And today's missing cute girl is..

Note to a large portion of America, pictured below:

Do not give your baby girls cute names. No more Caylees. No more Haleighs. No more marrying your 17-year old "girlfriends" while "grieving." I am of course disturbed by how these freaks abuse and kill their children, but sadly..it is not news. Go away.

So how many more days...

until Michael Steele,pictured below,

receives his walking papers?

An idea with no "merit."

Dear Mr. President:

You mentioned the subject of merit pay for teachers. Did I happen to miss the development of a metric that can accurately and comparatively evaluate teachers? If I didn't miss anything, then you're talking NCLB II and the disastrous folly of teaching to the test..after test..after test.

Mr. President, children are not widgets, and education is not a commodity. Education is a cumulative, cooperative and socially dynamic process that cannot be defined, assessed or quantified by a scantron sheet. Sir, there are many things we can do to improve education, and I applaud you for your interest in an area where your predecessor only wanted to privatize and theocratize education. I'm sure you have many good ideas on the subject. This, however, isn't one of them.

To quote Etta OR Beyonce...At Last.....

President Obama to Lift Stem Cell Restrictions
Obama to Sign Executive Order Reversing Bush Policy
By DAN CHILDS and LISA STARKMarch 9, 2009

President Obama is expected today to end an 8½-year ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

See more at link

It pisses me off that over 8 years have been wasted, literally wasted, because a foolish adminstration cared mored about frozen blastocytes that were to be discarded anyway than living, breathing and suffering children and adults. Finally, the Village Idiot is back home and sanity abides back in DC. I'm hope it isn't too late for everybody that was screwed by the fool.

I usually don't do this but...

If you're out and about on Chicago's north side (Belmont near Racine), stop in for a bite and a brew at Joey's Brickhouse restaurant (link in the sidebar). Good family-owned place, great friends to progressive causes and makers of a mean pizza. They are also getting screwed over by a recently bailed-out bank who loves playing hardball with small businesses. So if you're headed to the theater or out to a show at the Vic, or just to watch the games, stop in and see Joey and Greg.

Depression Psychology: Always Darkest Before the Dawn

This is one of those rare moments in our nation’s history in which panic about our economic survival, let alone short-term viability, is beginning to set in, driving the markets' slow death spiral. Wall Street reflects the growing anxiety felt on Main Street where credit remains frozen and every day looks like Christmas Day in March -- without the gifts.

President Obama has governed with a steady hand and his quiet confidence has won over the American people. As a student of history, he knows that in times of crisis the nation rallies to the leaders who have remained calm and steady in the midst of dark, swirling storms of uncertainty and fear. Men such as Lincoln, who led us through civil war and saved the union, and FDR, who brought the country back from the brink of Depression and dictatorship with unlimited faith in his “laughing revolution” facing down fear.

And yet, even as the stimulus money slowly makes its way into a moribund economy, there is apparent indecision within the Obama Administration about how to restore our financial system, and what to do with those so-called “toxic assets,” driving the markets’ freefall. Treasury Secretary Geithner has not inspired confidence in the markets with vague ever-changing plans, trial balloons, and a seeming lack of urgency. To make matters worse, the post of Undersecretary remains unfilled at Treasury, as well as other key positions, prompting some in the media to say Geithner is “home alone.”

Our faith in the President remains strong, but there is some unease that while he moves aggressively on the long-term future fronts of health care, energy, and green jobs, he is neglecting the short-term crisis of confidence in our markets that Tim Geithner, fairly or not, has the right prescription to rescue the financial system. In Britain, the government is moving swiftly to nationalize its banks, the latest being a 77% stake in the once venerable Lloyds of London. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman warns that if the Obama Administration doesn’t follow a similar strategy of temporary nationalization of the banks, and soon, our economy may sputter along not for months, or years, but for an entire decade or more, much like Japan’s “lost decade” of the 90s.

Short of outright Depression, this would be the worst possible outcome for our nation. President Obama faces unprecendented challenges not seen since the Great Depression: aside from our teetering economy, three wars sap our blood and treasure and there is the looming threat of a failed state on our southern border, as Mexico’s President Calderon wages a losing “existential war” against the drug cartels. This little publicized threat has already invaded our territory: Phoenix, Arizona, one of the cartels’ major drug conduits, hosts heavily armed paramilitary thugs roaming its streets and claims the unenviable distinction of being the kidnapping capital of the United States.

It’s always darkest before the dawn, so goes the song. In this can-do nation of eternal optimists our hopes rest heavily with a visionary president who looks to the future with confidence to lead us through the darkness of fear and despair into the first glimmers of a new day.

Carpe Diem.

The World's Scariest Haircut

Barring one from him,

it would be difficult to imagine a more frightening haircut than the one I had yesterday.

I am not hesitant to spend money on high-end food, but on things like clothes and hair--I dress like a flood victim and go to discount hair salons. Yesterday I was greeted by a "stylist" I had not seen before. To re-use a comparison, it was like an encounter with a giant squid. You have heard they exist but they are rarely encountered in their natural habitat.

Making small talk, I note my rapidly graying hair and casually mention the story about how the prez is going gray only a few weeks into his term. She abruptly says, "I have no comment on that." OKAY. Then she asks what kind of work I do, and I should have made something up. Rodeo clown perhaps. I think gay porn star would have been less irritating to her than the combo of lawyer, writer and teacher. Because after all, and I quote, "the liberals won't let the schools use the kind of history books that teach the kids about God's plan for America."

Great, I thought. I'm hitting here 1/3 of the way into a haircut by a crazy woman armed with sharp objects. I'm dying to go Five Easy Pieces on her ("I'm listening to some cracker asshole who lives in a trailer park..."), but again, I remember that 1) right now, with one side of my hair cut, I look like an escaped mental patient and 2) as per above, crazy woman armed with sharp objects.

I made my feelings known to her, the salon manager and corporate (not to mention any names, but its initials are Great Clips.) Who thinks to rant like that to a total stranger? That is good for business how?

And see below about the proper uses for the stupid.