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…what we’ve been up to then you’ve gotta change your feed.  This page has moved to www.wendellrobinson.com and the new feed is here.

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Due to circumstances beyond my control (and in an attempt to make your visits more enjoyable), we’re in the midst of moving this blog to the homepage for Wendell Robinson . com.  We’ve been able to migrate the posts from this page to the new page and over the next few days we’ll continue to build the new site.  During that time (and from now on) we’ll be posting over there.  So please change your RSS feed settings to the new feed.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Thanks…

Well, the inevitable happened - Karl Rove has tendered (interesting word “tender”) his resignation from the White House, and the sharks in the media both mainstream and otherwise are circling looking for some trace of blood upon which to strike.  According to the Wall Street Journal, Rove will leave his 1600 Pennsylvannia Avenue gig by the end of August.

Sorry gang, no blood (or smoke before the fire here) - just little if anything for a political (campaign) director to do in a lame duck Bush White House.

The next question is whether he’s got the fire in the belly for another presidential campaign… do I hear Fred Thompson? 

Gay, straight - I don’t care we’re all people, but somone may want to check into all of this discussion about homosexuality being the result of genetics and not choice (or vice versa) - just ask Bill Richardson, he’s still not sure.

HUMOR ALERT - IF THE FOLLOWING IS OFFENSIVE TO YOU, YOU OBVIOUSLY DON’T LIKE SARCASM… and those who know me in the LGBT community know that the following is strictly sarcasm.

Case in point Melissa Etheridge.

Last night the formerly sleek and seductive (I must admit that when she first hit the music scene I thought Etheridge was kinda hot, hey I didn’t know she was gay - but that wouldn’t have mattered to me: Portia di Rossi is a project just waiting to be attempted by any heterosexual man (although Ellen Degeneres may have a problem with that) - sorry I digress…

Back to Etheridge -

Last night during the LOGO candidate forum sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign, six of the Democrats seeking their party’s nomination for president (gee, I wonder if they same opportunity will be afforded to the Republicans , or as I mentioned the other day how about one more geared toward the right side of the aisle… maybe we could have GOP event that’s hosted by the CEO’s of the top ten Fotune 500 companies where rightwing issues could be showcased - sorry, it’s a morning filled with digressions)…

Back to Etheridge -

As one of the moderators for last night’s forum, the now less sleek (but still occasionally still seductive) rocker told Conman Dennis Kucinich, “I hope you always run for president until you’re elected.”

Now I’m not a scientist (neither by the way is Richardson… seriously if you haven’t done it yet, please click on the earlier link and watch the video), but based on this less than credible deductive logic:

If a gay person says something crazy, then all gay people are crazy.  Furthermore if being gay is genetic than being gay and crazy is part of the same genetic chemistry - because no one would choose to be crazy (or gay) would they?

Maybe I better call Richardson for his advice - his inability to define the issue though uncomfortable may have been the closest thing to honesty that was displayed last night.

Pass the turkey, the stuffing and…

the absentee ballots?

That very well could be the new Thanksgiving tradition if you’re from New Hampshire and plan on celebrating the annual family gathering somewhere other than your own homestead.

Here in South Carolina (where we’re rounding out a few days of r’n'r), the big news this morning in political circles is the revelation that South Carolina GOP chairman Katon Dawson will personally deliver a letter to New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner settling the date of the South Carolina GOP Primary once and for all (or at least until another one of the states longing to assert itself leapfrogs the currrent hierarchy).  Dawson is delivering the letter to “protect this battleground” in referring to South Carolina’s “first in the South” primary status (although the South Carolina Democratic Party intends to keep its primary date on January 29th.

South Carolina’s Republicans are moving their date in reaction to the state of Florida’s decision to move it’s primary date to January 29th.

I understand the desire of these states to want to be involved in the active portion of the primary process (where their votes really will help to determine the respective party’s nomineees), but c’mon.

If this cascade of stupidity continues it is extremely likely that both parties nominees could very well be determined BEFORE the end of January.

Talk about disenfranchisement. 

Look I’ve never been a Barry Bonds fan - even when he was a much skinnier Pittsburgh Pirate who’s contribution to his team was more about his speed than it was about his power so I have no interest in giving him his props on surpassing Hank Aaron’s Major League Baseball Home run record.

But last night Bonds achieved something very few human beings will ever do - a potentially tentative place in the record books by hitting his 756th home run.

Did he use performance enhancing drugs to help him reach this milestone?  Almost certainly.

Does it cheapen his accomplishment?  Not as far as I’m concerned.

