The saga continues (Part One is here, and Part Two is here)..Dregs Of The Year Nominee
Greg Gutfeld, who mocked the Canadian Forces (as noted here); in reference to Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie's comment that the military may need a year to recover after Canada's mission in Afghanistan ends in 2011, Gutfeld stated "Meaning, the Canadian military wants to take a breather to do some yoga, paint landscapes, and run on the beach in gorgeous white Capri pants" (and Gutfeld, who of course has never served, said this when the Canadian Army was burying four of its soldiers killed in action, bringing their country’s casualty count to 116 – to date, Canada has lost more troops in Afghanistan than any other country).
Do Gooder Of The Year Nominee
House Repug Leader John Boehner (yep, you’re reading this right) for calling out the “Blue Dogs” here – can’t wait for Cornyn & Co. to reciprocate towards Evan Bayh and his “secret senators”...the bar is set low here, I know, but fair is fair)
The “And So Let Me Guess; His Applying For Reinstatement, Then, Will Be The Lead ’Story’ In The Times?” Citation
Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the financial products unit of AIG, wrote a resignation letter that appeared on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times in March (here); in it, addressed to chief executive Edward M. Liddy, he promised to donate the bonuses due to him based on his contract “directly to organizations that are helping people who are suffering from the global downturn,” though he was still paid $742,006.40 in March, after taxes…and kudos to Matt Taibbi for this, and also this)
Update 12/11/09: And Taibbi does it again here (and DarkSyde is right about Dems sitting on their hands if Obama doesn't wake up and give us something, and especially if the Dems blow it on health care reform).
The "Second Verse Same As The First" Citation
DeSantis again here (oh brother)…
Do Gooder Of The Year Nominee
Former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt, who endorsed same-sex marriage here (if he sticks to his guns on this, thus alienating himself among the wingnuts his candidate claimed to represent last year, then he will have won a measure of respect from your humble narrator that I did not think would ever have been possible for him to achieve, and to date, he has)
The “Insert Your Snark About Automatically Being Disqualified To Work In Harrisburg Also As A Result Here” Citation
A Pennsylvania appeals court ruled here that Collier Township officer David Agostino could be discharged because he lost his sense of smell in an off-duty motorcycle accident.
Dregs Of The Year Nominees
Luzerne County, PA Juvenile Court Judge Mark A. Ciavarella, who, along with fellow Luzerne County judge Michael T. Conahan, pleaded guilty this year to taking $2.6 million in secret payments from the former owner of two juvenile detention centers, to which about 2,500 juveniles were sentenced; the youths thus experienced "routine deprivation of children's constitutional rights to appear before an impartial tribunal and have an opportunity to be heard” according to PA Chief Justice (and former Philadelphia District Attorney) Ron Castille (as many as 1,200 cases are expected to be overturned as a result - this page is a collection of related stories).
Dregs Of The Year Nominee
Evan Bayh (so many reasons, but a few are here, and here – h/t Atrios)...
Dregs Of The Year Nominee
Wyoming County, PA District Attorney George Skumanick (pronounced skoo-MAN'-ik) Jr. for filing child pornography charges against three Pennsylvania teenagers who took racy cell-phone pictures of themselves (good for the girls and their families for suing this idiot – there’s a proper response to be meted out here, but what the DA came up with ain’t it...here and here).
Do Gooder Of The Year Nominee
Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge who brought six Bushco officials up on charges of torturing Guantanamo Bay detainees (here)
Dregs Of The Year Nominee
“President” Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan here (more like “Treat Women Like Cattle-istan”) – I think he said he’d rescind this at some point, but I have yet to hear anything else on this…
Do Gooder Of The Year Nominee
Jessica Meyer of Morrisville, PA, who watched a pit bull being tossed out a car window onto a sidewalk (unbelievable), then rescued the dog and took it to the Center for Animal Referral and Emergency Services in nearby Middletown, PA (here). As a result, the dog was adopted by Bob Kuder, who’d lost his own pit bull to lymphoma on the same day.
