Earthpork Deadline Tomorrow

From the Cedar Rapids Gazette:

The executive director of the controversial Earthpark indoor rain forest said Tuesday he is optimistic about the project's future as a critical Saturday deadline nears.

Executive Director David Oman told The Gazette an application detailing the project's financial commitments will be filed by the end of the week with the U.S. Department of Energy for a federal grant. Brian Quirke, a spokesman for the Department of Energy, said department officials expect to receive the paperwork Friday.

Earthpark, once linked to Cedar Rapids and Coralville but now slated for Pella, has until Saturday to show the energy department it has secured $48.3 million in pledges toward the $140 million project. If it doesn't, it will lose a matching $48.3 million federal grant - a scenario that likely would doom the project.

Oman declined to say if Earthpark has at least $48.3 million in pledges. "I'm not getting into all the details of the application," he said. "As I said, we have a very sound application and a good array of sources willing to help."

When a reporter said sending in the application seemed to imply Earthpark officials believe they've met the requirements to get the federal money, Oman said, "Understood." When asked if he was feeling optimistic about the project, he said, "Yes."

So far, the only confirmed commitment is from Atlanta-based Maxon Holdings for $10 million of in-kind support. Pella is to kick in another $25 million as part of the agreement to locate the project there.

There was some question whether in-kind contributions would count toward the federal match, but Quirke said his department has ruled they will. The Earthpark does not need to have the $48.3 million in hand by Saturday but rather must have secured pledges totaling at least that much, and that the department and Earthpark officials have been in close contact this past month about what is needed.

What does the newspaper mean that there was a question on whether in-kind contributions would count?

Haven't they read the legislation that Senator Chuck Grassley wrote and re-wrote for fellow Republican and campaign contributor David Oman?

This project has gone from $280 million down to $140 million over the years. While it's been supposedly scaled back somewhat lately ($180 million, $150 million....), it is rare to have such an enormous construction project actually cost less year after year.

And how is Pella going to come up with $25 million? The population of Pella is less than 10,000. That's $2500 for every man, woman, and child in town.

The biggest problem are these "in-kind" donations, which are little more than promises for free services at sky-high rates in order to fluff the numbers.

You can't rent a car with shower curtain rings and you can't build a $140 million project with in-kind donations. The Federal Government simply shouldn't allow it, but Grassley included it anyway.

Let's not even get into how Oman is going to finance the additional money needed beyond the grant and the "matching" money.

One saving grace is that Oman is not going to get a dime out of Democratic Governor Chet Culver, much less the Democratically-controlled Iowa Legislature:

Trans Plants

Do a search on the Des Moines Register's web site for such words as "CNN, debate, Republican" and you get one hit on the matter: David Yepsen's column about Mike Huckabee.

Perhaps there was other coverage in the print newspaper about the event. Wire service (AP) stories don't usually make the online cut at the DMR as they do at other Gannett-owned newspapers such as the Iowa City Press-Citizen.

But it should be noted that, at least in the web edition, the Des Moines Register, the monopoly corporate newspaper that central Iowa is stuck with, didn't mention a single thing about the number of Democrat "plants" in the Republican/CNN/YouTube debate.


Update: More on the depth of the scandal from John Fund. And don't miss Instapundit snooping around Editor & Publisher and Poynter.

Oman To Get Earthpork Money?

Via a reader, this is from KCCI-TV:

KCCI has learned that Earthpark developers are expecting to make their Saturday funding deadline.

David Oman, the Executive Director of Earthpark, told KCCI’s Emily Price that the group is filling out the applications to receive a $50 million federal grant from the Department of Energy.

Earthpark was given until Dec. 1 to come up with $48 million of private funding in order to match the federal grant.

If the group doesn't make the deadline they would lose the $50 million grant, which would make it virtually impossible to move forward with the project.
Oman told KCCI the project is very complex project and that's why it's taken months to bring everything together for the grant application. He would not provide specifics about where the $48 million matching funds are coming from.

“We’re not going to talk about that until we finish it and submit it. And the Department of Energy has to evaluate all that. We have an array of sources coming together as a confluence to meet the D.O.E requirements. We’ll turn it in and they’ll make a decision and share that with the news media and Iowans very soon,” Oman said.

Oman said the application would be delivered by the end of the week. There’s no word yet how long it will take for the Department of Energy to consider the application.

Global Warming Lecture Canceled

From the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

Researcher Chie "Siqiñiq" Sakakibara’s lecture on the effects of global warming on Iñupiat whaling in the Alaskan Arctic is canceled.

The lecture was scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Monday, Dec. 3 in Room W151 of the Pappajohn Business Building on the UI campus. The university apologizes for any inconvenience.

Meanwhile, the weather report for the next few days in that part of the state:

Tonight: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 21. South wind 7 to 13 mph becoming west.

Friday: Mostly cloudy, then gradually becoming sunny, with a high near 31. North wind between 8 and 17 mph, with gusts as high as 24 mph.

Friday Night: Increasing clouds, with a low around 17.

Saturday: Snow and sleet likely before noon, then periods of freezing rain and sleet. High near 33. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible.

Saturday Night: Rain or freezing rain likely, becoming all freezing rain after midnight. Cloudy, with a low around 29. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible.

Sunday: A 50 percent chance of snow. Cloudy, with a high near 32.

Sunday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 15.

Monday (December 3rd): Mostly sunny, with a high near 27.

Monday Night (December 3rd): Partly cloudy, with a low around 9.

Tuesday: A slight chance of snow. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 28.

Tuesday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 16.

Wednesday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 28.

Normal temps for this time of year in Iowa City are a high of 40 and a low of 24

The Cocksucking News Network

I never watch the debates. I haven't for years.

They've become too predictable and scripted.

There's too many candidates.

I certainly didn't see last night's Republican debate.

Besides, Project Runway was on last night.

Nowadays the debates have all these gimmicks: submit your questions via YouTube and stuff like that. That's co-branding by trying to look hip rather than anything else.

But I do like to read reaction to the debates.

Lately, it's all been about how CNN stacked the audience with plants and phony "undecided" voters at the Democrats' "debate" in Las Vegas.

Now, after the Republican debate, it seems that one of the questions came from a homo former General who is a member of Hillary's queering committee.

Then there were all the questions from committed Obama and Edwards supporters.

Oh, sure, CNN's Anderson Cooper said they fucked up once they got caught, which didn't take long.

I don't want to advocate violence, but Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, and all these other "reporters" at CNN need a "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" moment from the general public.

They need to get run out of business.

Fuck them.

Who the fuck do they think they are pulling this shit?

It's our election! Not theirs!

How fucking stupid do they think the public is?

Like we can't Google what they're doing.

The "undecided voters" in Las Vegas were a total lie - they were all obvious Democrats and you could tell who they were going to vote for. Now all the questioners of Republican candidates turn out to be Democratic activists.

The problem with the media like CNN is that the Democrats willingly arrange this and the Republicans are such a bunch of gullible idiots that they'll roll over so that fags like Anderson Cooper can fuck them in the ass without any lube.

And don't get me wrong, I like it when a candidate has to deal on the stump with some nutjob questioner who won't shut up. That speaks volumes. Do they raise their voice and accuse them of being a plant like Hillary did? (that guy was a Bush-hating Democrat...) Or do they handle the situation?

It's bad enough that the local media in Iowa is either lazy, stupid, willing accomplices, or a combination of all.

But the National Media? No wonder nobody's watching. It's as fake as Britney Spears' singing. It's all kind of American Idol-ish.

I want danger and weird moments and gaffes.

I want the Real American Public asking questions, not a bunch of fucktards from all the usual interest groups or political parties.

If that happened, I'd watch again.

Dwelling On Hagiography Tripe

Ashlee Vance, writing for The Register.

No, not the Des Moines Register, but a UK online tech news service called The Register:

Who needs religion in middle America when you have Google?

Google executive Ken Patchett recently visited Council Bluffs, Iowa and received a hero's welcome. Patchett leads Google's effort to build a $600m data center in corn country, and the locals couldn't be happier to have him around - at least according to propaganda purveyor The Des Moines Register. The paper has presented Patchett and Google as the bringers of all things wonderful - entities capable of curing ills and feeding the poor.

These days Google and Microsoft march into small, depressed towns with similar stories. "Give us a few tax breaks, and we'll build a $600m data center in your backyard. You'll be seen as a technology leader, and we'll bring in a ton of jobs."

In actual fact, however, these mega data centers used to fuel both companies' internet ambitions provide very few jobs over the long haul. It takes hundreds of construction crews, contractors and suppliers to set up a mega data center but only about three dozen people to run the center post-construction...

...Now in Iowa Google is being celebrated for sending job ads to a community college. "Google's hiring. Come on home."

In addition, Google looks to plant executives with the Chamber of Commerce and will aid non-profits via free online advertising.

We'd bring you more examples of Google's coming generosity if only the reporter had bothered to dig up anything else substantial. Instead, she dwelled on the standard Google hagiography tripe, boasting of Nerf gun fights, decent lunches and "casual Fridays all week".

Should a town really base its hopes and dreams on three dozen workers getting to wear jeans to work? Oh, why not.

That's pretty funny.......

Good column.

Related (State 29): Nerf Gun Fights

Bill Clinton Lies In Muscatine

I once caught a fish thisssssssss big!

Via Don Surber, this is from the New York Times:

During a campaign swing for his wife [in Muscatine], former President Bill Clinton said flatly yesterday that he opposed the war in Iraq “from the beginning” — a statement that is more absolute than his comments before the invasion in March 2003.

CNN on June 23, 2004:

Former President Clinton has revealed that he continues to support President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq but chastised the administration over the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

"I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over," Clinton said in a Time magazine interview that will hit newsstands Monday, a day before the publication of his book "My Life."

Clinton, who was interviewed Thursday, said he did not believe that Bush went to war in Iraq over oil or for imperialist reasons but out of a genuine belief that large quantities of weapons of mass destruction remained unaccounted for.

Noting that Bush had to be "reeling" in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, Clinton said Bush's first priority was to keep al Qaeda and other terrorist networks from obtaining "chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material."

"That's why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff unaccounted for," Clinton said in reference to Iraq and the fact that U.N. weapons inspectors left the country in 1998.

"So I thought the president had an absolute responsibility to go to the U.N. and say, 'Look, guys, after 9/11, you have got to demand that Saddam Hussein lets us finish the inspection process.' You couldn't responsibly ignore [the possibility that] a tyrant had these stocks," Clinton said.

How did what I call the "Cocksucking Reporters" in Iowa react to Clinton's speech in Muscatine?

Ed Tibbetts of the Waterloo Courier didn't notice the lie.

Kay Henderson of Radio Iowa didn't seem to be there, so she ran to Tom Vilsack for a campaign-approved sound bite.

The Des Moines Register? They sent their puff piece writer, Jennifer Jacobs, to the event. She needs a new set of kneepads after writing that one.

And Muscatine Journal reporter Cynthia Beaudette wrote a couple of paragraphs of fluff.

You chickenshit reporters. Do you have a brain in your head? Do you remember anything other than what the campaign press agents give you? Why are you even employed?

This isn't fucking Britney Spears you're covering, you know.

No wonder your industry is dying.

What Do You Get For The Impeached Adulterer Who Has Everything?

Bill Clinton strolled into Iowa City yesterday and ate at the Hamburg Inn, a local greasy spoon where the candidates hang around for photo ops.

This caught my eye:

Clinton stayed overnight at hotelVetro in Iowa City before making campaign stops for his wife...

The hotelVetro is currently running a special:



Did Bill Clinton sleep alone? (when was the last time he slept with his wife? You know, in the same bed, not just the same ZIP code....)

And how about that massage upgrade option. Do you think BJ Clinton got a happy ending?

