Last Call

And if you haven't heard yet, and that's because Bon is modest, her first contribution to the world of published literature is now in print in a collection of horror short stories called Frightmares: A Fistful Of Flash Fiction Horror available at Amazon.





Scare yourself up a copy this holiday season.

A Study Of Known Unknowns

John Hinderaker, whether on purpose or by complete accident, hits upon the major problem for Republicans going forward right now without Mr. 9-9-9 (emphasis mine):

What happened to Herman Cain is what the Democrats intend to do to whoever the Republican nominee turns out to be. They know they can’t win a debate on the economy or on President Obama’s record, so they will do everything they can to distract the voters’ attention from those matters, which should be decisive, and instead turn the focus to the GOP candidate and his or her alleged foibles. If Republican voters allow that to happen by nominating a candidate with baggage that permits the Democrats to turn him into the next Herman Cain, it is all too likely that President Obama will be re-elected, with consequences that can hardly be overestimated.

And exactly which candidate meets that criteria?  One Percent Huntsman?  Second Chance Palin?  Whatever position Mitt Romney is taking this week?  If there is a candidate that actually fits that description, Hinderaker doesn't mention who they are.

Perhaps that's because precisely none of the remaining contestants on "So You Think You Can Run The Country" here are anything more than the sums totals of their foibles and baggage, defined so completely as aggregate concretions of varying densities of suck.

If there was a Republican who could truly take on President Obama and win easily, would they be having essentially a completely open primary with the first House Speaker to face admonition for ethics violations as their current "top guy"?

I'm honestly curious as to whom Hinderaker is referring to, because I don't think they exist.

[UPDATE] What BooMan said: 

None of these candidates can unite the Republican Party. In fact, all of them will divide it in more or less devastating ways.

President Obama will win a second term precisely because of that.

Would You Like Fries With That?

HuffPo had this little piece highlighting two different fast food stupidities:

In Goshen, Ct., John Traonetta, 35, was charged with second-degree harassment after ordering takeout and requesting to perform a sex act on a teenaged female employee at the Zoar Drive-In. Traonetta has agreed to write an apology to the woman.

Moving down the East Coast, Shawn Porter, 32, of Deltona, Fl. got himself arrested after asking for "a blunt and some herbs" at a Burger King drive-through. The cashier could smell marijuana coming from his car and a store manager called 911. The manager acknowledged that the incident was more of a nuisance than a major emergency. The police ran Porter's tags, located his car and discovered about 28 grams of pot -- hundreds of dollars worth of the drug. He is being held on a $1,000 bond.

Cain Unable, Part The Last

And he's done.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain effectively ended his White House bid on Saturday under the weight of accusations of sexual harassment and marital infidelity.

Cain told supporters at an event in Atlanta that the charges hurled at him over the weeks are "false and unproved" but said they have taken a toll on him and his wife, Gloria, who appeared with him on stage.

"I am suspending my campaign," Cain said.

We have a photo from the event...




Good night, sweet comedy prince.  May flights of angels with nice racks and low self-esteem sing thy campaign to rest.

Cute Puppies Save Law Students. Yup, You Read That Right.

Law students are under a tremendous amount of stress as part of preparation for the work. However, for young people who are still learning how to deal with stress and insane competition, it's easy to get lost and forget that we need goodness and light in our lives.

Insert the best idea I've heard in a long time. Puppies were brought in to lighten up law students, some of which stayed at school to study over Thanksgiving break. It's a lesson in balance and a reminder that loving an animal is good for the soul.

“Especially this time of the year, law school seems to ruin your life,” said Allison Tisdale, 24, a third-year from Texas who didn’t go home for Thanksgiving because she had to study. Holding a squirming puppy, she said, “you get to be human again.”

After the Yale Law Library added a “therapy dog” named Monty to its collection in the spring, a number of other law schools have used the gentle yapping of puppies to break the stifling pressure that blankets their campuses. Thursday was the second time Mason’s law school, in Arlington County, partnered with a Chantilly-based rescue group for “Puppy Day.”

