ArchPundit

Geraldo vs Arnett

Atrios hits my question put off by a day of meetings yesterday, but could someone explain the differing reactions to the two of them?

There does appear to be one possible reason beside hypocrisy that people treat the two cases so differently—Geraldo is such a bleeping idiot, people expected it out of him.

And Bunning wants to try Arnett for treason. I would think that US Senators would disapprove of a law that equated stupid utterances with treason for obvious reasons.

I Highly Recommend

this article from the Illinois Leader.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the Choose Life license plate obsession of the right wing is weird and completely out of whack to important issues, but whatever. What it does do is show very well how bills get killed in the Illinois House. The creation of sham committees that never meet are used quite often and are an easy way to avoid legislative responsibility.

On the other hand, this whine by Kevin McCollough is poorly informed as usual:

Last Wednesday U. S. Congressman from New York Charlie Rangel said on FOX News Channel, "I don’t think we should be bombing women and children…" Even for the mildly maniacal Rangel this was a moment in which he seemed crazed even by his operating norms. The sidewalk warriors went into action and by the end of the week the lunacy had been denounced at every water cooler in the nation.

McCollough might have noticed that Charlie Rangel served in combat in Korea. Whiny punks who have delusions of being sidewalk warriors might criticize his ideas, but damn well not his sanity or right to express himself about war.

Let American Die

Conventional wisdom in St. Louis is that American Airlines must be saved to save the hub status in St. Louis. Regular readers know that I think this is incredibly stupid and anti-consumer, but more importantly, efforts to keep inefficient airlines alive hurt consumers by keeping inefficent business models alive. Fortunately, Daniel Gross at Slate agrees.

But maybe they shouldn’t. What if we’re in the midst of a several-years-long era of lower demand, transparent pricing, and rising competition from upstarts free of expensive contracts and airplane leases? These airlines might emerge from bankruptcy with lower debt loads and better union contracts and find they still can’t compete. They might be setting the stage for a round-trip journey to Chapter 11?call it Chapter 22. Perhaps instead of trying to save all our airlines we should let some of them die off.

Amen.

Bush League Move By Blago

While I think some of the whining about a New York aide is a bit silly, Rich Miller rightly takes Blagojevich to task for the faux pas of going to a legislative district in a negative mode when there is no campaign.

Rutherford was not amused. "To physically appear in my hometown, a half a block from my legislative office, on a day that I physically cannot be present to talk about something legislatively maybe isn’t the best way to encourage something to be accomplished," Rutherford told the Bloomington Pantagraph. "The way to work with Dan Rutherford is to pick up the phone and call."

Rutherford is a straight shooter and this sort of tactic is a good way to piss him off. To make matters worse, Blagojevich isn’t going to get far in Pontiac without some nod from one of the state Republican Represenatives or Senators. Pontiac is rock solid Republican town that a Democratic Governor needs to work with not against for support.