The Beautiful Sheeple

Via Mainstream Iowan:

All five of the leading Republican presidential candidates — including John McCain — would beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in a head-to-head match-up, according to a surprising new poll from Zogby International.

But Barack Obama outpolled all five GOP hopefuls — Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, and McCain.

The national poll of nearly 10,000 people — about equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, with about one-quarter independents — is more bad news for longtime front-runner Clinton. It shows that she’s slipping not only in Iowa and several other early caucus or primary states, but across the country as well.

This doesn't surprise me.

Hillary's negatives are so high that a lot of Democrats are finally getting the news that she will lose - and lose big - if she's the nominee.

And of course the most important thing to Democrats is being able to win an election.

Democrats take the Vince Lombardi/Harry "Red" Sanders approach: "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."

And now, for this morning's entertainment: Marilyn Manson

We Knead Mo Money

From the Waterloo Courier:

Extensive remodeling projects at two Cedar Falls junior high schools could potentially drain the district's local option sales tax coffers for the coming 10 years according to numbers presented to the board Monday night.

Estimates show the two projects would cost about $26.8 million to complete, leaving little to no money remaining for future district needs. That possibility concerns board president Deon Senchina.

Before the 1 percent sales tax was approved the first time, the district laid out a series of projects and general cost estimates for the expected $36 million revenue. Now, with only a couple years remaining, the district is moving plans around to accommodate the needs of certain schools and the ever-increasing cost of construction...

...Superintendent David Stoakes said much of the expected shortfall comes from a substantial decrease in per pupil allocations promised for the second 10 years of the tax.

When Black Hawk County residents originally passed the tax in 1999, all revenue from money spent in the county stayed in the county, resulting in a per pupil allocation of nearly $940. During the second 10 years that figure will drop to about $575 as the money is spread equally among students across the state, resulting in a loss of about $9.8 million over the life of the tax.

And in today's Quad City Times:

Faced with losing millions of dollars, school districts in Scott County are pushing lawmakers to reconsider the state’s limit on how much money they can make from a 1-cent sales tax.

Legislators capped the amount of money districts could raise from the local option sales tax four years ago, allowing them to collect as much as $575 per student. The change was meant to bring funding for retail-poor districts up to that of their peers in more urban counties after 161 districts brought an inequity lawsuit against the state.

When lawmakers passed the measure, they said districts that had already passed the 10-year countywide sales tax would not be affected until it expired and voters approved an extension.

Legislators also promised to revisit the limit each year to adjust it as necessary but have failed to do so. And with the pool of money poised to grow substantially in the next three years, school districts are pushing lawmakers to pass legislation that adjusts the limit, so they don’t lose out on funding.

Among them are leaders in the Davenport, Bettendorf, Pleasant Valley and North Scott school districts. The four plan to have ballot measures in March 2008 asking residents to extend the tax another 10 years in Scott County.

“I am certainly an advocate for equity across the state,” said Tim Dose, North Scott School District superintendent. “The concept I agree with. But the amount they have established there needs to be re-examined.”

Factor in that the Des Moines School District is likely not going to get their 1% sales tax renewed in 2009 and has been pressuring the Iowa Legislature to hike the state's sales tax further to pay for their mismanagement, well.... all I can say is Thank God I'm not a Democrat in the Iowa Legislature.

That's gonna get nasty next January!

Earthpork, 4 Days Left

Nicholas Johnson is joining in the countdown.

Nothing new in the media. The Boston Glob mentions the project in passing here when talking about earmarks. But that's it.

You've got to wonder how much the Des Moines Register is holding back. I bet they've got a number of pre-written stories in the can, all of them with David Oman's seal of approval on them.

Or, maybe not.


Related: Earthpork: 7 Days Left

Ramona Cunningham Is In A Locked Psychiatric Facility

GED recipient and former $368,000-a-year CIETC head Ramona Cunningham with Senator Tom Harkin at the dedication of the "Tom Harkin Learning Center" at CIETC offices in October 20, 2004.

The Des Moines Register is reporting that Ramona Cunningham's lawyers are trying to get a change of venue because the GED recipient and way overpaid former head of CIETC is guilty cannot get a fair trial because of publicity.

Gee, I'm surprised Bill Kutmus hasn't blamed bloggers yet.

There are some funny parts of the story:

Meanwhile, former CIETC chief executive Ramona Cunningham, the main defendant in that trial, remains in a locked psychiatric facility following an October suicide attempt in Louisiana, said her lawyer, Bill Kutmus.

Kutmus said he last talked with Cunningham roughly a month ago. Her sister, who also lives in Farmerville, La., told Kutmus that the "medication isn't working," he said. Kutmus refused to provide further details.

Ramona is so crazy and suicidal that only the dropping of charges or a not guilty verdict could help her metal health.

Er, did I say metal health?

R.I.P. Kevin DuBrow. Here's Quiet Riot from the US Festival:

Nerf Gun Fights

From the Mason City Glob Gazette:

Google has begun to recruit and hire workers for its new data center in Council Bluffs, but executives remain tightlipped about details of the company's future growth in southwest Iowa.

But Ken Patchett, a Google executive, gives a subtle hint when he says it will be ``huge.''

...Google also is supporting Gov. Chet Culver's program to encourage Iowans who have moved away to return to the state. It sent letters to Iowa Western Community College graduates that read: ``Google's hiring. Come on home.''

Patchett said the company will continue hiring as it works toward the 2009 opening, recruiting as many workers as it can from the area.

New employees should expect what Patchett said was a bottom-up culture, focused on fun and accountability.

Things like Nerf gun fights, cafeterias with executive chefs and casual Friday's all week aren't a marketing ploy.

``It's the No. 1 place to work in America. Why?'' Patchett said. ``You get to make the culture. ... We'll provide you some framework.''

Nerf gun fights?

You mean that Google doesn't have to pay their fair share of Iowa property taxes so their employees can have nerf gun fights?

Today, GOOG closed at exactly $666 a share.

Don't be evil, indeed....

I bet any new Google recruit gets those stock options dangled in front of their face. Sure, there were over 900 Google "millionaires" after the stock IPO'd in 2004, but the lure of free riches will attract all sorts of nerf gun fighters and bottom feeders even after those salad days have gone.

Back in the old days, if you wanted to strike it rich in your twenties, you had to start a rock band or something. Times have changed.... these days -- if you believe what you read -- anyone who can turn on a computer is pretty much guaranteed to hit the jackpot. And of course there's always day trading -- which, to judge from the commercials is like having a license to print money. In fact, if you're under thirty and haven't made your first million yet -- well, what are you, some kind of pathetic underachieving loser?

Barack Obama And His Wife On Guns

From the Baltimore Sun:

From his days of campaigning in Downstate Illinois, Sen. Barack Obama has been asked plenty of times about his views on gun ownership.

But the Illinois Democrat and presidential candidate added a new wrinkle Saturday night while campaigning in conservative-leaning western Iowa, when he said his Chicago-native wife, Michelle, recently commented that she could see why rural folks might want to own guns.

Here was Obama's discussion of gun ownership and his wife's thoughts during a campaign stop at a middle school:

"We should be able to combine respect for those traditions with our concern for kids who are being shot down. This is a classic example of us just applying some common sense, just being reasonable, right? And reasonable would say that lawful gun owners – I respect the Second Amendment. I think lawful gun owners should be able to hunt, be sportsmen, protect their families.

"And by the way, Michelle, my wife, she was traveling up, I think, in eastern Iowa, she was driving through this nice, beautiful area, going through all this farmland and hills and rivers and she said 'Boy, it's really pretty up here,' but she said, 'But you know, I can see why if I was living out here, I'd want a gun. Because, you know, 911 is going to take some time before somebody responds. You know what I mean? You know, it's like five miles between every house.'

"So the point is, though, we should be able to do that, and we should be able to enforce laws that keep guns off the streets in inner cities because some unscrupulous gun dealer is, you know, letting somebody load up a van with a bunch of cheap handguns or sawed-off shotguns and dumping them and selling them for a profit in the streets."

In other words, there should be Two Americas!

One America is you white militia-type crackers living in the sticks 5 miles apart from one another and who get to have a gun because you like to kill defenseless little critters and because Michelle Obama says your 911 system sucks.

And then there's dem po' black people who live in the inner city and who ain't have no weapons whatsoever to defend demselves with and who certainly should have no rights to carry such weaponry because of guys in vans selling illegal handguns and sawed-off shotguns - people Janet Reno refused to prosecute.

Anyway, after all these years Michelle Obama finally realized one reason why people should be allowed to have guns????

And what does that say about Barack Obama? There he is, trying to conceal his true feelings about guns.

Does this clown think the Second Amendment is about hunting????????

Barack Obama was a lecturer on constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School for 11 years!!!

He's lying to Iowans, of course. He really doesn't believe that you country types ought to be able to carry guns. Obama is just another elitist liberal gun grabber and rights denier.

I'm sure if you put Barack Obama in a university setting he'd even think that the cops shouldn't have guns!

Pander. Pander. Pander.

Out. Of. Touch.

Daily Idiots

From the Daily Iowan:

DI: Now that the 21-ordinance has failed, what do you think the university has to do to curb underage drinking?

[UI President Sally] Mason: The provost is putting together a task force, and obviously, that's our first step. We've got a lot more work to do on this issue, clearly. It's not going to go away. I was very disappointed the last two weekends to see the number of students who were cited for [Possession of Alcohol Under Legal Age] PAULAs has gone up. It's horribly frustrating to me to see students participating in such risky behavior. It's not good for their health, their well-being, and it can potentially affect their careers in a negative way later on. I think we need to make some strong statements about what is acceptable behavior and what's not acceptable behavior for our students. We need to be very clear early on that if your goal for coming to the University of Iowa is to engage in illegal and risky behaviors, then you're not the students th\at we want here. Students now have the privilege to continue going to the bars, but that doesn't mean they can or should continue breaking the law or abusing their privilege by engaging in behaviors that put themselves or others at risk.

At risk of what?

At risk of a hangover?

At risk of having a good time?

At risk of coming under control of the demon rum???

You're going to put together a task force. I can predict what your task force will suggest:

• Increasing fines
• Threatening to kick 18, 19, and 20 year old ADULTS out of school if they get busted for having a beer.
• Wasting more taxpayer and student money on "non-alcoholic" things.

You're just kicking the can down the road, Bubbles.

Want to eliminate underage drinking? Lobby to have the drinking age lowered.

And then there's this question by the DI, perhaps one of the most ridiculous ever:

DI: It was recently reported that your salary, $450,000, is on the low end compared to other university presidents at research institutions across the nation. Do you think your salary is adequate?

Mason: I was very pleased when the regents offered me the salary offer that they did. If you look at it carefully, my base salary is $450,000 a year, and there are additional options of another $110,000 worth of compensation that can come to me, providing I do a good job and through deferred compensation. This is a pretty standard package for presidents these days, and this is competitive. I don't feel underpaid, and I feel appreciated. I'm sure the regents will be watching the levels of pay presidents are receiving to see how they rise or don't rise, and I'm certain that assuming I do a good job, I'll be rewarded adequately.

Nice, bland answer. Much better than her recent performance.

Could a dumber question be asked by the Idiots? "Are you happy with your lowball salary of $450,000 a year?"

Why don't they just ask her, "Are you happy having such a small penis? Would you like to have it extended?" It would make about as much sense.

Hillary: "I Want To Get Rid Of The Student Loan Companies"

From the New York Times:

SIOUX CITY, Iowa – Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton had some tough words Saturday afternoon for the college student loan industry, saying banks and other lenders had “ripped off” students with high interest rates and repayment plans that were onerous on recent graduates and their families.

