Miss Piggy Lunchbox

It’s time to fix the Senate.  The way you fix a howling male dog.

Republican Senator Richard Shelby has put a blanket hold on EVERY one of Obama’s 70 nominations currently on the Senate calendar for confirmation.  Because he can’t get some pork project for Alabama moved through.  Because, yeah, this is clearly what those rules are set up for.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary “blanket hold” on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, CongressDaily (sub. req.) reports. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.

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According to the report, Shelby is holding Obama’s nominees hostage until a pair of lucrative programs that would send billions in taxpayer dollars to his home state get back on track.

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A San Diego State University professor and “Congressional expert” told the paper “he knew of no previous use of a blanket hold” in recent history.

This is exactly the problem with our government.  Each senator has too much power.  You wouldn’t dream of writing up a system of government where you have 101 Presidents, yet that’s essentially what we’ve got, where any single Senator with a bone to pick can bring the government to a screeching halt.

Break up the Senate.  Blow up all of their rules.  Get rid of this individual hold BS, and destroy the filibuster so badly that it never ever comes back.  Hell, get rid of the chamber all together…what a waste of breath those people are.  Except for Franken, my all-time second-favorite senator.  He’s cool…and he holds the same seat as my all-time favorite senator: Paul Wellstone.

And Jesus H.  This is the group that thinks they’re going to design a college football playoff system?  I mean, even beyond being a waste of their time, I can’t even imagine what a playoff system would look like if it were designed by the same a-holes who crafted the Senate rules.  So let’s see, there’s 8 teams, and one-third of those teams changes every two years, and you have to beat six of the other teams in order to win the championship, and if nobody beats six other teams then there is no champion.  And there’s only a championship held every two years because everybody’s scared to play anybody in the year when the new playoff teams will enter so really there’s hardly ever any change in membership.

Either way, it’s your fault.

With 23% of registered voters’ votes counted, write-in has 1% of the Seattle mayoral vote.  Congratulations to whichever horrible candidate ends up winning.

I guess I will go to that job interview then.  Flood the universe with thoughts about how awesome I am.

I just wanted to remind my Seattle readers that, as your ballots are arriving now, I’m still running for mayor.

According to Rush Limbaugh, he wasn’t dropped as a member of a group attempting to buy the NFL’s St. Louis Rams because he’s a lightning rod for criticism and the NFL wants to appeal to as many people, right and left, as possible.  No, it’s a direct result of Obama being President.

Conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh lashed out at NFL union leader DeMaurice Smith, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the media a day after being dropped from a group trying to buy the St. Louis Rams.

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NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Colts owner Jim Irsay each expressed misgivings this week at a league-wide meeting about Limbaugh’s involvement, with Goodell saying Limbaugh had made “polarizing” comments and Irsay vowing to vote against him. On Wednesday, [group leader] Checketts said Limbaugh had been dropped from the bid.

During a 15-minute counterattack at the start of his show, Limbaugh said he believes he’s been made an example by a players’ union seeking leverage in talks over a new collective bargaining agreement. What happened to him was an illustration of “Obama’s America on full display,” the commentator said.

First of all, how is this a counterattack, and not just a reaction?  “Counterattack” makes it seem as if he was attacked by the NFL.

Anyway, Limbaugh seems to have forgotten when he was an on-air commentator for ESPN and suggested that the media was saying that Donovan McNabb was a good quarterback only because he was black:

Limbaugh’s history hurt his participation in the bid. In 2003, he was forced to resign from ESPN’s Sunday night football broadcast after saying of the Eagles’ Donovan McNabb: “I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well.”

(Of course Limbaugh hasn’t forgotten.  I don’t think he believes 80% of what he says, but he knows what to say to fatten his wallet, and that’s his true master calling.)

To continue with the reverse chronology of this post, I’m reminded of when his job on ESPN was announced, and when asked how much he knew about football, Limbaugh said, “Football’s a lot like life…and I know a lot about life.”  To which my buddy KEN responded, “No, football is a lot like what you think life is like.”  Which I think sums up the war-as-sports jingoism of Republicans just about perfectly.

I can’t believe this story, reported by OC Weekly last month and brought to my attention by TPM Muckraker, didn’t receive more attention, because it is just too delicious.

You’ve got a socially conservative, values-oriented Republican California legislator, a lobbyist, and a microphone that, unbeknownst to Representative Duvall, is hot…and about to get a lot hotter.  Now that the stage is set, and you know where this one is going.  Here’s some of what the mic picked up as Michael Duvall described his escapades to a colleague.

She wears little eye-patch underwear. So, the other day she came here with her underwear, Thursday. And
 so, we had made love Wednesday–a lot! And so she’ll, she’s all, ‘I am going 
up and down the stairs, and you’re dripping out of me!’ So messy!

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So, I am getting into spanking her. Yeah, I like it. I like spanking her. She goes, ‘I know you like spanking me.’ I said, ‘Yeah! Because you’re such a bad girl!’

And he talked about a second woman, too.

