Rowdy's Roundup - Crist, Cyber Pirates, Bettie Paige... and more!

One of the wags at Fire Dog Lake ponders this delicious moment from Florida Governor Charlie Crist's recent nuptials (as reported on MSNBC):  "Crist kissed (Carole) Rome briefly at the end of the ceremony - perhaps too briefly. She put her hands on his face and kissed him again." 

TBogg writes:  "This adds a whole new dimension to the term 'sexual tension.'  While Charlie looks to be a work in progress for a game and undaunted Carole, Maggie Gallagher can start using Crist as the poster boy who proves that gays can get married as long as they are willing to deny the very core of their being and engage in humiliating and unappealing sex acts at least once a week or possibly twice if TNT is showing Top Gun and the Harvey Wallbangers are flowing..."  (Meow.)
   
Over at Texas Kaos,  J.H. Behrman contends that modern day cyber pirates are far more sinister than those who sail the seas:  "To be sure, in cyberspace, they are new and much more extensive and dangerous than just downloading music and video files or even stealing bond-elections. They are central to financing and conducting terrorism. They have something to do with all those trillions that the central banks are wiring into cyberspace with no clue where it is ending up or what it is actually doing for or to the world economy. And, they are the pretext for massive assaults on traditional liberties by -- in the case of the National Security Agency -- US Navy (Cryptography) Admirals who may or may not know what they are doing other than, of course, spending lots of money in, say, Steny Hoyer's Congressional District."  (When these pirates plunder international financial institutions, we all end up walking the plank.)

Ezra Klein believes that progressives worry too much about the ideological trends in Obama's appointments:  "Politics is not the simple application of ideology. The model many seem to have of Obama's decision-making process holds that he examines the pool of possible applicants, chooses the individual whose ideas conform most closely to his own, and names them to the position. As such, beliefs are the relevant qualification. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Rather, experience has come first in most of Obama's choices. What unites Daschle, Gates, Emanuel, Jones, Clinton, Summers, Geithner, Orszag, Rice, Volcker, Schiliro, and Biden is not ideology. It's relevant experience... Put another way, imagine Obama's policies are 75% as liberal as some would want, but his administration is 100% effective at passing this agenda. Would that be better or worse than an administration that's fully liberal but has only a 40% success rate? ... And so he's assembled the left-of-center team that's maximally experienced at 'getting stuff done' rather than maximally liberal."  (Damn you, Ezra!  Now I'll have to find something else to bitch about.)   Continued, after the jump... 

Shakesville's Melissa McEwan considers the legacy of 50's pin-up icon and S&M starlet Bettie Page:  "Like most sexualized imagery, there are legitimate critiques that take issue with some (e.g. the submissive bondage series), or even all, of her work.  But I also think it's fair to say that any woman who appreciates whatever recognition of her sexual autonomy she has owes a little something to Bettie Page, a survivor of multiple sexual assaults who made our culture consider the idea of a woman owning her own damn body."  (I was mildly disappointed in the 2006 Hollywood biopic, The Notorious Bettie Page.  It's not a complete waste of time, though, if your expectations aren't high.)

Over at Huffington Post, Steven Weber has a few dozen pointed words about our response to the financial crisis:  "The trillion dollar bailout was a scam. No accountability. No disclosure. It smelled awful but we let the greed whores do it anyway. They said Do It Or Else XYZ Will Happen! We flinched. And they had us. But good. The old ones are the best. Forget their blatant abuse of the system. Forget their utter contempt for justice, for fairness, for honesty, for Democracy, for America. Forget the media's blizzard of pallid punditry, with their candy coated smiles and their phlegmmy shrieks and their distracting bust lines. Think: the corporate capitalisto-fascists must hate, I mean reeeaaallly, hate... People. Must hold them in utter disdain. And to harbor such dizzying revulsion for them it must be that they truly, ultimately fear them. Though clearly, not while they trundle around in their Ambien sleep-walk-eat-fuck state."  (But Steve, tell us what you really think.)

Crooks and Liars' John Amato responds to the GOP's recent 'Action Alert - Auto Bailout' memo:  "The GOP sent the first shot across the bow of the upcoming Obama administration as they killed the auto rescue plan Thursday night. It never was about trying to help the automakers or the economy, but an effort to crush the working class and punish unions. There are many more people in line to suffer if the Big 3 go out of business, but Shelby and his band of brothers couldn't care less. Union Busting is a high priority for these Conservative fools that have allowed our country to be run into the ground. Can you name anything good that has come out of the eight years of Bush and Conservative dominance? So what is their solution? To take it out on the blue collars of America."  (Will working-class Americans remember any of this when election time rolls around again?)