“I want to get rid of the student loan companies,” Mrs. Clinton said at an event in Sioux City, as she laid out her college affordability plan in response to a parent’s concern about high tuition prices. “I kept working and I got a little scholarship, and I borrowed money from the government at 2% interest.”

“I’m asking myself, why are we making it so expensive and costly for families today?” she continued. “I also want to eliminate the complicated form that families have to fill out. I don’t know how many of you have had to fill out those forms, it takes dozens and dozens of pages.”

It's not "dozens and dozens of pages" as Hillary suggests. It's about eight pages long. Here's the worksheet.

I don't know if Hillary knows it, but colleges and universities do a good job of pushing their customers towards taking out as many and as much in student loans as possible. Need a Wii? A spring break to Cancun? Some blunts? All can be had thanks a big fat Federally-backed and subsidized student loan.

You don't even need to be old enough to buy a beer in order to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt for that art history, communication studies, or political science degree.

And I don't know what planet you come from (Planet Marx?) where the borrower gets to base their payments on what their income is after spending 6 or 7 years getting that art history, communication studies, or political science degree.

Should I feel sorry for your stupid ass because you're in hock $72,000 to Drake for a law degree while the starting salary at the job you could manage to find pays only $50,000 a year? What about the dumbfuck who went $100K in debt for a socialist worker degree? When can the public say that borrowing $60K to teach middle school students is a really bad idea economically?

Oh no, no, no, in Hitler's world, I'm sorry, Hillary's world, we'll just get rid of those greedy vultures known as banks and loan companies. What the hell do they know? Probably as much as those stupid doctors and nurses and insurance companies know about providing health care. Or those idiot Generals in the military on how to run a war. Or those dipshit teachers working in public schools where Chelsea wasn't sent. Or wives who love their husbands and stand by them like some cookie-baking Tammy Wynette song......... except when they found out that hubby was running around the world fucking and groping everything that moved, and especially shoving cigars into the pussies of female interns while in the workplace and getting blowjobs from them while on the clock, and if anybody tells then by god you better lie for me.... in which case any sensible wife would cut their hubby's nuts off and shove them down his throat and then see him in court.

Right?

Or about how Hitlery, I mean Hillary, knows more about energy than the execs of all the major oil companies in the world.... businesses she would take the profits from and give to her politically-connected "green" friends. But not the rich ones, because it's not rich people who made America great. It's know-it-all fake feminist Commies like Hitler, I mean Hillary, and her cocksucking acolytes in the media who make America great. Yes, they do.

Sloppy Seconds

Look at what I saw on the front page of the Des Moines Register's web site this morning:



The number of puff pieces on the Clintons in the DMR has just been staggering.

And none of the chickenshit Iowa "reporters" are going to ask them any tough questions.

If you do ask Hitlery a "non-planted" question, she accuses YOU of being a Republican plant!

Just another new kneepad low for the media in Iowa!

Iowa: Get Rid Of Your Stupid Bottle Return Law

I drove up I-35 to Iowa on Thanksgiving Day (much better than Wednesday night when even we here in Overland Park had snow flying around) and made it to my destination just fine.

One thing I didn't expect to do was to go to a particular grocery store this (Saturday) morning.

On my way in, I noticed this room off to the side by the front. So I stopped and had a peek.

Honestly, it was one of the most disgusting sights and smells I've ever seen in a grocery store.

This room was a complete disaster.

It's the aluminum can / plastic jug / glass bottle return room.

What the hell are these rooms????

You see, we don't have this down in Overland Park, or much of the rest of the country for that matter.

Here in Opieland, we recycle at the curb. Everybody does it.

In the Hell Room at this grocery store are a number of machines that will take your cans, bottles, and jugs, one at a time. When you're done, a receipt can be printed out and you take it inside the store for cash off your purchase.

There isn't a store employee within miles of this space.

Oh, did I forget to tell you about the way the rest of the room looked?

Broken glass ALL OVER THE FLOOR!

Twisted aluminum cans ALL OVER THE FLOOR!

Piles and piles of bags of flattened cans and jugs that had been in the machines ALL OVER THE FREAKIN PLACE!

It STUNK!

That room was a tetanus shot waiting to happen.... or bubonic plague!

And there's this guy. You can picture him. Fat, balding, and likely on his way to pick up another 30-pack for the weekend. Here's got this shopping cart with garbage bags in them. Stuff leaking out of the garbage bags onto the cart. When was that cart cleaned last? He's hogging three machines (cans, plastic, glass) at the same time. The can machine was rejecting a tall boy of cheap swill and the guy kept putting it back in the machine! And there were others waiting to get back what looked to be little more than 75 cents or $1.50 at the most.

I was there for maybe 45 seconds, but that was enough. I couldn't believe my eyes.

So when I get back to where we're staying I say What Is This? And I'm told that this is the wave of the future. Wal-Mart's got the same sort of thing, too, only more of them. But Wal-Mart does a slightly better job of keeping their room clean, but not that much better.

I'm like, eh!!!!!!

Two years ago, this blog urged you Iowans to get rid of your antiquated bottle return law.

What is the matter with you people?

The bottle return law did clean up Iowa's road sides and ditches by bringing awareness, but now the law is a disaster! It's outlived it's usefulness! Times have changed!

I'm sure most every town has recycling in one form or another. Littering is taboo, and everybody's got a cellphone. Just empower the people to report litterbugs!

No, no, no, Iowa will keep charging 5 cents for particular cans and bottles and jugs, but not all, because that's the way we've done it since 1978.

And the answer isn't to impose the fee on everything!

Get with the future, Iowans. Kill the bottle return law. Stop forcing grocery stores to create these stupid stinky rooms filled with broken glass and shards of metal.

Start recycling all that crap at the curbside, not your grocery store!

You people really don't know how stupid you look, do you?

So Easy, Even A Senator Can Do It

Obama, unlike Clinton or Edwards, won't make health insurance a mandate:

“Their essential argument is the only way to get everybody covered is if the government forces you to buy health insurance. If you don’t buy it, then you’ll be penalized in some way,” Obama said. “What I have said repeatedly is that the reason people don’t have health insurance isn’t because they don’t want it, it’s because they can’t afford it.”

Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, has received criticism for his health care plan by those who assert that it is not truly a universal plan because it mandates coverage only for children.

Shouldn't parents be responsible for health insurance for their children?

Some parents can be responsible for buying cigarettes, booze, scratch-off lottery tickets, fast food, and forgetting their birth control, but they can't manage to make sure the family is covered in case of an expensive medical emergency - much less taking junior to the doc every year for regular checkups and vaccinations. In my world we call these people Fuckups.

And Mike Glover over at the AP also quotes Obama:

"Cost is the number one reason that 47 million Americans do not have health insurance and thousands more are edging toward bankruptcy every day," Obama told a town hall-style meeting of about 350 people at a Council Bluffs high school. "That is wrong, and it's why my plan does more to cut the cost of health insurance than any other proposal in this race."

First of all, if Obama is so brilliant at cutting the cost of health insurance while providing top-notch care, why doesn't he start his own insurance company? Why doesn't he take his plan to Warren Buffett and get GEICO to offer health insurance for 15% less than everybody else?

So easy even a Fuckup can do it, you know....

Earthpork: 7 Days Left

Chief Rainforest con man and Senator Chuck "fauxscal conservative" Grassley campaign contributor David Oman

From the Knoxville Journal-Express:

Earthpark is a $150 million indoor rain forest project, tentatively set to be built on the Pella side of Lake Red Rock. The bulk of the money for the project is coming from the US Department of Energy, thanks to Sen. Charles Grassley. To receive those funds, a matching grant of $25 million had to be raised locally.

Grassley secured the funds five years ago. The project was originally supposed to be built near Coralville, but it did not come to fruition. Pella was named as the new site for the project last year. If the matching funds are not in place by Dec. 1, the money will go back to the US Treasury. In his own words, Grassley once told the Journal-Express, "Five years is long enough."

Oman and the Earthpark Board have been traveling across the country over the past year to work on securing the necessary funding. He said there have been many good discussions with potential investors and that he would be happy to share more information when the time is right.

Er, is this news story correct?

Grassley secured $50 million in pork for this joke, and Oman had already spent $2.9 million of it when Grassley turned off the spigot - which shouldn't have been turned on to begin with. Grassley then had to change the rules on where the money could be spent (all of Iowa, rather than just Johnson County, where Coralville is....) after Oman pulled out rather than face questioning from the Coralville City Council members who actually supported the project but wanted to learn a few minor details - like where the financing was coming from.

So I thought the amount that con man Oman needed to raise was $50 million in matching, not $25 million. I think this news story is incorrect.

But anyway, it's the first news story we've seen on the Rainforest in quite a while and at this point I'm going to mention every one of them as we approach the deadline.

Some of the money can raised can be in "services" - which of course is a total scam because you can't get buildings raised without cash or financing, and con man Oman hasn't been able to raise a private dime in all these years. Oman did get some rinky dink company in Georgia to "donate" $10 million in "financial and technical" services.

Even if Oman can cobble together enough phony promises in order to unlock Grassley's $50 million or $48.1 million or whatever the amount is in pork, he's still got to find a way to finance the construction costs - now down to an alleged $150 million.

How does Oman get the other $100 million financed if he's lucky enough to meet the deadline? He'll only have the cash from Grassley's pork. Nobody in their right mind would loan David Oman $100 million. He's not going to get it out of the Iowa Legislature. And he's certainly not going to get it out of Governor Chet Culver as evidenced from this gubernatorial campaign commercial last year when Culver was running against Jim Nussle:

Keep Winter Cold

Via email, this is from former Iowa Legislator and gubernatorial candidate Ed Fallon, who has clearly lost his mind:

Dear Friends,

Seriously. I promise not to write about the global climate crisis every week. And I promise to keep today’s Update short. But this is such an important issue that I have to bring your attention to an upcoming event that didn’t make the Update last week. It’s a special event, not just because it’s important, but because it’s fun . . . for some people . . . perhaps.

On December 8th, representatives of nations the world over will gather in Bali for talks on climate change that will, hopefully, lead to the next generation of the Kyoto Treaty. Rank-and-file citizens around the world will mark the start of these talks with the Third International Day of Action on Global Warming.

In Des Moines, local activists are organizing the "Polar Bear Plunge." People passionate about tackling global warming, or simply inclined to acts of insanity, are invited to a rally followed by a jump into Gray's Lake at 12:00 noon on December 8th. The theme of the event is “Keep Winter Cold,” which may be a hard sell for Midwesterners on a brisk December day; but talk with any polar bear you meet on the street and you won’t see a lot of enthusiasm for warmer winters...

Acts of insanity is perhaps more apt here.

The Date of The Iowa Caucuses Are Screwing College Students

Susan Estrich:

College students won't be voting in the Iowa caucus this year. Or, at least, most of those who would have won't now, and those who still can might not know about it yet. No matter how you look at it, it's a mess.

The problem is the calendar. The Iowa caucuses used to be in late January, which meant students who attend college in Iowa could caucus in the cities and towns where they go to school. Since you have to register at least 11 days in advance, that left time to do everything after Christmas — or to register before break and vote when you got back. When this campaign began, all of the candidates had college coordinators and were making appearances on campuses in the hopes that it would encourage students to register to vote and get involved.

Now, it's hardly worth the effort. The caucuses have been moved to January 3, so Iowa can stay ahead of New Hampshire, which wants to stay ahead of South Carolina, not to mention Michigan. The problem is that students who go to college in Iowa aren't back by January 3 and, in most cases, couldn't be if they wanted to because the dorms aren't even open yet.

She's right. Read the whole column. It's good.

Thank God This Didn't Happen At Iowa State!

