Shocking-Please Pray for Senator Kennedy in His Fight With Cancer

As most could surmise, I am not a huge fan of Senator Ted Kennedy, he is at best the faded star of a once great political family. In the ranks of the blogosphere, of which I am only a small part, there will always be a certain amount of "grave-dancing" in instances like these.

On Daily Kos and Democratic Underground, people relished in the deaths of Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and Jerry Falwell along with making crass jokes about former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow's battle with cancer.

On Free Republic and other right-wing nutbag blogs, the same happened for poor old codgers like Senator Bob Byrd and is now happening for Senator Kennedy.

To all of those who want to dance on the good Senator's grave: STOP!

Ted Kennedy has served in the Senate, always serving his constituents well (remember, he is from Massachusetts). No one deserves to die a painful death by brain tumor.

The prayers of the Scudder Household are with you Senator, and with your family.

Dancing With the Stars Finals

Well, the final episode has finally come and gone.

During the Cha Cha dance-off Christie was perfect as always and was rewarded for it with a perfect score. Jason and Christian continued to valiantly defend the honor of the Y-Chromosome. Christian was excellent in spite of his jacked-up arm, even doing an amazing one armed slide. Jason flubbed up on a twist and ended up on the bottom. In all fairness, I think Bruno was bought off with a kiss from Christie. Unless he is gay, which you can never be sure of with Italians.

Freestyle for Christie and Mark was outstanding, kind of a groove/hip-hop deal. Moonwalks, hand-jives, and a surprising lift from tiny tiny Christie of all people throwing Mark into a complete back flip over her own head. Of course another perfect score.

Jason and Edyta did an awesome and fun version of Will Smith's Miami. They did some of the most amazing lifts I have ever seen and of course both Jason and Edyta got pretty stripped down, so there was something for everyone. The judges suck however and only gave them 3 nines.

I thought that the one-armed wonder, Christian, did an amazing job dancing to one of my favorite songs "Suavemente". He did many complicated half lifts and spins. In a word Christian is an effing stud.

Please split votes between Jason and Christian, Christie is a ringer, figure-skaters should not win dancing with the stars.

Im Back

To mark my return to blogging I will leave everyone with this lovely image:


see more crazy cat pics

Senate Refuses to go Kosher

The pork-addicted fools in our nations highest house voted to keep the corrupt practice of earmarks alive. The saddest part of all is that the vote wast even close...29-71!!!!!!

In a near midninght vote (engineered by Harry Ried in order to prevent John McCain from voting), nearly 3 quarters of the Senate voted to keep the pratice of "sneaking in" federal funds for pet projects into unrelated spending bills. John McCain has been a crusader against pork for most of his career (since getting wrapped up in the Keating 5) and has not taken an earmark for Arizona in 20+ years. Obama and Clinton tried to play like they were reformers too, despite bringing home $400+ million dollars home in pork just last year. Obama even got a multi-million dollar investment in the University of Chicago hospital, after which his wife got a $200,000 raise...as Vice President for Community Relations for that same hospital. The media is hot on this case, investigating it throughly (not really of course, there are no Republicans or blonde lobbyists involved to grossly speculate on).

Since John McCain promised that he would not only veto any earmark bills he would make the little porkers famous, I figured I would follow suit:

Akaka (D-HI) Baucus (D-MT) Bennett (R-UT) Biden (D-DE) Bingaman (D-NM) Bond (R-MO) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Byrd (D-WV) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Cochran (R-MS) Coleman (R-MN) Collins (R-ME) Conrad (D-ND) Craig (R-ID) Crapo (R-ID) Dodd (D-CT) Domenici (R-NM) Dorgan (D-ND)

Durbin (D-IL) Feinstein (D-CA) Gregg (R-NH) Hagel (R-NE) Harkin (D-IA) Hatch (R-UT) Hutchison (R-TX) Inouye (D-HI) Johnson (D-SD) Kennedy (D-MA) Kerry (D-MA) Klobuchar (D-MN) Kohl (D-WI) Landrieu (D-LA) Lautenberg (D-NJ) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Lincoln (D-AR) Lugar (R-IN) Menendez (D-NJ) Mikulski (D-MD) Murkowski (R-AK) Murray (D-WA) Nelson (D-FL)

