I hope he checked with Katie

White House spokeman Tony Snow was just diagnosed with a recurrence of Cancer that doesn't sound too good. I wish him well. He's got the toughest job in America, as chief spokeman for The Idiot. I just hope he has checked in with Katie Couric before making any career or family decisions. If you saw the interview with John & Elizabeth Edwards, you know it's now Katie's job to decide what is appropriate behavior and what people should think.

Are Bostonians ALL Complete Idiots?

First off, as a graphic designer, who has had to work with more than my share of marketing people over the years, I will state plainly that ALL MARKETING PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS. In fact, I've been working on a project for one all day today, which is why I didn't catch onto all of this Mooninite business till late this afternoon.

Clearly it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that strapping battery powered devices to bridges all over a city, might be cause for alarm by somebody!!

But how in hell did it take the entire apparatus of local, state and national government, and the mainstream media until 5:00 PM, after a full day of shutting down bridges, tying the city in complete knots, and blowing up electronic cartoon characters to figure out what was going on here. Seems like there were clues all over the place. I mean, there are pictures of this thing all over the internet, and the thing has been set up in 10 other cities for two weeks. Are Bostonians just particularly ignorant?

The most comical point in the whole day for me was Channel 7 blurring the finger (3 light bulbs) of the Mooninite so that no viewers would be offended. I'm just offended to live in such a completely nutjob society.

It feels drafty in here

Bush's Secy. Of Veteran Affairs: “I Think That Our Society Would Benefit” From Reinstating Draft...

Then of course he clarified "of course I don't support the draft"

But mark my words, it's going to happen. Plenty of talk lately about increasing the size of the military, but the draft is the elephant in the room. No one dare mention it, except maybe McCain. But with the mess Bush has made of the military and the state of the world, it's inevitable. It probably will be left to the next Democrat president to do it, thereby forcing the Democrats to get the blame for it, but it's coming down. And to my Republican friends, who like me, have a kid that will probably be just the right age to be affected some day, just rememberer that you twice voted for the bafoon that is the cause of it.

I'd Cry Too...

If my son had screwed up his country and his world as thoroughly as W has. I really feel bad for 41. He's obviously been in agony over this. Has known all along where this was going. But the man is loyal to family, even above country. It's a friggin shame. All W had to do was take one ounce of fatherly advise from the man who may not have been the best President in modern times, but was certainly the most qualified. But no, W only took advise from a higher father. That has got to be the most telling of all quotes this dunce has uttered.

I think W has all of his mother's genes anyway, not his Dad's.

Why are all my friends Republican?

Here is just a sampling of comments from my Republican friends after Tuesday's big thumpin'. For some reason I tend to have many more Republican friends than Democrats. They are all terribly misguided, but I can't seem to do anything about it. This doesn't even include the most anti-liberal, FOX News talking-point spewing, illegal alien fearing (although safely ensconced in alien-free Marblehead) Republican nut-job buddy, who I nearly came to blows with in a bar on the eve of the Iraq war when I correctly predicted just about everything that has happened over there. I have yet to hear from him, but have no doubt that there will be no change in his no-holds-barred anti-liberal tirades.

Anyways, here's a sampling of emails from the others.

• I suggest you start the process of getting your pistol permits to carry concealed weapons now. The Democrats are in power and as bad as Massachusetts is now, it will only get worse. May the dear lord take pity on Massachusetts; I almost puked last night listening to Ted Kennedy introduce the Devil. In fact, I couldn't listen; I turned off the TV, kissed my children and started battening down the hatches. This is Jericho.


• These guys are in over their head. Just wait a few years after we've paid higher taxes and on the surface a few social/ education programs look a little better (as might the economy) We'll also have a deficit of 4 billion instead of 2. By the time his or Murray's term is over (Patrick is out of here if a Democrat is elected into the Oval Office), it will be 1989 all over again, our economy will be in the tank and more people will be out of work. Not to mention the criminal pardons. Cranky, you will rue the day you decided to go back to the dark side.

At least one is only a wishy-washy Republican.

• You know I voted for Healey but to be honest, I held my nose while doing it.

In addition to this, my brother-in-law persueded (certainly with some help of the race card) his normally Democratic 85 year-old mother of all the scarry things that could happen if Patrick was elected & drove her to the polls so she could vote against the Dems.

Jeeze, I need to do something about my political circle of friends. I guess this is the perils of living in the suburbs. But if you judged me by my friends and relatives, you might think I lived in Mississippi, not Massachusetts.