I've been staying away from the alleged latest scandal brewing at the University of Iowa. It's an alleged sexual assault that allegedly happened on October 14th and allegedly wasn't reported to the Iowa City Police until November 7th. It allegedly involved three members of the Iowa Hawkeyes alleged football team.

Nicholas Johnson is all over it, of course.

Here's why I'm jumping in: The Press-Citizen has a story today with a quote by new UI President Sally Mason about the case:

"The victim has got to get to the point she is on the right course, that she is doing the right thing, and that took a while," Mason told members of the Press-Citizen editorial board during a meeting Tuesday morning.

The victim???

Johnson's response:

[Mason] didn't focus on what she and the other administrators did or did not do -- which is the only legitimate story at this point. She focused on the accuser -- with feeling and sensitivity and compassion. Indeed, she even persisted in referring to the accuser as "the victim" -- which raises problems of its own, especially since the Press-Citizen picked up and repeated that characterization. But it was a truly brilliant performance in conception and execution on her part, and bodes well for the University's ability to deal with the other crises that are bound to arise in the future.

[President Mason noted the Duke case in the video excerpt from her interview. It's a reminder I have raised as well -- as have many others. But it should be noted in that context that describing an accuser as a "victim" is precisely what got Duke's administrators in trouble. As I've written earlier, both the accuser and the accused are entitled to presumptions at this point: the accuser is entitled to a presumption that she is telling the truth, and the accused are entitled to be characterized as "innocent until proven guilty."]

Pardon me while I straighten my eyebrows. It might take a few minutes.

Mason really should have known better than to call the accuser "the victim", especially to the media.

Nothing against the accuser! It would not surprise me at all if more football players aren't accused as criminal-athletes. But they are entitled to presumption of innocence by our legal system.

Mason uttering the phrase "the victim" and having it be on the headline in the local newspaper practically guarantees that if any charges are filed and a trial happens that there will be a change of venue.

Remember Pierre Pierce's first sexual assault in 2002? The one where he was initially charged with third degree sexual abuse, a charge he later plead down to assault causing injury? That accuser/victim was never named, if I remember correctly. And for good reason! Can you imagine having your name dragged through the mud by the media and having to deal with the wrath of all those dumb jocks and athletic supporters who stand by their man/rapist? That's sort of like being raped all over again.

(Which makes me think.... do you wonder if Pierre Pierce's friends and supporters will be caucusing Hillary Clinton for President?)

So I totally understand why the accuser was nervous about coming forward.

But Sally Mason's got to watch those verbal gaffes from now on. She needs some coaching.

And I hate to put it this way but THANK GOD THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN AT IOWA STATE!

From Wikipedia:

In 2004, University of Colorado president Elizabeth Hoffman fanned the flames of a football rape case when, during a deposition, she was asked if she thought "cunt" was a "filthy and vile" word. She replied that it was a "swear word" but had "actually heard it used as a term of endearment." A spokesperson later clarified that Hoffman meant the word had polite meanings in its original use centuries ago. In the rape case, a CU football player had allegedly called female player Katie Hnida a "fucking lovely cunt".

Hoffman is now the Provost at ISU.

Foreign Affairs

Domenico Montanaro at MSNBC:

First Read did a double-take this morning when we thought we heard Clinton supporter and former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack say on MSNBC of Hillary Clinton, “there’s no question that she was the face of the administration in foreign affairs."

So we went back and checked. Sure enough, he did say that. Vilsack had been asked how and if Hillary Clinton’s time as first lady qualified as “experience.”

"There’s a tremendous responsibility [as first lady], and she assumed a tremendous amount of responsibility in the Clinton administration,” Vilsack said. “And there’s no question that she was the face of the administration in foreign affairs.

Hillary wasn't in charge of health care, that was Bill's idea!

Hillary was instead in charge of foreign affairs!

What foreign affairs are we talking about? Belinda Stronach?

Naturally, you don't see this quote in any newspapers throughout Iowa. You certainly wouldn't see anything about this in the Des Moines Register because the editors and reporters there are pro-Hillary and who know a cringe-worthy quote when they read it.

Do any you ass-licking "reporters" want to ask Hillary about her role as Co-Secretary Of State during her husband's regime? I bet none of you will. You're all a bunch of chickenshits.


First Clinton Administration Secretary of State Warren Christopher (second right) standing next to terrorist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Yasser Arafat.


Second Clinton Administration Secretary of State Madeline Albright with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il


Albright with Communist China President Jiang Zemin

Normal = Pathological

John Carlson has a column in the Des Moines Register today about the punctuality of all the candidates.

He talks about Edwards being chronically late and calls it "rude".

Carlson, like all Gannett employees, must be required to be a tool for the Hillary campaign. He's just "piling on" against Edwards because she's been late a whole bunch of times. But, but, but.... she always apologizes for it, says Carlson. Like that makes it OK.

The media is always making excuses for Hillary Clinton's faults.

When Carlson asks a friend about Mitt Romney (because, you know, why would a reporter or columnist ever show up at any of these big events happening in his own back yard....), the friend replies that Romney's insistence on being on-time is "pathological".

I don't know about you, but when I have meetings at work or appointments in life I don't show up an hour late all the time. My ass would be fired.

And being on-time isn't "pathological".

It's normal.

It's expected.

You know what's pathological? Lying all the time, like the Clintons have done for years.

Or having a sycophantic media whitewashing your every turn.

Ramona Cunningham Tried To QUOTE "Kill Herself" UNQUOTE

GED recipient and former $368,000-a-year CIETC head Ramona Cunningham with Senator Tom Harkin at the dedication of the "Tom Harkin Learning Center" at CIETC offices in October 20, 2004.

The Des Moines Register is reporting from former CIETC head Ramona Cunningham's lawyer William Kutmus that she "attempted suicide" and of course failed at it.

You know what?

The biggest lie ever told and that has to be anything coming out of Bill Kutmus's mouth to the Des Moines Register.

Or Bill Kutmus's mouth in general.

Kutmus is one of those lawyers. Only the guilty can afford him.

And he'll do anything to get his client off.

Even pull phony stunts like this.

Then again, Ramona could have tried to off herself. Too bad she didn't save the taxpayers some money this time around. Maybe we'll get lucky soon. Who knows?

John Edwards: The Late Pretender

From the Des Moines Register:

Folk-rock singers Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne headlined a campaign rally for presidential hopeful John Edwards today in a populist-themed event dampened by the candidate’s chronic tardiness...

...Their audience of several hundred people mainly consisted of middle-age adults who remembered the artists’ heyday, plus scores of students from Davenport’s North High School, where the event was held...

...The event was supposed to start at noon, and many of the students were excused from classes to attend. They fidgeted in their seats for 55 minutes before the program began.

When asked why Edwards was late, spokesman Dan Leistikow said, “He just had some stuff going on.”

...Afterward, Edwards was asked why he made the audience wait nearly an hour. He gave no specific reason. “We keep a very busy schedule, both here in Iowa and other parts of the country. … I do everything in my power to make sure we don’t keep people waiting, certainly not any longer than is necessary.”

The reason apparently was not travel-related, because he’d stayed overnight in the Quad Cities the night before, and the noon appearance was his first of the day.

Edwards is regularly late for campaign events. Last week in Dubuque, for example a few dozen union nurses and supporters waited for 45 minutes outside in a cold, damp wind for Edwards to take part in an informational picket near Finley Hospital. An aide said then that the candidate had been spending time with his parents, who were along on the trip.

The Register has been on Edwards' case in the past about his chronic lateness and the BS excuses. Good for them. But they only do it because they're a bunch of Hillary suckups.

How did the other lameass media in Iowa report this event?

Nothing in this O. Kay Henderson report at Radio Iowa about Edwards' lateness, a report which had to be phoned-in because Kay herself was busy in Knoxville covering a Hitlery appearance.

Ed Tibbetts of the QC Times wasn't wearing a watch.

Chris Minor at WQAD talked about Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne playing some old fart hippie songs at the Edwards appearance. Nothing about the candidate's tardiness.

NBC's Tricia Miller concentrates on the song lyrics that were sung. Are you kidding me????

Don Frederick at the LA Times probably rewrote his copy from a press release. Likely this press release. LAme. LAme. LAme.

What is it with the media treating these pre-caucus events like they're covering celebrities?

And how about the AP? You know, it's bad enough that the Associated Press employs terrorists in Iraq, but they can't be bothered to do much beyond rearranging campaign press releases. And this is a story that's going out to hundreds of newspapers around the world!

See if you can guess which copy was written by the Edwards campaign and which copy was written by the Associated Press.

Door number one:

Raitt and Browne are also co-founders (along with Graham Nash and Congressman John Hall) of Musicians United For Safe Energy, whose 1979 “No-Nukes” concerts remain watershed models for grassroots activism. Currently, they are mobilizing behind Nukefree.org, opposing federal bail-out of the nuclear industry.

Door number two:

The two are co-founders of Musicians United For Safe Energy, along with Graham Nash and John Hall. In 1979, the group played a series of "No-Nukes" concerts, drumming up activism to thwart the spread of nuclear power. The group now works through Nukefree.org and opposes a federal bailout of the nuclear energy industry.

The press release was door number one.

The AP was door number two.

Now for your entertainment, Jackson Browne:

Caught between the longing for love
And the struggle for the legal tender
Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring
And the junk man pounds his fender
Where the veterans dream of the fight
Fast asleep at the traffic light
And the children solemnly wait
For the ice cream vendor
Out into the cool of the evening
Strolls the Pretender

Doing The Jobs That The Media Will Never Do

Holy shit, watch this:



Via the Hot Air blog.

What A Racket

From the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

It was another bad weekend for underage drinkers.

Iowa City Police cited 92 people for possession of alcohol under the legal age, or PAULA, over the three-day weekend starting Friday and ending Sunday. Only five of the citations were not issued within bars...

...the largest number of PAULAs was given at The Summit, Vitos and The Sports Column, where 15 citations were issued at each bar. Those bars were followed by the Union Bar, with 12, Third Base with 10 and One-Eyed Jakes with 9.

A PAULA offense is considered a simple misdemeanor and is punishable by a $200 fine for the first offense. The second and subsequent offense carries a $500 fine and the suspension of motor vehicle operation privileges for up to a year.

Wow, you're much better off being the 60 year old county auditor who has been picked up twice for drunk driving in the past 6 years than to be a 20 year old ADULT enjoying a beer at the Sports Column.

Tom Slockett, the Johnson County Auditor, got a slap on the wrist recently by Judge Stephen Gerard after nearly mowing down a bunch of pedestrians while drunk driving. Slockett was given probation and 25 hours of community service.

Do you need any more proof of how screwed up and unfair our alcohol laws are?

In Johnson County you can drive drunk, kill a man and seriously injure his wife, and if you're lucky enough to get Judge Kristin Hibbs, you get a suspended sentence!

But if you're 20 years old and have in your possession a bottle of beer at the Sports Column, you can be fined $200 on first offense and $500 plus loss of your driving privileges on the second offense! And you don't have to be driving!

Now that's screwed up! MAJORLY screwed up!

Oh, I can read the comments in the Press-Citizen story. The Carrie Nation types are calling for alcohol permits to be pulled from all the bars. No! That's the wrong way to handle things. If you pull the alcohol permits from all the bars in town, effectively closing those establishments, then the 18, 19, and 20 year old ADULTS will just get their alcohol from over 21s via the grocery store and then drink in their dorms, apartments or houses. You know I'm right about this.

As I've said before, and I'll said it again: The best way to eliminate underage drinking is to lower the drinking age.

But... but... that will cut into the city's revenue prosecuting "underage" offenders!

What a racket.

Meanwhile, In The Parallel Universe

Joe Kristan at the Tax Update Blog composes a news story on the other side of corporate welfare tax giveaways.

