Quick Hits, Nothing To Do With Mark Foley Edition

There are other things under the sun...

• Like tons of polls out there, virtually all showing good news for Democrats. All four of the top-tier races have Democrats ahead. We're ahead in Tennessee. About tied in Missouri and Virginia. Win all 7 and we're in control of the Senate with a Lieberman buffer. And Lamont's within 5-6 points there.

• By the way, Bush is polling back in the 30s as the 9/11 anniversary fades into the distance and the "Democrats want to kill you and your children in their beds" line of BS starts to tire. Does anyone really still want to be seen with him?

• Close to home, the head of the College Republicans at my old stomping grounds in Ann Arbor is caught completely making shit up, claiming that he was beaten up at a party by "homosexual rights groups" (because they're so fierce and aggro) when actually he got drunk, picked a fight with a friend, and blacked out.

•This ad rules:



I'm heartened by the outside-the-box campaign ads employed by Democrats this year. They are finally understanding that politics these days is entertainment too.

• This happened last week: Keith Olbermann received a fake anthrax letter from some crank, and the New York Post made fun of him for it. Not only is it an act of domestic terrorism (even to fake it), not only did it kill people in 2001-2002, but the New York Post ITSELF received anthrax letters back in the day. Classless. It goes without saying that the Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch, right?

• I remember those Clinton depression years, don't you? Rick Santorum does.

SANTORUM: You probably remember well when Bill Clinton and the Democrats passed the largest single tax increase in our nation's history in 1993, $293 billion. That sent our nation into an economic slump.

"Economic slump" should read "largest peacetime economic expansion in American history." Must be a typo.

• Oh yeah, all that "bin Laden is dead" talk a week ago? Never mind, as Emily Litella would say.

• Here's the party of fiscal responsibility for you, shoveling pork to the most endangered districts in an attempt to bribe voters. This happens every year with every Congress, Democratic or Republican to be honest, and it's one of the things that infuriates me about the way government is run. There's not only corporate welfare but incumbent welfare, and something must be done about it. I support the Porkbusters bill for increased transparency in earmarking, although that represents only a tiny bit of the vast sums of money given away by the federal government each year. I believe in stronger, better, leaner government.

• And finally, speaking of a waste of money, there was $20 million dollars in the 2006 federal budget for "a celebration in the nation’s capital 'for commemoration of success' in Iraq and Afghanistan." 20 mil? That was going to be some HUGE Mission Accomplished banner. Oh by the way, STILL in the budget, it got rolled over into 2007. Just save time and roll it into 2036.