Wait until all the facts are in before judging

No, I'm not talking about the Rod Blagoyovich scandal, although that's an example of what I'm talking about. Blagoyovich tried to sell Barack Obama's senate seat, and there was a firestorm of controversy about it. (Too bad Fitzgerald didn'twait until he'd actually *sold* the seat before taking action, so both Blagoyovich and the man who bought it could be put in jail.)

But, the thing is, as the firestorm has waned, the truth has come out - which is that Rod Blagoyovich, dishonest as he is, did nothing that every other politician doesn't do - "horse trading" - exchanging positions for favors. Blagoyovich should go to jail, sure, but so should every other politician - they're all crooks, and shame on us for putting up with it.

But, what I'm talking about is a case in Phoenix Arizona. A cat was stuck in a tree in a police officer's yard for 8 days. The cop wouldn't let people onto his property to get the cat. I just saw a video about this, which presents everything from the side of the cat's owner, etc and makes the cop look like a jerk.

Then I checked a news article, which points out the cat is now rescued and is fine, but people are so incensed by the story that they're sending death threats to the cop and, very bravely, scrawling threatening messages on his sidewalk.

http://www.abc15.com/content/news/phoenixmetro/story/Man-claims-Phoenix-officer-wouldnt-let-him-rescue/uSDXo0vALEiuKVsvSvFUfA.cspx

is the link.

And if you look at it from the cop's point of view, he does have a point. If people come in to his yard trying to get that cat, and fall off their ladders and get hurt - they will sue him for everything he has.

Even if they sign waivers promising they won't, the courts will still allow them to do so - this has been documented in several cases.

How many innocent people have lost their life savings because some teenagers disregarded "NO trespassing" signs, walked onto private property, and stepped on a power line or something and got killed, and were still awarded millions of dollars because of the "negligence" of the homeowner.

There was the case of a train yard, a couple of years ago. Two teenagers broke in, past lots of signs saying No Trespassing and Danger, and touched some electrical wires, burning them so badly that I think they actually lost some limbs. And of course it was all the train yard's fault for being negligent, and they had to pay a ton of money to these people.

Pretty soon private pilots are going to be taxed and insured out of business. If a pilot crashes his plane in a populated area, and kills someone, the survivors of that person will be able to sue not only the pilot's estate but also the makers of the plane as well, in order to get their money! Crap!

We're on the slipperly slope to total destruction, I'm afraid...

Rush Limbaugh - the early years

Pretty interesting 10 minute video - he looks a heckuva lot better now that he's dropped about a hundred pounds.

Discusses his history in talk radio.

Paul Shanklin

I've been getting a LOT of hits about Paul Shanklin in the last few days, ever since a couple of Republicans expressed their distaste for his parody song, Barack the Magic Negro.

Well, keep on coming! And if the wealth hasn't been spread your way, pick up what you need on Ebay - using my links on this blog. ; )

The problem with Barack Obama is that he's a socialist, and he intends to turn the US into more of a welfare state than the Democrats have already turned it into. This is bad.

On the other hand, if it can get various minorities out of their ghettos, and in to learning proper English so they can get good jobs and move into the middle class and truly become integrated into American society instead of being separatist (as the Rev Wright seemed to preach), that can only be a good thing.

New Weight Loss Blog

If you're in despair over your weight gain this holiday season, don't be.

I've started a blog that will help you lose weight - and keep it off.

Check out:

http://minisculeweightlossguide.blogspot.com/

Don't start nothing, there won't be nothing

For weeks, Hamas has been sending rockets into Israel. Killing innocent people. (I don't remember any news articles about this, by the way, no sob stories of Israeli dads cradling dead children and vowing revenge on Hamas).

Last night, Isreal, after warning Gaza repeatedly, retaliated.

So the news today is all about how civilians were killed as well as Hamas people, and how fathers are cradling their dead sons and vowing death to Israel.

And I'm like, do you think the fact that your country has been sending rockets into Israel for the last few weeks might have a little something to do with what just happened?

Or, since these people are probably illiterate, do their immans just tell them that Gaza has been sitting their peacefully for several weeks and Israel made an unprovoked attack on them?

