It's been a long time . . .

Yeah yeah, holidays and excuses and whatnot. But even while we were all celebrating Baby Jesus' birth by sending Him some Baby Einstein DVD's, things were happening here, in America. It's almost the new year, which means our new and improved (?) congress will meet soon. Except a bunch of states have no idea who will be their new unelected Senator, for various reasons. Let's take a look at some of them.

• New York With Hill Dawg moving up in the world as Secretary of State, someone has to replace her as political dynasty senator. The names everyone is mentioning are Caroline Kennedy, whose main qualification is her last name, and Andrew Cuomo, who has the same going for him only fewer Americans care enough about his politician father to be outraged. Governor David Patterson has to appoint someone, anybody, just to hold things down for two years until the people can vote some wretched monster into office. It will probably be Cuomo.
  

• Illinois Even though Senate Majority Leader and ten year old girl Harry Reid said he will fight any nominee put forth by corrupt Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, Blago announced today the he will nominate former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to replace Barack Obama in the Senate. He's essentially daring Reid to do something that could be interpreted as racially insensitive (refusing to let a qualified black man take the seat of Obama,) which means Charles was wrong. There IS a race card, and Rod Blagojevich plays it better than anyone. You gotta tip your hat to whitey.

• Delaware Now that Joe Biden is out of the Senate and into the Vice President's chair, where he can do no real harm, the eastern seaboard's most boring state will send Ted Kaufman to Washington to replace him. Kaufman spent 21 years on Biden's staff and is just keeping it warm until Biden's son (and Delaware's attorney general) Beau gets home from Iraq in time for the 2010 elections.

• Colorado Didn't know Colorado was missing a Senator, did you? Nobody does. Current Senator Ken Salazar has been appointed Obama's new Secretary of the Interior, so Governor Bill Ritter has to replace him with someone, we'll say Mike Shanahan. I hear he's looking for work now.

• Minnesota Al Franken has an INSURMOUNTABLE 49 vote lead in the recount that will never go away, even when you try and pretend it isn't there. There's a little over 1,000 absentee ballots left to be counted, unless there's some other meaningless hurdle that we have to get through. Norm Coleman's strategy of "have people stop counting votes" has so far proven to be a failure. No one wins, one side just loses more slowly © Mr. Prezbo.
  

Detroit is saved (not really)

Not these guys, they're still an abomination

After years of begging, pleading, flying, driving, compromising and being rejected, the Big 3 automakers are FINALLY getting their money from the government. President Bush sidestepped Congress (because cmon, when have they ever mattered) and approved $17.4 billion in immediate loans for GM and Chrysler. Ford will get nothing and like it, because they said they don't need anything right away.

The $17.4 billion, less than half of what the automakers were asking for before, comes with the condition that the Big 3 have to come up with another concrete plan by March 31, or they get no more bailout money and will have to pay back this loan. I don't remember Citi having to jump through these kind of hoops to get approved for $20 billion back in November. Why is that? Oh yeah, car company workers are all unionized, which means they're lizard people communists. Even though the UAW decided to suspend the dreaded jobs bank program, that pays people money after they retire.

Bush's goal on this bailout is to give the Big 3 enough money so they don't die before he leaves office, at which point it will be the black dude's problem anyway, so who cares.

Janesville: A Bailout Story.

While politicians stall on a bailout plan due to personal differences with the auto industry, a city in Wisconsin will get ready for life after a plant closure.

The GM assembly plant in Janesville, one of the oldest plants in the country, will close in seven days and put its final 1200 workers on the unemployment line right before Christmas.

According to an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the ripple of the plant closing will send about 9000 jobs crashing with it, with every industry from pizza delivery to day care affected.

Tax revenue will also decrease in the area from people leaving the area in search of new jobs and less spending by the people who stay.

This is a microcosm of what will happen in cities across the country that are homes to auto plants, which normally reside in areas where they are the biggest game in town.

The senators who are holding up the bailout plan because of their own personal grudges with the UAW and the execs from the Detroit Three need to take towns like Janesville into consideration as well while they sit on a six figure check in one of the most meaningless legislative bodies and have the nerve to pass judgement on what somebody else should and shouldn't be doing.

What's happening in the Land of 10,000 ballots?

The greatest election season EVER still isn't over. We here in Minnesota (except for sad Randy Wittman) are all eagerly anticipating who will win litigate his way into the Senate. The Star Tribune's count has Norm Coleman ahead of Al Franken by 192 votes, but this is not counting the thousands of ballots that have been challenged by both sides. According to the AP, of the ballots that can be assigned to either Coleman or Franken (anything not for Dean Barkley or Lizard People) Franken has a net gain of 200, which would give him a potential win by EIGHT votes. This is far from final, as that doesn't even include the absentee ballots (though those are believed to favor Franken as well.)

What does this all mean? That we won't know anything until the fate of these challenged ballots is decided in a state meeting that begins tomorrow and will probably end never. Whoever wins is sure to not win reelection in 2014.

Wait, who are you again?

When your 15 mins are up, here's where you go.

If the picture above doesn't jog your memory, that is the infamous "Joe the Plumber," the guy who was name-dropped ad nauseum during the last presidential debate.

Although the media found out that almost everything about Samuel J. Wurzelbacher ("Joe"'s real name) was a lie, apparently he still thinks he matters. And unfortunately so does Glenn Beck.

