“Sarah Palin is a great friend to the bowling industry and we’re so proud and honored to welcome her as our keynote speaker at International Bowl Expo 2010,” said Steven Johnson, executive director of the BPAA.

A bowling columnist writes:

Politicians don’t seem to give a hoot about championing the great sport of bowling and that bothers me when politicians who know nothing about bowling are invited to speak at a bowling convention and barely mention the sport. I would venture a guess that a keynote speaker at Bowl Expo earns between $25,000 and $50,000 for maybe 25 minutes of jokes and their beliefs about what is happening in the country…views they probably have expressed numerous times on numerous cable and network TV shows.

And that’s the point.  The convention brings her in for the publicity and she’s there for the payoff and to reread her lines.  

…is only indicative of local situations, really – with two caveats.

1. If you run a crappy candidate and a nasty, dumb campaign, don’t be surprised when you lose.
2. If you spend a lot of money and should have won or just barely won, that says more about your campaign and your candidate than anything else.

In Virginia and New Jersey, the Democrats ran really poor candidates and got beat.  In NYC, Bloomberg spent $100M of his own money and won by a much lesser margin than expected; exit polls said that his gyrations to but term limits didn’t go over well with voters.

In New York’s 23rd congressional district (which will go the way of the dodo come next reapportionment and census)  the Conservative Party candidate and his snarky stunts and we’re-entitled-to-stomp-the-unpure approach, hand in hand with Glen Beck, didn’t go over well with the locals.  For the first time since the 1870s, the Republicans lost that seat to the Democrats.

The big lesson for the Democrats is not that Obama’s lost support; his support in VA and NJ was far higher on election day than the sad-sack Democratic candidates.  It’s that they run to the right with cruddy candidates at the peril of losing the active support and interest of their base and of voters who are tired of the same old stuff.    A large majority of voters in both states clearly said in exit polls that their vote had nothing to do with national politics, period, and far more that the other guy was a bigger stinker.

Weird – the guy who transported me up to my room from the ER last night was going on at length about the horrible injustices done to former Congress critter James Trafficant; I hadn’t heard that name for a while.  Most of the rest of his blurb was a odd and incoherent rant about the Powers In Charge smashing the little guy, but in a very weird ‘the aliens are coming in black helicopters’ style.

Discussion about a bailout bill for newspapers if they reorganize as 501c3 not-for-profits; the President had this to say about it:

Obama said that good journalism is “critical to the health of our democracy,” but expressed concern toward growing tends in reporting — especially on political blogs, from which a groundswell of support for his campaign emerged during the presidential election. “I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding,” he said.

No lie there, dude.   You can’t make news organization hot profit centers or milk cows for your big corporation with turning them into worthless piles of tabloid junk, centered on the cheap and dirty and not getting people to understand and think.

The family has taken up a new and very nice practice; having family reading times – not scheduled as such, but so everyone has something good to read and is in the living room together reading.  It works pretty well, I think, and is an improvement over endless oh-I-can’t-watch-that debates about TV stuff.

Tastes run like this for entertainment:

MERE: Could watch the Disney Channel endlessly as mind candy until her brains ran out her ears.    For fun reading, she likes fantasy stuff; I try to steer her to less trashy authors, though fantasy isn’t really my bag.   Some historical novels, some slice-of-life kids’ books.  She reads at a whole lot higher level than her age group, and she’s in AT math and English.  Right now, she’s reading the third HARRY POTTER book and loudly complaining about how much got left out in the movie.   Wait till she reads the rest…

SUSAN: Her reading list has involved a lot of sub-sub-genre stuff – mostly odd mystery books based around dogs or knitting, etc.  She’s now into two new-to-her Sara Paretsky books – BLEEDING KANSAS  (which is modern day) and GHOST COUNTRY.  She will read alternate history stuff, but she shares my distaste for stuff that masquerades as AH, such as CC Finlay’s latest stuff.  She accidentally picked up one of those from my donate-to-the-public-libray pile, and did a WTF. 

She’s also taken to using her MP3 player a lot for audio books, especially when in the car or commuting.

CONNIE: Really good historical novels, history works that are very readable and some biographies; she recently has been reading Ted Kennedy’s TRUE COMPASS cover to cover as fast as she can.   Occasionally, something new-agey inspirational.  One hole: she has a strong aversion to Roman history; I’ve tried to get her to read Falco mysteries or McCullough’s First Men in Rome series, and she won’t hear of it.  Not sure why.

