Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Hair of Glendale

Friday, April 20th, 2012

Kim Kardashian plans to run for mayor of Glendale, California.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “Who’s Kim Kardashian?” That’s because you have a life and don’t watch so-called reality TV. Well, here’s everything I know, or think I know, about Kim Kardashian: 1) she has a reality TV show; 2) she is the Paris Hilton of this decade, Paris being sooooo 2005; 3) she has a couple of sisters whose names all start with K; 4)her stepfather is an Olympian; 5) from every tabloid picture and commercial I’ve seen, she has great hair.

Apparently on her TV show recently, Kim was musing that she would make a good mayor of Glendale because it’s, “like, Armenian town.” Yes, that’s right; Kim Kardashian is a landsman! for those of you who don’t know very much about Armenia, here are some interesting facts.

(I will now admit that up until yesterday I often pronounced Kim K’s last name as if it were the name of these guys from Star Trek: Deep Space 9.)

Apparently, Kim’s campaign hit a snag. Well, a couple of snags, actually. The first setback is that you can’t really run for mayor in Glendale.  You must run for, and win, a seat on the city council. Then the position of mayor rotates among city council members. Kim might have to wait a year or two to get to be mayor. Does she have the attention span for it?

Glendale also has this picky, bureaucratic, so-unfair rule that, to run for city council, you have to live in the town of Glendale.

I’m sure one of Kim’s minions can find her a house in Glendale. I’m sure the voters of that town will embrace her. She’s demonstrated such a clear understanding of the democratic process, and she’s so well-informed on so many topics. And she really cares about the core issues of Glendale, whatever those are.

And she’s got  such great hair.

Fox News; Vision of America

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

Spouse watches Fox News. I don’t try to explain it or excuse it; he just does. Anyway, the blogs and Fox are jumping with the story of a house or mobile home that burned down in Tennessee. A fire truck and crew sat a short distance away watching the structure burn but did not intervene, because the home-owners had not paid the $75 annual subscription fee for fire services and they live outside the city limits.

The owners of the building went back into it in order to try to retrieve some of their belongings. The authorities assured the public that if the firefighters had thought that anyone was in danger, they would have attempted to rescue them. They just don’t save property if you haven’t paid your membership fee. They can’t afford to.

A show Spouse thinks is called “The Fabulous Five” had this as a topic, and the Fox pundits were incensed that those firefighters didn’t rush in and save the structure. He quoted them as saying things like, “Couldn’t they put out the fire and then collect the $75?”

Typically, Fox blamed the firefighters instead of the municipality or even the state of Tennessee, which I guess does not collect taxes and provide fire-safety services. Even more baffling, to me, is their reaction at all. This is “small government” Fox. They should be thrilled. Here is small government in action. Hurray! Not only that, it is looking forward, striding bravely into the  nineteenth century, when city-dwellers posted the medallions of their private fire companies on their walls, so that their houses would be saved in the event of a conflagration. Live in a tenement and can’t afford the cost of a fire company? Better be careful with your candles and your coal fire, then.

As a taxpayer and a homeowner in California, I pay taxes and I expect fire protection. And I get it. Even though we live at the edge of a rural area and many of the firefighters are volunteers, they are well trained,have excellent equipment, and a network of mutual aid contracts. (Mutual aid, apparently a socialist idea Tennessee does not embrace.)There are streets in my county that have designated themselves somehow “privately maintained roads” but to my knowledge they still pay parcel taxes and still have fire protection.

Of course, California is teetering on bankruptcy. Maybe Tennessee is right and only people who live in the city or are wealthy enough to pay an annual membership fee “deserve” fire-protection. For that matter, why do we have to pay taxes for water treatment? Can’t we all buy bottled water? Or those of us with money could pay “memberships” in water treatment plants and we could have clean water. Those slackers who just mow our lawns and watch our kids, pave our roads, mix our coffee drinks, nurse us back to health, teach us and sell us our clothes would just have to take their chances. Instead of paying for everybody, even those dratted poor people, to get water, why don’t we just drill some holes and put some standpipes in the town square. That’d work, right?

And don’t even get me started on education! How dare all those people think they have a right to learn! Don’t they understand the meaning of privilege? Well, if they don’t, they can go look it up.

Fox’s “Fab Five” or whatever they are lack the courage of their own convictions. A family’s house burning to the ground is the logical consequence of a government “so small you could drown it in a bathtub.” Grumbling? Complaining? Acting shocked? You should be celebrating! This is the Fox’s vision of America. Rejoice in it, Fox pundits. Sip expensive wine  and toast some marshmallows in its lambent glow.

