Prez's Half-Brother Arrested in Kenya

It's getting to be a tradition with Democratic presidents: The embarrassing brother--who is usually an addict of some sort. Jimmy Carter had the hard drinking Billy, Bill Clinton had cocaine addled Roger, and now Barack Obama has George. According to a report CNN.com, the president's half-brother currently sits in a Nairobi jail on charges of marijuana possession and resisting arrest.
Between the economic crisis and this, it seems that people named George have been nothing but trouble for our new prez.

The Leaders We Deserve

Apparently, the Senate majority leader is an idiot.
Harry Reid was on Meet The Press this morning making an ass of himself by displaying for the entire nation to hear his utter lack of command of the English language as he contended repeatedly that his objections to the appointment of Roland Burris to the fill Barack Obama's seat is not to Burris himself but results from the controversy surrounding the criminal activities of the "appointee".
You moron! Roland Burris IS the "appointee"; i.e. the person who has been appointed. Obviously, Captain Opposite was referring to the charges surrounding Illinois' governor, Rod Blagojevich, and alleged attempts to "sell" the aforementioned Senate seat. Blagojevich, is the "appointer", the person making the appointment. By using the wrong wrong word, Reid inadvertantly contradicts himself and generally ends up sounding like a complete moron.
Apparently, new MTP moderator David Gregory, who let this gaffe slip by repeatedly without correcting his guest, is equally stupid--or maybe he was making a misguided effort to be "polite" to Reid. Tim Russert would have set Reid straight right away, I'm sure.

GOP Has New "Frontrunner"

Even though he laughed off the idea when it was suggested by Chris Wallace (or maybe he was just laughing at Wallace, who is utterly ridiculous) on Fox News Sunday yesterday morning, former Massachussetts governor Mitt Romney, after coming out on top in the first actual, if totally meaningless, vote of the 2008 Presidential election season, the Iowa Non-binding Straw Poll on Saturday, could arguably be considered the current frontrunner for the Republican party's Presidential nomination.

This, to me, is very good news. Nominating Romney is one of the best things the GOP could do...for Democrats. Lots of movement conservatives and Christian right types have serious qualms about Rom's positions, or former position, he claims, on gay rights and abortion, as well as the fact that he's a Mormon. (Perhaps they're wondering if he'd bring a Second and Third or even Fourth Lady to the White House) Romney's nomination would probably cause more of these people to just stay home next November than even Guiliani's could. Hell, I'd bet even the obnoxious and disliked Hillary Clinton could win against the Rominator.

Warning To Dems: Fred Thompson Could Be Serious Threat

This is an outrage!

I just ran a search on Google for blog entries about Fred Thompson's non-announcement that he might just possibly consider thinking about running for President next year, and my entry from Sunday wasn't among the results....

There are, however, thousands of results, both in blogs and other news outlets. Thompson's half-assed declaration of intent to seek the Presidency is being treated as if it were real news, which certainly wouldn't be happening if he were just a former Senator from Tennessee and not a bona-fide TeeVee star. Many conservative bloggers seem to be throwing their support behind the latest non-candidate, hailing him as the only true conservative in the race that he's not yet in and as the GOP's best chance to retain the White House.

That last part I agree with. And this is why the Democrats can not, must not nominate Hilary Clinton. Thompson's fame from Law & Order may just be enough to catapult him to the Presidency no matter what his politics, because people tend to feel that they know and like actors who they see every week on TV. (Actually, with the hours of L&O reruns available on basic cable, it's more like several times a day.) Meanwhile, a huge chunk of the country really, really does not like Hilary. Given that, she stands very little chance of winning in the general election against someone who isn't a beloved star of a beloved TV series, and against someone who is, she's doomed. Doomed, I tell you.

Seriously, this is a call to the base of the Democratic Party to wake the hell up and smell the friggin' coffee while there is still time...Hilary can not and will not win next year, especially if she ends up going up against Fred Thompson. Do not let your best chance to restore some sanity to how this nation is run slip through your fingers! Please, I urge you, Democrats, to nominate Barack Obama or, my personal favorite, John Edwards. Anybody---For the Love of All That Is Holy--ANYBODY BUT HILARY!!!! (Ok, maybe not Dennis Kucinich, though. He's kind of a little nuts.)

Arthur Branch for President???

Yet another big change could be coming to the constantly morphing cast of NBC's Law & Order. On this morning's edition of the rightward leaning Sunday interview show Fox News Sunday, actor and former United States senator Fred Thompson, who for the past five seasons has portrayed New York City District Attorney Arthur Branch on the long running cops and lawyers drama, revealed to FNS host/Bush Administration puppet Chris Wallace that he is considering wading into the already crowded pool of hopefuls wrangling for the Republican Party's nomination in next year's Presidential election.

Thompson told Wallace that he has no set timetable for reaching his final decision to run or not, but I would think that he would have to come to a conclusion soon in order to give his bosses at L&O enough time to find a replacement, since I assume that he will leave the show if he decides to pursue the Presidency.

Whenever he may throw his hat into the ring of fire, the visibility he has enjoyed as a co-star of one of TV's longest running, highest rated and most respected dramas should catapult him to the front of the field, up there with John McCain and Rudy Giuliani and straight past such relative unknowns as Mitt Romney, Sam Brownback, Chuck Hagel, Mike Huckabee and Duncan Hunter. (No, I'm not just pulling these names out of my ass, they're all real people who want to be the next POTUS. Truthfully, I'd never heard of anyone named Duncan Hunter, either, until just a few moments ago, when I saw his name, which is all I know about him at the moment, on this list of GOP contenders--and I use that term loosely for most of these guys.) Politically, though, due to the fact that he's been out of the game for a while, Thompson is himself a bit of an unknown quantity. I suspect that a lot of people who support him, at least in the early going, will be doing so based more on the politics of D.A. Branch as revealed during his sojourn on Law & Order, rather than on anything the real-life Thompson has said or done. It reminds of when G.W. Bush first emerged as a serious contender and some of his early popularity sprang from people thinking he was his father, which turned out to be far, far from the truth.

Interestingly, none of this came up during the on-air interview. While it's fitting for what is ostensibly a "news" program (Word From On High style rule # 37: the word "news" always goes in quotes when discussing Fox) to focus on the issues rather than the showbiz aspect of the story, it seems odd that his current employment was not even mentioned in passing, since it will no doubt, as I said above, influence both his decision to run and his chances at getting the nomination.

2008 Presidential Race Well Underway.....

With more than a year before anyone gets near a voting machine to even decide who we're going to have to decide between in the Presidential election next year, there are, last I heard--but that was two days ago and there may be twice as many by now, eighteen candidates; nine from each party. They range from the hopeless and goofy, like Dennis Kucinich, to serious contenders like Hillary Clinton (who must be stopped! Dems may love her, but if she is nominated, she will lose the general and America will be saddled with John McCain for at least four years) to the man whose announcement I present below (and who will whip McCain's tush if the two go head to head):

Well, that probably makes it pretty clear who I'm planning to vote for--at least in the primary. That's if he even makes it to the Ohio primary. 2004's "promising newcomer," Howard Dean, crashed and burned long before I would have gotten a chance to vote for him, which I did intend to do. Of course, Obama seems a much calmer sort, not given to career killing screams.

Blackwell Still Controversial Even Out of Office.

From the Columbus Dispatch:
Blackwell staff got goodbye bonuses

The article begins: "Before leaving office this month, Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell gave parting payments totaling more than $80,000 to 19 top staffers who were not kept by new Secretary Jennifer Brunner. "

Now these "questionable bonuses," as Brunner calls them, are controversial in some circles, especially with the new Democratic regime, who dislike Blackwell and with good reason. However, I think the bonuses are well deserved and a suitable reward for all the hard work Ken Blackwell's loyal staff put in over the years.

Stealing elections isn't easy, you know. Blackwell and his cronies, however, went to heroic lengths to disenfranchise and suppress minority and Democratic voters and deliver the Buckeye State firmly into George W. Bush's camp, for which they certainly deserve their thirty pieces of silver.

Most Outspoken People of '06

Whether you agree with what they said or not, they said what they meant and they meant what they said despite attacks from the media and politicians.

Al Gore--Big Al wasn't saying anything new last year. He's been sounding a clarion call about global warming his entire career. The difference is that in 2006, with the release of his documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, people were finally listening. However, when you see 50 degree temperatures and people running around in shorts in the middle of January in the American midwest, you can't help but wonder if it's too late.