ME: Alternate history (because I have to read everything in the genre, pretty much, for the Sidewise Awards).  Historical novels and histories.   he occasional mystery or fantasy book; THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA was my most recent hot-stuff fantasy, and my favorite book of all time is LORD OF THE RINGS.  (I like epic fantasy stuff, and not the stuff that is too weird (GORMENGHAST) or watered down (Shannara series, Thomas Covenant) to deal with.  Throw in science stuff of all sorts; my to-read pile includes a ton of research on climate and history and whatnot for the ice age and since.

(taken from the teabagger protest in DC this weekend)

Lesson #1: Anyone who is not a Republican is not a Marxist.  Really.

Lesson #2: The last Czar in Russia gave up the throne in 1917, and the Russian Communists took over Russia in 1918; I don’t think you understand that there were no Czars in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I’ve never heard of Czar Brezhnev.

…also, there’s no ‘czars’ in the US federal government, except in the pens and imaginations of press writers who deemed some person a ‘czar’, just like there was no ‘Star Wars’ DOD program by that name – headline writers thought that the namess were cool.

I will admit that a ‘abstinence czar’ is indeed a funky title, and I don’t know what the punishments would be for breaking his rules.   (Though the one that Dubya appointed resigned over his hookers…dude, just say no, OK?)

Lesson #3: Inflating the numbers of a rally by a factor of 25-30 (making 50-60 thousand marchers become 2 million) and lying about the source of the information is right up there with declaring to the ladies that your tallywhacker is 53 inches long, and that Obama wants to kill your grandma.  Wait…

I have been listening to enough rants, hate and nonsense in the last year and a half to last me a lifetime or more, and I’ve been more than fed up with it all.  But I started realizing that this sort of crud is endemic; uninformed people who choke off their sources of information to a limited cell of rumors and scares will support all sorts of wild stuff out of ignorance and fear, and fail to take this sort of thing apart and think it all through.

Nutballs in American political life were there from the beginning – look at the nastiness during the Adams and Jefferson administration, under Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, Truman, and so on.  There’s been two big red scares (right after the first and second World Wars), and a lot of people fighting anything that smells like change.

They fought immigration from ‘those people’ – first non-English speaking Europeans, then non-Protestants, non-Europeans, and so on.  They fought changes in the laws to give anyone voting and citizenship rights…removing rules that kept Catholics, non-property owners and the like off the voting rolls.  Not to mention non-Christians.  And letting people who aren’t our kind into office?  Oh!

They fought taxation of any kind.  They fought any kind of consumer protection, including drug safety and food safety.  They fought public schools.  They fought paper money, banking, lending, interstate commerce, the internet and highways, and practically everything that they considered despicable progress.    They fought separation of church and state, because they desired their religion’s rules to trump everyone else’s.

They fought medicine and science and public health.  They fought innoculations, public water systems and sanitation laws. They fought educational reform; if the Bible and a switch were good enough for them, it was good enough for you.

They fought slavery in favor of indentured servitude (think serfs, and they were white and British) because they hated foreigners, and then fought against freedom for the black slaves that came over to America against their will, and they fought homesteaders.  And yes, there were fanatics like John Brown who fought against slavery but didn’t give much of a damn who died in the process, and bushwhackers like Quantrill and Jesse James who killed and laid waste in the opposite direction.

They fought freedom of expression and gun ownership by other people who didn’t fit their mind of real people.

They closed their eyes to intolerance, poverty, hate, misery, ignorance and want, out-scrooging every Scrooge.  They become stooges, in many cases, for much more moneyed and wanna-be-powerful interests.  And very often, those interests proceeded to screw the ignorant over just as much and thoroughly as anyone else, because the powerful who used them didn’t care who got worked over.  They fought reforms of banks and recoveries from panics and recessions and depressions because they felt that the government shouldn’t help anyone.

They become shills, endlessly repeating total nonsense.  They get sucked into buying tons of extra ammo and gold and survival equipment by scare merchants who advise them that the Boogie Man is right around the corner – or become dittohead drones to people who advise them to trust Nobody But Them aginst All Those Commies Out There.

Here’s a sampling of some; cut to avoid disturbing your stomach.  I remembered plenty of this from my own experience, and had to do a little research to give specifically connected links.

I have no problem with political debate.  I have every problem with organizing people to shut down political debate with threats and screaming.  And it deeply bothers me to see how many people don’t think before they act, vote or rant about whatever.

I know Marxists, and nobody in the Administration’s top is a Marxist, unless your definition has no connection to real life.   I see people rant at town halls about the evils of socialized medicine, and go home and thank God for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and never realize the problem with this.   I see people gripe about potholed roads and collapsing bridges and about how there should be no local taxes and never get the connection that no taxes = no public anything.

