Governor’s Mansion: Everything Must GO!

1/27/08


Governor Blunt has lost his lease! All merchandise priced to move! Especially those pesky emails we don’t want the public to see! Missouri’s Republican governor Matt Blunt (son of Congressman Roy Blunt) announced to a stunned audience last week that he will not be running for reelection as governor. This was especially unexpected since he had been fundraising like Jerry Lewis and had already started running negative campaign ads against Democratic rival Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon. Hey Matt, what’s with the sudden 180? In his own words:

“What we set-out to achieve four years ago has been accomplished… After a great deal of thought and prayer, and with the knowledge that we have achieved virtually everything I set out to accomplish, and more…I feel we have changed what I wanted to change in the first term there is not the same sense of mission for a second.”

Wait, really? Your excuse for quitting is, essentially, “all done here!”? It appears so, which seems odd and flimsy at best and downright idiotic and suspicious at worst. It’s not like being governor is akin to being camp councilor, where, you know, when the summer’s over your job is fucking done. But hey, sure, political figures who are at the top of their game, 37-years-old and have done nothing wrong walk away from office all the time. About as often as Ann Coulter has experience periods of lucidity, I’ll wager. Oh, but don’t fret; Blunt is a Republican being investigated for wrongdoing, so naturally he tacked on this tired old piece of refuse:

“Melanie and our son William Branch mean the world to me. I have spent more time away from them than I would like. We are ready for the next chapter in our lives and I am looking forward to spending more time with them.”

Ohhhhhh, good gravy. The family card, Matt? You’re playing the family card? How could--oh sweet Jesus what's wrong with that kid? I don't want to be cruel, but are Blunt and his wife related? It looks like that thing from The Island of Dr. Moreau. Yeesh.

Why is Blunt really tucking tail? Basically, it’s a huge election year, and he’s a big, fat, smelly liability for the Republican Party. Not only is Blunt’s office and Blunt personally being investigated for knowingly deleting interoffice government emails (which are public record in Missouri and illegal to trash) but he was informed by his lawyer that they shouldn’t be doing it. Not only did Blunt continue the policy, but he fired his attorney Scott Eckersley, and then went into Eckersley’s personal email account fishing for information about to whom the scrupulous lawyer blew the whistle. If you have any doubts whether Blunt is guilty of this crime, one only has to turn to the press conference he gave a few weeks ago about the charges. Blunt took questions for about 3 minutes, then his eyes appeared to glaze over as he cut the reporters short in mid-question and almost sprinted from the room like a gazelle spotting a lion. It was very strange and hilarious.

As for the claim that Blunt has accomplished all he set out to do, he has had a not-unimpressive record. If you don’t care about people, that is. His big selling points in yesterday’s release were balancing the budget, boosting education, reducing unemployment, and medical care for the poor. Quickly, we’ll take them into account.

1. Balanced Budget
He did do this. Without raising taxes. All he had to do was gut Medicare and slash social services. However, if Blunt’s plans for this year were implemented, we were looking at a $400 million budget deficit in 2 years, according to the Missouri Budget Project.

2. Boosting Education
This seems to have been done, there was more money for some schools and universities, but I’m sure Hanni would know more about it than I would.

3. Reducing Unemployment
Again, he did accomplish this. For awhile. Unemployment hovered between 5 ½ and 6% in 2004 when Blunt took over. Between August of ’05 and July of ’07, unemployment ranged between 4.6 and 5.3%, with the average being 5%. It hasn’t been below 5% since then. I will say it’s not bad; even a 1 percentage point drop means 25,000 more people are working, but the 90,000 “new jobs” Blunt claims to have created is rather misleading.

4. Medical Care
Okay, frankly this one baffles me. Blunt’s balanced budget and cash for other programs pretty much came from dismantling huge swaths of Medicaid and other social programs. His program ended health care for 125,000 Missourians. Most cuts were:

A. 61,000 low-income parents — mostly working mothers — with incomes between 30 percent and 75 percent of the poverty line (between $4,800 and $12,100 per year for a family of three), after certain deductions;[2]
B. 4,600 senior citizens and people with permanent disabilities with incomes from $6,900 per year (for an individual) to $9,600;
C. 3,000 working people with temporary disabilities (receiving medical assistance under General Relief);
D. 1,150 people who recently left welfare for work;
E. 13,600 children and adults who would lose coverage because of stricter application requirements and increased paperwork; and
F. 24,000 children who would lose Medicaid (MC+) coverage because their families are unable to pay increased premiums.

http://www.cbpp.org/4-4-05health.htm

Since I’m running long I won’t even touch on the fact that Blunt has made it more difficult and supported legislation to ban pharmacists from distributing emergency contraception, or the fact that he would be pleased as punch if medicine and science in the Show Me State went back to leaches and ether.

