Newscoma

As yesterday just did not go the way that I wanted it to, I decided to wake up this morning with a better attitude. I even decided that I was going to try to find some positive Tennessee political news in order to be, oh I don’t know, a better person. To joyously look for a glass half-full is what my lofty intentions were.

And then I found this at the Commercial Appeal.

An East Tennessee lawmaker has filed a bill to make it a criminal act for the state to contract for any work on any portion of Interstate 69 or any other highway project designed to link Canada, the United States and Mexico.

The design, and in some places the construction, of Interstate 69 is slowly moving along in West Tennessee.

But Rep. Matthew Hill, R-Jonesborough, has filed House Bill 2785 to make it a Class E felony under the state’s criminal code for any officer of the Tennessee Department of Transportation to enter knowingly into any contract for work on I-69.

Gobsmacked.

As I live in this fine area that would benefit from I-69 (inner 12-year-old always comes out so let’s ignore that) and you may ask why but it’s rather simple.

Roads mean industry. One of the most common known issues facing counties like Perry Co. is the lack of four-lane roads to that area. Has dude seen our desperate need for job creation in this area. Even where I live, where we are lucky to have four-lanes all over the place, it is still roughly an hour before I can get to the interstate going to either Nashville or Memphis. Trucks, for distributing products built in factories, sort of rely on interstates to get things from Point A to Point B. I realize much of this area’s manufacturing boom ended about the time I was in cloth diapers but it would help.

In an area that is suffering staggering unemployment numbers, I can’t believe the tomfoolery of Hill’s bill. I realize that some folks don’t agree with me, but looking at it from the perspective of long-term assistance to northwest Tennessee, it only makes sense.

We don’t have flying cars yet campers, so from an industrial standpoint, this would help. I covered this story when I was in radio nearly 20 years ago.

And Hill wants to put TDOT in the hot seat by creating a criminal code if anyone does contract work on this? Unbelievable.

And I was looking for a half-glass full this morning. I really was.

Well, ain’t this just skippy.

Home prices are cratering at a record pace, while foreclosures have hit record heights, and this holiday season was the worst in four decades as consumer confidence hit an all-time low.

And it’s all expected to get worse in 2009.

But don’t worry: Congress is taken care of.

Today, Congress — which has an approval rating of about 20 percent, actually up a few percentage points from the summer — receives a 2.8 percent raise.

That translates to a $4,700 increase to the base congressional salary of $169,300 a year.

Lovely. Just lovely. And according to the story, it’s automatic and they just can’t do anything about it. Well, boo hoo.

I’m still waiting on my bailout.

Just saying.

From New Media Jim on Twitter:

Goldman Sachs is on course to pay its top City bankers multimillion-pound bonuses – despite asking the U.S. government for an emergency bail-out.

The struggling Wall Street bank has set aside £7billion for salaries and 2008 year-end bonuses, it emerged yesterday.

Each of the firm’s 443 partners is on course to pocket an average Christmas bonus of more than £3million.

The size of the pay pool comfortably dwarfs the £6.1billion lifeline which the U.S. government is throwing to Goldman as part of its £430billion bail-out.

As Washington pours money into the bank, the cash will immediately be channelled to Goldman’s already well-heeled employees.

This is unacceptable yet it is being accepted.

Can someone explain this?

I’m guessing the answer is no.

I sometimes wonder if I just quit paying taxes or bills I owe, if it would be forgiven by the government.

Once again, I know the answer is no.

Dear New York Times,

My name is Skeeter Bob Alice Hatfield. I am interested in writing for that there paper you got up there in the big city. I like big cities. I’d a sent my job page to you before but I was busy completing our moonshine harvest and then meth season is coming in so I had to take a bit of time eating three squares up at the jail. I’m out on good behavior. And I got me some new shoes from Wal Mart that the warden gave me as a going away prezzie.

I ain’t ever seen a dog fight but I did see two raccoons get intimate out on the farm one time and the only time I’ve ever seen a chicken is when grandpoppa would ring their necks for a country dinner.

Uncle Hubpie has a rebel flag, but when he got married to his first cousin Bertha, she made it into a table cloth with napkins for the wedding. It was purty.

I got seven dogs and they is all named George.

I’d love to come to the Big Apple. I promise to clean my camos and we can set over a cold PBR and talk about journamalism.

The big story here right now is the economy. With all the plants shutting down, all of us rednecks are moving north. I’ll just set my RV up in that big old Park you gots in the middle of the city.

I like toast.

See you soon,

Skeeter

(Editorial note: NYT’s, that the biggest asshat, stupid ad I’ve ever seen. Shame on you. You want stereotypes, you got it.)

H/T Katie, Adam and Gawker

I have a friend who tells this story and yesterday someone confirmed it to be true. First of all kids, meth is bad. It’s gross. You can’t pee it out so the lithium in it oozes out of your skin making folks look pretty terrible. Why anyone would do meth is a mystery to me.

With that said, this story says a lot.

There is this guy I know who owns a carpentry business. He actually can drive me bonkers in about five seconds but he’s not a bad dude and he hires folks at a good wage which endears me to him.

