1/15/2010

Things Important and Unimportant:
Because, even with the glaring distraction of the ongoing catastrophe, the American political process lumbers on.


Things Important:
1. That the Senate race in Massachusetts is even close is clear evidence of the incompetence of the DNC without Howard Dean running it. And since it got so little attention from Obama before, there's no way the President can wander into the Martha Coakley/nude guy race now.

2. Because if they screw up this race, they've screwed whatever health care reform might possibly get passed. Or at least the piece of paper that claims "reform" on it.

3. Republicans are actively preventing the executive branch from operating at full steam by blocking Obama nominee after Obama nominee for reasons petty and ideological. Whether it's Dawn Johnsen for the Office of Legal Counsel or Craig Becker for the National Labor Relations Board, the GOP has decided that any time it can, it will simply throw itself in the way as a roadblock.

Which is an indelicate way to bring up that people are so frustrated in Haiti by a lack of aid getting to them that they have, in two cases, used corpses for roadblocks.


Things Unimportant:
1. Anyone remember that idiotic debate over some damn Washington insider book?
2. Anyone still care who Tiger Woods was banging?
3. Are we actually spending time on who gets to host The Tonight Show?

That right there is a community of shacks and trailers that was also destroyed by the earthquake in Haiti. The shantytown in Port-au-Prince was the shithole people called home. Haiti has one of the greatest income disparities between well-off and impoverished in the Western Hemisphere, with one percent of Haitians owning half the nation's wealth. The people who lived in the Carrefour slum are as homeless as many of the rich who lived up in Petionville.