April Fool Of The Year (Millennia?)
Mann Coulter for this...
Dregs Of The Year Nominee
Dem Sen. Blanche Lincoln of
Dregs Of The Year Nominee
Shana Brown, a 32-year-old mother in PA who was charged with giving her 13-year-old daughter drugs and alcohol so the woman's boyfriend could impregnate the girl without her knowing, police said here (Brown can no longer have children, see, though she wanted to have one with the boyfriend – yep, this is as bad as it sounds; picture says a lot, by the way, and the guy is your typical, garden variety thug).
Dregs Of The Year Nominee
Former Toronto Blue Jays star baseball player Joe Carter (here), who said that his 1993, World-Series-winning home run off Phillies pitcher Mitch Williams doesn’t get the respect that it deserves, or words to that effect.
Now I honestly am not citing this because Carter hit the home run, crushing blow that it was. I’m citing Carter because he’s trying to compare it with Bobby Thomson’s “Shot ‘Heard Round The World” for the former New York Giants, or Kirk Gibson’s home run off Dennis Eckersley which Gibson basically hit on one leg.
Here’s the deal; everybody in the world knew that Williams was out of gas, and he threw up a beach ball “right down Broadway” that Carter hit about two miles. No, wait, I take that back; everybody knew that except Jim Fregosi, the Phillies’ manager, who kept running Williams out in save situations throughout the LCS and the World Series despite the fact that he was done.
So, do Carter and Williams stay in touch? Well…
Carter still talks occasionally with Williams, and got the better of the reliever in a celebrity bowling match in 1998. Williams, an accomplished bowler who owned the alley where the match was held, did not know Carter had grown up bowling regularly with his dad.“Demoralized him” in a celebrity bowling match, huh?
"I went out there in the first game and bowled a 245 and just killed him," Carter said. "I killed him three straight games, it just demoralized him."
What a dick.
Dregs Of The Year Nominee
Robert Powell, the Dallas police officer who pulled out his gun and threatened NFL running back (and former Eagle) Ryan Moats while Moats' mother-in-law lay dying in a nearby hospital bed (here); Moats blew a red light in Plano, TX to get to the hospital to visit her, and Powell pulled him over and cornered him in the hospital parking lot – an understandable action as long as no one was hurt (she died before he could visit her – Powell later resigned…creep).
Dregs Of The Year Nominee
Somebody named Lloyd Marcus, who obviously doesn’t have much of a career (h/t Atrios/Instaputz)…
Dregs Of The Year Nominees
The 40,000 or so Texas Rangers baseball fans who gave Former President Reality Avoidance a “standing O” here at the team’s home opener when he threw out the first pitch (I’ve got some suggestions for what you can do with that “Yellow Rose,” by the way – and gosh, they were so excited that he ACTUALLY THREW A STRIKE!! - though the team had a good season, they ended up missing the playoffs)
Dregs Of The Year Nominee
The Obama Administration for trying to throw out the FISA lawsuit (here – yes, I actually typed those words...also for this).
Do Gooder Of The Year Nominee
So far, I’d give it to this guy, Sun Wenguang, for reasons noted in the story (even if he didn’t use very good judgment – hope he lives).
Dregs Of The Year Nominee
Archbishop Raymond Burke, head of the papal courts at the Vatican, who said here that Catholics who voted for President Barack Obama engaged in “a form of cooperation” with evil because of Obama’s pro-choice policies…
Do Gooder Of The Year Nominee
Patrick Murphy here for taking the lead in the House congressional effort to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (h/t Atrios – can hardly wait to hear the howls of outrage from the Courier Times readership over this one...also for defending fellow Dem U.S. Congressional rep Patrick Kennedy, denied communion by Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, RI because Kennedy is pro-choice here...the wingnut outrage in the Courier Times over this has been every bit as despicable as I knew it would be)
The “You Go First, Madam Representative – How About Lady Moron Politician?” Citation
Austin, Texas (of course) Repug state lawmaker legislator Betty Brown, who suggested as follows to Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans: “Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” adding “(can you) adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with…?” (h/t Atrios - she apologized here)
Dregs Of The Year Nominee
Lucinda Glinn, the appeals officer for the PA Open Records Office, who ruled here that it was OK for the Northampton, PA Area School Board to provide a draft copy of the budget proposal to a reporter for The Morning Call in Allentown after a public meeting, though the dollar amounts were redacted (as the story tells us, the budget was discussed at a special meeting in February, so it was a public record – what’s the purpose of having a “sunshine law” if this is going to be permitted?)
