Making light of the boot is a bootable offense.

On the all-time sucky thing list, getting a parking ticket for your disabled vehicle has to rank fairly high. Not over having a bird shit on you (still hot at No. 1( and something that has happened to me personally three times, THREE- really, what are the odds of that?)), but well above stepping in dog poop (a common occurrence in dog rich-owner poor Evanston). I walked out to my car an hour ago to move it because I believed the street cleaning days were Wednesday-Thursday. Alas, no. So now I have two parking tickets and not even one working car. Maybe I should take a hint and give away the busted car? Yes, I should. It’s on the list, people. It’s a real list. On a chalkboard. Next to the front door.

- Housing prices continue to slump here in Evanston. Homes here are selling $200,000 less than last year. No, that wasn’t a misprint. $200,000 less. K and I need to start our home hunting pronto.

- Has yet to snow here today. Pretty much the same miserable weather as yesterday.

- While you were watching the classic Bulls game last night, our very own incumbent Urkel appeared on Chicago Tonight. He came to address the firing of a $60,000-a-year admin who has been arrested twice in the last six months. You need to watch this.

Best parts if you don’t want to watch- Todd Stroger stating that “I’m certain employees get arrrested all the time.” Great. I’m so glad our county taxes go toward an effective disciplinary system. He inserts race into the discussion every chance he gets, as if that gives him a poor management waiver. “Just because people look like me doesn’t mean that they’re from the eighth ward.” Righto, Todd. But answer the question. How come so many county hires come from the eighth ward? And the follow up- what does your hiring have to do with race? Hmm…And about his cousin, who resigned over this new employee flap- “She didn’t do anything wrong.” Then why did you have her resign, Todd? Oh, to answer your critics. So, in short, it is OK for county employees to spend their off-times committing crimes. Gotcha. I’ll make sure to remind my close friends who work for the county that it is now open season. No matter what their skin color.

Operation ‘Pants Urkel’ remains in effect. Time to go, Todd.

- Obama released the CIA memoes related to the Bushies’ use of torture. Now the next step is to form a truth committee and lay open all the papers and names related to this mess. If this causes some CIA personnel to lose their jobs, oh well. I don’t want to see trials for those involved in the torture scandal. All that will do is inflict more wounds to our dignity. But we citizens deserve the truth. We need to know how a few individuals hijacked our country and sold our most basic beliefs down to river in the name of short-term political gains. Names. And deeds. After all of this information is released, than we can go through the courts to make sure the guilty individuals who hold law degrees are disbarred. Only after that can we say that the past is truly behind us. Without an investigation, we will provide an awful example for every developing country. Do the right thing, Barack.

Che shirt and Western suit coat? You, my friend, have the fashion sense of a troll.

The man at the right in this photo is Gary Pasciucco,  a former vice chairman of Morgan Stanley who now runs AIG Financial Products. That division is the prodigal arm of the insurer which guaranteed the credits swap that unraveled the global economy. Gary and his cronies will now receive millions in bonuses, even though you and I now own AIG. Yes, the politicians should be outraged. Yes, these corporate douchebags should feel such shame that thoughts of suicide are not foreign. But, America, this is a smokescreen! The bonuses are just a small slice of the hundreds of billions of wasted dollars you, me, everybody spent in the mad dash to prop up Wall Street greedheads.

Don’t let the witch hunt to catch these bonus boneheads and Bernie Madoff distract you from the real scandal. The people who got us into this mess are running the show! Timothy Geithner ran the New York branch of the Federal Reserve which signed off on these poisonous assets!

Congress and Obama administration, we don’t want to get back the .01 percent of our Wall Street bailout. We want it all back. We want the heads of those firms which got us into this miss. We want the heads of those in government who did as well. Hank Paulson. Ben Bernanke. And, yes, Timothy Geithner. They must resign and join the shame chain in front of the American people.

