It used to be that "Kennedy" was always the name of multiple office holders: from local officials to state officers to Congress, the Senate and the Oval Office. Not to mention the Peace Corps, and public service for groups such as the Special Olympics.
Love or hate their politics (and I personally love them, as I know other DCW community members do) one cannot deny the influence and contribution of this family.
With the pending loss of Patrick Kennedy, who will not run for re-election of his Congressional seat, that leaves only one Kennedy holding public office by the end of January, 2011, unless another family member runs in 2010. Do you know who? Answer is after the jump.
Remember the "lipstick on a pig" goings on from last year? Every time something comes up about a pig, I think of Sarah Palin. I don't think she is a pig, there's just some linkage within the neurons in my brain for some reason.
So here's the latest on Palin:
Last year, she had an 89% approval rating in Alaska. Now, it's down to 55%. Her unfavourables have risen from 16% to 42%. (In case you have forgotten the things that helped crash and burn her approval ratings, I've posted a "Greatest Hits" video after the jump.)
Her response? Rumour has it that she'll either be in DC or NYC this weekend. Yeah, that's the ticket, come to those oh-so-red areas of the country and play to the crowd. Seriously - one rumour has her as Fox's guest at the Correspondents' Dinner, and the other has her on the GOP re-branding tour.
I was trying to track down the latest number of ethics complaints are currently outstanding against Spunky, but all I could find was this:
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly how many complaints have been filed because the state doesn’t keep count and the complaints are kept confidential by the attorney general’s office unless the state moves forward with a public accusation of wrongdoing. But in total there have been more than a dozen, and most of those have surfaced in the last seven months.
And as for the legitimacy of the complaints (from someone who has filed some of them)
Every complaint is legitimate except the one Governor Palin filed on herself. That’s the one that has driven her legal bills out of sight in an effort to cloak her actions in secrecy in order to avoid any embarrassment during her failed VP run.
Yes, not her week, especially since her unwed-mother daughter is now a spokesperson for abstinence.
Afghanistan has one pig. In the whole country, just the one.
He lives at the Kabul zoo. With his friends deer and goats.
Afghanistan quarantined the pig.
My guess is that it's hard to get H1N1 in Afghanistan because it's unlikely that many Afghanis vacation in Mexico, and Afghanistan is not exactly on anyone's short list for a vacation haven.
I did not make this up, and I feel very badly for the pig, who is likely confused and lonely without his friends.
I present the video below because someone sent it to me, and I found it incredibly funny and wanted to share. It really has no value other than being really funny.
There is a new interactive web site where you can look up your Rep or Senator and find the most common words they spoke in Congress, as read into the Congressional Record. Before you go over there, please heed this warning -- it is addictive, and an incredible time waster for those of us who truly love this sort of trivia. You can search by word, or search by lawmaker.
So I did some investigating. (I'm lying -- I just kept playing because I couldn't help myself.)
Most used word in the Congressional Record for both the current and previous Congress? "Health"
Most common word, and the number of times used, by some of the lawmakers I like to keep up with (In no particular order):
Richard Shelby "Believe" 63 times.
Ted Kaufman "Short" 71 times.
Arlen Specter "Court" 434 times.
Ted Kennedy "Workers" 195 times.
Mitch McConnell "Leader" 298 times.
James Inhofe "Billions" 374 times.
Harry Reid "Republicans" 771 times, and "Republican" 690 times.
And I am not making this up: Charlie Rangel "Caribbean" 293 times.
We mentioned in passing a few weeks ago that Stephen Colbert was a write-in candidate to have the new node of the Space Station named after him in NASA's on-line poll. Well, he won. By a lot. Sorta. He won the votes, but NASA instead decided to go with "Tranquility". They had always reserved the right to override the actual vote.
It wasn't his first shot at getting something named after him:
In 2006, after mobilizing another write-in campaign, Mr. Colbert captured the most votes in an online contest to name a bridge in Hungary. But, in an appearance on “The Colbert Report,” the Hungarian ambassador to the United States announced that Hungarian law mandated the bridge be named after someone who was both dead and fluent in Hungarian.
