Success is not measured by what a man accomplishes, but by the opposition he has encountered and the courage with which he has maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.
Orrison Swett Marden
Follow-up: America's Sweetheart, Kathleen Edward
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| Kathleen at a shopping spree courtesy of Tree Town Toys Photo courtesy of WJBK/myFoxDetroit.com |
Mrs. Petkov has finally been arrested. No, not on cyberbullying charges (will the Michigan legislature and/or local government please catch up with the 21st century?), but on an allegation that Mrs. Petkov aggressively drove in the direction of Tana Boling, a neighbor friend crossing the street towards the Edward home, forcing Boling to dodge the vehicle. Petkov's attorney claims that the Petkov's have surveillance filming of the incident which will exonerate Jennifer (although he has refused to release the footage to the media). [How convenient! "Hey, honey: I'm going to the store to buy some eggs and milk..."; "Wait, sweetheart; I don't have the camcorder loaded..." Maybe they're worried that their provocative behavior isn't winning friends and influencing other neighbors...]
It's wonderful seeing the generosity and heartfelt response of the American people to the story of that beautiful gift from God, Kathleen. The Huntington Disease Society has reported a surge in donations. Over $17,000 in donations have been received; a large check was delivered to the local children's hospital after Kathleen's recent red carpet, unlimited shopping spree visit to an Ann Arbor toy store owned by an empathetic Hans Masing.
People take a bad thing and turn it into a good thing, and that's what we're focusing on now. We don't care about those people anymore. We're done. We accept their apology. It's about Kathleen and Huntington's disease now. We're just ready to move on. -- Kathleen's dad, Robert EdwardMean Girls?
I can just see it now: after her election in two weeks, former WWE CEO Linda McMahon can book heel Maureen Dowd and babyface Dana Perino into a no-holds-barred cage match fight to the finish. Unlike Ms. Perino and as the faithful reader probably knows, I don't have much respect for Maureen Dowd; her unconscionable attempt to fabricate a conspiracy, accusing a godly man like Pope Benedict XVI of trying in the past to protect a few rogue priests with child predator allegations, was the proverbial final straw.
Dowd's tirade against the alleged "mean girls" doesn't dot the i's and cross the t's, so let me translate progressive pettiness into plain English: she's making reference to Sarah Palin's claim that Sharron Angle has more testicular fortitude than the President, Carly Fiorina's reference to Barbara Boxer's hairstyle, Christine McDonnell's reference to Chris Coons' spending at a men's fashion show, and Meg Whitman's alleged mistreatment of an undocumented maid (at $23/hour). [On a side note, it takes a lot of chutzpah for progressives to point fingers at Whitman, whom in good faith hired a maid qualified by her agency. After all, wasn't it their beloved Bill Clinton whose first two picks for attorney general went south based on household help?]
I suppose that is a lot better than Barbara Boxer's thin-skinned response to a general's following military protocol by calling her ma'am, Chuck Schumer's in-print reference to now Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) as a "tea-bagger" (the progressives' adolescent, habitual use of gay sexual references to slander Tea Party members), or Alan Grayson's suggestion that the GOP plan to contain health care costs was for old people to hurry up and die. And what does Obama's constantly bashing Bush behind his back say about his chivalry? The basic difference? While none of the women cited by Maureen are current officeholders, all of the mentioned Dem lawmakers (except Obama) are up for reelection this year.
It's very easy to understand why Maureen Dowd wants to deal with the trivial nonsense she discusses, scraping the bottom of the barrel with her piece: the progressives don't have much of a story to tell with government spending out of control, sky-high unemployment and little to show for it other than crony capitalism. She spends much of the piece waxing enthusiasm over Harry Reid, whom as Senate Majority leader has delivered for the state with its 14% unemployment, has worked to limit GOP amendments using exotic techniques like the clay pidgeon, and worked corrupt political deals like the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback and Gator-Aid to win passage of the strictly partisan Senate health care bill.
I do want to make a final comment because Maureen Dowd managed to sneak in a few spots plugging the federal bureaucratic micromanagement of health care. You would infer from her description that private health insurers and/or provider don't or won't do colonoscopies and mammograms. There are costs and benefits to medical tests (including the high costs, in both financial and human terms, of false positives). I would rather have a doctor, knowing the patient's genetic history, making the call of whether and the frequency of medical tests (without distortions of defensive medicine) than a "one-size-fits-all" federal policy. Mandates are a significant addition to the costs of health care; health care decisions are more efficiently made at the operational level.
Rand Paul: DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF
Yes, I realize that the Democrats are turning desperate as the countdown tomorrow is 2 weeks until the midterms. RCP today showed another two lean-Dem House seats turning toss up; the GOP needs to win only 6 of those 44 toss ups from current projections to fire Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, and chances are very good they'll win more than they lose from that group. The President is using everything in his arsenal without affect: Bush-bashing, 8 years of "failed policies", not giving the Republicans the car keys (but the American people are giving the Republicans one, maybe 2 house keys to Congress), etc.; he's even resorted to smearing the US Chamber of Commerce (because, to the President's horror, it turns out businesses don't like a high-tax, high-regulation, high-mandate, micromanaging federal government, recklessly spending trillions of dollars it doesn't have in a zero-sum game with the private sector, bullying bondholders to reward its union cronies in bankruptcy proceedings, taking over AIG, the auto companies, and the GSE's, picking winners and losers among companies through its stimulus program, nationalizing student loans, pushing health insurance costs through the roof, not approving pending free trade pacts, etc.), by suggesting foreigners are trying to manipulate our elections using the US Chamber as its front.
But Rand Paul--just because Jack Conway, that pathetic excuse of an attorney general running against you, has to resort to pathetic smear attack ads reporting 30-year-old college prank allegations, since heaven knows he can't win the Senate seat by supporting the ineffective Obama/Pelosi/Reid record, doesn't mean you should give him (and everyone else) the impression that you are thin-skinned. I think you would have impressed everyone with your class if you had simply reacted coolly under the circumstances and showed that he couldn't pull your chain.
Personally, I would have responded to Conway similar to the following, "Jack, I'm not a lawyer. But is this the way you've been serving the people of Kentucky, by investigating allegations of decades-old college pranks reported in a solitary magazine and resorting to innuendo instead of substantiated facts? If you need a mystery to investigate, why don't you show us the evidence that state of Kentucky is better off because of Palin, Reid, and Obama's policies you support? Where are the jobs? If you brought a case for business growth based on Democratic policies to court, it would get dismissed due to lack of evidence..."
Political Humor
"A Republican candidate for Congress in Ohio, a guy named Richard Iott, photos have surfaced of him dressed in a Nazi uniform. He would go to Nazi reenactments dressed as an SS Stormtrooper. He said he only dressed as a Nazi as a bonding ritual with his son. Really? Any other kids do that with their dads? 'I don't want to fish, I don't want to play catch, Let's dress up as Nazis!'" –Jay Leno
[They thought they were going to a father-son "Monsters' Ball Halloween Party". Others came dressed as Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un, Joseph Stalin and Yakov, Saddam Hussein and Uday, Pol Pot, and the Spanish Inquisitors. Frankenstein and Dracula also made an appearance but disappeared without a trace.]
An original:
- Barack Obama is very frustrated that he couldn't pass his version of election reform before the midterm elections; the key proposal was listing each Republican on the ballot with the middle initial 'W'.
Dusty Springfield, "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me"
