Year: 2008

Sarah Palin’s Clothing Bill, and the Big Picture

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While the comment of a Talking Points Memo commenter about Palin and the GOP dropping over $150,000.00 of campaign funds on her cloths and bling is amusing, “If Sarah Palin’s $150,000 wardrobe had a life of its own, it would get a tax cut from a President Obama,” it misses the big picture.

We have to remember that she also accepted per deim payments intended for away from home expenses for times when she was at home, which should have the IRS coming after her, and her bilking the state out of over $21,000.00 for travel expenses for her children.

This is not about Sarah Palin. It is rather about movement conservatism, of which Sarah Palin is, at least until after election day, a sterling example.

Movement conservatism is by its nature corrupt.

Basically, these people read too much Ayn Rand, or more accurately they took it too seriously, because any amount or Ayn being read is too much.

Because of this these people believe that the government, and government service to be inherently evil, and so they enter into service to do what they believe to be evil.

The only reason for them to enter government service is money and power, and they believe that they are owed these little bits of corruption, whether it be Palin’s per deim or Stevens’ house renovations, because they are doing something so awful.

Me Bad

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I have been talking politics, and have neglected to mention two races in our back yard:

  • Frank Kravotil running for Congress in MD-1
  • Jennifer Dougherty, who is running for Congress in MD-6

Kravotil is running against Fred Flintstone (he is positively antediluvian), Andy Harris, who defeated the moderate (when it didn’t count) Republican in the primary, and Dougherty is running against Roscoe Bartlet, who…Well….He lives up to the name “Roscoe”.

In any case, they ar both on Matthew Saroff’s Act Blue Page.

Show them some love.

Bachmann-Turnoff Overdrive

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I make no apologies for the pun.

What’s more, I call out all the Liberal Blogosphere….This one was pretty obvious.

Well, Michele Bachmann, the lady who started her political career keeping the Disney Movie Alladin out of town, “feeling that it endorsed magic/witchcraft and promoted paganism” is still experiencing blow-back from her outrageous and un-American outburst on Chris Matthews’ show, where she accused most of the country of being “anti-American”

It now appears that her primary opponent, Aubrey Immelman, will run a write-in campaign against her, because, as he states, “We cannot tolerate this festering brand of neo-McCarthyism in our midst.”

Good for him, and bad for her. She has now generated something north of $700K in donations for Elwyn Tinklenberg, her Democratic Opponent, who has a real chance of pulling this out now, particularly now that the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) has stopped funding their ads for her.

Bummer of a birth mark, Miche.

*I know that it’s not nice to make fun of someone’s name, but his name still sounds like a character from Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegone.

Depressingly Sober

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Yesterday was Shmini Atseret. Tonight is Simchat Torah, which, along with starting a new job, has had me offline for the past few days.

We are going to a family friendly Simchat Torah celebration….No booze…..So I’m sober, and wishing that I wasn’t.

Oh well, in the morning, I’ll be sober either way.

Overheard at the Barber’s

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They had a sports program on, with sports talking heads.

Bill Cowher was talking about the Pats-Broncos game @ Foxboro.

He called it for the Patriots, noting Matt Cassel’s performance at home, and the fact that Denver is 33rd in the league against the pass.

Then,he dropped this bon mot, “Joe the Plumber could throw for 200 yards against Denver.”

It appears that Joe the Plumber haa become a synonym for “lame” in just a few short days..

heh

Stop Jenny McCarthy

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There is a website about Jenny McCarthy, and the lies that she spreads regarding conditions on the Autism spectrum.

I have a child on the Autism Spectrum (Aspergers), and my wife noted signs at birth, and had specific concerns about a condition on the spectrum before he turned 3, but my anecdote is no more valid than McCarthy’s where she claims that vaccines cause autism, and that her son “recovered”.

Neither happen in Autism. The data is clear: there is no correlation between Autism Spectrum disorders and vaccines.

While correlation does not prove causation, lack of correlation does prove lack of causation, and this has been proved dozens of times.

As to “curing” people on the spectrum, you can’t, as is the case with children “recovering” from Autism. They aren’t broken, they are different, and so they need to learn how to bridge the gap with the rest of the world.

Rats are Leaving a Sinking Ship

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By rat, I mean Peggy Noonan, and by sinking Ship, I mean McCain/Palin.

Her latest piece in the WSJ cuts Sarah Palin a new one.

Of course, 6 weeks ago, she said the same damn thing on an open mic by mistake, but now she puts it in the Journal.

Her article is not about the Sarah Palin, or the election, or conservative philosophy, it is about Peggy Noonan, and an attempt to have plausible dependability about what she sees as a coming electoral drubbing.

Dragon Skin and Its Successors

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I haven’t followed the entire body armor controversy particularly closely.

My interest there has primarily been the allegations of corruption and war profiteering, but I know that this is a subject that tends to get people screaming at each other, with the word “conspiracy” being thrown around.

So the army’s decision to postpone tests on flexible armor will doubtless raise some hackles.

It may be that the army saw some new technology coming down the pipe, as we also have a press release from Allan Bain, one of the creators of scale armor,* regarding a new technology to forge the plates that will result in improved performance

Evolution Armor Systems calls it “Skaalar Exoskin Gen 4+”.

*Truth be told, the technology is thousands of years old, so we are talking about the recreators of scale armor.

It Was Only a Matter of Time

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As the Minnesota Independent so eloquently stated, “putting Bachmann in front of a live microphone is like handing an excitable 15-year-old a bottle of gin and a loaded gun. The only question is when something unspeakable is going to happen.”

Heh….In any case, if you’ve followed her career, and things like accusations of attempted lesbian kidnapping, secret plans to give Iraq to Iran, and lord know what else that I’ve missed, we now see this missive:

On Friday, Bachmann, R-Minn., told MSNBC talk show host Chris Matthews she thought Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle “may have anti-American views” and said the media should investigate whether members of Congress are “pro-America or anti-America.”

Seriously, this woman is flat out nuts, and within 24 hours of her latest deranged outburst, her opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg* got more than $450,000.00 in campaign contributions in the next 24 hours.

Heh.

*I know that it’s not nice to make fun of someone’s name, but he sounds like a character from Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegone.