Not gonna lie: definitely worried right now.

Perhaps not, but apparently it does leave a paper trail. Josh Marshall at TPM points out this great OpEd piece from Michael Gerson, railing against Al Franken’s brazen crudeness. Because, of course, we all know Al as the king of filthy humor. Watch in delight and mirth as he goes out of his way to look like a humorless loser by itemizing Franken’s humor:

Michael Gerson - Vulgarian at the Gate - washingtonpost.com

Franken’s “brand name” includes other highlights. In 2006, after a long monologue about a dog and its vomit, Franken impersonated the deceased Sen. Strom Thurmond as saying: “Yeah, I screwed a woman who was vomiting once.” He once proposed a television sketch about a female CBS reporter being drugged and raped. He has suggested that his next book title might be “I F — – — Hate Those Right-Wing Motherf — – — !” At an event hosted by the Feminist Majority Foundation in 1999, Franken offered this thigh-slapper: “Why don’t we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers.”

I’d like to think that Gerson isn’t just feigning humorlessness. I’d like to think he’s really that dumb. And best of all, he joins our own Rochester Democrat and Chronicle puditry in it’s crusade against long-dead musical trends:

Michael Gerson - Vulgarian at the Gate - washingtonpost.com

Our popular culture, of course, violates even these expansive boundaries of tastelessness with regularity. We laugh at comedies featuring the C-word and at cartoons of foul-mouthed third-graders. In the cause of relevance and realism, our common life is already decorated with excrement. Why should political discourse be any different?

For at least one reason: Because vulgarity is often the opposite of civility. . . But the vulgarity of “The Jerry Springer Show” or misogynous rap music — the cultural equivalents of Franken’s political “satire” — generally expresses contempt and cruelty.

Note how, in an attempt at humor, a Conservative columnist feigns concern over “misogyny.” Well, we can’t all be Jerry Lewis.

A while ago, there was a fair amount of information about John McCain’s funding troubles floating around. However, happily for McCain, the press was more interested in McCain’s alleged sexual promiscuity (ssssshhhivvver) with a young and pretty lobbyist. Now, the DNC plans to sue McCain over the issue, which is reported by Politico, but sadly without much information about the actual issue at hand. So, in case you missed it then or have subsequently forgotten about it now, I’ll throw you a primer after the link:

Jonathan Martin’s Blog: DNC to again file suit on McCain’s matching funds - Politico.com

Democrats hope to puncture a hole in McCain’s good government image by pressing the issue while Republicans dismiss it as totally groundless.

Way back when John McCain was the luckless loser of the Republican Primary contests, he was riding coach and struggling to pay for even the most meager of campaign advertising and rallying. In those days, he chose to dip into the matching funds account setup by the Federal Elections Commission that pays an equal share of funds for every dollar you raise, up to a point. But he didn’t use it like you’d think he’d use it. What he did was apply for a loan from a bank and apply for the matching funds program at the same time. He then told the bank that they could use the matching funds money as collateral if he wasn’t able to pay the bank back.

He got both the loan and the matching funds approval. You can’t do that. And once he got the loan, he declared that he no longer needed the matching funds, so he figured he’d just turn them down. You can do that either.

The real trouble for McCain is that offering something up as collateral implicitly means you own it. Either that, or it’s fraud. It wasn’t fraud, inasmuch as he did get approved for matching funds. So the only other option is that he acted as though he’d already accepted the money. Once you accept the matching fund money, you have to play by the matching fund rules, which include a miniscule and wholly inadequate cap on spending which would put McCain well out of the race.

Because the FCC is currently not completely staffed, there’s no one at the bridge to say whether there is or isn’t a violation here, officially. So it appears as though the DNC has chosen to sue McCain in court to get the same ruling. This is going to be interesting.

My favourite Rightie Poindexter, George Will, excoriates Republican presidential hopeful John McCain for one more subject on which he shows tremendous lack of understanding: the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus. Or for that matter, legal issues in general. Or for that matter, the pulse of the public, for whom the “activist judges” meme may or may not have every really resonated in the first place:

George F. Will - Contempt Of Courts - washingtonpost.com

Did McCain’s extravagant condemnation of the court’s habeas ruling result from his reading the 126 pages of opinions and dissents? More likely, some clever ignoramus convinced him that this decision could make the Supreme Court — meaning, which candidate would select the best judicial nominees — a campaign issue.

The decision, however, was 5 to 4. The nine justices are of varying quality, but there are not five fools or knaves. The question of the detainees’ — and the government’s — rights is a matter about which intelligent people of good will can differ.