If anything, Joe's rewrite shows just how complicit and lazy the Fourth Estate have become.

Few journalists are advocates for the taxpayer anymore, much less business owners. Their own industry is dying, so they're doing their best to suck up to government entities and politically-connected wealthy business owners just in case the pink slip arrives.

And it's not like many journalists have business backgrounds. Most of them are only bitter Socialists who exploit the downtrodden so they can look cool to their friends. No wonder they complain about the rotten economy, as they can't look beyond than their own desperate situation.

If the Register fired Ken Fuson, David Yepsen, or Rekha Basu tomorrow, what would they do? I can tell you exactly what they'd do. They'll whip out their old Rolodex, make a few calls, and within a couple weeks they'll become a "spokesperson" or "media contact" for some obvious politician or a corporate entity they've written favorably about in the past. But their pecking order would be incredibly marginalized and their influence totally neutered.

Find another job in the newspaper or media industry? Bahhhhh! Not gonna happen.

Des Moines: El Santuario de la Ciudad?

The Des Moines Register is reporting that Des Moines City Council member Christine Hensley was approached by groups representing illegals and asking that Des Moines basically become a Sanctuary City to the point where even the police cannot inquire about their legal status!

This comes on the heels of Barack Obama answering a question in Chariton recently about illegals. He basically said he could give them amnesty.

And then there's Hillary Clinton's waffling and eventual lie about giving driver's licenses to illegals.

Republicans should be bashing Democrats at every turn on the subject of immigration. Hell, other Democrats should be bashing incumbents who believe this nonsense! I know that a lot of Democrats, many of them union members, do not want illegals invading our country, given driver's licenses, and (likely) the right to vote - even though they're still here illegally!

I'll go a step further. I believe that any politician who wants to grant blanket amnesty to illegals, give them driver's licenses, and likely allow them the ability to cast a vote should be harassed and heckled and mocked at every possible turn. They should live in fear of the public. And then at re-election time they should be trounced.

So Jorge Bush, it's too bad you're not running for re-election, because you'd be on the list.

David Yepsen Hates Those Crazy Christians

The new Des Moines Register web site sure sucks, doesn't it? Slow as hell. If you want to read all the comments on a heavily-trafficked article you have to keep clicking an additional number which will then take you back to the top of the page where the article starts rather than to the comments.

Today's Yepsen column, now that it's taken 5 minutes to bring the damn thing up, deals with the issue of a small group (isn't it always?) of moderate Republicans who are trying to bring back the good old days of Bob Michel and Nelson Rockefeller. Or Robert D. "Filthy" Ray.

The group includes former Congressman Jim Leach, former Lt Gov Joy Corning, and former NJ Governor Christine Todd Whitman.

Yepsen gets rather pointed here:

The moderates face several challenges.

First, they are moderates. They have lives outside politics. They are civil, well-balanced people who have other things to do with their time besides sit at long political conventions listening to the zealots. That's especially true when those zealots are intolerant or treat them shabbily.

Gee, Yepsen, tell us how you really feel about non-moderates.

And what does being a "moderate" mean?

We can look at Jim Leach as an example.

Leach was a career politician who didn't take PAC money or out of state donations, wore sweaters, moved when his district got reapportioned, was against tax cuts for working people, was an isolationist, was in favor of abortion - even partial-birth abortion (infanticide) except to save the mother's life, which is never an issue but is convenient cover for politicians to hide behind, and he loved the corrupt United Nations.

The most important part of a "moderate" Republican is that they're in favor of abortion. That's the litmus test. Any other Democrat-ish appeal is just icing on the cake.

You can be pro-war and pro-abortion, but still be a moderate in the media's eyes. You could be pro-tax cuts and pro-abortion and still be a moderate. But if you become anti-war and anti-abortion, you're no longer a moderate. You're, uh, something else. A pariah! An annoyance. A nutjob.

Nobody looks at Jim Leach the way I did: that he lost his Congressional seat to lefty PAC-whore and warmonger Dave Loebsack because Republicans and Independents in his district basically sat on their hands and couldn't vote for one of the worst lifer RINOs since Jumpin' Jim Jeffords or Lincoln Chaffed.

Then you've got to love this bit:

At the same time the Iowa GOP has moved to the right, Iowa Democrats took control of the center in Iowa. In Chet Culver, they nominated a candidate for governor who supports restoration of the death penalty.

Another litmus test.

You can be as far out left as Chet Culver, who thinks government can run a venture capital fund with state employee pension money and who thinks global warming is man-made, but if you're pro-death penalty then, by golly, you're a centrist!

By the way, Chester, where's that death penalty bill in the Iowa House now that Democrats control everything? You didn't hear a peep out of Culver after the Bentler murders. And you never will. Why? It was all for show. Culver was 100% disingenuous on the matter of the death penalty. Put up or shut up, Big Lug!

Then Yepsen gets delusional:

First, the conservatives must go down in a crashing defeat. Just as the anti-Barry Goldwater landslide of 1964 enabled moderate Republicans to rise for a time, a defeat of party social conservatives will have to happen before a new generation of GOP moderates can rise again.

That is, frankly, bonkers.

GOP moderates rising again? Never.

Then this:

Second, the moderates need a champion. Politics is about ideas, and it's also about individuals. After the '64 landslide, a 36-year-old Des Moines lawyer named Robert D. Ray was state party chair and began building the GOP - and a stellar political career.

For moderate Republicans in Iowa today, a fair question to ask is: Where is the next Bob Ray?

David Yepsen is the newspaper political opinion columnist version of Bob Ray.

Moderates are a dying breed. Newspaper political opinion columnists are a dying breed. Yepsen is in a dying industry. Nobody reads Yepsen and believes his bullshit anymore, except maybe all those clueless dildos from East Coast rags who are too busy to hoof it to Iowa every Caucus season. Instead, they rely on Yepsen for the regional skinny.

Moderates try to please everybody, but nobody respects them. Same thing with political opinion columnists from the monopoly corporate newspaper that Iowa is stuck with.

A moderate is different than a hybrid independent, which is what I think I'm sort of these days and which a lot of people have tendencies. Independents are growing, haven't you heard? We're dissatisfied with Republicrats and Demicons. We hate career politicians. We hate the money that influences scams like ethanol. We want sane fiscal management. We want the government to stop fucking up health care and bastardizing insurance. We hate the bad guys, but we all disagree on how to go about neutralizing them. We don't hate illegals, but they should come here legally and we don't want them to be a burden to taxpayers here or exploited by greedy companies and why can't Mexico get their shit together?

Stuff like that. I think the future is in hybrid independents, not moderates or centrists of yore.

I'll bet you anything that Yepsen has had some bad run-ins with those Crazy Christians in the Iowa Republican Party. You can tell by the surface anger in his pieces. When was the last time Yepsen ever talked with any of those Crazy Christians? And why would the Crazy Christians even bother trying to get their message out via Yepsen and the DMR? He's hostile territory to them.

I've got to say this: I've got respect for those Crazy Christian Republicans. I may disagree with many of their positions, but they don't take any shit from the media. They lay it out on the table to the voters. That's a lot more honesty than you get from any David Yepsen column. For sure.

14 Days Left For Earthpork

Time Magazine in the November 16th issue, a copy of which is likely languishing unread in your dentist's office or the oil change shop:

The Eden Project is simultaneously futuristic and organic, and it's not hard to see why Brits voted it their favorite new building of the past 20 years. Similar efforts in the U.S., however, have been received less rapturously. Attempts to build an American version of Eden called Earthpark stalled for years as Midwestern cities like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, doubting the project's profitability, said no. (Tiny Pella, near Iowa City, finally said yes to Earthpark, scheduled to open in 2010.)

That's Time Magazine for you, always doing a crappy job with the facts.

Cedar Rapids said no? When was that under consideration??? That must have been a good 8 to 10 years ago, at least, and fleeting at best.

Pella is near Iowa City? Pella is 97 miles away from Iowa City.

Earthpark is scheduled to open in Pella (pop. 9832) in 2010? How the hell is that going to happen?

Chief con man David Oman hasn't come up with the $50 million in matching money in order to get the rest of phony fiscal conservative Senator Chuck Grassley's deficit-financed pork earmark given to one of his past campaign contributors.

Nevermind that Oman has no way to finance the rest of the construction costs, estimated by him at around $150 million. Companies donating "technical and financial services" will not pay the bills!

Don't forget that Chuck Grassley basically bent over for David Oman time and time again. Grassley had to get the language changed on the location of where the pork money would go because Oman and his gang of con men were run out of Coralville after pissing off all the local supporters of the project!

Oman's got until December 1st, about 14 days, to come up with the matching money.

No one's really sure how $2.9 million of the $50 million that Oman already spent will get paid back.

I certainly don't expect any of the reporters or editors at the Des Moines Register to ask tough questions. What do they care if the taxpayers get screwed? They're all on the Take, especially that dipshit David Yepsen.

Chuck Laudner Demonstrates How Stupid The Iowa GOP Leadership Has Become

Marc Ambinder, writing in his blog on The Atlantic's web site:

So yesterday, the Republican Party of Iowa released, in the name of executive director Chuck Laudner, a statement about the cancellation of a planned debate in December.

Laudner blamed the "frontrunner" Romney campaign for canceling, a rare and unusual rebuke from a state party to a candidate.

The Romney brain trust was rather upset. And late today, the chairman of the Iowa GOP, Ray Hoffmann, apologized.

"DES MOINES -- Yesterday, members of our staff put out a misleading statement concerning Mitt Romney and the cancellation of the RPI/FOX NEWS debate. We regret this statement."

"The facts are that a number of campaigns had scheduling conflicts, such that the debate could not take place."

Let me guess. Is Laudner is a fan of Rudy Giuliani? What do you want to bet on that?

Who knows? Maybe Laudner is on the payroll of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

What the difference, really, when you think about it?

The Iowa GOP might as well disband. Why do they even exist? To field a seemingly endless supply of shitty candidates?

I looked up the phase Republican Party of Iowa on the Wiktionary. Just click the link to see where I ended up. This internet is amazing!

I'm Melting!!! I'm Melting!!!

It's global warming freakout day in the Des Moines Register.

Gee, it's a degree or two above the average recorded temps for the past 120 years or so for early November, but TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and Stein Mart can't seem to move any winter coats.

We have no idea whether these companies over-ordered supply, have prices higher than the competition, or haven't advertised their winter coats.

As for the Register's online example, Overstock.com, do you really need to read beyond the name of that company? It's all about the Ohhhhhhhhh!

Generally, people don't buy heavy winter coats until they need them. Yet you see them in the stores in August and September. It's kind of like how the retailers start stocking bikinis in February.

Do people really need thick winter coats anymore? So many people have garages, cars with heated seats, and climate controlled buildings to work in.

Don't worry, by Thanksgiving the high temps in Des Moines should fall to the low-to-mid 30s. Is that cold enough for all those lefty global warming kooks?

The other obvious thing was the editorial on the opinion page praising Gov Chet Blubber signing some climate-change pact. These people all act like "greenhouse gases" are causing temps to rise. It's still a theory, folks.

I remember in the past the vegetarian crowd went apeshit because cows were discovered to be one of the biggest problems of "greenhouse gases" on Earth. Gosh, if only we turned vegan would the planet be saved! Another big fat lie.

Which makes me think..... if cows farting and belching causes the state to roast then maybe we should ban all cattle and pig production in the state! Right? You think they're going to do that? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!

Iowa Judges Soft On County Auditors Who Drive Drunk Often

Update: The judge who sentenced Slockett was Johnson County District Court Judge Stephen Gerard. Remember that for the future.


From the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

Johnson County Auditor Tom Slockett received a deferred judgment today on a drunken driving charge stemming from last June.

