Come Heller high water … The February 10 edition

Come Heller high water …

• Oh, c’mon, it’s impossible to blame Gov. Snyder for declining the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee invitation to testify. If you were a Republican governor would you? The invite was meant for show anyway. If he’d said yes they’d have been shocked. The Nerd King should testify before Congress,  however, because it’s the right thing to do. (It was also politics, by the way, that he wasn’t subpoenaed when others were, so nonsense cuts both ways.) In fact, you’d think he’d be eager to. He’s gone out of his way to try and prove how forthright and transparent he is, right? (Except, of course, for that highly selective release of emails, which, by the way, will come back to bite him.) So why clam up now, especially when he’s being offered a national stage to blabber-jabber about the glories of relentless positivity?
• Snyder, former Flint emergency manager Darnell Earley and DEQ employees were named in yet another lawsuit, this one filed by the father of a 2-year-old who tested positive for lead. Better get used to it, gang. You’re going to be in court an awful lot for the next 10 years. Enjoy. You’ve earned it.
• This probably says something about me (judge if you must) but the only Super Bowl commercial to make me laugh involuntarily was the Doritos one where the baby fetches the chip at an, um, delicate moment for his momma. (If you haven’t yet, check out USA Today’s admeter list, which ranks and links all 63 commercials. Quite fun.)
• The most disturbing commercial I’ve ever seen (not just during a Super Bowl) was Mountain’s Dew’s puppymonkeybaby. What the hell, Mountain Dew? What. The. Hell? (It finished 55th on admeter, which is a bit weird because that means people thought eight other commercials were worse? You serious, America?)
• Last completely obvious, totally unfair,  but needs-to-be-said Super Bowl observation: Does Peyton Manning have the hugest forehead in history or what?
• I don’t care what anybody says, a paczki is just a jelly donut on lard steroids.
• Marco Rubio lost in New Hampshire – and for the Republican nomination – because Chris Christie owned him at the debate. When Christie called him out for his bizarre “Obama knows exactly what he’s doing” mantra (wait, knowing what you’re doing is a bad thing now?), Rubio seemed to physically shrink. He looked like a nervous high school debate kid with a neck suddenly to small for his collar. Everyone saw him for what he is – a pretender. Bye bye, nomination.
• When I look outside and see – for the umpteenth month in a row – nothing but gloppy snow, bare trees and gray skies , I think this: The Detroit Tigers’ pitchers and catchers report to spring training in sunny, windy, wonderful Lakeland, Fla., in one week and a day, meaning spring here is only, oh, about 8-10 weeks away.
• Can I ask a peevish question: Where are the plows and salt trucks? Do we not pay for these things? It’s been a mild winter. They haven’t been needed much. So when snow is forecast, even if it’s not much, why aren’t they salting before it hits? And why don’t they plow for what seems like days on end? The main roads they seem to get to – eventually. But neighborhood streets and even a lot of main routes through town, it’s like they don’t even bother anymore. Any road commission folks wanna explain why?
• I’m no fan of the GOP-controlled Michigan Senate. But they didn’t actively include language in an amended version of a pet adoption bill criminalizing sodomy. But they did leave existing language in the bill that bans “the abominable and detestable crime against nature,” which is legislative code for sodomy. The point is it’s nothing new. As the wonderful and much recommended Eclectablog puts it: “This law did not alter it by either by making it more illegal or by removing it. There’s basically no need to because the U.S. Supreme Court already outlawed sodomy laws in 2003. So, yes, they could have removed the language and chose not to. But nothing has changed. Sodomy laws are still just as unconstitutional in Michigan today as they have been since 2003.”
• “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” – Carl Jung.