Earlier this week I put together a list of possible McCain VP choices. He of more time and resources, John Hawkins at Right Wing News, has compiled and even more extensive list here.
Check it out and research them over the weekend. You may be hearing a whole lot about some of those folks come August and getting your homework done early is helpful.
As those of you who regularly stop by know, I try to theme these as best I can. Sure, sometimes I just say “Screw It†and toss something up and see if it sticks, but that is the exception more than the rule.
I was having a hell of a time with this week’s. Too many minor subjects and nothing really stood out until I popped in a disk containing today’s tunage.
The Washington State Repub Caucus screw up this weekend was one of the minor topic ideas I was bouncing around. I mean, after the BS in 2004 I’d figured folks would be competing to see who could do it the cleanest.
Boy, was I wrong. The Repubs put on their clown shoes got in their little clown car and went on a nationwide media parade.
As I said earlier this week, I couldn’t hold back the bile long enough to sign a party pledge for either party and definitely not a pledge for any candidate still in the running. After being brought flowers and given some smoochin’ by the Repubs earlier this decade, I’m feeling differently this year for them.
When they had it, they apparently didn’t want it, and now that they’ve lost it, they want it back. I’m talking here about (R) Party Unity. They tossed it away for cold hard cash. People were saying they’d leave if the spending didn’t stop, and they’re answer was “Where you gonna go to?â€
And now they have their answer: We’re going home.
I’m pretty sure that I care enough to keep a (D) out of the White House with my own vote, but not sure that I care enough to even suggest to folks split that they should vote for the candidate with an (R) after his name. I guess I’m just tired of getting bent over whenever I raise an objection. And getting bent over is the subject of today’s tunage.
I’ve answered emails from both folks who read RNS and from members of “The Establishment†who say that I should join the party and try to bring about change like Larry Elder did. Depending on how much I like their request determines just how nicely that rope is hard to piss up, but that I would rather enjoy watching them try.
The main reason for this is that it just isn’t in my nature to be gentle enough to be a player in the politics that takes place during an election season, and especially not the Reindeer games that go on outside of election season.
Some ideas just don’t deserve any consideration and deserve to be loudly and immediately derided as ignorant. That doesn’t make you many friends. Which is why I blog and why I don’t give speeches.
About the only time I “reach across the table†is to smack someone across their stupid melon head, and that isn’t a good negotiating tactic (or so I’ve been told).
I am one who should only represent myself.
But enough about me, let’s get to the music!
Dr. Joe would probably find this track appropriate. Just keep in mind that the Repub pols are the fellas and us voters, the ones they should be catering to, are the ladies, and you can keep up from there.
Fuck her gently – Tenacious D
Enjoy!
Btw, my favorite “posish†is the freedom to keep the government out of my personal property and lowering my taxes.
I’m still trying to find a track for the Dems. That might be next week. Suggestions welcome (I’m currently thinking “Closer” by NIN)
UPDATE: You can buy the album here (forgot that part)
Update the second: Jeep’s back. Pics tomorrow.
No, nothing for me today.
Yes, ten days before anniversary of the start of the siege The Alamo, HRC was in El Paso pandering to illegal immigrants.
Tuesday night in El Paso, after a string of bruising losses in the Potomac primaries, Senator Clinton took the stage to thunderous applause in a place that rarely sees a national politician.After waiting for years to be courted, this city put on a pre-Valentine’s Day spectacular for its new sweetheart. She got the full Texas treatment, sharing the stage with a tiny boy in a giant sombrero, holding a bouquet the size of Dallas and being introduced by a talkative Texas Congressman who took this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work the crowd and run out the clock.
Texans vote on March 4th. Legend has it that that is the anniversary of Colonel William Travis drawing his line in the sand and asking for volunteers to stay, two days before The Alamo finally fell.
Texas has a choice to make. They would do well to remember the anniversary.
On a different note, the linked article is from HuffPo and was written by none other than Dan RaTHer’s former SeeBS producer, Mary Mapes. I don’t know who let her into the rally, but if I were Hillary’s people, I’d make sure she was seen at an Obama event.
This isn’t the only significant anniversary for the Dems this political season, but I’ll wait until next week to write about that. Unlike this one, I’m hoping history will repeat itself on that one.
You can go here for the context, but I though this was funny. Especially because of today’s fake holiday.
And, so far anyway, orgasms have escaped government regulation, taxation and licensing, although you never know with the Democrats looking pretty strong this year.
