Saturday, January 26, 2008

speaking of end times...

Currently in the eye of the storm...

It's the end of the world as we know it

Satellite is weeks away from hitting Earth

The satellite, which no longer can be controlled, could contain hazardous materials, and it is unknown where on the planet it might come down, they said.

But not to worry, our government is on the ball, as always...

"Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation," said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

Friday, January 25, 2008

sounds like they're turning a corner

Iraq ready for "final" battle with al Qaeda: PM

Next Shocker: A Picture of Fung and Tony Rezko

"Today" show host Matt Lauer asked presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton on Friday if she has a connection to indicted developer Tony Rezko after flashing an undated photo of the two posing with President Bill Clinton.

"You were attacking Senator Obama, in particular, his work connected to what was a so-called a slumlord in Chicago, a guy named Tony Rezko," Lauer said. "You can't see what I'm going put up on the screen ... but it is a picture of you and your husband Bill Clinton posing with that same man."

finally, some good news

EXXON MOBIL SET TO ANNOUNCE RECORD PROFITS

Barack-tober is coming!

Barack Obama's Top Ten Campaign Promises

The complete Top Ten List, as read by Obama:
10. To keep the budget balanced, I’ll rent the situation room for sweet sixteens.
9. I will double your tax money at the craps table.
8. Appoint Mitt Romney secretary of lookin’ good.
7. If you bring a gator to the White House, I’ll wrassle it.
6. I’ll put Regis on the nickel.
5. I’ll rename the tenth month of the year “Barack-tober.”
4. I won’t let Apple release the new and improved Ipod the day after you bought the previous model.
3. I’ll find money in the budget to buy Letterman a decent hairpiece.
2. Pronounce the word nuclear, nuclear.
1. Three words: Vice President Oprah.

dat settles it... i am voting for Barack

Electoral Compass USA

Barack Obama
You are 13% economic left
You are 3% more traditional
You have a substantive agreement of 81%

John Edwards
You are 8% economic left
You are 9% more progressive
You have a substantive agreement of 74%

Hillary Clinton
You are 3% economic left
You are 14% more progressive
You have a substantive agreement of 70%

Ron Paul
You are 56% economic left
You are 30% more progressive
You have a substantive agreement of 46%*

Rudy Giuliani
You are 61% economic left
You are 49% more progressive
You have a substantive agreement of 39%*

John McCain
You are 53% economic left
You are 63% more progressive
You have a substantive agreement of 39%*

Mitt Romney
You are 63% economic left
You are 63% more progressive
You have a substantive agreement of 38%*

Mike Huckabee
You are 58% economic left
You are 69% more progressive
You have a substantive agreement of 33%*

Fred Thompson (withdrawn)**
You are 61% economic left
You are 78% more progressive
You have a substantive agreement of 28%*

* holy phokking s#i+
** but folksly

they still don't get it... you're a puppet, ok?

News item: With its international mandate in Iraq set to expire, the Bush administration will insist that the government in Baghdad give the United States broad authority to conduct combat operations and hold battlefield detainees, as well as guarantee American troops and civilian contractors immunity from Iraqi law, according to administration and military officials.

This negotiating position faces a potential buzz saw of opposition from Iraq, with its fragmented Parliament, weak central government and deep sensitivities about being seen as a dependent state, these officials said.

when does this model extend to the whole ballpark (cont'd)?

Sell-you-lar Field: Sox auction seats

"There are people who can't afford to pay for season tickets in these areas but they may be willing to win an auction once or twice. It gives people an opportunity to sit in a seat they might not be able to."*

* If you're a plutocrat

Thursday, January 24, 2008

there's a lot to be learned here

Rap Lyrics Explained With Charts and Graphs

Al Gore's Biggest Mistake

Putting this jackass on the ticket...

Lieberman Joins McCain’s Campaign…Officially

it was inevitable

I was going to vote for Obama anyway, since i think he'll be fighting an uphill battle out here against Hillary and her lying liar husband, but still...