He hired this guy (and subsequently fired him) due to his meth problem.

He told me this guy comes wailing into the parking lot of their job site and starts screaming that his girlfriend was having a heart attack. Of course, she was in the car. Every time I have a heart attack, I make sure that I don’t go directly to the hospital and I head to work to announce my problem, but that’s neither here nor there.

His “old lady” was sitting in the passenger seat cradling a cooked pork chop and screaming “My baby! My BAYBEE!”

A couple of days later, meth dude was canned.

Of course this is tragic but it’s funny as well. If I ever start cradling a cooked pork chop, please shoot me in the head.

On another note of my limited intelligence, I used to work in a battered women’s shelter and we had to search bags that came in. I found a ziploc in one woman’s bag that I thought had dirty white aquarium gravel in it.

Let’s just say I learned that day that crack and aquarium gravel look very similar. Silly me.

Needless to say, meth is yucky.

In the midst of sounding morbid this week, it’s been a doozy. My friend Paul passed away and I went to the visitation. When I got there, his wife came to me and we talked a moment about what a wonderful man he was. But here’s the thing that was just so shocking to me that it’s taken me a few days to process it.

Her grandmother died three hours before her husband did. Paul was on one side of the funeral home, her grandmother was on the other.

Next time I whine, you are allowed to call me an asshat.

She is one of Mainstreet. In her grief, she could have given two poops about what is currently going on in Washington.

I’ve thought a lot about being in this small town. So much has happened this week and to put it in a blog post is difficult, thus this annoying autobiographical pause as I try to wrap my brain cells around it all.

Yesterday, I was in contact with one of John Tanner’s people and he told me that John voted for the bailout, I just sighed because a verbal riot ensued within the doors of the paper within just a matter of minutes once the news was given. Business people were waiting to hear.

Let’s just say, it wasn’t Tanner’s best day in the minds of some of those “Mainstreeters” that everyone keeps talking about.

So I hit the street and I heard more angry diatribes that would make my grandmother blush if she was still alive. Disillusionment and confusion followed by foul words that filled the air followed by the big question “Why?”

“There not explaining it to us,” one man said. “They just shoved it down our throats and they talk about mainstreet and saving middle class Americans but I don’t see it that way. What was Tanner thinking?”

“I lost $85,000 dollars in the past two weeks,” another man said. “I’ve been a Republican my whole life, but this isn’t a political thing. This is a matter of that I see the republic of this country destroyed.”

“I don’t have anything anyway,” one woman cited. “But it’s the principal of the matter that makes me angry.”

I tried to find someone who supported the issue and believe me, I tried.

I didn’t find one.

Not one, and I went to several places. Not one “Mainstreeter” I talked to supported this measure.

Not one.

And I talked to dozens.

In this day of instant information, we have none. We hear catchphrases but very little valid explanation on why. The failure lies with our elected officials not listening.

And as I referenced at the beginning of this post, day-to-day life goes on. There isn’t a choice.

But to reflect these words that are floating around the ‘tubes right now:

Dear Con. John Tanner,
As a taxpaying, voting citizen of this great nation, you have failed me. Over the course of the past two weeks, you have chosen to divert more money from my child to benefit those who have worked off of my back to get to where they are today.
I grow weary, not from the constant burden that has been placed on my shoulders everyday by those who claim to work in my best interest. No, I grow weary because I look at my two-year-old daughter who hasn’t a clue what is going on this country right now and I see her begin to slump over. She slumps because of the burden that she unknowingly carries at the hand of people that pretend to care about her future.

The failure is more than that though. We looked at pork attached to this bill. They voted for it anyway. We watched panic. Blue Dogs weren’t very blue, were they?

We are told it was the best thing to do.

I ask “Why?”

With that said, I’m hanging up my boots with the Democrats and the Republicans.

I just became an independent.

And I will answer “Why?”

Because the lot of Washington has forgotten “Mainstreet” but that’s where I live. I live on the ground and in the trenches. Mainstreet no longer exists after the past eight years and it is more than a catchphrase.

Mainstreet is filled with people. Forgotten people.

And thus I direct you to this post by Sadcox, who has posted an image that explains it all.

Here is your money at work in all it’s glory.

The following are some of the top tax sweeteners in the Senate passed Bailout Bill. Not all the provisions are per se outrageous, but collectively are intended to help Congressional leadership get final passage of the 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.

1. Sec. 503. Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children
   

Current law places an excise tax of 39 cents on the first sale by the manufacturer, producer, or importer of any shaft of a type used to produce certain types of arrows. This proposal would exempt from the excise tax any shaft consisting of all natural wood with no laminations or artificial means to enhance the spine of the shaft used in the manufacture of an arrow that measures 5/16 of an inch or less and is unsuited for use with a bow with a peak draw weight of 30 pounds or more. The proposal is effective for shafts first sold after the date of enactment. The estimated cost of the proposal is $2 million over ten years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

The Oregon senators were the initial sponsors of the provisions. According to Bloomberg News, the provision would be worth $200,000 to Rose City Archery in Myrtle Point, Oregon.

