Is it just me, or are you creeped out when you go to a website and it tells you your facebook “friends” have joined the Huffington Post, or CNN updates you on your friends activities? Do I show up on other people’s pages too? I think I changed all those settings, but who the hell knows? I mean, I think some of the people I see are the same people who passed along those helpful “change your facebook privacy settings” tips. I really should just pull the plug on the facebook thing. I never quite got it in the first place, and I really don’t look at it all that often. I guess I just don’t care whether Billy Bob fertilized Betty Sue’s crops in Farmville (I mean, go for it you two, but, geez, is nobody discrete these days?).

Hey, how’s this for a quandary? You get picked up by five-oh on some bogus stolen car charge (so you say, anyway), and you post bail but you’re, you know, kinda Mexican looking, so the feds hold you for being an illegal immigrant. And you show them your ID and your birth certificate that shows you were born in Puerto Rico (and, yeah, that really, really is part of the United States, no matter what Vaughn Ward may think), but well, did I mention you’re kinda Mexican looking? So obviously your documents are forged, so they hold you and tell you you’re gonna be deported. Fortunately, your Congressman – who’s kinda Mexican looking himself – intervenes and springs you.

That would kinda suck, huh? And it didn’t even happen in Arizona; this was in Chicago.

So, while nobody was paying much attention, it looks like North and South Korea are on the verge of resuming their war. Now, as much as I liked M*A*S*H, let’s say we just sit this one out, eh? It might make the price of TVs, DVD players, and other consumer electronics go up, but, well, it just doesn’t seem worth it. Besides, we’re still in the process of bringing Democracy to Afghanistan.

Ever get the urge to fire off an angry e-mail to a Senator or congresscritter? Well, you might wanna think twice about that (especially if you happen to be kinda Mexican looking). Turns out what I always thought was one of our “rights” is actually called “felony harassment” or something. Go figure. I hope it’s still OK to bitch about ’em here, or I’m gonna need to start up a collection for my legal fees.

BP is gonna try packing their hole with mud today (maybe). I always knew those Brits were a bunch of mud packers (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Hopefully this will actually work (or at least slow it down so they can do something else). I have my doubts, though. I think they may just wind up stressing the pipe and blowing it out in a few more places. I hope not though.

The lamestream media keep pushing the “Is This Obama’s Katrina” meme. Unfortunately, this seems to be worse. For one thing, Katrina the hurricane at least was an event that ended in a couple of days (even if the aftermath goes on), while this oil spew has been going on for over a month, and it may be many more months before they can drill a relief well to stop it. And while there are really only a handful of hurricanes that threaten the Gulf Coast in a given season, there are Allah only knows how many of the 800+ active offshore drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico are ready to blow at any moment, like a bunch of aneurysms ready to pop without warning. Without any warning to us anyway. It appears that BP actually had quite a few clues that there were pressure and flow problems (which, at my age, I can relate to) before the damn thing blew up. And Obama keeps allowing new ones (fuck new ones; they ought to shut them all down until they can be inspected and relief wells drilled), and seems to be unwilling – despite the tough talk – to regulate them.

Fortunately, I live inland and don’t really like shrimp, so I think I’m good.

The President has requested a $37.5 billion “emergency” war supplemental – $32 billion of which is earmarked for Obama’s Folly in Afghanistan (which will bring the Afghanistan War spending for this fiscal year up to $99 billion). Two reports – from the Congressional Research Service and the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction – make you kind of wonder just why we’re throwing all this money down the Afghan rabbit hole instead of, oh, I dunno, plugging the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico or maybe rebuilding New Orleans after Katrina (I mean, it’s only been 5 years now), or, hey, how about single payer healthcare, building high speed rail, or fixing every crappy bridge and highway in the country?

According to the reports, there’s no exit strategy, we’re not making our timeframes for withdrawing troops, and the “surge” has been quite as wonderful as Saint Stanley McChrystal led us (or some of us, anyway) to believe it would be.

There’s also the matter of seemingly unrealistic goals for training Afghan security forces, poor planning of infrastructure projects, pervasive corruption within the Afghan government and the lack of contracting oversight. Finally there’s the concern that some of the individual funding requests seem inflated, in certain areas the Pentagon isn’t spending the money it already has and billions of dollars in requests don’t appear to genuinely qualify as emergency spending — the only thing Obama vowed he would ever use an emergency spending bill for again.

I predict the supplemental will pass overwhelmingly. I mean, you gotta support the troops, right?

It was too goddamn hot yesterday, it’s gonna be too damn hot today, and it’ll be too dam hot again tomorrow. Expect much whining from me.