So…you might say I’m skeptical when he dusts his hands and claims “we is done!” Not the worst governor we’ve ever seen, but I’m not sad to see him go. Also, what horrific things could possibly be in those emails for Blunt to risk deleting them even when he knew it was illegal? My guess: Weasel fights in the state office.


Sources: http://www.cbpp.org/4-4-05health.htm
Employment: Dept of Labor
http://www.kansascity.com/281/story/433207.html
Governor’s Press Release - transcript

Pop Quiz

Overheard in an Office

1/22/08

“Well, I don’t have to go to my doctor for another 2 weeks at least. My doctor was in a mood last night. A funny mood; he was funny. I told him I got a new scale—a new talking scale—and he said “It’s not sarcastic is it?” Heh-heh. Well I know I haven’t been weighing right because I don’t do it with shoes or street clothes. According to his scale I’ve lost 7 pounds. I’m a lot more accountable for what I put in my mouth if I’m weighing myself. ‘Course then after I went to the doctor’s office we went out to eat at Red Robin, so…”

I ask you, ladies and gentlemen; are the above statements:

A. Dumb things to say
B. The Dumbest thing to say

Pass your tests to the front whenever you’re finished.

Gotcha. That Will Be $8

1/18/08

There’s an interesting book gracing the shelves of your local bookstore, ladies and gentlemen, and it covers a topic that concerns us all. Namely, the fact that businesses in the new millennium seem bound and determined to small-print-fee us into the poorhouse.* It’s called Gotcha Capitalism: How Hidden Fees Rip You Off Every Day-and What You Can Do About It by Bob Sullivan.

We all know that companies are…pretty much ripping us off on a daily basis. It’s not as if they don’t have the right to charge whatever they want, but they don’t have to be so bloody sneaky about it that you have no earthly idea how much something will end up costing you. In his book Sullivan points out that we all know about the $2-$3 fee for using another bank’s ATM, but what you may not know is that your bank could charge you another two or three dollars for the same transaction. So that $20 you took out has now essentially been instantly reduced to $15. We all sort of take this stuff for granted, because is it really worth getting your dander up over a measly $2? Maybe not, but that stuff adds, up, friends. From the book:

"You didn’t fill up the rental car with gas?Gotcha! Gas costs $7 a gallon here.
Your bank balance fell to $999.99 for one day?Gotcha! That’ll be $12.
You miss one payment on that 18-month same-as-cash loan?Gotcha! That’ll be $512 extra.
You’re one day late on that electric bill?Gotcha! All your credit cards now have a 29.99% interest rate."

That last is a bit of an exaggeration. But, your credit card account will “adjust” to a higher rate if you pay your bill late. Pay late twice in a 6-month period and it’ll be jacked up to that 29% rate, all right. Oh, plus the $35 fee each time. Plus the annual fee. And cash withdraw fee. Oh, and that cash APR will be much higher, too. And the “transaction fee” of 3% to use one of those “promo rate” checks. Also, when you pay your bill, your payment is first applied to any fees, then to the interest, then to the principle. And it goes to pay off the lowest interest rate first, if you have, say, some purchase on there made with a promo rate. I used to work for a credit card company. You ever wonder why they all have a Wilmington, Delaware address? Is “The First State” some kind of wonderland for financial institutions? Yes, actually; credit card companies are based out of Delaware because that state has no cap on how much they can charge you in interest. Oh, and we can say thanks to the former Republican Congress of 2006 for the butt-fucking fact that credit card debt can no longer be dismissed through bankruptcy.

Booking a hotel room is another big one. Since the advent of the internet companies have become aware that we can find the cheapest price for something just sitting at home. So they basically made it impossible for us to tell how much something really was. Hotels have taken to charging hidden booking fees, local phone and even room-to-room call fees, and at the Wynn in Las Vegas, well, they’ve just gone off the rails. The Wynn has mini bars in its rooms, just like anyplace, but if you even take something out to look at it, the Wynn will charge you for it if you don’t replace the item within 60 seconds. It has a little optical sensor and everything. Sweet tap-dancing Christ.

