Funny Or Die's Presidential Reunion

Comedy with a message, directed by Ron Howard. As Tom Hanks once said, "That Opie Cunningham can sure cut some film".

Funny or Die's Presidential Reunion from Will Ferrell

MASTERMIND OF FAILED ST. LOUIS TRANSIT FUNDING CAMPAIGN "RESIGNS"

From the Tuesday, September 22 St. Louis Business Journal:

St. Louis County lobbyist Cline to resign

St. Louis Business Journal

Darin Cline

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Darin Cline plans to resign as St. Louis County’s chief governmental lobbyist.

Cline’s duties include acting as liaison to the state of Missouri.

Cline also was County Executive Charlie Dooley’s campaign manager in 2006.

“He had an opportunity to get back into full-time political consulting, and it was an opportunity too good to pass up,” said Mac Scott, Dooley’s spokesman. “The county executive wishes him well.”

Cline did not return a request for comment.

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Here's the story from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Curiouser and curiouser...

Home "> Blog Zone "> Political Fix "> Political Fix "> As the rumor mill turns: Dooley aide resigns amid political frenzy

09.22.2009 9:18 am

As the rumor mill turns: Dooley aide resigns amid political frenzy

By Jake Wagman

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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Cline

As our St. Louis County beat reporter Paul Hampel reports in today’s paper, there was intrigue out of Clayton last night, where an aide to County Executive Charlie A. Dooley abruptly resigned.

His departure has nothing to do with persistent rumors of a federal probe into county government, Darin Cline, Dooley’s director of intergovernmental relations said.

Nor, Cline added, was he leaving because of a pending IRS inquiry into his personal finances, though that at least is real, Cline acknowledged.

“My attorneys and my accountant are handling that matter on my behalf,” Cline told Hampel.

Welcome to St. Louis politics, circa August/September 2009.

Since the guilty pleas of two state lawmakers that straddled the city limits — former State Sen. Jeff Smith represented St. Louis, ex-State Rep. Steve Brown calls Clayton home — suspicions have run rampant among Democrats across the region.

Adding to the frenzy is that Smith was caught on a wire worn by Brown, who in turn was busted with the help of recorded conversations he had with now-jailed Democratic strategist Milt “Skip” Ohlsen III.

In other words: You never know who is listening.

Cline’s departure may have more to do with politics than justice — with Dooley gearing up for what could be a tough re-election campaign, he does not need any distractions on the Ninth Floor.

That’s not to say the feds are done with their crackdown of political corruption. But it’s anybody’s guess if the next conviction, should there be one, will finally temper speculation — or add to the paranoia of who might be on deck.

Tags: Charlie Dooley, Darin Cline, Jeff Smith, Skip Ohlsen, Steve Brown

I've written about this gentleman many times before in this blog, and from everything I've been able to ascertain, this is the person behind the embarrassingly amateurish and woefully unsuccessful campaign to add a one half cent sales tax in St. Louis County to fund mass transit. The campaign was run out of St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley's office because Metro, as a public agency, can't conduct a political campaign.

Cline seems to have been the henchman, I prefer the term HACK, charged with running the campaign, and his efforts were so horrid that a freshman PolySci student would have been sent home with his tail between his legs after having proposed a campaign that so underestimated the needs of the people and the importance of the issue. In a real business, this guy would likely have been fired for blowing the campaign, endangering the economy of the entire St. Louis region, and not carrying out his duties on behalf of the people of St. Louis County.

I don't know Darin Cline, but not for lack of trying. I've tried to link to him on Facebook and LinkedIn, but clearly this man wants nothing to do with me. I've written him asking to meet to discuss how I can help the disaster that is mass transit in St. Louis County. Not a word in reply. Maybe its the whole thing about me caring about the St. Louis region. Whatever the reason, it looks like Cline's days are numbered and he might be taking up residence in lovely Terre Haute, Indiana.

As of now, a tax to help raise money for mass transit in St. Louis is due to go on the ballot in April of 2010. County Executive Dooley is in for a major battle for re election, as he has proven once and for all that he is no Buzz Westfall, someone who would have NEVER let Proposition M fail in 2008.

Dooley, and EVERYONE in St. Louis, needs someone with an understanding of the importance of public transit, the economic value to the future of the St. Louis region that comes from a complete transit system, and the ability to communicate a message that will get people to vote for a small tax increase in April. Darin Cline is all but gone, what's the chance Dooley and his cronies can do better and actually get the ballot measure passed?

HEY EVERYBODY, I'M HELPING THE PRESIDENT SPREAD HIS EVIL MESSAGE

I know this will knock me right off Glenn Beck's Christmas Card list, but I think its important. So as a service to America, I'm proud to go against all that is Fox News and offer you, the American Citizen, the chance to watch the President Of The United States poison the minds of unsuspecting children on Tuesday at Noon Eastern, 11 in St. Louis, Midnight Wednesday in Beijing, 8PM in Moscow, and 9PM in Tehran.

