This may be the longest blog hiatus that I have ever had, but I have rarely been as busy as I have been for the past two weeks. More on that later.
Here are a few random thoughts that must get out.
1. Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Suggesting that he is the leader of, and somehow emblematic, of the conservative movement is like suggesting that Al Franken is someone who should be elected to important public office. Who would buy that?
2. President Obama signing the earmark-laden spending bill and announcing that the era of earmarks will now be over is a little like the guy at a bar knocking down boilermakers and announcing that he'll stop drinking tomorrow.
3. I don't understand why Charlie Sykes is making fun of Gwen Moore's energy plan. He has two dogs. I have three. We ought to sell her the right to harvest our backyards. I'll need her to send someone about everyday.
4. Rich Lowry describes Obama's economic policy as follows " more money to banks and industry, more unsustainable entitlement spending, more deficit spending, more uncertainty about how to handle the toxic assets in the banks — with promises of higher taxes layered on top." With the exception of taxes, how is this different from Bush administration policy? Are we supposed to believe that the only thing we need to do is raise marginal tax rates a bit for a small number of high earners?
5. I think that the only thing that Ted Thompson has to do to bring himself to the edge of the cliff is make one of his inexplicably obscure first round draft choices. He's going to do it. You know he is.
13 comments:
Right On!
On the subject of your absence, I thought there was no rest for the Wicked?
Yah.
Besides, MU can now grant a BS in BS.
3. Sykes is defending his methane trust.
Three dogs!
Maybe a personal energy program would be cost effective for you.
1. Poop digester (inside and out sourced)
2 Domesticated wolf treadmill generator
3. Solar panels and wind turbine
4. Zip together sleeping bags
5. Federal grant(s)
In this changed poitical environment, the opportunities are limitless.
The Gwen Moore earmark certainly illustrates the difference between Marquette and the great state university.
At Wisconsin, researchers win more than $800 million every year in competitively-awarded research grants and at Marquette, you have to depend on Gwen to steal $500,000to study human excrement.
I can almost hear the Marquette Sitting Band now -- "Flush out Ahoya with an MU, fart, fart, fart!"
On, Wisconsin!
Anony 11:38-
One thing I have learned at Marquette is humility. For example, one would not find me making an ass of myself by anonymously deriding one university's grant awards, particularly when a professor at my university had received funding for "discovering some wonderful pie." (Her words)
A swing and a miss, Nate!
Professor Walsh received a grant from a fund administered by the UW Foundation. That award isn't part of the $800 million, which comes from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, etc.
Glad to see you found the UW web site. Hope you didn't waste too much of your time searching for that little gem. Again, a swing and a miss. Thanks for playing.
Speaking of whiffs, I think you missed the point of my comment.
Nate, as Sir Winston once observed, you have so much to be humble about! My congatulations.
WOW!
Five farts in a row.
Wisconsin-Madison certainly does not have clean hands when it comes to accepting earmarks.
http://chronicle.com/stats/pork/index.php?institution=&q=Search+term&state=WI&agency
I’m not from Wisconsin nor do I know much about its universities, but UW’s grand total of earmarks that it has accepted far exceeds to Marquette’s recent receipt of 500K.
Anon - that shouldn’t stop you from posting your seemingly clever comment on multiple blogs . . . oh wait, you already have done that.
How do you define "leader"? One who is followed? One who leads a charge on issues? I'm reminded of comedy sketches - was it Fawlty Towers? - where the fellow puts on one hat to play the bell-boy, another coat to be the maître d'hôtel, another to be the chef. "I'm just a lowly entertainer but my followers happily call themselves Dittoheads." If he's popular and followed and admired, why couldn't he be emblematic of a particular philosophy? Oh, I know, Rush is different than Coulter is different than Boortz is different than Sykes. It's like that line from the Blues Brothers: "We've got both kinds of music here - country and western."
Conservative talk-radioheads are like the Blue Man Group. There's not just one BMG, there's as many as they need to fill the tour dates. They can clone themselves. Put on the paint, practice and follow the script. What kind of "entertainers" are given talking points and repeat that script until instructed otherwise?
Lefty actors/actresses. Think Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Rosie O'Donnell, Whoopi, etc. Those who speak otherwise are shunned.
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