Roundup

Perimenopause is so much fun. Every couple of months, I get to enjoy an extra several weeks of PMS. I have the energy of an elderly sloth on Thorazine. When I woke up today, I had one frayed nerve hanging on by one determined thread, and then the Cons came by shouting words like "Pork!" and "Tax cuts!" at it until it finally gave up. The only thing that keeps me going is fantasies of stalking the halls o' Congress with the Smack-o-Matic 3000 and a license to spank. I hope I can do it blindfolded - the last thing I want to look at right now are bare, corpulent, hairy Con butts as I blister them.

Don't think I'm leaving you out of the pain, Blue Dogs. You're next on my list of people to call into my woodshed. But it'll have to wait until I've had a nap.

All I've done tonight is spelunk the blogosphere. Other bloggers aren't suffering my lethargy, and so I can serve you up a selection of goodies, things that provoked thoughts even in my thinking-challenged state.

Cujo359, the official Thinking Brain Dog of En Tequila Es Verdad, believes he knows why Congress rushed to Wall Street's rescue while letting Main Street burn. I'd quote, but you need to go look at the pictures to get the full effect.

He also has a damned good question about Con hacks and their vote against infrastructure spending:

Yet all but two Republican Senators voted against cloture on this far more modest proposal. These are the same Republican Senators, mind you, who sat around for four years while we blew billions of dollars trying to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure with no oversight (PDF), unqualified contractors, and quite often no clear specifications as well. They sat by while plane loads of money and weapons were lost in Iraq (PDF), and didn't even bother to hold hearings. Am I supposed to believe these guys are now concerned about fiscal responsibility?

The answer is, not if you're sane. But since they think we're all just as stupid and insane as they are, this makes perfect sense to them.

Cons are going to need to find another tune to sing, because everyone who's at ground zero of the economic catastrophe is hurling tomatoes at the stage:

First it was the economists, then the governors (and GOP ones like Schwarzenegger at that). Now it's the mayors' turn to beg the Republicans in the Senate and their Blue Dog buddies to stop screwing around and vote for the stimulus already:

“We’re here to support the president’s call for an economic stimulus package,” said Miami Mayor Manny Diaz. "We need to get something passed. ... We're asking Congress to act."

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa took a sharper tone toward Congress, declaring: "It's time to stop bickering and start negotiating."

The mayors met with top White House aides, including Valerie Jarrett and Cecelia Munoz, according to Palatine, Ill., Mayor Rita Mullins. And the group is headed to the Hill next to meet with Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

I find it interesting that they're going to meet with Pelosi, being that the House version of the bill has already passed. Are they perhaps planning to undo some of the many concessions Obama and Pelosi made to the bill in the failed bid to get Republicans to back it?

Heh. Now that would be a sweet sight to see.

In news that will shock no one, Dick Cheney is still a dick:

Former Vice President Cheney sat down with Politico yesterday for his first interview since handing the reigns of power to the Obama administration. During the interview, Cheney wasted no time trying to defend the Bush administration’s unpopular (and perhaps illegal) counterterrorism policies, many of which he created. Cheney warned that if those policies are repealed (as many of them have already) then the U.S. is at greater risk of “a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind” going off in an American city:

“I think there’s a high probability of such an attempt. Whether or not they can pull it off depends whether or not we keep in place policies that have allowed us to defeat all further attempts, since 9/11, to launch mass-casualty attacks against the United States.”

Except we’ve seen this movie before. On a number of occasions throughout the past five years, Cheney displayed a knack for trying to scare Americans into allowing him to have his way...

Oh, indeed. And just like every other tired Hollywood franchise, this sequel's not worth seeing. Allow me to quote Denis Leary here: "Shut the fuck up."

Since too much Dick can leave one paranoid, you might want to check out George's simple idea for preventing your RFID chips from ratting you out:

RFID chips are widely misunderstood. Many people envision them as broadcasting information, even spying on the carrier. But they’re not that energetic. The majority of them just pick up some inducted power from a handheld reader, then broadcast an identifying number in response, back to the reader. The problem is that the range (normally a few inches or feet) can be significantly enhanced if the reader is modified with a directional antenna. So if you could interrupt the induction power signal, and further interrupt the broadcast response, you’d greatly limit the range of the RFID chip.

Wait until you see his demo and solution. It's awesome. And it'll give you an excuse to eat more chocolate, which is always a plus.

In a blast from the past, it looks like the Tylenol poisoner may finally get what's coming:

Federal agents on Wednesday searched the home of a man linked to the fatal 1982 Tylenol poisonings in Illinois and the FBI in Chicago said authorities are reviewing evidence in the deaths, which caused a nationwide scare and led to dramatic changes in the way food and medical products are packaged.

That would be James W. Lewis, who was the main (and very nearly only) suspect, and who ended up in the slammer for trying to extort $1,000,000 from Johnson & Johnson in exchange for not killing any more of their customers. You have this asshole, and others like him, to thank for the fact that you have to remove ten tons of safety seals to get to your pain meds. I'm not even going to hedge on the "guilty until proven innocent" stuff on this one, although he still deserves and will get a full and fair trial. He's all but bragged he's the murderer:

Lewis, an out-of-work accountant, was arrested in December 1982 at a New York City library after a nationwide manhunt. At the time, he gave investigators a detailed account of how the killer might have operated and described how someone could buy medicine, use a special method to add cyanide to the capsules and return them to store shelves.

[snip]

In a 1992 interview with The Associated Press, Lewis explained that the account he gave authorities was simply his way of explaining the killer's actions.

That's a classic way for killers to take credit without confessing. Bundy did it. So have many, many others. I'm going to be utterly shocked if evidence emerges proving this schmuck wasn't the poisoner.

John Douglas will be so proud. He had this prick nailed in Mindhunter.

And that's it. Dana and her perimenopause are going to bed with our science books now.