Archive for April, 2009
Great Merciful Zeus — it really appears Al Queda will get its hands on up to 100 nukes by the end of the year
Pakistan is in danger of collapsing in just months — and since Al Queda essentially controls 2/3 of the country to begin with, once the government of Pakistan falls, who do you think will sweep into its military facilities to nab their storehouse of 100+ nuclear weapons?
When the Soviet Union collapsed, not all of its weapons were secured. Supposedly, not only are there still warheads unaccounted for, but there’s at least one suitcase nuke missing from the Soviet arsenal as well. This could be poor records-keeping at the Kremlin, or it could mean these weapons are in the hands of anyone from terrorists to George Soros. No one really knows.
And, evidently, we didn’t seem to learn anything from the last time a nuclear power collapsed and its government was usurped in entirety.
We do not have any faith or confidence that Obama will have strength and courage enough to do the right thing and move quickly to secure all of Pakistan’s weapons when its government falls. More likely than not, Obama will instead go to the United Nations and ask for some sort of resolution, or some other sort of dithering nonsense. China, at the very least, has great incentive to stall or shoot down any resolution that would come out of that laborious body. Just think about it: the more time Al Queda has to seize Pakistan’s arsenal, the more likely it is to succeed. Any weapons Al Queda acquires will be used against the West, not against China. So, it is most definitely in China’s best interests to gum up the works and allow whatever’s to happen to happen. If Russia isn’t too afraid of receving one of those bombs gift-wrapped by Al Queda itself (because of Al Queda agitation in Russia’s Muslim regions), it might just join China in prolonging the dithering.
And then you need to factor in what unpredictable India will do if Pakistan goes under. Will it decide to settle the Kashmir issue once and for all with Pakistan destabilized? Will it make a grab for those nukes itself?
There are so many terrifying twists and turns in all of this.
H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and the horrific writings of Nancy Pelosi couldn’t do a better job turning our stomach or keeping us up at night than this nightmare scenario.
Obama’s lemonade and pixie dust Hope! Change! Silliness! malarkey aren’t going to make this problem go away.
Just like Obama himself, the Portuguese water dog Ted Kennedy gave Obama has another name on its birth certificate too
When Obama lived in Indonesia and was adopted by his stepfather, his school records and official Indonesian paperwork all listed him as “Barry Soetero”.
The dog the Obamas call “Bo” has another official name, too: “Amigo’s New Hope”.
That’s its official name on its pedigree.
For those unfamiliar, pedigreed dogs have very fancy names that follow a pedigree breeder’s traditions. The names are often lyrical and strange, and the first part of the name (Amigo’s) denotes the kennel’s name where the purebred dog was welped (Amigo’s Portugues Water Dogs kennel).
The “call name” for a pedigreed dog is always something short, which is used in daily conversation. But it’s official paperwork registered with the American Kennel Club bears its official, and technically “real” name.
Somewhere out there, locked away, perhaps buried under concrete, is Obama’s official birth certificate, which has never been revealed to the public.
Who knows what name’s really on there. It could be Flopsy the Easter Bunny or Butterscotch McChristmastree, and it will most certainly be many years before any intrepid scholar uncovers what’s so purposefully been hidden.
But, here’s another little mystery conjured by Obama’s new dog: are Art and Martha Stern, the breeders at Amigo’s, big Star Wars fans? Because they named the dog “New Hope” months and months ago, soon after it was welped. The dog is a littermate of Ted Kennedy’s own dog.
This is interesting because it sure seems like Obama planned all along to give this dog to his daughters. He’s a candidate that was all about branding and forced symbolism all through the campaign. “New Hope” would be a name given to a dog intended for him.
So, the whole “we’re going to get a shelter dog” really was a big scam, because all along it sure seems like Ted Kennedy intended for that puppy to go to the Obamas.
Why the misdirection on the “rescue dog” then?
Why lie about something so stupid?
Tuesday Open Thread
What’s on your mind today?
Later this afternoon, we’re going to get a few minutes to speak to RNC Chairman Michael Steele while he’s here in Chicago. Now’s your chance to tell us what you think we should say to him. Primarily, the purpose in our meeting with him is to give him our thoughts on how the GOP can address corruption in states like Illinois, and how it can do a better job reaching out to the LGBTQ community, moderate Democrats, and people who’ve grown up Democrat or Independent, but find themselves singing a lot of Twisted Sister in the shower these days (we’re not gonna take it…no, we ain’t gonna take it…we’re not gonna take it ANYMORE…da da da dada da da).
The winning GOP candidate in 2012 needs to be a conservative — but in our opinion a conservative who bears no resemblance to Fred Phelps or Anita Bryant.
Sarah Palin and Mark Sanford are two viable contenders so far…and we’d like to see Steele run as VP in 2012 himself.
And we’re going to tell him that.
Now’s your chance to give us more things to say to Steele.
Put your ideas in this post, and then go an extra step for us: read other people’s ideas, and debate which ones are best. Let’s build a consensus. We leave for the Steele meeting at 12 noon…so anything posted up until then can be a part of our conversation with him.
Consider it the HillBuzz virtual Coffee Club discussion thread of the day.
Monday Open Thread
Well, today’s the Cubs season opening home game, which, following Easter Sunday, is like two holidays back-to-back here in Wrigleyville. We’re making a day of it and will be at the game, and then later running various errands to get things together for the Navy Pier Tax Day Tea Party on Wednesday.
There a few things you can do to help us today:
(1) If you live in Chicago, it would be greatly appreciated if you could stop by your local grocery store, restaurant, liquor store, bar, or anyplace else you think they’d have wooden crates they normally throw away and see if you can take them and bring them to the Chicago GOP headquarters so the Chicago Young Republicans can use them to make Tea Crates for the Tax Day Tea Party. Any crates you can find need to be at the Chicago GOP HQ by 5pm today. The address is: 1549 W. Blackhawk. The crates would be very appreciated, and will be artistically turned into vintage Tea Crates, circa 1773, for display at Navy Pier by the tall ship.
(2) At Easter Dinner yesterday, something interesting happened that we’d like your input on. Robby went home to Mineral City, Ohio this weekend and his mother, Patricia, brought up an idea she had to get people who read HillBuzz involved in her daily Coffee Club discussions with all of her friends back home. Pattymelt (as we all call her) suggested we run a thread every day inviting people to suggest topics for the Coffee Club to discuss the next day. Normally, the Coffee Club ladies talk about whatever’s on their local news, or whatever any of them think of that morning, but Pattymelt thinks it would be more interesting to see what people around the country are talking about every day. It could be something interesting for us to do going forward. This site has continuously evolved in ways we never expected a year ago when we started writing it. It would be fun to bring Robby’s mother and her friends back home (Robby’s play aunts, one and all) into this experience on a more regular basis, and those of you who want to participate can be virtual Coffee Club members through these discussions. Pattymelt’s all fired up about it (the way she’s fired up about everything), and said she’s willing to write in more regularly to share how your suggested topics go over at the Coffee Club round tables in Mineral City. It’s spring, so it would be fun to try something new like this. And since we love Robby’s mother almost as much as we love him, it would be fun to further strengthen the Chicago-Mineral City-Cleveland Axis of Snark. If you like the idea, we’ll turn the daily Open Thread into a Dear Mineral City Open Thread. It could be interesting.
(3) Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune claimed figures would soon come out showing how the Trillion Dollar Spending Bill Obama jammed through Congress would be spent in Illinois. We’re still waiting for those specifics. So far, it seems that pothole repair is the only “shovel-ready” project our tax dollars are supporting. What’s happening in your states? Have you seen an accurate accounting of where that Trillion Dollars is gone? We feel like you have to be an amateur detective to figure out where that Trillion Dollars is, and what it’s doing. We know there will be massive waste and fraud involved in how it’s spent here in Illinois, but can’t watch all 50 states, so we wonder if some of you out there can take a state and watch it closely and continuously report back on what you see. If enough people did this, then it would certainly be easier to hold the government accountable.
UPDATE: The Cubs game was interesting this year. The Concession lines were incredibly short for opening day. That was a big surprise. The news today, instead of reporting on the game and the new restaurant that’s opened at Wrigley Field this year (which was packed) talked about a poll conducted that says most Chicagoans feel ticket prices are too high and that Major League Baseball is out of touch with reality and out of synch with the economy.
On the way walking home from the game through Boystown, we ran into Tabatha from BRAVO, walking down Halsted shooting an episode of her show Tabatha’s Salon Takeover — she was filiming at the Chicago Male salon on Halsted, right in the heart of Boystown. Here’s the thing: it’s a GORGEOUS salon. All the stylists are top-notch. They’ve spared no expense at this place. But, it’s absolutely empty most times we walk by it (there used to be a Chicago cop who’d always be hanging out in there at the reception desk, a cute cop too, but when the receptionist he liked stopped working there, even he stopped coming in).
Some of us here have gotten our hair cut there, but why pay $35 for a cut when just one street over there are places where you can get just as good of a cut for $12 or $13? Maybe women need to pay a lot for a really great cut, but for men, it’s pretty much the same wherever you go. Why pay more, especially when money’s so tight for everyone in The Golden Age of Obama?
So, unlike other episodes of her show where Tabatha turns around a salon that’s disgusting or has bad help, this episode looks like it’s about how to turn around a business in this economy — when the business caters to people with disposable incomes that have been relatively disposed of. (FYI: Tabatha is WONDERFUL in person. We spotted a camera crew following someone down the street, setting up one of those shots where a reporter walks down a block narrating a story. We assumed it was a local reporter at first talking about the Cubs opening day…but as she got closer, we realized it was Tabatha, dressed all in black, with that shock of cartoon yellow trademark hair. A lot of people from TV will just smile back if you say anything to them, and some put their heads down and clearly don’t want to talk to you, but Tabatha stopped and chatted while her crew set up her shot. We asked her what she was going to do for Chicago Male and she said, “Help them start making money again”. Good luck with that, we thought. What a great, great person she is though…we were thrilled to see she was so nice)
And we really appreciate everyone who brought wooden crates to the GOP Headquarters — we got about 30 crates from various people, and we spent the rest of the day painting them into TEA boxes for Wednesday. It’s going to be a great visual with all of those crates on Navy Pier by the tall ship — and are so happy we got so many crates to make it as impressive as possible.
Cast and crew of new Star Trek movie premiere the film early for our troops in Kuwait
We had absolutely no intention of seeing the new Star Trek movie (despite the grade-A, baby blues adorable that is Chris Pine), because SciFi is usually not our sort of thing, but after hearing this, you better believe we’ll ALL buy a ticket opening weekend and get as many people to support this film as possible, because the cast and crew of the new Star Trek movie went to Kuwait to premiere the film early for our troops.
An effort like that deserves kudos…and if the people behind a film make such an effort to support our troops, then we feel we should all support them too.
It was absolutely incredible to give the troops such a treat.
Hollywood should do this more often (especially considering the fact that Hollywood types are generally the first in line to berate and abuse those in uniform).
The USO is one of the greatest organizations you can be a part of, because it exists solely to give support and comfort to the men and women brave and patriotic enough to wear those uniforms.
Wherever you live, there’s a way you can help the USO. Obviously, not all of us can do what the Star Trek crew did, but we’re sure there’s something you can do to help in your city or town. Here in Chicago, we were so inspired by the military personnel we met during the McCain/Palin campaign that we’ve been volunteering for the USO, doing everything from helping out at USO stations at the airports as concierges and serving meals for the USO’s “No Dough Dinners” on the military base near Chicago (these are dinners the USO puts on, with fundraising help, to give the troops a fun, tasty meal the day before payday, when most of them are hurting for cash and their treats have run dry…just the right pickmeup right when they need it).
