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A little interlude.

We’re going to keep this clean for a few days. God knows what some of the newer vis­i­tors must think of me. They came here to see us lift high the blood­stained ban­ner, and what do they get? The C-word and that other C-word.

So let’s dial it down a lit­tle. Go smoke a bowl with Mary Ann.

There. Every­one mel­lowed out? Good. (And thanks, Ash­ley, for the tippage.)

Sounds like Spitzer may be out of a job before I can hit “pub­lish” today. Ah, well. It was inevitable. Why am I reminded of the speech Beadie gives McNulty in “The Wire” this sea­son, about who comes to your wake when you die? “A nice guy and good tip­per” isn’t the worst epi­taph in the world, but for a man with three daugh­ters, I’d say he has some repa­ra­tions to make.

For­tu­nately, because this is pol­i­tics and the great cir­cle of life, we didn’t even have to wait a few min­utes before fresh enter­tain­ment arrived: Dr. Kevorkian says he’s run­ning for Con­gress. Well, he can’t prac­tice med­i­cine any­more and he’s overqual­i­fied to pump gas, so I’d say this fits. He’s chal­leng­ing Joe Knol­len­berg, known locally as “Toi­let Joe” for his will­ing­ness to march into bat­tle against the scourge of low-flow toi­lets. Jack Lessen­berry pro­vides the details:

Toi­let Joe got his nick­name from his as-yet-unpassed “Plumb­ing Stan­dards Improve­ment Act.” That would per­mit our John­nys to use more than twice as much water per flush, cer­tainly a fine envi­ron­men­tal idea in the parched South­west, and one of the many rea­sons the League of Con­ser­va­tion Vot­ers rates T.J. a per­fect zero.

Dr. Death vs. Toi­let Joe? Where else can you get enter­tain­ment like this at these prices?

Note: Jour­nal­is­tic objec­tiv­ity requires me to make a cou­ple of obser­va­tions. Kevorkian’s run will likely not hap­pen; he needs to gather sig­na­tures and has sup­pos­edly been dying of kid­ney dis­ease for years now, and most peo­ple think this is, what do we say these days? “A cry for help,” yes. Also, every­thing I know about low-flow toi­lets comes from Dave Barry; appar­ently some peo­ple really con­sider them an affront. But my sis­ter remod­eled her bath­room last year and can­not say enough good things about hers, which is not only effi­cient but, being low-flow, refills in just a few sec­onds. Plumb­ing seems much louder in the mid­dle of the night, and a fast-refilling potty is some­thing you want. “But what about the multiple-flush phe­nom­e­non I’ve read about, in which a sim­ple num­ber two can­not be sent on its way with­out sup­ple­men­tal explo­sives?” She said she’s never needed it, and even if you did, 75 per­cent of all toilet-flushing is for num­ber one, so you’re still sav­ing water. Hav­ing used this very toi­let myself, I have to say I was impressed. It does seem very effi­cient for only using a gal­lon and a half.

So I’m vot­ing for Kevorkian!

Actu­ally, I can’t vote for Kevorkian, because I don’t live in his dis­trict. My own con­gress­man is Car­olyn Cheeks Kil­patrick, mother of the cur­rent mayor of Detroit. He is what we reporters gen­er­ally call “embat­tled.” (It’s one of our special-vocabulary things, like “war-torn.”) A few weeks ago, one of our com­menters, JohnC, pre­dicted Kwame would play the race card before his cur­rent trou­bles are through; not to take any­thing away from JohnC, who is a very sharp observer, but this is a lit­tle like pre­dict­ing win­ter will be colder than sum­mer. It came last night in his State of the City address, the race card with extreme prejudice:

“In the past 30 days, I’ve been called a nig­ger more than any time in my entire life,” Kil­patrick said, his voice ris­ing and his fin­ger wag­ging at the sud­denly elec­tri­fied audi­ence, which stood and applauded.

“In the past three days, I’ve received more death threats than I have in my entire admin­is­tra­tion,” he con­tin­ued. “I’ve heard these words, but I’ve never heard peo­ple say them about my wife and chil­dren. I have to say this, because it’s very per­sonal to me.”

And then, in a swipe at the media, he said, “I don’t believe that a Nielsen rat­ing is worth the life of my chil­dren or your chil­dren. This uneth­i­cal, ille­gal lynch-mob men­tal­ity has to stop.”

Well-played, sir! The N-word and a lynch mob in one fell swoop! Let’s see how it goes. Every week it gets worse for him, but never, ever count out a crook in Detroit. In many ways, the city hasn’t found its bot­tom yet.

OK. Sec­ond cup of cof­fee and extra sleep is now fully oper­a­tional, and it’s time to get to work. No blog­gage today…no, wait. Ken Levine is back on the job, tak­ing apart “Amer­i­can Idol” for the amuse­ment of par­ents across this great land of ours, trapped on our couches watch­ing this crap with the kids:

Amanda Overmyer wailed on “You Can’t Do That”, a song refer­ring to her black and white striped slacks.

Of course she’s the one from Indi­ana. Figures.

Have a great after­noon. I’m off to write queries.

Posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 10:25 am
in Current events, Detroit life, Television.

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69 responses to
“A little interlude.”

  1. Danny said on March 12th, 2008 at 10:45 am

    OK, now that the com­ments are sure to die down, I might as well weigh in.

    The seri­ous com­ments here ranged from “Men are pigs and it’s in their nature,” to “It’s prob­a­bly the woman’s fault.” I don’t buy either one of these nor any com­ments that are reach­ing for some mid­dle ground.

    Assum­ing there is no abuse, the only ques­tion that is really rel­e­vant in any mar­riage is, “Do you love your spouse?” And by love, I don’t just mean the feel­ing of affec­tion. I mean the time-to-roll-up-your-sleeves and get to work kind of love. The love that does not seek it’s own way, but con­sid­ers the other more impor­tant than your­self. In short, the I Corinthi­ans 13 kind of love.