Anybody remember how the U.S. Army gave soldiers LSD back during Korea? Or how about how the “Reefer Madness” propaganda convinced the Army to give soldiers pot to see if they could turn them into killing machines? Results fell somewhat short of expectations, comically so, but what is happening now is not even remotely funny:

ABC News: ‘Disposable Heroes’: Mentally Distressed Veterans Used to Test Suicide-Linked Drugs

Mentally distressed veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are being recruited for government tests on pharmaceutical drugs linked to suicide and other violent side effects, an investigation by ABC News and “The Washington Times” has found.

I’m sure the Veterans Administration will have some snappy answer as to why they didn’t warn soldiers, even after repeated warnings from the manufacturers of the drug. But if I were a cynical man - and as luck would have it, I am - I’d say that the Veterans Administration is doing the Pharmaceutical industry’s own worst-case drug testing on the cheap.

So, let us now drop this silly pretense about “supporting the troops,” shall we?

Whadda ya know? Bob Lonsberry is in hot water over racially-charged comments again. But he’s not racist. Good to know. The more I look around me, the more it looks like the Ninties all over again:

Bob Lonsberry Criticized Over Remarks - 13WHAM.com

In his remarks on June 10, Lonsberry said the Rochester City School District was setting racist standards for giving awards to black students who get a “B” average, while white students are held to higher requirements to receive awards.

I’d call the comments “borderline” at best. Probably not worth firing, but definitely worth a ton of grief for this idiot. At what point do you begin to realize that, once busted for racist remarks, one should probably eschew racially charged issues as often as possible? As I have pointed out in the past, there is a difference between racially insensitive speech and a bonafide racist, but that does not allow the non-clansman to simply escape reproach.

And before anyone starts crying “freedom of speech,” let me say that what you have a right as an individual to speak is not necessarily what is appropriate for you to say in the context of being a representative of an entire radio network. There is an expectation that, as a radio jock, you are capable of facing a microphone and speaking for a few hours without causing race hate. Is that so much to ask?

DFE Blogger and Rochester City Councilwoman Carla Palumbo reports on the state of the current proposed City budget. Notice how much different the City’s budget process is from the County’s. What? You’ve never heard about the County process? Yeah, that’s the point:

» Firetrucks and Rec Centers… » Carla Palumbo

The City Budget process is almost to the end…City Council’s vote on Tuesday night will wrap up over a month of budget review, hearings and deliberations. There are a few major changes proposed in this budget — the two drawing the most ire are the changes to the Fire Dept and Rec Centers After-school programs. Given the tight budget there were some fairly significant cuts to City staff, mostly in IT — but the Rec Center After-school program is being cut and the Fire Dept methodology changed with a loss of 16 positions (not lay offs, loss is by attrition)

I’d call this a sign of the times. The Rochester Business Journal is reporting that home sales in Monroe County plummeted 11 percent this month, while automobile sales continued to climb. Unfortunately, the RBJ did not report on what types of cars are being sold. Based on other reports about plummeting SUV sales, I suspect that the answer is “a whole mess of Priuses.”

Rochester Business Journal:

Sales of existing homes in May dropped 11 percent compared with a year ago, the Greater Rochester Association of Realtors Inc. reported Friday. Though May closings, at 928, were up 10.7 percent from April, which posted 838 closings.

Rochester Business Journal:

Sales of new vehicles in Monroe County continued to increase last month, while used-vehicle sales fell in May, the Rochester Automobile Dealers’ Association Inc. reported.

I’m blogging from my mobile using Titter Tools. At least, I hope I am !

Of the companies who have long declared a tiered Internet the only just system for the Big Telcos, AT&T has been on the forefront for a long time, now. Back when Net Neutrality was a big buzz word in Washington, it was quotes from AT&T executives that really got the dander of the Save the Internet crowd up. Now that broadband companies have found a back-door route into the tiered Internet world (because, do not let them fool you: Tiered Internet and Metered Internet are functionally the same thing), it’s no surprise that the AT&T Broadband folks are looking into making the same switch:

AT&T Considering Metered Broadband - GigaOM

Bend Broadband, Comcast, Time Warner Cable — they’re all considering or going the route of the tiered (aka metered) broadband. Now add AT&T to that list, according to a report in CED magazine.

Let me just state once again the point that I think is the most relevant, here: there is a fundamental type of discrimination inherent in this system which measures total download capacity, a concept completely foreign to most Internet users.

And just as an antidote to this new system, what if there was a site that would allow you to completely use up any extra bandwidth at the end of the month, just so you’ve gotten what you paid for? Imagine the load on the network if people just started downloading text files at 10gb at the end of the month - not because the files themselves are of any value, but just so they can get the full use of their Internet connection?