Busy Today, But Here's This Bit O' Funny

White House Reveals Obama Is Bipolar, Has Entered Depressive Phase

Caption Contest! PoLOLitical Stuff

It's an early weekend, and therefore, is an early caption contest. In light of a recent dearth of comments, I've decided to kick it up a notch, and add some photos that already have comments on the photos themselves.

By all means, feel free to add more comments, captions, suggestions, or threats on my personal well-being. All are appreciated.

And yes, this is a clear cut example of my phoning it in today. Enjoy, and have a merry Independence Day, and take part in America's favorite pastime — recklessly and dangerously blowing up stuff that is highly flammable.

That's Senator Franken To You

My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.

Al Franken, the former SNL Funnyman, has won the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota, with his decidedly unfunny opponent, Norm Coleman conceding defeat.

Way to go guys. Only took you eight months. Healthy children have been conceived and born in that time, albeit prematurely.

For Republicans, this is yet another in a long line of kicks to gaping hole that used to be their gut. Not only does their Doomsday Theory of 60 seats in the Senate being controlled by Democrats inch closer to reality, but simply speaking, they threw the pocketbook at this problem, spending over a million bones in the last three months.

I've only met handful of people from Minnesota, and none of them are worth a million dollars.

That's not to say that Democrats didn't put a lot into soon-to-be Senator Franken's campaign either. Franken is going to have an even greater impetus to achieve in his inaugural term. He will be heavily scrutinized by his opponents, but also the independents in the Land of 10,000 Metaphorical Lakes.

I'm very interested to see how Franken fares, regardless of his political leanings. Democrats can recognize good, hard work from Republicans and vice versa. Independents don't care about that stuff anyway. Franken should have no problem being a good speaker, but let's see if he is persuasive. Or at least worth the trouble of letting Minnesota go eight months without being represented by two Senators.

Even Arkansas has that.

Speaking of the Natural State, the local angle could be that now Sens. Lincoln and Pryor, moderate, rural Democrats, will have more pressure on them than they had when Democrats lacked the filibuster-ending 60 votes. Every Democratic vote will now be crucial. Expect those who are trying to temper the more liberal-inclinations of the party for the sake of their political lives — like Lincoln, a Democrat up for re-election in 2010 in conservative Arkansas — to feel more heat.

Today, Lincoln and Pryor both professed their reservations for the House-approved Cap-and-Trade bill. While it will be much more difficult to achieve in the Senate, you can tell by the ruckus in the House that it's an important Democratic issue. And if President Obama is going to phone lil ole Rep. Mike Ross, D-Pig's Knuckle, and try to get him to vote for such legislation, one has to believe that for Obama-issues, Pryor and Lincoln will get Obama-calls too.

I'm looking forward to hearing Franken's first floor speech. And I'll be watching for Pryor and Lincoln's reactions.

Is Tom Cox Really the Worst Person in the World, Keith?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

You know if a Republican screws the pooch and Max Brantley doesn't verbally skewer him, he's probably okay. Olbermann probably should have consulted with him, Max that is, first.

Caption Contest! I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggonit People Like Me

It's yet another rabble-rousing Friday with yet another Caption Contest.

Last week's winner was anonymous. I donated five dollars in his or her name to a local charity. Congratulations! Unless this guy/gal hates Catholics. In which case, he/she doesn't need to win anyway. Shame on you.

Al Franken, comedian, will now have his name followed by D-Minn. in most places now. Public Strategies polls Minney-soda with 63 percent wanting the other guy whose name has already escaped me (Coleman? Callahan? Cartwheel?) to give it up already and get to representing. I'll get it started.

"HUG ME!"

"He's got the Whoooooole World in His Hands, He's got the Whole-Wide-World, In His Hands! Everybody!"

"I've played worse joints than this so-called Senate."

Pretty weak sauce attempts by yours truly, but this one's pretty open. Have at it.

Majority Punditry In Midst of Identity Crisis

This is an objective observation about the slow demise of objective news.