    To any man in an unhappy mar­riage, I would say “boo-hoo.” You are prob­a­bly largely respon­si­ble for the way your wife treats you and even if you are not, big deal. Be a man. Love your wife. Honor your vows.

    So no, Eliot and Dr. Laura. It’s not Silda’s fault. It’s Eliot’s fault for be such a hard-hearted jerk.

  2. brian stouder said on March 12th, 2008 at 10:46 am

    And Mary Anne is almost the sole sur­vivor now; the skip­per and Gilli­gan (another stoner) are dead, as are the Howells.…don’t know about the Pro­fes­sor (who might be Ash­ley, for all we know) or Ginger.

    It’s the pig-tails on her, I say; that’s where the trou­ble begins

    edit: Danny, agreed about Spitzer. He seems to be a sort of idiot savant; highly advanced polit­i­cal savvy, and less than zero judge­ment and per­sonal restraint

  3. nancy said on March 12th, 2008 at 10:51 am

    Or, Danny, as the gay Methodist who mar­ried us said at our wed­ding: “The ques­tion we ask you to answer today isn’t ‘do you love,’ because of course you love each other today — it’s your wed­ding. It’s ‘will you love.’ That’s the hard part.”

  4. Sue said on March 12th, 2008 at 10:54 am

    You say you’re going to keep this clean and then you start a dis­cus­sion on toi­lets? Just guess where the com­ment sec­tion will focus.

  5. alex said on March 12th, 2008 at 10:56 am

    I love my house but I curse the for­mer owner for one thing: Remod­el­ing the bath­rooms and installing low-flow toilets.

    Dunno if you tried to do num­ber two when you were here, Nance, but I’ve got the rou­tine down pat. If it’s big break it up with the plunger. You might get it all down in three tries. For the squirts, sim­ply remain on standby for a sec­ond flush.

  6. Danny said on March 12th, 2008 at 10:56 am

    Won­der­ful, Nance.

  7. Danny said on March 12th, 2008 at 11:31 am

    You know, we were just reflect­ing the other day at cof­fee on how Gilligan’s Island is where most of our intro­duc­tions to Shake­speare came from.

    And thanks goes to Chuck Jones, who was respon­si­ble for acquaint­ing most of us with clas­si­cal music.

    Ah, we are rich with tele­vi­sion, aren’t we?

  8. nancy said on March 12th, 2008 at 11:31 am

    Alex! TMI! Silen­cio!

    As to your, um, prob­lem: From what I under­stand, the low-flow tech­nol­ogy has been improv­ing steadily since the first ones came on the mar­ket. Exist­ing water pres­sure in the struc­ture is prob­a­bly a fac­tor. You may have to ask your in-house con­trac­tor if wells can pro­duce the turbo boost needed, but my sister’s house is on a stan­dard res­i­den­tial sub­di­vi­sion, and her LFT per­forms admirably. It’s all over very quickly — just whoosh and refill.

  9. derwood said on March 12th, 2008 at 11:40 am

    If you buy a qual­ity low-flow they work great. If you buy the one on clear­ance for $24 at Big R, you will be flush­ing twice. My mom would never let me replace her yel­low 70s toi­let because she was sure the low-flow toi­let would kill her.

    Alex…you have the $24 model.

    daron

  10. Peter said on March 12th, 2008 at 11:41 am

    On today’s install­ment of Ask An Archi­tect: Advice on Low Flow Toilets.

    Friends, although my upcom­ing pil­grim­age to the Kitchen and Bath Show (any week now) may change my mind, Toto is the go to brand for your waste evac­u­a­tion needs. Their new 1.2 gal mod­els are some­thing else, and they also have the two level flush (less water for no. 1’s). And my Toto’s at home have taken every­thing I’ve given them and it’s one flush every time — and I’ve dropped some depth charges over the years. What can I tell you — the Japan­ese obsess more about toi­lets than they do about cars, and you know how much they obsess over those.

    YOu know, all this talk of poop reminds me of John Water’s com­ments on that famous scene in Pink Flamin­gos — “It isn’t against the law; it isn’t even a sin. I looked it up!”

    PS I just heard that Eliot is an ex-governor. Now only if the GOP per­verts were as ethical.

  11. Danny said on March 12th, 2008 at 11:43 am

    Sue is a prophet.

  12. Sue said on March 12th, 2008 at 11:43 am

    What did I tell you?

  13. nancy said on March 12th, 2008 at 11:50 am

    You peo­ple are killing me.

    Gen­er­ally, when I need to get work done, I shut down both my browser and e-mail, because com­ments come to me as e-mail, and if I start read­ing them, I tend to get sucked in.

    Lately I’ve been keep­ing the e-mail up, because we’re get­ting some first-time com­menters lately, and I want to approve them as soon as pos­si­ble, so they don’t lan­guish in mod­er­a­tion forever.

    But Peter, now I’m won­der­ing if there isn’t a story in the low-flow toi­let debate. Poo is very much on the national radar at the moment. We have our finger…on the pulse!

    Or some­where, anyway.

    Actu­ally, I’ve been want­ing to write about colon-obsessives for a while. Maybe I can wrap it all up in a nice pack­age after all.

  14. Sue said on March 12th, 2008 at 12:01 pm

    “Maybe I can wrap it all up in a nice pack­age after all.” Then set fire to it and leave it on someone’s doorstep? Want some sug­ges­tions? Don’t for­get to ring the doorbell.

  15. derwood said on March 12th, 2008 at 12:07 pm

    Sure you guys don’t know me that well…but I had a colonoscopy a few years ago. They give you pic­tures. I put a santa hat on mine and put “Happy New Rear” on it and included it in our xmas cards. Not all of them of course…just the friends and fam­ily I wanted to offend. Or make laugh.

    daron

  16. nancy said on March 12th, 2008 at 12:09 pm

    My take would be brain-based, of course. But lately one of my favorite mar­kets has taken to stack­ing giant jars of Dr Natura’s Colon Cleanse near the check­out lanes, which I find intrigu­ing. Every­thing goes in cycles, and an obses­sion with inner clean­li­ness is noth­ing new, as any stu­dent of the road-to-Wellville era in Amer­i­can his­tory knows. I won­der if it’s tied to some fin de sié­cle–eight-years-late thing.

