Arnold Booted for
New Tired Celeb!



Modified Image: Reuters, China Daily

- posted by Sean @ 1:12 PM 0 comments  

 
McConnell Comes
Out for Pitcher


Kentucky senior Senator Mitch McConnell openly declared the special relationship he shares with embattled junior Senator and former pitcher Jim Bunning before the Bus Tour's largest crowd of almost 200 citizens yesterday in Benton according to a frank report in this morning’s on line edition of the Murray Ledger & Times:

“Jim Bunning is my best friend…I don’t want to lose him,” McConnell, the Senate’s second-ranking Republican, said Thursday afternoon during a rally at the Marshall County Republican Party headquarters. “It’s hard to have friends in the Senate.”

Elsewhere, yesterday, Jennifer Brown of Kentuckynewera.com reported possible unease when the location of a previously scheduled Bunning rally in Christian County had to be relocated:

Organizers had planned to conduct the Bunning rally on the parking lot of First Baptist Church. However, shortly before the senator arrived on his "Bush-Bunning" bus, an associate pastor of the church asked organizers to move and cited concerns about partisan politics on church property.

The Kentuckynewera.com report went on to report the local Republican Party chairperson offering this somewhat unusual endorsement:

“He's willing to stare down the opposition, and that's the kind of person we like in Christian County.”

Modified Image: Murray Ledger & Times

- posted by Sean @ 7:15 AM 0 comments  

 
Dan Responds & Jim Quibbles


This morning’s Louisville Courier-Journal reports Democratic Senate candidate Dr. Daniel Mongiardo responding to the increasingly confused slurs oozing from the Bunning campaign:

Mongiardo said that he is not gay and that Bunning must make sure people campaigning with him conduct themselves appropriately. "By him being on stage while they were saying these outrageous things, he approved them," said Mongiardo, adding that the remarks are "appalling and un-Christian. These are the despicable acts of a desperate senator who is dangerously out of touch with reality”… Bunning denied responsibility for the comments. "I think you should go to Sen. Tori and Sen. Williams and ask them about the appropriateness of them. I didn't make the comments…

[State Senator Elizabeth] Tori said she had "no regrets" about making the comment. "It's an ambiguous statement, I acknowledge that. People can take it however they want to…Women are weaker and more fragile than men," Tori said. "So we like to look up to a man who is strong and a forceful leader”…[State Senator and Kentucky Senate President David] Williams, told crowds in Western Kentucky while campaigning with Bunning that Mongiardo is "limp-wristed" and a political "switch-hitter”… "I have absolutely never made any statements concerning his sexual orientation or his sexual practices. I made some baseball statements concerning him being a switch-hitter.”

The Courier-Journal, in an excellent report, goes on to detail Williams’ quibbling over various dictionary definitions of the term “limp wrist”.
The news account, of course, makes no mention of the rumors sweeping Bunning’s hometown of Fort Thomas, in the northern tip of the state, that, if elected, the 73-year-old Senator would step down within two months of taking office thus allowing Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher to, unchecked by popular will, appoint anyone to the 6 year term.
The C-J does quote 73-year-old former Democratic Governor and current State Senate candidate Julian Carroll who appeared last evening with Mongiardo in the state capitol of Frankfort:

"Sen. Bunning, are you in the early stages of dementia? Are you? Stand up and tell the people of Kentucky the truth.”

Photos: Louisville Courier-Journal, Kentucky State Legislature

- posted by Sean @ 9:33 AM 0 comments  

 


Though overly sensitive web publishers like myself are pejoratively referred to as “midnight bloggers” and despite my writing this shortly after midnight, salon.com breathes science, that bane of the Bush administration, and new life into the story of the mysterious Debate bulge:

Dr. Robert M. Nelson…a senior research scientist for NASA and for Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an international authority on image analysis…has been analyzing images of the president's back during the debates…"I am willing to stake my scientific reputation to the statement that Bush was wearing something under his jacket during the debate…This is not about a bad suit. And there's no way the bulge can be described as a wrinkled shirt."


