Just like Roland Burris wasn't going to quit until the Senate agreed to seat him, he's now not going to quit sitting in the Senate until the Capitol Police pull his chair out from under him and haul him off, ethics scandal or not. He doesn't care who isn't supporting him any longer or how many people he has to meet with in order to find a few who think he shouldn't resign; that Senate seat is his, dammit, because he needs to finish up the list of accomplishments on his mausoleum before he pops off.

People who are backing down, however, include Washington lobbyist Vicki Iseman, who is dropping her suit against the New York Times for implying that she was boning John McCain in exchange for some space to reiterate that she was not, in fact, boning John McCain. Screw the money: she just really, really wants people to know that she was not boning John McCain. Don't blame her.

Hillary Clinton is getting tough and telling the North Koreans to stop being such assholes, which they're totally being assholes about. So Clinton has named yet another special envoy, Stephen Bosworth, to deal with their crap while she heads to China and deals with problems that are larger than even Kim Jong Il's inflated sense of self-worth, which is to say, pretty big.

No longer big and strong is the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which slipped to a 6-year low yesterday and that noise you heard was the last pennies of my 401(k) rattling around in the bottom of the piggy bank my brokerage is now keeping it in. To celebrate our already-shitty economy, Barack Obama has decided to stop fucking around with budget numbers the way that Bush did to make the deficit look smaller, since, really, adjusting our budget deficit upwards by $2.7 trillion over 10 years by an elimination of book-cooking would normally cause the markets to tank, but they're already tanked, so fuck it! His approval rating is still at 60 percent. Congress's approval rating, though, is slightly lower (as in, half as much) which I'm certain has nothing to do with the fact that people just watched Republicans fall all over themselves to defeat Obama's stimulus plan and are now watching the same motherfuckers line up at the trough for some delicious porky goodness they can take credit for bringing home to their districts.

In the rest of the world, it turns out that the Iranians promised to stop attacking troops in Iraq if we'd just let them have their nukes; Obama might stop building a nuclear weapons shield around Europe that Bush wanted; Argentina is expelling the Holocaust-denying bishop guy that Pope Benedict un-excommunicated; Benjamin Netanyahu is going to be the new Israeli prime minister; and Obama got some beaver tail in Canada. (That's a pastry, you sick fucks.)

McCullough, author of the book The Kind of Man Every Man Should Be: Taking a Stand for True Masculinity which purports to tell men "to behave with dignity, act with clarity, and lead with conviction" (advice McCullough obviously hasn't applied to his own life), believes that the stimulus package is exactly like rape. Because, really, when is legislation not akin to being forcibly held down, beaten, groped, penetrated, and potentially left for dead? For McCullough, that's every day in Washington. (Luckily for the women of Washington, McCullough lives in New York.)

According to Mr. McCullough,

This week Amazon.com after many complaints finally decided to ban a virtual reality game called "Rapelay." Defenders of the game say it's not real rape because it only occurs between computer animations. There are no genuine side effects. And it won't impact reality.

Sort of like what liberals sound like when it comes to our money.

Yes, paying money for government services is totally like a video game depicting rape.

He continues:

In the game Rapelay, reviewers have stated that the player must first sexually assault a mother character and her two daughters before being allowed to then "pick" their next series of victims.

In the Congress of Washington DC liberals have seen to it that our mothers and daughters will have less money in the home budget working for their protection and welfare.

Uh, what? I'll take getting robbed every single day over being actually raped, not that taxation is robbery.

But he's not done yet!

In the game Rapelay the reviews indicate that the rapist can even convince one of the animated computer characters that they like what's happening to them.

In Washington DC liberals in Congress sent their lapdog "Mr. President" out to the masses to do the same thing.

Yes, he did just call the President a "lapdog." Oh, and see there? He also called the President a rape apologist to "our" mothers and daughters. Who is "our," again?

Okay, now that we've got casual racism out of the way, let's get back to making fun of sexual assault!

In the game, players take what is not theirs and laugh about the outcome.

In Washington DC, liberals take what is not theirs and laugh at the stupid people that gave it to them.

Dear rape victims: You "gave it" to your rapists, and you're stupid for doing so.

Now, keep in mind that I'm just excerpting the worst of McCullough's so-called "logic," and ignoring the random parts where liberals are supposedly soft on child porn and child molesters because Obama is getting rid of the God Squad at Justice. Basically, for all his talk about integrity, clarity, conviction and dignity, McCullough thinks that our bodies are commodities - like his money, only his money is of far more concern to him. He equates sexual assault with taxation because having his money taken from him to pay for government services — many of which he avails himself of, by the way — is, to him, stripping him of his dignity in the same way and to the same degree that sexual assault strips women of their dignity every day in this country.

Rather than "What Liberals share with 'Rapelay,'" I think we should write what Kevin McCullough shares with "Rapelay." I'll start. Both seek to dehumanize women and sexual assault for their own petty ends and personal entertainment. Both seek to hide behind excuses — the game manufacturer says it was only meant for Japan, and McCullough claims that he's just restating the arguments of others — to justify their behavior. And I wish neither had ever penetrated my consciousness.

What Liberals Share With 'Rapelay' [Townhall]

Related: The Kind of Man Every Man Should Be: Taking a Stand for True Masculinity [Amazon]

While Hillary Clinton is over in Asia, finishing in Japan by telling girls to "do what's true to yourself and then making a large detour to Indonesia in order to highlight and improve our relations with a moderate Muslim nation after the Republicans spent most of the election calling them terrorists, Barack Obama was on the road, too, signing the stimulus bill in Denver before heading to Phoenix to accept a size 23 shoe autographed by Shaq and, oh yeah, unveil his plan to stem the tide of home foreclosures. But while the grown-ups are away, Washington will apparently play.

And play they did, with the news that newly minted Illinois Senator Roland Burris had more contacts with former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich's staff than he initially testified to and, oh, yeah, tried to raise money for Blago to get the Senate seat Blago eventually gave him. The Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post are both calling for Burris to resign, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is talking about a potential Ethics Committee investigation and Burris may soon find himself facing impeachment charges in Illinois. Fun times!

Republicans are having fun on their own, with House Republican Whip Eric Cantor getting a cease and desist letter from Aerosmith over his use of the band's song in an anti-stimulus video and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal saying he doesn't want the federal government's damn stimulus money because he wants to run for President later. Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann thinks we're "running out of rich people" except for Postmaster General John Potter, who got more than $850,000 in compensation last year despite the Post Office being awash in red ink and talking about ending Saturday mail service. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey's sitting pretty with a new job, though, doing corporate law and raking in the fees even as his predecessor Alberto Gonzales spends his days job-hunting and blaming his lack of prospects on the poor economy rather than his utter disregard for the Constitution.

Speaking of the shitty economy, 14,000 Americans a day are now losing their health insurance, the government's bailout stock portfolio lost $86.5 billion since October, the banks that got the bailout money cut lending anyway and GM and Chrysler would like another $22 billion, please. While South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham is defending his statement that we ought to consider full-on nationalizing some of the banks, no one's talking about how we may end up de facto nationalizing the car companies if we're just propping them up with billions of dollars every single month.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama will be sending more troops into Afghanistan, spending some of his political capital for that instead of the stimulus plan, but he probably won't be sending the Uighurs he releases from Guantanamo Bay back to China, what with the likelihood that the Chinese will just execute them. He's then going to head to Canada and play nice on NAFTA (did you know Canada's a member too? Neither did most Americans!) and, apparently, definitely not nominate Howard Dean to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services because Dean might not be able to play nice with Republicans. You know, since the Republicans themselves are playing so nice these days.

Although Michael Steele — like Dubya before him — would like you to believe that the recession was kicked off by Bill Clinton before he left office 8 years ago, the truth is that the last recession started after Bush took office in 2001 and finished up not long thereafter. In fact, it appears that it might have been helped by Dubya's massive stimulus package, which was bigger than the Obama one that all the Republicans are whining about. Lest you think that said smaller stimulus might help, there are a bunch of economists who say that there's no way it will be big enough to help since the banks are refusing to lend money this time around to mitigate the crisis — and that's not even to talk about the massive unemployment that's dwarfing unemployment figures from earlier recessions. Speaking of the banks that took your tax dollars to jump-start the economy through increased lending and then didn't lend, on Tuesday, they'll find out what's to become of them and their TARP funds under the new Obama regime, other than that their execs might all have to start taking the subway and forgo armed drivers and $9 hot chocolates. Please feel free to pity them; I mean, we wouldn't want the rich to have to sacrifice anything in this economy!

Other people that don't wish to sacrifice? Michael Steele's sister, who reportedly got paid by his 2006 Senate campaign for work she never did, an allegation that Steele is denying. Also, Ann Coulter, who reportedly found that changing her voter registration to New York just too taxing and is now being investigated for — of all ironic things — voter fraud for voting where she doesn't really live.

Anyway, so, the Iraqi shoe-thrower is going to get a trial; German chancellor Angela Merkel wants — but probably won't get — an answer as to why the Pope un-excommunicated that British Holocaust-denying priest; and Joe Biden was hoping for more foreign policy success on his first foreign visit but didn't really get it ("and that's why you don't send a man to do a woman's job," said someone over in Foggy Bottom under her breath). But, the word is out that Howard Dean's possible competition for that empty Cabinet slot over at Health and Human Services might be Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius. That's probably another contest that Dean should prepare to lose. The skiing is lovely in Vermont this time of year, though!

Yesterday, as I searched in vain for news that didn't make me want to tell stupid people to shut the fuck up, I found out from Nicholas Kristof both that he's part of a video game about women in the developing world (yes, I follow him on Twitter) and that Senator Barbara Boxer will be chairing a new subcommittee on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee specifically charged with women's issues. Can we all just love Nick Kristof and Barbara Boxer a little this morning? Thanks.