    Just think­ing out loud.

  17. ashley said on March 12th, 2008 at 12:10 pm

    Danny: Whether to be, or not to be, that is the ques­tion that I ask of thee.

    My wife used to find it hilar­i­ous that I was intro­duced to Wag­ner by Chuck Jones, but now she real­izes that with­out that, I prob­a­bly wouldn’t have been exposed to Wag­ner until college.

    And don’t for­get that an entire episode of King of the Hill was ded­i­cated to the topic of low-flow toi­lets.

    Oh, and by the by, tomor­row is my “inva­sive pro­ce­dure”. A friend said “think of it like you are a porn star, and this is your first DP”.

  18. LAMary said on March 12th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

    Very true about low flow tech­nol­ogy. The older ones were ter­ri­ble. New ones work fine. I replaced mine last year and every­one in the house­hold is happy with their toi­let experiences.

    Speak­ing of poo, one of my col­leagues and I have been col­lect­ing poo related names of busi­nesses. The three win­ners this week are a Chi­nese restau­rant in the San Fer­nando Val­ley calle Poo Ping, a Viet­namese restau­rant on the edge of Chi­na­town called My Dung, and a store­front in North­east LA that refills those big plas­tic water jugs called Wateria.

  19. Sue said on March 12th, 2008 at 12:19 pm

    Don’t for­get lit­er­a­ture: My brother in law and I had a long dis­cus­sion a cou­ple of months ago on whether a char­ac­ter in one of the Looney Tunes car­toons was mod­eled after Lennie in “Of Mice and Men” (“I will hug him and squeeze him…”). I still think it was. And speak­ing of per­verted clas­sics: I watched “High Noon” AFTER I had seen “Blaz­ing Sad­dles”, and unfor­tu­nately couldn’t stop laugh­ing. I don’t know what will hap­pen when I see “Destry Rides Again”.

  20. beb said on March 12th, 2008 at 12:23 pm

    On low flow toi­lets I’ve heard that they need a wider dis­charge pipe that was com­mon for the lower high-flpw toi­lets, but I Am Not A Plumber (IANAP).

    My wife made the mis­take of watch­ing the State of the City Speech last night. I thought she was going to stroke out, it made her so mad.

    I want to slap him so hard his mother hurts. Lying piece of.…

    Unlike Guil­iani, Spitzer didn’t assign a police escourt to his hook­ers, and unlike Kil­patrick, Spitzer dpes nopt appear to have used city (state) money to pay for his escapades.

  21. del said on March 12th, 2008 at 12:26 pm

    Best Chuck Jones car­toon: Rab­bit of Seville.

    http://​youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​e​w​o​A​S​fRSJWY

  22. Danny said on March 12th, 2008 at 12:30 pm

    You know, I think the first mis­take that most American’s make in Europe is with the bidet’s. They are NOT drink­ing fountains.

  23. Danny said on March 12th, 2008 at 12:31 pm

    Del, that was the very one I was think­ing of.

  24. Dorothy said on March 12th, 2008 at 12:42 pm

    We need to hook up Peter with Fred and Sharon so they can make a com­mer­cial for him.

  25. brian stouder said on March 12th, 2008 at 1:03 pm

    I think tomorrow’s nn.c post should tie together Spitzer and low flow toi­lets, and be titled ‘We’re flush with johns’

  26. Adrianne said on March 12th, 2008 at 1:23 pm

    And not to inter­rupt the how-low-can-you-flow toi­let discussion:

    But my ini­tial guess at the Spitz’s “unsafe” sex­ual prac­tices turned out to be right. He didn’t want to wear a con­dom. The response of the brunette ho Kris­ten was, mem­o­rably, “Dude, do you want the sex or not?”

  27. Peter said on March 12th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

    Tying it all together -

    Sue — that car­toon is def­i­nitely based on Mice and Men

    Danny — I loves them bidets. When my wife and I travel, we throw ice in them for the per­fect wine/pop cooler.

    Del — Chuck Jones? I like McKim­son and Clam­pett bet­ter — they could really crank out some vio­lent ones. BTW, where have those car­toons gone? Is the only way to see them is by DVD?

    LA Mary — when I did a job in Sao Paolo my hotel was next to a drug­store called E Farto

  28. Gena said on March 12th, 2008 at 2:30 pm

    you guys are so enter­tain­ing, it’s effin impos­si­ble to get any­thing done. i’d tell my friends, but then i’d be respon­si­ble for their kids going hun­gry, too.

  29. alex said on March 12th, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    Speak­ing of restau­rant names, my fave is “Thai-arrhea” (Thai Aree) in Chicago. Hottest damn Thai food I’ve ever eaten in my life and I used to think I was no wuss. Guar­an­teed to give stab­bing abdom­i­nal cramps and pro­jec­tile squirts and so good it’s well worth the trouble.

  30. Sue said on March 12th, 2008 at 3:00 pm

    The unof­fi­cial tourism slo­gan among Wis­con­sinites in the know is “Come to Wis­con­sin and Smell Our Dairy Air”. For some rea­son the State tourism board hasn’t taken that one up.

  31. Harl Delos said on March 12th, 2008 at 3:07 pm

    now I’m won­der­ing if there isn’t a story in the low-flow toi­let debate

    Habi­tat for Human­ity has a store locally, where they sell recy­cled build­ing mate­ri­als. They never have high-flow toi­lets in stock; they sell as soon as they are available.