1. Sec. 317. Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility
   

Track owners want to be able write-off the cost of their facilities on their taxes over seven years – a depreciation timetable many of them have used for decades. But the IRS has wanted to stretch it to at least 15 years and has raised questions whether the increasingly popular tracks really belong in the same tax category as amusement parks.

Auto track owners are simply trying to get out of paying more taxes – which they’d have to do if they deducted less every year. These owners have gotten plenty of tax breaks over the years from states and localities eager to get speedways. The provision would be extended 2 years till the end of 2009 and would cost $100 million. The provision encompasses all facilities including grandstands, parking lots and concession stands.

1. Sec. 308. Increase in limit on cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands
   

Extends until December 31, 2009 a rebate against excise taxes charged on rum imported from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. A $13.50 per proof gallon excise tax is applied to distilled spirits imported to the U.S. Under this provision a $13.25 rebate is returned to PR and the VI, and is retroactive back to January 1, 2008. Permanent law sets the rebate at $10.50 per proof gallon, but the PR and VI provisions have generally been in place since the first Clinton Administration. The most recent extension of the $13.50 rebate expired January 1, 2008. Cost is $192 million.

Sarah Palin is not made of china. Joe Biden, and yes he’s the gaffe king, is not made of china either for that matter.

I’m going to get a bit feminist on you right now. Treat Palin and Biden the same. If softballs are lobbed tonight, then I’m going to be one peed-off woman.  The debate about this alone is infuriating because I keep reading how Biden shouldn’t “bully” Palin.

Biden and Palin just need to debate. The end.

She’s a growed up woman, as my sister Homer would say. Treat her as a vice-presidential pick and move on with it. She deserves to be treated as a candidate. To say that Biden doesn’t need to go on the offensive is absolutely ridiculous. Biden has as much, if not more, to lose as well.

I have no idea why I watch the news as my blood pressure just rises and rises.

Why am I writing this? I run a business with several employees. I have to put on my big-girl panties everyday and deal with the realities that people depend on me to make good, solid decisions. It has nothing to do with the fact that I’m a woman. I manage a business which has no gender involved when it comes to day-to-day operations. My bi-monthly check doesn’t say “WOMAN” on it.

So that ticks me off that this is being talked about. I wonder what time tomorrow the media will tell us which designer’s clothes she wore. Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin both, and I say both, have done a lot for women in having to deal with so much mainstream media crap.

On the other hand, the die is cast. Democrats will claim Biden the winner. Republicans will claim Palin the winner and the debate isn’t for another 11 hours.

I’m watching the newsers this morning and they are talking about how both candidates have “lowered expectations” regarding this debate.

Guys, don’t buy it. This is an old political trick that needs to be retired effective now. What kind of BS is this?

The American people deserve a debate and not a public relations stunt.

Just call me Cranky McComa.

I don’t get people. I swear sometimes I don’t.

A judge has ordered a $5 million bond for a man accused of caging and shooting at his new bride.

Matthew George is accused of handcuffing his wife, Mary Swihart, and putting her in a dog cage the size of a 4-foot cube.

Police say the 28-year-old also fired several shots at her feet while their 15-month-old child was in an adjoining room.

George faces charges of abduction, felonious assault and domestic violence.

Okay, George put his wife in a cage, shot at her and is an abusive, crazy person.

The judge set the bond at $5 million. This judge, in my opinion, is a rock star and awesome.

Why in the hell are you giving Charlotte Allen valuable newspaper real estate in your paper? I just read her column called “We Scream, We Swoon, How Dumb Can We Be?” and all I have to say is that has to be the biggest crock of poo I’ve read in a long time.

When are mainstream media outlets going to abandon the burning stupids?

My teeth are clenched over this one. Seriously clenched.

This is the same woman that wrote back in 2005 “Why are Airline Flight Attendants so Awful … and ugly?”

And, for balance, both conservatives and progressives are calling foul on this one.

A good point, WP, is that if you are wanting to increase your female readership (something you’ve been whining about) then running crap like this isn’t helping your cause.

Echidne breaks it down:

The Washington Post is a step ahead of you. Women are either dim or fickle. Probably tomorrow they’ll have a thoughtful column which shows that we could be both dim and fickle!

It’s going to be a long election year, isn’t it.

Prince Harry is home in the UK.

And the debate begins.

So, is Matt Drudge an asshat?

Talk amongst yourself.

Photo credit

Just two questions.

Where is the prosperity and where is the peace, Pres. Bush?

President Bush, rallying conservatives for a battle against Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, says “prosperity and peace” are at stake in the upcoming election for his successor.

“We have had good debates and soon we will have a nominee who will carry the conservative banner into this election and beyond,” Bush said in prepared remarks of a speech he was to give Friday to the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“Prosperity and peace are in the balance,” the president said in speech excerpts the White House released on Thursday night. “So with confidence in our vision and faith in our values, let us go forward … fight for victory … and keep the White House in 2008.”

Karl Rove back in town?