The Sunshine Empire

I had spent a day floating down the Ichetucknee river with my extended family and was away from the news cycle.  As I was heading back down I-10 I get a call from TV’s Jolemite asking if I’d heard about Governor Hotness stepping down.  I had read in recent days that Sarah Palin had all but decided not to seek a second term as Governor of Alaska in order to free herself to build the momentum for a 2012 Presidential run.  When I hung up I found a message from Biggus Rickus that she had in fact stepped down.  Now my first impression was that I was thankful that she was not Vice President.  I then went to CNN for more news on this and both Republican and Democratic operatives stated that this was a curious move and was highly damaging to any Presidential plan she may have.  I switched over to Fox and suprise, it was a good move as far as they were concerned.

Most of the defense of Sarah Palin has been that she now has time to focus on other things.  2012 is almost four years from now and her term was to end in 2010.  She would still have had two years to dedicate to a Presidential bid.  This is a woman that touted her experience and will be coming to the American people with a half served single term of a minor state, facing an incumbent.  If this doesn’t show her laid bare as a flaky bimbo foisted on the American people by a desperate old man than nothing will.  Of course, to hear it from her the real culprit is the same boogie man that has caused all the country’s woes, the media.

me: read this sentence
Foster is the platonic ideal of a boom-and-bust running back, who breaks one or two highlight runs a game and then spends the rest of the time leaving his unfortunate quarterback in second-and-9 after second-and-9.
“platonic ideal”?
Biggus: It’s a little, um, pretentious for a football column.
me: as Will just said, “My relationship with first down is strictly platonic”
Biggus: It makes logical sense, but quintessential or “So-and-so epitomizes” would work better.
me: he means Plato?
Biggus: It should be capitalized I guess, but the Platonic ideal is somewhat commonly used phrase.
me: Socrates would have made a great shut down cornerback
What kind of Quarterback would Kant have been?
Biggus: Middle of the pack probably. Bounce around for about a dozen years, put up a couple of solid seasons.
me: honest question
what would a proto-arch-statist president be?
Biggus: Did you read that somewhere?
me: someone replied to me on twitter and I believe he was callling TR that
Biggus: I would say whoever wrote that needs fewer hyphenated prefixes in his diet.
me: I honestly was going to reply, “Now you are just using excessive dashes to confuse me”

When are elections and Democracy good and when are they bad. Hard to tell these days when it comes to most conservatives. Most rallied around George W. Bush’s freedom agenda when he laid down the lives of American fighting men and women for the wonderful panacea of Democracy for the middle east and Iraq. The Bush administration demanded elections in the Palestinian territories even when it resulted in Hamas being in control. But many are taking a curious tact when it comes to the situation currently in Honduras. President Manuel Zelaya was attempting to stage a referendum, that would decide if a referendum could be staged to give him a second term in a change to the Constitution. The Supreme Court of Honduras told him he could not and he said he would stage the referendum anyway. The military then removed the elected head of the country in favor of a member of Congress. The facts are these. Zelaya had a 30% approval rating and could not have won another term much less the referendum. Zelaya was exiled to another country and not kept for trial or any kind of impeachment proceeding. He may not have been the best guy in the world for his people or for U.S. national interests but this coup is walking and talking like a duck. Conservatives interest in Democracy and elections deciding the fates of nations has taken a back seat to the fact that Zelaya was an ally of that goofy puffy guy in Venezuela. Zelaya having been close to Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro and such seems to make a coup acceptable. But conservatives do not want to admit as much. The argue that Roberto Micheletti was an elected member of Congress and in the line of succession so it’s not a coup (despite the military removing his predecessor.) They also argue that it was done at the insistence of the unelected Supreme Court in the country. Again I don’t see how that avoids the fact that they are unelected and he was removed from the country he was democratically elected to lead by force.

Conservative principles are always pliable when it comes to their favorite boogie men.

Much has been made in the political press about the power of Twitter, especially when it comes to the ongoing turmoil in Iran. Following several Iranians on Twitter has been both thrilling and tragic, but the service as a tool for quickly disseminating information is fantastic. This past Friday I found out first hand how effective it can be even on a local level. As I sat here on the south side of Jacksonville not far from the St. Johns County line, routine but strong thunderstorms passed over us with just some swaying trees and roadsigns. Not long after this a local Twitter feed for local politics re-tweeted a picture of a funnel cloud not far from my Father’s office in Downtown Jacksonville. Immediately several local twitter feeds that I follow, and some friends feeds all started erupting with first hand accounts of multiple waterspouts roaming through different parts of the city. Jacksonville has a combined city and county government so the area between these events was vast comparatively. Then I received a picture of a waterspout not far from my Mother’s office not far from interstate 95 on the southside. Now this is all before any local news websites were reporting the event. But to have such a flow of information showed that Twitter can be more than just the next annoying social networking trend, but something of use.

I know my posting here has become few and far between with my newfound addiction to Twitter, but I wanted to commemorate an anniversary today. It was two years ago that I purchased the domain name www.thesunshineempire.com. I wanted to write about my passions, which are politics and sports. I didn’t really want to do this for any kind of feeling that others should hear me, but more as a constant writing exercise. I have lived my entire life in the sunshine state so I named my blog The Sunshine Empire. Little did I know that in Singapore there was a multi-level marketing company called Sunshine Empire. Due to this I get accidental traffic from the Far East. I’ve always wondered what they thought of my humble blog when they were seeking get rich quick schemes in Asia. Now since the time I’ve been writing we’ve seen events that have changed the course of history, and thrilling sports moments. We’ve seen the birth of bacon wrapped deep fried hot dogs, and I’ve traveled to all the corners of this great country from Cleveland to Sacramento to Portland Oregon. Since the historic elections here in 2008 I’ve felt the writers block come on, but I’m still pretty regular with my growing Twitter Empire. What the future will bring in year three of The Sunshine Empire is anyone’s guess, but I will continue sharing and hope someone enjoys my opinion.

me: I don’t know how much of a difference that makes
some
I listened to a bit of the US open on the radio on the way here
Biggus: Are you playing with the extender thing?
me: If you thought NASCAR was weird on the radio
no
Biggus: That would make it more challenging.
me: I figured I would try again when I’m maxed out
Biggus: I can’t even imagine what golf on the radio is like.
And he swings, and it’s going left. He’s in the rough, but it’s sitting up pretty well.
My God, the dead air.
me: basically
They kept saying, “we’re still waiting for Tiger to take his next shot”
Biggus: I think you want crazy people calling golf on the radio, just so their filler talk is interesting.
me: He came up short and was in the bunker on a par four on his third shot
That’s a fantastic idea
“Wow that’s a great tee shot. Did I mention that the President is eating my brain from the inside?”
Biggus: It’s so hard to find paranoid schizophrenics with a good radio voice though.
me: HA
The Golf Channel could create a reality show centered around such a quest
But pull the same garbage they pulled with that Last Comic Standing and just include David Farety
Biggus: Why does Rush Limbaugh have an approval rating? I think we need one for Oprah.
me: and Bruce Springsteen, Tiger Woods, Daniel Tosh, and Ringo Starr
“I highly disaprove of the job Ringo Starr is doing”
Biggus: I highly dispprove of Kobe’s play in the finals.
disapprove
me: Biggus Rickus is part of a team of academics attempting to disprove that Kobe Bryant actually played in the 2009 NBA Finals
“I not only can disprove that he played in the finals, I can highly dispprove this bunk”
said Rickus
Biggus: I just follow the grant money.

h/t to McCainblogette