Studies have found that the legal profession has higher-than-average rates of depression and problems with substance abuse. Many law schools now teach students how to balance the stress of late-night legal research, tort outlines and case summaries with healthy habits: running marathons, volunteering or hanging out with a pet.

“If people don’t learn how to balance their lives in law school, and then, if they go to a big firm, chances are they won’t balance their lives there, either,” said James E. Leffler, executive director of Lawyers Helping Lawyers, a Virginia nonprofit organization that offers assistance with substance abuse and mental-health issues. “They need to learn to take care of themselves and to also look out for their colleagues.”

And maybe, when animal causes need their help, they will donate a little time to help animals in need. Puppy love is the best kind, after all.

Auto-Neurotic In Alabama

One has to wonder what Alabama cops have against foreign car executives anyway.  Oh wait: they have no choice but to ask for papers, please.

The Guardian reports that Honda manager Ichiro Yada was arrested earlier this week at a checkpoint in Leeds, Alabama, despite being able to show police his passport, US work permit, and international driver’s license. He was not taken into custody, however, but was ticketed and released on a signature bond.

Yada’s international license was apparently not sufficient to satisfy the letter of the law, which required him to carry either an Alabama license or one issued by Japan. The charges were dismissed only when his attorney faxed a copy of his Japanese driver’s license to the judge.

The mayor of the city of Leeds defended his officers, saying, “The police are instructed to follow the law as written. People are trying to use this to make the law look bad. That’s not our problem. We’re going to enforce the laws of state of Alabama.” 

And you know, when laws against interracial marriage (which by the way technically existed as part of Alabama's state constitution until 2000 long after the Loving v. Virginia decision in 1967) and Jim Crow laws were in place in Alabama, they used the exact same excuse.  Here's a tip, man:  it's the law itself that makes Alabama look bad, not the stringent efforts to enforce it.

And yes.  It is your problem as an elected official in the state.  It's a law forcing you to be a racist, reactionary douche bag.  Saying "that's the law, it's not our problem" immediately makes it your problem.

I'm guessing at some point, these automakers and other foreign companies are just going to stop doing business with the state.  Alabama's already lost major agriculture business due to the law.  It really is an example of "job-killing regulations".

But it doesn't matter.  Gotta rid the state of the unclean and the impure.

Nuked Gingrich, Part 10

Newt's baaaaaaack, and stomping hard on all the 90's era dog whistles:

So more Americans now get food stamps therefore and we now give it away as cash,” Gingrich said of President Obama. “You don’t get food stamps. You get a credit card and the credit card can be used for anything. We’ve had people take their food stamp money and use it to go to Hawaii.” 

Only one problem, Newtie.  You're lying out your ass.

Each of Gingrich’s claims about food stamps is so ridiculous -- especially for a self-styled policy wonk -- that we wondered whether he was really intending to be serious. (By publication time, we did not receive answers to several queries made to his press staff.) But the transcript makes it sound like he wasn’t joking, so we’ll assume he wasn’t. For being so ridiculously wrong in so many ways, we rate his statement Pants on Fire.

But you know what?  Republicans don't care about truth.  They just hate President Obama (and anyone who looks like him).  And that includes portraying "poor people" as the singular cause of all our economic woes.

"Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works," the former House speaker said at a campaign event at the Nationwide Insurance offices. "So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of 'I do this and you give me cash,' unless it's illegal."

Gingrich lately has been unspooling an urban policy, beginning with his comments at Harvard University last month when he discussed child labor laws. "It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods," Gingrich said then, "entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid."

Children in poor neighborhoods, he said, should be allowed to serve as janitors in their schools to earn money and develop a connection to the school.

Really? Newt Gingrich, the first Speaker of the House to be brought up on ethics charges before the full House of Representatives, who faced 84 ethics violations, and was made to pay a $300,000 fine?  This is the man lecturing anyone on "work ethics"?  I love it.  Newt Gingrich's full title is "Disgraced Former Speaker" for a reason.

Please let this billowing blowhard win the nomination.  I'd love to see Barack Obama win Kentucky...and every other state out there.