Bob Sullivan supposes there are probably a lot of companies that would love to do honest business. But we’re stuck in this kind of shame spiral because the ones who do can’t compete with the ones that hide their price behind a wall of fine print and bullshit. There was a hotel, for example, that started posting its true price for rooms on the internet. I’m sure you can guess what happened; their sales tanked. Customers were still paying the same amount to stay there as before, and the same or less than comparable hotels, but those other hotels hid their costs in fees for ice or what-the-shit ever. That’s the saddest goddamn thing I think I’ve ever heard.

We’ve become so inured to thinking that this is just the way things are we don’t even get upset about it anymore. And if you did, what could you do about it? Banks are probably the worst. Many banks now actually make more money on the fees they charge than from interest. Their entire business model has changed from making money through loans and finance to trying to figure out how much they can siphon off a dollar at a time before an angry mob of pitchfork-wielding villagers sacks the building.

I can relate. My wife and I have a checking, savings and credit card account at a certain bank which will remain nameless. Okay, I’ll give you a hint; it’s Bank of ___(the “A” in USA)___. Wanna transfer money between your savings and checking? Well that’s easy, convenient and free online, but don’t let your savings account drop below $300 or that’ll be $3, please! I used to pay my Bank of…somewhere credit card online, but since Hanni and I opened a checking account there, I can’t. Know why? Because my main checking account is at another bank, and once you get a BOA checking account you can no longer pay your credit card bill with any other account. Man…just…FUCK YOU!

At any rate, it’s an interesting read.



*They don’t actually have poorhouses anymore. But writing it makes me feel just so delightfully Dickensian.

Sources:

NPR – http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17898418

Amazon.com – http://www.amazon.com/Gotcha-Capitalism-Hidden-Every-Day/dp/0345496132

A Guy Walks Into a Brothel

A Guy Walks Into a Brothel…


1/10/08

Good evening Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea, let’s go to press! Dots and dashes and lots of flashes from city to city and coast to coast!* Here’s the news…oh, by the way, this was supposed to be posted yesterday, so here’s your discount, day-old news!


How Much to Fold the Laundry?

(WARSAW) I can think of fewer things sadder than a married man who chooses to frequent a brothel. Well, there is one thing that’s sadder; finding out that your wife is working there in her spare time.

That’s precisely what happened to a Polish man, according to the tabloid Super Express. Apparently his dear lady wife had told her husband she’d been getting all the extra money working in a nearby store. I guess she just neglected to tell him it was a vagina store.

“I was dumbfounded,” the man told Super Express. “I thought I was dreaming.” The unhappy couple had been in the shackles of holy matrimony for 14 years.

There is some good news, though! They’re getting a divorce. Rarely can I think of two people that so desperately should not be married.

*This is actually a famous Walter Winchell quote, not yours truly.

Source: NPR.org – Marriage Unravels After Meeting at Brothel
Yahoo News – What are you doing here?


Just Wind It Up & It'll Go!

(NEW DELHI) The Indian carmaker Tata Motors unveiled the its new car The Nano, yesterday at a New Delhi car show. The Nano is officially the world’s cheapest car, with a price tag of only $2500 US. You may have recently heard of Tata Motors Ltd, as they are negotiating to purchase the Jaguar and Land Rover brands from the demonic and floundering Ford Motor Co.

The Nano is actually a pretty sexy little number, if you consider vaguely egg-shaped objects sexy. It’s a 4-seater and doesn’t have a huge get-up-an-go, but it doesn’t need it. The Nano also sports no truck, as it’s a rear-engine vehicle. Even with taxes the Nano will go for about half of what the world’s former cheapest car from Maruti Suzuki costs. The cute little thing gets an impressive 45 miles per gallon. It’s designed for developing nations, such as India, China and Africa, who traditionally have relied on scooters, motorbikes and bicycles for locomotion. In India only 8 people in 1000 own cars, and The Nano is an attempt to not only tap a new market, but an effort to more safely get people around without having to pile 3 people and several hundred pounds of cargo onto a tiny scooter. And they do that. It’s friggin’ nuts.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSDEL00094120080110


Definition of Self-Delusion

(JERUSALEM) President Bush announced he was “confident” there will be a peace plan in place between Israel and the West Bank before he leaves office. He thinks there can be a peace, establishment of a Palestinian state, and an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which has been going on since 1967. Bush has reason to be confident, it having been a full 12 or 13 hours since a salvo of Katyusha rockets rained down into Israel. I wish that were a joke. Also, Israel won’t accept any peace negotiation that doesn’t include the Gaza Strip…which is controlled by Hamas. You may remember them as the terrorist group that violently overthrew Palestinian control of Gaza. Yeah, they’re the guys who don’t recognize Israel as a nation, and want it wiped off the planet. Sure, that should only take a year to hammer out, no problem.