How did AIG receive all these funds, no strings attached, with rules they created? AIG contributed to the campaign funds of both parties. Obama received a ton of money from Wall Street greedheads. Now, those greedheads are running the show. The story of the Obama election was supposed to be the story of small donors. We now know it was really the story of Wall street insiders.

Why is Obama bailing out Wall Street at an even more aggressive pace than the Bushies? Where is the change promised during the campaign?

Yet again, America, we’ve been had. Send your complaints directly to the White House.

Shame on you, President Obama. You’re no better than the rest. Money, pure and simple, continues to run this country. Lack of accountability is still the flavor of the month in Washington D.C. In three years, you watch, the Gary Pasciuccos of the world will still make society pages and Joe Struggle will still see no way out of his debt.

- Gawker released AIG memo warning employees of mob justice. Why are the afraid? Most likely because they’re guilty. Don’t burn all the employees’ homes down. Only those you find still enjoying luxury vehicles and meals. Reposess, people, reposess. It’s our stuff anyway.

This Tuesday, President Obama reversed the intransigence of the Bush administration and signed legislation which allows federal funding for embryo-derived stem-cell research. Obama heralded the signing as step toward the removal of politics from science. Unless, of course, you want to score political points with those who wished to see this reversal and paint those opponents of this research as religious zealots. And that is the case with this reversal.

The advances which will come from this decision promise to be nothing less than revolutionary. In The Atlantic, William Haseltine writes about the medical advances to come.

Scientists and doctors at Wake Forest have already successfully implanted the first laboratory-made human organs–bladders and urethras. Coming soon: synthetic corneas, heart valves, skin, cartilage, tracheas, and vaginas. More ambitious plans are underway to replace lost digits, muscles, and nerves, and to build entirely new complex organs such as livers, kidneys, and human hearts.

Great, right? We can build replacement organs. Right now, there are a glut of unwanted embryos frozen at fertility clinics across the country. I have no problem with using those embryos to further research.But once we build replacement organs, what’s to stop us from building replacement embryos for our children? Embryos are humans. I don’t think most Americans are comfortable with embryo factories. In Slate, William Saletan defends the position of the other side.

To most of us, the dilemma is more compelling from this angle [from the side of pro-research]. It seems worse to let the girl die for the embryo’s sake than to kill the embryo for the girl’s sake, particularly since embryos left over from fertility treatments will be discarded or left to die, anyway. But it’s still a dilemma. And as technology advances, the dilemmas will become more difficult. Already, researchers are clamoring to extend Obama’s policy so they can use federal money to create and destroy customized embryos, not just use the ones left over from fertility treatments.

My fear in all this is that we’re giving conservative America a new front. Just like pro-choice proponents liberalized abortion laws throughout the country, instigating a raging cultural debate which has yet to subside, I fear the same could happen over embryonic research. Inevitably, some scientists will grow embryos for research with federal funds. The ensuing debate will have very little to do with science, but very much to do with politics and religion.

Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius wishfully think they have stuffed their opponents into a black hole of pure scientific reason. They will soon find out that just as science deigns to even nod toward religion, science bares the same ignorance toward politics, and therefore, the interests of any political party.

CNBC interviewed Nouriel Roubini, RGE Monitor, and Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan author. You need to watch this! These two are rightly famous because they both predicted the economic mess we are in more than a year ago. The reason we are in such a mess? Our banks were too big and too highly leveraged. Both of them state that we need to look at a completely new way of doing business, and we must start by ridding Wall Street of those who made the mistakes in the first place. This is the exact position we at Shambollocks! have taken since this crisis began.

What makes this video must-see is that it sums up for me the problem we have in America right now. Wall Street does not want to reform. They don’t believe they did anything wrong. Basically, their attitude is ‘Shit happens’. The round table of CNBC talking head twats continue to ask these esteemed economists variations ot the same questions- “How can I get my money back?” The answer these economists give is we won’t get our money back, unless we completely change the system. That is not what CNBC wants to hear. Their ad revenue comes from Wall Street. Wall Street doesn’t want things to change. Neither do the politicians.

