Bent Corner

Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan posted a letter from one of his readers explaining why they are supporting Barack Obama for president. It’s a powerful letter nicely sums up just why I voted for him earlier this week and hopefully will be voting for him again this November:

There’s one salient reason why people of my age are supporting Obama and that’s because we feel that Obama will finally show us what it means to be proud of our president.

I read more than I should about politics and US history and am always confused as to how Americans can love their president so. Intellectually I understand why Americans love(d) Lincoln and the Roosevelts but I never felt why they did.

Andrew, people my age are too young to remember Bill Clinton. All we have is George W. Bush. The office of the President to us is a mockery. We don’t link President Bush to concepts such as leader, we link it to ignorance and idiocy. Most people my age have never felt proud of our President. We grew up on the Daily Show, we only know how to make fun of him and mock him.

I attended an Obama rally a few days ago and was amazed at how filled up with emotion I was. Halfway through his speech, other 21 year olds just like that filled the Hall were screaming their heads off, waving banners, and grinning. Everyone was giddy, hell even I was giddy. I was smiling and chanting along to “Yes We Can.” I didn’t know what that feeling was because I had never felt it. But then I realized it. It was pride. I was proud of Obama.

I know you’ve felt proud of Reagan and others have felt proud of Bill Clinton. I can’t wait to actually know what it feels like to be proud of my President and not embarrassed by him. That’s why at least my generation is turning out in droves to make Obama president. We’ve finally got a taste of what it feels like to be proud of our President and we’re not giving that feeling up.

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From the Hagerstown paper of record, The Herald-Mail:

Maryland Del. Robert A. McKee, R-Washington, on Friday announced his resignation from the House of Delegates after information surfaced that deputies, acting on information that child pornography was in the residence, searched his Halfway home on Jan. 31.

During the search, investigators seized two computers, about 30 videotapes and a “significant amount” of printed material, including magazines, Washington County Sheriff Douglas Mullendore said Friday afternoon during a press conference.

No charges have been filed.

McKee, in a faxed statement, also said Friday that he had resigned from his position as executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Washington County, an organization he said he served for 29 years.

Yes, that’s right. When this asshole isn’t carrying out his duties as our elected representative in Annapolis, he is running the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Washington County. You just can’t make this kind of stuff up.

Even though authorities found a “significant amount” of child porn in the delegate’s home over two weeks ago, he remains free. He has yet to be placed under arrest. How much child porn does one have to amass before being placed under arrest? This asshat should have been forced to announce his resignation from the House of Delegates from a jail cell. This is why we have jail cells. Why hasn’t he been placed under arrest?

McKee was present when the search warrant signed by Washington County Circuit Judge W. Kennedy Boone III was executed, said Mullendore, who knows McKee personally.

I guess it’s safe to say if you are going to be a collector of child porn, it pays to be friends with the local sheriff.

Things are not looking good for comic book retailer and Pittsburgh Comicon promoter Michael George.

From this morning’s Detroit Free Press:

Allegations that Michael George cheated on the wife he is accused of killing will be allowed in his upcoming trial, a Macomb County Circuit Court judge ruled Thursday.

George, 47, is to go on trial Feb. 26 in the July 13, 1990, death of his wife, Barbara George, 32, who was shot in the head in the couple’s Clinton Township comic book store.

Judge James Biernat made several other rulings Thursday: He denied George’s request to exclude testimony about his behavior after his wife’s death — such as witnesses’ accounts that he wore sunglasses to and flirted with other women at his wife’s funeral. He also denied George’s request to quash charges of insurance fraud.

His own lawyers admit he committed acts of adultery with more then one woman. I would say this is a very bad development.

From MSNBC’s First Read:

“Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn’t won any of the significant states — outside of Illinois?” Chief Strategist Mark Penn said. “That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama.”

Significant states? Does that mean the only states Obama has won — such as Maryland — are insignificant?  At least we weren’t called poopy heads.

Thanks to the fact that I felt like dog poo today and called off work, I was able to sit at home in my recliner and watch Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee testify before Congress about performancing enhancing drug use. I would have listened to the hearing if I was at work, but I would have missed out on a lot of the details if I had only listened to it on XM.

I’m not even sure why Congress is investigating this. From what I can tell, Clemens either used or didn’t use steroids and human growth hormones before they were even banned by Major League Baseball. Plus, at least some of his supposed performance enhancing drug use happened when Clemons was in Toronto. The last time I checked, Toronto was in a different country.

I don’t know what a strength and conditioning coach is supposed to look like, but I’m pretty sure they are not supposed to look like this guy. Could Roger Clemens have found a bigger nerd then McNamee to be his strength coach?

I have no idea if Roger Clemens used steroids or human growth hormones or B-12 shots or egg white omelettes or skinless chicken breasts. I really don’t care. I do think he should be kept out of the Baseball Hall of Fame. The reason? For hiring an Ichabod Crane lookalike to help him lift weights.

