Crises abound! And stuff.

I’m sick with the coughing and the sneezing and the sniffling. My head feels like it weighs 40 pounds. I stayed away from The Work today, but The Work didn’t stay away from me. Bastards. Also, the lappie had a hard drive failure last night. Luckily, The Husband was able to get most of my data off the old drive and onto a new one this evening, so I’m back in business. Here’s some shim-sham I found on the interwebs today.

• Mayor Funkhouser and the Delightful Shoeless Doula were rear-ended in Leawood this past evening. Thankfully everyone is safe and sound, if somewhat sore. So we will have the Funk to kick around for awhile longer. Hurray!
• When Jeebus-cults collide: a new McCain endorsement could prove to be fun for those of us who enjoy watching faith-based wackadoodles scream at & about other faith-based wackadoodles.
• As I was watching Ruckus this evening, I found my self thinking that if I had to be cast away on desert island with any of the Ruckettes, I’d choose Deborah Holmes. She’s the only one that doesn’t make me scream and throw the cat at the TV. I’d beat Yael Abouhalkah to death with a coconut 3 minutes in.

While I personally am not a big fan of vaginas…

Many of my Dearest Friends have very close relationships with them and I know several Nice Young Men who swear by their restorative powers. I’m thrilled that my State Senator, Jolie Justus, is doing her darndest to protect them and my thanks to Tony for the tip.

Other stuff happened today.

• My friend Jay Bird follows up on something about which I blogged earlier in the week: Governor Sebelius responds to Senator Huelskamp.
• National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. passed away today. If I’d been born the son of an attorney, real estate speculator and oil baron, I might have been a conserva-douche, too.
• An idiot is running for a Missouri’s Ninth District Seat in the U.S House of Representatives. I took several social studies classes and will be declaring my candidacy for Head Mofo in Charge of Everything next week.

Synchronicity.

I received this comment today on the establishment of a biobank, a repository of genetic information for research purposes, by the NIH and other healthcare agencies. Kansas City is one of fives cities in which the Genetics & Public Policy Center will be holding town hall meetings on the establishment of a biobank and the very real privacy concerns & other issues surrounding it.

And then I read this post over at Daily Kos regarding the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. The bill passed the house 420-3 and appeared to be a shoo-in for passage in the Senate until Senator Tom Coburn put a hold on the bill signaling his intention to filibuster the bill if and when it came up for a vote on the floor. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has chosen to honor this hold, for reasons known only to him. Senator Reid could easily choose not to honor the hold and bring the bill to the floor for a vote. It would be a smashing opportunity for a real bipartisan moment. Hell, even the Preznit says he would sign it.

Click here to register for the town hall meeting (its free & open to the public, but they’re encouraging early registration).

Click here to email Senator Reid to ask him why, after Missouri so graciously sent him a Democratic Senator in 2006 thus giving him a majority, he is honoring the hold on GINA.

Click here to email Senator McCaskill and have her go harass Senator Reid. I hooked my shit all over this city for that woman in 2006 and I always remind her of that when I email her office.

Behold, Scottish cough medicine!

I’ve been hacking up a lung all day, but my friend C. had reserved us spots (along with his wife S. and our dear friend K.) several weeks ago at a Scotch tasting at the Cellar Rat at 17th & Baltimore scheduled for this evening. The shindig was $35 and, while I’m a notorious spend-thrift, I hate to waste money on a ticket and not actually hit the event, so I sacked up, fixed myself a to-go mug of hot water with lemon and scooted on down to the CR.

The Cellar Rat folks run a great little shop. Their wine selection is awesome, the staff is knowledgeable and the operation is just generally first rate all around. They also carry a small selection of top-shelf liquors and have a small selection of meats & cheeses (they occasionally make their own mozzarella in-house). The tasting tonight was for several Signatory-bottled single-malt Scotches. I’d previously attended a tasting for some of their younger Scotches at the Hy-Vee liquor shop near 75th & State Line, but the batch we tasted tonight was far superior, not a stinker in the bunch.

I ended up pre-spending a good chunk of my tax return on a really great, creamy, peaty bottle of cask-strength 12-year old Laphroaig. All in all, a great way to spend a Tuesday evening.

And my throat feels much better!

Kansas lawmakers experience dearth of meaningful legislative work.

Republican State Senator Tim Huelskamp’s panties are in a bunch over Governor Kathleen Sebelius’s son, John, selling a board game originally designed as his Rhode Island School of Design senior project. The prison-themed game, called “Don’t Drop the Soap,” is undoubtedly in poor taste, but for chrissake, the kid is a 23-year old college student. He could be making really poor decisions.

