Weekend Open Thread: A Good Day for Obama Spoofers, Plus: New Laws Go to Guv

Our commenter BigBoxOfRedWhine found this video from the famed Second City comedy factory online and … well, it’s funny. Anti-Obama, but funny. So what the hell, here we go with it. If civilization ends as a result of our republishing it here and thus undermining Obama’s Presidency, then I deeply apologize.

In other news: Not only is today Friday the 13th, but tonight at sunset begins the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, through Saturday at sundown.  Technically, this is only supposed to be an obligation for Jews, but based on your posts, some others of you might want to give it a whirl this year. Seriously.  While you’re thinking that over, here is a picture (from the video) of a woman imitating a cat.

Obama WW3 spoof, 2nd City

It’s at right around the 2:22 mark, if you can’t bear to watch the whole thing.

And finally, the legislature ended its session last night and is sending a whole bunch of new bills to the Governor.  This includes Sharon Quirk-Silva’s VLFAA plan, AB701, which passed the Assembly by a vote of 76-0 and will remove a good number of Orange County’s chestnuts from the fire.  Other bills include:

  • AB 60, a bill that will allow many more persons residing in the state without legal authorization to obtain California driver’s licenses, which Gov. Jerry Brown says he will sign.  The licenses will be marked to indicate that they provide only driving privileges and nothing more.
  • AB 1024, which will allow DREAM Act student Sergio Garcia to seek a license to practice law.
  • AB 10, raising the minimum wage to $9 pn July 1, 2014 and $10 on January 1, 2016.  This was a party-line vote, 26-11 in the State Senate.  Attitude towards the minimum wage continues to be one of the starkest and most consistent ways of distinguishing between the two major parties.
  • AB 1159, which will bar attorneys and others from charging people for services related to proposed changes in federal immigration laws — before such changes have occurred.
  • AB 241, the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, would will give personal attendants require time-and-a-half pay when they put in more than nine hours in a day or 45 hours in a week.
  • SB 374, requiring  current owners of “assault weapons” without fixed magazines to register them by July 1, 2014.
  • A bill criminalizing “revenge porn.”  Next time your relationship breaks up, you will be committing a misdemeanor if you humiliate someone by posting pictures (or, I’m guessing, video) of a sexual nature featuring them onto the Internet without their consent.  So stop doing that.

Got all that down?  Good!  This is your Weekend Open Thread. Talk about this or anything else that strikes you as interesting, within reasonable bounds of decency and decorum.


About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)