Thursday’s campaign round-up

This InTrade chart is looking bad for Hon. Sen. McCain, although I note that these can change with with the weather.

Obama is in for a rude awakening: his much-discussed fist bump is going to be obsolete. The retooled McCain campaign will soon reveal the McCain Depends Snap. McCain and his supporters will playfully snap the elastic waistbands of each others’ Depends. Should make for some great, nearly-humanizing footage.

I’ve always thought kids need all the fist bumps they can get, especially if it’s my fist bumping their face. I guess that’s why I’ll never be president.

I’m also into giving out fist mumps in crowded malls, which could be another disqualifier.

* McCain’s allies have found another loophole in the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law, and will funnel funds through the Republican Governors Association.

Seems that the campaign finance law championed by McCain to limit big cash from the select few in presidential politics may now be inconvenient since McCain is now involved in presidential politics and is now in need of obtaining big ca$h from the select few. No word yet as to whether McCain is in favor of skirting McCain-Feingold limits, whether is he against skirting these limits or whether he is both for the limits and against skirting the limits but will do it anyway.

Ever since McCain embraced Bush and became kinda the McSame, its almost as if there is a new McCain. So as to campaign finance laws, that was the old McCain who was in favor of such things in the past and it is now the present for the new McCain. And McCain may be able to justify this juxtaposition because it was the old McCain that favored campaign finance limits, while it’s the new McCain that may be opposed to these limits.

But on the other hand the New McCain is older than the old McCain who was younger than the new McCain when he was the old McCain.

Straight talk aside, it is getting confusing to follow this guy.

Climate change means that the focus of conservation efforts must be toward limiting greenhouse gases, not cleaning up toxic waste sites. Planting trees is a good idea but fairly trivial compared to what is needed in terms of limiting emissions, cleaning up coal, etc. Another pretty pander.

Disadvantaged youth need remedial education so that they can complete high school and succeed in college. Obama’s efforts to help them need to be aimed at improving K-12 education. The Peace Corps has had trouble lately because (1) fewer countries are requesting their services; and (2) they are flooded with too many applicants who have little to offer the host countries. Sending underqualified disadvantaged youth to the Peace Corps is a bad idea. Involving youth in service opportunities that will concurrently include efforts to build the volunteers own skills would be a good idea, but it doesn’t sound like that is part of his plan. “Disadvantaged” youth who have graduated from college can no longer be considered disadvantaged, in my opinion, unless Obama is using the term as a synonym for minority youth. Developing nations and poor American neighborhoods are not dumping grounds for America’s educational failures, nor are they places capable of solving the problems of disadvantaged youth. They are places that need competent, effective helpers, not those who cannot help themselves out of their own difficulties.

The point of service is to actually serve the people you are helping, not to help yourself. The idea that service opportunities are to serve the youth who volunteer instead of the needs of the program suggests again that Obama does not understand the meaning of service. It helped him find direction, so he thinks that is what service is all about.

At the college level, students from minority backgrounds already aim disproportionately toward social sciences with a goal toward service occupations. They don’t need to be channeled toward them. They need to be encouraged to widen their perspective to see that they too can become scientists, engineers, doctors, and computer scientists — all fields where they are dramatically underrepresented by their own choice, not exclusion. By channeling minority youth, and especially “disadvantaged” youth into service, Obama’s plan would limit them to the worst-paying job opportunities with the least chance of joining the middle and upper classes, especially in an increasingly technological society. I understand that he might feel that his own choices are best for everyone, but there is no need to point youth toward them. They are already the most visible and most appealing to so-called disadvantaged youth.

The idea of encouraging youth involved in gangs, drugs, teen sex and other problems that derail teens these days, toward service opportunities horrifies me. It is already hard enough for people who need help to obtain it without packing the field with undereducated, unempathetic, emotionally underdeveloped and unmotivated children who cannot help themselves but are somehow expected to help others. This, from the man who supposedly understands what poor neighborhoods need.

Fourth item in the essay:

An “independent” arm of Republican National Committee will spent $3 million on TV ads in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, starting Sunday. The ads will focus on energy policy, and according to the AP, represent the first of the RNC’s independent expenditure operation.

What exactly, pray, would prevent the oil companies from actually making use of such wells in the Williston Basin, say, as were subject to “drill-and-cap” mindsets some 25 years back “to stabilise market prices”?

The Washington Post article yesterday on Obama’s mortgage rate really was a uniquely bad piece of journalism.

Imagine the fun the media would have if Obama didn’t pay taxes on a beach side condo in La Joya.

La Jolla

Can anyone point out a website/blog that lists all of the major legislation that Obama has sponsored or co-sponsored? Someone asked me what he has accomplished since being elected to the US Senate or in the IL Senate. I have a hard time remembering details, and it’s not listed on his Senate nor campaign websites.

Thanks.

Gridlock: Being a GOP mole and making an ass of her(him?)self *is* Mary’s job.

Mary: “The point of service is to actually serve the people you are helping, not to help yourself. The idea that service opportunities are to serve the youth who volunteer instead of the needs of the program suggests again that Obama does not understand the meaning of service. It helped him find direction, so he thinks that is what service is all about.”

No, I think Obama understands that service is all about the people one is helping. It’s just that when one does this, there is a benefit to the person serving.

By distancing himself from Clark, Obama is showing he will not make the same mistakes Gore and Kerry did, by campaigning too strongly against their opponent.

Looks like AP is holding down the fort in my absence.

Leave Mary alone. I had a good joke about fist jabbing and no one noticed.

citizen pain

Thanks for pointing out the “Freedom Jab”. That’s funny.

Jacek said: “Actually, this is far more important than you realize. One of the reasons that the planet is warming is because our carbon “sinks”, i.e. forests and the oceans, are being used up and/or reduced. “

Part of that is most old growth forests and deep jungles (has anyone else noticed how the term ‘Jungle’, along with ‘Swamp’, has gone out of vogue and been replaced with ‘Rain Forest’ and ‘Wet Land’?) have deep layers of decaying leaves on the forest floor that also hold a lot of carbon. When farmers clear land for agriculture they burn not only the trees but this layer of decay as well, pumping lots of carbon into the atmosphere that replanted new forests can’t hope to recapture for generations.

mary, if you complain to CB about Dennis parodying your post i’ll complain to CB about your complaining about Dennis parodying your post! nyah!

Mary is just afraid she might cease to exist if she doesn’t relate everything in some way to Obama. In her own twisted way, she worships him (“he who is at the solipsist center of the universe”). Sort of like a Fredric Brown book, except it isn’t funny.

Here’s the part I objected to:

“On July 3rd, 2008 at 12:31 pm, Mary said:”

I don’t care about the stuff he wrote after that, except that he wrongly it to me with this heading. If he is going to write “parodies” then he needs to pick a different name. Otherwise he is lying about what I wrote.

If he wants to start posting as Mary now, I will pick a different name so there won’t be confusion about who is saying what. Deliberately posting with the same name as someone else in a thread violates netiquette — and that isn’t anything I’ve made up. But I get it — you think wrongdoing is fine as long as it is in support of someone you agree with. Nothing new about that.

If he wants to start posting as Mary now, I will pick a different name so there won’t be confusion …

You could just use your actual name: Mary Cheney

Mary, @41,

Which one is the counterfeit, sweetheart? The bitter, clinging-to-her-prejudices one? The one nobody could really fake, no matter how hard they tried, because there’s not enough bile among all the regulars *combined* to produce such a succubus?

“Mary” @ 41 ain’t “it”; Mary @ 41 is “something else”. Something I’d like to see more of, too…