I can't get rid of my Kerry cookie

On a day of almost uniform good news: Democrats taking control of the House, and possibly Senate. Rumsfeld resigning. The end of the Romney error. On a great day for a liberal-leaning news junkie, my web browser, and MSNBC is playing dirty dricks on me. Every time I go there I am greated with the above banner from two weeks ago. The day when our dufus Senator stuck his foot in his mouth and gave rise to the insecurity and fear of every Democrat that, just like the Red Sox, they were going to find a way to blow it in the bottom of the 9th. If I refresh, I get the current good news, but every time I go back to get any updates, I'm greeted by Senetor Dufus again, and for an instant think yesterday was only a dream.

More "Freedom Fries" Silliness

Remember all the idiot restaurant owners a few years ago that were serving Freedom Fries instead of French Fries after France refused to go along with Bush's Iraq madness? Gee, that really showed old Jacques Chirac that we Americans mean business. Pretty obvious who was right about that one, huh?

So now some Boston City Councilor and a local talk radio nitwit want to tear down the Kenmore Square Citgo sign and put up a giant American flag to protest Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's UN speech. In case you missed it, the Venezuelan nutjob said on the floor of the UN that Bush was the Devil and needed to see a psychiatrist (I personally think he hit the mark on this one). Apparently Citgo is owned by the Venezuelan government.

Whenever a foreign government dares to disagree with or criticize the American government, there are always plenty of bozos ready to step up, and play right into the stereotype of the ignorant American, aren't there. "Here's a big raspberry to you, Chavez. That'll learn ya."

Public School Silliness Part 1

My kid started kindergarten this week, and so begins my education into ridiculous government regulations. Actually it started somewhat in preschool with my introduction to the concept of peanut-free schools.

Well my son's new elementary school isn't peanut-free, only peanut sensitive. But it is newly homemade bakes goods free, No more bake sales. We got the official regulation today. No goods baked at home will be allowed for any school events. All foods must be prepackaged or cooked in a "licensed kitchen," meaning a restaurant, grocery store, or bakery. So it''s OK to go to the bakery at Stop and Shop, or presumably even Dunkin Donuts, and buy cookies and bring them in. But you are not allowed to bake your own brownies for the school bake sale. What would Betty Crocker say?

Now I first assumed that this ridiculousness was a product of the Massachusetts Democratic Legislature (remember Fluff madness?). But no, it's a new Federal Regulation signed by George W called the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act.

I'll bet if you follow that legislation back, that somewhere there is a trail of large donations to Senators from the Bakers' Union or whatever lobbying group represents bakery owners. Just gotta cut off that competition from Aunt Betty making her own brownies for the school bake sale. It's threatening bakery owners everywhere.

It's a Fluff Circus

Can't we all just stop talking about Fluff and get along?

• No kids shouldn't be served Fluffernutters every day for school lunch.


• No, our legislators shouldn't be spending time making laws to this effect.


• No, the Fluffernutter shouldn't be the state sandwich.


• Can't you all just get back to important issues like flag burning, and let talk radio get back to immigrant hysteria.

I sort of feel responsible for this, because Sunday at the beach (the day before Fluffmania started) I got all Cambridgey and scolded the wife for bringing Fluffernutters for the kids.

You Call This RAPID Transit?

I used to be a regular MBTA Commuter Rail and subway rider, so I am very accustomed to Boston's dysfunctional system- especially the Green Line and North Station. Both are jokes.

I've mentioned here before the absurdity of building an all new transportation hub (North Station) that is used by thousands of commuters a day (in addition to serving as the entry area to a 20,000 seat stadium) that has a 15 foot wide waiting area, and one two-stall bathroom located at the furthest possible point from the train platforms. The place is an absolute joke.

And when I worked in the city, I generally would walk from the Back Bay to North Station because the chances were 50/50 that you would beat the Green Line by walking. At least you knew how long it would take if you walked.

So yesterday I took the train in to the Red Sox game. The commuter rail ride from my home on the North Shore is only about a half hour, half of which is spent negotiating the track switching area along the final mile. It used to be that the biggest bottleneck of the trip, and the reason I usually avoided taking the train to such events was having to use the decrepit elevated Green Line station, and having to wait in line at the single booth for a token.

But hey, I figured, I know there is a spiffy new subway station, there is the much hyped Charlie Card. And it's 2006. Boston must finally have caught up with the times, and there must be token machines galore.

Well that was giving much too much credit to this stupid annoying city.

