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John Dingell Jr. wants to slap two more George Washington metal heads on each gallon of octane love you put in your tank. Not to reduce pay to GM execs like his wife $0.50 for each gas guzzler they make, but to charge you halfabuck more for le gasaroo. Less bling bling to ching ching in your wallet cos Ding Ding wants it that way. Well.

…Who can primary this person and get rid of him? cf. this comment at Michigan Liberal on the need for Dingy to disappear, and my own diary there from a few back about primarying General Motors Jr. out of office before he can damage the state and country any more.

And feel free to make suggestions to me, or others, about who could best primary him out of office.

  Choose your holiday:

  Purim

  Eid Milad

  Holy Thursday

  And see Time mag on the “tsunami” of holy days coming up simultaneously, Good Friday! Happy Purim, Eid, etc….

  Holy moly!!

See AA News channeling AP, Judge dismisses suit challenging Michigan affirmative action law,

“A federal judge Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit challenging a Michigan law that bans racial and gender preferences in government hiring and public university admissions.
The ruling upholds the constitutionality of a measure approved by Michigan voters in 2006. It had been challenged by groups including the NAACP and the pro-affirmative action group By Any Means Necessary. …”

Oh well.
I was against Proposal 2, but the suit against it did not ever seem strong to me; when the U of M “Grutter” case says affirmative action is permissible, that’s not the same as its being mandatory.

Somebody better come up with a new way to fight Prop 2-type stuff; maybe ideas will occur on this very blog, stay tuned…

Mr. Smooooth (Courtesy of the Daily Mail)

  Why it was Ian Fleming’s wife who invented James Bond by Christopher Hudson in the “Femail” (…) section of the Daily Mail is a somewhat unbelievable-yet-believable portrait of Bond creator Ian Fleming, and the strange bonds which he formed with his wife Ann Charteris,

  “…Fleming’s ruthlessness towards women may have been influenced by the gonorrhea he caught at Sandhurst. … 

  His London flat was full of books about flagellation: men and women standing over each other with a whip.
  To a guest who showed any interest in them, Fleming would remark: ‘I say, are you getting a kick out of that?’” …

  She wrote to Fleming in 1947 after a few days together: “It was so short and so full of happiness, and I am afraid I loved cooking for you and sleeping beside you and being whipped by you… I don’t think I have ever loved like this before.” … 

  Their relationship thrived - thanks to their fierce physical fights. When Ann left bruises on Fleming, he would warn her that “all this damage has to be paid for some time”, and so it was.
  “I long for you to whip me because I love being hurt by you and kissed afterwards,” Ann wrote to him. “It’s very lonely not to be beaten and shouted at every five minutes.” … 

  The problem for the Flemings was they were both too self-centred to make the compromises necessary for any successful marriage.
Fleming also had growing health problems. For years he had been drinking a bottle of gin and smoking 70 cigarettes a day. …

  Apart from several of the wives of expats in Jamaica, a succession of socialites passed through Goldeneye while Ann was in London.
  Some of them, he reassured Ann - who knew all about Fleming’s womanising - were impossibly dull. He claimed he was more likely to rape a yam. …”

  I guess this guy was the Eliot Spitzer or Kwame Kilpatrick of his era. (And I decry his violence towards his wife, and his wife’s violence toward him, although discussing those things helps understand his strange life better.)

  …”The name is Bondage. Pain Bondage.” !
  RIP IF. And AF.

  The Jack Chick website, Christian religious tracts and all, is always good for some entertainment, or occasional enlightenment. Check it out, though with a grain of salt.

  I’m not endorsing the website or Chick, just mentioning them…

  See AP via Freep, ‘Gilligan’s’ Mary Ann Caught With Dope,

  “Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on “Gilligan’s Island,” is serving six months’ unsupervised probation after allegedly being caught with marijuana in her car. …”

  A lot longer than a “three hour tour”, huh?

  –There goes that wholesome image. I thought Ginger was supposed to be the bad one.

  Some thought New York gov Eliot Spitzer was the bee’s knees, but maybe he is just a sleaze sleaze; see Huffy Poo again, Spitzer As Client 9: Read Text Messages From Spitzer To Prostitute,

  “…Client 9 - believed to be Spitzer - paid $4,300 for a woman named “Kristen” to come from New York to D.C. A portion of that money, however, likely went to credit for future appointments. … 
  Client 9, according to another woman associated with the Emperor’s Club, “would ask you to do things that, like, you might not think were safe.” There was no elaboration. …”

  This guy is a worse governor (maybe) than Jennifer Granholm. And maybe even a worse sex texts guy than Kwame Kilpatrick…

  See HuffyPoo, UM professor Scott Kurashige, The Sad State of Democracy in Michigan,

