Friday, March 01, 2013

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) So Weaker Boener caved in and allowed the sequester to go through. Naturally, the mouthbreathers of the right cheered him on. As I posited the other day, it seems pretty likely that Weaker Boener did this as a sop to this flank, and will now have to negotiate with Harry Reid and President Obama. Do not expect easy negotiations. Boener is in a terrible bind, with ghosts of the 1995 shutdown looming over the Republicans and the American people pointing fingers directly at him.
 
2) The second private space flight to the International Space Station, the unmanned Dragon space craft, will launch today at 10:10 AM. It carries restocking supplies, including fresh food. NASA is paying $1.6 billion for a dozen flights.
 
3) Groupon fired its CEO (and general knucklehead) yesterday. He comes off an as immature brat, even walking out the door. Groupon could have, should have, been the darling of the American economy, particularly in tough economic times, but instead they ended up being a diversion, a light entertainment on the business landscape, and a thorn in the side of stockholders.
 
4) God bless America, where voting is an entitlement  -- Scalia's word -- but slaughtering a classroom full of five year olds is a God-given right.
 
5) Now that President Obama has a) endorsed gay marriage and b) won re-election, it's nice to see he hasn't forgotten to follow up.
 
6) A "polarizing issue"? My God, IT'S FUCKING GOLF, for Christ's sake! Gun ownership, voting rights, violence against women, those are -- although they should not be -- polarizing issues. But putters????
 
7) Another nail in the coffin for climate change denialists. Soon, guys, those will be literal coffins, as the planet pays us all back.
 
8) You know those background mental stability checks the NRA is proposing? Here's a good start. I'm betting many gun nuts would fail, epically.
 
9) First came the telephone. Then the cell phone. Then the smart phone. And soon? The brain phone. I have a problem with this: I like to turn my phone off at night.
 
10) I pick on Florida a lot in this column, so let me post something nicey-time for your perusal to make up for it.