Hugo Chavez--Sure, he sounded kind of crazy and ended up costing his country a seat on the United Nations Security Council, but the Venezuelan President wasn't afraid to stand up in front of the U.N. General Assembly and say exactly what he thought, in no uncertain terms, calling American President George W. Bush "El Diablo" (the devil).

John Murtha--A Vietnam vet and notorious "hawk" when it comes to military issues, the Democractic Congressman from my home state of Pennsylvania braved the disapproval of both political parties to become one of the first national leaders to publicly say that the war in Iraq was a fiasco and to call for bringing the troops home.

Michael J. Fox--The TV icon starred in a series of promos for political candidates who support federal funding for stem cell research and ended up being forced to defend himself from a series of vicious attacks from the right wing media, not on his politics but on him personally and the outward physical effects of his Parkinson's Disease.

Just when you thought that Rush Limbaugh's prescription drug addiction scandal had finally and deservedly relegated the fat obnoxious loudmouth to the scrapheap of irrelevancy, he manages to make one of the most outragous and patently offensive statements of the year and get his name and fat ugly face back on people's minds again. You've almost got to admire someone who, despite being publicly humiliated and utterly and thoroughly discredited--repeatedly--remains so consistently obnoxious and just plain wrong.

Then, there's Big Bad Bill, the Clintonator. Big Al's old boss wasn't saying anything new last year either, as he's been forced into defending his administration's policy on terrorism and Bin Laden since probably minutes after the planes hit on 9/11. But his dressing down of Bush administration butt-boy Chris Wallace of FOX News on FOX News Sunday is credited by many pundits with raising the morale of the Democratic party and rallying them in their ultimately successful efforts to wrest control of the congress from the GOP.

I sometimes picture Chris Wallace's father, the legendary investigative reporter Mike Wallace of CBS' 60 Minutes, watching FNS with his head hung low in shame, muttering to himself, " How can it be that the fool on my TV kissing Republican ass at every opportunity is my son? Where, Oh Lord, where, I beseech you, did I go so horribly wrong?"

Well, that pretty much wraps up my look back at 2006. Starting tomorrow, it's time to tackle '07 head on. Hallelujah!!

X-Pres Gerald Ford Now Eligible to Appear on Money

Had Gerald Rudolph Ford's life taken the path that I imagine he probably thought it would, I would not be writing this piece today, for the death of a fairly obscure and relatively undistinguished former Congressional Minority Leader from Michigan would garner no special notice from the world's media. But Fate, Destiny, or Kismet, whatever you wish to call if you believe in such forces, had other plans for the Hon. Mr. Ford. The term "Accidental President" has been used to describe Vice-Presidents who ascend to the presidency when the President is unable to finish his term, usually because he has died, ever since John Tyler, the first to do so, assumed the office following the death of William Henry Harrison, but in Ford's case the term is particularly apt, for no presidency was more accidental than his. Named to replace disgraced former Vice-President Spiro Agnew in 1973, Ford found himself sitting in the Oval Office following President Richard Nixon's resignation as a result of the Watergate scandal on August 9, 1974.

While Ford was not exactly a great President, nor was he the buffoon that his occassional public clumsiness and the infamous WIN buttons led comics to portray him as. He was a gentle, honest, and soft-spoken man pulled by the tide of history into waters that were way above his head, but he managed to avoid drowning and emerged as one of America's most respected ex-Presidents and elder statesmen.

True, his was, for the most part, a "placeholder" presidency, and he was really just keeping the seat warm until the next "real" President showed up, but after the "long national nightmare" of Watergate, not to mention Vietnam and pretty much the entire preceding decade, that's probably precisely what this country needed in order to begin the long process of recovering.

These days, in the post-Watergate era, it seems as if the highest praise you can pay a former Chief Executive is that he did nothing to disgrace the office of the President of the United States or himself. By that yardstick, Gerald R. Ford may, in fact, be one of the great Presidents of my lifetime.

(STRAY THOUGHTS) Topic: What's In A Name?

So, I was reading The American Prospect's wrap-up and analysis of the Democratic victories in this month's mid-term elections when I came across the name of the newly elected Democratic senator from the great, but tiny, state of Rhode Island and I just had to wonder if this guy has ever entertained any thoughts about running for President of the United States someday. Given his name, it almost seems predestined that he will.

The senator-elect in question goes by the handle of Sheldon Whitehouse.