Blind Allegiance, Part I

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

I’m only about halfway through Blind Allegiance. This is not normally the kind of book I read, but Jeanne Devon, who writes the Mudflats blog, co-wrote it, so of course I had to get it. It broke in the top 100 on Amazon, hitting the lower 40s at its peak. 

Since the full title is Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin, I did expect the book to be somewhat about Palin, and it is. It is more about the main author though, Frank Bailey, who managed her gubernatorial campaign and worked for her when she was governor, and his loss of his soul (and the subsequent, we hope, regaining of it).

What makes Frank Bailey’s book different from other boring campaign tell-alls is that he brings e-mails sent by Palin. Lots of e-mails: between 50,000-60,000. Not all of them are in the book, of course. It is the e-mails, which are irrefutable, that make the Palin camp dislike Bailey so much, and probably what spawns the epithet “disloyal” instead of the more common “disgruntled.”  While Palin was governor, she and her “inner circle” conducted state business through private e-mail accounts like Yahoo and G-mail. An Alaskan citizen actually filed an ethics complaint about this, demanding that the e-mails be made available to the public since the public’s business was conducted there. The finding was that, while it is a bad practice to conduct state business on a non-secure private e-mail account, the accounts were private and do not have to be opened to the public. Using that same logic, Bailey is making the e-mails sent to his own personal account available in his book. And now, that’s the subject of an ethics investigation. All very circular.

What stands out, and I’ve only finished Chapter Eleven, is how quickly Frank Bailey and the “Rag Tag,” as Palin’s inner circle of campaign volunteers called themselves, relaxed their ethics in their zeal to get her elected.

The first startling example was the letters to the editor. Palin was in a three-way race in the primary, and the Republican candidate picked up some of her ideas and sound bites and began using them. He also designed a website that had some of the same elements as Palin’s. Palin was furious about this. I guess she believed that she had some kind of intellectual property right to these elements, (the color red, Abraham Lincoln), and was incensed that her opponent could get away with using them. One day, Frank got an e-mail from Palin that read, “Wouldn’t it be nice if someone would write a letter to the editor of the Alaska Daily News, and just say something like this?”  Then, in three paragraphs, she writes the letter: 1) Sarah Palin is fresh, feisty and a reformer; 2) Can’t help noticing that the other Republican candidate is stealing her ideas; 3) Wow, her opponent’s website looks just like Sarah’s!  Isn’t that cheating?

Frank e-mails back that, yes, it would be nice if someone wrote a letter like that. Then they decide that since someone (Palin) already has, they’ll just get a neighbor or friend of a campaigner to send it in to the ADN. They do, and it gets published. This sends them off on a flurry of letter writing. They are careful to make sure that the people they give the finished letters to, to sign and mail from their addresses, are never directly involved with the campaign. Later, when the campaign’s lawyer e-mails Frank that the campaign should not get caught proofing (editing) letters, Frank thinks how upset the guy would be if he knew the campaign was writing the letters.

Is this so bad, really?  I mean, every time any local non-profit is applying for a grant and needs a letter of support, they send me a ‘sample.’  I frequently draft “talking points” for our allies in funding fights or initiatives. Is there a difference?  Yes, I think there is; and more importantly, so did Frank Bailey. Unfortunately for Frank Bailey, he thought there was a line that had been crossed only as he saw that line dwindling in his moral rear-view mirror.

This was the first example, the pinch to the gut that Bailey ignored. What comes through in so many words, so far at least, was the idea that these things were okay because God wanted Palin to get elected.

Historically, the chosen of God don’t usually fare so well. The Jews, Jesus Christ and Joan d’Arc come to mind as examples. If you are really chosen by God, it seems that a short life and early death are probably what you should expect. If you are going to live, you should do it with an attitude of complete humility. Contrast this with the beliefs of self-styled “Christians” like Palin and her crew, who act on the assumption that once you are chosen by God, the usual rules don’t apply to you. Lying, cheating?  Those are terrible things for those other people to do. For us, though?  It’s okay. God wants us to win. Spying on others, suborning people who are contractually obligated to work for the opponent?  Despicable!  For us, though?  It’s okay. God wants us to win. 

I was startled by the letters. It seemed so obviously wrong and kind of childish, besides. I didn’t know what was coming. I hadn’t read up to the part, yet, about Andrew Halcro.

Selling Utah

Friday, May 20th, 2011

Click here for an interesting story about selling off federal land in Utah to balance the national budget.

Here’s my favorite quote:

“I’m not an economist, but I have maintained a household,” Ross told Reuters. “The federal government owns 70 percent of Utah, for example. There are federal buildings. If you need cash, let’s start liquidating.”

