ZOMG. I kinda agree with MoDo. *fear*

I need a shower.

Via National Review's Hillary Spot, a source of much hilarity...Michelle Obamarama makes fun of her husband because he doesn't clean up after himself and is less competent than a five-year-old at making the bed. He's "A great man, a wonderful man. But still a man." Ouch.

Maureen Dowd takes exception (I can't read the original because I refuse to give money to the NY Times):

her chiding was emasculating, casting her husband — under fire for lacking experience — as an undisciplined child.... But it may not be smart politics to mock him in a way that turns him from the glam J.F.K. into the mundane Gerald Ford, toasting his own English muffins. If all Senator Obama is peddling is the Camelot mystique, why debunk the mystique?

Uh, no shit. Assuming Obama's goal is to beat Hillary (ostensibly a woman) for the nomination, why on Earth would his wife want to go around saying, "Yeah, he's cool, but he's just a man and inferior to women" ????

Ya know, if, say, Mr. Pelosi, or Mr. Boxer (or any husband of a female candidate who hasn't already been been POTUS himself) stood up at a rally and pointed out that his wife can't fold a map, calls him to plunge the toilet, and keeps trying to get him to talk about his feelings while he's watching a game, the national outcry would make the Imus debacle look like a fender-bender that gets reported on Page 18 only because one of the drivers is a local celebrity.

The truly funny part is MoDo taking up on behalf of a man and against the accepted tenets of contempory feminism. Maybe she's still looking for a husband.

We don't need no stinking oil in WI...

I never bought the argument that ~9% profit was "unreasonable"--especially in light of all the infrastructure necessary to get the product to market at all. Plus, I think part of my 401(k) is in "energy" mutual funds, along with millions of other people.

But this is the Socialist Republic of Wisconsin. ROI is bad, mmm-kay?

A proposed state tax on oil company profits will inevitably be passed on to consumers at the pump, a report to be released today says.

No shit!

The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, a conservative think tank based in Thiensville, contends that a provision in the proposal aimed at keeping the tax from being passed on to consumers will be overturned in court, as has happened in other states.

...

"This tax should be called what it is - a five cent increase in the gas tax," the report says. "The no-pass-through provision, with its promises of jailed oil company executives and cheap gasoline, should have no place in a serious discussion of transportation finance."

Jailed oil executives? You expect "cheap gasoline" after they spend millions of dollars on legal defense? And who's spending the millions of dollars necessary for personnel, equipment, and office space for "audits" of the oil companies' finances?

Here's the kicker:

But as oil companies see their price of doing business go up, less oil would be allocated to the state's gasoline stations.

And then the price goes up at the consumer level (supply/demand). The oil companies themselves haven't jacked up the price to pay the tax. All they did was send the gas and heating oil to Illinois.


Meanwhile, PepsiCo turns a much larger percentage profit on sugar water--during an "obesity epidemic." There's an excellent candidate for social-engineering through punative taxation--and I don't need Pepsi to get my sorry butt to work and back. It's just as wrong, but let's be consistent with our feel-goodery...

Testing 1-2-3

Greetings!

Welcome to my political blog. Regular topics include national, international, Wisconsin, and Milwaukee politics; occasional wishing I still lived in Iowa so I could participate in the run-up to the 2008 caucus; general complaints about current popular culture; extensive mocking of the kook left, especially but not limited to environmentalist whackos intent on creating a Stalinist America; and unrepentant, unreasonable, illogical love of the Indianapolis Colts (since 1996--bandwagon fans go away!).

Mostly I'm blowing off steam; I don't have a regular audience for my snappy comebacks and pithy observations. I'm an engineer, Jim, not a policy wonk. My role models are Mark Steyn and James Lileks and Jonah Goldberg. I dream of being Zombie but all the anti-America rallies in Madison are scheduled during regular business hours and I work. Sigh.

Let's get it on!