Politics and Hypocrisy

6 more Senators crossed the imaginary “drill now” line making the bi-partisan “Gang of 10″ the “Gang of 16″ and South Dakota is well represented. As we all know John Thune was a founding member and he is now joined by our other Senator Tim Johnson making it a clean sweep.

The group supports a bill that would lift a ban on oil and natural gas drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the southeastern U.S. coast, invest $20 billion in the development of petroleum-free motor vehicles and extend tax credits for renewable energy.

Can you tell it’s an election year with all this bipartisan co-operation? We just might get more offshore drilling leading to more oil on the world markets and little if any changes in prices afterall.

John McCain’s POW defense is now making the rounds on late night talks shows. His standard response to tough questions was given to Jay Leno when he was again asked about how many houses he had.

McCain: “Could I just mention to you, Jay, that, at a moment of seriousness. I spent five-and-a-half years in a prison cell. I didn’t have a house. I didn’t have a kitchen table. I didn’t have a table. I didn’t have a chair. And I didn’t spent those five-and-a-half years because, not because I wanted to get a house when I got out.

I guess you could say that the POW defense does fit on late night TV, it has been used it so much in a sentence by McCain that it is becoming a joke…

Despite what some are saying, the Sioux Falls school board has rightly apologized for distributing a school directory containing an ad for the pro-life Alpha Center against their own policies.

“We would … like to apologize for this lapse. We will do better work in the future,” said Darin Daby, president of the board.

The ad, purchased by the Alpha Center, is included in a directory the public schools began distributing last week. The school district supplied the news text for the directory. The Shopping News sold the advertising and published the directory before sending copies to the
schools for free distribution. The Shopping News printed 30,000 copies under an arrangement in place since 1993.

This isn’t about the pro-life/pro-choice argument, this is about the school system staying out of political issues of which this just so happens to be one of the most divisive.

The fact that they distribute it means that they should know what is in it and in fact their own policies say as much and to try and deflect this by contending that they have no control means that there is a problem with Superintendent Dr. Pam Homan’s leadership.

If the Shopping News wants to sell ads to the Alpha Center, put it in their regularly distributed issues and keep it out of the schools.

I saw this on KELO’s newscast and can’t find it online but found it interesting just the same.

A recent survey by Junior Achievement found that many young students thought that cheating in business to get ahead is ok. As a result JA decided to started a new program to try and change that perception among our future business leaders.

Of course a program of the magnitude that JA wanted wouldn’t be cheap so who do you think  jumped in to help out? I would bet that you wouldn’t have guessed it was that bastion of fair play in business, Wal-Mart, whom made a nice donation to Junior Achievement for this program.

So now we have company that strong-arms their suppliers, tells their employees how to vote, and forces their competition out of business with brute force pricing tactics wanting to help instill fair business ideals into our young business people? Maybe they want them working for their competition so they will have a whole new generation to take advantage of…

You just can’t make this stuff up.

UPDATE 8:30pm: The story is now up on KELO.

Oh the humanity. For some reason Faux news can’t understand why far left protesters marching in Denver were mean to their reporter. You know that fair and balanced thing…

(H/T - Huffington)

Our illustrious Congress already irreparably weakened the 4th Amendment earlier this summer when they passed the “Spy on Americans” act, also known as the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 and now the Justice Department wants to pretty much erase it from the Constitution.

A Justice Department plan would loosen restrictions on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to allow agents to open a national security or criminal investigation against someone without any clear basis for suspicion, Democratic lawmakers briefed on the details said Wednesday.

And here is the meat of the Justice Department plan:

The senators said the new guidelines would allow the F.B.I. to open an investigation of an American, conduct surveillance, pry into private records and take other investigative steps “without any basis for suspicion.” The plan “might permit an innocent American to be subjected to such intrusive surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on protected First Amendment activities,” the letter said. It was signed by Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. (emphasis mine)

Just like when dealing with a 4 year old, you give in once and they want more. What’s worse, knowing the total lack of backbone exhibited by our wonderful Democrat led Congress, the Justice Department will likely get what they want.

Finally, speaking of FISA, since the FISA bill all but cut off at the knees all pending lawsuits against the Telco’s, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has had to resort to plan B. They will instead sue the US Government over illegally spying on US citizens as the final bill signed into law didn’t contain the government immunity that Bush had requested.

Considering George Bush will long have been out of office if and when this goes to court, the new administration will be left to deal with it. If it is Barack Obama, I will have zero sympathy considering his flip flop on the issue.

And yes I know the above scenario is highly unlikely, but I can dream can’t I?

Daily KOS

This has been the best veep rollout EVER. But alas, all good things must come to an end.

Not being one to drink to KOS Kool Aid all that often, does a middle of Friday night leaked announcement in time for the almost non-existent Saturday morning news cycle really qualify as the best VP rollout ever?

