Daily Dolt

ArchPundit March 9, 2007 No Comments

Roger Ailes is Funny:

There’s a long tradition of news organizations, national and local, sometimes together, sponsoring presidential and other candidate debates. The organizations and the panelists have been the objects of a lot of advice and even pressure as to how these debates should be conducted and what questions should be asked. This pressure has been successfully resisted, but it’s being tried again this year with the added wrinkle that candidates are being asked to boycott debates because certain groups wants to approve the sponsoring organizations. This pressure must be resisted as it has been in the past. Any candidate for high office of either party who believes he can blacklist any news organization is making a terrible mistake about journalists. And any candidate of either party who cannot answer direct, simple, even tough questions from any journalist runs a real risk of losing the voters.

There’s also a tradition that a news organization doesn’t issue talking points that mimic a political party’s talking points.  Fox doesn’t seem to have a problem with that.

The reality is there is no reason for Democrats to go on Fox News. It is a right wing propaganda machine with news coverage dictated by ideological concerns.  What good is it for a Democrat to go on there? So they can have these jokes made:

And it is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don’t know if it’s true that President Bush called Musharraf and said, ‘Why can’t we catch this guy?’

Hysterical given Fox News never retracted nor apologized for the ‘madrassa story’.

Daily Dolt: Sheila Simon Should Wear Pearls

ArchPundit March 5, 2007 4 Comments

If Tom Roeser didn’t exist a satirist would have to invent him. 

…Sheila Simon has evidently chosen to stress the same plainness-and she has a lot of plainness to dramatize. Spectacles remind people of her father: there are such things as contact lenses-her neglect of them is no accident. Toothiness is a trademark of the Kennedys as, in lesser known degree, of the Simons, her father and mother.

She need not stick with toothiness; there is an industry known as dental cosmetics but she has chosen to. No woman needs to surrender to plainness willingly. Eleanor Roosevelt was told by her mother that she had to offset her plainness with charm and anything else she could muster. She did. She became-take my word for it-one of the most charming women alive, wore pearls to offset a long, scrawny neck, had her teeth straightened and pulled inward from outward, her hair done by a highly-paid professional and wore higher heels than normal to emphasize height which gave her great dignity (all of which she had in abundance when I met her). Sheila Simon would be advised to go the Eleanor Roosevelt way. Everybody knows she’s Paul Simon’s kid anyhow; while married, she has chosen to carry the family name.

This man hosts a weekly radio show.  Why?

He also attempts to back up his claim that Wright is antisemitic:

The “occupation” applies to Gaza and the West Bank. When the Egyptians owned the West Bank nobody charged them with being occupiers nor did people so assail the Jordanians who held the West Bank and much of Jerusalem for the same length of time. After Israel won a war over those who wish to drive it into the sea, they became “occupiers.” What about us with California and Texas-does Dr. Wright want us to return these to Mexico? What about France and Alsace-Lorraine, should France return it to Germany?

Now, one must assume he means the Gaza Strip in relation to the Egypt.

But more to the point, George Bush believes that the West Bank and Gaza should become an independent state as the 1948 partition meant to do.  The Palestineans have been screwed by Arab governments and, in fact, treated more harshly often by the Jordanians. The basic problem is Jordan no longer controls the West Bank and hasn’t since 1967.  Even more problematic for the argument is that Jordan formally recognized Israel and signed a peace treaty in 1994 and argues for a two-state solution.
The challenge in the case of the West Bank is Syria and internal rebellion within the occupied territories.  Complaining that someone identifies an occupied territory as occupied is bizarre.

The problem is how to provide a second state while guaranteeing security for Israel. I think Dr. Wright oversimplifies the situation and understand why the occupation continues in terms of Israeli security, but it is an occupation and like all occupations undertaken by democratic governments, it hurts the occupier and its own civil liberties.

The point being is that while Roeser’s addled brain claims Wright is anti-Jewish, Roeser never offers any evidence that Wright is anti-Jewish other than to claim that those seeking to have a two state solution, claim that all muslims seek to destroy Israel (not true–see above) which doesn’t address anything Wright  said, and finally, that Wright should be criticizing Jordan for it’s occupation forty years ago.

IOW, look over there…quick…while I realize my argument is silly so I’ll bluster and whine.

Daily Dolt

ArchPundit February 22, 2007 1 Comment

Whomever let this article through the Sun-Times. 