Liberal punditry has scored some big time victories this decade. Not only has their voice been made legitimate, but they have taken once-straight-news organizations,most notably MSNBC, and made them their own. Conservatives are left with talk-radio and FoxNews, which has never sought to be objective, and therefore has always lacked a degree of credibility, as far as most are concerned.

The Fairness Doctrine, once ballyhooed by the Left as necessary to counter the formerly dominating Conservative punditry on the radio, with the likes of Limbaugh, especially, has been aptly dropped; They've staked their claim on television and blogs, as blogs are typically driven by a younger crowd and younger crowds often lean leftward.

But in order for these people to establish a reign, they're going to have to appeal to a minority they soundly oppose. Which is of course nonsense.

Watching Hardball last night was anything but Hardball.

The openly biased Chris Matthews, whose contract was extended past the next presidential election, tossed softballs up to fellow Democrats about the salvation of Obama's budget, in between talking about how happy and glowing he is all of the time these days (not kidding, he said that).

My favorite line: "The economy. Republicans don't have a plan. Democrats have one. Back after this."

Well, that's newsworthy.

If it were really hardball political analysis, he might be more concerned with how this Democratic majority will handle the budget and all of its ambitions agenda points and not how the Republicans will be powerless to stop it. The bit about the GOP isn't news; It's olds.

Olbermann has been particularly hackable. Bush and his cronies remain in the headlines, showing you how pointless Olbermann's headlines are. "BREAKING NEWS" isn't a question of whether or not Bush was the worst President ever. I'm not even sure breaking news should be a question to begin with. Sure, George W. Bush was terrible. But there's nothing else to be done about it. He's out. Obama's in. Obama's in the White House. Bush doesn't even have a house, he lives in a Dallas condo.

Same goes for Maddow and the rest. Lamenting over the past is not news. In fact, the news isn't even their business anymore.

And therein lies their deal with the devil. By abandoning objectivity, they have sought to merely be weapons of the minority plight, which is all well and good, until you become the majority.

Want to know why O'Reilly is all over Olbermann's 'Worst People in the World'? Because he's thrashing Olbermann in the ratings. The conservative voice, while not necessarily missed just yet, merely a few months out of the Bush era, will continue to grow.

You heard nary a peep out of Rush Limbaugh during the Republican dominance of the early century. These days he's being labeled as the face of the whole franchise, which only helps his cause.

I started this as some kind of vocal plea for these "news" anchors to get over Bush and start being real journalists about the current President. But that won't work. I think it's the ebb and flow. They'll be down again, just like they were during the Clinton years, while conservative radio surged.

Then they were back up during their Minority Glory. I suspect the cycle will roll on.

What's In a Name?

According to the Hill, Democrats are lobbying for their Republican chum Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to go ahead an come on over the fence, abandoning his GOP for the DNC.

According to the article, the governor of Pennsylvania, as well as the Arkansas traveler and VP Joe Biden, have been pushing him to go ahead and defect already, but apparently Specter will not relent, fearing the extinction of moderate Republicans.

I think the entire operation, from both sides of the agenda, can be described by one word: Futile.

Just weigh the pros and cons. Securing that 60th and filibuster proof vote is obviously high on the party agenda for Democrats. They've got the legislature by the throat, now they want to hit em where it hurts. Pelosi is just rigid with anticipation of a rampant Democratic "mandate" that sounds something akin to Manifest Destiny.

But what would Democrats be getting that they do not already possess? Specter has made national headlines since last week regarding the Employee Free Choice Act, or card check, because of the bind in which he finds himself; Being in a pro-union state with a pro-business party, one that may find someone a little more to their liking in the 2010 primaries.

Specter has been widely regarded as a R.I.N.O., Republican in Name Only, due to his centrist tendencies. So what are Democrats getting other than a little more solidarity and another name on the roster?

For the very reasons I listed for the explanation regarding his EFCA plight, it would not behoove Specter to join those Democratic ranks. He's been elected several times over, despite his centrist record and his admittedly Democratic past. There are no Democratic challengers. He's already as far left as it's going to get in this Senate race. So why lower his shoulder and plow through the wall and into the Democratic party? It wouldn't benefit him much; His re-election campaign is squared solely on the shoulders of another Republican, whether he's in the GOP or not.

