Jul 3, 2011

The Week in Review

We made it to the end of the week. I'm kind of surprised too.

A quick look back to the week that was, NY is allowing gay folks to get married. It'd be news if it wasn't such an also-ran behind States like Iowa. And there are still more States that allow you to marry your first cousin than there are States that allow you to marry someone with the same genitalia as you.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) confused American icon John Wayne with serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Then she insisted that America's slave-owning Founding Fathers were fierce opponents of slavery. Well, let's just say she knows how to get the press to follow her. Meanwhile, the GOP field continues to threaten to expand, which to hear some folks talk about it, is underwhelming, at best.

Moving on to the other side, Mr. Obama had some choice words for Republicans Wednesday, chastising them for not doing their jobs, and trying to bully them into raising the nation's legal borrowing limit by August 2, when the country will otherwise default on its debts. But he's not leading the charge. He's just yelling from the stands. It's not even his budget. It was Pelosi and Reed's. And I'm not the only one giving him some flack for the presser, Obama's scolding — journalist Mark Halperin even called him a "kind of a dick"... and was indefinitely suspended by MSNBC as a result. I don't remember that kind of backlash for calling Bush worse than Hitler

The case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF chief accused of rape by a hotel maid, seems to be falling apart, with Strauss-Kahn's accuser looking increasingly unreliable. She's been caught in a number of lies, and Dom was released from house arrest, as he awaits a July 18 court date. If I was quick to judge - and I don't feel like searching it, but I assumed that the oligarchy (and it was amid Arnold's love baby, Weiner's Twitter weiner, and all that) was guilty before the trial. On the other hand, this is NOT good for women, in general. Well, she WAS wearing a sexy French Maid outfit, officers.

Blago's going to Jail-o. A jury found former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich guilty of 17 corruption-related charges, many centering on his attempts to sell President Obama's old Senate seat. Blago faces up to 300 years in prison. Prosecutors are being credited with a job well done, and they hope this conviction will help clean up Illinois' inglorious rep as one of the nation's most corrupt states... which is batshiat nuts - because the LAST conviction of the Gov. BEFORE him wasn't a deterrent to the one who followed, was it?

Google has tried to knock down Facebook, again. Remember Google Buzz or Wave? Well, this one organizes friends into "Circles" for micro-targeted sharing. This really should be the last hope Google has to get into the social networking business. And speaking of social networking failures, News Corp. unloaded MySpace to Justin Timberlake for a mere $35 million — they paid 580 million for it in 2005. Ouch.

The TSA got back on America's nerves this week after demanding a 95-year-old wheelchair-bound Florida woman to remove her soiled adult diaper. Meanwhile, Texas lawmakers tried (and failed) to make invasive airport security pat-downs a crime in the state. We're drawing down in Afghanistan, let's also draw down our security theater.

Let's try to meet up again next week.

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