    Nel­son Rock­e­feller funded a grant to a group to develop a com­post­ing toi­let. I under­stand it worked well. It had a curved stor­age area at the bot­tom, so you waited 10 years, and then started remov­ing it as fast as you were accu­mu­lat­ing it. It was dry, loamy, odor-free, and free of any pathogens.

    A cousin of mine was think­ing about installing one when he built a house. The hous­ing per­mit peo­ple ques­tioned his blue­prints, say­ing, “You want to keep ten years of WHAT in your basement?”

  32. brian stouder said on March 12th, 2008 at 3:17 pm

    Speak­ing of music set to shows — 

    this past week­end we had a free Show­time deal on Directv, and I watched a doc­u­men­tary about the mis­sions to the moon, with all-real footage, inter­est­ing (off the beaten path) music (plus the now-expected clas­si­cal music, as the space craft manuever and pirou­ette, ala 2001: A Space Odyssey), and very com­pelling voice-over nar­ra­tion from the astro­nauts them­selves. It put a lump in my throat and made my eyes misty — so many under­state­ments (very Right Stuff style, indeed!); in one seg­ment they showed a mon­tage of one spill after another; astro­nauts on the face of the moon, falling on their faces, or stum­bling onto their knees, or onto their backs — while one of the fel­lows (Collins, I think) is say­ing “You know, it was almost dan­ger­ous — ’cause if you ever would spring a leak, you’d die”.…and of course you think “ALMOST”!!!??? “Almost dan­ger­ous???!!” Good God!! — they’re a quar­ter mil­lion miles from home, with the blue earth hang­ing in the sky above them, stand­ing on the sur­face of the moon on 300 degree F sun­light in a vac­uum, jump­ing around and falling.….….

    A great, great show — I will have to buy it. I think it was called Home of the Brave — from 1989 or there­abouts. One of the end-credits said “All scenes shot entirely on loca­tion by the National Aero­nau­tics and Space Adminstration” — which made me laugh out loud!

  33. Harl Delos said on March 12th, 2008 at 3:25 pm

    at MSNBC:
    Deputies said a woman in west­ern Kansas sat on her boyfriend’s toi­let for two years, and they’re inves­ti­gat­ing whether she was mistreated.

    Or con­sti­pated?

    Or she hadn’t fin­ished the sudoku book?

    Did they dis­cover it when he applied for a court order giv­ing HIM a turn?

  34. LAMary said on March 12th, 2008 at 4:04 pm

    There was a Simp­sons episode based on “The Departed,” a few days ago.

  35. sue said on March 12th, 2008 at 6:18 pm

    Del, just took a moment to watch Rab­bit of Seville. Any­time Bugs is in drag, it’s a clas­sic. I usu­ally work alone at my night job — guess what music will be going through my head until 11:00 tonight?

  36. MichaelG said on March 12th, 2008 at 6:19 pm

    I’ve been out of town the last cou­ple of days and it sure looks like I missed a cou­ple of good NN.Cs. Went to the women’s prison at Chow­chilla.
    They’ve got their own sex scan­dal going on right now. Not pretty. The war­den told me “If your con­trac­tor has any Brad Pitt look-a-likes on his crew, keep him off the prop­erty.” She was more than half seri­ous.
    While down the val­ley, I stayed at a brand new Court­yard by Mar­riott. They let me sleep indoors  —  I didn’t have to crash in the court­yard. Any­way, the bog had some kind of blow jet toi­let affair that scared the crap out of me the first time I flushed it. I pushed the lit­tle lever down as per nor­mal and it aggres­sively popped right back up at me as if to cast off my hand. Star­tled, I drew back with a jerk and at the same time the toi­let flushed with an instant and almighty 800 deci­bel KERWOOSH. A lit­tle kid expe­ri­enc­ing this for the first time would be ter­ri­fied into a hor­ri­bly scarred life­time of anal reten­tion. For­tu­nately, I’m made of stouter stuff, but wow. I still may need counseling.

    I’m wait­ing for the next wife of one of these guys to balk at going up to the mic with him. “I’m not going up there. Don’t look at me, go talk to stupid.”

  37. Joe K said on March 12th, 2008 at 6:46 pm

    Try watch­ing Duck amuck, the one where bugs is draw­ing Daffy, or Duck Rab­bit Duck, and not laugh out loud.
    Brian– I saw the same thing you did, Thought it was great. I liked the part where Pete Con­rad ask his part­ner if he would like to fly the lunar mod­ual and he was afraid it would break some rule. Pete said no one would ever know,cause they were on the back­side of the moon. I have seen two shut­tle launches over the years and they are awsome I saw one day and one night launch, the night launch left you in Aw. I can remem­ber the Sat­urn –5 moon launches, that big bird sat on the pad and burned with out mov­ing for a few sec­onds, then lifted off, the shut­tle just lights and go’s
    Joe

  38. michaelj said on March 12th, 2008 at 7:15 pm

    MSNBC: I can hon­estly say, I talked the Kick­ing Ass blog into tun­ing into Keith Olber­man every night back in ’04, but in the last sev­eral months, he’s made every effort to por­tray Hillary as nuts and Obama the voice of rea­son. I believe both can­di­dates are, in gen­eral, and it’s not just any­body but Bush.

    Clinton’s health care­lan is more solid, and well-conceived eco­nom­i­cally, and more likely to start an eco­nomic turn­around than Obama’s. I under­stand both pretty well, and they don’t dif­fer greatly, but the lat­ters is a rehash lack­ing cru­cial ele­ments of the former’s.

    On the Iraq inva­sion, well, if W and the Stovepipe gang booted Al Baradei, they broke the Pub­lic Law. You can parse the lan­guage of the Autho­riza­tion how­ever you want and claim Shock and Awe-shit was ‘autho­rized, but the troop inva­sion cir­cum­vented what the lying ass­holes had talked Con­gress into by pure subterfuge.