Wurzelbacher told Beck that he almost abandoned John McCain on the campaign trail because he co-signed the $700 billion bailout.

I was angry," Wurzelbacher told Beck. "In fact, I wanted to get off the bus after I talked to him."

I'm sure McCain would have cried if he didn't have your support "Joe."

Alot of good it did him anyways.

For any Brewers fans cursing CC Sabathia

Please read this Tom The Dancing Bug strip and calm down.

http://images.salon.com/comics/boll/2007/11/22/boll/story.gif

Please, tape my conversations

You won't find anything, anything at all. Oh wait, you found something? Well, that wasn't supposed to be there.

The new king of Sunday morning?

That is David Gregory, the world's oldest looking 38-year-old human. He is your official new host of NBC's Meet The Press. The announcement was made on Sunday, which means that Tom Brokaw (who took over after Tim Russert's sudden death) will go back to being retired. Gregory, a veteran White House correspondent who hosts the show that comes on before Hardball that used to be Tucker Carlson's show (and has changed it's name like 3 times this year) on MSNBC, has long been rumored to be NBC's top choice for thr MTP gig. He also likes Mary J Blige.

It's a solid, if fairly predictable choice. Meet The Press under Russert was the gold standard of Sunday morning talk shows (and probably will be as long as George Stephanopolous insists on letting George Will on camera.) They're looking at someone who can simply ask credible questions and won't freak anyone out, and Gregory proved he could do both when he was made MSNBC's anchor for the Republican National Convention because Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough couldn't be on the air for 5 minutes without trying to kill each other. Still, it would have been refreshing to see Chuck Todd or dare I say Rachel Maddow get the nod over the fairly vanilla (again, watch the dance clip) Gregory.

Mallrats.

Why can't I see it?!?

The National Mall in Washington D.C. will be fully open for the first time ever to accomodate crowds for Obama's inauguration ceremony.

Usually parts of the mall are closed off for staging areas, but with at least 1 million people expected to descend on Chocolate City, every inch of space will be needed.

If you want one of the 240,000 tickets to see the inauguration up close and personal (as close and personal as 240,000 can be at least), contact your local congressman or senator and put in a request.

I wonder if Rev. Wright will be there...

So there was an election yesterday AGAIN

That is your new old Senator from Georgia, Saxby Chambliss, who retained his seat in a runoff yesterday against the democrat, Jim Martin. Chambliss got 57% of the vote this time, with turnout down almost 50% from the real election day.

This ends the Democrats desire for an unblockable super majority of 60 seats in the Senate, which was probably never going to happen anyway. We're still waiting on the ballots to be recounted in Minnesota, where Norm Coleman has a 303 vote lead. The recount is scheduled to be certified December 16, but who knows if they'll lose count or something by then.

I Gave You Power

I dont usually mess with Fox News, but they make a great point about the exclusion of John Kerry in Obama's cabinet announcements.

Kerry is possibly the earliest Obama supporter, giving the then-relatively-unknown Senator a spotlight during the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

When Obama decided to run for President, Kerry was on board early and spoke for Obama often. Kerry has been named Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, but that's a huge step down from the Secretary of State position Obama just gave to Hill Dawg.

I don't know whether to take that as Obama isn't playing favorites, or whether he's turning his back on the people who rode for him when nobody believed (Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin, another key early Obama supporter, hasn't been appointed to a cabinet position either), but it's very interesting.

Detroit vs. Washington: Round 2

He was going to take this, but it died halfway out of his driveway

Well, the Big 3 are going back to Washington to ask for $25 billion. Last time, Congress laughed them out of the building. Will this time be any different? Maybe.

Ford CEO Alan Mulally says he actually has a plan this time. Ford will not give any bonuses or pay increases to their salaried employees. In fact, Mulally himself says he will take a $1/year salary next year if Ford does get any bailout money. Also, more hybrid and plug-in cars will be on the way, with a plug-in van scheduled for 2010 and a plug-in car for 2011. General Motors and Chrysler have not yet released their plans, but as Ford is the most profitable of the Big 3, I wouldn't expect the other two to differ much form Ford's plan.

We won't know until later this week whether this is enough to sway a skeptical Congress. Congressional Democrats will really be looking for tough fuel efficiency and environmental standards (which the Big 3 resisted for years) while Congressional Republicans will be hesitant to back any bailout after the earful they caught from their conservative constituents about the Wall Street bailout. But at least Detroit is taking a step in the right direction PR-wise, as Mulally will go to DC not in a private jet, but in a hybrid.

We'll see if this sways aynone.

Look who's having a birthday

It's just a rental, I couldn't afford to actually buy a cake

The Recession. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, our adorable little money-sucking recession is a full year old, as it actually began last December. Has it really been a year since every financial adviser with half a brain was telling me they'd rather castrate themselves than put their clients in a long-term product that tied their money too much to the stock market (these are the conversations you have when you work for a financial services provider?) Time flies.

If you're keeping score, that officially makes this recession #2 during George W Bush's presidency. The first one was from March of 2001 until November 2001. How'd we get out of that one? Oh right, wars and such. The NBER says we can't do that with this recession. We'll have to actually work our way out of it with vague advice on stabilizing the markets and the need to "continue to make progress in housing." So, more bailouts then?

Anyways, what are you getting the Recession for it's birthday?