Kucinich drops out of White House bid

However, he'll get to spend more time with his hot wife, so it ain't all bad for The Martian.

what a totally phokked up country we live in

Heath Ledger attacked over Brokeback Mountain role

I know one fucking thing, if i saw this piece-of-shit-talent-free-Fox-Noise-asshole-host John Gibson on the street i would start punching his face in and not stop until there was nothing there.

this is probably nothing to worry about

You could probably get 50,000 scientists to say almost anything.

The Warning From 50,000 Scientists: Earth's Climate Is Unbalanced

Clip & Save


player most likely to be run over by a bus

Nick Johnson has "no remaining physical limitation" after missing all of last season with a broken leg. Johnson, who has been working out in Sacramento, had his recovery slowed by a titanium rod that was inserted in his hip. The rod was causing him pain, but has since been removed, and Johnson is expected to be ready for Opening Day. Whether he wins a starting job over Dmitri Young remains to be seen.

SHOCKING

Bush, before:
“I believe it is the job of a President to confront problems, not pass them on to future Presidents and future generations.”


Bush, now:
The White House confirmed Wednesday that its new budget next month will not request a full year’s funding for the war in Iraq, leaving the next president and Congress to confront major cost questions soon after taking office in 2009.


Then there is the fact BushCo put most of the war on the nation's credit card, which we'll all be paying off for decades. Thanks, fuckers.

new study: global warming may be good for you

Global warming reducing hurricanes in U.S., report says

when does this model extend to the whole ballpark?

Sneed has learned the best new seats in the house at Wrigley Field, also known as the 70 new "bullpen box seats" scheduled to be built next to the dugout along the third base line, will be auctioned off to the highest bidder! Exclamation point!

The upshot: "That way, everyone will have an equal shot at purchasing a seat within smelling distance of the chewing tobacco in the dugout,"* a Sneed tipster said.

* If you're a plutocrat

The only thing Rick Majerus has led astray are fat phokks to the buffet table.

Majerus gets heat over pro-choice remark

ST. LOUIS – A Roman Catholic archbishop said yesterday that he will ask officials of Saint Louis University to take “appropriate action” against its basketball coach, who said in a television interview that he supports abortion rights. One of the game's winningest coaches, Rick Majerus made the comment at a weekend rally for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke declined to say what the action against Majerus should be, saying that was a decision for the Jesuit university. “I'm concerned that a leader at a Catholic university made these comments. It can lead Catholics astray,” Burke said by telephone as he attended March for Life anti-abortion events in Washington. “I just believe that it's of the essence for people to understand as a Catholic you just cannot hold these beliefs.”

Create Your Own Caption

But not dis one: "Governor makes hasty exit without answering questions about legal bills"

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Winter is a cruel mistress.

Guess what Smiff had to walk home in tonight? No, not flying monkeys but POURING RAIN. Well, i did hear that rain was in "the forecast," but yesterday when they predicted SLEET and it was sunny all day. So i left the umbrella at home. Not only were my feet wet, but every inch of me was soaked through to the bone! Since they got one right for the first time in months (on July 8th they said it would be sunny), the local weather mafia, led by the brain-dead John Coleman, were seen partying into the night, bar-hopping through the Gaslamp. Well, party on, frauds! You'll got yours (look for my forthcoming class action suit), much like the Bush Administration. After BushCo., there is no group more incompetant or infested with rampant corruption than weather "forecasters."

Who's to blame: Fung, dats who

Zydrunas Ilgauskas hit 10-of-10 shots from the floor on Wednesday for 24 points, six rebounds, four assists and three blocks in an easy win over the Wizards. Big Z was great tonight and was playing through a bruised shin. Obviously, he had no problems with the shin, or Brendan Haywood, tonight.

