Yesterday there was this big photo-op where President Elect Obama sought council from former presidents Bush, Bush, Clinton, and Carter.  It brought about an interesting optical illusion.

The famous optical illusion is the one where you’re supposed to be able to see a young woman and an old woman intermittently. 

So the question with yesterday’s President’s Gallery photographs — is Carter snubbing Presidents Bushes, Obama, and Clinton or are Presidents Bushes, Obama, and Clinton snubbing Carter?

My eyes can’t quite figure it out.  I look at it one time and I see the others shoving Carter to the side.  I look at it again, and I see Carter standing as far away from the others as he can.  It really is something of a brain-fart, isn’t it?

I was always kind of hoping that the staff of the White House in the Bush Administration would remove all the “O”s from the keyboards, and that there would be some kind of photographic evidence of such an act.  This way, I could actively not care about it — as opposed to the fisco behind the “The out-going Clinton White House Staff removed the ‘W’s” story which, for the life of me, I don’t know if ever occurred — though for the press it got in some areas and some circles, if it didn’t, the evidence would have to be manufactured of keyboards with “Property of White House” stamped on with that “W” removed.

As it was, there was an explicit statement not to remove the “O”s.  Supposedly.  These things circulate.

That being said, Bush managed a more egregious snub.  Obama requested that the room of the White House which the incoming president and his family moves into — the Blair House — a tad early in order to accomodate the schooling of their daughters.  But, no, the Blair House was booked.  I, and any number of others out here in the peanut gallery, have been wondering — booked for who?

As it turns out, booked for former Australian president John Howard.  Bush has shoved Obama aside for a modest favor for John Howard — the longtime Australian head whose country finally axed in part due to disgruntlement over Iraq — replaced by a man who is seen on youtube eating his own earwax.  So, for that honor he gets to bump Obama.

Priorities in order, I suppose.  It’s a slight.  Slight slight.  Move on, nothing to see here.

At the front of the street-car.  A young woman, who I later will be informed has both red hair and red shoes.  A sketchy looking middle aged man.  The fat man says to the woman, and I quote, (ahem)

“Your hair is as red as your shoes.”

At which point the young woman immediately makes hay to the back of the street-car, with about the expression of contempt on her face as you would imagine her to have. 

So, Senator Al Franken.  After the hi-jinx of Cornyn battling down the hatchets for filibustering and as the Norm Coleman court challenges flitter away and dissolve, that’s what you have.  (Along with, sadly, Senator Burris in a flutter of equal political hi-jinx.)

Not really the man I’d pick for the job, and a man who’s presence on the ballot might just have me pulling for “Lizard People”.  I’d like to say that Norm Coleman isn’t too bad a man, a Senator perhaps with a tad bit of sleaze as standard but in the grand scheme of party politics as being not the worst it’s hard to justify animosity toward — but that would describe just axed Oregon Senator Gordon Smith – when I look through Norm Coleman’s term in the Senate I see that he did take a strong stance in the trenches of some repugnant Republican causes du jour — a healthy dose of UN bashing and the go-to-guy in supporting John Bolton.

Wander over and about to see reactions and I see a blog post yesterday posted this image, intoning the end of Our Republic.  For the sense of good taste, I’ve shrunk the image… and it does serve as an argument against Hi-Definition big screen television…

How can a state in these United States have just elected a public official with an image like that circulating around?  And, given how Saturday Night Live has always sort of dragged on through the last half of its 90 minutes, there has to be many more broad visual vignettes such as that one out there.  Indeed, we can expect this image to find its way into an Al Qaeda propaganda any day now, as per this comment.

You know, our enemies hate us already. Seeing crap like this just makes it easier for them to hate us and for our allies to loose respect for us

One thing I can say about a photograph of Al Franken wearing a diaper …

UHH Texas D……..Do you realize that that’s the junior senator from Minnesota wearing a FUCKING DIAPER!?
He has already made a fool of himself before becoming a senator.
Did you ever listen to his libtard ass radio show?*
Thank you hiram.

is to wonder if maybe other Senators haven’t been photographed in more compromising positions wearing diapers.  The obvious candidate is Louisiana Senator David Vitter, (who, in this last Senate, co-sponsored with Idaho Senator Lary Craig a Craig – Vitter Marriage Protection Bill, just to serve up something for the peanut gallery to laugh at, I suppose)  but it seems evident that the prostitute he bought services from follow the confidentiality agreement in not taking those photographs — otherwise Larry Flynt or the National Inquirer would have already showered us with them.  The upshot is that al Qaeda will be able to pepper their propanda with multiple Senators wearing diapers as grown men.
 

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(* I’ll answer that question:  Yes.  It was something of a sedative, and it became clearer and clearer that Franken was steering toward a sort of middle of the road (one of his friendly weekly guests was best called “Center – Right”) in prepping for a Senate bid, though with that it also seems clear he was using the show to brush up on policy… the result was always, um… mixed?.  In terms of running for office, it does make him more comfortable than a Randi Rhodes or a Rush Limbaugh.

It’s interesting to take some stock of where things are with Alternate Universe American President John Kerry.  His promised increase of American troop levels in Iraq was always ironic — in that it was a war position being accepted by the anti-war part of the electorate.  I could never guage if it was the best option or not.  I did hear serious or quasi-serious figures state they believe Kerry will use political cover of a generally growing anti-war public to just vamoose, the technicalities of his promise not redoubted.  But, no, this Kerry Surge happened as said, started right when Kerry took office just about — the question of whether it’s given political space where the the rival factions have settled their troubles remains unresolved.

So, with an economy that has gone in the tank, Alternate President John Kerry won an unspectacular election, more or less by default — Republican candidate Mitt Romney proved tone deaf on the economic woes of the nation and a third party splinter from Ron Paul grabbed the 6 percent of the vote that allowed Kerry’s 48 percent to win the day– and streams into a Republican congressed helmed by a 59 Republican Senate.  Really, this is some sort of a booby prize.

The interesting thing to see is how this whole sex scandal concerning Alternate Universe Vice-President John Edwards is going to play itself out.  It now looks as though his denials of the allegations that he had an affair — and on his Cancer – strickened wife at that! — and I wonder if Kerry may just dump him now — he’s a president already struggling to get political support from anywhere — the talk is that he should just be dumped now and be done with.

It’s been nearly a month since the Bernie Madoff scandal broke.  And in all this time I have somehow managed to avoid the big punchline of a headline or news-clip…

“Bernard Madoff MADE OFF with $50 billion from…”

Until yesterday.  Finally I saw it on the teevee.  In the meantime I have to wonder how I avoided the obvious turn of phrase and play off of names.  The google reveals a plethora of “Madoff Made off” headlines and by-stories, plenty from victims of the ponzi scheme themselves, “Madoff Made Off With My Money”.  Maybe I heard the “Madoff Made Off” deal and somehow had it slip right past me?