Andrew Malcolm – LA TimesBlog
Found via The Instaman
I’ll be buying mine with my tax money. It seems fitting to me anyway.
I heard about this, oddly enough, listening to the local Air America affiliate. Even more oddly, I haven’t heard anything on the right-wing stations.
Seeing as how the hosts on AA Radio badly want to get rid of the first, second, ninth and tenth items on the list, and these guys don’t seem to advertizing with anyone on the other side of the aisle, maybe I’d better ask if it is the “Edited Versionâ€?
Those who know more about this than I have spoken, and while I would like to agree with them, trying to figure out if they’re going to take my right or my left arm isn’t making me feel any better.
In November, the United States may take its strongest lurch to the left since 1933. The Republicans easily could lose 10 seats in the Senate. The relative turnout numbers in the Democratic and Republican primaries are consistent with a landslide victory for either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama.Assume that this scenario plays out, and that the Democrats sweep into office behind either the nation’s most aggressive nanny or its most liberal Senator (or both). What sort of consequences can we expect?
From a tax perspective, the Democrats will be constrained. All of their beloved “middle-class tax breaks” will be inoperative unless the Alternative Minimum Tax is curtailed. The tax increases that they plan for high-income taxpayers will serve mostly to make up for lost revenue from reforming the AMT. There will be essentially nothing left over for new spending.
This means that from a spending perspective, the Democrats also will be tightly constrained. They will start with a fiscal deficit. After claiming for the last eight years that Social Security does not need to be fixed, they are going to find that in order to meet its obligations Social Security is going to absorb funds from other programs (or require tax increases).
How can the Democrats implement policy changes without large spending increases? The answer is regulation.
And that would seem to be the path both HRC are talking about in the “Dem-Speak†(also known as “Double Thinkâ€).
It is sad how at least half of the American public cannot think far enough ahead to see that raising regulations on how corporations costs them money. Arnold King at the above link lists out just a quick few of the regulations most likely to be down the pike of an HRC or Obama Administration.
The first couple are on the subject of heath care, and after reading them, you may want to go to your doctor and ask him/her to hook you up with four years worth of some serious psychotropic meds.
Especially what with Obama talking about “Patriot Corporationsâ€.
Rob at the SayAnything blog has the skinny on what that particular (D) administration would consider “Patriot Corporationâ€.
So what do you have to do to become a “Patriot Corporation?†You have to roll over for the unions, pay out the nose to provide your employees with health care, keep production costs high by not outsourcing parts of your business to areas with cheaper labor and pay what Obama and his fellow liberals define as “decent wages.â€
Oh and if you’d like to pretend to get ahead on the dough to hopefully help ease the mental pain of your future consumer costs, you can wager on just how high the new tax rate is going to be in 2011 here.
Don’t bother attempting to educate leftists with facts such as that “The Top 20% of income earners account for 40% of overall consumer spending, which is a total of 66% of economic activity”.
They just hate facts like that and will accuse you of being an oppressor, which means that you are obliged to knock out their teeth and they don’t have health care, so what are you gonna do. Better to just not go there.
Roto-Reuters spends many a-pixel in this article hoping that the Republican Party will lose their grip on the Miami/Cuban vote.
But if this crap with Obama half-assing his excuses about his supporters lovin’ them some Che doesn’t quiet down soon, I’m sure they’ll hear about it.
Oh wait, they already have. Not only have they noticed, they’ve caught him lying about it.
Which earned him this neat little graphic, courtesy of “Conductor” Gomez
Ain’t it loverly.
Unsurprisingly, most leftosphere sites are downplaying the item. Except for FDL, who has decided that anyone who doesn’t like Che is a kook.
One thing I didn’t think I’d see and don’t really understand is the blog v blog foghting going on about this item. For example: James Joyner vs. LGF. I’m behind LGF on this, so that’s the link I’m giving out.
Oh well, at least Reuters is wrong, once again. That’s all I needed to see.
They’re doing something about it.
Just nothing that’ll do any good.
Bill proposes “scarlet letter†for DUI’s: bright yellow license plates
Sen. Mike Carrell wants everyone on the road to know who’s been caught driving drunk.
He’s sponsoring a bill that would require people convicted of drunken driving to put fluorescent-yellow license plates on their cars for one year — once their driving privileges have been restored.“I’ve talked to the law-enforcement agencies and they think it would be an awfully good idea to have a way of visibly telling sheep from goats out on the road,” said Carrell, R-Lakewood.