In our lives, three people have inspired us to work a little harder every day and give more to people we can help. Hillary Clinton, who inspires us to volunteer with reading programs and efforts tied to healthcare. John McCain, whose campaign for president inspires us to help the USO. And Sarah Palin, whose support for special needs families inspires us to help the Special Olympics.
2008 permanently changed us, in a good way we think. We’ll never have as much influence as Clinton, McCain, and Palin have, but if we can get one person out there to help the USO, Special Olympics, or eduction and healthcare projects because we’re doing it too, then all the energy we put into this site truly means something to us.
Wooden Crates Needed for Chicago Navy Pier Tea Party
If any of you are in the Chicagoland area, there’s a real need for wooden crates (like the kind produce comes in at the grocery store) here for the Navy Pier Tea Party on April 15th.
Tomorrow, the Chicago Young Republicans have organized a sign-making effort for the 15th, but they need small wooden crates so they can paint them to read TEA.
They will be used as props at the Navy Pier Tea Party on the 15th, where there will be a tall ship and a restaging of the Boston Tea Party on Navy Pier, from 430pm-9pm, near the Billy Goat Tavern.
If you can get some wooden crates, please bring them to the Chicago GOP Headquarters by 5pm tomorrow (April 13th) so they can be decorated as TEA crates. The more wooden crates we can get, the better the decorations we will have for Navy Pier on the 15th.
The crates should be small enough for one person to carry — most grocery stores have some sort of fruit that arrives in wooden crates. If you can call your local grocery store and speak to someone in produce, and can get them to set some crates aside for you, you can pick them up and bring them to the Chicago GOP headquarters so they can be decorated tomorrow night.
Here’s the address the crates need to go to:
CHICAGO GOP HEADQUARTERS
1549 W. Blackhawk
Chicago, IL
Any help you can give in this would be greatly appreciated — and since the Navy Pier Tea Party will be well-photographed, you can look for your painted crates in all the media the event will bring.
Disappointing race-baiting in Albany: Governor Paterson's wife claims his unpopularity is because of race
This is really hard for us to comment on, because we like Governor David Paterson. The way he humiliated HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy at Christmas last year was remarkable. He never intended to appoint her Senator, but allowed her to make an absolute fool of herself for weeks, ruining any chance she’d ever have of running for elected office in her own right, let alone demanding a Senate seat because of who her parents were, and who her uncle is. He just kept stringing her along, and made Princess put more effort into something than anything else she’s ever done in her 50-year, wholly unremarkable life.
Paterson turned that Senate seat into an Hermes scarf blown high into a crystal chandelier by a sudden gust of wind through the revolving door of Bergdorf’s. Princess spotted it, and wanted it, and kept leaping as high as she could in her Jimmy Choo’s, but she just couldn’t reach it. No matter how many servants she stacked upon one another, she couldn’t climb up high enough to grasp that glittering silk. So ultimately, she plopped down on the floor, gathered up all of her jewels, and hightailed it to her idling limousine to recamp at Pastis and commiserate with other millionairesses there about how truly unfair and unsettling life is.
Governor David Paterson will ALWAYS have a special place in our hearts because of this.
We also deeply feel for him because of the way Saturday Night Live continues to shamefully mock his disability. Routinely, Fred Armison portrays Paterson as wandering around the TV studio during Weekend Update, not knowing where he is, bumping into things because he’s blind. It’s sick, and so obvious this sort of caricature would never be allowed for something racial or religious, but is gleefully amusing to Lorne Michaels et al when it’s a blind man being ridiculed for his vision impairment (along the same lines of how much fun Obama thought it would be to give Gordon Brown, who is also legally blind, 25 DVDs to watch when he can’t really see the screen and…wait for it, wait for it…the DVDs were Region-One Coded and not even able to play on UK DVD machines. Hilarious! Saturday Day Night, the White House is ready for its closeup!).
But, today Drudge is reporting that Paterson’s wife is now claiming the reason he’s unpopular and most likely not going to secure the Democrats’ nomination for Governor in 2010 is because he’s black.
No, it’s actually because Paterson’s been a poor and largely ineffective Governor.
