinhactskot, and then for some reason there was a link on Facebook that said “switch to Deutsch” or something. So, I clicked it, and now I have 20 postfach, 2 Veranstaltungseinladungen, 2 Gruppeneinladungen, 2 Seitenvorschläge, 25 weitere Anfragenmy, my sister has zurückstupsen me, and Liz Winstead and I have 10 gemeinsame Freunde. While I can figure out what most of that means, I’ll be damned if I can figure out how the hell to change it back to English. Was fickt das? Good thing I don’t use it much.

I get the impression that a lot of people hate Tiger Woods, don’t you? I mean, OK, he appears to be a bit of a – what would you call it? Scallywag? Rake? Debaucher? Duchovny? I guess he’s a bit of a phony and a hypocrite (and kind of a dick), but there’s plenty of that going around. Assuming you’re not married to him, though, I fail to see the obsession with him and his philandering (it’s not like he went MIA from the Governor’s Mansion or something). I’d like to think I’m a better person than that, but it’s definitely a lot easier to stay “pure” when you’re not a billionaire and don’t exactly have the women pounding on your door. I mean, let he who is without sin cast the first stone and all that.

Speaking of scumbags, it looks like Bill O’Reilly has his knickers in a knot about Law and Order producer Dick Wolff (which seems kinda ironic; based on Andrea Mackris’ lawsuit against him, Bill – like Tiger – seems like a bit of a Dick Wolf himself). Apparently Bill really doesn’t have a handle on the whole fiction vs. reality thing (no surprise there), and has taken umbrage at a line uttered by one of the characters on a recent L&O show:

Garrison, Limbaugh, Beck, O’Reilly, all of them. They’re like a cancer spreading ignorance and hate. I mean, they have convinced folks that immigrants are the problem, not corporations that fail to pay a living wage or a broken health care system.

Personally, I’d have added Dobbs to that list, but, whatever. Bill was most decidedly not amused.

O’Reilly called that “simply defamatory and outrageous,” and labeled Wolf “a coward” and “a liar.”

“I have consistently defended poor people who only want a better life,” O’Reilly said. “If you watch ‘The Factor’ you know my beef is with the federal government not controlling illegal immigration and with violent aliens who wreak havoc once they get here.”

O’Reilly went on to call Wolf “a despicable human being for distorting and exploiting this very complicated situation.”

Oh, boo-fuckin’-hoo, Billy. Want a little cheese with that whine?

Oh well, I slept in late this morning, so I guess I better get busy. Have a good day, y’all.