    I know for a fact Obama wasn’t there and had no access to the man­u­fac­tured ‘intel­li­gence’ pre­sented to sit­ting mem­bers of Con­gress. I fig­ure the House and the Sen­ate were pre­sented with bogus evi­dence none of them were pre­pared to think involved the Pres­i­dent just lying his ass off, or the Pres­i­dent of Vice mov­ing his lips to say the same. How’s Con­gress sup­posed to judge, in that sit­u­a­tion, the Pres­i­dent capa­ble of mon­strous duplic­ity? When LBJ foisted Tonkin Gulf on America’s leg­isla­tive bod­ies, dthe die was cast. In the cur­rent case, PNACenturion’s appeals to Pres­i­dent Clin­ton notwith­stand­ing, every sin­gle thing they were told was a carefully-woven tis­sue of lies to hood­wink them

    I was surely fol­low­ing it closely. I didn’t know dick about the whole thing, but what I could find out in a moment’s Google about Saddam’s capa­bil­i­ties, inten­tions, plans and think­ing, any­more than Obama could in the Illi­nois House.

    But Hillary Clin­ton should have had some sort of pre­mo­ni­tion about Doug Feith so they’d no more about what Obama didn’t know??

    This crit­i­cism is a delib­er­ately non­sen­si­cal crock of shit. And if you never heard the spec­tac­u­larly well-planted and designed infor­ma­tion, you didn’t know shit to make a judge­ment, but you could sure lick the frost­ing on the other end, when you had no vote, and what the hey.

    Tell you what. I fig­ured one way or another all of this was Sunni vs. Shia. vs Kurds and Amer­i­can troops signed on for one, tops two. Now I was right about that. Don’t think Obama was. If you didn’t see Turks vs Kurds, how do you claim pre­science. Pre­science seems to be Obama’s claim to fame. How did he miss Kurdistan?

    Domes­ti­cally. I said the cau­cuses were anti-democratic. In Dem cau­cus states: 6% of Democ­rats took part. Total dems in states: 2.35mil in Michi­gan and Florida. In all the cau­cus states that expressed their supe­ri­or­ity, because they bum-rushed cau­cuse, 1.2mil. Somebody’s screw­ing with the process. These voter reg­is­tra­tion num­bers can be jacked around hoow­ever any­body likes.

    Hillary sai in Jan­u­ary these del­e­gates should be seated The argu­ment that nobody got to run adds. Well I dom’t think any­thing pre­cluded run­ning ads. Obama’s full of shit, and seems to be dis­en­fran­chis­ing vot­ers. But I’m sup­pos­ing that’s some­how racist.

    I know this is silly. The Obama cam­paign says Bill Clin­ton is some sort of racist. Yeah, right. What kind of idiocy are you.

    Please explain how any­thing Bill Clin­ton said was racist. Please explain his Obama’s cam­paign said it was racist? Well, you can’t. The race card is being wielded like the ham­mer of the Gods. Accus­ing Hillary’s cam­paign of racism is so lame, it’s kind of like claim­ing Hillary sup­ported the war. You make do with the lies presented?

    Racism brought by the Clin­ton cam­paign? Well, any­thing crit­i­cal. Seri­ously lame, but that’s the whole deal. Do Amer­i­cans flinch more from a woman or from a manly black guy?

    I do know this and I don’t really care about that. Amer­i­cans would like to rein­state the Constitution.

    In the long run, I don’t care. I just don’t want to see some whack­job insist­ing we’ve got no rights of pri­vacy, assem­bly, or to think what we like. My opin­ion? McCains about as insane as Ronald Ray­gun, and he’s entirely for full-on Bush KBR-Blackwater trai­tor for cash.

    Barak said the most obnox­ious­lyi nad­miss­able thing. Her sup­port­ers would sup­port­ers would sup­port me but mine wouldn’t sup­port her. They sup­port remov­ing the troops but not if I don’t do it? Is he that self-messianic? If he thinks this way, is it sur­pris­ing he sucks up to Ray­gun? Cu.t of Personality

    It’s a fact. I don’t favor lne over the other. But If you try to go all Ralph. You’re an ass­hole. I’m old enough to believe nobody meant any­thing but Bobby. Truth? That was John KERRy. Given pre-announcded cheat­ing in Ohio, he got cheated. They ate Ohio alive and they cheated like bas­tards. They said they would and they did.

    So Hillary and Obama? John Kerry would have been bet­ter. But you ass­holes let him get slimed, and some­how that was his fault. DNC, pro­gres­sives, how wasn’t that train­wreck your fault? How wasn’t John Kerry your can­di­date? Not heroic? Not patri­otic enough>

    ?Here’s the deal lWhat I was going to say. It’s hard to explain.The Pres­i­dent of the United States just chose to liehis ass off toComgress to make cash, and the Con­gress was sup­posed to assume he was a mon­ster. They didn’t want to believe the Pres­i­dent was a mon­ster that would lie his ass off. So he just lied.

    And Con­gress was sup­posed to think the Pres­i­dent was such a scum­bag he’d lie about everyrhing he said?

    He still stilld’t. If you say he co

  39. Deborah said on March 12th, 2008 at 7:19 pm

    Any­one won­der­ing where Gin­ger (Tina Louise) is these days lis­ten up. I was in New York a cou­ple of weeks ago on busi­ness and was invited to a cock­tail party by a busi­ness asso­ciate. Tina was at the party as a guest! She looked fan­tas­tic, still a red head, slim and styl­ish. She’s writ­ing chil­drens books now they say, although I have not seen any of them. I didn’t know who she was when I spoke with her, she was very nor­mal. Other peo­ple at the party gave me the scoop later.

  40. Dorothy said on March 12th, 2008 at 7:36 pm

    Keep that up, Deb­o­rah, and you’ll be rival­ing LA Mary with your brushes with greatness!

  41. Crabby said on March 12th, 2008 at 7:39 pm

    Spitzer girl­friend, really (in case any­one is interested)

    http://​www​.myspace​.com/​n​i​n​a​v​enetta

    Regards
    Crabby

  42. Deborah said on March 12th, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    Wow, being com­pared to LA Mary in brushes with great­ness is a com­pli­ment that I totally don’t deserve. But I’m flat­tered all the same.