The Rochester Zeniths would have been reaping the fruits of this labor if i didn't have to sit players because no one, like, oh, Commissioner Fung, told me about the asinine "maximum games" rule until a third of the way through the season (an obvious conspiracy to keep Smiff from finishing in the money in anudder Yahoo league...). So i wasted a bunch of games early in the season on players i shouldn't have been playing. If i do anything in this league it will be to finish ahead of Parcers' Bud Lite, a Zimbabwean used car salesman from Chicago...

anudder Smiff who's solid, smart, of high character, integrity...don't laugh

Falcons hire Jaguars' defensive coordinator Mike Smith

ATLANTA (AP) -- The Atlanta Falcons hired Jacksonville defensive coordinator Mike Smith as their new head coach Wednesday night. "Mike possesses all of the key qualities we were looking for in a head coach," said general manager Thomas Dimitroff, in his first month on the job. Dimitroff said the 48-year-old Smith, a 26-year NFL coaching veteran, "has strong experience with winning teams, a track record of success, a solid, smart approach to the game, and high character and integrity."

Smith, the Jaguars' defensive coordinator since 2003, had his second interview with the Falcons on Friday. He has never been an NFL head coach, but Falcons quarterback Byron Leftwich, who was with Smith in Jacksonville for four years, says Atlanta made the right choice. "I've played against his defense more than anybody in the world," Leftwich said. "I did it every day in practice for four years. I think he's a great guy for the job. "A lot of people might not know his name, but I've seen the work he puts in every game, how guys were so prepared on Sundays that they knew exactly what teams were going to do."

Smith, a former defensive assistant with Baltimore, had the league's No. 12 defense with Jacksonville this season after ranking second in 2006 and sixth in 2005. Leftwich said Smith would never receive enough credit in Jacksonville because many assumed Jaguars coach Jack Del Rio, a former defensive coordinator, was the real mastermind of the defense.

Jaguars defensive end Marcellus "The Asshole" Wiley confirmed that opinion when he said on ESPN Wednesday, "Jack Del Rio was the defensive coordinator, and if it wasn't him, it was (linebacker) Mike Peterson. "Wiley said Smith "was just a guy who stood at the front of the room when Jack Del Rio was leading the defense." Wiley said the Falcons "really went down low on the totem pole." WHO THE PHOKK IS MARCELLUS WILEY?

Leftwich said he was aware of the Wiley's comments but said of Smith: "I was with him for four years. Somebody had to be calling those plays in Jacksonville. It was him. "We always said Smitty would be a great head coach because the time he put in and the way he interacted with players and how seriously he took his job."

Congressional Republicans sustain Dumbya's message to poor kids: "Why don't you phokkers just die already."

Republicans Sustain Bush’s S-CHIP Veto

The House [debated] the override of the President’s veto of the revised bipartisan SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) bill. The President’s veto on December 12 denied health care to children of hardworking families across America just as the country began experiencing an economic downturn, with families increasingly struggling with the costs of heat, food, gas and health care*.

* Yeah...so? There are plenty of bridges out there for people to live under. Or get that phokker Jimmy Carter to build them one big house in Wyoming or somewhere. What the economy really needs is more give-aways and set-asides for multinational corporations - what don't these phokking poor kids get together and become one of these? Then they would have lots of money, get HYOOOGE tax cuts and wouldn't need "socialized medicine." Phokking kids, while you're at it, get off my damn property!

Somebody Counted...

Study: Bush team used 935 falsehoods to justify war

Rezzzidunce Bush has done wonders for the Nation's military (cont'd)

News item: The percentage of new recruits entering the Army with a high school diploma dropped to a new low in 2007, according to a study released yesterday, and Army officials confirmed that they have lowered their standards to meet high recruiting goals in the middle of two ongoing wars.

The study by the National Priorities Project concluded that slightly more than 70 percent of new recruits joining the active-duty Army last year had a high school diploma, nearly 20 percentage points lower than the Army's goal of at least 90 percent.

The National Priorities Project, a Massachusetts-based research group that examines the impact of federal budget policies and has been outspoken against the Iraq war, said the number of high school graduates among new recruits fell from 83.5 percent in 2005 to 70.7 percent last year.

