Rex Kickass

So Joe Lieberman's campaign finally has a blog. Complete with spots for comments. Here are some comments added by the Lieberman campaign director. Poor choice of words. Now the Lieberman campaign has had to deny that Lieberman beats his wife. The Link to the comments.

Cutlass Ciera. Two As, eh?

I would like to point out that Brian Anderson has raised his batting average 60 points in the last two months, and although he is currently in a 3-16 slump, he has been hitting .285 over the last ten games.

Id didn't belong there, because it was terrible. I have no problem with this program being broadcast. I have a problem with marketing it as "news-like," which is exactly what they're doing. Fox News' Chris Wallace on the subject on Fox and Friends today: Bill "Abortions cure Crime" Bennett on the subject on CNN today: Historian Arthur Schlessinger

Here's the "veiled threat" from Senator Reid and a few others.

I should also add that the AFA (the ones who went hogwild over the Janet Jackson nipple tragedy of 2004) have been pressuring CBS over their 9/11 documentary because there are some bad words used in the DOCUMENTARY. Since this is within the 60 day window of a federal election, it could conceivably be considered an in-kind political contribution. From today's Variety

Actually, its because they tried as much as possible to present this as news - even though its a freakin miniseries. To the point where until yesterday, Scholastic Books was offering curriculum guides based around the freakin docudrama.

Heads, I finally saw a poll on IA-1. Democratic candidate was up like 13 points.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Sep 8, 2006 -> 12:46 PM) I'll fire this back at you then...CBS could always run "the Reagans" under the excuse that they were running it not as a part of a public interest, but were doing so for profit. The 9/11 thing on ABC is being broadcast commercial-free. With no sponsor. And given away freely online. That's over $40 million going into a pre-election political statement with almost no means for ABC/Disney to recoup its expenses. How would you react if a major network decided to run Fahrenheit 9/11 commercial free 2 months before an Election, offered to distribute the movie freely online, and billed it as based on the facts surrounding 9/11? Michael Moore tried to have that happen in 2004, remember? No network dared.

Apparently, that's not entirely true. A bunch of right wing pundits and bloggers have received screener copies, including Rush Limbaugh and have been assured that any edits to the final cut would be "unnoticeable."

I always liked Maya

QUOTE(EvilMonkey @ Sep 7, 2006 -> 01:07 PM) Yes, it is a sad story, and one that happens in this world of ours. Rex, would you buy a $35,000 car if you couldn't afford the $500 month payments? Would you take out a lease on a 3000 square foot apartment if you only made $10 per hour? I never mentioned banning sex. Make sure you reread that, because it isn't in there anywhere. I said that maybe people who can barely keep their own heads above water ought to think twice before adding to their financial responsibilities and adding a child. Sex is free, kids cost a fortune! And if they are low wage earners, who pays for them? Not the parents. Yes, there are exceptions to that, such as you mentioned above. if you are working minimum wage, and living in poor conditions, bringing a child into this world is just wrong. You have, as a parent, a moral and ethical obligation to provide for that child as best you can, and if you can't even provide for yourself, well then you have lost before you have even started. How about a little personal responsibility here? What about personal responsibility are these people avoiding? I really am growing to hate that phrase because its thrown around so much by people and I don't think that people understand what it really means. A lot of people get thrown into situations that they don't anticipate, that they may or may not be able to handle. In this case, the family did everything that they could do. I don't know many minimum wage earners that drive $35,000 cars or get approved for car loans in that amount. Last time I checked, you need a credit check to get an apartment lease in most cases. If personal responsibility is involved, why are the people who are offering those loans offering them to such high risk payments?

I think you are misunderstanding me. I'm not saying that life even should be fair or that our government should make things fair. I just think that when people say that couples shouldn't pop out babies when they're making minimum wage seem to forget that a lot of people were doing just fine before they ended up on the lowest rung of the income ladder. And I'm willing to bet there are too many stories like this around our country for us to do nothing about it.

Eileen left that show before him. He stayed on the PM Chicago thing for a while. I think he was back on WLS for about two years or so, maybe three.

Jay, I believe is working in Denver as the local affiliate for Air America's morning program. He's a phenomenal radio talent, and I don't believe left under any bad circumstances at WLS. He was pretty instrumental in their early/mid 90s growth and left originally because of issues related to his bipolar disorder (after a near suicide attempt he was strongly recommended to work a day shift). With a strong lineup during the day, that was something WLS couldn't provide at the time so he went to Denver. He did mornings there for a few years, rather successfully and ended up back at WLS but I don't think they knew what to do with him - he got moved around so much and his partners seemed to always be at the end of a contract. WLS had changed by the time he got back and didn't need his liberal counterweight anymore. I've heard him fill in on AAR for Springer, and it was some of the best radio that timeslot ever heard on that network. Of course, he was replacing Jerry Springer so the bar was pretty low. I doubt AAR survives the next 12 months so maybe WIND should make a phone call to Denver.

Like I celebrate most holidays, sitting on the trunk of my car in the parking lot quietly, drinking a case of malt liquor. It's something I have in common with Barbara Walters.