  43. brian stouder said on March 12th, 2008 at 8:47 pm

    Thanks for the link, Crabby. Here’s the money shot -

    http://​www​.thesmok​ing​gun​.com/​g​r​a​p​h​i​c​s​/​a​r​t​4​/​0​3​1​2​0​8​4​k​r​i​s​t​e​n1.jpg

    Ash­ley and I can pick out at least a cou­ple of high­lights (so to speak) here

  44. alex said on March 12th, 2008 at 8:53 pm

    Roach motel’s got a bikini over it.

  45. velvet goldmine said on March 12th, 2008 at 9:31 pm

    I rented a Tina Louise movie a cou­ple of months ago, and she was a rev­e­la­tion. What a shame GI defined her rep­u­ta­tion. She was hell­cat sexy in this flick, but in a sub­tle, heart­break­ing way.

    Speak­ing of GI (ha ha), I usu­ally run the other way dur­ing toi­let talk, but Whoopie Gold­berg keeps talk­ing about hers and I really wish I had her money. Her toi­let kind of washes you down, blows you dry.…probably wipes your nose and sings you a lul­labye, for all I know.

  46. Suzi said on March 12th, 2008 at 10:09 pm

    And thanks goes to Chuck Jones, who was respon­si­ble for acquaint­ing most of us with clas­si­cal music.

    Ah, we are rich with tele­vi­sion, aren’t we?

    So that’s who Chuck Jones was. I Googled “bugs elmer fudd kill the rab­bit” and got this among oth­ers:
    http://​www​.thes​tar​.com/​e​n​t​e​r​t​a​i​n​m​e​n​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​233518

    Thanks, Danny, for the his­tory les­son. We were rich indeed.
    kill da wabbit …

  47. Kafkaz said on March 12th, 2008 at 10:39 pm

    Sigh. How weirded out must the daugh­ters be? Espe­cially the eldest of them? Unless these kids are being barred from com­puter use, they can surf to that page – and to all of the rel­e­vant pages – just as eas­ily as we can.

    (I was teach­ing an exec sort to man­age his email and his online life. He Googled him­self, and up popped a news­pa­per arti­cle about an ethics charge that had been lodged against him years ear­lier. He turned a bit green. Assured me that he’d been cleared. So. Can’t keep these girls away from their var­i­ous inter­net devices for­ever. They *will* read this stuff, and won’t that be fun for them?)

    MichaelG – Some air­port bath­rooms have those auto­matic sonic boom flush­ers. My daugh­ter was, indeed, pretty darned freaked out by that the first time around.

    Harl – You know, I just keep won­der­ing what made the two year mark so mag­i­cally moti­vat­ing. What is it about that par­tic­u­lar inter­val of time that finally made the boyfriend think, “Now *this* is too long?” Oddly, too, I found myself won­der­ing how they han­dled hol­i­days. I’d like to read the short story ver­sion of that sce­nario as han­dled by Dou­glas Adams in his Dirk Gen­tly Holis­tic Detec­tive guise.

  48. Dexter said on March 13th, 2008 at 12:06 am

    By gawd, ya won’t see this every day! [not valid com­men­tary in New Jer­sey, Con­necti­cut, and New York.]

    http://​graph​ics8​.nytimes​.com/​p​a​c​k​a​g​e​s​/​p​d​f​/​n​y​r​e​g​i​o​n​/​c​i​t​y​_​r​o​o​m​/​2​0​0​8​0​3​1​2​_​S​p​i​t​z​e​r​L​e​t​t​er.pdf

  49. nancy said on March 13th, 2008 at 12:13 am

    What? A politi­cian resign­ing on St. Patrick’s Day?

  50. Dexter said on March 13th, 2008 at 12:15 am

    By now we all know “Kris­ten” is a “musi­cian”. And you guys haven’t come up any “…and she plays the flute…” jokes yet?
    It’s been an edu­ca­tion , these past few days…I didn’t know Eliot is a half-billionaire, and I had for­got­ten he won 70% of the vote…and then in a year and a few months, reversed it into an 80% dis­ap­proval fac­tor.
    …wish I had the cham­pagne , Guin­ness, and Dewar’s con­ces­sion in the near —  Wall Street bars yes­ter­day after Spitzer offi­cially resigned. Most hated gov­er­nor down there since …ever?

  51. Dexter said on March 13th, 2008 at 12:17 am

    …lis­ten­ing to Detroit mayor drop­ping the n word in a speech a cou­ple nights ago. Sad . Said he was called that more than ever the past 30 days.

  52. Dexter said on March 13th, 2008 at 12:19 am

    nance…did ya see Jon Stewart’s take on the St. Paddy’s Day timing?

  53. MarkH said on March 13th, 2008 at 12:20 am

    OK, so I have a few brushes with great­ness tucked away, and Mary Ann is one of them.

    Driggs, Idaho, where Dawn Wells moved about seven or eight years ago is 25 miles from where I live. Every now and then she shows up in Jack­son, and a few years back attended our annual Labor Day Fun Run for char­i­ties push­ing her non­prp­fit Spud­Fest and actors’ work­shop. About 65 at the time, she looked great, you’d know her any­where, almost unchanged and unmis­tak­able as Mary Ann. Very well-presented. She is very approach­able, friendly, funny, yes, perky, and, well, she’s just Mary Ann fer cryin’ out loud. I got spend about ten min­utes one-on-one hear­ing about how she came to the area, her new work with young actors and the Spud­Fest. GI was fun, but it was mostly over for her on TV when it ended and she doesn’t miss it or look back often.

    This inci­dent was a bit of a stun­ner around here, even given the more lib­eral sen­si­bil­i­ties that abound. No mugshot is flat­ter­ing, but what the hell. She is nearly 70 after all, now we know what she looks like after a snoot­ful on her 69th birthday.