Follow the link, sit through the commercial and get a salon.com Day Pass, then, consider the photo strip, a possible health condition and the lifecor.com site before arriving at the type of wild speculative conclusion reserved for midnight bloggers like myself.

If, however, you are looking for real, eye-popping paranoia, how about this item from Newsfactor's Top Tech News:

The official campaign site for U.S. President George W. Bush appears to be blocking visitors from most locations outside the United States, according to a report issued by Internet traffic analysis company Netcraft...Since Monday morning, attempts to visit GeorgeWBush.com from U.S. sites have proceeded without a hitch, but attempts to access the site from London, Amsterdam and Sydney have failed...it is possible that the Bush team constructed the blocks to make sure that no attacks would bring down the site before November 2nd.

Trust me, all you swarthy and shifty-eyed (wink, wink) pre and post foreign-born, except for the occasional amusing photo or heavily edited transcript, the Bush campaign site is dull, dull, dull.
Borrowing a phrase from film alien Klaatu, people of the world, we here at planetsean global HQ love every one of our readers no matter where you had the misfortune to take your first breath and value your miraculous access to our digital ramblings!

Photos: NASA, C-SPAN, salon.com, lifecor.com

- posted by Sean @ 1:35 AM 0 comments  

 
Whatever It Fakes



Modified Image: Mattel, Reuters

- posted by Sean @ 9:18 PM 0 comments  

 
The Hate Bus


Bunning, Williams and Tori

Republican hypocrisy is hitting new heights, or is that lows, with shocking levels of anti-gay rhetoric spewing from Jim Bunning’s ill-fated bus tour.
The fast-to-anger 73-year-old embattled junior Senator, as you may know, has been assigned Republican minders to “help” with the Hall of Famer’s ongoing battle with Foot in Mouth Disease.
Unfortunately for Bunning, his declining poll numbers and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, a seemingly virulent form of Foot in Mouth Disease is sweeping fellow bus travelers suggesting the soon-to-be-former Senator’s helpers need helpers.
Only yesterday, I posted a link to an Associated Press report stating that Bunning bus mate and Republican State Senate President David Williams had described Democratic opponent Dr. Daniel Mongiardo as “limp wristed” before a paltry crowd in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
This morning, a report by John Cheves of the Lexington Herald-Leader’s Frankfort Bureau clearly shows the desperate Bunning campaign sinking into a swamp of anti-gay hate speech:

A top state Republican called Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Dan Mongiardo "limp-wristed," and another GOP state legislator said she questions whether "the word 'man' applies to him" in speeches during Sen. Jim Bunning's campaign bus tour…Senate President David Williams of Burkesville and state Sen. Elizabeth Tori of Radcliff denied they intended to raise questions about Mongiardo's sexual orientation -- though Tori later said that if any listeners thought she was referring to his sexuality, "so be it”… Tori, the state Senate majority whip, said, "I served with Dr. Dan -- let me tell you he is not a gentleman. I'm not even sure the word 'man' applies to him." The comment drew laughter and applause…"I don't know anything about his sex life," she said of Mongiardo, who is unmarried. "I didn't say it that way." But, Tori added, "It's up to the person who hears it to decide" what the remark means.”

Mongiardo’s campaign manager, Kevin Geveden said Bunning and his impolitic “helpers” are waging "a gutter campaign, a campaign of sleaze and smear” and that Bunning’s campaign is "on the ropes”.
No matter the aging Bunning's oft repeated claim that he will "pitch a full nine innings and serve six years in the Senate”, his alleged mental infirmity was apparent yesterday when, at St Catharine College in Springfield, he referred to the "November the 11th" terrorist attacks in New York City.
This blogger can report this morning that the hot-tempered Bunning’s home town of Fort Thomas, Kentucky is awash in rumors claiming that if elected Bunning would only serve two months before resigning and allowing extremely conservative Kentucky Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher to appoint a successor to the six-year Senate term.
Having met the very charming Mary Bunning it gives this blogger no pleasure to report the horribly ugly end to the career of a man who once pitched a perfect game of baseball and, once, brought honor to this beautiful Commonwealth.

