Weekend Tids and Bits

FLY INCIDENT STILL BUZZING -- It seems the fly unfortunate enough to fatally annoy the First Swatter in a CNBC interview isn’t an isolated incident. The New York Times reported last week that the Obama White House is infested with flies. Sources in the Agriculture Department who requested anonymity to remain employed suggest that any large concentration of manure is bound to be a fly magnet.

---

HARDLY AN EXPLOSIVE ISSUE -- The AP reports that a couple of lawsuits have been filed against propane gas companies who are accused of putting less than 20 pounds of propane in the tanks that fuel backyard grills. The explanation offered was that putting less propane in the tanks was a way to deal with last summer’s fuel costs. A quick backyard check here showed both fuel tanks from FerrellGas, one of the companies named in the suit, were clearly labeled as containing only 15 pounds of propane. The real damage is mostly to one aging Baby Boomer’s ego. The old guy had been congratulating himself that he could still handle a full 20-pound tank one-handed.

--

NOT HALF BAD --The Guardian reported that an analyst told Parliament that half of Britain’s local and regional newspapers could be shut down within the next five years. Revenue that’s already declined by half gets the blame. Mirroring their U.S. counterparts, newspaper executives whined about the recession and changes in technology. No word in the story of any MP expressing outrage or even interest.

--

NO BOYS ALLOWED – or wannabe Supreme Court Justices either it seems. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor resigned from the Belizean Grove after Republican senators questioned her membership in the exclusive women-only group. While the Senate itself used to be a mostly all-male bastion, the current Senate has 17 females, four of whom are Republican. You know you’re in trouble when a Republican Senator has the high ground on diversity.

--

BRIDGING THE GENERATION GAP – Actually, maybe floating over it. Polls showing something like half of the adults in America would legalize pot. That lights up common ground between today’s college students and their aging Baby Boomer parents. Both groups tend to be for legalization, although there was concern about adolescent pot use, which would then join adolescent drinking, tobacco and sex on the list of things parents themselves did but now counsel against.

LAST WEEK’S DISCUSSIONS:

n Alaska’s Gov. Sarah Palin and Louisiana’s porn star Senator Wannabe Stormy Daniels could be a 2012 Republican Dream Ticket at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/06/gov.html

n The recession must be ending because the political But Birds now have the time for English-only nonsense at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/06/recession-must-be-ending-springtime-for.html

n The cross-border trade of guns and drugs between Mexico and the U.S. is blooming, so the Customs and Border Protection folk are going to get tough – on pocket knives at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/06/customs-and-border-protection-cutting.html

n Newspaper consultants are telling their nervous employers that the way to make money in a nation of nymphomaniacs is to open a brothel at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/06/newspapers-and-nymphos-dying-newspapers.html

n Why do we need to know whether or not the employees of Brooksville, FL, are wearing underwear at work? See http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/06/internet-tower-of-babel-informed.html

Happy Fathers Day!

###

News Is Busting Out All over

Actually, not much, at least not much worth comment – and one of the joys of the web is that unlike newspapers or broadcasts that have to fill space whether or not anything interesting happened, blogs can call a ho-hum day when they see one. Tiny ripples of interesting stuff from Monday’s otherwise placid news waters:

Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor broke her ankle Monday morning at New York’s La Guardia airport as she boarded a plane to meet with senators in Washington. Conspiracy theorists were unable to connect any of the Republicans who have been sniping at Sotomayor’s nomination with the incident and most observers were content with the general observation that her ankle was not the part of Judge Sotomayor that Republicans wanted to see in a sling.

--

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was buzzed in some corners for allegedly plagiarizing from Newt Gingrich in a speech she made in Anchorage. You know, the one in which she mustered all the dignity of her office and declared “screw political correctness.” Issue seems to turn on whether or not Governor Go Go credited Gingrich enough in her speech. A quick look at the newt.org website found no striking mention of the issue, perhaps reflecting obvious disbelief that anyone would actually want to plagiarize him. Palin, in the meantime, continues to be the focus of high policy debate, including a poll on The Huffington Post website that wonders what, if anything, Governor Palin had on top of her red-painted toenails at a Sunday appearance. Study the issues and contribute to democracy by making your choice at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/08/sarah-palins-toenails-wha_n_212863.html

--

The Beaver is Back, and we’re not talking the late 1950s/early 1960s TV show. The New York Times reports Tuesday that the critters once near extinction have become a dam nuisance – literally. Back from a 1900 population of 100,000 or so, they’re now somewhere between 10-15 million and build their ponds without bothering to get zoning or property permissions. They join a growing list of native critters that once hovered near extinction and now hang around suburban backyards, including deer, coyotes, bears, alligators and cougars.

###

Sotomayor and Republican Choices

 

 

President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court shows the president at his most gracious towards the Republicans who bedevil him, giving them a choice and a voice in one of a President’s most enduring decisions.

 

Sure, the choice is like that 20 states give condemned inmates facing execution, allowing them a say in method, not outcome. Hey, it’s a choice, right?

 

And if the voice Senate Republicans get is the kind heard after a warden says “Any last words?”  they still can’t claim being denied a voice.

 

Senate Republicans trying to resist a growing urge to lie down in front of any steamroller they see have limited options in opposing Sotomayor, all of them bad.

 

Republicans can oppose Sotomayor because she’s female. Of course, they wouldn’t say so explicitly, but the party’s Cheney/Limbaugh base, which can only see women in either nighties or cooking aprons, would understand and approve.

 

Women voters, of course, might see it differently. In the 2008 presidential election, Republicans lost unmarried women by a 70-29 margin. And they lost women overall 56-43. Opposing the nominee because she’s female would certainly build on that record.

 

Republican can oppose Sotomayor because she’s Hispanic. In a 2001 lecture, she is reported to have said “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

 

“Racist!” yells the Republican core, which admittedly ought to know, but is wrong on this one. If the idea, as it says on the Supreme Court building, is “Equal Justice Under Law,” than those dispensing justice must at least in some way connect with those judged – and with the likely real-world consequences of their decisions.  That won’t wash with the Republican core, which is made nervous by census data showing Hispanics account for more than 15 percent of the U.S. population, and downright jittery when they look at the 2008 results with Democrats taking Hispanics 67-31. If Republicans seek even more distance from the Hispanic electorate, opposing Sotomayor is the ticket.

 

Republicans can oppose Sotomayor because she’s liberal. Of all the grounds for opposition, this is the least odious. It chucks a scrap to the snarling core that that bays attack when it sniffs the L-word, and at least  spritzes GOP Senators with Eau De Principle. But the record of Supreme Court justices voting the way folks who nominated and confirmed them thought they would isn’t good. Soon to-be-retired Justice David Souter, who was supposed to be a safe and solid conservative appointee of President Bush I, ended his career as a mostly liberal vote on the court. This course won’t cause more self-inflicted Republican damage, but it won’t gain any converts, either.

 

Prediction: Republicans will oppose Sotomayor because she’s a female Hispanic liberal. With a sure instinct to find the worst of all possible outcomes in any recent political situation, the Republican party will manage to offend all possible new constituents while catering to a core that sees Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney as the rising young hopes of tomorrow.

 

If the post-Sotomayor confirmation Republicans are offered a last meal, they shouldn’t be surprised if it’s crow.

###