The reality is that the bio-medical assistance Bonds enlisted to assist his quest was not against the rules at the time he used it.  Did he lie about it? Yes.  - and so does every other athlete out there who uses some form of mysterious methodology (whether it be stealing signs: Bobby Thompson’s “Shot Heard Round the World”, Cy Young’s numerous victories that were certainly aided by the spitball and other pitcher’s doctoring methods, hey Gaylord Perry’s in the Hall of Fame and he even bragged about his cheating) to help them win.  All heroes - all enshrined in the history of the game.

But Bonds - he’s tainted.  They say there should be an asterisk next to is name (just like many purists said about Roger Maris when he surpassed the single season home run record back in the 1960’s).

Get over it sports purists and snobs.  Bonds did it.  You didn’t like him before and you don’t like him now.

He still deserves the recognition for an incredible feat.

I’ve been steering clear of the recent raft of CPC’s (Competitive Press Conferences) amongst the candidates for their respective party’s nod for the presidential nomination mostly because the answers that the candidates are supplying are the same ones that I’ve heard since this pre-primary period began.

Tonight’s CPC hosted by the AFL-CIO in Chicago for the Democratic candidates provided nothing in the way of new ideas, but it did allow the candidates an opportunity to stoop to a new low on the pander meter.  I was only half-paying attention to the event - as I preferred to listen to my family discuss their views on the questions and the candidates, but I was intrigued by the level of volume that the candidates used to emphasize their willingness to bend over and take one for big labor and America.  Answers ranging from withdrawing from NAFTA and being patriotic so as John Edwards said we would “be ready in case (as George Bush never has) things go bad in Iraq.”

What a bunch of drivel.

The only thing one of the candidates needed to do tonight to win the Labor-panderthon was display a portrait of George Bush and then proceed to deficate on his image on stage.  Memo to my friends in the Democratic consulting corps - work in the dump on the president photo-op into your next stump speech event it’ll generate more press than you could ever imagine.

While I’ve been a strong dissenter to this current debate process (I continue to advocate for a more substantive Cooper Union styled one-on-one format), I am curious about how well one of this panderthons would go over with the Republican candidates.  The Democrats seem more than willing to preen and fawn for every special interest group that typically supports their party (AFSCME, AFL-CIO, etc.) while the GOP’s candidates are forced to debate in front of receptive yet non-red meat begging audiences.

Contrast tonight’s event with the first Republican CPC at the Reagan Library when the question was posed to the candidates on the dais - “Show of hands, who doesn’t believe in evolution?” and the caveman club folks - Brownback, Huckabee and Tancredo raised their hands.  Each of the gang of three cromagnons was villified by the media the next day for such an unenlightened approach to evolutionary science.  Nobody bats an eye when one of the Democratic candidates goes out of their way to pander to the crowd that’s hosting them - if the Democratic presidential hopefuls had enough time to actually do all of the things they say they’ll do in “my first day in office I’ll give you everything you want” that would be the longest day in history.  But can you imagine what would happen if the Republicans allowed their next debate to be hosted by the National Association of Evangelicals - the caveman club might get a better reception.

But God forbid how the MSM would characterize that CPC…

 

By luck I find myself along with my family in the Charleston, South Carolina area getting a little r ‘n’ r (of course lucky us it’s supposed to be in the 100 degree zone the whole time we’re here), and that affords me the chance to enjoy a little southern hospitality and relax.

One of my favorite things about the low country (as they call it around here thanks to an affinity of swampy land at or below sea level down from the foothills of the Appalachains) is the local metropolitan newspaper - the Post and Courier.  Founded in 1803 the P and C bills itself as the south’s oldest daily newspaper and it is a time honored tradition to which they remain true.  The editorial page is dominated by folks that are strongly to the right of me (nice to see that some newspapers have a conservative editorial board) and the paper is filled with the kinds of stories that demonstrate a reverence for history and a longing for the good ol’ days (and a desire to return to some of those genteel times).  And that’s why this item in their Sunday edition caught my eye:

FOUR SCORE AND APRIL 15th AGO

On this date a century and a half ago, the fabled emancipator Abraham Lincoln was weighing his options when it came to crushing the insurrection that would become the War Between the States. He was particularly worried about the loss of revenue collected at the cash cow ports along the Southeast, such as, say, Charleston. Like any good politician, he knew just what needed to be done. So he asked a few cabinet members whether the president could tax profit from “any kind of property, or from any professional trade, employment, or vocation carried on in the United States or elsewhere from any source whatever.” And income tax was born. Those words are from the Revenue Act, imposed by Lincoln on Aug. 5, 1861, repealed by Congress in 1871, passed in 1909 and ratified in 1913 as the 16th Amendment. Suitably enough, the country has fought over it ever since.

Now I recognize that nothing really nasty is said in this piece about Lincoln, but you’ve got to love the label of “fabled emancipator” which has little or nothing to do with the information about the income tax.

You don’t think some folks down here still bear a grudge do you?