"The trend is clear," said Anita Dancs, the project's research director, who based the report on Defense Department data released via the Freedom of Information Act. "They're missing their benchmarks, and I think it's strongly linked to the impact [of] the Iraq war."

The study also found that the number of "high quality" recruits -- those with both a high school diploma and a score in the upper half on the military's qualification test -- has dropped more than 15 percent from 2004 to 2007. After linking the recruiting data to Zip codes and median incomes, it found that low- and middle-income families are supplying far more Army recruits than families with incomes greater than $60,000 a year...

but didn't Hemingway smoke?

Cigarette Pack-Shaped Books Get British American Tobacco Steamed

"British American Tobacco, however, claims that the book containing the Hemingway classics "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "The Undefeated" too closely resembles a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes. BAT believes the association could threaten the health of its brand."

Create the headline!

What would the members of the LoC (and anyone else) come up with for the title for a post that includes the following link:

Hilton: Spears is 'great mother'

Kettle calling the pot black? Dumb and Dumbererererererer? Stooooooooooopid?

Winner gets, er, em, a free guide when they decide to visit Andrew Young's Zimbabwe Rhodesia.

How does last night's Dem debate relate to Smiff?

Barack Obama mentioned in Tom Brokaw's new book, Boom!: Voices of the Sixties Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today, that Hillary Clinton praises Ronald Reagan (Hillary, how could you!?). On the cover of the book, there is a picture of Hillary next to a picture of Andrew Young. On his show tonight, Stephen Colbert told the story of a strike by black nurses in Charleston, South Carolina in 1969. The strike was ended when Andrew Young, representing the nurses, negotiated with a hospital official, Colbert's father James.

Several years later (1974, i think), Young, then a Congressman from Georgia, appeared on The Today Show (w/ Brokaw? don't remember) on Martin Luther King Day with my father (i got to stay home from school to watch it). Young later became the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under Jimmy Carter, where "His greatest contribution was helping end segregation in Zimbabwe Rhodesia." (so says Wikipedia)

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Did someone wake him to let him know he dropped out?

News Item: Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson quit the Republican presidential race on Tuesday, after a string of poor finishes in early primary and caucus states.

Seeya, @sshole.

Chicago



Neat looking map, though i'm not sure how accurate it is. Judging by the comments, not very (as usual, da Sout' Side gets short shrifted). Also, read the description for an alternate history of Chicago (nearly everything is wrong here..."striped skunk"?).

Let Freedom Ring

$20 by M.I.A. is the best goddamn song ever.

And I think Fung should marry her.

As well, I got an awesome offer on my gmail today: Find where the imperialism already happened...and move there.

Monday, January 21, 2008

A Real Holiday

No shopping to help the economy, feeding our faces, fireworks, or whatever happens on Labor Day...
I was curious to find that my father's book it still available out there. I can't tell whether it's still in print but Amazon has a few copies, and someone gave it a five star review.
Snuffy (as he was known to his friends, colleagues, and students) and his two sons (circa 1975):
Can you imagine Smiff wif hair and a tank top? Now you don't have to anymore. I was kinda cute (whatdaphokk happened?). Also, notice how totally baked my brother is (not much has changed there).

Rudy, a fucking Asswhole

He could still win, we should remember that:

The Long Run: Crossing Mayor Giuliani Often Had a Price
By MICHAEL POWELL and RUSS BUETTNER
Published: January 22, 2008

Rudolph W. Giuliani likens himself to a boxer who never takes a punch without swinging back. As mayor, he made the vengeful roundhouse an instrument of government, clipping anyone who crossed him.

In August 1997, James Schillaci, a rough-hewn chauffeur from the Bronx, dialed Mayor Giuliani’s radio program on WABC-AM to complain about a red-light sting run by the police near the Bronx Zoo. When the call yielded no results, Mr. Schillaci turned to The Daily News, which then ran a photo of the red light and this front page headline: “GOTCHA!”

