A recent poll shows that a majority of small business owners polled lean conservative — but plan on voting for Obama. What’s their number one issue? Health care. Hm.

Which brings new meaning to the term Beastie BOYS.

Here they are.

Nothing ruins one’s mood so quickly and so completely as dealing with AT&T. Whether it’s jacking up your bill without notice, baiting-and-switching you on the plans and services offered, transferring you to five different people on the same service call, or sending you to collections because they forgot to cancel one of your old lines, they are unbeatable at beating you down while sounding pleasant over the phone.

Stop being the man’s dancing monkey.

I think this advice applies to everything.

In which, rather than euthanize a stunned deer involved in a fender bender, the Michigan deputy picks it up and carries it to the side of the road.

I grew up surrounded by deer, but I’ve never gotten to pick one up.

For more on this story, click here. It’s interesting that when first asked about this, the deputy was out hunting. I was prepared to see more caustic comments about this online — hey, he saved this deer, but he’s off hunting other ones — but found only one, which was nicely answered by this response: “Hunters do more to protect wildlife than almost anyone else. The whole wildlife conservation movement began with sport hunters. There is absolutely no conflict in this officer’s actions.”

OK, the two attacks on Obama’s support of gay marriage that I missed:

1. That he’s waffled on the issue. (In fact, that’s how I just heard NPR report it — “After months of waffling on the issue, President Obama today….”; which I was taught in college was “editorializing,” but that was an earlier era.)

2. That he did this solely to support wealthy Hollywood donors who wouldn’t write him checks otherwise. I’ve been seeing this one on social media.

Is there any base we’ve left uncovered now? Maybe supporting gay marriage is an alien plot masterminded by the clearly gay Marvin the Martian. Look for that one next.

Today in an interview with ABC News, President Obama came out (no pun intended) as saying he supported the right of same-sex couples to get married.

Here’s his actual quote:

“I’ve been going through an evolution on this issue. I’ve always been adamant that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally. At a certain point I’ve just concluded that, for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

So now I’m trying to predict how various Republicans are going to distort this.

I know if Santorum were still running, he’d say that Obama is in favor of people marrying streetlamps. Or, under the Obama plan, everyone must marry a San Francisco leather queen. He’s not running any more, but he’ll probably still say these things.

I think that Romney is more likely to say that now somehow you have to pay for other people’s gay weddings. I truly expect that one: It’s going to cost “us” when these gay people get married.

And I’m still trying to figure out how they’ll work in other Others (al-Qaeda; unions; socialists; wine-drinkers; people with college degrees), because clearly this is their work.

And I expect all of this to start… 20 minutes ago.

Here’s an actual honest-to-God recent email from a California high-school principal to parents:

Greetings from [name of principal and name of school]. We are trying to improve how the district and staff communicates with you, our educational community. In order to do so, we need to ensure that we have your latest email address in our student information system. Please check your primary email account for a copy of this message. If you received it, we already have your current email address on file and you do not need to do anything. If you did not receive an email, we do not have your current email in our system. In that case, please send us an email from your current email address so that we can update our records. The email should be sent to [email address] with the following information: 1) your child’s first and last name 2) the names of any siblings also attending [school name] and 3) parent or guardian name. If you have children attending other schools in the district, you will need to update your information at each school. Thank you for your help in updating our records. We hope to improve how we communicate with you in order to help our children have a more powerful and effective learning environment. Thank you.

 
So: If you didn’t get the email, please email them to let them know. And when you email them, you might point out that “district and staff” is plural, so the verb should be too.

May 6th would have been Orson Welles’ 97th birthday. I’ve seen most of his movies, and I’ve heard The War of the Worlds, but as with every other American child of the 1970s, my greatest exposure to Mr. Welles was courtesy of his commercials for Paul Masson wine. What we have here, in this outtake, would seem to be the result of imbibing too much Paul Masson Wine — were it not for the fact that Mr. Welles was later sacked for admitting that he never had, and never would, drink Paul Masson wine. Cheers.