That also doesn’t take into account the fact that the “letting supporters know first” technology blitz included a text message I never got and an email that finally arrived at 9:20am. If it wasn’t for the somewhat unreliable Twitter, I would have had to find out just like Americans have for the past 50 years, by watching TV.

The message that liberals and bloggers have been waiting for with baited breath for days has finally come, at 3:22 this morning?. According to sources close to me (Twitter/TweetDeck) Barack Obama has chosen Joe Biden to be the 2nd line on the ticket in November.

More to come for sure but what is your initial reaction? Why the middle of the night annoucement?

UPDATE: By the way, I never got the text message or the email announcing the choice, at least not yet. I guess the new technology thing that Obama has embraced still has a few bugs to be worked out.

Also, after a few minutes thinking this over I am not sure this choice does much for me. Does Obama, the so called candidate of change, need a 30 year Washington insider with a penchant for saying stupid things as a running mate?. Don’t we already have that on the Republican ticket?

At least now Obama can probably put Delaware in the win column…

If you thought T. Boone’s plan for getting us to substitute natural gas and wind power for overseas oil all while having huge interests in natural gas futures and wind energy companies was brilliant, you will love his entry into the water business.

It seems T. Boone owns a large ranch in Texas that just so happens to sit on one of the largest aquifers in the country, so large in fact that it reaches all the way up into South Dakota. He wanted to sell this water but ran into a problem that South Dakotan’s are intimately familiar with. How to get the water from the aquifer to where he wanted to sell it. A pipeline would be the best option of course but how could a private citizen get the right of way to run it on all those parcels of privately owned land, and how would he finance it?

T. Boone, a billionaire for a reason, figured it out. He started his own town, held an election, sold tax free government bonds, and plans to used eminent domain to run his pipeline.

Then he turned this parcel into a town, basically, with only two eligible voters — both of whom were his employees. (This required a change in Texas law in 2007 — a change facilitated no doubt by his $1.2 million in campaign contributions to Texas legislators in 2006). Then
there was an election in this district, in which both voters voted to make this 8-acre municipality a special fresh-water district.

Pickens’ wholly owned government entity now can issue tax-free bonds (meaning he can borrow at a serious discount) and use the power of eminent domain to pressure landowners to sell — or to take their land if they hold out. The eminent domain power is key to building the
pipeline that will run this water down to the Dallas area, where Pickens hopes to sell the water. If your land lies in the path of his proposed pipeline, you got a letter explaining that T. Boone wants to buy a stretch of your land — and explaining that he can use eminent domain if you resist. If this begins to sound too cutthroat to the public, Pickens just reminds journalists and politicians that following this water pipeline will be the transmission cables for Pickens’ mammoth wind farm.

Remember this if and when T. Boone sets up his proposed wind farms here in South Dakota and needs to get transmission lines run to his newly generated wind energy to market.

The funny thing about extremism:

The poll by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life finds increasing numbers of Americans believing that religiously defined ideological groups have too much control over the parties themselves. Nearly half (48%) say religious conservatives have too much influence over the Republican Party, up from 43% in August 2007. At the same time, more people say that liberals who are not religious have too much sway over the Democrats than did so last year (43% today vs. 37% then).

Those that subscribe to “the cause” often times end up alienating those that they wish to convert instead.

Day 2 of housegate and the question remains, who is really the elitist again?

McCain, who huddled with advisors at his desert compound in Sedona, Ariz., said nothing in public. A nine-car motorcade took him to a nearby Starbucks early in the morning, where he ordered a large cappuccino. McCain otherwise avoided reporters. (emphasis mine)

At least somebody can still afford Starbucks these days…

UPDATE: Some hopefully more obvious McCain humor in honor of commentator GoMcCain

From Huffington:

If you can’t count how many homes you have, you might be a rich guy.

If you think it takes $5 million a year to be rich, you might be a rich guy.

If you think some people “are poor if they’re billionaires,” you might be a rich guy.

If you have a fireplace next to the outdoor spa in one of your mansions, you might be a rich guy.

If your plan to cut taxes on the wealthy would save your family $373,429 a year, you might be a rich guy.

It looks like McDonalds has company in the sights of one of the several homophobic groups preaching intolerance in the US. This time the group Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (somehow I doubt much truth is coming from these folks) is mad as hell at Hallmark for having the audacity to produce cards celebrating gay marriage. The head homophobe even sent them a sternly worded letter telling them he will not be buying any cards from them until they stop.

Meanwhile A Williams Institute study estimates that more than 85,000 same sex couples in the U.S. have entered into a legal relationship since 1997 so let’s see, Hallmark can either tap into this market that just exploded with California’s new law or they can appease the homophobes. McDonalds chose to throw it back in their faces by taking out a half page ad in a gay publication celebrating their diversity, I wonder which one Hallmark will choose?

UPDATE: Well no surprise here. The American Family Association, the group behind the McDonalds boycott among others, has gotten involved and announced that they will be leading a boycott of Hallmark as well. This could be a good thing for Hallmark though as during the 9 years that the AFA boycotted Disney, they saw record profits.