Interesting events here last night, as an apparently pretty big underground transformer blew up, sending manhole covers flying and flames shooting up into the night sky. Good thing this isn’t New York City, or you know everybody would be flipped out over a terrorist attack. We’re not very high on the target list, though, so they just cut the power and put out the fire. Not a job I’d want – climbing down a manhole and hoping that the people from the power company were really, really sure they’d gotten the electricity shut down. Pretty fortunate that it happened on a Sunday night when nothing was going on (not that there’s a whole lot going on ever around here, but it’d kinda suck to be driving over a manhole when it exploded.

When I first briefly glanced at the headline, I thought Joe Arpaio had been gored by a bull. Sadly, it was somebody else. I wasn’t gonna look at the pictures after reading what happened, but, well, I finally did. One of those staring at a car wreck things, I guess. I hesitate to say that anybody deserves a horn through the throat, but, well, if you’re gonna torture and kill a 2,000 pound animal that can run, like, 35 miles an hour, I gotta say you’re both cruel and crazy. At least the fools at Pamploma aren’t cruel. Just stupid.

While the financial reform bill headed to conference doesn’t exactly have the blessing of Wall Street, folks in the financial sector are apparently pretty relieved that it doesn’t really do anything.

Speaking of not really doing anything, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is talking tough about BP, but not actually doing anything about them as oil – that may be un-cleanable – oozes into Louisiana’s wetlands, and the oil keeps gushing out more than a month since their drilling rig blew up (a month already? My how time flies). Well, that’s unfair, I guess. The Obama Administration did issue a moratorium on offshore oil drilling. For those wishing to expand their vocabulary, “moratorium” apparently means “business as usual,” as at least 17 permits (more than one every other day) have been issued since the “moratorium” went into effect.

Tonight is the series finale for Law and Order, which bows out after 20 years. Well, sort of. A new Law and Order LA will premiere in the fall (which I predict will be a flop; not the fall, the show), the SVU show will be back for another season, and I’m pretty sure that L&O or one of its spinoffs is on somewhere 24/7 (often at the same time).

Still it’ll be sad to the show that brought us Stephen Colbert as a murderous forger, a young Lewis Black with a Jewfro, and a then-unknown Phillip Seymour Hoffman and his lawyer, Samuel L Jackson.

Yes, I havewatched the show once or twice.

Oh well, time to shut all the doors and windows; it’s gonna be way too hot today.

On Press the Meat today, it’s Rand Paul and Joe Sestak. OK, mostly it’s Joe Sestak, since, as we all know, Rand Paul is too much of a coward to defend his bullshit, “first amendment” objection to the Civil Rights Act. Also up, Tex-ass Senator John Cornyn and Bob Menendez, plus a roundtable with flat head Tom Friedman, Paul “I’m nothing without Shields” Gigot, Andrea Mitchell, and the mummified remains of Bob Woodward.

Faze the Nation has Robert Gibbs, Lamar “Tennessee Jed” Alexander, and Joe Sestak.

On Fux News Sunday, Weaselface Wallace has Caribou Barbie, plus Tim Kaine, and Bozo the Clown, Michael Steele. There’s also a panel with the usual fuxheads, and the “Power Player of the Week”, Mrs Clarence the Clown Thomas tells us how she wants the people to take a pledge against “Washington’s big government agenda.” Plus, she’ll share her husband’s favorite free porn sites.

The Kaine and Steele show makes its way over to the Goebbels network, where the Axis of Drivel is reunited with a “classic” roundtable of George :jerk: Will, Cokie “the hag” Roberts, and Sam :omg: Donaldson. Oh, plus token roundtable sitter, political mastermind Donna Brazile.

Over at CNN, Fareed Zakaria has the story of some guy’s terrifying experience in Russia, plus, the President of Georgia on dealing with Russia two years after the Georgian war, and two experts discuss Putin’s Russia. Even better, you can buy a Fareed Zakaria GPS coffee mug.

Enjoy the day – and try not to think about what’s coming tomorrow.

We are a divided nation. Half the country thinks Obama is a Nigerian commie mooslam who wants to take your guns, money, and women, and give them to Mexicans. The other half of the country thinks Obama is an ineffectual, naive corporatist, selling out to the insurance industry, big pharma, big oil, big banks, and big nukes (by the way, Mr. President, if companies are too corrupt and inept to safely dig a hole in the fucking ground, do you really want them playing with fissionable materials?). The third half of the country, of course, believes Obama can do no wrong, has a secret liberal agenda that he’ll unleash in his second term (yeah, like he’s gonna get a second term), and really, what can he actually accomplish with the Democrats in charge of the House and Senate (can’t wait to see what he does with Republicans running at least one house of Congress – though, I must say, the Democrats might owe the teabaggers a steak dinner at a fancy whites-only restaurant for all their help in keeping Republicans in the minority)?