Geithner’s bailout will fail just as Paulson’ did. We need to take over the banks, fire everyone in their leadership, and start from scratch. Of course, that’s an awful lot of responsibility. So our government doesn’t want to do it. And Wall Street doesn’t want to be punished. Sigh. It’s a rigged system.

Follow these guys advice. Cash is king. Do not spend. Save. Credit like we knew will never happen again, and if it does, it will burst again. Don’t trust Wall Street.

If you thought that the decades long Great American Leaders Search had ended with the inauguration of President Obama, well, you’re wrong. Six months into the New Depression most Americans don’t know how we got here, what we can do to get through this, and, most importantly, what we can do to avoid a mess like this ever developing again. We are clueless and ignorant, watching a debate over a stimulus package nobody really likes and nobody knows for sure will work.

I’m not going to lie to you. It sucks to be American right now.

Unlike politicians, we at Shambollocks! are not beholden to anybody. No corporate teat nourishes us, so we will level with you. We need to spend money. Lots of it. And after that, we’re going to have to spend more money. Lots of it. I don’t want to spend money. In general, I am a fiscal conservative. But right or left, the consensus is this-spend!

What should we spend it on? Infrastructure and investments in green energy. States should be given millions of dollars to improve public transportation. High-speed rail should be tested, and, if feasible, built in the Great Lakes and the East Coast. Renewable energy sources should be researched, financed, and given tax cuts. After that, cut taxes on businesses with fewer than a hundred employees. Extend limited housing credits to those who face foreclosure. Extend unemployment insurance through 2009 at least, with an option on 2010.

But my plan comes with pain. All universities will have endowments over a certain level taxed heavily. Those funds will be distributed in grants toward states’ funds for elementary and secondary education. All federal aid toward universities will be cut. If you want to go to college, you will have to pay for it. Or the state’s will have to work out their own aid. But no longer will the government fund an education that rewards the wealthy and the gifted. Those groups already have their rewards.

I don’t give a rat’s ass if Ivy League schools offer free tuition. I want Johnny Jackson in Philly, in L.A, and in Chicago to know how to read.

I would increase the highest tax bracket by one percent. They can afford it. I would greatly increase corporate taxes.  Money from corporate taxes would be given to the states to pay higher medical costs. If the corporations want lower taxes, they can tell their puppets in Congress to pass real health-care reform instead of giving it lip-service.

Financial institutions who receive aid will have to voluntarily enact plans to break their brokerage arm from their commercial lending arm from their financial products arm. If this crisis proved one thing, it is that bigger is not better. Stiffer regulation should ensure larger capitalization at all lending institutions. If you don’t have the money at hand when audited, you are taken over by the government.

Most importantly, all institutions given government aid must have their leadership restructured. Those who got us into this mess should join the unemployment line like everybody else.

That’s my plan.

What do we have right now? We have a president who has stumbled severely in his first 30 days. I knew the Clinton folk weren’t the solution.  I had no idea the Clinton folk would do the same mistakes they did the first time. I blame the nominees for their tax problems, not Obama. But he should have shown Geithner the door. He still should. And while he’s at it, show Larry Summers the door. He was on the board of Citibank! We will continue to tell the powers that be that no one with blood on their hands gets to clean this up.

BO’s people could learn a thing or two from the Bushies. Where is the use of the bully pulpit? Speak at the Hoover Dam. Let America know our proud history of financial reconstruction. The man was an excellent campaigner, but he needs to amp up his appearances. My gut instinct- this team knows how to win campaigns, but never knew how to govern. Ditch the Clinton deadwood, BO! This being said, BO tried to earn consensus on his stimulus package. He understands the gravity of this crisis. Considering the sheer size of this challenge, he gets a C-. He earns bonus points for having to deal with these idiots…

The congressional Democrats! Oy vey! I now know what it must feel like to be a Cub fan. How in the dickens could the Democrats, in one month!, get hoodwinked by Bobby Rush and Cook County Democrats into seating Senator Burris AND lose all momentum with Obama’s stimulus package. They just kicked ass in an election and have near-insurmountable advantages in both houses. No way they could lose, right? Nope, they did what they always do. They larded the stimulus package with needless spending, and allowed the Republican to rise from the grave. They’ve completely lost America. Their strategy remains the same- watch the Republicans blow themselves up. Hey, Dems, you’re luck is going to run out soon. Get together with the executive branch and start GOVERNING! They earn an F. And they get that for showing up.

