Linking the Night Away

Sigh, it was another sleepless night for theScoundrel. I did manage to visit a few links so here are a few places I visited as I linked the night away.

First a little humor.

For Dog lovers Link – 1.

For the Bush Haters link – 2. (Now, don’t say I ain’t never been nice to ya.)

For Dog lovers again link- 3.

How about some oddities.

Death took a holiday and left a state of confusion – link4.

Toys for rich older women, you’ve come a long way baby – link5.

Sometimes it pays to be a nice guy – link6. (Don’t quote me on that.)

For all the Cardinal Fans – link7.

And sometimes a little tragedy falls into our lives and what better to remind us of that than a daily dose of Britney News – link8.

Holy Cow Cub Fans thats all for now!

Rudy Giuliani Lands Parting Shot on Ron Paul

Well! The Republican chase for the Primary has been lulling me to sleep lately. Other than the boring McCain-Romney accusations claiming each other is a liberal and not a true Reaganite , the Republican race has become a snoozer of a huggy-hippie-love-fest compared to the Democrat race. It is almost like, despite spending millions of dollars to win, none of them really want to sound the triumphant horn of victory. Other than Ron Paul and the Paulites, there really has not been much juicy gossip currently coming from the Republican side of the power walk to the primary finish. But after realizing his scheme to pass on the early state primaries was doomed, good old Rudy Giuliani in his parting comments had to get in one last sucker punch. It was as good of a sneaky slap as is possible, when after he complemented all the rival candidates he slipped in his backhanded compliment to Ron Paul saying: “after all the debates he’d go back to his hotel room and watch television and how every time, according to the texted tallies, Ron Paul won all the debates”. It looks like Rudy got a little fired, up a lot too late. I guess in retrospect, though Ron Paul did not win any debate, he won a war of attrition by outlasting the former front-runner of the Republican race, Rudy Giuliani, for the POTUS gold. Thanks for one last sign of life and –> Sha Na Na Na Na, hey hey good bye, Rudy. Thanks for almost playing.

Imus Humor Generates More Foot in Mouth Diseased Legality

Okay, I am neither a devoted listener nor a spirited critic of Don Imus or his show/s. But his past humor decisions continue to get him and those around him in legal and personal hot water. Now I do not think his current legal case of Foot in Mouth Diseased Humor will cause the furor of his Rutgers Moment, but once again, it could prove to be costly to his choice of career value, to his personal pocketbook, and his former employer CBS.

Anyone that regularly listens to talk radio (I do) can tell you that part of the job is hawking advertisers merchandise and products. It pays the bills! Imus obviously is not a member of the clueminatti when it pertains to this part of his chosen business. In a spot where Imus is supposed to be the carnival barker luring his listeners to his sponsors’ product he had a Freudian Sales Slip moment and committed one of the ultimate faux pas of business, he disparaged the advertisers product. Oops, a major rule of sales sell features/benefits/excitement – not personal opinion!!! Sell the sizzle and aroma of that bacon, not how it’s going to clog the arteries. That will not win you brownie points with your sales management or allure potential advertisers. According to the article from The Smoking Gun, in this moment of zaniness, Imus managed to call his clients, Flatsigned Books, bastards and cheesy among other things that he said about the product they were selling. Now I talked about Flatsigned Books during my posts of Less Ordinary Christmas Gifts. The book, an autographed by President Gerald R. Ford Limited Edition Book “The John F. Kennedy Assassination” with Comments on President’s Nixon, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, is one of several collectors edition autographed books that they sell. Imus took offense that they were selling it after Fords death, and thus out came his abuse towards the company. Now I do not remember all the particulars but I seem to remember hearing that the agreement Flatsigned had with Ford was not to offer the books up until after his death. That was probably conducive for both parties. It was good for Ford as his foreword was said to contain statements critical of the Warren Commission Report in which he played a major role. It was good for Flatsigned because although it meant they had to sit on costly inventory, Fords death as the last surviving member of the Warren Commission drives the collectors value of the book higher. No matter the reason, Imus decision to attack his shows advertiser, Flatsigned, is detrimental to that company while also damaging to Imus’ ability to appeal to advertisers. Flatsigned is asking four million in damages. You have to wonder if any fallout from this lawsuit will eventually spill over to his new show on ABC.

Insider Fighting and Bickering Over Kennedy Endorsement of Obama

There were a couple of interesting articles this morning over on the CNN Political Press site. It seems that Ted Kennedy is getting some flack over his endorsement of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. According to one article the organization NOW, who have in the past overlooked Teddy’s philandering and misogynist practices as long as he voted for their agendas in the Senate, have strongly rebuked the Senator and called his action a betrayal of their group in a very public manner, for not endorsing Clinton. Oops too bad for Teddy, too bad its not likely to ride him off the taxpayers payroll. In another article, during the State of the Union address someone snapped a picture of an incident telling of the strain being put on the two candidates, when Barack Obama looks away from and give the cold shoulder to Hillary as she leans across in front of him to shake politically eager hands. Here’s the Beef Hillary looks as if she is enjoying the moment to the Political Max while Obama clearly has a stressed look on his face as Clinton invades his space and comfort zone.

