Thursday, February 21, 2008
Your Morning News 2.21.08
Posted by Josh in Barack Obama, blowing stuff up, Election 2008, FDA, hillary clinton, john mccain, Stagflation, Supreme Court, Teamsters, US Navy, Your Morning News
I stayed up late last night to watch the eclipse. While watching the eclipse, I may have had a few beers (and a few glasses of whiskey). So I overslept and I was feeling a little delicate this morning when I popped open the newspaper. All of this is my way of saying to The New York Times, I WAS NOT PREPARED TO HANDLE A JOHN MCCAIN SEX SCANDAL. THAT IS GROSS.
Ok, it is not a “sex scandal”– yet — but The Times has a piece detailing the variety of ethical issues that Senator McCain has had come up during his career. The story leads by detailing McCain’s relationship with a female lobbyist during his 2000 campaign for President. She apparently traveled with him or to meet him on the campaign trail so frequently that campaign aides confronted both of them repeatedly to tell them to stop. Though he did not necessarily have an improper relationship with the lobbyist (both deny it), he did write letters to government regulators on behalf of her clients. The story is about 1 million words long and goes on to describe a variety of scandals in McCain’s career. But honestly, no one will be talking about a regulatory scandal from 1987. If this comes up at work, bring up that John McCain already has a smoking hot, super rich wife, so what the hell is his problem?
Democrats, The Law, and Blowing Shit Up after the jump
The next series of primaries is March 4, so we are facing the longest stretch without a primary we have seen since the Iowa caucuses. However, just because there are no primaries doesn’t mean there isn’t news. Institutional support is lining up behind Senator Obama, but Senator Clinton is beginning to spend more on a harder message. Yesterday, Senator Obama was endorsed by the Teamsters union. The union isn’t as powerful as it was when it killed people and buried them under Giant’s Stadium, but still is very influential and this was a coup for the Obama campaign. Senator Clinton has started to flat-out say that Senator Obama is not ready to be President, and several of her financial backers have launched an “independent” group that will run ads saying she is more qualified to fix the economy. If anyone asks, say that Senator Clinton hasn’t had a chance to get any attacks to stick because Obama kept winning primaries. She needed this two week lull to try to get a word in edgewise.
I don’t think I mentioned it here, but for the past few weeks, an enormous satellite has been falling out of orbit and was going to crash into the earth, spewing toxic fuel (I guess it slipped my mind). Yesterday, the US Navy blew the satellite out of the sky over the Pacific. Some are beginning to say that the satellite didn’t pose that big of a threat, but that the US wanted to demonstrate the strength of its missile and satellite defense systems to the world (China). I would argue that who the hell cares, we blew up a satellite and that is friggin awesome.
A recession is bad, but stagflation is worse.
Today’s story that sounds boring, but will most likely end up screwing you, is a front-page New York Times article saying that by a vote of 8-1, the Supreme Court ruled that you can’t sue medical device companies for damages if their products were approved by the FDA. The fun part is that this decision also preempts any attempts by states to impose tougher regulations or, you know, protect their citizens from corporate excess. It gets even better if you remember that the Bush administration has been undermining and under staffing the FDA for years so that it is basically a shell of its former self.