Once again, that "problem" of being alive worked against him. One of NASA's reasons for overriding the vote was that they don't name things after living people. However, they have decided to create "COLBERT" aka "Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill". Said treadmill will be on the Space Station, and Colbert has been invited down to Florida to test it out.
For some reason, the past few days have been great for little bits of under-the-radar pieces of information. Perhaps it's because Congress is on break, so people have more time to look for other sorts of information.
First, there is a rumour that Eliot Spitzer will be running for AG next year. It's in the NY Post, and once again, the Post is wrong.
According to new data released by the Cook Political Report, only one congressional district in the country voted for John Kerry and John McCain: the Pennsylvania 12th, represented by John Murtha. Either that district just really likes people named "John," or perhaps Western Pennsylvania isn't as representative of the country as we were told last year during the Pennsylvania primary.
The Hill reports that 123 lawmakers are currently on Twitter. Your Congress in action. Tweeted by Chuck Grassley:
Work on farm Fri. Burning piles of brush WindyFire got out of control. Thank God for good naber He help get undr control PantsBurnLegWound.
John Murtha can't be sued by Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, as per the US Court of Appeals. From Roll Call (sub req'd):
Wuterich filed a lawsuit against Murtha in August 2006 for libel, defamation and invasion of privacy, alleging the Democrat “publicly and falsely accused” the Marines of “cold-blooded murder and war crimes” in the deaths of two dozen Iraqis without facts to support that claim.
And under life imitates art imitates life, watch this clip. It's the parade scene from the movie The Fugitive, with Tommy Lee Jones and Harrison Ford. The thing is, when they filmed it, they filmed actual scenes from the actual St. Patrick's Day Parade. If you look closely, you'll see a current US Senator who was actually marching in the actual parade that year. See if you can find him/her. Answer after the jump.
My commute to work is mostly a 20 mile trek up a 4-lane, divided access highway. I commute against traffic, so it is normally a quick trip. It's actually a very pleasant drive if you're not on the parking lot side of the highway.
So today, I am driving home from work, minding my own business, and I notice a car in the right lane. The first thing I notice is that car is seriously tilted to its left side. The next thing I notice is the bumper sticker. It's black on white and says "01.20.2013", and I think to myself, "Oh, the second Obama-Biden inaugural, how nice." As I pass the car, I look at the driver, and understand why the car is tilted: people big enough to barely fit between the seat pushed back all the way and the steering wheel probably shouldn't be driving smaller cars.
I don't think much of it, and I pass him.
I hear honking.
It's him, trying to catch up.
My first thought is there's something wrong with my car, and he, being a kind citizen and fellow small-car driver wants to tell me about it.
WRONG.
It becomes obvious that he's seen my bumper stickers (you can imagine) and his bumper sticker is actually some sort of dull hope for some IIE party leader to step forward and find some way of ousting the nuanced smart folks from the White House in the 2012 election.
This is obvious because he pulls next to me and gives me the finger. And it was fun, because I'd forgotten some of the many variations that he used.
I smile. I lick my lips and blow kisses. I wave and smile more broadly. I pull off my sunglasses and bat my eyes at him.
David Letterman did a piece the other night on the difference between using a teleprompter and not using the teleprompter. You can view the video here. It's a Bush-Obama comparison. Here's another one. I'm thinking these women are referring to brain power. Honest.
The Hill is running an article today with the headline "Go back into hiding, GOP begs Dick Cheney". Love the title. Here's their lede:
Congressional Republicans are telling Dick Cheney to go back to his undisclosed location and leave them alone to rebuild the Republican Party without his input.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday defended the Bush administration's economic record, the invasion of Iraq and the treatment of suspected terrorists, warning that reversing its anti-terrorism policies endangers Americans.
"I fundamentally disagree with Dick Cheney -- not surprisingly. I think that Vice President Cheney has been at the head of a movement whose notion is somehow that we can't reconcile our core values, our Constitution, our belief that we don't torture, with our national security interests. I think he's drawing the wrong lesson from history."
That's from the most powerful man in the world, the President of these United States, Barack Obama, his distant cousin. Makes you think about that whole nature vs. nurture discussion...
