Fourteen billion dollars down the drain to achieve what could have been achieved for nothing.

As Obama's taking over the board of directors, I worry that he'll make the company do bizarre things in bankruptcy -- like, rather than breaking contracts with the UAW, give them all a big parting bonus.

Posted by: Ace at 11:26 AM | Add Comment
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...owing to prosecutorial misconduct, long alleged by Stevens, and apparently accurately.

I assume Stevens is corrupt. I assume he probably should have been evicted from Congress.

But what the hell were these prosecutors doing bringing a case like this before an election?

Posted by: Ace at 10:58 AM | Add Comment
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Kids, you might not believe me, but there was once a point when Dave Letterman was considered funny.

You know what really destroyed Letterman for me?

For years Letterman coasted on the same gag -- "Look at how much precious network time I'm wasting with comedy bits intended to go nowhere and provide zero entertainment to the audience."

Now, the thing of it was, we, the loyal Letterman audience, thought we were in on the joke. We laughed along with Dave as he wasted our time, because we were digging that he was also wasting the network's time. All those "found comedy" moments that yielded nothing but awkward silence and stilted interaction with deli owners.

Now, Letterman has always done this, but earlier on he had a competent writing staff who would actually produce funny stuff that made slogging through the tedium worth it. But as he aged and became more bitter and less funny, he began to rely on the conceit of obviously phoning it in and blatantly wasting everyone's time more and more, until that became his main mode of "comedy."

And then came the Norm MacDonald impression of him on Saturday Night Live. In a deadly five minute sketch, MacDonald mimicked all of Letterman's time-wasting unfunny jokes and endless repetitions of them, and his penchant for giggling at himself as he did nothing but waste the network's time.

And the audience's time.

Here's the only clip of it I can find:

And something in that sketch clicked in me. I finally realized: The joke's been on me for ten years. I thought I was in on the joke as he wasted the network's time. But the network was still selling ads, weren't they?

The only people having their precious time wasted were those still watching Letterman. The network people weren't watching these long, tedious supposedly funny-because-it's-not-funny Larry "Bud" Melman appearances. I was.

And I was forcing myself to laugh because I wanted it to be funny. I caught myself doing that at one of Woody Allen's sad later "comedies" -- Shadows and Fog, I think -- and realized there, too, that if I had to force laughs to show support, maybe I shouldn't be supporting Woody Allen anymore.

And so I stopped. I hadn't been watching Letterman much for years, but I still tuned in on occasion. (The show I tried to stay up to watch had become Conan O'Brien's.) But now I stopped even bothering to check what guests Letterman might have on, or tune in to an early comedy bit hoping for a laugh.

And so now we see an old, unfunny, cranky old man, who attacks Limbaugh, etc., for stating their political opinions and for being "too smart to believe the crap they say," even as he turns his non-comedy show into a nightly hour-long advertisement for the Obama Administration.

And speaking of being too smart to believe this crap-- Edward R., who tipped me, says that Letterman also casually brought up the "death squads" Paul Bremmer had brought with him to Iraq. That's not in the clip, so I'm not 100% sure he said that, but it sounds par for the course.

And while Letterman always had a hard-on for Johnny Carson -- a kinda embarrassing case of hero-worship -- the irony is that Letterman is rejecting the Carson model of joke first, joke second, joke last, politics never, and moving into Lenny-Bruce-reading-his-court-transcripts-on-stage mode. While Leno, who didn't seem to give a rat's ass about Carson, is emulating Carson's style of giving it to all sides equally.

Incidentally... I don't think MacDonald intended the impression to be devastating. I think he likes Letterman, as most comics do (or did).

I think he just set out to impersonate him in a friendly manner. The trouble is, by doing so, he revealed just how thin and tired Letterman's act was.

Posted by: Ace at 10:12 AM | Comments (2)
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When we left things off last night Democrat Murphy led Republican Tedisco by 59 votes.

Well, it could be closer than that.

THE COLUMBIA COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS IS NOW REPORTING SOME NEW NUMBERS THAT APPEAR TO PUT DEMOCRAT SCOTT MURPHY AHEAD OF REPUBLICAN JIM TEDISCO BY 25 VOTES OUT OF MORE THAN 154,000 CAST YESTERDAY.

...THESE NUMBERS ARE FROM RE-CHECKING THE MACHINES...NOT A RE-CANVASS. ELECTIONS OFFICIALS SAY THEY MAY CHANGE AGAIN AFTER THE RE-CANVASS.

Updated vote totals here.

Based on the party breakdown of the absentee ballots, it looks like Tedisco has a very good shot at winning this once they are counted next week.

BTW-Spare yourselves the ACORN nightmares. It's a suburban and rural district for the most part. The two biggest "urban areas" are Saratoga Springs (an upscale resort/college town) and Glens Falls (a down trodden mill town). This is simply not fertile grounds for them.

As for regular party shenanigans? Meh, the district doesn't include Albany County so the chances for foul play on a large scale simply aren't any greater than anywhere else.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:44 AM | Add Comment
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You've been pranked.

