Regarding the bloodletting…

Watching the show last night, I knew immediately what was going to happen, although I didn’t believe it when things came down.

Of course Trump would’ve fired them all. Not only did they put up the worst performance ever for an Apprentice team, you gotta realise Dick’s is part of the whole elaborate product placement and marketing gimmick for the show. And then for this team to come along and cost a partner revenue? That’s embarrasing for the whole Trump franchise.

I’m not being hyperbolic, or saying it was catastrophic or anything… but if you put egg on the face of your boss’ business partner, it doesn’t matter if it is a reality show or real life. Expect to get canned.

North Cacalaca
North Cackalack
North Cackalacky

The people who live in Cary, NC
Should call their town “North Khaki”

CNN/AP has an interesting article entitled “‘Little Ethiopia’ takes root in D.C.” about the burgeoning Ethiopian communities arising in DC:

On a small stage, performers in sequined white gowns thump on drums and sing traditional music from the East African nation. Patrons sitting nearby use their fingers — no forks here — to tear into spongy pancakes and scoop up exotic cuisine such as awaze tibs, which is lamb marinated with jalapeno, tomato and garlic.

A new ethnic identity is taking root in a once-decaying neighborhood not far from the White House, where 10 Ethiopian restaurants are clustered together and dingy storefronts are now splashed with bright hues of blues, yellows and reds.

This made me think about whenever we would, on occasion, take trips out to Adams Morgan, where one can find any number of ethnic restaurants… and there used to be several Ethiopian joints there too. They probably still are.

I liked Adams Morgan a lot, sans the hassle it took to always get there — and to be fair, I tended to bitch a lot about the time and hassle it took to get anywhere near the city. But anyway, it seemed like every time we decided to head to Adams Morgan, it was freezing outside. That one St. Patty’s day, I think I had green beer and blue hands.

R, the Italian in the crew, loved the cheap ass, giant floppy slices of pizza that you could get for like a buck fifty. I liked Tryst, and the tough-looking bar nearby that had the Shinerbock countdown. There was the time M and I went into a dive called, I think, the Pharmacy, where they had a pharmacy sign on the wall with Cyrillic letters. M was told by the bartender — and owner, I think — that it had come over from somewhere in the former Yugoslavia. The guy’s mom had picked it up.

We had a good time once or twice at the wine bar down there, too, near Kalorama road I think. The name escapes me, and I sometimes wonder if it’s still there. You go to restaurants once in a while these days, and the trendy thing is to have crayons and rolls of paper to draw upon. This was the first place I’d seen that, and quite a few months before I’d seen it anywhere else.

Detroit Free Press coverage here.

RIP, Ms. Parks. You were and will remain an inspiration to many.

Sure looks like the VA Governor’s race is heating up between Jerry Kilgore and Tim Kaine.

I guess invoking Hitler wasn’t such a good idea after all.

I don’t think I’ll ever quite be able to give up on following Virginia politics… and if Mark Warner gets involved in the 2008 presidential race as many suspect, I think a lot more people will be following along with me.

The GOP is all about “traditional values”, a term which has been perverted into being family values. I’d wager that personal privacy and indivdual rights are traditional values, and indeed are rights that the the GOP perhaps used to espouse. However, it seems that large bastions of the conservative constituency are quite oblivious to the planks in their own eyes. According to this New York Times article, there are a interesting differences between lifestyle choices between different regions in the US, regions which also happen to encompass a political divide.

Now, I can already see the GOP harping about this… hell, it’s been a favourite for years:

Generally, the study found, states in the Northeast and the West had a higher percentage of unmarried-partner households than those in the South, In Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, unmarried couples made up more than 7 percent of all coupled households, about the twice the proportion of such households in Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi.

Oh, dear heavens. Living together… unmarried… in sin!! What to do??

Oh, wait a second, though…

On teenage births, the same differences become clear. In New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, about 5 percent of babies are born to teenage mothers, while in Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, South Carolina, Texas and Wyoming, 10 percent or more of all births are to teenage mothers.

The study also found that the percentage of births to unmarried mothers was highest in the South.

Compare this to the study that came out a few years ago indicating that the highest divorce levels in the US tend to be in the south (some numbers can be found here), and things become ever more interesting.

Family values, indeed.

Think the recent GOP tarpits of bad news haven’t dragged down even the most cheerleader sites, like FreeRepublic?
As several have noted elsewhere in the past week, it seems the recent disarray concerning Frist, DeLay and the ever-deepening pile of doo-doo that is the White House CIA leak, FreeRepublic.com has been at a loss in posting its usual barrage of GOP “good news”. The knife cuts deeper than that, however.

A while back, I did an analysis of the thinly-veiled racism that exists througout the FreeRepublic website.  I noted that, whenever stories appear on the site that might have racial undertones, that, “[y]ou can hear the underground buzzing of the swarm really amplify.”

So what happens when there’s a vaccuum of GOP propaganda to disseminate and a history of racism on a website?
The answer is pretty evident… stories that normally get lost in the shuffle end up front-paged by FR users.  What’s more, this was actually the second time the story was posted today, albeit with a much more negative slant.

This entry isn’t so much a case of saying “I told you so”, nor hashing out something that we all probably knew – the inbred racism amongst a good portion of FreeRepublic users. Rather, it’s more an indication that the corruption that the GOP has found itself in has manifested in ugly ways, even amongst the most ardent of GOP websites. Lack of talking points from the GOP results in increase visibility of the garbage that makes up much of the GOP constituency.

Meanwhile, I am suprised that the apparent poster of this story — and ensuing commenter — seems to be using a corporate email account for personal use. Thanks, Google!

What’s with all the “kicked puppy dog” behaviour lately? Emphasis mine, in the quotes below.

White House adviser, on Patrick Fitzgerald:

But the investigation has taken a toll on White House aides, many of whom now fear that the special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, is intent on issuing indictments.

“Fitzgerald’s office, although very professional, has been very aggressive in pursuing people,” the adviser said. “These guys are bullies, and they threaten you.”

Congressional staffer, on Ronnie Earle:

“I would be a fool to comment on this,” said one Senate aide last week. “Anything could happen to me or my boss.”
Lawyers who deal with the district attorney’s office regularly will talk about Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst or House Speaker Tom Craddick — often colorfully — but generally they shy away from remarks about Mr. Earle or his realm.
“It’s not that we are afraid,” said one, glancing around to see if anyone was in earshot, “but this guy has the power. You know, the real power. And he’s known to have been vindictive.“