And I am tired of politicians who lie through their teeth for political power, regardless of the cost to all but their buds – whether it’s Richie Daley trying to tapdance about how the Olympics won’t cost Chicago anything, or the GOP leadership / politicians refusing to  care about anything but trying to destroy Obama  as a lesson to the rest of us and pandering to the most whacked out elements of their base.  That was the reason why I left the Republican party years ago; I believed in government’s role for the general good, and in things like honest government for the general good, and the GOP leadership stopped doing that.

When environmental protection comes down to ‘don’t worry, the rapture is coming’, I can’t support that.

The inspector general of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reports that five SEC exams and investigations of Bernie Madoff were incompetently done.   I can believe one screwup happened, but five?  Five is agency policy to not look too hard.

Both Markopolos and an SEC staff accountant testified that it was clear the Boston office’s assistant district administrator at the time “did not understand the information presented,’’ Inspector General David Kotz wrote in a blistering report. As a result, the Boston staff failed to investigate the complaint or, at first, to even refer it to the regional office in New York, according to the inspector general.

and:

“Moreover, we found that Madoff proactively informed potential investors that the SEC had examined his operations. When potential investors expressed hesitation about investing with Madoff, he cited the prior SEC examinations to establish credibility and allay suspicions or investor doubts that may have arisen while due diligence was being conducted.”

This was a man who was a former chairman of NASDAQ, and his family and he were on all sorts of securities industry oversight and control boards, including the industry’s internal compliance office.   He got away with his actions because there was a lot of loose money floating around, he was a fantastic con artist, and because of his numerous connections.  The Chinese call this guanxi, 关系 – the old-boy-network.

As in ‘we can’t being him to justice; he’s one of the connected people. Laws and taxes are for the little people.’

Various reports that the WPA wireless security systems have been broken pretty thoroughly, which is a big reason why my home wireless setup is top of the line on encryption.  This is a problem because some older laptops won’t handle it, and in the *brief* time such laptops are around, I have to either come up with a clear unencrypted signal OR hand ‘em an ethernet connection.

Also noted: The FTC is supposed to shut off those dang robocalls – we get tons of them from two sources – clothing stores for Susan and Mere, telling us perkily that THERE’S A SALE ON! – or the local Republican congresswoman who is telling us how much she wuvs the party line.  Obviously, I’m not very interested in hearing from either one.

I will form a belief structure in this when I apprehend the reality of the robocalls actually shutting down…

I am frequently dismayed by various Truthers out there who insist on a Grand Conspiracy theory of the universe; stories about how the moon landing was faked, the world is flat, that 9/11 was an inside job and how Obama is some kind of Manchurian candidate smuggled into the country as a very small baby with the connivance of Moo-slims, Africans and atheists to bring our nation to socialism, that Hillary murdered Vince Foster, or how the Queen of England is a drug dealer just get me to a point of saying: you guys are passing over the real conspiracies for this crap?

It’s Calvinball, folks, where the rules change with a whim.   If you argue with the flat-earthers, they just call you part of the conspiracy, or deluded fools, or slaves of the Megatron, and screw on their aluminum foil hats all the tighter.  When is someone going to deliver an original Moon rock to my door so that I can verify it with my home chemical test kit?

And it’s usually motivated by ignorance and fear.   People who are afraid of the idea of the moon landing and the notion of space travel as such will hop on the ‘it’s all made up’ bandwagon.  People who can’t openly say that the notion of a African-American president  is alien and horrifying to them will look to Birther stuff because they feel in their guts that he *can’t* be a legitimate President; he’s the wrong color.

Not to mention that Democrats could not have legitimately won any election without trickery and fraud, etc.   Any concept otherwise would have to accept the fact that somone in the GOP messed up bad enough that they lost an election on the basis of policy issues, and that’s not acceptable in the place where the sky is paisley-colored.

Of course, this also feeds things racial and cultural on the Republican side of a similar nature with their own people: Bobby Jindal’s South Asian ethnicity and citizenship and Romney’s Mormon faith seen as cultism.   My own connection to Unity would be seen as some whacko cult, I’m sure, let alone that I’m a race traitor and Mere is a hanjian.

Personally, I’m of the opinion that they should put in an Amendment to the Constitution that says something like: …and naturalized citizens who have been resident in the USA for 30 years can be President or VP. That way, Meredith can be President and you all can face her mighty wrath.  Bwahahaha.

One blog commenter wrote:

These people didn’t need a black president to make them crazy, they were crazy when he got here. They’ve been told for almost thirty years now that God’s plan for America is a permanent Republican majority, for the last fifteen years that Democrats are “congenital liars” dragging the country into the depths of degradation through [Clinton], and for the last seven that we are now locked in a multi-planar existential conflict and our only hope is a strong Godly deciderer who will protect us all from our enemies. The birthers picked up with Obama pretty much where they left off with a Bubba from Arkansas. Remember, Clinton was accused of rape and serial murder because it was politically convenient to accuse him.