Well, you haven't been. But 52% of the country was.

One of President Barack Obama's campaign pledges on taxes went up in puffs of smoke Wednesday.

The largest increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite Obama's promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000.

This is one tax that disproportionately affects the poor, who are more likely to smoke than the rich.

To be sure, Obama's tax promises in last year's campaign were most often made in the context of income taxes. Not always.

"I can make a firm pledge," he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. "Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

He repeatedly vowed "you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime."

Now in office, Obama, who stopped smoking but has admitted he slips now and then, signed a law raising the tobacco tax nearly 62 cents on a pack of cigarettes, to $1.01. Other tobacco products saw similarly steep increases.

I don't want to sound cynical, but sometimes I get the feeling that Obama isn't being straight with us.

Posted by: Ace at 09:12 AM | Add Comment
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You know how some bloggers have gift lists on their blogs? Things they want you to buy for them?

Apparently Obama reads those and thinks, "Oh! Perfect! Yes, I'll get Pope Benedict Season One of The Wire!"

Posted by: Ace at 09:02 AM | Comments (32)
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Protests at Royal Bank of Scotland and the Bank of England.

At first glance there appear to be more broken windows than the number of assholes arrested.

Some protesters spray-painted the side of the RBS building with the phrases "class war" and "thieves." Others pushed against columns of riot police who swatted them away with batons.

Demonstrators shouted "Abolish Money!" and clogged streets in the financial district known as "The City" even as Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President Barack Obama held a news conference elsewhere in the British capital.

Remember when it took Bush-hatred to generate this kind of anti-American sentiment?

Yeah. Me neither. Hopefully Obama will start apologizing soon. That should calm them the fuck down.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:53 AM | Comments (1)
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I believe the diplomatic term for the Taliban's reaction to the Obama/Clinton plan for "honorable reconciliation" is "frank".

Taliban insurgents reject a U.S. offer of "honorable reconciliation," a top spokesman said on Wednesday, calling it a "lunatic idea" and saying the only way to end the war was to withdraw foreign troops.

...U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an international conference on Afghanistan on Tuesday that those members of the Taliban who abandoned extremism must be granted an "honorable form of reconciliation."

"This matter was also raised in the past," said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, referring to comments last month by Obama, who spoke of reaching out to moderate Taliban.

"They have to go and find the moderate Taliban, their leader and speak to them. This is a lunatic idea," Mujahid said by telephone from an unknown location.

Of course the US answer will be, well this isn't the kind of Taliban Clinton was talking about. But as Bill Rogio points out, this isn't anything new and in fact a lot of former fighters have been reconciled, so this maybe what's left.

Then what?

Posted by: DrewM at 07:29 AM | Comments (4)
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Grandma got busted for doing 103 mph with her grandson in the car.

The driver, a 53-year-old woman, reportedly told authorities she was trying to teach her grandson about the dangers of speeding, and warned him never to drive the way she was about to.

The woman was charged with reckless driving and reckless endangering.

Emphasis me.
Nanny state much?

Jeepers. When I was a kid...

"Girlsh, don' NEVER do thish," Daddy said, as he felt his way blind drunk down my mother's '62 Ford Fairlane 500. "Never," he gravely intoned, and slid behind the wheel.

"I'm vaaary, vaary...too drunk. Annn thish car, thish CAR, thishssh...ish...a death trahhh....(burp)...DEATH TRAP. Get in, Punkin'. I show you."

Those were some of the most thrilling moments of my childhood. I really learned a lot.

Posted by: LauraW at 07:15 AM | Comments (1)
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You see, Eric Holder is brave while you my dear fellow American are simply a coward. That's why he gets to ignore his Office Of Legal Council's judgment that the bill to give the District of Columbia a voting member in the House is blatantly unconstitutionall and simply find a political hack who will back the position he and the president hold.

Justice Department lawyers concluded in an unpublished opinion earlier this year that the historic D.C. voting rights bill pending in Congress is unconstitutional, according to sources briefed on the issue. But Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who supports the measure, ordered up a second opinion from other lawyers in his department and determined that the legislation would pass muster.

A finding that the voting rights bill runs afoul of the Constitution could complicate an upcoming House vote and make the measure more vulnerable to a legal challenge that probably would reach the Supreme Court if it is enacted. The bill, which would give the District a vote in the House for the first time, appeared to be on the verge of passing last month before stalling when pro-gun legislators tried to attach an amendment weakening city gun laws. Supporters say it could reach the House floor in May.

In deciding that the measure is unconstitutional, lawyers in the department's Office of Legal Counsel matched a conclusion reached by their Bush administration counterparts nearly two years ago, when a lawyer there testified that a similar bill would not withstand legal attack.

Holder rejected the advice and sought the opinion of the solicitor general's office, where lawyers told him that they could defend the legislation if it were challenged after its enactment.

Well, thank God we've gotten rid of those evil Bushies and their nefarious plots to run roughshod over the Constitution!

Feel better yet?

Posted by: DrewM at 06:12 AM | Comments (11)
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