The Village Provides A True Eureka Moment

Hey Republicans, I've think I've discovered the problem.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, still considered among the most influential members of the Republican Party, is touting Sarah Palin's impact on the GOP and her future in the party. 

Please take a moment to analyze that sentence for what may be the key to your more recent electoral difficulties in 2006 and 2008.  The bolded sections are there to help.

Thanks.

A Lesson In Self-Defense

When local government revenues continue to crash along with the residential and commercial real estate markets, your choices are A) cut more services, B) borrow money, C) raise taxes.  Since in a wingnut world B and C are unconstitutional and must be answered with armed revolution, that leaves A.  The problem is all the easy cuts have been made.

Now comes the hard, painful cuts.  You know, the ones dealing with public safety.

When the sheriff's department in Ashtabula County, Ohio, was cut from 112 to 49 deputies, just one vehicle was left to patrol the 720-square-mile county.

Asked what residents should do for protection, Common Pleas Judge Alfred Mackey replied, " Arm themselves," and added, "We're going to have to look after each other."

Area gun dealers and instructors told WKYC-TV, Cleveland, that they've noticed an uptick in sales and interest in self-defense classes.

One instructor, Tracy Williams, said the cuts mean "you don't have any other option" other than to listen to Mackey's advice.

Welcome to Galt's Gulch, kids.  Coming soon to where you live!  Hey, if our ancestors could live through the 19th century, so can we, right?  Clearly the solution to this problem is more tax cuts so that the residents of Ashtabula County can have more money to buy weapons and ammo.

On the other hand, these guys will have a leg up when the zombie hordes come.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

This chart here?  This is where the money is in this country.




To reiterate, the conservative platform is basically that the dark green section is telling the light green section that helping the sliver of white there is an unconstitutional waste of taxpayer money that the light green section pays, so that the best strategy is instead to take that money and give it to the dark green section and their buddies, the medium green section, through tax cuts.  Even better, the dark green section tells the greenish-white sliver that they are slaves if anyone helps them, and they should shun it out of pride.

In other words, your average conservative honestly believes that the little sliver of greenish-white there representing the bottom half of the country has too much of a share of wealth in this nation of freedom and equality of ours.  Politics is basically a fight over that sliver.

Have a nice day.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Via John Cole at Balloon Juice, Taylor Marsh asks in a piece titled "Where's the Left's Sarah Palin?":

Where is the woman on the left who can make headlines and draw crowds like Sarah Palin, Liz Cheney, perhaps even a re-entry of Dr. Condoleezza Rice?

Cole's answer is quite sufficient:

It’s a real shame that there is no lefty Sarah Palin, because what the party could really use is a know-nothing empty suit who is wildly unpopular with the majority of Americans, extremely divisive to the folks you need to reach out to, completely unversed in anything regarding policy, and leading the party into a ditch. It really sucks there is no left-wing Palin.

My answer goes into a bit more detail.  If anything, Sarah Palin and Liz Cheney are known for their foibles and their stubborn, willfull ignorance.  I'll tell you what, Taylor, where's the woman on the right who got health care reform passed as Speaker of the House like Nancy Pelosi?  Where's the woman on the right who is America's chief diplomat who is improving America's standing in the world, and not covering for an incompetent, belligerent foreign policy like Hillary Clinton?   Where is the woman on the right, a daughter of immigrants, championing the rights of the American worker as Secretary of Labor like Hilda Solis?

I'll take effective, competent, strong leadership in our women on the left than half-term failed governors and unaccomplished jingoists trading on their father's name on the other side, thanks.

The left is better than Palin and Cheney.  If they want to make headlines, fine.  I'd rather have people who make history.

The Miami Unsound Machine

A nice story this morning out of the St. Petersburg Times showing that the Florida GOP tried to hide spending by using a junior staffer's party-issued credit card...spending totaling over a million bucks.  Needless to say, Florida donors are not happy.

Over the next 2½ years, nearly $1.3 million in charges wound up on Melanie Phister's AmEx — $40,000 at a London hotel, and nearly $20,000 in plane tickets for indicted former House Speaker Ray Sansom, his wife and kids, for starters. Statements show thousands spent on jewelry, sporting goods and in one case $15,000 for what's listed as a month-long stay at a posh Miami Beach hotel, but which the party says was a forfeited deposit.

The credit card records, obtained by the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald, offer the latest behind-the-scenes look at extravagant and free-wheeling spending by the party touting fiscal restraint. Not only did certain elite legislative leaders have their own party credit cards to spend donors' money with little oversight, but Phister's records show these leaders also liberally used an underling's card — without her knowledge, she says.

"I did not have the sole discretion to initiate credit card spending," Phister said in an e-mail statement. "Over that period of time, there were multiple instances when the card was used to make purchases that I had no knowledge of, and I did not regularly review the monthly credit card statements which I understand were sent directly to the Party's accounting office."

Even after a series of embarrassing revelations over profligate credit card spending by the likes of Republican U.S. Senate frontrunner Marco Rubio, Sansom and incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon — and pending state and federal investigations of party finances — revelations of the huge charges on Phister's card had veteran GOP fundraisers apoplectic.

"Oh my God. I can't believe it,'' said Al Hoffman, a top fundraiser from Fort Myers, when told of the $1.258 million on Phister's card. "See, that's it. They have an underling do it all. There's no reason a young assistant should be ringing up charges like that."

Phister served as finance director for state House campaigns for 2½ years starting in mid 2006.

She was a Republican Party employee who mainly answered to Sansom, R-Destin, speaker-designate at the time and overseeing House campaign operations. The job involved planning fundraising events and often accompanying Sansom and other legislative leaders on fundraising and other political trips.

Sansom was indicted by a grand jury last year for inserting $6 million into the state budget for an airport building that a friend and GOP contributor, Jay Odom, wanted to use as an airplane hangar. That criminal investigation revealed that Sansom charged more than $170,000 on his party-issued credit card — everything from plane tickets for his family to clothes to electronics.

Turns out Sansom spent heavily on Phister's card as well. 

Yeah, this one is not going to go away anytime soon.  The party of fiscal restraint and responsibility supposedly, screaming that the Democrats can't be trusted with taxpayer money, these are the same folks who went and spent party donations on themselves, and then used this staffer's card to pay for the REALLY big ticket stuff they wanted off the books.

It just goes to show you that Republicans are flaming hypocrites.  Remember why we threw them out of office in 2006 and 2008?  None of that has changed in 2010.  They're still the same crooked politicians they always were, and should they get back into power, this is the kind of thing you can be sure will happen time and time again.

You may want to throw out the bums in office, but let's not replace them with even worse bums.

PS, the Florida Democratic Party?  They have to use their own credit cards and their own money.  Only now, after all this crap has come to light, has the Florida Republican Party stopped the practice of using party issued cards.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife are among the dead reported as his military plane crashed short of a runway in eastern Russia.
• The bodies of four missing W. Virginia miners have been found, bringing the death toll from Monday's explosion to 29.
• The Commerce Department says China dumped cheap steel on the US market and hurt US steelmakers.
• Myrtle Beach-based Beach First National has become bank failure number 42 this year alone.
• Remind me not to link to Japan's Nikkei newspaper:  they apparently want you to fill out a form for doing so.