Plus, I thought our elected representatives were supposed to represent their constituents, not their party, so says Joe Biden while in Little Rock. He let Sen. Blanche Lincoln off the hook by saying he knew that if the party's interest and Arkansas' interest ever conflicted, he was both confident and content with the fact that Blanche would side with her state.

The Democratic party seems to be taking one Senatorita off the hook, and is trying to put a Senator on.

Limbaugh: He's As Big As You Make Him

There's been a lot of heavy weather over this heavy man on the radio.

Saturday, conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh spoke to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. In his own dojo, Limbaugh spoke to his people as most would speak to like-minded people: Unashamedly, abrasively, and loudly.

Notice that when you're speaking to like-minded people, you don't have to say anything with a lot of substance to get a rousing applause.

Obama — well, his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, who speaks for him, anyway — was on the offensive within 12 hours, speaking on CBS's "Face the Nation" and claiming that Rush is the voice and intellect of the GOP, and paying no compliments by doing so.

A columnist asked me, the youngest and therefore most technologically savvy individual in the office, how to register to comment on his own column. Apparently, criticisms were being levied and he wanted an opportunity to rebut.

I told him about a boxing rule I had heard: Don't fight below your weight class, meaning of course, don't sink to someone else's level. Let the words speak for themselves, take criticisms and move on, giving no credibility or leverage to the nay-sayer. Shake them haters off, I said.

The same rule should apply to Obama and Rush: Obama would do well to just ignore him completely.

Not to say that Rush doesn't own some clout. He's no elected official, but he carries himself as if he has a public mandate. He is articulate. He is compelling. These are not debatable opinions, but objective facts. No one has done anything close to what he did in 1994 with Newt Gingrich, which is use an entertainment medium to shift public policy and tilt Congress.

Love him like a saint or hate him like the devil, Rush Limbaugh is good at what he does. He also finds himself in the fortuitous circumstance of being a member of the Out Party.

Nobody likes to kick a dog while they're down. As Capt. John Miller in Saving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks wisely stated that gripes go up, not down; The American Public will have more to say about the In Party than the Out, and will thereby give more credence to Out. As Keith Olbermann still bashes Bush and Rachel Maddow lowers that eye brow, both struggling to remain relevant, Limbaugh is finding his feet and a broader audience than, say, the last eight years.

Obama charged House Republicans with ineptitude, claiming that nothing was going to get done so long as they "did whatever Rush Limbaugh tells them to do." Emanuel is chaining Rush to the Republican party, which is really rather redundant. That's not news to anyone.

While it may be a smart tactic to represent a somewhat vilified caricature in order to damage the opposition, it'd be smarter just to let him spin his wheels. You're only encouraging him to do what he does best.

And maybe that person with whom you find so much disdain will weed himself out in the end. Hey, it could happen.

Iran and U.S. Plan to Start Family Fun Band, Tour to Begin Soon

Everything I learned about Iran and U.S. relations I learned from this documentary-type video.

Today and yesterday, CNN yielded two stories concerning Iran, each basically contributing two different sides of the same story. The story is that President Obama is open to the idea of having progressive discourse of a civil nature with the nation that his predecessor dubbed an Axis of Evil, along with math and one of them Koreas, and that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is down for the cause as well.

Needless to say, there's been a bit of a rift between these two over the past few decades.

Right now, at this preliminary stage, it's hard to say you're against this. But it comes with a tremendously large caveat that a number of steps should be taken before we hustle some of our boys over there to start shaking hands and having drinks with the guys.

"There's been a lot of mistrust built up over the years, so it's not going to happen overnight," Obama said.

That's good. Because overnight, the crowd of thirty thousand or so that Ahmadinejad was speaking to at the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution were saying some ungood words toward the American ilk.Not to be labeled an alarmist or anything, but words like "DEATH TO AMERICA" blared over loudspeakers and in unison can be a liiiiiiittle unsettling.

