Sunday Wrap-Up (Only 364 Shopping Days Left Until Christmas)

Only lighter stuff today, while we’re all still digesting Christmas.  I’ll get back to hard news starting tomorrow.

*  I dug a little deeper in this story from Oklahoma City about a middle school student being arrested for having a permanent marker in school, and found out that he was violating an obscure DumbLaws.com style city ordinance about having either a permanent marker or spray paint can in a given place without the permission of either the private property owner or the administrator of the public place.  Turns out the young man was being a headache for his teacher, and the teacher must have remembered the obscure ordinance, and s/he used it as an occasion to sick the cops on him to get him out of his or her hair.  More, the ordinance was made out of fears of gang graffiti.  Which means that Oklahoma City politicians think that markers and cans of spray paint are to blame for gang graffiti, which in turn means that Oklahoma City politicians are just as dumb as the next cabal of larger city pols.

*  Along the same lines, thermoses are to blame for airline terrorism.  In fact, everything is to blame for airline terrorism EXCEPT for airline terrorists who (Shhhhh…) all practice a certain religion.

*  True dat — Most smartphone owners don’t use anywhere close to the full functionality of their phones.  But that’s true in a lot of other situations, too — Urban freeways aren’t wide because they have that much traffic all the time, but because you need them to handle rush hour traffic well enough so that most people can get to and from work in a reasonable amount of time.  If, for example, 270 in West County only ever had the volume it has at midnight on a Sunday night/Monday morning, then it wouldn’t ever need to be wider than two lanes per side.

*  I’d dump Tiger Woods if I were Gillette, too.  He never seems to shave anymore.  I don’t want people to think that my products are useless junk.

*  A left-of-center Vice President of the United States and a conservative televangelist disagree on marijuana.

Oh, you were expecting the former to be for legalizing pot and the latter against, weren’t you?

*  O.J. Mayo’s father is facing hard time for attempted murder et al.  As you’ll read, the father is 39, and Mayo, currently on the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies, is 23.  39 minus 23 minus about nine months?  God Bless teenage sex.

*  Yeah, it’s The Onion.  But it’s also liberal logic on youth sports applied to professional sports.  Which makes me wonder — How much sooner until this isn’t a joke?  As it stands, it seems that it’s bad to keep score before middle school, but okay starting in middle school.  In other words, if you’re under 12, then competition and the prospects of losing are just too much for you to handle, over 12, then you should just deal with it.  At some point, the libdrones are going to eke that age limit upward, a little bit at a time.  I mean, what’s bad for nine-year old kids playing soccer can’t be good for 25-30-year old men playing football.

*  Michael Vick would vote himself league MVP if he had a vote.  After having carefully considering all the other options, I’m sure.

I so want this sonofabitch to fuck up again and wind up back in prison.  But NOT at the expense of an innocent animal or human being.

Dennis Kucinich Announces Presidential Campaign

GARFIELD HEIGHTS, Ohio  (FNN)  –  Before any marquee-name Republican has announced his or her campaign for President in 2012 formally, and even before President Obama has officially announced his re-election bid, the 2011-2012 campaign season is already on the verge of a heated primary battle.

Dennis Kucinich, long time Congressman from the Cleveland area, announced today that he is running for President as a member of the Rent is Too Damn High Party.  Kucinich is its second major contender, after Jimmy McMillan, the party’s founder and 2010 nominee for New York Governor, announced his Presidential campaign three days ago.

Shantrella McMillian, Chairwoman of the RITDHNC (Rent is Too Damn High National Committee), is a half-sister to Jimmy McMillan.  While her half brother’s candidacy might seem a natural fit for her, New York City political insiders report that she is conflicted on whether to endorse him or Kucinich.  “Jimmy still owes her five bucks from two weeks ago,” reports Abe Rosensteinberg, a free-lance writer who has spend the last six months embedded in RITDH headquarters.  “And all she’s done since the start of Kwanzaa is the rant and rave about how every black man she’s ever known has tried to con her out of money.  She’s thinking going white is the only way to get right.”

For Kucinich’s part, there is no RITDH party structure in Ohio, and his fellow Democrats in the Cleveland area and in the state don’t seem to want to bolt the Democrats to help him create one.  Just about every elected Democrat in Ohio has already endorsed President Obama’s re-election bid, and the only one who has not, outgoing Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher, who lost the U.S. Senate election to Rob Portman back in November, released a parody video of his own parody video of the LeBron James “What Should I Do” Nike commercial.  Fisher is currently uncommitted, and his Chief-of-Staff, before departing the Office of the Staff of the Lieutenant Governor to become an assistant manager at a Wendy’s in suburban Columbus, tells Fake News Network that there are even money odds that he could endorse Kucinich’s RITDH Party bid as well as President Obama’s Democrat Party re-election campaign.

While there is expected to be a primary or caucus for the RITDH Party in all fifty states, the District of Columbia and several American territories, Larry Sabato, Professor of Political Science at the University of Virginia, only expects there to be contentious campaigns and significant voter turnout for the Rent is Too Damn High Party in areas where rents are high.  “Look, go to Flint, Michigan, or the Mississippi Delta, or places like that, and rents there aren’t actually too damned high.  So turnout for a party whose name complains about rent being too damned high is going to be too damned low,” Sabato told FNN.

The 2012 Rent is Too Damn High National Convention is scheduled to be held July 19-21 of that year inside the visiting team’s locker room inside Madison Square Garden in Manhattan.