Came out of the train station, and entered the gleaming new combined Green and Orange Line station, and sure enough, a line stretched nearly out the door to the SINGLE token booth manned by the same slow lazy, government union worker type that was always manning the single token booth in the old elevated station. Not a token machine or Charlie Card machine in sight.

That's Boston. They can build new multi-million dollars stations, increase prices regularly, but they can't figure out that at one of the busiest subways stations in the system on the day of a Red Sox game, they could probably use more options for selling tokens than one slow fat man.

Then, of course, once through the token line, it was 15 minutes till a train came, when one came it was an E train that didn't go to Fenway, and the thing creaked along at 2 miles an hour the whole way. Finally just got out and walked.

House of Card

So Bush's Chief of Staff Andrew Card resigned today. Can somebody tell me what this guy did anyways? You never heard him talk. Most Chief of Staffs are much more visible, aren't they? The only thing I ever remember him being personally involved in was interrupting Bush while he was reading My Pet Goat on September 11.

Karl Rove was supposedly the Deputy Chief of Staff, but you certainly heard a lot more about him.

That seems to be the way the Bush Administration works.

• Andrew Card was Chief of Staff, but Karl Rove is really Chief of Staff


• Bush is President, but Cheney is really President.


• Rumsfeld is Secretary of Defense, but the "brains" (term used VERY loosely) behind the Iraq war was really his deputy Paul Wolfowitz.

It's kinda like the Wizard of Oz, huh. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Land of the Caretaker Governors

Raise your hands if you really believe Mitt Romney isn't running for President. He just came in second in the first 2008 straw poll, and has been on a national tour trashing Massachusetts for the past year. Come on. Mitt only came back from Utah to run for Governor, because he saw an easy victory, and a great platform to run for President.

Jane Swift was a joke. She was only governor because Paul Cellucci got bored of the job halfway through his first full term, and rode off to become Ambassador to Canada. Cellucci only became Governor because Bill Weld got bored of the job before him. And they kept winning elections just because the Democrats kept serving up horrible candidates (as they are well on their way to doing again) and making the case for divided government every day by their actions in the State House. Hey, I even voted for all of these guys.

If you are in favor of term limits, then the Massachusetts governor's office is your kind of place. Want your candidate to take a pledge to serve only two terms? How bout a pledge just to finish one term?

It's been this way ever since Bill Weld rode into the Governor's office in the Silber Shocker filled election of 1990. At least Weld, Cellucci, and even Swift made some attempt to act interested in the job for a while. Despite his transparent denials, Mitt has been running for President since the day he announced he was running for Governor.

Maybe this time we can elect someone who really wants to be Governor of Massachusetts.

You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie

Turns out Bush may have been right about something for once. The video released yesterday of a briefing of President Bush by former FEMA Director Michael Brown immediately before Katrina hit, shows Brown fully engaged, fully aware of the potential catastrophe approaching, and hauntingly accurate as far as his predictions of what could happen. Maybe his training as International Arabian Horse Association commissioner did some good afterall. Certainly more than Bush's qualifications to be President (remind me again what those qualifications were?) Bush asked not a single question during the briefing, yet assured local authorities that the Government was fully prepared to handle the situation.

Then of course weeks later, Bush, along with Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff would deny that there was any way the scope of the disaster could have been anticipated, and would set Brownie up to be the scapegoat.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

I'm real cranky today. This Cheney gun thing has brought out madness all around.

Cheney and the White House bunglers, as usual, look like complete buffoons. No more needs to be said on that side.

The mainstream press is blowing the whole thing way out of proportion, because they smell blood (literally). They are still trying to make up for being lapdogs, and NOT asking the right questions BEFORE the invasion of Iraq, when we really needed them too.

And then idiot pundits on the left, personified best by Paul Begala, just prove that as horrible as the Bush administration is, that the Democrats have no better plan, and might even be worse. I mean, how can you be so bad, that the country would have elected Bush and Cheney twice!

See Scott Squirm

This guy has got has got to be the worst press secretary ever. I'm just watching the nightly episode of "Beat Up Scott" on Countdown. Olbermann fills about six minutes of air time every night, just showing the press beating this guy up. Tonight is particularly entertaining since the subject is Cheney's gun accident.

I wasn't old enough to really remember Ron Ziegler, Nixon's press secretary during Watergate too well, but some days lately, Scott seems to be channeling him.

His answer to every question is "You'll have to check with [fill in the blank's] office", or "I don't have that information". He just stands up there looking like the Pillsbury Dough Boy, getting barraged by the press about whatever the day's particular scandal is. I'm not really saying this just because I hate Bush. He's completely over his head, and does not help Bush out at all. If anything, he helps the other side by being so bad, and letting the press corps get all riled up. I can't believe that any Republican would think this guy helps them out at all.