$100 is about the going rate. While grassroots campaigns tend to rely upon volunteers, it’s very common for campaigns to pay people–it’s a burgeoning business for some political consultants.
Who else gets paid $100 a day for election work?  Election judges in the City of Chicago

Mayor Daley’s campaign is paying college students $100 apiece to get out the vote for the mayor on Election Day — and replace an army of precinct workers diminished by the City Hall hiring scandal.

Mayoral challenger Bill Walls accused the mayor of “buying” student support. He likened the $100 stipends to employment promises made to members of the Hispanic Democratic Organization and other pro-Daley armies at the center of the scandal. The mayor’s former patronage chief and three others were convicted last summer of rigging city hiring.

Look, you are asking people to give up part of their day. Many work for 10-12 hours making the going rate around $10 hour.  It’s great that there are volunteers to do this in some campaigns, but in municipal elections it’s especially tough to find as many as the Mayor is going to want.

It should be taken as a good sign that the Mayor can no longer call upon the patronage machine.   If anything the quotes by Walls and Brown show how bad of candidates they really are.

Daily Dolts: Proud of Being Asses

ArchPundit February 20, 2007 14 Comments

Fran Eaton saddles up again in the Marginalization Express to say she is proud that the Jill Stanek inquisition into Debbie Halvorson’s sex life including whether she had been raped occurred on Illinois Review:

Illinois Review proudly stands beside what’s right in the long run for our daughters. Call that “mean” if you will, but we won’t budge and we won’t let up.

Sort of like the Pastors on the quads at state universities, the distinction between being an ass and actually being productive is never considered.

The level of absurdity from Eaton and Stanek is hard to fathom. But let’s start with the stupidest line in the post:

It’s “mean” not to care for those uninformed young women whose bodies may become protected by the HPV vaccine, but whose damaged hearts and broken dreams due to promiscuity will take years to heal

No one is suggesting someone go out and be promiscuous. Suggesting that a vaccine is going to be the difference between a woman sleeping around or not tends to demonstrate just how deluded Fran Eaton is about the world. Furthermore, it implies those with HPV are somehow sluts. This is not new for the dynamic duo of denseness.

Perhaps most odd about the anger over this issue is the notion that the state mandate is going to end up in parents having to commit heroic acts of civil disobedience if they disagree withthe law. This is not true

Beginning August 1,
2009 a female student who is 11 or 12 years of age may not enter
any grade of a public, private, or parochial school unless the
child presents to the school proof of having received a human
papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination or, after having received the
information required to be provided by the Department of Public
Health under subsection (a) of Section 2e of the Communicable
Disease Prevention Act, the student’s parent or legal guardian
presents to the school a signed statement that the parent or
legal guardian has elected for the student not to receive the
vaccination.

In the time one could compose a blog post, one could write the note saying that the parent has elected to not have their daughter receive the vaccination.

The reasoning behind making it mandatory is that insurers then have to pay for the vaccination. I’m not sure if there is a reason why this is better than say making it a mandated service covered by health insurance, but the practical effect is minute.

It’s “mean” and destructive for state funds to be delegated to teaching comprehensive sex ed over the overall healthier choice of abstinence until marriage

This is the usual candard about how only abstinence education should be utilized since abstinence is the only 100 percent effective method to avoid disease or pregancy. This is true in a theoretical world, and also rather pointless given teenagers have been sexually active for thousands of years and the practical effectiveness is very low. Worse, it’s counterproductive since abstinence only programs may slightly delay the onset of sexual activity, but it also leads to young people taking fewer precautions when they do become sexually active.

Furthermore, abstinence education programs are medically bizarre often such as discouraging masturbation usually–something for males that has significant health benefits as Adam Carolla often called it, the prostate maintenance program as regular masturbation decreases the chances of prostate cancer. Is that taught in abstinence only programs? Not so much.

The larger problem being when teaching young people about sex, teaching them medically accurate and realistic scenarios is far more important than teaching them to do something that the vast majority of people will not follow nor have they ever followed.

I suppose it’s nice to live in a delusion, but it’s not very effective in determining public policy.

That said, tie the abstinence discussion to McCain and his recent claims to be all for abstinence only education and one laughs hysterically if they have read anything about John McCain as a young man.

The Nightingale’s Song

And here is where the real problem is. Stanek and Eaton are proudly anti-sex. They attack contraception along with the HPV vaccine because they seem to be in the camp with Alan Keyes of people who think that sex is only for pro-creation within a marriage. More power to them in their lives, but many of us have no problem with contraception.

