A Second Hand Conjecture

Lost so very badly. I pretty much feel the same way as Glenn Reynolds does on the immigration bill:

SAXBY CHAMBLISS was booed at a GOP convention over the immigration bill. The big problem for the GOP leadership is that they’ve lost their credibility. And they still don’t understand it. This was clear a year ago when we talked to then-GOP chair Ken Mehlman, and it’s much, much truer now. As a reader emails: “No credibility to fall back on. No reserve of good will to fall back on. No record to fall back on. No successes to fall back on.”

And as Dan Riehl said earlier this week, Republicans were given a wakeup call with the 2006 elections, and they opted to hit snooze.

I still don’t know enough to know if the bill is good or bad. But if the bill is actually a good bill that the GOP base would accept if they read it . . . then that’s an even bigger indictment of the GOP leadership for failing to sell it. At this point, they’ve either mis-sold a good bill, or produced a bad one.

What a bunch of fools. It is sad our political class is such a cynical bunch of power seekers and panderers, it is pathetic that they are so bad at it.

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This lovely angel is Tania Derveaux, the NEE party candidate for the Belgian Senate. Nee is the Belgian equivalent of “None of the Above.”

Tania has a problem with the dishonest and unrealistic promises most politicians make while running for office:

It started with our response to incredible claims that were made by other parties in Belgium, several parties promised new job opportunities in ridiculous amounts. We responded with a parody campaign for which I posed naked and promised our voters 400,000 new jobs.

The response was , how can I say this?….Energetic! The response after many requests, was to give the public what they wanted, as Tania came up with a campaign to express her disdain for “dirty politics” and differentiate herself from the typical politician. Uh, some might find this a bit… “risque.”

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I haven’t been following closely the CHANNON CHRISTIAN / CHRISTOPHER NEWSOME story. Generally I don’t follow the crime of the day, nor have I found that the crime of the day in our media deserves to be the crime amongst all the cruel barbarity of the world to deserve much coverage. The drive this time amongst many seems to be to make this a bookend to the Duke lacrosse case, as if we need similar behavior on the part of our media and justice system to balance out the scales of justice. Simply put, we don’t. Typically Glenn Reynold’s has a reasonable view to counter the frothing and links to this:

The popular comparison for media coverage is to the Duke Lacrosse case, because the races of the accused and victims are inverted. This is considered the main difference driving the degree of coverage. But there’s another difference that matters – in the Duke case, the DA actively sought out media coverage. He was either trying to drum up witnesses for an ongoing investigation (if you want to be charitable towards him), or exploiting the racial aspect of the case to help his re-election bid (if you don’t.) Either way, he actively asked the media to cover his case. The authorities in Knoxville have not. Are the Knoxville authorities wrong for not acting enough like Mike Nifong?

For the balance seekers it seems yes. Read it all.

Just as typically Eric Scheie has lots of reasonable and intelligent observations. I would start here, but follow the links to his other posts as well.

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Apparently Democrat Congressman from California, Tom Lantos, has decided that Congress’ recent attacks on Major League Baseball and its various teams and athletes just weren’t enough. Now, it seems, the NFL is in for it. Citing the recent investigation into Atlanta Falcons’ Quarterback Michael Vick’s former home in Virginia, the distinguished gentleman from California took the opportunity to threate… um, I mean remind Commissioner Goodell that his Oversight and Government Reform Committee would be only too happen to visit the same woes on NFL teams and players as the MLB suffered. In fact, Lantos seems to infer that the NFL would wish for the type of treatment that baseball received by the time he and his Committee are done with it. Once again the feds are absolutely overstepping their bounds here and interfering in a private organization. The Commissioner has to walk a fine line between defending the NFL and its teams and players and graciously accepting the advice of Congressman Lantos (that is, not irritating him further). In this case of flagrant abuse of Congressional power, however, I’d say he should lean a bit more towards the former. Doesn’t Lantos have other things he could be focusing on (like immigration, homeland security, the global war on terror, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, earmark refrom, the Di-Fi scandal, Hillary’s choice of theme music for her campaign, etc.).

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Hillary Clinton said that her childhood dream was to be an Olympic athlete. But she was not athletic enough. She said she wanted to be an astronaut, but at the time they didn’t take women.  She said she wanted to go into medicine, but hospitals made her woozy. Should  she be telling people this story? I mean she’s basically saying she wants to be president because she can’t do anything else.”

–Jay Leno

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Now I know this has been everywhere, but the fact is it should be. So I am putting it up as well. Fred Thompson’s response to Michael Moore’s request to debate health care policy:

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