Although Obama moved with a Bush-like pace (and a Dick Cheney mindset) on the whole underwater oil gusher thingie, his administration has now sprung into action. Which, of course, means he’s created a commission to study it. I don’t know about you, but I feel much better. Plus I hear Toni Morrison is working on a new novel based on the BP oil spill – “Tar Baby 2: This Time It’s Personal.”

Speaking of BP, they’ll be taking a much-needed break this weekend, and will get back to not stopping the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico next Tuesday (must be British Memorial Day is a week earlier than ours; kinda like the opposite of Russian Christmas, I guess). No doubt, the President will be drafting a stern letter, expressing his desire to have them get back to work (which Rand Paul will decry as being un-American and mean).

It’ll be interesting to see how the Texas history books (coming soon to a school near you) cover all this. On the one hand, they’d want to emphasize how bad Obama fucked it all up (maybe even caused it), while still praising deep water oil drilling and the corporate right to rape the Earth in the name of the almighty dollar.

Keith Olbermann mentioned this the other night, and I remember seeing it before. Thanks to the Intertubes, we don’t need to purchase the Tonight Show box set to see it. Thank you, YouTube.

Oh, and John Fund’s an asshole.

You’ve got to admire somebody who has the courage of their convictions and is willing to stand up and defend their beliefs, even if you don’t happen to agree with them. Ron Paul seems to be one of those people (I guess; I’m not really one of his groupies, so I don’t really know for sure). His son the doctor? Not so much. In less than 24 hours, Little Paul went from saying that he thought companies had a right to discriminate against people based on race (or anything else, presumably) to saying he’d have voted for the Civil Rights Act.

Actually, I guess he didn’t really change his position after all. He said he’d have worked to change the CRA to let private companies tell black folks to get to the back of the bus, but he never did say he’d have voted against it. Except he was about a year old at the time, so, really, what he would or wouldn’t have voted for is pretty much moot. All we know for sure is that now, in 2010, Rand Paul thinks private companies ought to have the right to discriminate against anybody they want. Is this likely to hurt his candidacy? In Kentucky? Land of Jim Bunning and Mitch McConnell? I don’t think so.

Speaking of Kentucky, the ‘Double Down’ sandwich (bacon and cheese with chicken filets where the bread ought to be) that everybody privately says is so disgusting and terrible has been such a big hit for KFC that they’re gonna continue to offer it as long as their customers want it (or until they all die off). On the bright side, if the Double Down leads to chest pain, with all that chicken, you can probably trade one in for an EKG, and two might get you a stent.

Other news from the world of medicine this morning involves pools and pool water nastiness. This just in: “experts” at the CDC say you shouldn’t use the pool if you’ve got diarrhea. Experts, and everybody else in the pool. There’s something to think about next time you get a mouthful of pool water, huh? Mmm. Wanna double down on that?

Speaking of doubling down, Julie Bowen has a nice pair. Of twins. Babies, I mean. And she’s got the pictures to prove it. I always thought Julie was just the cutest little thing, ever since Boston Legal. She and the twins are welcome to come to dinner at our house any time.

So, teabagger darling and Republican candidate for KY Senator (that’s Kentucky, not the lube) isn’t 100% down with the Civil Rights act, telling Rachel Maddow he’d have tried to change it if he was in office when it was enacted. Oh, he himself, of course, doesn’t believe in discrimination (and would never join a white-only Country Club – like, say, the one where he held his big victory party), but that doesn’t mean other people shouldn’t have the right to do it. Apparently, he considers it a First Amendment right for a private business to refuse to serve, say, black people. Is it? Is that protected “speech”? If a business is privately owned, does the owner have the right to say, “we don’t serve black people” or “the lunch counter is for white people only”? Or, no Jews, no Whites, no Mooslams, no Ukrainians, no Irish, no, well, whatever? I suppose you have the right to keep whoever you want out of your home, but does that right extend to, say, your hardware store or the family-owned Greasy Spoon (or the Wal-Mart in Leitchfield, KY)? Doesn’t seem like it to me, and it doesn’t seem like somebody who thinks it does ought to be a US Senator in the 21st Century. Not even in Kentucky.

BPs oily sludge is now gunking up the Louisiana wetlands, and it’s headed up the East Coast. Since they don’t seem to be able to stop it, it’ll be interesting to see how far it goes. On the bright side, you might not need the tanning oil out on Jones Beach this summer – just go for a swim, and you should come back out with a nice brown patina. I wonder if it’ll make it all the way to Europe?

Feeling a little sluggish and off your feed lately? Might want to take that Miley Cyrus jewelry off and put it in your drawer. It appears that the MC jewelry collection is loaded with cadmium, or as the local news bimbo – and reincarnation of Norm Crosby (who isn’t actually dead yet) just said about three times, “caddyum”. Looks like Wal-Mart (where all the classy chicks do their jewelry shopping) is pulling the collection from its shelves.

