Ninja Monkie Bacchanal

This is awesome. From Gizmodo.com.

This ran in the Christmas Eve edition of the NYT:

My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.

America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society — in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage. China may have great airports, but last week it went back to censoring The New York Times and other Western news sites. Censorship restricts your people’s imaginations. That’s really, really dumb. And that’s why for all our missteps, the 21st century is still up for grabs.

You know, I have spent the last eight years bitching about this president. But this is a good thing.

Bush pardoned 19 people on Tuesday, including Isaac Robert Toussie of Brooklyn, N.Y., who had been convicted of making false statements to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and of mail fraud. On Wednesday, the White House issued an extraordinary statement saying the president was reversing his decision in Toussie’s case.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said the new decision was “based on information that has subsequently come to light,” including on the extent and nature of Toussie’s prior criminal offenses. She also said that neither the White House counsel’s office nor the president had been aware of a political contribution by Toussie’s father that “might create an appearance of impropriety."

With apologies to Chevy Chase…

“Hey. If any of you are looking for any last-minute gift ideas for me, I have one. I’d like Frank Shirley, my boss, right here tonight. I want him brought from his happy holiday slumber over there on Melody Lane with all the other rich people and I want him brought right here, with a big ribbon on his head, and I want to look him straight in the eye and I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is. Hallelujah. Holy shit. Where’s the Tylenol?”

This is disappointing.

An internal review prepared for President-elect Barack Obama says his incoming chief of staff had multiple conversations with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s office, but no one close to Obama suspected that the governor might be trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat as prosecutors allege.

The report was released Tuesday as an Obama transition official confirmed that Obama and two of his top aides, Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett, had been interviewed in connection with the federal investigation into Blagojevich

From the Washington Independent:

As political reporters wait for the release of the Obama-Biden transition’s report on its interactions with the office of disgraced Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, it’s hard not to wonder about the timing.

The release is expected later today at 4:30 p.m. EST. Taking at face value the transition team’s assertion that the U.S. attorney’s office requested the release be delayed so as not to interfere with the ongoing investigation, we can forgive the transition for waiting until today to unveil the report, which it says has been ready for a week.

However, the report will come out late in the afternoon before Christmas eve — which essentially amounts to a two-day holiday, when news consumption tends to drop dramatically. Despite all accounts suggesting there is nothing juicy in the report, the timing gives the appearance that there is something to hide.

It would have been nice to see the report first thing this morning, so it could be examined and digested today, before the holiday. Following eight years of the Bush administration, in which secrecy and late-Friday/holiday information dumps were the M.O., one very easy way for President-elect Barack Obama to signal the end of those bad old days would be to release information, good or bad, without regard to the ebb and flow of the news cycle.

From MSNBC.com:

Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals.

The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to lagging bank performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages.

Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found.

Interesting turn of events in California:

California Attorney General Jerry Brown changed course on the state’s new same-sex marriage ban Friday and urged the state Supreme Court to void Proposition 8.

In a dramatic reversal, Brown filed a legal brief saying the measure that amended the California Constitution to limit marriage to a man and a woman is itself unconstitutional because it deprives a minority group of a fundamental right. Earlier, Brown had said he would defend the ballot measure against legal challenges from gay marriage supporters.

But Brown said he reached a different conclusion “upon further reflection and a deeper probing into all the aspects of our Constitution.”