It also could help law-abiding drivers as a signal to give a wider berth to anyone behind the wheel of a car with bright-yellow plates, Carrell said.
Uh, what? So that they can be pulled over for a random Breathalyzer? So that other drivers can stay 20 car lengths away at all times and/or give them the finger from the street corner?
Why not just take them off the road by putting them in jail for a length of time that actually feels like punishment?
Nope, too hard for Washington State Legislators.
That’s what I’d call five out of six letters being published in the Seattle Times “Letters to the Editor†section being pro-Obama.
And the one that wasn’t pro-Obama wasn’t anti-Obama, it was simply more “Women deserve to be first to the White House more than Block people do†than the rest.
I’m not kidding, hit the link. Third letter down.
This’ll be the third all pro-(D) LttE section I’ve seen in as many weeks. No pro-any (R) letters yet though. But the media are all right-wing corporatists, just ask anyone with BDS, they’ll tell ya all about it.
So let’s see a real debate!
HRC has agreed to a debate with Obama to be broadcast by FOX News. Apparently she feels that it is more important to get more free TV facetime than it is for her to hate the “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy”.
Of course, the leftosphere is wailing and gnashing their teeth about it.
I don’t know why. Even they complained that the questions at the last couple debates were pretty lame. Hell, some of them even complained that since the very last debate was monetarily sponsored by some “Clean Coal Conglomerate”, as they called it, that the hosts of the debate (CNN if I remember correctly) were embargoed from asking any enviro-questions.
So i would like to gather up a list of questions to send off to the possible FOX personalities who might be asking the questions. I’m not being malicious here, I’m wanting to let HRC and Obama get asked the questions that need to be asked so that the American public can hear them answered.
Think of it as a public service.
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Question #1: Currently sitting in front of the Supreme Court is a case titled Heller Vs The District of Columbia. In a large number of legal circles, it is being touted as one of the most important cases of the early 21st Century. In the first week of February, a significant number of your fellow legislators signed onto a friend of the court brief that was in support of the Heller view of the case. Neither of you signed this. Should this lead us to believe that you support the view that the Second Amendment is a collective right, and if not, exactly what is your stance on the Second Amendment as it pertains to private citizens?
Question #2: A study by the Heritage Foundation has shown the death penalty to be effective in deterring crime and saving lives. Likewise, the RAND Corporation and researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles each separately studied hundreds of death penalty cases and concluded that it was the heinousness of the crime and not the race of the murderer that led to the decision to seek the death penalty. Do you support the death penalty for heinous crimes, and why or why not?
Question #3: The citizens of two liberal or progressive states, California and Washington State, have spoken with their votes to outlaw Affirmative Action for college admissions and government contracting. In 2007, the Supreme Court said that the city of Seattle was no longer going to be able to use race as a factor in determining which students could attend which school in the city’s public school district. Do you believe that Affirmative Action is necessary in the 21st Century, and why or why not?
Question #4: Both of you have spoken in the past of your feelings on the subject of Gay Marriage. I believe that you both said you support “civil unions”, which some people on both sides of the political aisle would say is the wrong answer. My question is this: If a state were to pass legislation legalizing full marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples, and this legislation also included language that penalizes those licensed to perform marriages if they were to refuse to perform same-sex marriages, even if they’re church’s doctrine and/or their personal beliefs told them it was a sin to do so; Would you support such legislation?
Question #5: In 2007, with the Democratic Party re-taking control of both houses of Congress, the topic of re-instituting The Fairness Doctrine was brought up. The Fairness Doctrine, noted for it’s ability to silence political free-speech on the airwaves for both television and radio, has been gone for two decades. In those two decades, political speech and the emergence of numerous 24 hour news channels, including political news, has flourished. Would you sign legislation reinstitutiing of The Fairness Doctrine, and why or why not?
Question #6: Each of my last five questions have relations to either recently past or current cases before the Supreme Court. President Bush has been criticized by both of you, as well as numerous members of your party, for his appointments of both Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts, the main point of contention being their supposedly “strict constructionist views” of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The next President of the United States will undoubtedly have the opportunity to nominate one, or possibly even two or more Supreme Court Justices. In 2004, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said that “Judges would be negligent if they disregarded the role of international law in US Courts”. Do you support the interpreting of US law as seen through the magnifying glass of other nation’s legal standards and would you appoint a Supreme Court justice who did use other nation’s laws to interpret ours such as Harold Koh?
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There, I believe that covers enough for now.
Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments. Yes, I’m serious about sending these off.