Yes, D.C. is now riddled with zombie Republicans. When we last left the Republicans, their tomb had no flowers and few visitors. What a difference a month makes! Thanks to the horrid lack of Democratic governing talent, the Republicans are back for more of our brains. They refuse to support the stimulus because, hold on, it spends too much money! This from the party that blew up the Clinton era surplus in the time it takes me to decide to go record-shopping or not. Now the party of fiscal discipline (sigh), they’ve hammered the wussy Democrats as spendthrifts and socialists. Basically, nailing the script they’ve used on Dems for the last fifty years. They don’t want to spend anything, they want to cut taxes. They basically want to deepen the crisis. Bravo, Republican zombies. You continue to earn my vehement disgust. Zombies must be eliminated. Zombies don’t get grades.

So, in short, we have the status quo of the last thirty odd years in D.C. The Democrats don’t know how to govern, and the Republicans don’t want to govern. Big change.

Why are Americans so ignorant of the details of our plight? Because nobody wants us to know anything. The Tribune’s Friday front page contained a large photo of a swank dinner party. The accompanying article spoke of the rising rate of split checks at restaurants. The photo indicated which party member paid what. Their tabs: $212, $162, $135. In what middle class is that a budget night out? Hell, K and I sweat when we pay $30 out. On Monday’s Trib front page, they pulled off an amazing feat. No news on the front page. Not one piece of news. Their Monday feature told us of extraditions of illegal aliens. With the job losses, how many Americans do you think really care about these extraditions? How about explaining the stimulus legislation?! What do they teach these people at Medill? I now continue my subscription for purely humor-related reasons. I treat it like the Onion.

We need to pass this stimulus package now. Even Republican and bill supporter Arlen Specter said, “The country cannot afford not to take action. ” It’s the right thing to do.

Before you start throwing around the word socialism and besmirching the New Deal, take a look at what the New Deal gave us. And I hope you don’t need that Social Security. Or unemployment insurance. Yeah, those are the New Deal, too.

You need to get back on the mic. Suckas on to your title.

Mathematics by Mos Def

Today, everybody wants to talk about the Inaugral Address. What did you think of it? Did it embolden you to risk a path less taken? Did it leave you wanting more? I don’t believe any of those questions touch at the heart of the matter. Yesterday was profound not for what we heard but what we saw. A black president taking the oath of office. A black commander-in-chief receiving salutes when in the midst of our military. A regal black woman from our segregated urban ‘ghettoes’ dancing with her husband as America watched. That is what made yesterday profound. Those images, broadcast all over the world, will remain in our memories in a way that words never will.

The best words spoken during the inauguration ceremony came from Rev. Joseph Lowery. Their power emanated from the ancient rhythm of black spoken word. Begun in the call-and-response of field calls, strengthened in the epic services of black Churches, mastered by oral wizards as disparate as Dr. King and Malcolm X, black speech propels the listener. It defeats monotony by attracting our musical ear. We want to hear more because it sounds good. President Obama’s speech yesterday did not equal some of the rousing triumphs he has given us. But it was in no way a failure. A president should be measured by deeds, not words. From this day forth, we will perceive the true measure of our new leader.

