Well, I guess one could say that I am flattered that syndicated columnist Marie Jon Apostrophe reads my blog, or, at least, my posts concerning her columns, even though she does nothing but leave cryptic comments. It also looks like I may have gotten through to her. For the first time in months, she’s written a column about Barack Obama … Read More
Local Politics: Dem In NC-11 Running Virtually Opposed
From Kos: At one point, the GOP was bursting with enthusiasm about gaining back their long-lost and well-deserved House majority, and high on their target list for this goal were seats like North Carolina’s Republican-leaning 11th District, now represented by freshman Democrat Heath Shuler. Except that their candidate has now suspended his campaign. Republican Congressional candidate Carl Mumpower has suspended … Read More
An Uneducated President Is Not A “Plus”
I touched on this yesterday, but it seems to me that the GOP strategy of touting one’s educational ineptitude is really not a good selling point. It’s kind of like pandering to stupid people: "Hey, I’m a moron, just like you. And if I can get in the White House, so can you. Because I’m a regular Joe, a non-Ivy … Read More
A Useful Set of Graphs
Presidents and the economy. In the graphs, the parties are color-coded by the traditional Republican red and Democratic blue. Individual terms are in a lighter shade, and the party average is the darker shade. Technical note Unless otherwise noted, the figure shown is average annual growth rate for a president’s term, from the year, quarter, or month of inauguration to … Read More
Jesse Helms — Leader Against HIV?
What is Elizabeth Dole smoking? From the Congressional Record dated July 14, 2008: SA 5074. Mrs. DOLE submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by her to the bill S. 2731, to authorize appropriations for fiscal years 2009 through 2013 to provide assistance to foreign countries to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie … Read More
Obama’s Elitism
One of the oddest things the Republicans are trying to pin on Obama is his supposed "elitism". I really don’t understand it. I mean, yes, Obama went to Harvard Law School and was the editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. This is… what… bad? Are we back to this stupid old "I want my President to be a regular … Read More
Since When Is Ignorance A Virtue?
So here’s the latest scandal rocking the Obama campaign…. Last week, Obama said this: Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they’ll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language. You … Read More
Oy Vey, Maria
Oh, Marie Jon Apostrophe. You’re so self-parodying, it’s not even fun anymore: Hope and change worth having without an Obama racial test Ok. So I’m going to gather from Marie’s awkwardly worded headline, that she is in favor of hope and change. Not in favor of Obama’s racial test (I guess we’ll have to wait and see what that means), … Read More
President A-Hole
You know, it’s not just that he’s wrong; it’s that he’s arrogantly wrong. Proud of it. Read this: President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit. As he prepared to fly out from Japan, he told his fellow leaders: "Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter." … Read More
Stupidest Poll Of The Campaign Season (So Far)
The Associated Press wrote up results from an AP/Yahoo poll showing that John McCain does better than Barack Obama among pet owners than among Americans who do not own a pet. John McCain leads by Barack Obama by five points among pet owners (42% to 37%), while Obama leads by 14 point (48% to 34%) among those who do not … Read More
Bush Is An Embarrassment To The GOP
…which is going to make the GOP convention very… aaaawwwwkward. I mean, the last thing the McCain people want is to have their boy up on stage, in front of the whole nation, being embraced by their party’s leader, who just happens to be the most unpopular President in the history of polling. The solution? "Give the president a first-night … Read More
Not Funny
John McCain once again "jokes" about his desire to kill Iranians. And he’s not talking about the Iranian military or anything — he’s joking about killing Iranians. I guess that’s good red meat for the conservative masses, but the targets of McCain’s blood lust "joke" are ordinary Iranian civilians. I know it’s easy to think of Iran has some sandy … Read More
Better Conservative Columnists, Please
Jonah Goldberg starts his column in today’s L.A. Times this way: Forced servitude in America? The U.S. already has high rates of volunteerism, but that’s apparently not good enough for our presidential candidates. There’s a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to … Read More
Jesse’s Grill
You might wonder why I havent opined on the passing of Jesse Helms and his bigoted foul legacy. It’s because I was taught not to speak ill of the dead. Besides, we all know he’s in hell. UPDATE: But here’s a column from David Broder written in 2001 (when Helms was still alive), which pretty much sums it up with … Read More
McCain = Bush
Interesting happenings yesterday at a public McCain rally. Carole Kreck, a 61 year librarian was waiting in line at the Denver Center for Performing Arts to attend the John McCain town hall meeting. She held a sign that said "McCain = Bush." McCain’s security detail told her to leave. The police were called. They issued her a ticket for trespassing … Read More