I urge readers to express your opinion:
NRSC (202) 675-6000
Senator David Williams (502) 564-3120
Senator Elizabeth Tori (502) 564-2450
The Bunning Campaign (859) 341-6480

Photos: bunningforsenate.org, the Kentucky Legislature

- posted by Sean @ 1:32 PM 0 comments  

 
Limp Pitch?


Speaking again, today in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, to less than 100 citizens, the Associated Press reports lonely 73-year-old junior Senator Jim Bunning continued his political no-hitter bus trip with a lukewarm endorsement of his equally embattled President:

"I support George W. Bush most of the time.”

Hired political “helpers” traveling with the Bunning bus also continued the desperate Senator’s crazed mud flinging with more outrageous slurs against Democratic opponent Dr. Daniel Mongiardo.
Referring to Bunning and helper-in-chief senior Senator and, for the moment, Majority Whip Mitch McConnell as the “one-two punch”, Kentucky State Senate President David Williams said:

"We don't want to trade that one-two punch for a limp wrist.”

Asked by reporters to explain the remark, Williams, laughably, said he meant no sexual connotation.

Photo: grandstandsports.com

- posted by Sean @ 8:35 PM 0 comments  

 

"A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief."
--George W. Bush, Today in Lititz, Pennsylvania.

Image: September 11 Digital Archive

- posted by Sean @ 7:52 PM 0 comments  

 

The President’s tailor, shown in the photo on the right pointing to a wrinkle, wants us to think the rectangle evident under the President’s jacket in the first televised debate (photo on the left) is similar to the wrinkle on his model.
Georges de Paris insisted to The Hill newspaper that a rectangle is really a straight line:

“There’s no mystery about it, no secret bunch, nothing…The same thing will happen anytime you cross your arms like Bush did. It causes the back of the jacket to pucker along the seam.”

Judging from his looks, Georges de Paris couldn’t possibly have any kinky secrets the White House is leveraging could he?
I think it’s clear from today’s edition of The Hill that the Bush disinformation people need a vacation.
Notice the LifeCor vest still exists outside the sphere of consideration for your plugged in disinfotainment funsters.

Photos: C-SPAN, The Hill

- posted by Sean @ 11:21 PM 0 comments  

 
As the ill-fated Bunning bus tour enters its second day, I was amused by this unfortunately small image from the Louisville Courier-Journal.

The shadow-frightened 73-year-old and his equally nervous artistic wife seems to have found, as the photo shows, some small comfort from those able companions of the “little green men” the infamous Men in Black or, as the Senator calls them, "strangers among us"...
Since Kentucky’s hot-tempered junior Senator is drawing fewer than 100 citizens to his various stops our Senator’s putative Men in Black, in lieu of state troopers, should find the maintenance of the frightened Bunnings’ security and composure a fairly simple task unless, of course, one of those citizens asks an unscripted question.
Live long and prosper, you dark-clad alien protectors!


On the corrupt and semi-corrupt major media front, I was compelled, following a lengthy morning bed dawdle (I found last evening’s campaigning to be, as our President says, "hard work"), this fine morning to dash off a quick note to New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent (public@nytimes.com):

Mr. Okrent,
I will try to write carefully as I know how sensitive you, like all the "major" media, are to criticism...in fact, I'm slowly whispering these words.
Let's start off on a positive note...Your newspaper’s science reporting is excellent, your new media efforts along with your photography are superb and in keeping with what a major US daily should be and, of course, I'm a major fan of Mr. Krugman and Mr. Rich.
I wish your successful departments could rub off onto some of your more troubled subdivisions, but in my experience, bad only rubs off onto good and not the reverse.
Like a gardener with a mold-infected plant, serious pruning is required to return the Times and its spore-encrusted motto to a healthy state.
Obviously, the sexually rapacious Judy Miller's corrupted reporting has greatly harmed your paper and, equally obviously, the less said about Maureen Dowd's politically inept befuddlings the better.
I write, today, about this morning's embarrassing and onanistic David Brooks OpEd puddle.
Unintentionally, I am sure, the thick-fingered Mr. Brooks provides an excruciating window into the empty soul of modern American punditry.
I think, Mr. Okrent, that dear, dear David is making a quietly indirect, albeit public, plea for help.
Couldn't you and a few other hefty Times staffers perform an intervention before David, again, lifts his expensive Cross pen and further shames your paper and American journalism?
With sincere best wishes,
Sean Malloy

Images: Louisville Courier-Journal, New York Times

- posted by Sean @ 2:52 PM 0 comments  

 
What a day this Monday has been!
I have a really good excuse for today’s tardy post.