Letter To The Editor

Several months ago, I read a letter from a reader in Playboy that got me so upset that I had to respond in kind with a letter of my own. Hef's minions, however, chose not to print said letter, obviously blind to its depths of insight and literary excellence. That will not, though, keep me from sharing my opinions with the world, thus I present for you the full text of the aforementioned epistle:
I'm writing in response to the letter from Benjamin Chan printed in the September issue of Playboy in which Mr. Chan accuses the magazine of "liberal bias" and "trying to rewrite history" because of a joke whose punchine stated that Bill Clinton "almost got impeached." I will not deny that Playboy has a liberal bias. That (plus the pictorials, of course) are why I read it. However, using this joke in an attempt to show said bias is itself a joke.
It is far more likely that, rather than an attempt at revisionist history, the reference to Bill Clinton's "almost" impreachment stems from a very common misunderstanding of what it actually means to impeach a president or other government official. My Webster's dictionary defines "impeach" as "...to charge (a public official) before a competent tribunal with misconduct in office," which is exactly what happened to President Clinton. However, there is a general misconception that to impeach means to remove from office. By being impeached, Mr. Clinton was, in fact, "almost" removed from office.
It is clear from his letter that Mr. Chan understands the true meaning of impeach. It is also clear that he was so blinded by his own conservative politics and hatred of liberals that he read a sinister political agenda into what was quite obviously an innocent vocabulary error.

Dummies and Crazies

Seen at the Whetstone branch of the Columbus library--yet another book we do not need: Politics For Dummies.

Speaking of politics, I've made it no secret that I'm seriously considering packing up and moving back to Linesville, Pennsylvania if Ken Blackwell is allowed to become governor of Ohio, but frankly, other than the fact that he isn't Ken Blackwell, I'm really not sure why I'm voting for Ted Strickland, either.

Take a look at the picture of the two main gubernatorial candidates that accompies this Columbus Dispatch article about Monday's debate.

If you ask me, they both look kind of crazy.

Hell, the more I think about it, the more likely it becomes that I might just end up voting for Green candidate Bob Fitrakis.

Hating Bill O'Reilly For Fun and Profit

Just last night, I started reading a book called Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O'Reilly by Joseph Minton Amann and Tom Breuer, creators of the web-site of the same name. The book is devoted to debunking the lies, distortions and general BS of Rupert Murdoch's Golden Boy, but as much as I loathe O'Reilly and his fellow Fox News blowhards, I'm not enjoying it as much as I thought I was going to. After all, is there anyone besides O'Reilly's fellow lunatics who takes this loser seriously anymore. By now, making O'Reilly look like an idiot is just too easy, as he does it himself almost every time he opens his big fat lying mouth. It's liking shooting fish in a bucket with a Howitzer, which could be fun at first but would probably get a little boring after a while.

As far as I'm concerned, the fatal wound to O'Reilly's already crippled credibility was when his and Fox News' bogus lawsuit against Al Franken in an attempt to block publication of Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by claiming that Franken infringed on Fox's incredibly weak and indefensible trademark on the generic phrase "Fair and Balanced" was literally laughed out of court. I think the judge may still be chuckling.

Bill O'Reilly is a loudmouthed lying jerk. That is all ye know and all ye need to know (at least about O'Reilly). Skip the show, skip this book, let the healing begin and get on with your lives.

A Brief Detour Into Politics....

I'm puzzle by something I read in The Other Paper last week...

No, this is not my usual and, by now, tedious rant about how TOP is a worthless waste of paper and all of its writers are talentless, lazy hacks with the maturity level of a 13 year old boy. Actually, Dan Williamson, who wrote the column in question, is the onlyTOP writer I can read without screaming.

Except when he writes about the strange behaviors of Republicans. But it's the Republicans who make me want to scream, not Williamson's prose.

Last Thursday, Williamson related how the Democratic candidate for Ohio state Treasurer was virtually a lock to win because his Republican opponent was unknown and underfunded. It seems, according to Williamson, that Republican voters rejected the re-nomination bid of the Republican incumbent Treasurer because of her positions on abortion and gay rights.

What????

That's the thing that I don't understand...

Certainly those are core Republican wedge issues that they love to use to lord their moral superiority over us ungodly liberals, but what the bloody hell do they have to do with the Treasurer's office????