That morning, police officers appeared on Mr. Schillaci’s doorstep. What are you going to do, Mr. Schillaci asked, arrest me? He was joking, but the officers were not.

They slapped on handcuffs and took him to court on a 13-year-old traffic warrant. A judge threw out the charge. A police spokeswoman later read Mr. Schillaci’s decades-old criminal rap sheet to a reporter for The Daily News, a move of questionable legality because the state restricts how such information is released. She said, falsely, that he had been convicted of sodomy.

Then Mr. Giuliani took up the cudgel.

“Mr. Schillaci was posing as an altruistic whistle-blower,” the mayor told reporters at the time. “Maybe he’s dishonest enough to lie about police officers.”

Mr. Schillaci suffered an emotional breakdown, was briefly hospitalized and later received a $290,000 legal settlement from the city. “It really damaged me,” said Mr. Schillaci, now 60, massaging his face with thick hands. “I thought I was doing something good for once, my civic duty and all. Then he steps on me.”

Mr. Giuliani was a pugilist in a city of political brawlers. But far more than his predecessors, historians and politicians say, his toughness edged toward ruthlessnessand became a defining aspect of his mayoralty. One result: New York City spent at least $7 million in settling civil rights lawsuits and paying retaliatory damages during the Giuliani years.

After AIDS activists with Housing Works loudly challenged the mayor, city officials sabotaged the group’s application for a federal housing grant. A caseworker who spoke of missteps in the death of a child was fired. After unidentified city workers complained of pressure to hand contracts to Giuliani-favored organizations, investigators examined not the charges but the identity of the leakers.

“There were constant loyalty tests: ‘Will you shoot your brother?’ ” said Marilyn Gelber, who served as environmental commissioner under Mr. Giuliani. “People were marked for destruction for disloyal jokes.”

Mr. Giuliani paid careful attention to the art of political payback. When former Mayors Edward I. Koch and David N. Dinkins spoke publicly of Mr. Giuliani’s foibles, mayoral aides removed their official portraits from the ceremonial Blue Room at City Hall. Mr. Koch, who wrote a book titled “Giuliani: Nasty Man,” shrugs.

“David Dinkins and I are lucky that Rudy didn’t cast our portraits onto a bonfire along with the First Amendment, which he enjoyed violating daily,” Mr. Koch said in a recent interview.

Mr. Giuliani retails his stories of childhood toughness, in standing up to bullies who mocked his love of opera and bridled at his Yankee loyalties. Years after leaving Manhattan College, he held a grudge against a man who beat him in a class election. He urged his commissioners to walk out of City Council hearings when questions turned hostile. But in his 2002 book “Leadership,” he said his instructions owed nothing to his temper.

“It wasn’t my sensitivities I was worried about, but the tone of civility I strived to establish throughout the city,” he wrote. Mr. Giuliani declined requests to be interviewed for this article.

His admirers, not least former Deputy Mayor Randy M. Mastro, said it was unfair to characterize the mayor as vengeful, particularly given the “Herculean task” he faced when he entered office in 1994. Mr. Giuliani’s admirers claimed that the depredations of crack, AIDS, homicide and recession had brought the city to its knees, and that he faced a sclerotic liberal establishment. He wielded intimidation as his mace and wrested cost-savings and savings from powerful unions and politicians.

“The notion that the city needed broad-based change frightened a lot of entrenched groups,” said Fred Siegel, a historian and author of “The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life.” “He didn’t want to be politic with them.”

He cowed many into silence. Silence ensured the flow of city money.

Andy Humm, a gay activist, worked for the Hetrick-Martin Institute, which pushed condom giveaways in public schools. When Mr. Giuliani supported a parental opt-out, the institute’s director counseled silence to avoid losing city funds. “He said, ‘We’re going to say it’s not good, but we’re not going to mention him,’ ” Mr. Humm said.

“We were muzzled, and it was a disgrace.”

Picking His Fights

Mr. Giuliani says he prefers to brawl with imposing opponents. His father, he wrote in “Leadership,” would “always emphasize: never pick on someone smaller than you. Never be a bully.”