President Obama will find himself held responsible for his brothers’ keep to a degree no politician has ever known. The condition of the American black male is woeful. Whether impoverished, incarcerated, or uneducated, too many black males fail to make positive contributions to society. If you listen to hip-hop, you’ll hear lots of fear, lots of anger. But you won’t hear many solutions. Nine years ago, Mos Def released his first solo album, Black On Both Sides. The album, and the track ‘Mathematics’ in particular, work as a State of the Black Male address which could easily help President Obama know those for which he is now responsible. And Obama’s on the hook for a lot.

Rock your hardhat black cause you in the Terrordome
full of hard niggaz, large niggaz, dice tumblers
Young teens and prison greens facin life numbers
Crack mothers, crack babies and AIDS patients
Young bloods can’t spell but they could rock you in PlayStation
This new math is whippin motherfuckers ass
You wanna know how to rhyme you better learn how to add
It’s mathematics

DJ Premier provides the old-school scratching. Mos Def’s early work as an MC has equals, but no betters. In college, when most hip-hop was either too violent or too pop-sheen, his flow doubled as a hip-hop primer.The albums Black Star and Black On Both Sides blew me away. They were proud but not preachy, fun but not fake or forced. They made you think- think about what we do for others, how we always take care of ourselves. Mos Def, like all great MCs, understands black oral tradition. He knows it is not only the word that has power, but the pause before the word as well, to paraphrase Miles Davis’ definition of jazz. And sure, this joint is nine years old, but ain’t nothing listed in this track that hasn’t gotten worse under Bush.

Young soldiers tryin to earn they next stripe
When the average minimum wage is $5.15
You best believe you gotta find a new ground to get cream
The white unemployment rate, is nearly more than triple for black
so frontliners got they gun in your back
Bubblin crack, jewel theft and robbery to combat poverty
and end up in the global jail economy
Stiffer stipulations attached to each sentence
Budget cutbacks but increased police presence
And even if you get out of prison still livin
join the other five million under state supervision
This is business, no faces just lines and statistics
from your phone, your zip code, to S-S-I digits
The system break man child and women into figures
Two columns for who is, and who ain’t niggaz
Numbers is hardly real and they never have feelings
but you push too hard, even numbers got limits
Why did one straw break the camel’s back? Here’s the secret:
the million other straws underneath it – it’s all mathematics

It may not be fair to lay this all on Obama. But others’ expectations are infrequently fair. What he can do is continue the dialogue we all started during his campaign-what does it mean to be Americans? What do we owe our fellow citizens? Honest answers to those questions may present solutions the majority of us can find palatable. Maybe they will begin to address the staggering figures surrounding the black males’ condition. But one thing is certain. We will always need words on which we can reflect. And we will all get behind a leader whose work we can respect. Amen.

Sometimes we need a fake newspaper to tell us the truth. In January of 2001, The Onion wrote an aricle entitled ‘Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’. The article predicted much of what was to come, albeit with tongue firmly in cheek.

Bush swore to do “everything in [his] power” to undo the damage wrought by Clinton’s two terms in office, including selling off the national parks to developers, going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies, and passing sweeping budget cuts that drive the mentally ill out of hospitals and onto the street.

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.

“You better believe we’re going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration,” said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. “Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?”

On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further.

Wall Street responded strongly to the Bush speech, with the Dow Jones industrial fluctuating wildly before closing at an 18-month low. The NASDAQ composite index, rattled by a gloomy outlook for tech stocks in 2001, also fell sharply, losing 4.4 percent of its total value between 3 p.m. and the closing bell.

So true. It hurts a bit to read this today. What the above signifies more than anything else to me is the true death of our mainstream press. Where was the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post through so much of the humiliating shenanigans perpetrated by Bush? They failed, each and every one, until much too late into Bush’s second term for any of their investigations and criticism to matter. The predicament that most newspapers find themselves in now is self-inflicted. The civic bond that tied resident to paper was irrevocably harmed when they failed to question so many Bush policies.