Calling the President delusional at this point is rather like calling Hitler “a little angry,” but even for Bush, believing not only that there will be a Middle East peace, but that his influence means anything is delusion of epic proportions. “I am committed to doing all I can to achieve it,” were the President’s words.

I’m not sure exactly what in Dubya’s reputation makes his Swiss cheese of a diseased mind think he has any credibility in the Middle East. Which do you think carries more weight, his continued dick-waving behavior in the region, or the fact that this week was the first time he even bothered to visit the Israeli area in his 7-year tenure? Maybe it’s the fact that he pretty much ignores any country that either (a) doesn’t contain oil, or (b) that he doesn’t want to launch his next holy Crusade upon that makes him the perfect adjunct to this peace process.

Buy Me House, Glorp, Snoggle, Fnag

1/9/07


I’ve mentioned some of this material before, but this post has the joy of a ludicrously moronic Craigslist posting, so bear with me.

Anyone who has spoken to me for more than a few minutes is probably aware I’m a bit of a dick when it comes to grammar. It is physically painful for me to hear people butchering a language that is already the biggest bastard in the orphanage. Hearing some douchebag in a smelly muscle shirt insert non-existent R’s into the word “wash,” claim something literally happened which is beyond the scope of reality, use the word “ain’t”, or ask “where you at?” with that final word just dangling there like a dead, rotting herring, send me into fits of homicidal rage. Visions of attempting to cram an English textbook down their sic-spewing throats dance through my head like the singing movie snack advertisement.

It’s not that I’m elitist, snarky, or merely an asshole. Well, okay, I am all of those things, and it is them a little bit, but not mostly. Mostly it’s just the frustration that so few people don’t seem to give a shit how terrifically ignorant they sound. Whenever I bring up the fact that, hey, it’s Joe and me in this instance, they react as if I’m asking them to pour battery acid into their crotch. There’s this prevailing notion that grammar doesn’t matter. But it does, if only in the way others perceive you. I found this, for example, on a recent online posting:

"we have two houses that we would like to sell we have listed with two different
realtors and they could not sell none of them one realtor was dumber than a box
of rocks one house is 3bedroom 1 bath that needs fixed up it was priced at
49900.00 the other one is 2beedroom 1 bath with 24x24 shop and new furnace and
hot water heater newac system it was listed at 69900.00 one is at 2028 n benton
which is rented for 475.00 and the other one is at 2127 n lyon which we live in"

Great smoking horny toads! Upon reading this my eyes began to glaze over and I’m pretty sure I had a minor stroke. The right side of my face is still tingly. Leaving aside the fact that this entire post is a run-on sentence, nary a punctuation mark in sight, I love the fact that they refer to their realtor as “dumber than a box of rocks” right after the gem of a phrase “could not sell none” makes its ghastly appearance. It’s sort of like hearing Corky call someone a fucking retard. And what, was moving his pinky finger over to the Shift key just far too much effort? “I ain’t cap’tlizin’ sheeeeet. Fuck ‘em, man! Pass me them Twinkies, Murtle.”

Can you take an ad like this seriously? I’m not sure what the legal ramifications are when purchasing a house from the brain-damaged. This cat might be the smartest mongoloid on his block; he might even be a goddamn genius but you’d never know it because he writes and, likely, speaks as if the left hemisphere of his brain has been removed. Perception, people.

Why take the effort to speak properly? Because doing otherwise gives your listener an excuse to think you are an idiot, and conclude you don’t know what the bloody shit you’re talking about. It’s an excuse for people to dismiss you. If nothing else, maybe someday you’d like to make a first impression that doesn’t require you to end up banging the sleepy-eyed turd who smells like cheese because everyone with above a 4th grade vocabulary isn’t interested in your ignorant ass.

Of course, the amendment to this rule is that if you’re attractive enough, you’ll be forgiven anything and might as well go around just grunting and pointing whenever you want something.

Ryan's Lonely Xmas Eve 2007

Ryan's Lonely Xmas Eve 2007

I have no doubt you have all been anxiously awaiting my new lonely Xmas Eve video. Well...here you go, dear readers. Enjoy.

Warning: There is some PG-13 nudity. But really, what is Xmas without some butt-shots, huh? Watch with caution, ladies and gentlemen.