QUOTE(EvilMonkey @ Sep 7, 2006 -> 09:38 AM) This may sound cold and heartless, but if you have a family of 4, and can only work minimum wage or less jobs because of your skill set, you had no business starting a family to begin with. Why are you bringing new mouth(s) to feed into the world when you can barely feed yourself? That said, I generally don't mind a small increase in the minimum wage level, but you can't increase it so that it suddenly becomes a 'living wage'. Those jobs weren't meant to provide support for a family of 4, most (of the legal ones) are entry level jobs, where you are supposed to advance up and out of that pay structure. No one issue is solitary anymore, so solutions are not as straight-forward either. Let me give you a family of four scenario EM. One that I saw personally. I have a friend of mine who has two kids - both autistic, one severely the other mildly. She gave birth to them while serving in the military with her husband - also in the military. When they were discharged, they didn't make enough money in the military to stay in Colorado near where they were stationed so they moved back to Michigan to be closer to family so that childcare would become affordable. Despite being trained as an engine mechanic, the only job he could find was stocking shelves at a grocery store for 6 dollars an hour. With her years as an Administrative Assistant in the military, she got a job at the radio station I worked at as an Administrative Assistant. She was making about 9 dollars an hour. That's prevailing wage in that area at the time. She went two years without a raise, despite being one of the most important employees in the sales department. He was laid off when the supermarket cut back its workforce. The resulting problems from the lack of money eventually ended their marriage. So now its just a family of three, living off 9 dollars an hour. She was able to get some limited state assistance, but when youre making 18 grand a year, which is about where 9 dollars puts you, the state assistance you can get is limited. It took her months of searching before she was able to find another AA job that paid her better and gave her the kind of hours she needed so that she could look after her kids the way she needed to as a responsible parent. Not everyone who works on the low rungs of the wage ladder planned to be or stay there, they just get there and find it difficult to get off that rung. Not everyone who has a family of four was making minimum wage (or in this case slightly more) when they had their kids, and unfortunately not everyone who gets pregnant plans on getting pregnant. Sometimes, despite precautionary measures, pregnancy happens. Now we can't ban sex, its one of the few affordable forms of entertainment low wage workers have. And more seriously, you just can't. So unless you think minimum wage earners should be forced into giving up their baby either through abortion or adoption unless they find a better paying job during their pregnancy - we still have to take their needs into account. We belong to a society that believes in protecting all its members and letting them and their children have an equal opportunity to a life that meets basic needs. Our current minimum wage laws don't provide for that at the moment in most places in the US.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Sep 6, 2006 -> 05:33 PM) Secret prisons, public prisons, does it matter? They are all detained, who cares where it is? I doubt they care or even know where they are for that matter. Kap, that's not my point and you know it. I'm glad that they are detained too - but we should never have had a network of prisons that are undisclosed to the American public. And we should never have had them on foreign soil so that we can "get around" our justice system - UCMJ or regular old civilian legal system. If the way of life and system of government we're defending isn't good enough to take care of the people who are trying to bring it down, maybe those people have already made changes in our system that we don't want to give them credit for. You know? I'm glad that the US has finally decided that human beings are deserving of basic human rights. It's just a shame that it took nearly five years to come to that conclusion.

Personally, I think if WIND had a more diverse talk lineup, it would do them better in Chicago. It's gonna be really tough catching up to WLS as the number two conservative talk station in the market. They should get Jay Marvin.

Thanks everyone for your kickass birthday wishes.

If by that you mean people blaming France as being responsible for actions they didn't do, you'd be correct.

Actually, to cross over to Canada, you do need to provide proof of citizenship or permanent residency now. A Drivers License or Social Security card is not enough. You currently are supposed to have a birth certificate with you when you cross over. Passports aren't that hard to get and everyone should have one anyway.

Could you please tell me what specific protection the Geneva Conventions offer that you are uncomfortable with?

Ummm, its great that we're doing the right thing. But doesn't it concern you that we had secret prisons at all?

QUOTE(EvilMonkey @ Sep 6, 2006 -> 09:49 AM) I am saying it takes balls to stand up to the Muslims in Europe, which most of the governments over there just don't seem to want to do. Europe has been thumbing its nose at us for a while. C'mon, Tex, anti-US in the 'in' thing in Europe (and elsewhere), it has been for a while now. Why don't you try being a muslim in France or Germany and see how easy it is? From what I've seen, its much more difficult to be muslim in Germany or France than it is in the US. I can't speak for Italy or our good ally Great Britain as to why they are prohibiting the use of their airspace for transporting military cargo in passenger jetcraft, but I can say that when we built the new Germany after World War II, we built it to be a passifistic state. Prior to 1990, in West Germany - the only serious military actions or usage was done by the occupying powers. And the occupation didn't officially end until 1994 by the way. Thanks to 40+ years of nationbuilding on our part, we built a Germany which is generally hostile to the idea of unnecessary military action or intervention. When they decide to do something like this as a signal to not openly condone a military intervention by another state - ally or enemy, we shouldn't be upset - we should be proud of a job well done.