Call It A Comeback
Here in St. Louis I don’t get to do that often and …
Pat Quinn starts talking. Now, it wasn’t so bad that he was on promoting a charity to support the troops–that’s good of him. But he started talking baseball.
There is a dent in my dashboard from me punching it.
All of us who blogged the 2004 race with Keyes really are just recycling posts at this point.
When you go to the Keyes well, you might qualify as a Maverick but not in the way you want to…
Recycles the silly claim that Obama wanted to teach kindergartners all about sex. I dealt with this in October of 2004 when Alan Keyes tried the same crap:
Of the many carnards that Alan Keyes has tried to use during this race, the one that disturbed me most was his rant that no sex education for Kindergartners is appropriate (video to come–this was in Collinsville). He then went on a rant about how this showed some moral depravity. Barack reminded me of it today in a story where he explains the issue of storks versus birth which is a decent example.
But there is a far more serious side to this–relevant sex education at that age also includes information about how to deal with good and bad touches. IOW, how to teach children to appropriately deal with people who want to touch them in personal places. AKA child molestation. This can be an important defense against child sexual abuse and is not in any way promoting sex-in fact it does the opposite–it can protect children from abuse.
I have little use for demagoguing on this issue. Having dealt with kids who have been abused a little, the notion of boundaries is one of the most difficult issues with which those kids deal. I am not naive enough to think that such education is enough to stop sexual abuse of children, but it can be an important component of reducing it.
The Brody Files also addressed the issue quite well in 2007
“Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Planned Parenthood Tuesday that sex education for kindergarteners, as long as it is ‘age-appropriate,’ is ‘the right thing to do.’ ‘But it’s the right thing to do,’ Obama continued, ‘to provide age-appropriate sex education, science-based sex education in schools.'”
Here’s what Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki is telling The Brody File this morning:
“Barack Obama supports sensible, community-driven education for children because, among other things, he believes it could help protect them from pedophiles. A child’s knowledge of the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touching is crucial to keeping them safe from predators.”
So, at this point at least, what Obama is referring to is teaching five year olds about inappropriate touching. The Obama campaign also tells The Brody File that parents would be able to opt out. As for further details, the touching aspect seems to be the main idea here. Obama doesn’t want to hand out condoms to five year olds. He doesn’t want cucumber demonstrations as part of show and tell. The legitimate reasonable discussion here is whether the federal government and/or local school boards should get involved in providing these five year olds information about inappropriate touching or should it be left up to families only.
Still, The Romney campaign is already ripping Barack Obama. The campaign is sending out this You Tube video where Mitt Romney spoke about this last night in a Colorado Springs speech. Watch it here.
I must say that Romney’s comments suggesting that Obama wants to teach sex education to kindergarteners is a little misleading. Because he didn’t put in the proper context, many in the audience probably left thinking that Obama is ok with the condoms and cucumber approach.
The Brody File found a Chicago Daily Herald article from October of 2004 that shads some light on this latest episode. Read below:
Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Barack Obama, addressing college students Tuesday in Lisle, moved to clarify that he does not support teaching explicit sex education to children in kindergarten.
The sex-education question, from a student who identified herself as being part of an anti-abortion group at Benedictine University, mirrors a charge Republican candidate Alan Keyes has leveled at Obama.
The legislation in question was a state Senate measure last year that aimed to update Illinois’ sex education standards with “medically accurate” information. At one point, the legislation included a provision to allow students from kindergarten through fifth grade to be added to the middle and high school students receiving sex education.
Obama was chairman of the Senate committee that voted along party lines to move along the measure, which ultimately went nowhere.
“Nobody’s suggesting that kindergartners are going to be getting information about sex in the way that we think about it,” Obama said. “If they ask a teacher ‘where do babies come from,’ that providing information that the fact is that it’s not a stork is probably not an unhealthy thing. Although again, that’s going to be determined on a case by case basis by local communities and local school boards.”
Also, in October of 2004 during a debate with Alan Keyes, below is the exchange they had with regards to this topic:
KEYES: Well, I had noticed that, in your voting, you had voted, at one point, that sex education should begin in kindergarten, and you justified it by saying that it would be “age-appropriate” sex education.
But then on another vote, when they wanted to put internet filters on computers for the schools and in the libraries, you voted to oppose that, which made me wonder just exactly what you think is “age-appropriate.”
For instance, do you think that, in the first and second grade, we ought to be teaching from books like Heather Has Two Mommies, where we will be presenting, whether or not parents agree with it, a lifestyle that many folks in the state of Illinois believe is not advisable? Is that the kind of sex education you mean?