Last night, I opened my USA Today. I do this every evening. We all have our habits. There big story was on the Gallup study showing that in 2008, 24 million Americans went from "thriving" to "struggling". What caught my eye was that their byline was Exton, PA. I don't live in Exton, but since it's only a few towns over, I spend time in Exton. I have friends and family in Exton. I know Exton. And I distantly know some of the people cited in the article.
I am overwhelmed that Gallup interviewed 355,334 people nationwide for their study. That's a lot of people. And I have trouble getting my mind around that large a sample size. There's an interactive map, where you can see how your state or CD fares on the scale. It appears that Exton's CD is in the top 20%.
About this time, the phone rang. I ended up hearing a (reasonably gentle) lecture on how I honestly have no idea what is going on around America. How if something lacks political appeal or potential attachment, I don't know anything about it. I was specifically asked about Chris Brown and Rihanna. (And no, I had no idea who they were beyond some man who beat up some woman.) For the record, it's a felony, and if he hits once, he'll hit again. Get out now whether you are Rihanna or some other woman who has been hit.
In any event, I accepted a challenge to get on-line and look for things that I wouldn't generally read. Turns out that America is very different from what I would have expected.
For example, I didn't know that there was a town in Texas where the cops like to stop out-of-town cars, overwhelmingly with African-American drivers and passengers, and take all their money and property.
I didn't know that the housing crisis was so severe in Riverside, California, that even the rats were cold and hungry.
Perhaps that's why I stick to politics: I am amused that Michael Steele is facing a no-confidence election, even if he manages to pull off the NY-20th on 31 March.
I'm not surprised that Roland Burris is polling at 5%. I'm actually looking forward to that race: lots of action, lots of potential criminal activity on the part not only of Burris, but also Giannoulias and Daley. I intend to be all over that race, along with the new wrinkle in the Pennsylvania Senate race since Peg Luksik has decided to enter the IIE primary.
I enjoy that NASA wants to name a Space Station, and their names are things like "Legacy" and "Serenity". There's an on-line vote, and the current winner is a write-in. Name of "Colbert", as in "Stephen Colbert". As of yesterday, "Colbert" had about 115,000 votes, "Serenity" was next with about 98,000, and almost half a million people had voted. Grassroots in action.
I'm also liking the anti-Rush billboard contest being run by the Democratic Party.
So, I'm sticking with politics, and government, and governing and health care. These topics make sense to me in a world gone upside-down. And for the next one of you that wants to call me up and rag on my lack of knowledge - yes I know that "March Madness" has something to do with basketball.
It's hard to imagine what some people think about simple things.
Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. is honoring American's sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20. By doing so, participating Krispy Kreme stores nationwide are making an oath to tasty goodies -- just another reminder of how oh-so-sweet "free" can be.
Sounds good to me - free doughnut. And despite the heart attack potential, those glazed doughnuts are spectacular hot from the oven.
But did you notice the words "freedom of choice" in the press release? Me neither, I was thinking....hhmmm, it's too bad there isn't a Krispy Kreme shop anywhere around here. Of course, I'm not the American Life League.
"The use of the phrase "freedom of choice" by any corporation, particularly when used to coincide with President-elect Obama's inauguration, is offensive and demeaning to the millions who have suffered either directly or indirectly through abortion."
Maybe it's just me, but I thought AMERICA was about the freedom of choice of religion. Pilgrims and all that. And there's that First Amendment language...freedom of speech, freedom of the press. Oh I don't know....maybe there is some choice involved there? Will someone PLEASE tell me when "choice" became only a word of the far right and ONLY about abortion?
If there were a Krispy Kreme shop around here, my choice would probably be a glazed donut. Perhaps a jelly filled one. Or maybe even chocolate frosted. But it would be a baked goods choice -- nothing more, nothing less.
It used to be that "Kennedy" was always the name of multiple office holders: from local officials to state officers to Congress, the Senate and the Oval Office. Not to mention the Peace Corps, and public service for groups such as the Special Olympics.
On Tuesday, Harry Stonebraker was re-elected mayor of Winfield, Missouri. 
