OK, I’m cranked

So is Breda, and Rachel. I’ll bet even my recovering Democrat wife is. And the ghost of my McCainiac mother-in-law. I’m not sure Palin is enough for me to go McCain…unless he gets sickly. But that I’d even consider that is a sea-change.

The department’s screaming progressive was in, muttering about inexperience, but he seemed defeated somehow…

UPDATE: Dondero is cranked too. Well, somebody had to piss in the Cheerios.

Patron from Hell

LEWISTON, Maine — A Maine woman says she’d rather go to jail than turn over a library book she deems “dangerous.” And she may get her chance later this week.

A judge has ordered JoAn Karkos of Lewiston to turn over by week’s end the borrowed book titled, “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health.”

After appearing in court Wednesday, Karkos repeated her contention that the book violates the city’s obscenity ordinance, and she said she has no intention of giving up the book.

The book features frank but cartoon-like illustrations on topics that include abstinence, masturbation and sexually transmitted diseases. Karkos has until 4 p.m. Friday to return the book. If she doesn’t, she could be found in contempt of court.

Believe it or not, I don’t have an issue with this woman agitating over collections policy. If the community is looted to pay for the library then the community should have some say about what goes into it, and if she wants to use political pressure to “clean up the library”, well, that’s no different than supporting the right of bums to watch porn at public terminals. But that’s not what she’s doing here. This is vigilante weeding, collection management through theft, and she very clearly is in contempt of court. OTOH, for those of us who refuse to drink the communitarian flavr-aid, since the library is deemed to belong to “the public” (rather than “the government”), Karkos is just doing as she pleases with “her” book, and is fully within her rights.

John Goodman tells the truth

“McCain’s campaign says they do not consider Goodman to be an official campaign adviser.”
Duh, why’s that? Because he told too much truth?

A health care policy adviser for the McCain campaign told a newspaper reporter that nobody in the United States is technically uninsured, because everyone has access to hospital emergency rooms.

“So I have a solution [to the health care crisis]. And it will cost not one thin dime,” John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, told the Dallas Morning News in an interview published Thursday.

“The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care. So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.”

Imagine no O’Cain in Texas

Imagine Bob Barr as the only guy on the ballot there, taking all the Texas electoral votes.

It could happen. It won’t, doubtless, because the Duopoly will whine that people are being disenfranchised. That’s absolutely true. And it’s equally true when a different party gets tripped up by a technicality of ballot access law. Are my civil rights less important than those of any random Democrat or Republican, just because there are more of them? That’s not the way civil rights are supposed to work.

Since it’s Texas law that’s the main problem here, and we are a government of laws, not men, I think the Barr campaign (which has not been reluctant to sue) should do anything it can to ensure the law is followed. I’d love to see the Duopoly ask for injunctive relief from their own frigging law. I’d even more love to be the judge: “You want an injunction? I’ll make it permanent.”

A touching story of loss of virginity

…and the tender man who made it possible. Hard to imagine that Breda was once a hoplophobe.

I had a professional take mine (Hi Pat Seiffert! You always remember your first…) at an NRA Personal Protection class. A couple of memorable exchanges from that:

We’re dry-firing. Pat has me set my pistol down, then, a minute later, pick it up.
“Is it loaded?”
“No, it wasn’t loaded when I set it down. It’s never been loaded.”
“You took your eyes off it. How do you know the Bullet Fairy didn’t come and put bullets in it when you weren’t looking?”

Then, out on the range, I trade my crappy lil .22 for her .45.
“Your thumb is riding up. That slide is going to come back and get you, and you’ll expect me to patch you up” (she was a nurse) “after you’ve dropped my gun.”

A victory for contract law and gold

CINCINNATI — A landlord can enforce a clause in 1912 lease requiring that rent be paid in gold coin for a landmark building in Cleveland, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati sent the case back to a U.S. District Court in Cleveland to determine the equivalent rent that S&R Playhouse Realty Co. would owe for the Halle building with the “gold clause” enforced. The lower court also must address any remaining defenses by S&R.

The building is owned by 216 Jamaica Avenue LLC, which filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit in 2006 against S&R demanding rent equivalent to the value of 35,000 1912 gold coins. S&R has paid $35,000 annually in U.S. currency since assuming the lease in 1982 and balked at paying what would be a much higher amount. The lower court, finding for S&R, refused to enforce the gold clause.

Bottom line: rent goes from 17¢ a square foot (way below market in downtown Cleveland) to about $8.

The Kooch instead of Biden

DeCoster makes the case for Dennis the Menace as a better pick than Biden as Obama’s VP. Within the limits of that argument (which is no kind of endorsement), she’s fairly successful, and she understands why it would never happen. Certainly Kucinich’s mouth is almost as entertaining as Biden’s.

Womb with a view?

It’s part of liberal enculturation (I know, I was one once) that one’s sexuality should be an open book, that nothing should be hidden. So it’s only natural I guess that some Democrats are piling on Elizabeth Edwards for not narking on her husband’s affair in 2006. It’s a charming way to treat a dying woman, almost as charming as cheating on her. Why would Mrs. Edwards want to go public with something that makes her look undesirable and makes her husband look like a royal asshole? To me, that says that the woman has more class than the average Dummycrat, and certainly more than the Kos Kidz.

Get the message?

That’s a Rocky Mountain high. Made out of sheets, and 666 feet wide…no accident, I’m sure.

Agree with it or not, there’s a lot more welly there than at any Lefty protest in Denver this week… a lame lot, as Rush was noting today.

Decision 2008: Beelzebub vs. Mephistopheles

A Christian wingnut says that it is “Unbiblical” to call for not voting for either wing of the Duopoly, because Christians have an obligation to influence the larger society. This assumes that there is in fact an influence made by voting, and that voting for non-Duopoly candidates is of no influence, since they have no chance to win — both dubious assumptions. Now, I am sure that Janet Parshall knows the Bible better than I do, but I’m not sure it’s Biblical to surrender in a hopeless but righteous cause rather than to trust God for the victory. Consider I Samuel 8 and Ps 146 on the subject on the legitimacy of rulers, and observe that since Satan owns the kingdoms of this earth (else how could he have offered them to Jesus?), she is asking us to vote for one or another of Satan’s tools (note that this argument would also apply to, say, Chuck Baldwin.) It might be a stretch to note that the candidate Janet thinks you have a Christian obligation to vote for (as opposed to the Muslim-named Messiah-like guy) is named the Son of Cain, the first murderer, but it could very well be a sign. I’m all for her making a tactical pitch for the ‘Pugs. But this isn’t tactics, it’s theology. And whenever Christians have used theology in support of politics, they’ve made a laughingstock of the Gospel.