Monthly Archives: October 2010

Partisan Hackery Mea Culpa

Posted in all growd'sd up, ohio, politics on October 26th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
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Good news: with a week to go until what really ought to be a Republican landslide, I believe I’ve got this election-year bout of partisan hackery out of my system. Back to writing boring things about politics and boring things about other topics at a roughly 1:1 ratio!

To recap, nobody should vote for Maryellen O’Shaughnessy. Unless you’re a public union member, in which case go for it; after all, your dues are paying for her campaign! If possible, even fewer than zero people should vote for Mary Jo Kilroy, a socialist who has no business telling businesses what to do. OH-15 and America in general are better off without her, however much the leeches at the AFSCME might disagree. Noticing a pattern here?

Outside of Ohio, one of my satirical Bob Etheridge (D-NC) ads was picked up by his opponent Renee Ellmers’s attack site, which is just dandy as far as I’m concerned. Ellmers – like John Kasich, Steve Stivers, and most of Ohio’s GOP ticket – seems like an incredibly easy choice given the alternative.

As President Obama would say, let me be clear: I am not a party guy. I worked a couple of trivial events for Congressman Boehner during high school, volunteered when Dubya visited Troy in 2004, and put in a few hours at Ken Blackwell’s headquarters in 2006. But, despite all my transparently racist fear-mongering, I have little love for the Ohio GOP. Bob Taft? Mike DeWine? George Voinovich? These are hardly the sort of steely conservatives we can count on to do what’s politically difficult and economically necessary, and the state party has no shortage of their kind.

If being the grandson of a county commissioner is good for anything, it’s b.s. detection. From a young age I got to see that some of the movers & shakers in my own party are miserable human beings, and that most of the folks in the other party are not. As final reminders to vote, you should read this piece by Frank at IMAO and check out this video!

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Invaluable Insights from OSU Law

Posted in ohio, politics on October 14th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
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An “Ask the Experts” entry – in its entirety – from the new Ohio State election site, elections.osu.edu:

How does racial equity come into play in Tea Party politics?

john a. powell, professor, Moritz College of Law and executive director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity

A: ”Tea Party supporters are more likely to be White (80 percent), middle-aged, with higher than average education and income levels. As our nation becomes increasingly multicultural, and as minorities begin to assume positions of power, Whites can experience anxiety over a potential decline in their historically privileged social and economic position. These fears and attitudes can drive political opinion.”

Professor Powell’s answer is conventional wisdom for anyone who relies on “mainstream” media sources other than Fox News or The Wall Street Journal. In addition to providing no unique insight, it’s supported by exactly zero facts. Given presumably limitless space to answer a politically important question, Professor Powell devoted a whole three sentences to insinuating that Tea Party supporters are rich old bigots frightened of a black president.

As of the 2000 Census, 77.1% of America’s population was classified as “White alone or in combination.” Is America itself driven by fear and anxiety? Is any group populated by a certain percentage of white people de facto racist? If so, perhaps Professor Powell could enlighten us as to what that percentage is. Doing so shouldn’t be above his pay grade: according to The Buckeye Institute’s higher ed database, his 2010 salary is $345,835.20.

I am too lazy, too cheap, and, let’s face it, probably not intelligent enough for law school. But if I were a Moritz student, I would be downright embarrassed by this “Ask the Experts” feature.

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History’s Most Powerful Whiner?

Posted in politics on October 13th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
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Since I disagree with basically everything the man does, there’s a lot about President Obama that I find annoying. One of the president’s worst attributes – maybe even worse than the way he views himself as God’s gift to a horribly flawed America – is the fact that he’s a giant whiny baby:

“It may be that regardless of what happens after this election, they feel more responsible,” he is quoted saying in the Sunday edition of The New York Times Magazine, “either because they didn’t do as well as they anticipated, and so the strategy of just saying no to everything and sitting on the sidelines and throwing bombs didn’t work for them, or they did reasonably well, in which case the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals and work with me in a serious way.”