OBAMA: Actually, that wasn’t what I had in mind.
We have a existing law that mandates sex education in the schools. We want to make sure that it’s medically accurate and age-appropriate.
Now, I’ll give you an example, because I have a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old daughter, and one of the things my wife and I talked to our daughter about is the possibility of somebody touching them inappropriately, and what that might mean.
And that was included specifically in the law, so that kindergarteners are able to exercise some possible protection against abuse, because I have family members as well as friends who suffered abuse at that age. So, that’s the kind of stuff that I was talking about in that piece of legislation.
It’s McCain who is the pig, Just ask the DNC in July:
When John McCain rolls out his “Jobs First” economic tour in Denver today, he’ll have a lot of explaining to do to the American people. Senator McCain, according to the Wall Street Journal, “isn’t expected to say anything new” and will only “repackage proposals he has already outlined,” the equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig. With his support of George Bush‘s disastrous economic policies that have hurt America, voters will see Senator McCain offers nothing more than four more years of lost jobs, pain at the pump and a squeeze for the Middle Class.
That Nedra Pickler wrote that crap is another demonstration of stenography instead of reporting.
Let’s see some other example of Lipstick on a Pig
CNNMay 15, 2008 Thursday
SHOW: CNN ELECTION CENTER 8:00 PM EST
CROWLEY: Well, Bush is a big part of the problem, but I also think that they just don’t have a clear vision for how to get out of this hole. So they’ll be happy to get rid of Bush and they’ll be happy to be associated more closely with McCain than with Bush.
But Bush made them walk the plank on a lot of tough votes. They’ve taken a lot of positions. It’s going to be hard for them to run away from. Anyone who’s been there for a little while has to explain the record that the Congress has shown, that as Tara just explained, totally flew in the face of a lot of fiscal values.
Spending went through the roof. They didn’t get a lot done. They said they were going to. So it’s not going to solve their problem completely. I don’t really know how they’d get out of this fix. I mean, they’re trying to put lipstick on a pig.
I think to some extent, they’re just –it’s like when a team in sports just takes the hit and they rebuild, you know, and you just start from the bottom again. They’ve got to get some new leadership, some new guys to chart a new course.
National Journal’s CongressDaily
April 03, 2008 Thursday 19:00 pm Eastern Time
“Right now our fundraising sucks,” Boehner said. “There’s no other way to put it … There’s no use putting lipstick on a pig.” Afterward, Boehner said to win seats “you need a credible candidate, you’ve got to have issues and you’ve got to have resources.” He then added, “We have to raise more money.”
Federal News Service
February 1, 2007 Thursday
: It gets down to whether you support what’s being done in this new strategy or you don’t. You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig in my view. (Laughter.) And so we are — it fundamentally gets down to that.
Candy Crowley, John Boehner and John McCain–sexist bastards.
Rich mentioned reasons to hate Washington–this is a perfect example.
Palin has spent little time in Juneau, rarely coming to the state capital except when the Legislature was in session, and sometimes not even then.
During a recent special session called by Palin herself, she faced criticism from several legislators for not showing up personally to push for her agenda.
Someone at the Capitol even printed up buttons asking “Where’s Sarah?”
Rep. Andrea Doll, D-Juneau, called it a telling question.
“At a time when her leadership was truly needed, we didn’t know where she was,” Doll said.
More on Sarah Palin’s great scam of the state of Alaska, charging the state of Alaska for “travel” expenses while staying at home, all while making a big show of “saving taxpayer money” by getting rid of her private chef (all mooseshit, of course).
From the Anchorage Daily News, 7/29/2007, via Lexis/Nexis:
“Holding a special session in Anchorage last month cost the state at
least $103,500, according to the head of the Legislative Affairs Agency.
Criticized for adjourning the regular session without renewing a
program that gave cash payments to low-income seniors, legislators
called the one-day meeting on June 26 […]
Legislators earned a per diem of $278 each. The money is meant to be
used on meals and hotels, she said, and is a little more than
legislators would get in Juneau.
Holding the session in Anchorage costs about $2,000 more per day for
per diems, which are based on rates set by the federal government,
she said.
The overall price tag struck Gov. Sarah Palin as too high.
“That makes absolutely no sense, that a seven-hour meeting costs our
Legislature over $100,000,” Palin said. “What the heck were they
charging the state for then?”