Slockett received one year’s probation and ordered to serve 25 hours of community service in court today, but that will all go away if he stays out of trouble for a year.

Slockett apologized, saying, “I’d like to make a public apology. I’m very sorry it happened. I promise it won’t happen again.”

Slockett was arrested in June for failing to yield to pedestrians crossing Washington Street while he was driving southbound on Dubuque Street. He originally pleaded not guilty but changed his plea in July. This was his second drunken driving arrest, coming after a 2001 charge that was dropped to speeding.

Why the fuck do we even have drunk driving laws?

A year's probation and 25 hours of community service!

Are you fucking kidding me?

Who was the judge? The article doesn't say. I know from earlier reports that the sentencing phase was delayed because they couldn't find a judge available. But I'll find out, that's for sure! That judge will become the new poster boy or poster girl for what's wrong in Iowa.

"I promise it won't happen again..." - BULLSHIT - Slockett got caught drunk driving 6 years ago, but the OWI was dropped in favor of a $56 fine and a weekend OWI course at Kirkwood Community College. How many times DIDN'T Slockett get caught since then?

Probation works really well with drunk drivers in Iowa. Just ask drunk driver Tom Brazzell about how Dr Tom Curry of Morningside College feels about the matter. Oh wait, you can't ask Dr Curry, he's dead.

There are a ton of cab companies in Iowa City. Slockett couldn't have called one? Instead, Slockett nearly mowed down a bunch of pedestrians.

What if Slockett had killed somebody? That's easy to answer. If Slockett was before Judge Kristin Hibbs then he would have likely received a suspended sentence.

If I were King, here's how things would shape up with regard to drunk driving:

First offense: You lose your driving privilege for at least a year. Huge fine, at least a few thousand dollars. Rehab or re-education. If you get caught driving while suspended, tack on another five years and forfeit the car, asshole. If you get caught drunk driving while suspended, permanent revocation and a lengthy jail sentence. We aren't fucking around.

Second offense: You didn't learn, eh? 10 year loss of driving privileges after you're done serving 10 years in prison. $25,000 fine. Give up the car because you aren't going anywhere.

Third offense: Too bad we can't chop off your hands, but instead we'll put you in prison for 20 years and you'll never drive again.

Kill anybody? Get out the lube, because you'll spend the rest of your life in prison. It doesn't matter if it's first offense or third offense.

Injure somebody? Five or ten years in prison, followed by a hefty fine that will require you to be the victim's bitch for about 5 more years.

I'm sure with such laws in place we could easily cut down on drunk driving deaths and offenses. Ya think?

Ames City Clowncil

Aaron Gott, writing in the Iowa State Daily:

Record turnout in the Nov. 6 Iowa City election proves college students aren't always apathetic - at least when it comes to their booze. An Iowa City ballot measure to increase the bar-entry age to 21 was defeated by more than 2,000 votes with the help of a few campus activists and thousands of dollars in funding from downtown bars.

University of Iowa students recognized a threat to their lifestyle at the hands of older, more permanent residents. They understood they should have a say in a town in which they plan on spending at least four years as residents.

Iowa City's demographics closely mirror those of Ames, with nearly half the population comprising students. Yet Ames' recent city election brought few votes from students - eight from the Maple-Willow-Larch precinct - while 63 percent of early voters in Iowa City were between the ages of 18 and 24. According to a Daily staff report, only 404 students voted in the 2005 City Council election.

Sure, the proposed 21-ordinance in Iowa City would have had a direct impact on students, whereas Ames' recent election was a general vote for certain City Council positions. What you, Iowa State, don't realize is the effect the City Council has on your life.

Plenty of anti-student ordinances and practices permeate Ames. An ordinance preventing more than three unrelated persons in a single-family household keeps students from minimizing the cost of housing. Students' rights to do what they wish with their property - rented or owned - apparently stop at putting a comfortable indoor couch on their porch without a fine...

...Iowa State, these issues are a lot more important than an ordinance that prevents underage students from partaking in bar life - although Ames has that ordinance too. If you thought you couldn't possibly make an impact, the Hawkeyes just proved you wrong. It's time to vote these abusive clowns out of office. It's long past time to show the city of Ames it owes a huge part of its flourishing environment to ISU students, but it'll take a lot more than five votes. After all, you don't want the Hawks to win, do you?

I can see it now.

The young adults of Ames attending ISU eventually float a fellow student as a City Council candidate. He or she wins. What happens next?

You can bet that the City Council will change the time of their regular bimonthly meetings from 7pm to something more inconvenient for a full-time student.

Majority rules, you know.

I think they should draft Cady Thomas as a candidate.


Cady Thomas, from the October 2006 edition of Playboy

Who Is Push-Polling Romney?

Somebody is push-polling about Mitt Romney in Iowa and New Hampshire, asking all sorts of questions about Romney's weird religion and his draft deferments during the Vietnam era.

Some of the speculation has been funny.

McCain is a suspect, but he can't be because his campaign is on the ropes and broke.

Rudy is a suspect because supposedly the number used to call out was traced back to the company Rudy uses for polling. But then Rudy doesn't care about competing in Iowa, right?

Others think a 527 group may be responsible.

All these people are likely wrong.

Well, maybe the 527 idea is correct, but you just know they're doing it on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Hitlery Clinton is as dirty as the wind-driven shit, so I could believe that "Miss Fucking Jew Bastard" would order the trashing of Romney's weird religion. Then the evil bitch would deny it. That fits the disgusting Clintonian M.O. perfectly.

Rich Companies Don't Have To Pay Their Fair Share Of Property Taxes In Iowa

The Des Moines Register is reporting that the Iowa Department of Corporate Welfare is giving out tax breaks to rich companies like Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Monsanto, Google and Rockwell Collins.

What do these companies get? A way to escape paying their fair share of property taxes like everybody else already doing business in the state.

In additon, the worthless bureaucrats at the Iowa Department of Corporate Welfare and the politicians holding elected office get bragging rights that they have actually created jobs. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Hillary Is As Filthy As The Wind-Driven Shit

From ABC News:

Three recipients of controversial 11th-hour pardons issued by former President Bill Clinton in January 2001 have donated thousands of dollars to the presidential campaign of his wife, Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., according to campaign finance records examined by ABC News, in what some good government groups said created an appearance of impropriety.

Keep digging. You don't have to dig very far.

Downtown Iowa City Needs A Brand

One of the funniest opening sentences to a news story that I've read in a long time. This is from the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

To take downtown Iowa City to the next level, business leaders say it needs a brand -- and perhaps some tax dollars to get it there.

You know something? They tried to take downtown Iowa City to the next level about 30 years ago by building the Old Crapitol Mall. Urban renewal, they called it then. Smash down some old buildings, put up a boring mall and an annoying parking ramp, and place it right next door to a campus with 30,000 students.

The mall failed, of course. More history on this at the Dead Malls web site.

About the only thing they got right was the Pedestrian Mall, a section of downtown Iowa City that is off-limits to traffic. Pedestrian malls usually work out OK in areas of high population density.

Back to the story.... it's not necessarily about getting taxpayer-financed corporate welfare to promote the brand. They're just microwaving some stuff that's been sitting in a Tupperware for a few years:

A market study released Tuesday recommended how to develop downtown further. The Atlanta-based Marketek consulting group said downtown needs professional management and that one way to do this would be to create a downtown tax district, or Self-Supporting Municipal Improvement District. This would tax property owners in a designated area downtown. The proposal failed in 2004.

[Downtown Association president Craig] Gustaveson said the timing is right, and more business owners might be supportive of the self-imposed tax.

"Those against it or had questions now see how important it is to have this money. We need to market downtown," he said.

What is in downtown Iowa City these days?

Last I heard, the University had taken over half of Old Crapitol Mall, an expensive TIF-subsidized ultra-expensive condo/hotel was built, and a 13-story mixed-use semi-skyscraper was being proposed.

And then there's all those bars.

And vomit.

That's funny. Whoever this Gustaveson fella is, he clearly wants to drive out whatever commercial businesses still reside in the downtown Iowa City area. Or he's trying to save his own hide by getting somebody else to pay for his grand marketing schemes which are doomed to failure. Whatever the reason is, the guy's got some balls.

DC Changes People

Via a reader, this is from the Cedar Rapids Gazette:

During his career as a political science professor, Dave Loebsack was a popular political pundit, specializing in commentary on Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses.

Every four years, the well-spoken Cornell College political science professor was frequently sought out by local media outlets as well as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Reforma in Mexico and Izvestia in Russia.

These days, freshman U.S. Rep. Loebsack has little to say about the political horse race being played out across Iowa, at least not publicly.

"I like to talk to my friends, but not reporters, so we do a lot that in the privacy of our homes," said Loebsack, a Mount Vernon Democrat elected in 2006...

..."Sure, there's a part of me that misses being a college teacher, but it's been 11 months, so I'm getting used to the role of a member of Congress," Loebsack said. "Early on, I made a decision that I had to realize I'm a member of Congress. So I'm not handicapping things."

DC really does change people.

It's like being accepted into that ultra-inclusive clique in high school where you get to be become the two-faced bastard you always aspired to be... except that you get to spend trillions of dollars of somebody else's money!

Ever since he won his Congressional seat from anti-war/anti-PAC/anti-Bush/pro-tax increase Republican Jim Leach, Dave Loebsack has turned into a warmonger who spends all his time sucking lobbyist cock and taking money from PACs.

Hallelujah! Now that's what I call a Real Progressive!

Former Enron Advisor

Former Enron advisor and Reagan aide Paul Krugman spoke in Iowa City yesterday according to the Daily Iowan:

The 54-year-old spoke for a little more than half an hour, and his speech was primarily a summary of his new book, The Conscience of a Liberal.

Opening with a discussion of the Gilded Age, a period more than a century ago when wealth was concentrated in the hands of a select few elite and corruption and excessiveness was rampant, Krugman then compared the current age to this time period.

"Gordon Gekko [has] won," he said, referring to the fictional character in the 1987 Wall Street movie who famously asserted that "greed is good."

One of the keys to returning to a New Deal-esque era with renewed economic equality was through a national health-care plan, he said. The Princeton University professor looked the part in tan slacks, a green sweater, and a button-up shirt with the collars peeking out of his sweater, lauded the health-care plans presented by the top three Democratic presidential candidates - New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

"It really depends who you actually think is going to deliver," said Krugman, who, as a New York Times columnist, cannot support a candidate in the race. "We might be about to elect Franklin Roosevelt or we might be about to elect Grover Cleveland."

What was so wrong with Grover Cleveland?

Governor Tom Arnold

While Jon Bon Jovi may or may not be plotting a future career in politics in New Jersey, Iowans still cower in fear with the idea of Ottumwa native Tom Arnold plotting a run for the Governor's office - something Arnold has mentioned in the past:

"It would be the biggest honor to be governor of Iowa at the right time, you know," Arnold said in answer to a reporter's question. "It would be an incredible honor to be able to maybe do something good here, so those are my aspirations."

Arnold was recently in Iowa to promote the poorly-rated baseball movie bomb, The Final Season. He hung out with plus-size Democrat Governor Chet Culver at the premiere.

What about Tom Arnold's history? Well, since the beloved Democrat Harold Hughes was elected Governor AND Senator from Iowa during the 1960s while boldly admitting his alcoholic past, Iowans wouldn't care about Arnold's drink and drug years. Besides, Arnold's been sober and in AA for well over a decade now, divorced from the kooky Roseanne Barr even longer, and has had steady employment as the host of the cable TV hit, The Best Damn Sports Show Period, as well as a hit biography, How I Lost 5 Pounds In 6 Years.

Recently, Arnold held a charity garage sale and also showed his bipartisan spirit by leading the roast of his True Lies co-star, Republican California Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger.