And I'm not sure what to think of this Ahmadinejad fellow, but I fear he might be an Islamic Mike Huckabee; all charming religious rhetoric, but very little common sense (e.g. that whole denying the Holocaust bit might ruffle some feathers). But while the Huckster's only national claim to fame was dropping a few pounds and looking like Jim Nabors, Ahmadinejad's claim is being defiantly outspoken and developing nuclear technologies.

It's a good thing that hey say they're only going to develop their nukes "to harness it for energy" and such! I was beginning to worry that they might want to do the expected thing and go ahead and put a few confidential nukes away just in case someone decides to get ansty-in-their-pantsy. As long as their not doing that, anyway.

Obama reached out to the Muslim community in a way unparalleled by his honky predecessors in his first address as president to a Muslim television station, and even inaugural speech. I doubt you remember it, what with Beyonce's singing (DESTINY'S CHILD! OMIGAH!) at the ball later that night, so here's a highlight:

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West: Know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

As long as all of this holds firm — nuclear arms and all — we should be okay. But then again, let's wait and see how many of these items — destroying nuclear technogadgets on Iran's side and lynching Bush in a public forum on America's side — are actually done to progress these talks.

Likely, I'm sure.

Obama's Culpability: His to Make or Break

Well, someone had to do it. Someone had to finally get people out and Ba-Rock the Vote, as so many inept politicians before had attempted in the decades prior to 2008. The victory was clear, decisive, and wildly popular: Barack Obama is to become the 44th president of the United States. The fanfare associated with the inception of the very first African-American president is not only appropriate, but required.

But the roads will not prove to be so golden along the way in the next four years.

And while certainly challenging, Obama will have to do less of the talking which makes him so appealing and more of the walking that he has promised his country he would do, without having demonstrated a lot of it in his prior experiences. But no one will have more power than he to squeeze every drop of potential out of his administration.

So for better or for worse, these next four years are all Obama's to make or break. And if there's less making than breaking, the fault cannot be laid at the feet of outgoing President Bush.

Granted, Obama is inheriting an unprecedented burden. Two wars with one over-arching theme of eliminating terrorism coupled with an economy that seems to be "inconsistent" at best would be a challenge for anyone. But blaming the previous administration for one's woes is worthless. It gets nothing positive done but it is also, frankly, something that Bush did to absolutely no avail. Bush lamented the Clinton administration for a majority of his initial hiccups, and went about scrapping everything that Clinton hadn't nailed down in his eight years.

And look where that got Bush. Bush eliminated every stick of infrastructure of the executive branch prior to his arrival and I would argue thusly struggled. The Obama camp currently has plans to do this, or so I hear and speculate, but were I an adviser, I might hold off. It's just weak sauce.

Obama is a powerful personality. But a majority of his power does not lie in that trademark grin of his, or his oratory skills, but rather his control of both the House and the Senate. Obama has two of the three branches of government in the palm of his hand. It should be mentioned that Bush also had party favoritism when he was elected, as well as six years of his eight year tenure. But the division in Congress was much more even, so a GOP-romp was impossible whereas a Democratic free-for-all is a very real possibility.

Those recounts and run-off elections? Like Al Franken's in Minnesota? Those do matter, because Democrats are very nearly close to a filibuster-proof legislative period that would allow for most of their bills to pass unscathed, unopposed, and unchecked by the right. Now the past two elections have certainly been a mandate by the public for more Democratic legislation, but there needs to be some sort of disparity, some sort of discourse between parties. This is still a center-right country, and if Obama thinks that he can use majority rule tactics, he will most likely be treated similarly to Clinton in 1994 and Bush in 2006, both mid-term election domination by the opposing party.

Obama has an opportunity to be a transformational president, if only he follows through with the assurances he gave on his campaign stumps. I noticed a bit of his acceptance speech on Nov. 4th, something that makes me take notice, wary against a preceding-president backlash I see on the horizon:

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. -Barack Obama

The tail end of his message spells hope, while the first spells out "get out of jail free," or a "rebuilding year," to use a sports phrase. And I certainly agree with that. However, I believe that whether or not his first term is a success lies on his shoulders, rather than on Bush's.

Call this what you will, but I'll call it a preemptive attack on using a weak previous leader as a crutch. The end result would just be that: weak.