CNN Links have a tendency to change addresses as they update articles. So the above links may fail, I will check and update when chance allows.

Obama Secures the Drunken Misogynist Vote!

The Democrat primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has been revved up another notch. Clinton and Obama continue to try and get one foot above the other on the ladder climb to the top of the party’s primary election with celebrity and political endorsements, that will attract the left wing of the party. Today Obama went one up on Hillary by securing the support of far left liberal Ted Kennedy to match the liberal appeal of Bill Clinton. Now both candidates have a political official well publicized across the Internet for victimizing and preying on women! Hillary still has Bill, but his endorsements pale to the side of Ted Kennedy when it comes to preying on women. Sure Bill may have victimized and preyed on many women. But with the addition of Ted Kennedy, Obama has managed to get someone with a long family history of politicians using their political power for preying on women, whom is also the granddaddy of scandal clad predatory congressman that even managed to get involved in the vehicular homicide of a woman following one of his drunken parties. Ted Kennedy makes Bill Clinton look like Mr. Deeds when it comes to scandals. Accepting the Ted Kennedy addition is another chunk hacked away from the Obama campaign promise of change image. But it should lock down the votes of any drunken misogynist that was wavering on whom to vote for!

Are You Ready For Some Super Bowl Sunday Football!!!

Just over six days left at the time of this post – Are You Ready For Some Football!! Would you be willing to pay $2450.00 to watch the Super Bowl up close and personal? I wouldn’t. Even more ridiculous is the news that Super Bowl tickets, originally sold on the open market by the NFL for between $700.00 and $900.00, are being legally scalped for on the average of $4300.00. Ouch, want more? Too bad yer gonna get it anyways. According to a Yahoo!/AP article by Vinnee Tong, Stub Hub is selling some tickets for as much as $19,000+ each for club premium seating. In the article one person is quoted as paying over $29,000 for a package that includes, tickets – hotel room, three people for three nights – breakfast – and a ride to the game! Double Ouch!! That better be some gourmet breakfast and include those little mints on the pillows! (You do not want to know any thing more about hotel pillows, just be glad if they have mints laying on them!) There are some huge markups in those types of one-of-a-kind events. Ain’t capitalism grand! But then I am not even planning to watch the game this year, sorry Pepsi Co. you will have to find another venue to hawk your Mt. Dew to me, not that it takes much hawking to sell this consumer Yahoo Mt. Dew! Nope if there is any team that inspires me less to watch a professional football game than the New York Giants it is the New England Patriots. Nothing personal against either team – but I have no emotional bond to those teams. Instead I will be tuning to alternative Super Bowl entertainment like the Animal Planet programing, Puppy Bowl. But heck, I would not pay that kind of money to watch a game containing the team I do follow, the Chicago Bears, if it were in the Super Bowl game. The most ridiculous totals of all are actually what the corporations will be paying the networks for advertising time! But that is another post for another time.

Davenport Considers Three Strikes Law

I was reading over on the Quad City Times site that Davenport is considering a “three felony strikes and your out” law. Though I do think we need to work on our judicial system problems concerning sentencing and I can see both sides of the three strike law arguments, I am not a big fan of three strike laws, except in cases where three consecutive violent felony crimes are involved. And quite frankly if the crimes were truly violent, why are we waiting for three crimes before we punish harshly? We do need harsh justice in most violent crimes but in my opinion inflexible laws such as three strikes laws create an imbalance of justice. There are pros and cons to each side of the argument. Some arguments can be found at this link1 and link2. But I am not really going to get into the specifics of three strike laws. What really struck me as questionable in the article was the following statement:

The indeterminate life sentence includes a mandatory minimum sentence of 50 years, except that the person may become eligible for parole in one year if they elect to be voluntarily exiled from the state of Iowa, never to return upon penalty of having to serve the rest of the life sentence.

I read in the article that I am not the only person questioning this part of the law. I am not a lawyer, nor did I sleep at the Holiday Inn last night, but the law smells of desertion of judicial responsibility. My actual concerns about the statement go back to when I used to work in Rock Island. One of my former duties used to be removing unwanted individuals from the company where I worked. Most of those people were homeless or transients. Very often that would include involving the police. I was friendly with a couple of the officers at the time and inquired as to what they do with the people they hauled away. I cannot speak for current days, but at that time the RI police and the Davenport police had a rivalry going on where they would take such individuals and dump them across the river on each others turf when the homeless shelters were full up. It made absolutely no sense then nor does it make sense to “exile” criminal individuals to another city/state because they are unwanted by the current city/state they live in. Exiling criminals because the state or city is too cheap to legally handle the problem is playing hot potato! Hot Potato is a kids game and is not an adult way of solving the problem and eventually it will only spur inter state/city rivalry games of shuffle the felon, where nobody wins!