Waaaah – I’m the most powerful man on earth, and people don’t love me enough for spending billions of their dollars on things they’re too stupid to know they need! Republicans don’t hang on my every word like mommy said everyone’s supposed to!

President Obama gave the GOP leadership a ton of opportunities to work with him on the health care bill. Remember? That 2,000-page piece of legislation that totally wasn’t crafted in the dark by a handful of leftier-than-left Democrats and their favorite lobbyists? Right.

At least there was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. President Obama was a bipartisan superstar on that one:

Among the regrets the president said he felt during the 111th Congress is letting Republicans make him out to be “the same old tax-and-spend liberal Democrat.”

Obama said he also realized too late that “there is no such thing as shovel-ready projects,” a familiar refrain made by the president when he was trying to sell the stimulus package.

“There are almost 100 shovel-ready transportation projects already approved,” he said in August 2009. As recently as July of this year, he said, “Shovels will soon be moving earth and trucks will soon be pouring concrete.”

Let’s say government spending creates jobs in a way that is worth the investment and not just a temporary, politically beneficial boost to employment while the market corrects. Let’s say that. Assuming improvements to highways, the electrical grid, and other genuinely important infrastructure are worth hundreds of billions in “emergency” spending, one wonders how our unfairly-characterized president justifies:

“Dance Draw” – Interactive Dance Software Development (Charlotte, NC) – $762,372 [...]

Monkey and Chimpanzee Responses to Inequity (Atlanta, GA) – $677,462 [...]

Two Riders an Hour Get Brand New Buses (Winter Haven, FL) – $2.4 million [...]

Studying the Effect of Local Populations on the Environment…in the Himalayas (Ann Arbor,
MI) – $529,648 [...]

Scientist Attempts to Create Joke Machine (Evanston, IL) – $712,883

These are five examples from a list of 100 wasteful stimulus-funded programs, and they aren’t the most expensive ones. Alas, President Obama doesn’t justify anything, because he’s too busy making ridiculous promises, blaming the GOP for his failure to keep them, and talking down at the boobs who expected him to.

President Obama does everything exactly how “the same old tax-and-spend Democrat” would, complains any time someone – congressmen, businesses, voters – refuses to go along, and complains some more when people call him out on it. Get your chin up, Barack! If nothing else, we know you’re capable of that.

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Letting Lying Kilroys Lie

Posted in ohio, politics on October 5th, 2010 at 6:55 pm
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The Ohio Democratic Party really likes this “Mary Jo voted against the Wall Street bailout” line – you can tell, because they keep printing it although it keeps not being true:

ODP mailer for Mary Jo Kilroy, received 10/05/2010

Like the ODP mailer I received 09/24, this one again cites a 01/22/2009 House vote that took place well after TARP had passed, with the knowledge that it would have no impact. This isn’t a minor typo or a case of questionable wording that takes liberties with the facts. Kilroy’s ads from the Ohio Democratic Party are consistently, prominently bragging about something that did not happen.

Moe Lane covered this in a post way back on June 17th. FactCheck.org dissected it at the beginning of September, and so did The Columbus Dispatch (which you’d think one or two ODP strategists might skim):

The most dubious claim in the ad is that Kilroy voted “against the bank bailout.” She was not yet in Congress when the Troubled Assets Recovery Program, championed by President Bush, was enacted. It is widely seen as the “bank bailout.” Kilroy’s campaign says the ad refers to her vote in January 2009 against releasing $350 billion in additional funds from the Troubled Assets Recovery Program. Kilroy was one of 99 Democrats who joined 171 Republicans in opposing the additional funds.

The vote, however, was regarded as symbolic rather than substantive. The Senate had already agreed to release the additional $350 billion, and both chambers would have had to vote against it to block the release.

In addition to the Stivers-as-fat-cat-lobbyist business you’d expect from a socialist, the Kilroy campaign is leaning on a lie that was discredited a month ago by blogs and mainstream sources alike. Guess all that money from George Soros, the abortion lobby, and the usual assortment of unions has to go somewhere!

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