Sadly, it needs to be admitted that part of the reason for this is that Paterson’s blindness DOES indeed impair his abilities to successfully run the state of New York. Everything must be read aloud to Paterson. Repeatedly, it’s reported that the Governor is at least a week behind on important matters, because he cannot read any of the information himself, and must have aides report everything verbally to him. His blindness, at this level of the executive, is as much a crucial hindrance to a Governor as blindness would be to a truck driver. No matter how good a communicator the person riding shotgun is, you can’t take an 18-wheelers onto the highway when you are legally blind because you cannot react quickly enough to the challenges on the road in front of you.
As much as we wish this was not the case, Paterson has proved in the last year that he is not able to react quickly enough to the challenges before him as Governor. He is routinely out of the loop, always playing catchup, and never as informed or prepared as a Governor should be.
But, it’s hard to see Paterson’s wife trot out the old chestnut of blaming all the Governor’s problems on race. This isn’t like when Obama, James Clyburne, John Lewis, Al Sharpton, or Jesse Jackson cry RACISM! when they don’t get their way, and want to extort some political gain from the knee-jerk reaction many Americans still have to race-baiting. When those clowns pull that sort of malarkey, we slap them back with equally ridiculous parades of scantily-clad hunks to combat false race-baiting with similarly inane charges of HOMOPHOBIA! for everyone who doesn’t like hot guys in tight underpants.
When someone we like in the black community trots out the race card, it’s tough, because we’re so disappointed in them that we can’t muster up an appropriately snarky response. It’s like the other day when we were having lunch, and a friend of ours with a very, very soft voice asked the waitress for something, and it was very clear the waitress did not hear her (as one of us was sitting right next to her and completely missed what she said as well), but when the waitress came back and didn’t have what our friend asked for, our friend claimed it was because she’s black and the service industry ignores black people.
No, it’s because you talk like you’re in a library, not a loud sports bar filled with noisy drunks. We politely didn’t listen to our friend’s rant that racism prevented her from getting a glass of water, and we politely won’t listen to Mrs. Paterson claim racism will keep her husband from being nominated for Governor next year.
Race-cards expired at 12 noon on January 20th, 2009. The President of the United States is a black man. Not doing your job well means you will be fired, regardless of what color you are. That’s just a simple fact.
We’re still in Paterson’s corner, and hope he’ll be in Albany making things awkward and uncomfortable for all the Kennedys for many years to come.
But Mrs. Paterson needs to retire the race-card because none of us should accept that nonsense anymore.
Alaska Week begins on Discovery Channel tonight
Here are some highlights:
Bear Attack: April 12th, looking at a small part of how Alaskans contend with large carnivores on a daily basis.
Out of the Wild, The Alaska Experiment: April 14th, taking the Survivor concept and bringing it to Alaska, following a group of people as they try to make it back to civilization after being stranded in the wilderness 60 miles away from comfort and safety.
Alaska Most Extreme: April 16th, detailing daily life in some of Alaska’s most dangerous spots, and dangerous jobs.
Untamed Alaska: April 17th, showing how dangerous life is in Alaska and how the people there have to be smart and focused at all times just to stay alive.
After watching Alaska Week on Discocery Channel, we think we’ll all have renewed respect for the woman who has to govern this wild, enormous, dangerous state.
Sarah Palin, we don’t know how you do it, but are glad every day you’re on the job!
Does anyone think it's odd the media's not reporting on Obama's brother raping a 13 year old?
If you are suprised, then we’re sorry to point out the obvious, but you’re stupid.
Silly, silly, you.
Why on Earth would the media report on Obama’s brother’s rape activities, when they never bothered to report on his brother George living in abject squalor in Nairobi, or his grandmother living in similar squalor in rural Kenya, or Obama’s cousin Raila Odinga trying to overthrow the secular, US-backed government and institute Shari’a law in Kenya, or Obama’s aunt flagrantly viotating US immigration law?
Of course there’s no time for any of that reporting, because Sarah Palin’s husband’s half-sister’s friend’s hairdresser tore that tag off the mattress that says “Do Not Remove Under Penalty of Law”, so of course that needs to be the lead story. Those damn Palins. Always up to something!