    VG, that wouldn’t have been Tina’s first film, “God’s Lit­tle Acre”, would it? At her bomb­shell best as Griselda in that one. What a hoot, and with a very inter­est­ing cast. Tina Louise will ALWAYS look great, and she just turned 74! Always thought she was an under­rated actress.

    Also, Brian, the Pro­fes­sor, Rus­sell John­son, does survive…at 84. Very active an AIDS char­i­ties these days, since his son died of it some years back. Jim Backus, Natalie Schae­fer, Alan Hale, Jr. and of course, Bob Den­ver, all gone now.

  54. ashley said on March 13th, 2008 at 1:52 am

    Great. “Kris­ten” is really named “Ashley”.

    Thank you, God.

  55. michaelj said on March 13th, 2008 at 5:41 am

    Men aren’t pigs. DNA says pretty close, and women pretty much piglets with saucy trot­ters too. Older than the Bible. Women will eter­nally act like they don’t bother, moron guys will zoom in on tits. I’ve never seen the attrac­tion. Legs. Maybe. Maybe. How ’bout intel­li­gence that shines through.

    John Steed and Mrs. Peel. If there are avatars. Steed is a per­fect gen­tle­man, with brains. Mrs. Peel is gor­geous, and smarter than every­body, and she can kick about anybody’s ass. Steeds reserved, but he can kick everybody’s ass when Mrs. Peel is done with them.

    So, she’s pretty much my ex-wife, who wouldn’t take shit from any­body, and I loved her for it even when it was def­i­nitely not con­ve­nient. But, I think my point is:

    If you don’t think misog­yny trumps racism, lis­ten to Olber­mann play­ing the hys­te­ria card. Holy shit, Keith, what woman hurt you so badly.

    Aside from that, McCain is nuts about Iraq. What he says, you vote for this idiot, you deserve to be dis­en­fran­chised. He’s looney.

    No mat­ter how any­body wants to put it, this isn’t any­body but W. Although McCain, that was egre­giously slan­dered in 2000 by W, but now they’re buds.

    So now nobody wants to come back on the so-called autho­ri­sa­tion. Nobody authori­ized the inva­sion. You read it. Nno­bodyau­tho­rised the inva­sion, did they? That just hap­prned. Did they find Bin Laden there?

    The worst thing is so-called proges­sives that harp on this vote with­out a clue what it actu­ally said. These ass­holes didn’t stand with Jphn Kerry. Holier-than-thou? Vote Nader, you ass­holes. Dante’s wait­ing. There’s no cir­cle of hell not pre­pared for some­body that votes for McCain. who’s appant­ley insane. Shat vou;d

    Tell you what. Last time we we had an Old­timers guy, we fucked over the Con­sti­tu­tion and funded the most despi­ca­ble scum­bags you could ever hope to find.

    Iran-Contra? Please? Who wasn’t a crim­i­nal? But this is the thing. When peo­ple pull this sort of shit, they claim it was for the greater good. This was all for the greater greed.

  56. michaelj said on March 13th, 2008 at 6:04 am

    Tell you what. I said cau­cus states are more dogass and anti-democratic,. My opin­ion was greeted as we would expect. I’ll say this once and future. Bussssssh 2.0

    Cau­cas States Votes: 1.9 mil

    Michi­gan and Florida votes: 2.4mil.

    So how are the cau­cuses represetative

  57. brian stouder said on March 13th, 2008 at 7:24 am

    ‘course, one would have thought that Hillary’s almighty cam­paign orga­ni­za­tion would have cleaned up on straight-forward orga­ni­za­tional tests, such as cau­cus elections.…and yet she gets trounced in every one! Why is that?

    Michaelj, would you com­plain about cau­cuses if Hillary won them? Or, more to the point, did you decry their ‘anti-democratic’ nature BEFORE the con­test began?

    As far as that goes — are you will­ing to say, Michaelj, that if Bar­rack Obama ends up with more pop­u­lar votes than Hillary  — that Hillary should con­cede to him?

    And as far as that goes — Olber­mann (who, we might agree, DOES get awfully full of him­self) is absolutely right about Fer­raro the white-haired racist. Imag­ine if some old white woman walked onto the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan cam­pus, and upon see­ing an aca­d­e­m­i­cally suc­cess­ful and socially pop­u­lar African Amer­i­can stu­dent, imme­di­ately dis­missed her as “lucky” to even be there, and ONLY there because she is black.

    I think we’d agree that that would be overt racism, yes? And Hillary pussy-footed around with this for two weeks.…which is highly offensive

  58. MichaelG said on March 13th, 2008 at 7:52 am

    Nancy, I don’t believe Eliot’s Irish. Besides, all the bish­ops have been try­ing to can­cel, post­pone or oth­er­wise stave off Paddy’s day this year.

    Sorry about the bikini, Ash­ley. But you gotta admit she’s cuter than you.

  59. Dorothy said on March 13th, 2008 at 8:00 am

    Air­port bath­rooms are not the only ones with those turbo-flush, ear split­ting thrones. I’ve expe­ri­enced them at rest stops along inter­state high­ways and at var­i­ous shop­ping centers.

  60. Harl Delos said on March 13th, 2008 at 8:10 am

    And Hillary pussy-footed around with this for two weeks….which is highly offensive

    Geral­dine Fer­raro was born in 1973. I expect geezers to reflect the times they grew up in. She doesn’t get it. She’s insulted those scared white men wear­ing the white sheets and the dirty worn work shoes for years, and any­one that calls her a racist is evil. She’s always been char­i­ta­ble to her infe­ri­ors. Barack is doing damned well for a pick­aninny, and he ought to be grate­ful that he’s even being con­sid­ered for vice-president, even though he’s obvi­ously not qual­i­fied, and who are these men in the long white coats, and where are they tak­ing me.