Representative Ross, I see your point.  I’m not a neurosurgeon, but I have removed several splinters in my lifetime.  Let’s get out the bone saw, pop your lid and take a look at your gray matter, shall we?

And Now For Something Completely Different

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

The Onion exposes what we all secretly fear; the risk gay marriage poses for “opposite marriage.”

Wear something nice.

“You got Steampunk on my Palin!” “Well, you got Palin on my Steampunk!”

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

Oh, brave new world, that has such creatures (or wonders) in it!  Was I supposed to be giving up SP for Lent or something?  This tempting morsel is just too good to ignore.  Thanks to Thomas Dewar on Facebook, for sharing it first:

Steampunk Palin.

Upon reflection, it may be projects like this that made the Alaska celebrity want to trademark her name.

The Comeback Girl

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

Al hail to you, Sarah Palin, limelight-hugging Queen of the Kodiak! 

They said they had “Palin fatigue.”  They said you weren’t news.  They said they could ignore you. 

Would you stand still for that?  No!  You showed them. 

First of all, you wore that 1980’s vintage silvery Dancin’ Queen roller-disco jacket and those big eyelashes a la Tammy Faye Baker.  Awesome! 

You had us there.  They blogs would have gyrated for days:  “What was she wearing?  Was that her hair?”  You could have stopped—but oh, no.  Not you, not there, not when there was so much more to be achieved. You gave a critique of the State of the Union address. 

Yes, Sarah, it was a “Win The Future” moment, even if you did only use the initials. 

You said, “Well, speaking of last night, that was a tough speech to sit through and kind of try to stomach. . .” 

I know!  His speeches are hard to sit through because you can’t surf or play a game on your hand-held.  He actually makes points and you have to pay attention.  It can make your head hurt.  

But then you got to the “Sputnik moment,” or, as you’d prefer, the “Spudnuts moment.”  Oh, my gosh.  From the second sentence (or maybe it was the first—you do kinda talk in run-ons) when you used “aspire” instead of “inspire,”  to “inevitable” instead of “eventual,” (because if it were inevitable, then Sputnik couldn’t have caused it, because it would have been. . . inevitable. . . See how well you did that?) you launched a tour-de-force flight of fact-free, wrong-worded, incoherent fancy that nearly reached stratospheric levels. (Get one of your kids to Google “stratosphere” so you’ll know that I thought you were really, really high.) 

But it was the Spudnuts Bakery riff that gets you a seat in the Baffling Celebrity Hall of Fame.  

The audacity!  To pick the first website that did come up in Google after you misspelled Sputnik (what other explanation can there be?) and quote the website verbatim;—that means “word for word”—to choose as your local main street family business example a franchise that is both 1) global and 2) shriveling, from 200 stores to 35 in the US; to once again argue with the President by picking a story that supports many of his points . . .woman, you are freakin’ brilliant.  And to top it all off, they make potato-flour doughnuts. 

Potato-flour doughnuts. 

What a stroke of sheer strategic genius! 

Potato doughnuts.  How could we not talk about you? 

I kowtow to your awesomeness (have the kids Google “kowtow definition.”  Note; it’s not about cows.) 

President Obama, and the American people, will win the future, but you certainly won the moment.

Not talk about you?  Not talk about you?  How could we never?

Which One Do I Choose?

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

Check out this link to Wonkette.com and watch the candidates for chair of the Republican National Committee discuss their favorite bars–I mean books.  This is hilarious, and you can laugh without guilt since this position only controls spending of the Republican campaign funding; it’s not like they hold a real elected office or anything.

 Question Number One: Whose answer is funnier, the woman’s, or Michael Steele’s? Be prepared to defend your answer.

Question Number Two:  If one wanted to send Michael Steele a book in order to educate him (and one wants to, one really wants to) which book should it be?  War and Peace, or A Tale of Two Cities?

Fox News; Protecting America’s Children from Salad Bars

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010










Right to the Other Thing

Saturday, November 20th, 2010

Here is an excerpt from a cute story on Wonkette, about just how technically challenged our Supreme Court is.  To their credit, they seem to know they are technically challenged.  (They make me look geeky!)

“Although Breyer was making a point about judicial philosophy, he also touched on the court’s sometimes limited grasp of technological developments. For example, Chief Justice John Roberts in a public employee privacy case before the court earlier this year tried to figure out the role of a text-messaging service in enabling an exchange between two people.

“I thought, you know, you push a button; it goes right to the other thing,” Roberts said. Responded Justice Antonin Scalia: “You mean it doesn’t go right to the other thing?”

Read more at Wonkette: Stephen Breyer Admits Supreme Court Has No Idea How Internet Works