Oh, yeah, Sher, Shar, Shar. Oh, she is hot! I talked to her yesterday. She goes, ‘So are we finished?’ I go, ‘No, we’re not finished.’ I go, ‘You know about the other one [the lobbyist], but she doesn’t know about you!’

I don’t have anything to add to this story.  Like I said, it’s just too juicy.

Articles like this are comforting because they remind me that we’re not the only country whose populace can be ridiculously reactionary.

London’s subway bosses have erased the River Thames.

Mayor Boris Johnson on Thursday joined a chorus of disapproval at a new version of the London Underground map that does not show the river, which divides north and south London.

Subway operator Transport for London said the map was simplified after becoming cluttered. Bands denoting different fare zones and some small print also have been removed.

Johnson’s office said the mayor “has ordered the river to be reinstated as soon as possible” without incurring extra costs.

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In the Guardian newspaper, Patrick Barkham said it had “removed a vital orienting point” and “besmirched the capital’s history.”

Okay, I can see the point about the river orienting you while you’re trying to navigate the Tube, but besmirching the city’s history?  Come on.  What, are Tube riders not giving the city the proper reverence by reflecting on the Thames’ role in the region’s development?

I voted this weekend, and none of these miserable candidates for mayor deserve my vote.

So I wrote myself in.  You should, too.  I’m running as a write-in candidate for mayor of Seattle.  After reading a slew of statements, I think I get the idea.  Here you go:

I have lived in Seattle all my life, the son of a dock worker and the grandson of a dock worker.  I love Seattle.  You know what I love about Seattle?  Vibrant neighborhoods.  Seattle sucks now compared to what it was when I was a kid.

I am against petty, partisan bickering at City Hall.  I believe government should be accountable, and a good steward of our tax dollars.

You know what else?  Voters said ‘no’ on a referendum, and if there’s one thing I believe in it’s that voters should directly vote on just about every silly thing we can come up with, so when they said ‘no’ to a tunnel, I believe we shouldn’t try to build a tunnel.  We should build a bridge instead.  Wait, they voted ‘no’ on that, too?  Then we should definitely just not take any risks and let the current bridge, damaged in an earthquake, sit there until it collapses and kills dozens of us and, without any contingency plans, brings traffic to an even worse point for over a year.  But hopefully you and I won’t be on the bridge when it does collapse.  This is the kind of spineless leadership this city needs.  (This paragraph is sarcastic.)

Also, I have either led a business or served on some form of local government for the past so many years.  Either way…whatever.

Here are some other things I am strongly for or against if you are, too:

Schools.  Traffic.  Parks. Crime. Debt. Jobs.  Affordable housing. Children. Quality of life.  The environment.

Please write-in KEN for mayor of Seattle on Tuesday, August 18.  I did.

I’m a capitalist.  I like a free-ish market.  But this kind of cordoning off of access is anything but free.

Senator Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has warned the Securities and Exchange Commission that if it does not curb the practice of flash orders, which give traders at large financial firms with high-speed computers a brief advantage over other market participants, he will move to sponsor legislation to limit their use.

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Flash orders allow certain members of Direct Edge, Nasdaq and BATS exchanges access (for a fee) to buy and sell order information for milliseconds prior to that information being made available to the public. High-speed computer software can take advantage of that brief period to allow those members to trade ahead of those orders — at better prices — and therefore profit from advanced knowledge of buying and selling activity.

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Schapiro said last month that the SEC was working to identify emerging risks to investors, including so-called “dark pools,” or automated trading systems that don’t publicly provide price quotes. …

…Schapiro has noted that they create a lack of transparency that could cause suspicion and speculation, and cut the public out of the mix.

Gee, you think?  This is the kind of s**t that should bring out the “Don’t Tread On Me” types…not a plan trying to give them affordable access to health care.

I don’t have anything to add to this, but ever since I read this reader’s e-mail over at TPM a few weeks ago, it’s been bumping around in my head, striking an unsettling chord.  And so I just have to share.

…[I]f this country cannot pass a bill which insures that every citizen has access to medical care, which every developed country has managed to do (and got done many many years ago), there is something very fundamentally and structurally wrong with this country.

Such an event, in my mind, would confirm that we live with a completely corrupt and dysfunctional form of government. Forty nine states, each with bicameral legislative bodies, some of which have distinguished themselves recently with unabashed levels of incompetency and cluelessness. Then, graft a federal government over that, which is also bicameral, the non-representative portion of it being filled with officials who are certifiable morons and/or who are bought and sold like whores by wealthy contributors.

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This is a defining moment in our history. Do we fulfill our supposed status as a “shining city on a hill” or continue our long slow decline into a second rate oligarchy?

I am not one prone to hyperbole.

I believe this to the depths of my soul.

I can’t say I disagree with any of that, and that bit about the Senate has really been a mind-f**k for me recently.  God I miss Paul Wellstone.

Even Kenya is more humane than us.

Kenya’s more than 4,000 death row inmates all will have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, the president announced Monday, describing their wait to face execution as “undue mental anguish and suffering.”

Mother f**king Kenya, man.  Good god.  We should elect one of their people to be our President.