Step Right Up . . . .

Need more exercise?




Sweden and Volkswagen have an entertaining way to get it . . . .

Palin's speechwriters should at least finish the scene

This has been bugging me for a while.

This now familiar right-wing mantra. We'll put more money back in the hands of the taxpayer because they know how to spend it better than government does.

Palin, in two of her latest outings (Nevada and Colorado), has used the same speech. Aside from the painful introduction of her husband as "First Dude" and dripping family goo, she uttered this familiar line:

I'm returning a chunk of our surplus straight back to the people because they can spend it better than government can.

Same old mantra. I sloughed it off until I saw it on a video.



It struck me that this is a shallow and incomplete line of reasoning. It may work in the pub at 5:30 pm on a Friday, but by Monday there's a lot missing. It was hearing the audio that put that mantra in the field of mindless jingles. In that format, I knew that I had heard the line followed by an immediate take down. Then I found it. (I've removed the names for your continued enjoyment.)

Moderator: Governor [name removed], many economists have stated that the tax cut, which is the centerpiece of your economic agenda, could actually harm the economy. Is now really the time to cut taxes?

Gov. [name removed]: You bet it is. We need to cut taxes for one reason - the American people know how to spend their money better than the federal government does.

Moderator: [name removed], your rebuttal.

[name removed]: There it is. That's the ten word answer my staff's been looking for for two weeks. There it is. Ten-word answers can kill you in political campaigns. They're the tip of the sword. Here's my question: What are the next ten words of your answer? Your taxes are too high? So are mine. Give me the next ten words. How are we going to do it? Give me ten after that, I'll drop out of the race right now. Every once in a while... every once in a while, there's a day with an absolute right and an absolute wrong, but those days almost always include body counts. Other than that, there aren't very many unnuanced moments in leading a country that's way too big for ten words. I'm the President of the United States, not the President of the people who agree with me. And by the way, if the left has a problem with that, they should vote for somebody else.

There it is. The take down. Your mantra, Governor, is overly simplistic crap.

Worse, however, is that Palin's speechwriters apparently lack sufficient imagination to go any further than a fictional television drama for their text. Too bad they didn't copy the whole script because the reminder is there: "Complexity isn't a vice."



In Sarah Palin's world it's all about winning votes by telling you how much money she's going to give back to you. She doesn't tell anyone what the actual cost of that might be. In Sarah Palin's world you pay for your own rape kit.

"Batter Up . . . . "

From today's Globe and Mail:

Report: Clemens had relationship with country star

Associated Press - April 28, 2008

NEW YORK — Roger Clemens had a decade-long relationship with country star Mindy McCready that began when she was a 15-year-old aspiring singer and the pitcher was a Boston Red Sox ace, the Daily News reported.

Clemens's lawyer, Rusty Hardin, confirmed a long-term relationship but told the newspaper it was not sexual.

"He flatly denies having had any kind of an inappropriate relationship with her," Hardin said. "He's considered her a close family friend. ... He has never had a sexual relationship with her."

_______________


The newspaper said Clemens sent cash to McCready to help her with legal issues and reached out to her when she was in jail last year in Tennessee.

The 32-year-old McCready was sentenced last September for violating probation from a 2004 drug arrest and was released from jail last Dec. 30. The violation occurred in July when McCready was accused of scuffling with her mother and resisting arrest at her mother's home in Fort Myers, Fla. She still must serve two years' probation.

McCready had a No. 1 single in 1996 with "Guys Do It All the Time." (No reference to the above photo of Clemens and unknown playmate, we're assuming. - Ed.)

Sounds like there's lyrics to a hit country song in there somewhere . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moving to Vancouver)

Wanted : A "Device to Root Out Teh Stupid".

According to a few local residents, a public park at the foot of Bute St. in Vancouver is evidently the wrong place for a Device to Root Out Evil.

Well, obviously. A device to root out overly sensitive meddlesome Jeebus thumpers should have been installed there first.

The decision to remove the 25' steel, aluminum, and Venetian glass sculpture after 2 1/2 years was approved unanimously by Vancouver Park Board commissioners.

Artist Dennis Oppenheim "has denied any anti-religious design to his sculpture. "Pointing a steeple into the ground directs it to hell as opposed to heaven," he told one interviewer. "It's a very simple gesture."

The Park Board should have responded to the complaints with an even simpler one.

Cross-posted at Creekside