If you'd like to read the speech in advance and check for hidden fascist and socialist references, here it is:

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

I must say that it bothers me that so many people are all lathered up about the President addressing kids about staying in school and getting a good education. I don't care who the President is, I have respect for the office and have taught my kids that they should too. Cable news hacks and spineless school districts have urged, and in many cases exercised prior restraint and have already decided that the speech is not appropriate for kids to see at school, or anytime in some people's minds.

I'm a big fan of free expression, and have respect for the Oval Office, regardless of my thoughts about the person sitting in the "big chair". Blocking kids from seeing the President give a "first day of school" speech with absolutely NO idea about the content of the speech is just plain wrong. So below is a link to the live speech, and it will be replaced with an archived version after the broadcast.



I know, I'm a rebel and I'm going on the list of radicals who would dare to disagree with the Tea Partying, Right Wingnuts, but that's just the price of being a believer in free speech, whether I personally agree with what is said or not. Call me crazy, and part of a shrinking group who might still read and at least basically understand the Constitution.

ObamaFest lineup

With all of my new social networks and status sites, I wasn't sure where the best place to post this was. So, I defaulted to the blog.

Here's the schedule for Thursday's (8/28/08) activities at the Democratic National Convention. Amazing lineup!

Time Shown as local – Denver, Colorado MST

3:00 PM – 5:00 PM (LOCAL)

Live Performances (before gavel)
Yonder Mountain String Band Performance
Jeff Austin, Adam Aijala, Ben Kaufmann, Dave Johnston

Voter Registration Presentation

Remarks
The Honorable Luis Gutierrez
Member of the US House of Representatives, Illinois

David Plouffe
Obama Campaign Manager

Ray Rivera
Obama State Director, Colorado

Call to Order
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Permanent Chair, Democratic National Convention
Member and Speaker of the US House of Representatives, California

Invocation
Rabbi David Saperstein
Director, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism – Washington, DC

Presentation of Colors
Disabled American Veterans

Pledge of Allegiance
Shawn Johnson
US Olympic Gymnast

National Anthem
Jennifer Hudson
Academy award-winning singer and Broadway performer

Welcome
Elbra Wedgeworth
President/Chair, Denver Host Committee

Presentation of Resolutions
Democratic National Committee Vice-Chairs
Mark Brewer
The Honorable Linda Chavez-Thompson
The Honorable Mike Honda
The Honorable Lottie Shackelford
Susan Turnbull

Remarks
Honorable Bill Ritter, Jr.
Governor of Colorado

The Honorable Ed Perlmutter
Member of the US House of Representatives, Colorado

The Honorable John Salazar
Member of the US House of Representatives, Colorado

The Honorable Diana DeGette
Member of the US House of Representatives, Colorado

5:00 PM – 6:00 PM (LOCAL)

Video & Remarks
The Honorable Howard Dean
Former Governor of Vermont
Chair of the Democratic Party

Video & Remarks: Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King
The Honorable John Lewis
Member of the US House of Representatives, Georgia
Rev. Bernice King
Daughter of the late Dr. King
Martin Luther King III
Oldest son of the late Dr. King

Remarks
The Honorable Bill Richardson
Governor, New Mexico

Live Performances
will.i.am
Accompanied by John Legend (piano), Agape Choir, and band

Sheryl Crow
Singer/songwriter

Remarks
Ray Rivera
Obama State Director, Colorado

6:00 PM – 7:00 PM (LOCAL)

Remarks
The Honorable Jan Schakowsky
Member of the US House of Representatives, Illinois

The Honorable Mark Udall
Member of the US House of Representatives, Colorado

The Honorable Tim Kaine
Governor of Virginia

Live Performance
Stevie Wonder

Remarks
The Honorable Al Gore
Former Vice President of the United States

7:00 PM - 8:00 PM (LOCAL)

Remarks
John Kuniholm
Wounded Iraq veteran

Live Performance
Michael McDonald
Singer/songwriter

Remarks
Susan Eisenhower
Granddaughter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Retired Generals Tribute
Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration (Ret)
Accompanied by additional generals

American Voices Program
Roy Gross
Monica Early
Wes Moore
Janet Lynn Monacco
Nate Fick
Teresa Asenap
Pamela Cash-Roper
Barney Smith

Remarks
The Honorable Dick Durbin
US Senator, Illinois

8:00 PM – 9:00 PM (LOCAL)

Video/Remarks
SENATOR BARACK OBAMA
DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

Benediction
Pastor Joel Hunter
Senior Pastor of Northland in Central Florida

Adjournment
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Permanent Chair, Democratic National Convention