Sex and Power

It sounds like David Colby, another in a recent long line of high level executives fired for abusing his executive position in a “non-business nature”, could have used the Bill Clinton legal team. Or maybe Colby just needed a pit-bull-wife with political aspirations, like Hillary Clinton. The story here is if a business executive uses his position for sexual exploitation it is abuse and deserving of termination. If a Governor and POTUS does the same he is entitled to fame, glory and large wads of cash.

Fifth Grade – Use It or Lose It!

I have to admit I am not a big game show fan. Yes I had a brief fling watching Wheel of Fortune (mostly after it went nighttime, daytime went downhill fast after Pat Sajak left for the nightime version – can you say Rolf Benirschke) and would on occasion attempt to match wits with the Jeopardy enthusiasts. My trivia skills could best be described as, had I played for real, I would have lost on Jeopardy, baby! But then I dropped cable television for the better quality picture of satellite television, which meant no more ABC, NBC, CBS or Fox. I really did not lose sleep over the lost shows, especially the loss of game shows. (Really, all the quality games shows ended with The Gong Show featuring Gene-Gene the Dancing Machine!) Still I recently picked up local channels on my satellite package and have witnessed the onslaught of nighttime games shows since my absence. After being lured by watching a Jeff Foxworthy interview, I have now seen four episodes of one in particular and I can see that Elementary and Junior High is evidently universally transient knowledge. As I was watching the show “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader” I became less and less impressed with the knowledge of adults and more impressed by the quickness exhibited by the young tykes that actually help the professional adults. I have to admit that I was more than a little embarrassed at my own inability to answer questions that used to flow off my tongue without even thinking for the answer. As I was watching the Jeff Foxworthy show, “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader”, it became apparent that I along with the adults that were actually participating on the show, were probably not smarter than a fifth grader. The most recent show contestants included an EMT, a Middle School (Junior High, for us traditionalists) Principal, a college student striving to become legally blonde, plus some assistance offered by the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. (Note to self, do not rely on the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders for help on answers to elementary school questions!) Let us just say that the show contestants along with this viewer struggled with some of the answers! It reminded me of an experience I had watching people in NYC being interviewed on the street by news reporters and being asked to name state capitals. I was having a good old belly laugh until I heard a capital question I could not answer. That was embarrassing since I could name all fifty state capitals long before I was a fifth grader. (It was a required knowledge edict from my mother. Her and my grandmother spent more time than any teacher ever attempted drilling them into my head!) As I was embarrassingly struggling for some of the answers on the Foxworthy hosted show, that past awkward memory resurfaced. Ooops – no dessert with supper for theScoundrel! One thought that has came form this TV viewing is that first through fifth grade learning is evidently universally transient knowledge and a case of use it or lose it! Another consideration is perhaps we should replace the current debate process with question from the “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader” television show and see if our POTUS candidates are smarter than a fifth grader! Hmmm I wouldn’t place any bets on the results, I am far too frugal for that kind of gambling, my odds are better with the lottery!

Hillary Clinton Campaign – the Animal House Platform?

Don’t cha just hate it when you trust valuable personal assets to the care of someone and the individuals that were using the possessions, turn out to be comparable to the Delta House Fraternity in the movie “Animal House”? And at best, they show minimal respect for the caretaking of your property! It is especially disturbing when these individuals are supposedly professional representatives renting business property. Messy cleanup costs alone can often outweigh the profit figured into a short-term rental agreement and it will probably end up as a breakeven transaction at best, even if you have charged and received a nominal safety deposit. Then if there are damages involved, it will start to put the whole transaction into the red line. When damages are involved there is also usually a considerable amount of downtime for the rental property while reparations are taking place, making for even more lost revenue. Which makes the article I read on the Quad City Times a real head-scratcher. According to the article the Hillary Clinton campaign left the property they rented for Iowa caucus night in Clinton, Iowa a trashy mess! The article also said that some of the property was damaged. There was garbage strewn, spoilables left laying in the rooms, stained carpets, holes that had been drilled in the walls without permission, smoke alarms were missing and other possible building code infractions. The building owner kept the $500.00 safety deposit plus had to chase the Clinton campaign people down to get another $1750.00, and the owner hopes that will be enough to finish building repairs! That is an embarrassing state of events and not a banner campaign moment considering this is a group of professionals representing Senator Hillary Clinton, whom is running for President of the USA. I can only suppose that is indicative of the way her staff treated people and property throughout their stay in Iowa. They say word of mouth can be the best or worst advertising available. Perhaps word of mouth about staff disrespect for property and people is what finished off her Iowa Primary aspirations, sending her to defeat. I wonder if they have a Toga Party planned for South Carolina? Toga-Toga-Toga!