As mayor, he picked fights with a notable lack of discrimination, challenging the city and state comptrollers, a few corporations and the odd council member. But the mayor’s fist also fell on the less powerful. In mid-May 1994, newspapers revealed that Mr. Giuliani’s youth commissioner, the Rev. John E. Brandon, suffered tax problems; more troubling revelations seemed in the offing.

At 7 p.m. on May 17, Mr. Giuliani’s press secretary dialed reporters and served up a hotter story: A former youth commissioner under Mr. Dinkins, Richard L. Murphy, had ladled millions of dollars to supporters of the former mayor. And someone had destroyed Department of Youth Services records and hard drives and stolen computers in an apparent effort to obscure what had happened to that money.

“My immediate goal is to get rid of the stealing, to get rid of the corruption” Mr. Giuliani told The Daily News.

None of it was true. In 1995, the Department of Investigation found no politically motivated contracts and no theft by senior officials. But Mr. Murphy’s professional life was wrecked.

“I was soiled merchandise — the taint just lingers,” Mr. Murphy said in a recent interview.

Not long after, a major foundation recruited Mr. Murphy to work on the West Coast. The group wanted him to replicate his much-honored concept of opening schools at night as community centers. A senior Giuliani official called the foundation — a move a former mayoral official confirmed on the condition of anonymity for fear of embarrassing the organization — and the prospective job disappeared.

“He goes to people and makes them complicit in his revenge,” Mr. Murphy said.

This theme repeats. Two private employers in New York City, neither of which wanted to be identified because they feared retaliation should Mr. Giuliani be elected president, said the mayor’s office exerted pressure not to hire former Dinkins officials. When Mr. Giuliani battled schools Chancellor Ramon C. Cortines, he demanded that Mr. Cortines prove his loyalty by firing the press spokesman, John Beckman.

Mr. Beckman’s offense? He had worked in the Dinkins administration. “I found it,” Mr. Beckman said in an interview, “a really unfortunate example of how to govern.”

Joel Berger worked as a senior litigator in the city corporation counsel’s office until 1996. Afterward, he represented victims of police brutality and taught a class at the New York University School of Law, and his students served apprenticeships with the corporation counsel.

In late August 1997, Mr. Berger wrote a column in The New York Times criticizing Mr. Giuliani’s record on police brutality. A week later, a city official called the director of the N.Y.U. law school’s clinical programs and demanded that Mr. Berger be removed from the course. Otherwise, the official said, we will suspend the corporation counsel apprenticeship, according to Mr. Berger and an N.Y.U. official.

“It was ridiculously petty,” Mr. Berger said.

N.Y.U. declined to replace Mr. Berger and instead suspended the class after that semester. ‘Culture of Retaliation’

The Citizens Budget Commission has driven mayors of various ideological stripes to distraction since it was founded in 1932. The business-backed group bird-dogs the city’s fiscal management with an unsparing eye. But its analysts are fonts of creative thinking, and Mr. Giuliani asked Raymond Horton, the group’s president, to serve on his transition committee in 1993.

That comity was long gone by the autumn of 1997, when Mr. Giuliani faced re-election. Ruth Messinger, the mayor’s Democratic opponent, cited the commission’s work, and the mayor denounced the group, which had issued critical reports on welfare reform, police inefficiency and the city budget.

So far, so typical for mayors and their relationship with the commission. Mr. Koch once banned his officials from attending the group’s annual retreat. Another time, he attended and gave a speech excoriating the commission.

But one of Mr. Giuliani’s deputy mayors, Joseph Lhota, took an unprecedented step. He called major securities firms that underwrite city bonds and discouraged them from buying seats at the commission’s annual fund-raising dinner. Because Mr. Lhota played a key role in selecting the investment firms that underwrote the bonds, his calls raised an ethical tempest.

Apologizing struck Mr. Giuliani as silly.

“We are sending exactly the right message,” he said. “Their reports are pretty useless; they are a dilettante organization.”