Yet, even though they are a small minority, they are able to get themselves into news stories on a regular basis regardless of how offensive and bizarre their assertions are. Nothing they can say will marginalize them in the press even though they have successfully marginalized themselves politically. The same rule applies to other wingnuts like Peter Labarbera. They cannot do or say anything that will marginalize them in the media. In contrast, similar fringe elements on the left barely are ever covered–how many times does a news outlet look for Indymedia types to interview other than at a protest? That’s not a bad thing in itself, it’s that the mirror image is called upon and called upon regularly.

Daily Dolt: The Queen of Mean

ArchPundit February 16, 2007 7 Comments

I love morons.

That’s Bernie Stone’s daughter yelling at Bridget for having the nerve to canvass in the ward where the daughter thinks they shouldn’t. The daughter has quite a rep. Hysterical.

Daily Dolt: How To Marginalize Oneself Take 3643

ArchPundit February 14, 2007 9 Comments

It wasn’t enough to attack Debbie Halvorson in a local blog, Jill Stanek decided to take it national and add an actress

So when renowns like actress Marissa Jaret Winokur and Illinois state Sen. Debbie Halvorson divulged their history of HPV as the basis for conducting a crusade against it, you’d think they would discourage the destructive behavior causing it by talking about it, such as:

* Discussing the number of sex partners they had throughout their lifetime and how each one increased the likelihood of contracting HPV, or conversely how one can contract HPV from a sole encounter;

* Discussing whether they realized at the time their sex partners carried HPV, which most people do not;

* Discussing whether it was their husbands who passed HPV on to them after sleeping with other women, demonstrating a good reason for fidelity.

But instead of speaking against the cause of HPV, Winokur and Halvorson are instead promoting a vaccination to halt just a tiny fraction of the multitude of consequences of this destructive behavior.

Here is where they erred. After having publicly presented themselves as Exhibit A in this discussion they tried to say, “I have a history of this disease, but my solution excludes assessing the history of my disease.” That is illogical and dangerous. As an RN I’ll add it is bad medicine.

When I presented the aforementioned topics for discussion on a blog this week, liberals accused me of hate, extremism, personal attacks, venom and vitriol.

You mean when you compared Debbie Halvorson to a porn star? Why would anyone think that is a personal attack or venomous, or vitriolic. Poor Jill, she’s just so misunderstood. How else could one make an argument about being against a vaccine without demanding the details of a persons personal life?

She’s also lying, of course. The larger point has been made that the most effective way to reduce these risks is comprehensive sex education. Abstinence only programs are massive failures often leading to greater risk taking when individuals do eventually have sex. Comprehensive sex education provides accurate information on the consequences of sex, but also provides the information about how to minimize those consequences.

Of course, Stanek thinks that premarital sex is comparable to smoking:

So to answer Perry’s question, everyone would welcome a lung cancer vaccine, but wouldn’t turn around and say, “Great, let’s all smoke!” Because we know smoking causes other cancers like laryngeal, esophageal, stomach and pancreatic as well as health problems like heart disease and infertility.

Furthermore, this behavior endangers the health of other people who come in contact with the smoker, like babies born with low birth weight.

Interestingly, the most ardent critics of smoking are lawmakers, who have increasingly sought to discourage this destructive behavior by making it more difficult.

HPV is also the consequence of a destructive behavior, sex outside of marriage.

95 percent of people have premarital sex.

It is certainly true that sex can be unhealthy when it’s simply random sex, but to suggest that 95 percent of Americans are engaging in inherently self-destructive behavior is absurd. Furthermore, when premarital sex is so prevalent it kicks the legs out from underneath the argument that a vaccine for one particular STD is going to promote premarital sex. Premarital sex is and has been the norm.

I’ll repeat, there is nothing conservative commentators like Stanek can say that will cause them to be marginalized.

Daily Dolt

ArchPundit February 7, 2007 4 Comments

Rush Limbaugh:

On the February 5 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh, responding to media coverage of Chicago Bears quarterback Rex Grossman, stated “they’re dumping on this guy — Rex Grossman — for one reason, folks, and that’s because he is a white quarterback.” Limbaugh later insisted in conversation with a caller that, “they just want this guy not to do well ’cause he’s a white quarterback,” and that Grossman was “targeted for destruction.” The Bears lost to the Indianapolis Colts 29-17 in Super Bowl XLI.

I think Grossman gets more flak than he deserves, but it isn’t because he’s white. It’s that tendency to throw the ball to the other team.