Sen. Huelskamp has requested the attorney general investigate the game’s marketing and sales. His chief concern seems to be that Master Sebelius may be warehousing copies of the game in the hallowed closets of Cedar Crest.

I dunno. Are you Kansas folks really chomping at the bit to get to the bottom of this?

Breaking! Barack Obama Will Kill You in Your Sleep!

What else can you expect from an unpatriotic, madrasah-educated, Islamic-jihadist, Communist Jew?

How cool is it to have a confident Democrat who doesn’t roll over and show his belly at the first sign of a smear campaign? In response to the conservative Republican butt-plugs questioning his patriotism:

“A party that presided over a war in which our troops did not get the body armor they needed, or were sending troops over who were untrained because of poor planning, or are not fulfilling the veterans’ benefits that these troops need when they come home, or are undermining our Constitution with warrantless wiretaps that are unnecessary?

“That is a debate I am very happy to have. We’ll see what the American people think is the true definition of patriotism.”

The Autobiography of Miss Jean Nate

It’s Friday, so it must be time for Trivia Riot at the The Brick! Some friends and I attend semi-regularly, and while we haven’t won in awhile we always have a great time at Kansas City’s smokiest bar. If you’re a trivia nut, like a good bar game or just want to get hammered and hang out and watch a bunch of smarty-pants hipsters, aging attorneys and general downtown riff-raff pretending they knew the answer to questions to which they didn’t know the answer, you should give it a shot.

Adulterer, Ethics Committee Rebukee Accused of Adultery, Questionable Ethics.

The New York Times today reported Maverick Straight Talker Senator John “Walnuts” McCain’s top advisers were so concerned that his relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman Trophy had become romantic and could threaten his 2000 presidential campaign, they took steps to block her access to Walnuts and apparently discussed their concerns with both parties. Also concerning, Senator McCain had written letters to federal regulators on behalf of Ms. Iseman’s clients, Paxson Communications and Glencairn Ltd., supporting such issues upholding FCC marketing agreements and tax incentives for minority-owned television stations.

Now the least difficult part of this story to believe, is that he had an affair with a chilly looking blonde. After all, we all know how little Cindy Lou Hensley became Cindy Lou McCain, right? After meeting at some sort of military function in ’79, by all accounts they quickly began an affair unimpeded by the Maverick Straight Talker’s marriage at the time to wife, Carol. After requesting and receiving a divorce from Carol (who had been left 4 inches shorter, crippled and overweight from a near-fatal car crash while her husband was imprisoned in Vietnam), the Maverick Straight Talker waited a seemly and totally sociably acceptable 45 days before hitching his star to the icily beautiful (and mega-rich) Cindy Lou.

So you can see why I have no trouble believing Walnuts can’t keep it in his pants.

It’s also not difficult to believe Senator McCain may have taken a walk down the shady side of K street. One has only to hop in the way-back machine and go back to the latter half of the 80s when the Senator became involved in the Keating Five scandal. My interest in relating this to you is significantly lessened by the fact that there doesn’t appear to be any hand-jobs-for-legislation quid pro quo.

Basically (many thanks to Wikipedia since I was about 10 at the time), Charles Keating Jr.’s Lincoln Savings & Loan became insolvent as a result of some bad loans and was pulling some shenanigans with a real estate deal, selling it to investors as a savings account, in order to regain solvency. The gubment was not to keen on this and was looking to shut the S&L down. The deal ultimately fell through leaving many investors flat-ass broke. While in the midst of this deal, Keating allegedly contacted five Senators to whose campaigns he had donated. Walnuts was one and met with Federal Home Loan Bank Board Chairman Ed Gray trying to head off the government’s seizure of the S&L.

By the time the racketeering and fraud chickens came home to roost for Mr. Keating, Senator McCain found his dick in a wringer over charges of attempting to influence the federal regulators, ultimately receiving a rebuke for “poor judgment” from the Senate Ethics Committee.

So everything old is new again for the Maverick Straight Talker and this may be just the tip of the iceberg as more reporters go to work on this story. Poor Walnuts.

Wash your damn hands.

The flu, currently hammering other parts of the nation, is on the rise here at home. I’m unable to locate a copy on the internets of the alert I saw at The Work today, but the Kansas City Health Department is estimating that 46 percent of the city’s workforce will be out with this ick at some point during the next few weeks. So take care of yourselves and try to keep the germ spreading to a minimum.

If you do get sick, I recommend a hot toddy made with Bigelow Mint Medley Herbal Tea and a good slug of American Honey liqueur. It may not actually lower your viral load, but passing out can be a mercy.