Yeah! What /were/ they charging the state for? Were they living at home, yet squeezing travel expenses out of it? Were they bringing the whole family down to Anchorage on the government’s dime? Were they staying in $707 per night hotels?
It’s important those questions get answered, otherwise, this episode will start to look suspiciously like … hypocrisy. I know, I know, this is all hard to believe given that she eats mooseburgers and chose life, but there it is.
This episode may just have bought Sarah Palin another two weeks of isolation from the media.
You’ll have excuse me, but I’ve seen this play and I didn’t like it the first time. That, my friends, is not change we can believe in and it’s not rocking the system.
She didn’t show up often, got paid extra for not showing up, and then criticized others for getting per diem. That’s testicular virility, my friends.
Largely overshadowed by Lance, he did come in 3rd in the 1998 Tour.
One of my favorite sports writers addresses the Lance speculation:
Confusion reigned as the rumors — still unconfirmed by any of the principals — bloomed like algae on the surface of the mainstream media. What in the world could be motivating him? It couldn’t be money, and it couldn’t be titles. Could it be ego? Altruism, in the form of increased revenue for cancer research? Boredom? Enough with the tabloid headlines and the blondes, already? The need to respond in a different way, to the doping innuendo that never dies, even though Armstrong never tested positive, and stirs afresh every time some ex-teammate gets caught?
Chances are that if this story moves from the realm of the theoretical into the concrete, there’s a bit of all of the above at work, but the last item on the list is the most elusive. The seven-time Tour winner is said to be planning a comeback with Astana, where his former boss Johan Bruyneel runs the show. Last year, Bruyneel contracted with respected Danish anti-doping researcher and certified cynic Rasmus Damsgaard to put his riders under the microscope, in the form of rigorous out-of-competition blood testing that is designed to show suspicious deviations from an athlete’s normal biological parameters. The VeloNews report suggested the Texan will race in five big events, including the Tour of California, and put his testing numbers online to offer proof that he is not cheating. In so doing, he would be jumping on a bandwagon that got rolling only after he left the sport.
I don’t think Lance knows what to do with himself if he’s not racing. It’s the same thing as with Michael Jordan–both identify themselves as competitors. That he can torment those claiming he used to dope* is just a bonus.
Landis is apparently team shopping and for those that only know the story from the headlines, I have long been convinced the drug tests for Landis are simply not reliable and the lab made enough procedural errors we cannot know whether he doped reliably. The system is stacked to uphold findings regardless of what problems are identified and in Landis’ case, the evidence would never have stood up in a US Court. The saddest thing is we can never know whether he doped or not–which is the worst outcome for the sport. For detailed coverage on the problems regarding dope testing and such make sure to visit Trust but Verity.
* I’ve always thought Lance probably doped before cancer–after cancer, there’s no evidence.
Lance is getting the band back together!
Armstrong, who turns 37 this month, will compete in the Amgen Tour of California, Paris-Nice, the Tour de Georgia, the Dauphiné Libéré and the Tour de France — and will race for neither salary nor bonuses, the sources, who asked to remain anonymous, told VeloNews.
Armstrong’s manager, Mark Higgins, did not respond to questions. And an Astana spokesman denied the report to The Associated Press.
“He is no part of our team,” Astana team press officer Philippe Maertens told the AP in an e-mail. “Team Astana has no plans with him.”
However, sources close to the story have told VeloNews that an exclusive article on the matter will be published in an upcoming issue of Vanity Fair, expected later this month. Vanity Fair editors did not respond to requests for comment.
Rumors of Armstrong’s return swirled at last week’s Eurobike trade show in Germany and this week’s Tour of Missouri.
The rumor speculates that Armstrong will reunite with former team manager Johan Bruyneel at Team Astana — a viable option given Armstrong’s long-lasting relationships not only with the Belgian director but also Trek, Astana’s bike sponsor.
According to sources, the Texan will post all of his internally tested blood work online, in an attempt to establish complete transparency and prove that he is a clean athlete.
This is a giant screw you to WADA and UCI
With any luck it will be Lance and the royally screwed over Floyd Landis competing for first place.
According to sources, the Texan will post all of his internally tested blood work online, in an attempt to establish complete transparency and prove that he is a clean athlete.
That way when the Chatenay-Malabry lab screws up the samples, there is something to compare it to–in fact every team should do this for exactly that reason.
Dick Pound’s head just exploded. Heh.
I’m not sure what it will mean for the rest of Astana which has both Leipheimer and Contador on the team–two people who on their own are GC threats-Contador winning the 2007 race.
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