Iced Rt.66 at the Last Manatee

Paul the Psychic Octopus has retired. His German handlers at the aquarium say he is returning to his original profession "making children laugh" and will no longer be making predictions about sporting events. He ends his career 8 for 8 in the World Cup. He will be remembered.

Tuli Kupferberg has died at the age of 86. One of the Fugs, he called the band the "U.S.O of the Left. He will be missed.

Also missed at Vishnu Jindal's berms. Photos on Americablog show them being washed away along with the bulldozers. I guess they didn't do much in stopping the oil in the Gulf.

The "Cooch" is at it again. Virginia's Attorney-General made a legal ruling that couples who get married out of state are not considered married in the Commonwealth. While this is seen as a preventive measure against same-sex marriage, the first victims turned out to be a straight couple who got married in Maryland. Now people are raising questions whether anyone married outside the state like my wife and I are considered married. Has anyone noticed the deterioration in conservative lawyering these days?

Pundits are marvelling at the $1 billion campaign expenditures for this year's elections. But some perspective is necessary. Over 10% of that will be spent by Meg Whitman to buy the state of California. So far that has actually bought her a slight lead in the last week over Jerry Brown. Surprisingly, Democrat Jack Conway has matched Rand Paul's donations for their Senate race in Kentucky. While Senator Burr has a $6million war chest to go against Elaine Marshall in North Carolina. This seems to be the result of corporate donations to a candidate, whome no one can figure out what he does.

Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle has told Ralph Reed, who has been resurrected from the dead after the Abramoff scandal, that God chose her to run in Nevada. God also chose Jan Brewer to run for governor in Arizona. Somehow God has decided to be a teabagger this year.

67-year old Newt Gingrich says he will decide to run for President by early 2011. Newt claims Obama is the worse President in history and his administration is incompetent. He also said that whoever wins the Republican nomination will win the Presidency. Alot of Newt's activities these days is really to keep somewhat relevant until the presidential session starts. He has to keep his money-machine going no matter what he does.

Jonah Goldberg writes today that he hopes the GOP runs on Paul Ryan's "Roadmap for the Future". As I've written before Ryan's budget plans include phasing out Medicare, privatizing Social Security and ,according to the OMB, running titantic deficits for years without end. It is a recipe to deliberately transform the United States into a Third World country. It is estimated that the United States would not see a balanced budget for 75 years under Ryan's plan. If the Republicans take back the House, he would be in charge of the budget committee. While his plan is ruinous for America, conservatives have fully embraced it and believe this fulfills their ideological objectives.

Senate Republicans today say they want to cut Obama's budget because of government spending. While this year's budget contains the budget cuts the President required and the freeze on mandatory spending, it calls for an increase in Defense spending. The GOP wants to cut from the defense spending. You will recall last week President Obama announced the far-reaching program for veterans who suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome. He has streamlined the process for veterans from all wars including Vietnam to get assistance on this issue. Naturally, this is the area where Republicans want to create the defense budget. Is it because the President announced the initiative or is it because they have a hard time dealing with PTSD as a real malady? Also to be cut in the Republican plan are measures to address the issue of homelessness among veterans. Roughly 25% of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan now become homeless on their return from abroad.

It appears that almost every Republican will vote against Elena Kagan next week. They wanted more time to review her written answers to the Judiciary Committee. And they even wanted to stall the vote. It's really a matter that the white boys want to send a message to the President and Ms. Kagan about who the real bosses in this country are.

I'll believe it when I see it. Rumors have the Senate actually voting on the extension of unemployment benefits next week. While the votes have been there for the past four months,Republican Senators, along with Ben Nelson, have managed to stop cloture on the issue.

Our distinguished number 2 Republican in the House, Rep. Cantor held a jobs fair in his district with dozens of corporations, who are donating to the Republicans. Of the several dozen companies coming to thank the representative in bringing stimulus money to Virginia, even though he voted against it,there were only 5 jobs available among them and hundreds of Virginians came for nothing. If the unemployment benefits are not renewed, this will affect roughly 45,000 additional workers in the state.