What it also signifies to me is how incredibly we Americans were duped. I too voted for George Bush once. I take responsibility for that vote. I was wrong. Point blank. Nobody’s fault but mine. But I have worked since then to do everything in my power to negate that silly, ill-advised vote. And it is the mission of this humble web site to continue this struggle every day, against all powers-that-be that wish to disenfranchise all of us. Do not think that our enemies have left the stage. In many early instances already they appear to be just as intertwined with this infant administration as they were with the last. Check back here each day as we at Shambollocks! cover the news that is left unspoken.

The Bush administration has finally ended. Hallelelujah! But let us not shirk our civic duties as soon as our celebratory hangovers fade. President Obama must now earn all the work many of us put in for him. We will be watching. And reading. And writing.

I [Heart] Secret Societies

While we in Chicago froze our asses off and pushed around our busted vehicles, the Douchebags of the Universe who make up Kappa Betta Phi held their annual secret handshake convention at the St. Regis on Fifth Avenue in the NYC last week. Their HS newspaper, the Wall Street Journal was there. Surely, with all the extra peripheral damage that Wall Street has wrought of late, there would be a little more solemnity accompanying the “Thank you sirs, may I have another”, right?

“I feel like the mayor of New Orleans after Katrina,” quipped Alfred E. Smith IV, the group’s leader, or “Grand Swipe,” at the opening of its annual black-tie dinner last week. “Today, the FBI put out a warning that Al Qaeda was planning an attack to cripple the U.S. economy,” inductee Martin Gruss joked later in the evening. “I’ve got news for them, Congress has already done that.”

Um, no. Difference between you and Mayor Nagin, shitbag? Mayor Nagin was thrust into a NATURAL disaster for which he got very little assistance. You, you unctous waste of carbon, CAUSED the disaster and received TONS of federal assistance. What you should feel is the tightening of a noose around your neck. Al-Qaeda would slap themselves over the top of their heads in luck if they could even do a tenth of the amount of damage you yes-men did by just not knowing what the the f#ck you were doing. And Marty, yeah, let’s blame Congress for that. Just like you blamed the girl for the rape and the black kid for not getting into that grad program, right?

My God, they’re so full of themselves they invite the press to come and watch the show! This is America, people. Front and center. These are the people who are the problem. Bill Murray was right in Rushmore. “Keep the rich kids in your sights, and take them down.”

And all of you, all of you high on change- guess who didn’t attend? BO’s nominee for the SEC, Mary Shapiro. This is who BO assigned to watch the hen house, a member of this secret fraternity of financial sociopaths. BO, we said earlier, nobody involved with this mess gets to clean it up. President-elect Obama, cut them off. We wish to no longer be taken advantage of by these arrogant, greedy bastards.

They ended the night with a rendition of ‘American Pie’. It included the line- ‘Bye, bye, my slice of the pie’.

Shut down that stove, BO. Let’s make sure the next time they want dessert, they foot the bill themselves.

Do not call us the Huxtables!

The New Yorker has a delightful Barack and Michelle profile from 1996. The two were interviewed by Mariana Cook for ‘a photography project on couples in America’. The interview reminds you of how reflective the young Obama appeared, and gives us a hint of the worries Michelle had as Barack began his political career.

There is a strong possibility that Barack will pursue a political career, although it’s unclear. There is a little tension with that. I’m very wary of politics. I think he’s too much of a good guy for the kind of brutality, the skepticism.

Get ready for it to get much, much worse, Michelle. We wish both of you and your family all the best during your tenure at 1600. You’ll need all the warm wishes you can foster.

What really transformed Obama’s electoral chances as ‘08 progressed was how many people decided to get active with his campaign. Obama’s campaign benefitted from an explosion of grass-roots organizing not seen in a presidential election since the ’60s. Most of these brand-spanking new organizers connected through MyBarackObama.com, or MyBO. Yesterday’s Boston Globe profiled the people behind Blue State Digital, the firm behind MyBO. I myself had a MyBO account, and was fascinated as the campaign developed how powerful this social networking application became. There is no doubt in my mind that Obama’s online organizing won him the election. If you want to know who the people behind the curtin were, this is a must-read.