Anyway, onto the dirty news of the day. The U.S. economy shed more than half a million jobs in January, more American soldiers committed suicide than were killed in combat that same month, and it's entirely possible that one of the damns China built recently was the proximate cause of the earthquake that killed so many people last year. But, hey, don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain; Eliot Spitzer liked to fuck prostitutes without condoms and is a whiny little bitch.

In the mean time, the "negotiators" for Hamas who went to Egypt, it turns out, weren't really there to negotiate as much as launder some money which, due to Egyptian interference, they didn't quite manage to accomplish. Larry Summers is having as much trouble negotiating interpersonal relations as Hamas, as he's busy thinking of ways to dick over and lock out Paul Volcker. Who knew he was Dick Cheney 2.0 (without the bum ticker)? And Cheney may have found his next move, if he wants to go work for yet another evil organization — Ticket Master probably needs a new spokeshenchman after they dicked over Bruce Springsteen and all his fans buy buying up the tickets to his event and then reselling them above face value on their own reselling site. But, no worries, there are cute mammals roaming the White House grounds!

In Administration news, CIA director nominee Leon Panetta is feeling less torture-iffic than his predecessors, Obama went and ralled his troops on the stimulus package and he's having the Census Director report to Rahm Emanuel rather than the incoming Commerce Secretary, Judd Gregg, who, incidentally, tried to defund the department and politicize its functions. That sort of begs the question of why you'd nominate a guy you don't fucking trust to do his fucking job, but maybe that's just 'cause I ain't had my Kool-Aid this morning. Anyway, Congress is delaying both the switch over to digital television signals because it's even more of a clusterfuck than anyone imagined and Hilda Solis' confirmation hearing because Republicans are still quaking in their expensive leather boots at the thought of Wal-Mart workers unionizing. But, hey, I was right and it turns out that Bush did go jacketless in his Oval Office despite all the carping from the former Bushies about Obama not being formal enough. So, I guess they can all shut the fuck up now. Oops, I did it again.

Barack Obama has finally found a way to keep down the ever-increasing costs of the stimulus and bail-out bill: he's decided that any bank that takes significant bail-out money from now on will have to agree to salary caps for top executives. I mean, it'll be hard for these guys to buy new planes or the naming rights for stadiums, pay themselves millions in bonuses or redecorate their offices with carpets that cost nearly twice the median household income in America ($47,000, by the way) without the government giving them the money to do so, but that's what they have layoffs for, so it's cool! Joking aside, although even Donald Trump thinks that salary caps are cool, it doesn't mean that Obama isn't losing the stimulus messaging war in which Republicans bitch and moan about $300 million in contraception funding while sticking in $19 billion for anyone wealthy enough to buy a house this year and defunding health care provisions for the almost-retired and unemployed. Nominate one to, say, run the Commerce Department — where economic stimulus is job 1 — and they still won't vote for the damn bill. But, hey, maybe if you nominate one to replace Tom Daschle at HHS, then they will.

Anyway, in totally important news, Sarah Palin is mad at Ashley Judd for "misrepresenting" aerial wolf-hunting, but she's not mad that Bill Clinton called her to sympathize over the fake stories that she didn't give birth to Trig. In other news of people who could really shut the fuck up now, Dick Cheney says the tur'rists are comin'; Democratic House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel says he didn't really mean to cheat on his taxes or fudge his required financial disclosures; Republicans are blocking Hilda Solis' confirmation hearing and eventual confirmation because over unions' agitating for unionizing. Oh, and Joe the Motherfucking Plumber isn't sure that we deserve his political wisdom more than his son deserves daddy time, so on behalf of all undeserving Americans, Joe, shut the fuck up.

A new website called "How I Spent My Stimulus" is devoted to people posting pictures and stories about how they spent the free government dough. A book, based on the entries received, is to come, naturally.

Michael, from Los Angeles, spent his check on a nice little vacation to a communist country (Vietnam). Apparently the spending of American dollars in communist countries was pretty popular this year.

There were also a lot of people who wisely spent their checks on bills, school tuition, tire alignment, and other things they were in need of. One woman gave her stimulus check to her granddaughter to help the poor kid start paying back all the debt the government has acquired by borrowing money from China (and using it for stimulus checks). Fun!

Of course, there were also plenty of dumb people who spent their stimulus checks on frivolous things like luxury goods and clothes (including me, sorry mom!). One guy bought a fucking sailboat. Another guy spent his check on a pair of $330 Prada sunglasses (from the Sunglass Hut, no less). Money well spent?

You decide.

Eric, an earnest guy in Seattle, decided to spend his check on "services" because he heard they would stimulate the economy better than just buying things. He went to go see Cirque de Soleil: Corteo with his family. Do you think he enjoyed it?

Hm.

What did you all spend your stimulus check on? Did you even get it? (Many on the Jezebel staff have not! Give these women their checks, government, there is wine to be bought!) Sadie spent hers on getting someone to clean her kitchen "really, really well." I was planning on saving mine but decided to "invest" (haha) it in some adult clothes (a Helmut Lang blazer on sale and some black pumps by Marc Jacobs). Now all I need an adult situation to wear them in!

[How I Spent My Stimulus]