For that, he should be forever banned from Cooperstown.

I woke up this morning and felt like total crap. I’ve been taking the chemotherapy drug Methotrexate for my psoriasis. I take two pills Monday evening, two pills Tuesday morning, and two more pills Tuesday evening. I don’t take any more until the following Monday evening. The side effects of Methotrexate include among other things, anemia. I don’t know if that’s what I have now. I only know that I feel like shit.

I had to call in to work this morning and take 8 hours of personal time. To say this has been frustrating is a complete understatement.

My hands are still a complete mess. They aren’t getting better. I don’t feel or see any improvement. They are still severely cracked and the skin on my fingers is hard and inflexible. Some days at work I can barely hold tools. Yesterday I was installing a ribbon cable into a connector when I noticed red marks on the ribbon cable. I quickly realized it was my own blood. One of the fissures on my hand had begun to bleed.

This actually happens a lot.

I’ve read that the worse place you can get psoriasis is the soles of your feet. When the skin cracks, it becomes painful to walk. I’m not disputing that, but I honestly believe the worse place to get it is on your hands. At least if it was on my feet, I would be wearing socks and shoes. Nobody could see it. I wouldn’t have the never ending fear of bleeding on something. I wouldn’t worry about situations where I am expected to shake someone’s hand. I wouldn’t worry about a sales person reacting with revulsion when they hand me my change. I am just getting extremely tired of it.

I want to stop taking the Methotrexate. It’s not even working. Even if it did work, it’s not a long term, permanent answer to psoriasis. I can not take Methotrexate forever. From what I can tell from reading the literature, it would eventually destroy my liver.

Today is the day Maryland, Virgina, and Washington D.C. hold their primary elections. People are calling it the Potomac Primary after the nasty, dirty river that runs through all three places. Here in Hagerstown, you couldn’t ask for a nastier day to vote. It has been snowing and sleeting most of the day.

Sheri and I voted at nearby Hagerstown Community College. There wasn’t that many people their casting votes. It was probably the smallest crowd I’ve seen voting at the college. I don’t know if it’s because of the weather or because most of the people living here are Republican. Maybe it was a combination of the two. I probably wouldn’t vote either if I could only vote for one presidential candidate.

Something funny happened as I was going over my ballot and double checking my votes. My cell phone started to ring. Are you even allowed to answer your phone while standing in the voting booth? They never covered that in my high school government class. That’s probably because they hadn’t invented the cell phone yet. I decided to go ahead and answer it. It turned out to be a taped message from Michelle Obama reminding me to go out and vote. As I was listening to her speak, I was looking at my ballot making sure the “X” was next to her husband’s name. It was a surreal moment.

From Keith Olbermann’s Sept 20, 2007 “Special Comment“:

And in pimping General David Petraeus, Sir, in violation of everything this country has been assiduously and vigilantly against for 220 years, you have tried to blur the gleaming radioactive demarcation between the military and the political, and to portray your party as the one associated with the military, and your opponents as the ones somehow antithetical to it.

So why can Keith Olbermann use the p-word when describing a four-star Army general, but David Shuster gets suspended for using the word in connection to 27 year old Chelsea Clinton?

My guess it’s because General Petraeus doesn’t care what someone like Keith Olbermann says about him, while Senator Clinton chose to make a Big Deal out of Shuster’s comment. Playing the victim doesn’t look too presidential to me.  If she wants to be president, she needs to buck it up just a little bit. Chelsea Clinton’s not a 12 year old little girl anymore. She is an educated, grown woman that makes her own choices.  She agreed to personally call celebrities and superdelegates to ask them to vote for her mother.  No one forced her.

Hillary Clinton threatened to not participate in a debate sponsored by MSNBC later this month. We should be very leery of politicians that threaten news organizations.

Hillary Clinton threatened not to attend any more events sponsored by MSNBC over a comment by one of their news personalities, David Shuster. Of course MSNBC knuckled under and suspended Shuster. Caving into pressure is what they do best.

Shuster said that Chelsea Clinton had been “pimped out” to make calls to superdelegates on behalf of her mother, Senator Hillary Clinton.

Only an idiot would think that Shuster meant that Hillary was sending Chelsea out to perform sexual acts with strange men for money. That is how they chose to react to the comment by Shuster implied that Chelsea was a prostitute.

What Shuster should have said was that Hillary Clinton is getting so despite in her run for the White House that she has enlisted her 27 year old daughter to call Democratic operatives to put pressure on them to cast their superdelegate vote for her mother - no matter what the will of the people may be.

In other words, Hillary is pimping Chelsea out.

The more states and delegates Barack Obama wins, the more Hillary is counting on the superdelegates to give her the election.  Since an overwhelming number of these superdelegates have ties to the Clintons, she sees this as a clear advantage over Obama.

Chelsea is not a 14 year old kid anymore. If she is going to help her mother circumvent the democratic process by locking in the superdelegate majority, she is fair game.