Let's face it - there will never be any peace in the Middle East. Just as with any other ethnic strife...people's hatred is just too virulent, and the joy of killing just too great, and the fact that both sides of these ethnicities apparently believe in God...a god who would allow this butchery for 4,000 years... just goes to show that religion is the great divider.

Obama apologizes to Nancy Reagan for seance remark

It will be interesting to see if Hannity and Limbaugh, not to mention Boortz, make hay with this on Monday. It's so trivial that i doubt that they will, but we'll see.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081108/ap_on_el_pr/obama_seances

Obama's POTENTIAL Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel

[This post has been edited to add links to two books about Rahm Emanuel from Amazon.com. If you want to know what to expect from this guy (and the article below isn't information enough for ya), check out these books.]




This is what Rush Limbaugh had to say about Rahm Emanuel (and can someone riddle me this. If this guy had done the steak knife thing, and had been anything other than a politician, would he or would he have not gone to jail or at the very least had a psych evaluation?)

Also, this notion of governing from the center? His first appointment, his chief of staff is Rahm Emanuel. Do we know if Emanuel has accepted? Rahm Emanuel wants to be Speaker of the House. Let me tell you a little bit about Rahm Emanuel. Hillary Clinton hates him. In the White House, Rahm Emanuel pushed NAFTA and made that go first instead of her health care baby, and her health care baby suffered. There's no love lost between Rahm Emanuel and Hillary Clinton, and he is good a old-fashioned Chicago thug just like Obama is a good old-fashioned Chicago thug. On the night of the Clinton election, Rahm Emanuel was so angry at the president's enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign; Rahm Emanuel grabbed a steak knife and he began rattling off a list of betrayers.

As he listed their names, he shouted, "Dead! Dead! Dead!" and he plunged the steak knife into the table after every name.

And from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/us/politics/06emanuel.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

After President-elect Barack Obama ran a nearly flawless 21-month campaign, Democrats are second-guessing one of his first and most important postelection decisions: Why is he asking Representative Rahm Emanuel — "Rahmbo," one of the capital’s most in-your-face partisan actors — to be his chief of staff?

A second question has the political networks abuzz: Why would Mr. Emanuel, now on a ladder potentially to be speaker of the House someday, take the job?

For both men, who are close friends from Chicago, the answers capture their separate calculations as to how best to seize the historic moment. In the decisive election of the nation’s first African-American president, they see a mandate to push through actual change — as opposed to campaign slogans — in the nation’s domestic and foreign policies.

Interestingly, Emanuel is an investment banker who made millions of dollars, and is one of those who helped "negotiate" the mortgage lender bailout of a few weeks ago. (You know, the one the Democrats caused by refusing to add oversight to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and then managed to successfully blame the Bush administration for?)

Mr. Emanuel, who turns 49 this month, knows the White House, having been a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton. In a brief career as an investment banker after that, he made millions and became familiar with Wall Street; in the House, he helped negotiate the government bailout of the financial system that the next president inherits.

How could he have made millions of dollars in a "brief career" as an investment banker, unless he was getting some help from some influential people, eh?

and

But there's the matter of his temperament — or, as Mr. Emanuel says, "I swear a lot." He also yells a lot, and in his sentences his favorite expletive can serve as subject, verb or adjective when he is facing down either recalcitrant Democrats or Republican opponents. As the House Democrats' campaign chairman for 2006, he swore at Hispanic and African-American House members, nearly all of whom had safe seats, to contribute more of their personal campaign finances to the party effort. Speaker Nancy Pelosi intervened to smooth things over.

To many Democrats, including some who are close to both men, Mr. Obama's choice of Mr. Emanuel to run the White House seems at odds with the atmosphere Mr. Obama enforced at his Chicago campaign headquarters. The motto there was "No drama with Obama," in contrast with the backbiting and shakeups in rivals' campaigns.

and

House Republicans are said to hate Mr. Emanuel for his partisanship, and on Wednesday, the former Florida congressman Joe Scarborough said on his cable television show that Mr. Obama’s enlistment of Mr. Emanuel amounted to "politics as usual" when the president-elect had promised conciliation.