On the bright side, they’ve just gotten a new shipment of lifelike sea gull oil lamps in from Louisiana.

Tough day for incumbents yesterday. Hopefully Arlen Specter will at least have more integrity than Joe Lieberman and not run as an independent (he said last night it was important to keep the seat with the Democrats, so I guess he hates the Republicans more for the moment). It’ll be interesting to see how Arlen votes as his term winds down. Around these parts, almost all the school budgets passed, as did most of the additional proposals (in my district, the budget passed, as did a library funding proposal, and we’ll be buying new buses). So, good for us, I guess. Still no State budget in place, of course, so hopefully I won’t be getting laid off.

Big day in a lot of states today, with primaries for US Senate taking place in Arkansas, Kentucky, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. This could be the end of Arlen Specter’s political career, and it’s looking pretty good that DINO Blanche Lincoln will be forced into a June runoff down in Arkansas. In Kentucky, teabagger darling Rand Paul looks like he’ll kick the ass of Mitch McConnell’s hand picked candidate. Here, there are votes on school district budgets going on. Could be bad news for school districts. People are pretty pissed at, well, just about everything, and about the only things they actually get to vote on are their school district budgets, so they tend to take it out them.

It was 30 years ago today that Mount St. Helens blew up. I hope Harry Truman’s OK.

Speaking of disasters, tar balls are starting to wash up on shore in the Florida Keys, though the Coast Guard isn’t saying if they’re coming from the underwater oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. Probably just a coincidence.

A Tokio Hotel guitarist OD’d on Viagara, or so he claims (not OD’d as in killed himself, I guess). Hs story is that somebody offered him one, and he replied that he didn’t need that sorta thing, but the guy replied “you should take it anyway,” so he took a fistful of them, and they made him feel bad. My first thought was, when did we start spelling Tokyo with an ‘i’ and I didn’t realize the hotels over there had in-house guitar players. As for a 20-yr old being stupid enough to take a fistful of Viagara because somebody told him, “dude, you gotta try these,” well, that doesn’t surprise me one bit.

The FIFA World Cup begins in about three weeks. This year, it’s in South Africa. Great place for a vacation, with a murder rate of about .5 murders per 1,000 people (or roughly 100 times greater then here in the US of A). Don’t worry, Colombia; you’re still #1.

You may have heard that Oily Taints and Michele Bachmann teamed up at a teabagger event in California yesterday. One headline I read yesterday, said “How Bachmann and Taitz Came Together Without the Universe Exploding” or something like that. Which was kinda dumb. Everybody knows that it’s only a problem is matter and anti-matter are brought together, and since neither Taints nor Bachmann matter, ther universe is safe. Taints and Bachmann in a roof full of teabaggers, though. Oy. That’s a whole lotta crazy in one place.

Oh well, looks like it’s about that time again.

Thanks to the NY State government’s inability to pass a budget (plus a petulant, impotent governor), 55 State parks and historic sites are closed. This action is saving an astounding $11 million dollars (or about on tenth of one percent of our current deficit). That doesn’t figure all the lost revenue for entrance and usage fees, of course, so the “savings” are quite a bit less (according to this, for every million “saved” $350,000 in revenue is lost, making that $11 million more like $7.15 million). It isn’t so much about the money, though; closing parks makes everybody’s quality of life a little bit crappier. Good work, guys. And might I add, you all suck.

Speaking of sucking, some good news (supposedly) from the site of the former Deep Horizon offshore drilling platform, as BP has managed to shove a mile long tube into the drill hole, and is sucking up some of the spewing oil. No idea how much they’re managing to suck up, and the oil that’s already out there appears to have entered the major current that will bring it through the Florida Keys and up the East Coast. Sweet.

Speaking of sweet, Bernie Kerik is scheduled to begin his four-year stint in the slammer today (unless he tries to make a break for it) for lying to Bush Administration officials trying to vet him in advance of his nomination to be Secretary of Homeland Security. It is, of course, a total miscarriage of justice (at least according to Bernie).

“Words cannot express my disappointment in the prosecutors and the judge’s behavior, and his sentence that followed,” Kerik wrote on his blog Sunday.

“I have repeatedly expressed remorse for what I may have done, however, unlike many, I can’t remain silent in the face of what I believe has been a gross injustice, which I pray will be remedied by an appellate court.”

Hey, he said he was sorry. What the hell more do you want? And all he did was lie a little, right?

Kerik, 54, pleaded guilty in November to tax fraud and six other felonies. He has been under house arrest in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, since then.

Oh, house arrest. For tax fraud and six other felonies. I bet Bernie was a big advocate of house arrest and a kinder, gentler Criminal Justice system when he was NYC police commissioner.