I don't want or need any office holder, Republican or Democrat or Communist or Green or whatever, telling me how to live, and I certainly don't see how it's the busines of the Treasurer. It appears that Ohio Republicans, in some twisted quest for moral purity in their candidates, have screwed their party of an important statewide office.

GOOD.

(Now, THAT'S Trivia! #19) Hail To The Chief...

I came across a book at the library called The Essential Book of Presidential Trivia by Noah McCullough (who is supposedly only ten years old) and here's a question from that book's "Ultimate Political Quiz". (This one stuck in my mind because it's kind of a trick question. I like trick questions.)

Q: How many presidents are not buried in the United States?

The answer lies on The Answer Blog.

Begun The Campaign Wars Have

When you work in fast food, every damned day you encounter morons who can't figure out what they want to order, or how to tell you what they want, or in some cases what fast food restaurant they're even at. I won't say which chain I work for, but it ain't BK, though we constantly get people trying to order a Whopper. The scary thing is that today some of these clueless types were sporting "I Voted" stickers. It's frightening to think that, with less than twenty-five percent of registered voters expected to turn out today, our choices for Ohio's next governor are being decided by people who cannot even figure out a fast food menu.

It really doesn't matter, I suppose. The outcomes of both the Democratic and GOP primaries have been pretty much foregone conclusions for months. Just a couple of months ago, the Democratic race looked like it might be interesting, with Columbus mayor Mike Coleman still in it and talk floating around of former Cincinnati mayor Jerry Springer (yep, that Jerry Springer) possibly making a run for the Statehouse. In the end, however, Ted Strickland has basically lucked into the nomination simply by staying in the race while all serious opposition collapsed around him. He really didn't have to do anything. I don't think I've seen even one Strickland campaign ad on the tube. Ken Blackwell and Jim Petro, on the other hand, have gone back and forth trying to appear more conservative than their opponent to their GOP base. I think Blackwell has won that dubious honor, not to mention simultaneouly coming off as mean-spirited, bigoted and slightly nutty, but not in a harmless way.

Meanwhile, Dan Williamson of The Other Paper, one of the few writers at that mostly worthless rag who at least appears to have some knowledge of the subject he's writing about, has already practically annointed Strickland Ohio's next governor, reasoning that while he had no primary opposition to speak of and thus was able to save all his campaign funds for the fall race, Ken Blackwell had some semi-serious competition in Jim Petro to fight off and may have depleted his war chest enough to put him at a disadvantage. Maybe so, but Kenny-boy is not going down without a serious and dirty fight. I bet he's had his ad writers and researchers digging for any dirt, or anything that could be made to look like dirt, on Teddy and I wouldn't be surprised if we see his first attack ad as early as tomorrow. The people with TiVo, who can skip over commercials, will be the lucky ones, for they will be able to avoid Blackwell's toxic cloud of blather, and the rest of will be wearing out the mute buttons on our remotes or heading to the kitchen during commercial breaks to make lots and lots of sandwiches.

Oh, yeah--it's gonna be a long six months 'til November here in the Buckeye State.

Which One of These Losers Will Be Ohio's Next Governor

A man named Jim Hightower wrote a book a few years ago entitled If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates. Now, I know nothing of Mr. Hightower, but from that title I would guess that he is a Democrat. I've been voting since I was eighteen, most of that time as a registered Democrat, and I have never encountered a candidate from any party that I was really excited about. Their have been no shortage of candidates, mostly Republican, to vote against, however.

Take this year's gubernatorial contest here in Ohio. Ted Strickland, the man who will most likely emerge from tomorrow's primary as the Democratic gubernatorial (I just love that word) candidate, seems like a nice enough guy from what I have read and heard of him, but so far he has said or done nothing that makes me especially want him to be my governor. The main reason that I will most likely vote for him in November is that he is not Ken Blackwell.

Blackwell, currently Ohio's Secretary of State as well as statewide chairman of George W. Bush's re-election campaign in 2004 and the likely Republican winner tomorrow, is a man whose proudest accomplishment, at least this is the impression his campaign ads leave me with, seems to be leading the campaign to whip up a statewide furor of homophobia sufficient to pass an amendment to the Ohio constitution banning gay marriage. His primary opponent Jim Petro opposed passage of the amendment, according, again, to Blackwell's ads, and those ads conflate opposition to the amendment with favoring gay marriage, though there were many other reasons not to want to see the measure adopted, not the least of which was that the legislaturer had already passed a "Defense of Marriage" law which banned gay marriage. Blackwell's ads stop just short of calling Petro a "faggot," which I'm sure he would do if he thought he could get away with it.

