Vibrating razors...

I got this vibrating razor a few weeks ago. I’m not really sure what to completely make of this thing yet. Allegedly in another great marketing scheme thought up by people at Gillette, they say that this new razor makes for an even closer shave than before. No, really, it is supposed to do this. Whether it really does this or not, I’m not really sure to be certain, but in the few times that I have raked this thing across my face, the skin seems to feel smoother, and looks smoother. Yeah, my 5 o’ clock shadow doesn’t come back for like 30 minutes now, whereas before, it was more like 10 minutes. If you have ever seen Fred Flintstone or Homer Simpson, the shading they have around their faces, that’s about what I look like, even when freshly shaven. It’s almost, no, it is ridiculous. I can’t help it. I have “thick hair” genes or something that I was either blessed or cursed with when I was born. Sure, I still have a full head of hair on top of my head from these genes, and for someone in their 30’s, this is pretty freakin’ good. But I also have a full back of hair, a full ass of hair, and a full chest of hair. And that stuff is just very annoying. I keep thinking about getting laser hair removal, but after hearing some horror stories about such things, I’ll just deal with it. There was a woman here in Raleigh, NC that had laser hair removal, but before she could even get to the final process, she was dead because of the topical numbing cream her doctor had given her to use before the procedure. She obviously had an allergic reaction. Tragic consequences that came out of the pursuit of vanity I say. Going back to the razor though, it kind of makes shaving fun, because even if the vibrating thing isn’t doing anything, it feels like a face massage, and that’s OK with me. I think that they have cornered the market on men’s beauty products anyway, so what’s one more thing to throw into the ring?

The big thing this week though is the Senate battle over judicial nominees (did you see how I segwayed into politics right from back hair – pretty cool eh??). We have this enormous jackass up there in the form of Bill Frist, who has been talking and talking and talking some more about triggering the nuclear option to rule out judicial filibusters. In order to do this, he would need a simple majority of Senators to vote to change Senatorial processes on the floor. In other words, he’d be taking away the minority dissent from the Senate floor on these remaining 12 nominees that Bush has kept trotting out to the Senate and the American people. While the Republicans have a majority in the Senate, and the House for that matter, they could make this change very easily. Triggering this change though I think would be detrimental. This would make the Democrats go into full shut down mode for the most part. They would then be uncooperative in the Senate on everything else for the remainder of the term. It could be disastrous, and all because Bush wants ALL of his judicial nominees put onto the bench, and just not 99% of them. Since he’s been in office, Bush has had all of his nominees confirmed by the Senate except for these remaining 12. The Republicans in the Senate keep preaching about up or down votes on the Bush’s nominees because they are the people that Bush thinks should be on those benches. Well, they were singing a different tune when Clinton was in office, and they killed off 60 or more of his nominees in committee BEFORE they were allowed onto the Senate floor. 60! Let me say that again. 6-0! They obviously didn’t believe that all of Clinton’s nominees deserved up or down votes on the Senate floors, so why should Bush’s? Should we just pencil whip the judiciary arm of our government? I think not. This is most definitely blurring the line of the separation of powers. Essentially, the way that it has been since Bush took office is that he tells Congress what he wants, and he gets it. Almost no questions asked. You can really count on one hand the times a Republican Congressman/woman has questioned Bush on something, or raised doubts about what the President wanted or wants. McCain does it once in awhile, because he has a backbone. The Senators from Maine actually do it a lot as well, because they seem to be more mindful of being good common sense type of people rather than toting the party line 24/7. But for the rest, they’re just yes men and women who are at the beck and call of the President. Plainly, that just sucks.

I saw today where Bush is talking about vetoing a bill that would provide more money for research into stem cells. He doesn’t want more money going into this research. Once again, the Bush administration proves that they are very anti-science. For them, it’s all fine and good to kill off 100,000 innocent people in the name of the war on terrorism, but taking some stem cells from aborted fetuses and possibly using those stem cells in curing currently incurable ills in the world, and doing that with federal monies just seems to be an abomination to him. He equates it with basically taking a life to possibly save a life. Well, it’s just not like that Mr. President. The man is such a dumb ass, I can’t believe that we as a nation re-elected that mealy mouthed SOB. Really now. What were we thinking?

The other thing I found very funny this week was Laura Bush coming out and saying that she was going on a goodwill tour of the Middle East this week, or next week, or sometime here in the near future. She is going on this tour to promote the goodwill of the United States in general, mostly because, in her own words (I’m paraphrasing here of course), she needs to repair the damage done to America’s reputation from the Newsweek story about the desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay. She must be off in la-la land. Lady, your husband has done more to damage the reputation of this great country over the last 5 years than any one person has probably done in history. Let me see what kind of list I can come up… Here are some things that have promoted ill will towards the US that he’s done:

• Breaking off all relations with North Korea
• Attacking Iraq
• Repeatedly ignoring the UN
• Attacking Afghanistan
• Supporting Israel
• Endangering relations with our NATO allies
• Responsible for starting the war in Iraq that has killed over 100,000 innocent people
• Making sure the rich get richer
• Trying to dismantle Social Security
• Drilling oil wells in the Arctic Refuge
• Pulling out of the Kyoto protocol (because he doesn’t believe global warming is ‘real’)
• Turning back environmental protections put into place by Clinton and previous administrations

And my list could go on forever…

The point is, the anti United States sentiment being portrayed by most of the rest of the world is not due to a 6 sentence story that ran in Newsweek, although the right wing talk radio shows would have you believe this, but by a muddled and shitty foreign policy being foisted upon the world by the Bush administration. And it shall continue at least until 2008, when hopefully, we’ll get him out of office, unless he changes the Constitution to allow himself another term to really run the country and probably the world into the ground. I mean, Hell, he already talked about getting the Constitution amended once before (so gay people couldn’t get married), but he dropped that as soon as he got re-elected. Funny how the right side of the political spectrum keeps trying to take rights away from people that they don’t already have. Ah, the right wing view of being the so-called persecuted MAJORITY. I love this concept that they have out there. It works. It really does work. Even when you’re in the majority, and are running things, and have been running things for a long time, the way to consolidate your power is to tell everyone that there are forces out there trying to attack and bring down your way of life, when the truth is so much further from that. But it does scare people, and energizes their base, which is why we’re stuck with an Alfred E. Neumann look-a-like in the White House bringing down the house around our ears. Bush is such a shmuck.