  “Those of us who have lived through five-plus years in Michigan with Jennifer Granholm as governor have come to expect her to make calculating decisions consistent with the middle-of-the-road image she has consciously nurtured. So what possessed Granholm to issue a passionate statement last week declaring that it was “reprehensible that anyone would seek to silence” Michigan voters?
  Could it be that our governor had finally abandoned her moderate, follow-the-crowd manner to become a fiery advocate of the people? Not likely. Granholm’s comments and positions with regards to the botched Michigan primary have been shamelessly self-serving. It is an open secret throughout Michigan that Granholm (who will be termed out in 2010 and has no other viable office-seeking options) would love nothing more than an appointment in a Clinton administration. She has endorsed Hillary and is doing everything she can to aid her campaign. …
  So our cash-strapped state, which recently balanced its budget by selling off $900 million worth of tobacco settlement money for 44 cents on the dollar, went ahead with an expensive primary that was meaningless for Democrats and half-meaningful for Republicans. Unwilling to admit their blunder, Granholm and the state party leaders continued to insist they had taken a principled stand that would serve Michigan well. Even though the Democratic candidates refused to campaign in Michigan, the governor stoutly declared that the botched primary had somehow “changed the dialogue” because it had made the economy more central to the primary debates.
  There was another shameless aspect to the Michigan primary that put it in disrepute. The Democrats and the Republicans in the state legislature set up the election so that all of the personal information (name, address, party affiliation) collected at the expense of the state would be delivered to the two major parties and no one else. They went so far as to make it a crime (punishable by up to 93 days in jail) for anyone else, such as third parties or the media, to access the information. … 
  …What is clear is that Governor Granholm’s latest grandstanding won’t help the situation. If she really cared about Michigan voters being disenfranchised, she would have acted to stop this fiasco rather than egging it on. …
  …Granholm is no more a neutral arbiter in 2008 than Florida secretary of state/Bush campaign co-chair, Kathleen [sic] Harris, was when she certified the results in 2000.
  The not-so-big news out of Michigan is that Jennifer Granholm has finally found something worth fighting for: Jennifer Granholm.”

  Now now Scott. You’re not being an obedient part of the herd. Shame on you!

  See le Guardian, When blasphemy bit the dust: It takes an arcane debate to repeal an archaic law in this country, as became clear in the House of Lords on Wednesday night,

  “So, farewell then, blasphemy. You were so pointless for so long, and now, by 148 votes to 87 in the House of Lords, you are dead. The Christian tenets of the Church of England are no longer afforded special protection under English and Welsh law. …
Lady Andrews kicked off Wednesday night’s debate by noting one of the very few occasions on which a successful prosecution was brought for blasphemy, when a Mr Haslam described the Old Testament as “wretched stuff” and “a disgrace to orangutans”.
  More seriously, she noted the failure of Stephen Green and Christian Voice to bring a blasphemy prosecution against the producers of Jerry Springer, the Opera. The Earl of Onslow agreed, noting: “If Jesus Christ exists, and if Jesus Christ in his Godlike form was capable of creating the universe, then he could quite easily hack the bit of leftwing obscurantism and b-mindedness that writes things such as Jerry Springer: The Opera. If he does not exist, nothing will happen. If he does exist, it is up to him to get hold of the chap who wrote it and make sure that he does time in the diabolical house of correction.” …”

  I prefer Jesus to Jerry, but I agree that even Springer-like stupidities should not be punished as “blasphemy”, usually.

  –And I am thankful that in America, we have no state religion or religious coercion, such as preventing National Park Service personnel at the Grand Canyon from talking about the geologic age of the Canyon, since some people believe Noah’s Flood created the thing. Whoops, maybe we do. 

         Maybe not; see Michigan Daily, Coleman to speak in Dubai next week: ‘U’ president to speak at women leaders’ conference,

         “Having just completed her trip to Ghana and South Africa, University President Mary Sue Coleman will fly north to the United Arab Emirates today to attend a women’s leadership conference.
         Coleman is scheduled to speak in Dubai Monday to a group of female college students during a conference called “Women as Global Leaders.” Other prominent leaders speaking at the conference include actress and activist Jane Fonda and Carol Bellamy, the former head of UNICEF, a United Nations agency that advocates for children’s rights. …
         Today in Abu-Dhabi, capital of the Persian Gulf nation, Coleman will meet with the nation’s Minister of Higher Education, Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, to talk about “possible collaborations” between the University and colleges in the U.A.E., Connell said. …”

         Uh, what about Dubai’s “little problem” of hating on Jews? Do you think M-Sue is going to complain about that? She shouldn’t even go over there to Dubai, maybe, until they stop abusing Israel.

         And I’m not sure about women’s rights in Dubai, either, actually. Boo to the bigots.