As for those political ambitions, don't forget that Tom's current and third wife is Democratic political consultant Shelby Roos. That's got to count for something.

He did rather well, didn't he?

Hillary The Convenient Protectionist

From the WSJ:

Her fellow Democrats keep trying to pin Hillary Clinton down on the issues, but they seem only to be driving her to even greater feats of triangulation. Take the Senator's position on trade agreements, which she and her husband championed in the 1990s but which she has, well, you figure it out.

A week ago, the former first lady finally announced that she'd support the U.S.-Peru trade agreement that passed the House last week with 109 Democratic votes. But then on Monday in Iowa, speaking to the United Auto Workers, she declared that if elected President she would call a "time out" on trade deals.

And Camille Paglia in Salon, "piling on" as the lamestream media would say:

Hillary's stonewalling evasions and mercurial, soulless self-positionings have been going on since her first run for the U.S. Senate from New York, a state she had never lived in and knew virtually nothing about. The liberal Northeastern media were criminally complicit in enabling her queenlike, content-free "listening tour," where she took no hard questions and where her staff and security people (including her government-supplied Secret Service detail) staged events stocked with vetted sympathizers, and where they ensured that no protesters would ever come within camera range.

It's about time the curtain that Hitlery has been hiding behind is finally being torn down. How long did the lameass softball media think it was going to last?

Hillary Scripted Clinton

From CNN:

The college student who was told what question to ask at one of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign events said "voters have the right to know what happened" and she wasn't the only one who was planted.

In an exclusive on-camera interview with CNN, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, a 19-year-old sophomore at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, said giving anyone specific questions to ask is "dishonest," and the whole incident has given her a negative outlook on politics.

Gallo-Chasanoff, whose story was first reported in the campus newspaper, said what happened was simple: She said a senior Clinton staffer asked if she'd like to ask the senator a question after an energy speech the Democratic presidential hopeful gave in Newton, Iowa, on November 6.

"I sort of thought about it, and I said 'Yeah, can I ask how her energy plan compares to the other candidates' energy plans?'" Gallo-Chasanoff said Monday night.

According to Gallo-Chasanoff, the staffer said, " 'I don't think that's a good idea, because I don't know how familiar she is with their plans.' "

He then opened a binder to a page that, according to Gallo-Chasanoff, had about eight questions on it.

"The top one was planned specifically for a college student," she added. "It said 'college student' in brackets and then the question."

Topping that sheet of paper was the following: "As a young person, I'm worried about the long-term effects of global warming. How does your plan combat climate change?"

And while she said she would have rather used her own question, Gallo-Chasanoff said she didn't have a problem asking the campaign's because she "likes to be agreeable," adding that since she told the staffer she'd ask their pre-typed question she "didn't want to go back on my word."

Clinton campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee said, "This is not acceptable campaign process moving forward. We've taken steps to ensure that it never happens again." Elleithee said Clinton had "no idea who she was calling on."

Gallo-Chasanoff wasn't so sure.

"I don't know whether Hillary knew what my question was going to be, but it seemed like she knew to call on me because there were so many people, and ... I was the only college student in that area," she said.

In a separate statement in response to the campus article, the campaign said, "On this occasion a member of our staff did discuss a possible question about Sen. Clinton's energy plan at a forum. ... This is not standard policy and will not be repeated again."

Gallo-Chasanoff said she wasn't the only person given a question.

"After the event," she said, "I heard another man ... talking about the question he asked, and he said that the campaign had asked him to ask that question."

The man she referenced prefaced his question by saying that it probably didn't have anything to do with energy, and then posed the following: "I wonder what you propose to do to create jobs for the middle-class person, such as here in Newton where we lost Maytag."

A Maytag factory in Newton recently closed, forcing hundreds of people out of their jobs.

During the course of the late-night interview on Grinnell's campus, Gallo-Chasanoff also said that the day before the school's newspaper, Scarlet and Black, printed the story, she wanted the reporter to inform the campaign out of courtesy to let them know it would be published.

She said the "head of publicity for the campaign," a man whose name she could not recall, had no factual disputes with the story. But, she added, a Clinton intern spoke to her to say the campaign requested she not talk about the story to any more media outlets and that if she did she should inform a staffer.

It doesn't help that the members of Iowa's media elites lob softballs or gets their kneepads out when it comes to asking questions of Hillary.

What kills me is that it took a college newspaper to break the story.

And then it was only after the student figured that being given a staged question by a campaign operative was wrong!

Come on, you lazy members of the media. The same bunch of you go to all these events. You had to know this was going on! How could you not know?

Didn't anybody note the questions being asked Hillary by the audience?

Maybe you "reporters" got bored listening to the same old stuff, day in and day out.

I bet somebody could take audio or video from all these events and come up with different audience members who are asking those same scripted questions over and over.

Excuses, Excuses

I'd cry too, Hayden...

In the Iowa City Press-Citizen, there was a letter suggesting that salaries for sports coaches get capped.

Who gives a flying frog about that? Such an idea will never be adopted. Normally I would ignore such an idiotic-but-reasonable request, but then I read this bullshit excuse that somebody wrote in the comments:

...absolutely no tax (or tuition) dollars go into athletics, including Ferentz's salary...

I love how certain people excuse excessive compensation by saying this. You read this all the time. As if where the money comes from somehow justifies or excuses it.

How much money did the English department bring in last year?

How much cash did the campus police bring in last year?

Did the Feminist Studies department pay for itself?

If the Feminazis could only cough up enough cash, they could be paying themselves $4 million a year!

Oh, I forgot, it's not a U-N-I-V-E-R-S-I-T-Y on the balance sheet.

Why not get some of that revenue and help lower tuition or ease the burden of the state's taxpayers? Noooooooooo!!!!!!! Can't do that!

Working So Well

Joe at the Tax Update Blog has a post concerning NJ Governor Jon Corzine's welcome veto of tax giveaways to major media companies.

It's a great post, a must-read.

But don't forget to click the link at the end of the post on the words "working so well".

I don't want to be a spoiler, but I had no idea it was THAT bad in Iowa!

Old Farts, Part Two (Hard Of Hearing Edition)

An update to the post Old Farts.

Dave Parsons emailed:

I wasn't serious about my suggestion to hand everything back to the state-run liquor stores - I was looking for a short and snappy way to end the column. Also, I'm fully in favor of giving every right to 18-year olds that are currently enjoyed by 21-year olds - I should have worked that in somewhere...

Yes, you should have.

I don't understand why anybody would vote for that ordinance if it wasn't going to have any effect other than kicking the under 21s out of the bars after 10pm. What purpose does that serve? Everybody will just leave the bars to go to John's Grocery, buy a bottle or a case, and be off on their merry way towards a serious hangover.

As I have said countless times, if you want to eliminate underage drinking then lower the drinking age. Stop treating adults like children. Restricting rights never works. Oh, but we don't have enough cops on the streets. Perhaps you would like to live in a police state. We'll need to raise your taxes. Gee, why is the jail so full?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this all out.

Unfortunately, when all your local politicians lack BALLS to speak the truth you get dumbshit ballot initiatives like that one in Iowa City.

How To Add Zeroes To Your Salary

From the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

A new survey suggests University of Iowa is paying its president this year the minimum compared to what top public research university presidents were getting a year ago.

A Chronicle of Higher Education survey shows that, with a few exceptions, the low bar for compensation among the “big players” in higher education is about $450,000 annually, which is the base pay for UI president Sally Mason this year.

The survey noted that 56 of 182 public universities paid at least that amount, with University of Wisconsin-Madison being one of the exceptions. The median pay among those was $397,349.

The Chronicle’s figures are based on 2006-07 numbers, which was before Mason came on board. Based on last year’s numbers, UI fell well short of the mark. At that time, Gary Fethke was leading UI in an interim capacity with a base salary of $302,000.

When Mason was named UI’s 20th president in June and the Iowa state Board of Regents announced a roughly 50 percent salary increase, regents touted that they were trying to compete in the market place.

How many people applied for the job that Sally Mason eventually got? I bet it was a lot.

These surveys are bullshit.

They are the reason that football coaches no longer make $264,000 a year and instead get over $4 million a year for a barely .500 season.

Somehow UNI can manage to pay their undefeated coach only $150,000 a year.

I'm sure somebody will say, "But the Big Ten isn't in the same league as the Gateway Conference" and that's true. The Gateway Conference likely has fewer criminal-athletes.

But hey, the University of Iowa had to pay basketball coach Steve Alford over a million dollars a year because dumbfucks like former AD Bob Bowlsby wanted to take Iowa Basketball to the next level - a level which included recruiting retards and sexual batterers rather than having a respected program with a better win/loss ratio.

This is also the same greedy nonsense which got former University of Colorado President Elizabeth Hoffman hired at ISU as one of the most expensive Provosts in the cuntry.

Meanwhile, Iowa's nurses have been ranked dead last in wages for years.

The Death March To China

Jason Bradley, a graduate student studying journalism at the University of Iowa, offers us this in the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

There is a problem so deeply embedded within the economic structure of the United States that it will not -- it cannot -- be resolved in the near future.

The problem weaves itself into every aspect of our American life. It is in the food we eat, the clothes we wear and the electronics with which we both work and play. It is found in our banking systems, our technology centers, our manufacturing plants and our farms. It threatens those with jobs as well as the steadily unemployed.

The problem is offshore outsourcing of American jobs.

Since President Bush took office in 2001, some 2.5 million Americans lost their jobs when their employers moved their manufacturing plants to less-developed nations where the indigenous populations could be paid less -- far less -- than the American workers.

In these struggling nations, major corporations are not only able to pay less, but also offer no benefits, vacation, health care and, in many cases, don't have to abide by those pesky laws that protect human rights.

"Since President Bush took office...."

You know, they never say "After President Clinton and the Democratic-majority Congress signed NAFTA in 1993..."

They never say "After Senator Tom Harkin voted for NAFTA in 1993...."

Curious thing, that.

Now I'm not one of these anti-NAFTA chest-thumpers. I think the biggest problem is these greedy asshole CEOs like Ralph Hake of Maytag, who closed perfectly good plants in favor of the lure of cheap Mexican labor, or companies like Ertl of Dyersville, who sold out in the 1990s after the owner died and whose manufacturing plant was moved from Iowa to Mexico.

What you have to do, and this writer doesn't do it, is name the companies who have sacrified US jobs for cheap foreign labor.

Case in point: people revolted after the Isabel Bloom company in the Quad Cities announced they were closing local manufacturing in favor of moving production to China.

Now, what with all the scares about lead in children's toys coming out of China, do you think any more companies are going to defect? Hell, no! Such a move would be suicidal anymore.

The biggest problem with outsourcing or off-shoring is not that the government allows it, but that stupid executives think it's a good idea!

Look at all the companies who do this. They don't want to make the best product. They don't care if their name or reputation goes into the shitter. The people involved with making these decisions didn't start the company and they didn't build the company. They were likely hired by some board of directors or headhunter, complete with worthless MBA or some other advanced degree. They're a bunch of fucking bean counters.

They're the same companies who run to the state politicians, asking for taxpayer-paid corporate welfare. They've made health care a "crisis" as an excuse to get more kickbacks. They've made labor costs an excuse because they don't know how to market or they don't covet the brand name or they provide shitty service or they refuse to get more efficient here at home by upgrading and modernizing facilities out of their profits.

Anyway, back to the opinion piece here.... I don't have any Big Love for President Bush, but to single him out as some sort of whipping boy for the loss of jobs when the unemployment rate in the state is still under 4% is crazy.

I have more respect for the anti-NAFTA nutjobs than somebody who is going to blame this on Bush 43.