Dregs Of The Year Nominee
"Uh-Oh Silvio" Berlusconi here for claiming that those who lost their homes in the tragic Abruzzo earthquake should consider their time in aid camps "a weekend of camping” (wish I had time to revisit more antics with this guy)
Dregs Of The Year Nominee
PETA, for basically terrorizing Chester County, PA dog breeder Linda Brown for selling a German Shepherd puppy to Vice President Joe Biden (here); these crazies used this as an excuse to “blame the killing of shelter animals on people who buy from breeders.”
Uh, this is more than a little ridiculous, particularly when you consider that, as the story tells us, both Brown and Biden have received death threats (tells you how stupid PETA is to bring the Secret Service down on them for something like this…and a dishonorable mention goes out to the “dog wardens” who have shown up repeatedly at Brown’s kennels, citing her for trivial “infractions” to the point where she’s had to incur $4 grand in court costs to defend herself).
Blaming breeders and the people who buy from them for the destruction of shelter animals reflects the workings of a lunatic mind; are the breeders and their customers supposed to be responsible for people who don’t spay and/or neuter their pets?
Non “Haute Couture” Expert Of The Year
In April, George Will of the WaPo wrote a column decrying blue jeans (hey, at least he wasn’t fabricating about global cooling or telling everyone that Americans didn’t want to buy fuel-efficient automobiles).
Dregs Of The Year Nominee
Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana here for signing a bill into law that aims to exempt Montana-made guns from federal regulation, and thus playing into the hands of the emerging “secession” crowd, to say nothing of pissing all over any notion of common-sense gun control (God, do I HATE pro-gun Dems for stuff like this, and I don’t give a damn where in this country they come from).
Song Misappropriator Of The Year
California Repug Senatorial Candidate Charles DeVore running against Barbara Boxer (I’ll have fun watching that slaughter) who, after Don Henley of The Eagles sued him for misusing two of his popular songs (“The Boys Of Summer,” “All She Wants To Do Is Dance”), stated as follows here…
"We're responding with a counter-claim, asserting our First Amendment right to political free speech," the site said. "While the legal issues play out, it's time to up the ante on Mr. Henley's liberal goon tactics. By popular request, I have penned the words to our new parody song."Uh, this is a case of copyright infringement, asshat. See you in court (at least Eric Cantor had the good sense to stop playing “Back In The Saddle” in a promotional video when Aerosmith told him to knock it off).
Dregs Of The Year Nominee
Chrysler, for “(turning) away a $750 million government loan because executives didn't want to abide by new federal limits on pay,” as noted here.
Dregs Of The Year Nominee
So many reasons to nominate Sen. Jim Inhofe of OK (usually related to denial of global warming), but here, for promising to filibuster Obama judicial nominee David Hamilton over a ruling based on a Supreme Court precedent (you mean, he’s NOT one of those dreaded “activist judges,” like Lawrence Silberman on the DC gun ruling?), when, in 2003, Inhofe said that “any senator who would dare filibuster a judicial nominee would necessarily be violating their oath to 'support and defend the Constitution.'"
Do Gooder Of The Year Nominee
Former Virginia U.S. House Rep Tom Davis for acknowledging here that Repug Jim Tedisco lost in New York State’s 20th Congressional District to Dem Scott Murphy (not that noteworthy of an accomplishment, but it’s so rare to find a Republican living in the real world these days that I thought I should acknowledge it; and what does it say that a legitimate centrist and a respected member of Congress no longer feels at home enough to serve in his own party, at least for now?).
More later...
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