There’s no way Obama’s brother raping someone in Britain in any way could ever compete with that.
So much for a rescue dog. Irony: man who let an American woman drown gives Obamas a Portuguese water dog
The Obamas have named the dog Bo.
So much for the business about getting a rescue dog from a pound.
Instead, just get an expensive, rare breed from a murderer.
Even better!
There are a few interesting things in the story above:
(1) The Obamas have never allowed their daughters to have pets before, which is intriguing. Not even a hamster or a goldfish. That may or may not be odd, depending on who you are. We think it’s strange, because everyone we know had some sort of pet growing up. Maybe there are a lot of people who don’t let their children have pets. We just haven’t known any of those people. There are probably people who make their kids drink caster oil too. We’ve read about people like that, but have never met any. Some things are just odd to us.
(2) The dog was dolled up with a Hawaiian lei a few times already. This is just one of those little things that makes us think Obama has no intention of coming back to Chicago after he leaves the White House in 2013. It just seems likely he’ll build his Presidential Library and Museum in Hawaii. The business this week with him flying in extravagant pizza from St. Louis was another one of these little things that just make us believe Chicago was a calculated and strategic place for Obama to build his political career, but that he’d give Chicago the shaft in the end, the way he’s given the shaft to most people and things in his life. Hawaii’s tourist industry is really struggling now — it seems likely they’ll match whatever Chicago ponies up to land the Presidential library. And if little Hawaiian touches always pop up in the private moments in the White House, and Chicago touches don’t (like St. Louis pizza (NOT Chicago-style) being flown in extravagantly, at high carbon cost, to the White House while environmentalists normally bemoane such waste), it just seems likely Honolulu is where the Obamas will live when his term is up.
(3) Newspapers really are irrelevant at this point. Supposedly, this story about the dog was to be a big deal exclusive for print journalists, and they had a story all ready to go for this morning (so people could line cat litter boxes and wrap fish in it by the afternoon). But, instead, the story broke over the Internets and various blogs were talking about it. This is really how people get news today: no one we know waits until tomorrow for something they can hear about in real time today. All that paper, and all of those trees, are being wasted so the New York Times and other dinosaurs can lumber along each morning, telling people things they already know, like Andy Rooney. The Chicago Sun Times is going out of business and will cease production in June. How long before the Tribune, the Times, and the rest follow suit? It can’t happen quickly enough in our book.
(4) It’s really interesting how desperate the Kennedys are to continue to tie themselves to the Obamas. What do you think that’s about? Is it to continue to probe for some job for HRH Princess Caroline, now that both the people of New York and the Vatican have made it clear they want nothing to do with her? Do the Kennedys just want to appear relevant — so they give Obama this dog, and get to share the headlines for a day or so when people talk about where the dog came from? Any dog that spent more than a few minutes around Ted Kennedy is a dog we’d never let anywhere near an unlocked liquor cabinet (or an Oldsmobile). If gifts of any sort carry a part of the giver with them to their new owners, we’d personally never want anything that came from Hyannis Port (though, admittedly, we’d accept a dog from them faster than we’d accept a ride anywhere).
(5) It’s interesting that neither of the Obamas ever had a dog growing up — but now have one for the very political reason that it’s expected in the White House. Dogs are interesting creatures: they tend to bring out the best and the worst in people. Some dogs have been great political successes for presidents: Falla and Checkers come to mind, of course, with Buddy and Mrs. Beasley being more recent distractions for the media whenever their owners wanted them to be. But, then there’s LBJ, dangling his beagles by their ears, making an ass of himself for the cameras. If the Obamas aren’t used to having a dog around, Michelle especially seems destined to have some bad photo ops in the LBJ vein, especially with what appears to be a very energetic and rambunctious breed. There will no doubt be plenty of people to take care of this dog for the rest of its life, but all the staff in the world won’t be able to stop another LBJ moment from happening with people who haven’t grown up around dogs. It will be interesting to see what happens.