His predecessor Ari Fleischer was a master at handling the press, and stonewalling. He certainly had a more docile press corps at that point, but there was some tension during the run up to the Iraq War, and he just knocked the press right back to the ground when they even attempted to get tough.

Here's are a couple pretty funny websites devoted to Scott:

• First one is an animated parody of a McClellan press conference.


• Second one, is a site called We Love Scott McClellan. At first glance it seems to obviously be mocking him, but the more I read it, I'm not really sure. I think it might actually be a fan club. Can't really tell where the creator is coming from. Pretty funny to look at.

Trigger Happy Cheney

Here's the story:
Cheney Accidentally Shoots Fellow Hunter

Comedians are going to have a field day with this one. Here are a few of the jokes I've read already on the web. Most of these are from here.

• Cheney was just upset that the ducks weren't greeting him as a liberator


• Cheney's blaming the hunter he shot for not alerting him that he was in his line of fire. "It's the intelligence, stupid"


• Maybe if Cheney hadn't gotten all those deferments, he could actually shoot straight

Bush's simplistic slogans

Who needs a coherent policy on anything when you can boil every issue, no matter how complicated or controversial, down to three or four words, that nobody could possibly be against, and slap them up behind W. Then morons watching the news can say, "Yeah, he really does have a plan for victory. Look, the sign says it." Or, "You know what? I am an American and I am favor of jobs. This guy is alright." Not, many people are gonna say, "No, let's break our promise to Grandma," or "No, I think our schools are strong enough already. Let's weaken them."

These signs have followed Bush everywhere, almost since the beginning of his presidency. You may not understand what the hell he is talking about, but all you have to do is look at the sign, to know he is your man. Promoting a policy for the Republicans is no different than selling fast food. I'm lovin' it.

Of course, who could forget Bush's most infamous banner. The Mission Accomplished banner hung on the USS Abraham Lincoln, the night Bush delivered his speech announcing that major hostilities in Iraq were over. Let's see, that was about three years ago. Gee, the White House website seems to have gone to particular pains to scrub that banner from its page about that event. I'm surprised they still have the flight-jacket photo up there.

What's this cartoon protester thing all about?

I usually like to think I'm pretty aware of what's going on in the world, but sometimes life is so busy that I just miss stuff. Like I have no idea what this cartoon protester thing is about. I've seen headlines on my home page, and caught two-second blurbs about it on the radio. But with two little kids, I rarely have time to see any of the national network news. I usually catch a few minutes of a right wing slant of the news on talk radio on my way home. I try to watch part of Countdown to get the leftward slant of the news. I watch the late local news, which mainly just covers car crashes and local scandals. So sometimes a week goes by, where all I know is the headline, and right now, this is what I picture when I hear cartoon protesters. Maybe I'm spending too much time blogging.

Will you both please shut up

I think I'm going to have to find some room on the top 10 suck list for one or both of these guys. Our distinguished and embarrassing senators from Massachusetts. George Bush will always be number one until the day he is impeached, resigns, or we somehow survive another three years of his presidency & get the clown out of there. But if the Democrats are ever again to win a national election, they must pledge to never again let either of these guys come within 100 yards of a camera or microphone. And remember, this is coming from a "Massachusetts Liberal" who voted for Kerry (before I voted against him).

Since this blog is supposed to be light, and not too political, lets focus on the comedy of it. Kerry calling a press conference and calling for a filibuster of Alito's nomination, long after it's clear that the fight is over (you lost the election, moron) from Switzerland. Only thing that could have made him look like more of an idiot, would be if he were in France.

And Kennedy's trying to be taken seriously blabbing unintelligibly about Alito for two weeks, while comedians are having a field day with his new children's book about his dog Splash. This guy will never be able to be taken seriously.

I swear, these two must have moles inside their offices working for David Letterman or John Stewart. You couldn't make this stuff up.

Am I being spied on, already?

I've been bloggin' for a week. A week! Just supposed to be stupid stuff about crappy toys and annoying stuff on TV. Posted a couple Bush paradies and they are after me already. Already! Government addresses in Arlington Virginia are popping up in my site stats. Really. You'd think they could block that out. Oh well, time to go back to non-political stuff anyways. It's more fun. Parady probably isn't protected speech any more since September 11.

Come to think of it, I did send a link to my buddy in Ireland. International Communications. Uh-Oh.