Still, that dinner was a rousing success. “All mayors have thin skins, but Rudy has the thinnest skin of all,” Mr. Horton said.

Mr. Giuliani’s war with the nonprofit group Housing Works was more operatic. Housing Works runs nationally respected programs for the homeless, the mentally ill and people who are infected with H.I.V. But it weds that service to a 1960s straight-from-the-rice-paddies guerrilla ethos.

The group’s members marched on City Hall, staged sit-ins, and delighted in singling out city officials for opprobrium. Mr. Giuliani, who considered doing away with the Division of AIDS Services, became their favorite mayor in effigy.

Mr. Giuliani responded in kind. His police commanders stationed snipers atop City Hall and sent helicopters whirling overhead when 100 or so unarmed Housing Works protesters marched nearby in 1998. A year earlier, his officials systematically killed $6 million worth of contracts with the group, saying it had mismanaged funds.

Housing Works sued the city and discovered that officials had rescored a federal evaluation form to ensure that the group lost a grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Martin Oesterreich, the city’s homeless commissioner, denied wrongdoing but acknowledged that his job might have been forfeited if Housing Works had obtained that contract.

“That possibility could have happened,” Mr. Oesterreich told a federal judge.

The mayor’s fingerprints could not be found on every decision. But his enemies were widely known.

“The culture of retaliation was really quite remarkable,” said Matthew D. Brinckerhoff, the lawyer who represented Housing Works. “Up and down the food chain, everyone knew what this guy demanded.”

The Charter Fight

The mayor’s wartime style of governance reached an exhaustion point in the late 1990s. His poll numbers dipped, and the courts routinely ruled against the city, upholding the New York Civil Liberties Union in 23 of its 27 free-speech challenges during Mr. Giuliani’s mayoralty. After he left office, the city agreed to pay $327,000 to a black police officer who was fired because he had testified before the City Council about police brutality toward blacks. The city also agreed to rescind the firing of the caseworker who talked about a child’s death.

In 1999, Mr. Giuliani explored a run for the United States Senate. If he won that seat, he would leave the mayor’s office a year early. The City Charter dictated that Mark Green, the public advocate, would succeed him.

That prospect was intolerable to Mr. Giuliani. Few politicians crawled under the mayor’s skin as skillfully as Mr. Green. “Idiotic” and “inane” were some of the kinder words that Mr. Giuliani sent winging toward the public advocate, who delighted in verbally tweaking the mayor.

So Mr. Giuliani announced in June 1999 that a Charter Revision Commission, stocked with his loyalists, would explore changing the line of mayoral succession. Mr. Giuliani told The New York Times Magazine that he might not have initiated the charter review campaign if Mr. Green were not the public advocate. Three former mayors declared themselves appalled; Mr. Koch fired the loudest cannonade. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Mayor,” he said during a news conference.

Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., chairman of a Charter Revision Commission a decade earlier, wrote a letter to Mr. Giuliani warning that “targeting a particular person” would “smack of personal politics and predilections.

“All this is not worthy of you, or our city,” Mr. Schwarz wrote.

Mr. Mastro, who had left the administration, agreed to serve as the commission chairman. He eventually announced that a proposal requiring a special election within 60 days of a mayor’s early departure would not take effect until 2002, after both Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Green had left office. A civic group estimated that the commission spent more than a million dollars of taxpayer money on commercials before a citywide referendum on the proposal that was held in November 1999.

Voters defeated the measure, 76 percent to 24 percent. (In 2002, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg advocated a similar charter revision that passed with little controversy.)

Mr. Green had warned the mayor that rejection loomed.

“It was simple,” Mr. Green said. “It was the mayor vindictively going after an institutional critic for doing his job.”

None of this left the mayor chastened. In March 2000, an undercover officer killed Patrick Dorismond, a security guard, during a fight when the police mistook him for a drug dealer. The outcry infuriated the mayor, who released Mr. Dorismond’s juvenile record, a document that legally was supposed to remain sealed.