My busy day began early with a visit to the dentist followed by an intense workout and a long steam at the Queen City’s historic Central YMCA.
My friend and I, then, chose one of our favorite downtown breakfast/brunch locations completely forgetting the restaurant is located next to (spooky organ crescendo) Cincinnati’s Bush/Cheney headquarters.
With a singular lack of luck, the restaurant was packed with bitter, seriously overweight and horribly dressed BC’04 supporters loudly topping one another with excruciating selections from that morning’s emailed marching orders.
If Tucker Carlson longs for a yardstick to establish a scientific measurement of banal, he should have joined this morning’s long line of cheap uncared for shoes and polyester awaiting a table assignment.
It was all I could do to stop myself from jamming a fork into a few pointy foreheads.
We sought solace and a respite from fork manslaughter by loudly exploring Bill O’Feelie’s audio taped memories of youthful Thai paramours.
We wondered aloud if he or young Nealsie was the better tipper as we enjoyed a lovely tomato, mozzarella and basil omelet and a French dip as our favorite server took her sweet time with the Republican’s order.
I gave her a big tip.


The Kerry/Edwards' team meets outside Paul Brown Stadium

Anyway, breakfast was but prelude to an evening spent doing our bit by campaigning for the Kerry/Edwards ticket outside Paul Brown Stadium and tonight’s Monday Night Football match up between Cincinnati and Denver.
After hooking up with KE team leaders and gathering up a load of buttons, signs and stickers our brave team descended to the Mehring Way entrance and our date with a unique manifestation of some sort of personalized political destiny.
I’ve never been to a Cincinnati Bengal’s game before and I would have to seriously think twice before attending another.
To describe many of those attending the game as drunk really doesn’t do justice to the seriously impaired condition of tonight’s average attendee.
Call me old fashioned but I never fail to be shocked to witness a publicly drunk woman.
Tonight my old fashioned sensibilities were bitch-slapped by a cascade of inebriated females and their equally tanked partners.
Without generalizing to horribly much, it seemed, tonight, the lost sobriety, for many, was replaced with an ardent and vulgar support for the Republican ticket.
Like chalk to the Republican supporter’s cheese, the Kerry/Edwards people were, across the board, polite, friendly and very supportive.
Perhaps I’m somewhat biased but blogs are not judged or read for the absurd pretense of balance affected by cable talking heads and major print.
Surprisingly thought impaired, the tanked supporters of our installed and born again President, screamed every curse known to modern American usage at our mixed group of young and old and male and female.
A few hardier and angrier souls coined epithets excruciating in their depravity.
My favorite was a fairly well dressed but no less sober couple in their mid 60s.
Tiny, and jacketed in small fuzzy polka dots, the woman got right into my personal space and screamed like she was possessed.
Naturally this caused a huge grin to spread across my face.
Naturally this jacked her up into foam and spittle mode.
It wasn’t pretty and neither was she.
Not long after, as kick off approached and the tailgating crowds grew increasingly ugly, we elected to call it an evening.
It was a very interesting and fun evening no matter the Cheney-esque character of much of the language.
We met and stickered many really nice people and I think we had an impact with our polite response to the vulgarities hurled by so many thought-impaired Bush supporters.
I would urge all my domestic readers, even in the seven days remaining, to visit the official KE blog, click on the plan/attend event category of the left side of the page, type in your zip code and discover an event in your area so that you too can participate in our shared history.

Photo: sean

- posted by Sean @ 11:36 PM 0 comments