By the way, does it strike anyone else as smacking of conflict of interest that the man in charge of overseeing elections statewide should be actively campaigning for any candidate other than himself? Maybe that's what we need an amendment to ban. I would, in fact, favor removing the Secretary of State's office from the realm of campaign politics altogether by making it an appointed office. I'm sure most voters have no idea what the SoS does or who the people are behind those names on the ballot.

Okay, enough politics....let's see what my evil twin, Charlie Sheen has been up to lately:

Charlie Sheen's porn habit cited in divorce case

Hell, I think I'd rather have Charlie Sheen as my governor than either of those two bozos.

The Word's Quote of the Week

"I'm a conscientious American, therefore I have to be angry."

--Henry Rollins on Wait Wait--Don't Tell Me 4/22/06

Taking Stock of Blackwell

I'm going to turn my attention today to Ohio's gubernatorial race, mainly because I think "gubernatorial" is a cool sounding word that I just don't get to use enough. (Other favorite words include "zeitgiest" and "benighted"--the latter, which means "in the dark", is one that I'm sure I'll have plenty of opportunity to use in writing about politicians.)

Anyway, this here story appeared on The Columbus Dispatch's site today:

Blackwell reports shares in Diebold

For those of you out of state, Ken Blackwell is Ohio's Secretary of State, aka The Guy In Charge of Overseeing Elections, which includes deciding which voting machines to use, and Diebold manufactures voting machines and the former head of the company has been widely and famously quoted as having promised to deliver Ohio to Bush in the last presidential election. So, you can see why Blackwell owning Diebold stock might look a little fishy to some people.

The article states that "...Blackwell said his investments were handled by a financial manager without his advice or review, and after he discovered during the past weekend that he owned stock in Diebold Inc., he sold his shares yesterday at a loss. "(In other words, Blackwell was "benighted" concerning the contents of stock portfolio. Hah! Told you!!)

At the very least, Blackwell hired the wrong financial manager. Doesn't it seem like common sense that you don't expose your client to charges of possible conflict of interest by, oh, let's say...buying stock in a voting machine company for a Secretary of State?

To tell you the truth, I believe Blackwell... I do not like Ken Blackwell and I most definitely do not want to see him become governor of this state, but I will give the man credit for not being stupid. At least not stupid enough to put himself at risk of investigation and political ruin by knowingly investing in a company that his office does business with. Apparently his judgment in hiring--financial managers, at the very least--is a little questionable, however.

My Last Word On The Cartoon Thing

Now that I've actually seen the cartoons that have caused all the kerfluffle around the world, I want to refine, though not change, my views on the matter. Maybe next time I'll get the whole story before sharing my half-baked opinions with the whole planet, but I doubt it.

I disagree with the American editors and news directors who opted not to show the 'toons, maintaining that simply describing them was enough. Unfortunately, I came away with a number of misconceptions based solely on verbal descriptions, including the false idea that the cartoons were the work of a single artist, when the twelve images are the work of a dozen different sets of hands. (I wonder if the Muslim cleric who put a $ 1 million on the cartoonists heads realizes this. Is it $1 million for the death of all twelve, or $1 million each? And just where is a "cleric" getting $1 million, let alone twelve?) That's why I decided to go ahead and post the "bomb turban" 'toon and a link to the whole set of drawings for the education and enlightenment of my dedicated readers.

I'd also said that the incendiary nature of these cartoons was obscuring their message, but I now realize that that was the message. The Danish editors were attempting to strike a blow for free speech. I still question the wisdom of such a move, and believe they failed to consider the possible consequences when they launched their little experiment.

Furthermore, now that I've seen the things, I'm really not impressed.

Anyway, that's the last I'm gooing to say about the subject at least unless some new and bizarre twist occurs that just begs to be commented on after, of course, I've gotten all the facts.

From now on I'll stick to "Cartoon Controversies" that I'm qualified to comment on, such as: Who would win in a fight between Speedball of Marvel's New Warriors and Cheeks the Toy Wonder?

Now back to the important stuff, like this week's trivia question.