Or this one:

I’m still waiting for conclusive proof of the existence of Hawaii. Until I’ve seen something more reliable than the evidence at hand, I’m not accepting it. I won’t accept Hawaii’s existence unless and until I’m personally flown out there and accommodated in a sumptuous hotel for the rest of my life, at taxpayer expense.I’m still waiting for conclusive proof of the existence of Hawaii. Until I’ve seen something more reliable than the evidence at hand, I’m not accepting it. I won’t accept Hawaii’s existence unless and until I’m personally flown out there and accommodated in a sumptuous hotel for the rest of my life, at taxpayer expense.

Being that the only two states that I have never been in are Hawaii and Arizona, I can get behind that notion completely. 

FOIA releases of a ton of emails to and from Governor Sanford of South Carolina’s office from various TV news types (most prominently MEET THE PRESS) offering all sorts of ‘we’ll act like we’re questioning you but we’ll make sure that you get all the softballs you want, and protect you from the nasties out there‘ prostitution-masquerading-as-journalism.    In short, they’re a bunch of insider suckups, which doesn’t surprise me but definitely disgusts me.

Two prominent Cook County politicians who are black will be running in the next election for President of the Cook County Board; this article discusses how that could split the black vote in the election and let Candidate #3 in the door, a reverse of what happened when Washington beat Byrne and Daley for the Mayor’s seat in 1983.

I remember that election and the aftermath very well, as I was marrying the daughter of a prominent Chicago city official a month after the election (we’re long since divorced), and the fuss that was all around at that time.   Since then, I’ve learned a lot about Chicago area politics, and I imagine this will be a true battle of the dinosaurs.

• Governor Sanford of South Carolina’s spokesman is resigning for a job in the private sector.  Comments from folks who know him say that he’s a nice guy who probably is very tired from this ride on the circus.
• Unlike at the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, Arlington trashes the stuff left behind.
• As I’ve said before, I’m ignoring the Sotomayor hearings as much as possible to avoid raising my blood pressure.

From a new WaPo article about details on how Governor Sanford elaborately jerry-rigged up an Official Trip To Argentina to see his ’soulmate’ in Buenos Aires, we have a new euphemism to go along with ‘hiking the appalachian trail‘ – to ‘go Dove Hunting‘.

Dick Durbin and some other Senate Democrats are saying – dudes, you Democratic senators who don’t wanna vote *for* a bill we ‘re putting through don’t have to do so, but fer pete’s sake, nobody lost their seats for voting to shut off debate and bring the bill to a floor vote.

The ‘close debate / cloture’ vote requires 60 votes.  An up or down actual vote on the bill / law just takes a simple majority to pass.

If that’s the deal, then Democratic Senators in Red states can vote to have the up or down vote, and we’re through with this 40-Republicans-can-choke-off-everything crap.

No, I’m talking about Robert McNamara, one of my particular historical nemeses, considering the number of important things that he messed up, destroyed or ruined. Not to mention the uncountable dead.

Apparently, she’s resigning the governorship at the end of the month (at a picnic?!) and neither she nor the new Lieutenant Governor who will replace her will run in the next Gubernatorial election.   Nothing about 2012 and the national scene.

I have my own suspicions, but the Californians who have opinions who regularly read my journal can read this posting in the Mahablog (which I regularly read) and see if they agree about the breakdown of the political process in the Golden State.

Here also is a quick breakdown of who is paid in IOUs and who is paid in cash.

(Buy it now here!)

What do you get,
When you open the top,
And look inside,
And smack your lips,
And turn it over,
And spill it out?
What do you get?

Lip-smacking’
Whipcrackin’
Paddywhackin’
Olagazackin’
Infolackin’
Alliganackin’
Crackerjackin’
Cracker Jack!

Candy-coated popcorn, peanuts, and a prize…
That’s what you get in Cracker Jack!

Rush Limbaugh: Sanford was probably driven in desperation to cheat on his wife and get some small pleasure out of life by Barack Obama’s efforts to destroy America, as in what-the-heck-it’s-all-over-I’m-just-going-to-have-fun.

Full quotes at the link.   At the other end of the world, Congressman Michelle Bachmann is suggesting that the Obama Administration is going to use Census information to round people up that it doesn’t like, and cites the Japanese-Americans rounded up during WW2 and taken to internment camps.

So I guess it’s probably really my fault for voting for Obama and plunging us all into a deep, dark gay socialist hell on earth.  Sorry, Governor Sanford, I just had no idea as to what I was doing.    I was only follwing the instructions of Comrade  Jiang Yu Cai as she was directed by the ChiCom Politburo, too, so they’re involved in the heinous plot.