Friday, August 24, 2007

Chicks Dig Me, Redux

My buddy Tasha Alexander, (for whom the term "lovely and talented" could have been coined) rises from her bed of pain and sorrow long enough to play host to yours truly over at The Good Girls Kill For Money Club.

This blog entry to end all blog entries features scintillating and erudite discussion of movies, music, and literature. Also the word "douchenozzle."

Thanks, Tasha, and get well soon.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Republicans: The Party of Cutting and Running

Minority Leader John Boehner:

"Democratic leaders, deeply invested in losing the war, would rather move the goalposts and claim that a precipitous withdrawal is the right approach despite the overwhelming evidence of significant progress."

Guess there's a few Republicans invested in losing too then, since a poll of Iowa Republicans had this interesting statistic:

4. Do you favor a withdrawal of all United States military from Iraq within the next six months? (Republicans Only)

Yes 51%

No 39%

Undecided 10%

And then there's:

Sen. Warner: Start bringing troops home by Christmas

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The influential former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has called on President Bush to start bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq by Christmas.

Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican, said Thursday that a pullout was needed to spur Iraqi leaders to action.

He has recommended that Bush announce the beginning of a U.S. withdrawal in mid-September, after a report is released from the top U.S. officials in Iraq, and that those troops should be back in the U.S. by Christmas.

"In my humble judgment, that would get everyone's attention that is not being paid at this time," said Warner.

But don't worry. It doesn't matter how many Republicans criticize the war--Chuck Hagel, Walter Jones, Warner--the Republican capos are going to pretend that the only ones who want to leave Iraq are the Democrats. Because they're, you know, a pack of liars.

Let Me See If I Can Help, Mitt

Romney Struggles to Define Abortion Stance -washingtonpost.com:

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said this week that as president he would allow individual states to keep abortion legal, two weeks after telling a national television audience that he supports a constitutional amendment to ban the procedure nationwide.

In an interview with a Nevada television station on Tuesday, Romney said Roe. v. Wade should be abolished and vowed to "let states make their own decision in this regard." On Aug. 6, he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that he supports a human life amendment to the Constitution that would protect the unborn.



Wait, wait, it gets better...

Top Romney advisers insisted yesterday that their candidate's statements on abortion this month were consistent with each other. They said Romney supports a two-step process in which states get authority over abortion after Roe v. Wade is overturned, followed eventually by a constitutional amendment that bans most abortions.

James Bopp Jr., a top Romney adviser on the issue and a lawyer who has represented antiabortion organizations for decades, said Romney shares the aspirations of the antiabortion movement while understanding that its goals will not be achieved overnight.

"There's no flip-flopping. There's no contradiction. There's simply step one and step two," said Bopp, who has helped to shape the GOP's official stance on abortion since 1980. "

Got it? They want to overturn Roe v. Wade, thus leaving the question of choice up to the states. Then they want to take the power away from the states with a constitutional amendment.

Now, I can see as how this would make your stance on abortion hard to define. Let me see if I can help. Try this:

"Hello. I'm Mitt Romney and I'm a political whore. I'll say anything to get elected. Therefore, my stance on a woman's right to choose is whatever will get me through a bunch of primaries driven by fundamentalist whackos, while not pissing off women in the general election."

I tell you I ought to be a political consultant.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Another One for the Redneck Noir Files

Police chief's stripper wife arrested in drug bust

WENDOVER, Utah - The police chief's wife was arrested during a drug bust at a Nevada nightclub where she works as a stripper named "Ecstasy."

Sylvia Tripp, 39, was booked into the Elko County, Nev., jail on suspicion of drug distribution and possessing medication without a prescription, said Craig Ronzone, commander of the Elko County, Nev., drug task force.

She was later released, the Salt Lake Tribune reported on its Web site Tuesday. Formal charges have not been filed.




Tripp is the wife of Vaughn Tripp, the police chief in Wendover, a city on the Utah-Nevada border. She was one of three people arrested Friday after undercover officers made drug buys.

"She was a drug store," Ronzone said.

Tripp works as a stripper at Southern X-Posure in West Wendover, Nev., he said.

Chief Tripp was away from his office and not immediately available for comment Tuesday. There was no home phone number listed for him or his wife.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

One of Who, Exactly?

Rudy Giuliani: “I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers... I was there working with them. I was there guiding things. I was there bringing people there. But I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I’m one of them.”

As the kids on the Internets say, O RLY?

The New York Times recently did a story analyzing the former mayor's schedule to determine the exact amount of time Rudy spent down at Ground Zero as compared to rescue workers. The found that

A sample by Mount Sinai Medical Center of 1,138 participants in its study of health problems among rescue, recovery and debris removal workers found that they had spent a median of 962 hours at the World Trade Center site, or the equivalent of about 120 eight-hour days.

as for Rudy:

...an exhaustively detailed account from his mayoral archive, revised after the events to account for last-minute changes on scheduled stops, does exist for the period of Sept. 17 to Dec. 16, 2001. It shows he was there for a total of 29 hours in those three months, often for short periods or to visit locations adjacent to the rubble. In that same period, many rescue and recovery workers put in daily 12-hour shifts.

Now, Salon.com analyzes the amount of time Hizzoner spent at New York Yankee games:

By our count, Giuliani spent about 58 hours at Yankees games or flying to them in the 40 days between Sept. 25 and Nov. 4, roughly twice as long as he spent at ground zero in the 60 days between Sept. 17 and Dec. 16. By his own standard, Giuliani was one of the Yankees more than he was one of the rescue workers.

So here's my modest proposal: every Giuliani appearance from now through the Republican Convention should feature a gaggle of folks in Yankee caps, singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."