The Weekly Rewind

It’s the weekend, and what does that mean? .... White Sox baseball? Nascar? Nope their seasons are over … Bear’s football? ... oh yeah ! Go Bears! Okay it also means that it is time for the weekly rewind….so here we go.

Heckle: to a smackdown. Earlier this week, Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Sarah Palin won’t be the next leader of the Republican party. “I think that she is going to be a significant player,” said Gingrich during an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “But she’s going to be one of 20 or 30 significant players. She’s not going to be the de facto leader.” So she will be a little fish in a big pond…..Snap!

Heckle: to another environmental slap from the lame duck administration. On Election Day, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced a Dec. 19 auction of more than 50,000 acres of oil and gas parcels alongside or within view of three national parks in Utah. Environmentalists are calling the move a Bush administration “fire sale” for the oil and gas industry, while the National Park Service’s top official in the state said it was “shocking and disturbing.” Don’t forget sneaky, diversionary.....basically par for the course with this President.

Heckle: to something that we were thinking, oh, 6 months ago. According to a new National Association of Business Economists’ poll of 50 professional forecasters, the “U.S. economy is in recession and will contract at a faster pace in the fourth quarter, extending the decline into early 2009 as high unemployment crimps consumer spending.” Preliminary government estimates showed GDP contracted 0.3 percent in the third quarter. Besides being a run-on sentence, the forecasters must have been sleeping the fist ¾ of the year.

Heckle: to a prime example of what’s wrong. The stock market suffered a terrible couple of days this week, dropping below 8,000 points for the first time since 2003. New-home starts in October were the lowest since at least 1959, and the consumer price index plummeted by the most since that series of monthly data was started in 1947, as the economy slowed so abruptly that companies had to slash prices to sell products. Who are we going to be asked to bail out next? Come to think of it I could use some cash!

Applaud: to making sense. Earlier this week, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) challenged “the idea that the expanded Democratic majority and its leaders will make a hard left turn,” the Hill reports. According to the prepared remarks for a speech at the National Press Club, Hoyer argued, “For the first time in decades, we are a true national majority party–and if we want to stay that way, we must govern like one.” Finally a Representative who is seeing the big picture. We applaud this perspective.

Heckle: to more of the same. In a report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction it states that “The Pentagon spent about $600 million on more than 1,200 Iraq reconstruction contracts that were eventually canceled,” adding that “42% of canceled contracts were terminated because the contractor either failed to deliver or performed poorly.” This has been par for the course for this administration. How badly could the U.S. economy have used that money? (Here’s a clue, we could still use it..)

Heckle: to No Shit Sherlock. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen said in an interview this week that “stress on U.S. troops from repeated combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan is ‘extraordinary’ and may be worsening even as fighting eases in Iraq.” Mullen expressed hope that “the strain will be relieved gradually as the Marine Corps and Army expand the pool of available forces.” Somehow I doubt it. I know what will reduce / relieve the strain on our troops….getting out of Iraq!

And this week there have been many rumors and leaks as to Cabinet level appointees in the upcoming Obama administration. As Kemp stated, we will address these when the appointee themselves decides to speak out. I would even extend that to when President-Elect Obama or his official spokesperson(s) speak to a nomination.

And finally our tool of the week: In a press release earlier this week, multiple time Presidential candidate and all around tool, Alan Keyes kicked his ‘tool’ rating up a few notches by being party to a lawsuit filed in the State of California which seeks to block the state from giving it’s electoral votes to President-Elect Obama. The suit was filed to force Obama to provide documentary evidence that he is in fact a natural born citizen of the United States. Okay, back in October the Health Department in the State of Hawaii declared that a Certificate of Live Birth was genuine. Keep in mind this is the same certificate that you or I would get from the state we were born in that verifies birth information. Come on Alan get over it, you lost, you had no chance of winning. And for this Alan Keyes is our Tool of the Week!

Okay so this may not be up to my usual standard of snarkiness. Rest assured I have never left you, instead I have been behind the scenes (with a lot of stuff going on). Honestly though, I share plenty of snark when giving Kemp my thoughts and input on many of the posts that you read on a daily basis. Yes thats right some of the snark you read has a little of me sprinkled in it.

So sit back and relax, I am ramping up for what promises to be some very stupid last days of the Bush Administration...or should I say, The "Bush"-Whacked Adminstration. Stay tuned, this last 58 days may get even more stupid.

Be good, stay informed…..later.