Nelson (D-NE) Pryor (D-AR) Reed (D-RI) Reid (D-NV) Roberts (R-KS) Rockefeller (D-WV) Salazar (D-CO) Sanders (I-VT) Schumer (D-NY) Shelby (R-AL) Smith (R-OR) Snowe (R-ME) Specter (R-PA) Stabenow (D-MI) Stevens (R-AK) Tester (D-MT) Vitter (R-LA) Voinovich (R-OH) Warner (R-VA) Webb (D-VA) Whitehouse (D-RI) Wicker (R-MS) Wyden (D-OR)

You will notice that our illustrious Florida Senator Bill Nelson is on there...please write him a little love note. Here is mine:

Senator Nelson,
I am a servicemember who has spent my life in Florida. I have supported you and voted for you. I want you to know that I will never vote for you again, never. Your opposition to the moratorium on earmarks was ill advised at best.

I am perfectly happy without this practice and I think most Floridians would be. If you truly think that runaway spending will help Florida, you are wrong. It is shameless graft and you should know better.

I do not find you to be dishonorable, I do not think you to be corrupt. Why would you vote to continue a practice which opens you up to questions of corruption or favoritsm?

Sincerely,
Randy Scudder

Super Tuesday Part Dos: Sun Belt v. Rust Belt

Voters went to the polls today in Ohio and Texas. They also went in Yankee-land, but compared to the bonanza of delegates it the first two. The Ocean and Green Mountain States look silly in comparison.

I am on duty tonight so I will not be able to live-blog, but I wanted to offer some predictions.

Today we see alot of story lines in play on the Democratic side: Hispanics and Blacks in Texas v white blue-collars in Ohio v. pointy headed New England liberals. It will be a wild night but here are my calls.

Vermont: Obama, big. This state was made for Obama. His demographic is most of the state. Rich, highly-educated, "limo liberals" living there for the skiing and nature. They are also mostly dovish, which is perfect for Obamas crowd.

Rhode Island: Hillary by 5%. Most of RI is working class folks, Obama will get a little support from the high-minded liberals in Providence and Newport, but the fishermen and plant workers are going to go big for Hillary.

Ohio: Hillary by 9%. Ohio seems to be breaking more towards Hillary every day. The NAFTA-baiting seems to have had the effect it intended, pushing the rust-belt workers who think that free-trade is what is causing all their ill and not the high taxes and sense of entitlement in the American workers, toward the one who isn't feeding them a doublespeak line.

Texas: Hill in a squeaker. I think Hispanics are coming back to Hill slowly and may be the difference maker. The problem will be in the "Texas Two-Step" caucus which will be won handily by Obama.

Will check back tomorrow to see if I was right.

The Obama Movement

In the last hundred-plus years, Americans have gotten the leader they really needed rougly every 15-20 years. Theodore Roosevelt, the only man who could make America a superpower. Woodrow Wilson and FDR, inspiring men for a nation at war. In 1960 we elected a young inspiring Yankee with a penchant for making us dream of what we could do together. John Kennedy's optimism and goals were all we had through the morass of the 60's and 70's. While his inspiration gave us the Peace Corps and took us to the Moon, JFK's assasination led to the wide spread dissolusionment felt by Americans well into the present day. Reagan convinced a depressed country what was possible, that we could belive in the American people, not the government. The cycle begins again this year. To quote one of my favorite movies:

People want leadership...and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll
listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're
so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when
they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

Americans want that leadership now. Enter Barack Obama. Aside from having an outstanding PR organization in the person of will.i.am (from the Black Eyed Peas)*, Obama has come out with a flourishing of eloquent words and calls for change. He has been compared to JFK, RFK and MLK...He may, someday, reach the heights of these men. His run is cast around an aura of squeaky-clean Washington outsider-ism, with a touch of messianism.

I saw this on CNN this morning...

But Slublog at Ace of Spades summed it all up for me.

One of these things is not like the other...we've got...smiling, serious,
smiling and 'GET OFF MY LAWN!'