Saturday Night's Alright for Writing

-        After an earthquake, cholera outbreak, violent election, and a history as being the poorest country in the western hemisphere, the people of Haiti were visited by Sarah Palin.  Haven’t these people suffered enough?  Fire up the Clooney telethon machine.
-        New additions to the Diggapedia music rotation: Black Keys, Broken Bells, Two Door Cinema Club, Cage the Elephant, and Civil Twilight. I’m sure their publicists are ecstatic.
-        Bill Clinton’s press conference at the White House this week was a treat.  Love him or hate him, you have to love him (huh?).  Though I wonder if President Obama felt like Captain Decker (Star Trek: The Motion Picture reference) as Clinton’s Captain Kirk returned to take the con.
-        I want to thank the house on Horned Owl for cooking bacon outside this morning as I was completing my run.  It was much needed motivation to get home and eat.
-        One statistic not mentioned in the recent Armed Forces DADT survey:  only 29% responded to the survey.  Does that signify indifference, apathy, or they were too busy because they were engaged in combat?  Perhaps we should send a survey to the other 71% and ask them?  No joke, I bet McCain brings it up this week.
-        Remember Richard Clarke?  No, not the Bandstand guy, the former national security expert who warned Condi Rice about the impending Al Qaeda attack before 9/11?  After he resigned due to the gross negligence in the Bush administration, he started researching and warning the government about our susceptibility to cyber attacks.  Why does he seem to be the only guy fighting tomorrow’s war?
-        California has joined Washington in states that will be holding open primaries instead of the party specific primaries.  Great idea.  This way voters vote for all candidates from all parties during the primary and the top two proceed to the general election.  Hopefully this forces candidates to address the 80% of the population that resides in the middle of the political spectrum and eliminates the base-pandering that happens when candidates vie for the nomination. 
-        James D’Cruz of Texas with help from the NRA will have his day at the Supreme Court soon enough. The 18 year old Mr. D’Cruz is plaintiff in two federal lawsuits in Texas claiming that his 2nd amendment rights are being infringed because federal law says you must be 21 years old to buy a handgun from a licensed dealer.  In a related story, the Violence Policy Center, a gun control organization, says that states with high gun ownership and weak gun laws have the highest rates of gunfire deaths.
-        America’s short attention span.  Remember the brouhaha this spring when President Obama said he would allow offshore drilling and then the BP disaster stuck and he sought a moratorium on future deep sea drilling?  Last week the President initiated a ban on oil exploration in the eastern gulf and the Atlantic coast.  Didn’t hear much about it did you?   Oil exploration is so yesterday like Lindsay Lohan.

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