Paragon of personal integrity Joe T. Plumber lashes out:

“I don’t owe him shit. He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it… McCain was trying to use me. I happened to be the face of middle Americans. It was a ploy.”

Oh, and Sarah Palin is a sellout, Birthers and Truthers need to get a life, and Barry’s not such a bad guy for a socialist.

Too bad Demrats can’t get shit done, or we’d really enjoy this.

A few minutes with Joe the Plumber [State House Sound Bites]

And yes, I have to post the obligatory Stormy photo:

Vitter isn’t as vulnerable as I’d like.

When Vitter’s scandal broke in 2007, some left his political career for dead. Two years later, his re-election campaign is humming along. He has racked up more than $3 million in his campaign treasury. Christian conservative leaders have come to his defense. The head of Louisiana’s Republican party says Vitter deserves another term representing the state, and Vitter has yet to draw a strong GOP opponent as some had predicted.

Read more »

Watertiger emails with some last minute gift ideas.

If I ever need a pill to do the deed, shoot me where I stand.

The early leader for “Storyline Bob Costas Is Beating To Death” is the whole “no golds for Canada in Olympics held on home soil” deal.  Apart from the fact that home soil is not normally touched in the Winter Olympics unless the snow melts (that’s in the mail for sure, on recent evidence), Canada’s done just fine.  At Torino, they nabbed 7 golds, and 24 overall — good for fifth.

One of those went to Jennifer Heil in moguls.  Ah, but looky here! Hannah Kearney (right) of Norwich, Vt. — Vermont, bitches! — beat out Heil to take U.S. America’s first super-duper shiny object.  Two things about the moguls — (1) my knees hurt just watching that, and (2) you can’t tell the difference between one run and another.  In that regard, it’s like figure skating without spandex, and with more stoners.

Anyway: Canada’s not starving for gold.  Tone it down, Bob.  (And that’s a general instruction, Bob, applicable to all things.)

Briefly: USA hockey (wimmin) draw China to open their run this afternoon (basic cable).  Mothership has more luge (safer than advertised, thank God).  Also: nordic combined has, in a shock, a dark horse American in the mix, and the fellas take to the bumps.  And ice pairs, for those into spandex.

Title: “A Patriot’s History of the United States: From Columbus’s Great Discovery to the War on Terror”

Authors: Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen

Rank: 1

Blurb: “For the past three decades, many history professors have allowed their biases to distort the way America’s past is taught. These intellectuals have searched for instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in our history while downplaying the greatness of America’s patriots and the achievements of ‘dead white men.’

“As a result, more emphasis is placed on Harriet Tubman than on George Washington; more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II than about D-Day or Iwo Jima; more on the dangers we faced from Joseph McCarthy than those we faced from Josef Stalin.”

Review: “This book has taught me more about our history than any I’ve read in years.” (Glenn Beck)

Read more »

I have no idea what’s going on (except the ski jumping) because I’ve been too busy to check my Google reader – there are over one thousand pending. I suck. So instead of my usual ranting, I present what is, in my opinion, the second best Bugs Bunny cartoon of all time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXU9SntbatE

Word is that — yes — the luge competition will go on.  Tonight.  In prime-time.  Notwithstanding the fact that a guy died on the track yesterday.  AP / NBC confirms it:

Fast and frightening, yes. Responsible for the death of a luger, no. 

Olympic officials decided late Friday night against any major changes in the track or any delays in competition and even doubled up on the schedule in the wake of the horrifying accident that claimed the life of a 21-year-old luger from the republic of Georgia.

They said they would raise the wall where the slider flew off the track and make an unspecified “change in the ice profile” – but only as a preventative measure “to avoid that such an extremely exceptional accident could occur again.” …

The International Luge Federation and Vancouver Olympic officials said their investigation showed that the crash was the result of human error and that “there was no indication that the accident was caused by deficiencies in the track.”

Last night, the local NBC affiliate in Chicago (who sent a reporter to Vancouver for some unknown reason) said that the B.C. coroner’s office and the RCMP were conducting an investigation and would not release the track to training, much less competition, until the investigation was complete.  The investigation, it seems, took no longer than an investigation on the Dan Ryan at rush-hour.  Positively criminal.

Remainder of the docket, and other thoughts, post-jump.

Read more »