The victim, Mr. Giuliani opined, was no “altar boy.” Actually, he was. (Mr. Giuliani later expressed regret without precisely apologizing.)

James Schillaci, the Bronx whistle-blower, recalled reading those comments and shuddering at the memory. “The mayor tarred me up; you know what that feels like?” he said. “I still have nightmares.”

Is this an act of desperation, or what?

On stage with Rudy 9/11 in Florida today: Johnny Damon and Jon Voight.

Jon Voight!! That should get, what, two, maybe three votes?

Was Gene Hackman unavailable?

ONE YEAR TO GO! C'mon America, We Can Do It!

Smiff Early Warning System

Rambo opens Friday.

Twenty years after the last film in the series, John J. Rambo has retreated to northern Thailand, where he's running a longboat on the Salween River. Shit starts blowing up. With Julie Benz and Ken "The White Shadow" Howard. Rated R for strong graphic, bloody violence (FUCKING AWESOME!!) sexual assaults (Cool!), grisly images (Yeah!), language ("FUCKING [noun]!"), and Sylvester Stallone's script, direction and acting. Decker will go see it.

Blowheim Brickfest in DC

After blowing a 5 point lead late in regulation, the bricks started to fly in overtime. Cuse lose 64-62 :(

1:32 Syracuse - Jonny Flynn misses a three-pointer

2:18 Syracuse - Arinze Onuaku misses a free throw
2:18 Syracuse - Arinze Onuaku misses a free throw

3:39 Syracuse - Jonny Flynn misses a jumper
4:06 Syracuse - Arinze Onuaku misses a free throw
4:06 Syracuse - Arinze Onuaku misses a free throw
4:06 Georgetown - Personal foul on DaJuan Summers
4:09 Syracuse - Arinze Onuaku misses a layup
4:09 Syracuse - Donte Greene misses a hook shot
4:44 Syracuse - Antonio (Scoop) Jardine misses a three-pointer

Beating a dead horse

If you thought we were the only ones who did not do their homework, and ignored what we didn't want to hear, you think wrong...


Guys, I'm afraid we haven't got a clue ...
On November 19 2002, four months before the invasion of Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a rare attempt to seek out expert views beyond the circle of his official advisers. Six distinguished academics were invited to Downing Street: three specialists on Iraq, and three on international security.

I will destroy the world...














Unless, that is, you turn over...ten meeeeeelion dollars!

So... New England wins another game they should have lost?

Yawn.

Add 18-0 football teams to the list of things that ain't what they used to be.

Tom Brady? They won despite "Mr. Interception" today. They're always covering for this guy. But what do you expect from a 2nd stringer from Michigan?

And i have to root for the Giants now? Fuck that - i'm going to go to a movie or sumfting. Man alive, Green Bay SUCKS. Two losses to the Bears and now this? That's one shitty season right there.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Cold deres? Suckers...

If it's any consolation, the "forecast" here for Tuesday is "predicting" "possible" "sleet". Of course, it's more likely monkeys will fly outta my butt, but if it does happen look for reports of people in San Diego running through the streets trying to put out their heads that are on fire.

Forecast from National Weather Service As of 3:26 PM CST on January 19, 2008
Tonight... Clear. Bitterly cold. Suckers! Lows 5 to 9 below...except 3 below to 1 above zero downtown. Wind chills as low as 20 below to 30 below zero. West winds 10 to 15 mph.
Sunday... Mostly sunny. Highs 10 to 14. Lowest wind chill readings 20 below to 30 below zero in the morning. West winds 10 to 15 mph. Are your testicles frozen?
Sunday Night... Mostly cloudy with light snow likely...mainly after midnight. Minor accumulation possible. Lows 5 to 9 above. Wind chills as low as zero to 10 below zero. West winds around 10 mph in the evening becoming light and variable...then becoming southeast around 10 mph during the predawn hours. Chance of precipitation 60 percent. You guys SUCK.


Global warming? Jimmy Carter's fucking ass...