    Grandpa said some­thing about those damn nig­gers in the the 1960s, and I said to him, when you were in a thresh­ing ring, one of the fam­i­lies was black, and what’s more, your best friend is black. “He’s not a blackie,” grandpa spat. “That’s Leo. I’m talk­ing about the city niggers.”

    And — rel­a­tively speak­ing — he wasn’t a racist when it came to black folk. He didn’t have any prob­lem hav­ing black friends eat at his table, he enjoyed it, and he didn’t quail at eat­ing at his black friends’ tables. You couldn’t say that about the beet hunkies or dirty greasers. He hated all of them, and the ones he knew best, he hated most. But he was prej­u­diced against blacks he didn’t know.

    Things change with time.

    In the 1950s, “good” white folk were in favor of inte­gra­tion, except when it comes to mar­riage, because it would be a rough lift for a mulatto kid, who doesn’t fit in either soci­ety, except that when they inte­grated the schools, they found that famil­iar­ity breeds and these days, there are a lot of mixed race kids out there, and nobody thinks much about it, includ­ing the Archie Bunkers who find they have mixed-race grand­kids. I don’t think it’s any won­der that sup­port for Barack is much higher among kids than among older people.

    And Hillary pussy-footed around with this for two weeks….which is highly offensive

    Yes, it is. She is a mon­ster, in many ways. She doesn’t have any idea exactly how offen­sive Bill’s and Geraldine’s com­ments have been. A lot of the pun­dits are talk­ing about this elec­tion tak­ing on racial over­tones, but it’s really a proxy for age. This elec­tion is young ver­sus old. It really would make a lot of sense for McCain to invite Hillary to be his run­ning mate, and it would make a lot of sense for her to accept.

    Unless, of course, you’re Ann Coul­ter. But she’s irrel­e­vant, these days.

  61. Dee said on March 13th, 2008 at 8:16 am

    I love my power flush low water pot­tie. It wakes the whole house up in the mid­dle of the night. I work the dreaded 3rd shift and the nights I am home no one sleeps.

    I can’t believe the first com­ment I make is for the toi­let post.

    By the way three of your Google ads were for toi­lets and the other one was for Lin­coln National Insurance.

    Great blog…

  62. Connie said on March 13th, 2008 at 8:30 am

    The toi­let Whoopi Gold­berg talks about is sold in med­ical sup­ply stores as a hand­i­capped toi­let. And it is not really an entire toi­let, but an add-on that requires plumb­ing sim­i­lar to that which con­nects your ice-maker, and elec­tric. I first ran into one in the women’s room of a med­ical sup­ply store.

    We occa­sion­ally visit a restau­rant in Saugatuck that has one installed in the women’s restroom hand­i­capped stall. Its var­i­ous options include wash rear gen­tle, wash rear hard, wash front gen­tle, and blow dry. The water is nicely warmed. They don’t have the var­i­ous mas­sage set­tings turned on.

    Another hawk pic­ture this week: http://​elmores​.net/​r​o​u​n​d​-​h​e​r​e​/​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​s​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​1​2​5​3​_​0​_1_0_C

  63. Harl Delos said on March 13th, 2008 at 8:44 am

    Nice expres­sion on the “new hair­cut”, Con­nie, but wear­ing only a scarf?

  64. brian stouder said on March 13th, 2008 at 8:44 am

    A beau­ti­ful pic­ture! Some­times on the way out of the park, I will see a very large, regal look­ing bird perched atop a street light; no idea what it is, but one of these days I’ll have the cam­era with me, and zoom a shot of it.

    Harl — com­pletely agree! The Fer­raro gam­bit looks all-too cal­cu­lated to appeal to rus­tic types in, say, Ohio and Penn­syl­va­nia and Indi­ana and North Carolina.….and your point on age is the key­stone (so to speak). Older folks VOTE — and youth (tra­di­tion­ally, any­way) get bored and tune out.

    This is the real hell of it.…November is a long way off, and the Clin­ton cam­paign seems to be con­sum­ing their seed corn on this. It might work now, and cre­ate the crack that kills them in November.….but at least when the crotch­ety McCain cam­paign plays some sim­i­larly cyn­i­cal game this sum­mer, muck rak­ers like Olber­mann will have their bonifides in order, when they express their out­rage at him.

  65. Connie said on March 13th, 2008 at 8:46 am

    Harl, the scarf gets put on by the groomer and only lasts a day or two. And I just am not into dress­ing my dog.

  66. Kirk said on March 13th, 2008 at 8:55 am

    What restau­rant, Con­nie? Not that I’m an expert on the place, but we really liked Saugatuck and would go back. Not based on toi­let ameni­ties, of course.

    And I agree. The dog looks bitchin’.

  67. Connie said on March 13th, 2008 at 9:12 am

    The restau­rant is Spectator’s, just off 196 at the Saugatuck exit. (39?) We hang out for din­ner in the sports bar. The other Saugatuck restau­rant we tend to go to is The But­ler Hotel. I think its just the But­ler now. Best burger and a really good vidalia onion vinai­grette that I usu­ally buy a bot­tle of to take home.

    I grew up near Saugatuck, and the few years that Michigan’s drink­ing age was 18 let me hang out in Saugatuck bars at an early age.

    I can also rec­om­mend good restau­rants in Holland.

  68. Kirk said on March 13th, 2008 at 9:23 am

    We almost went to Spec­ta­tors to eat and watch a NASCAR race but wound up eat­ing some­where down­town that had a bar that was going to turn into a dance club, so we went to another bar (Wally’s, maybe), where we were informed that the owner didn’t like NASCAR and didn’t allow it on his TVs. I informed the waiter that his owner wasn’t very bright, and we split.

  69. Connie said on March 13th, 2008 at 9:45 am

    We watched But­ler lose to Florida in the sweet six­teen last year at Spectator’s. All four of us wear­ing our But­ler swim team shirts (my daugh­ter is on that team). The shirts got us a lot of attention.

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