But put blame where it belongs: a culture of corporate greed. It's a case-by-case basis, so name names! Use examples to embarrass other bean counting CEOs from drinking the Purple Kool-Aid! You can't stop what's already happened, but you can point out and lampoon and beat-to-death all the examples we have of half-dead companies heading out to Mexico or China for the expected Death March. Maybe ridicule will eventually change some corporate cultures. It's a hell of a lot more fun than walking around Blaming Bush.

Now watch this and laugh:

"State government is Iowa's largest employer"

The annual peek into the salaries of State of Iowa employees occurs today in the Des Moines Register.

Money quote (pardon the pun):

"State government is Iowa's largest employer"

That's nothing to be proud of......

More Hitlery Plants Coming Out Of The Woodwork

It looks like the Hitlery Clinton campaign has been staging plants for softball questions so she can give canned answers all year long in Iowa. Here's one from April that's just being exposed now.

This comes on the heels of an eventually-admitted plant attempt at Grinnell College this past week.

Do you remember a month ago when Hitlery accused New Hampton Democrat and Bush-hater Randall Rolph of being a Republican plant after he asked her a question about Iran? Here was my reply:

Look at what Hitlery does. The first time she gets anything other than a softball question from the media or one of her staged supporters, she freaks out and considers them a Republican plant.

Staged supporters! Ha! Did I call that one, or what?

I Was Born In A Small Town, But I Now Live In A House As Big As A Small Town

You sure did well for yourself, Mr Mellencamp, didn't you?

Kay Henderson at the Radio Iowa blog:

It was 7 p.m. on a Friday night in Des Moines and I was driving to meet friends L, M and S at Wells Fargo Arena where I would see one of my favorite bands, Los Lobos, open for John Mellencamp. The sound of my phone ringing pierced the interior of my car. It was the Edwards campaign. I was advised that John Edwards might appear on stage with Mellencamp. So, after my brief interlude of enjoyment of all that is Los Lobos, it was back to work typing on the blackberry. Here is what transpired, according to my notes:...

...The crowd erupted as he started Small Town and sang the lyrics as though Wells Fargo Arena were one of those sing-along piano bars.

It's at this point Mellencamp gestures and John Edwards walks on stage. After a few cheers boos overtake the hall. "I've been in your small towns," Edwards said as Mellencamp stepped aside to give Edwards a place behind the microphone. "...You didn't come here to listen to me," Edwards continues as he winds down with a "thank you," waves and walks to the darkened edge of the stage.

The crowd is mostly booing at this point. "I came for a concert," one man behind me yelled. "Refund. Refund," another chanted a few rows back. One person in the crowd made this observation: "Are they booing Edwards specifically or booing because they don't like politics?" Mellencamp tells the crowd he's "had a lot of fun with that guy," and begins playing his guitar and singing Small Town again. The crowd slowly begins to sing along again. Edwards stood on the darkened edge of the stage until the song was over, then exited. Mellencamp didn't say anything at the song's end

I always liked Mellencamp's Authority Song:

...I said: growing up leads to growing old and then to dying,
And dying to me don't sound like all that much fun

I fight authority, authority always wins
I fight authority, authority always wins
I been doing it, since I was a young kid
Ive come out grinnin
I fight authority, authority always wins

When you read the Des Moines Register's take on the situation, it sounds like the reporter wasn't even there. Or perhaps some lameass dickhead editor told her to tone it down.

Old Farts

Updated below:



Dave Parsons, writing a column in the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

Now that conservative community killjoys like me have failed to have our way with the 21-only ordinance, it's time for a little perspective.

When I was a little kid in the late 1950s and early 1960s, adults had to expend some effort to buy liquor -- not like today when you can toss it into your grocery cart with the bread and milk. The state of Iowa had a monopoly on hard liquor sales back then, and it sold everything through its own retail stores...

...I held my nose and voted for the 21-only ordinance this week. Funny, if I was 18 or 19 there's no doubt in my mind that I would have lobbied energetically against it...

...The moral of this story is that kids who want to drink are going to find a way to do so -- no surprise there. Argue with me if you want, but the easier you make it for them, the more of it you're going to see.

Maybe the ultimate solution is to go back to the way it used to be and run everything through state liquor stores.

What a mess of a column, although his history of Iowa's changing of the drinking age is pretty good and very accurate.

Whoever this Dave Parsons is, he's officially become an Old Fart ™.

How could he hold his nose and vote for the 21-only (after 10pm) ordinance for bars?

There's no evidence that such an ordinance was going to cut down on underage drinking or binge drinking or a culture of stupid alcoholic behavior in Iowa City.

Why would anybody suggest that Iowa should go back to that ridiculous State-run liquor monopoly? Unless maybe you're an idiot Communist. How would that solve any problems?

Why do so many baby boomers, especially supposedly liberally-minded baby boomers, think restricting certain adult rights is a step forward?

The most illiberal thing is that they believe 18, 19, and 20 year olds are children who cannot handle buying a six pack, but who can join the military, buy property, drive a car, sign for tens of thousands of dollars worth of student loans, get married, have children, buy cigarettes, and own certain guns.

Restricting rights always works in the end, doesn't it? Well, maybe for pansy politicians and law enforcement coffers.




Update:

Dave Parsons emails:

I wasn't serious about my suggestion to hand everything back to the state-run liquor stores - I was looking for a short and snappy way to end the column. Also, I'm fully in favor of giving every right to 18-year olds that are currently enjoyed by 21-year olds - I should have worked that in somewhere...

Hillary's Staffers Have To Plant Questions

From the Quad City Times:

A Grinnell College student says an aide for Hillary Rodham Clinton gave her a prepared question to ask the presidential candidate during a forum this week in central Iowa.

Clinton staffers acknowledge the incident but claim Clinton did not know the question had been issued when the senator called on the student during a question-and-answer session with the audience.

"The senator had no idea," Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee told The Associated Press on Friday night.

Clinton's campaign later issued a statement admitting that "a member of our staff did discuss a possible question about Sen. Clinton's energy plan at a forum. ... This is not standard policy and will not be repeated again."

The incident, first reported by Grinnell College's student newspaper, occurred Tuesday at a biodiesel plant in Newton where Clinton was introducing her energy plan. Student Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff told the newspaper she was asked by a senior Clinton staffer to ask a question about global warming. Gallo-Chasanoff also said staffers prompted the senator to call on her.

A Clinton aide initially denied the claim in the story, but the campaign later told The Associated Press some parts were true.

They plant questions.

They lie.

They cover for Hitlery.

They're covering for her just like Bill does!

It's sick.

The Clinton campaign needs to be beaten. Feel free to interpret the word beaten any way you want.

Bill Clinton Spurts Lies To The Des Moines Register, Reporter Jennifer Jacobs Swallows It

Another day, another lie-filled pro-Hillary story in the Des Moines Register.

Today's pack of crap, written by usual Clinton cocksucker Jennifer Jacobs, offers up the preposterous notion that Bill Clinton himself was to blame for Hitlery's failed Socialist takeover of the US healthcare system.

Here's reporter Adam "Major League Asshole" Clymer, writing in the New York Times back in 1994:

Hillary Rodham Clinton says she is willing to take some of the blame for the death of national health insurance legislation this year, for failing to anticipate the intensity and effectiveness of the opposition and for not realizing that the complexity of the Administration's original plan could work against it.

But the most frustrating failure she acknowledges is not getting the country to understand that the plan that the Clintons offered a year ago was an opening offer, "constructed to be deconstructed." Instead of being a basis for negotiations, she said, "it was described as an ultimatum by our opponents and therefore used to undermine the process of reaching agreement."

In the crucial period shortly after the bill was proposed a year ago, she said, the Administration failed to foresee the problems that negative advertisements would cause and missed a chance to put on advertisements of its own that could have inoculated the public against what she considers falsehoods to come.

With the analytical funeral dirges for health care being sung all over the capital, Mrs. Clinton is plainly concerned that most people blame the Administration for a large part of the failure. They accuse the Administration of inattention and arrogance, of tolerating delay that cost momentum and, most of all, of rigidity.

So, seeking to air her own, quite different conclusion, the leader of the Administration's health care effort discussed it in two interviews with The New York Times last week, arguing that "this battle was lost on paid media and paid direct mail."

It's so impossible for cocksucking reporters like Jennifer Jacobs and the rimming editors at the Des Moines Register to look up the history, isn't it?

Clinton also offers up the lie that half of bankruptcies in America are because of "family health emergencies". Total bullshit:

Buried in the study is the fact that only 27 percent of the surveyed debtors had unreimbursed medical expenses exceeding $1,000 over the course of the two years prior to their bankruptcy. Presumably 73 percent — the vast majority — had medical expenses during that two-year period of $1,000 or less. Had that figure been recited up front, it would have been obvious that the proportion of bankruptcies driven by unmanageable medical debt was nowhere near half.

Bill Clinton, who loathed the military, suggests that US forces are "badly overstressed" and that "If you want people to re-enlist in the military, they have to believe that their lives are not going to be squandered".

Let's just ignore the fact that the US Army met re-enlistment goals for the year.

Then Jacobs lets Clinton go on about his 32 year Faustian bargain marriage, as if those two have actually done the Wild Thing in the past 20 years.

Folks, it is time to PUSH PUSH PUSH against the pricks in the media for printing this shit. I don't mind getting nasty and vulgar and rude to make my point in this instance.

Fuck them. I have no problem going up against people who buy ink by the barrel because I get my pixels for free.

I'll say it again: Jennifer Jacobs is a cocksucking "reporter" for the Clinton campaign. The Des Moines Register's editors don't mind rimming Bill or Hitlery Clinton's ass. It's all a Means To An End.

But it's fucking journalistic malpractice to print a story like this.

Al Gore's "National Example", Part 3

Tipped by a reader, this is from the Cedar Rapids Gazette:

The end of the Osada low-income loft apartment complex, which has been coming for months, is now at hand.

The City Council tonight discussed just what incentives — tax breaks, a neighborhood park and streetscape — it might provide to PBI Properties, incentives that the local developer says it needs to transform the property from 67 low-income apartments to 57 condominiums, most of which will sell for between $100,000 and $200,000.

Negotiating an incentive package is all that remains for the $3.5 million building transformation to begin, Fred Timko, owner and president of PBI and contractor Point Builders Inc. of Cedar Rapids, said earlier Wednesday.

Timko has suggested that the tax incentive be the same for the Osada building, 905 Third St. SE, as incentives for the building right next door, the warehouse successfully turned into higher-end condominiums and called WaterTower Place.

At WaterTower Place, the city granted 10-year, 100 percent property-tax exemptions for those who purchased a condominium unit because of the risk involved in marketing the first-of-its-kind units in the downtown.

In 1998, then-Vice President Al Gore called the Osada affordable-housing (read: taxpayer funded) project a "National Example":

Vice President Al Gore said Wednesday that the Osada affordable-housing project in Cedar Rapids "sets a national example" of a public-private partnership that can revitalize inner cities.

"For years in our country we've seen a misguided strategy of abandoning the inner city and using tax dollars to subsidize developments out in cornfields," Gore said in a 20-minute speech that was part of Osada dedication ceremonies.

The vice president spoke to about 200 invited guests in the atrium section of the five-story building, transformed from an old grocery warehouse and soda factory into 67 apartment units by MidAmerica Housing Partnership (MAHP) of Cedar Rapids...

Gore praised developers of the project at 905 Third St. SE, saying it's not just to provide tax breaks to private partners "but to bring the community together." He said the idea of bankers, representatives of the neighborhood, potential residents and government sitting at the same table "has provided the energy for this project."

Gore heads President Clinton's Community Empowerment project, the formal name for revitalization efforts involving residents of inner cities. He said when he and Clinton came to office, "we were hard-pressed to find a single success story in inner urban America."

By 2006:

...trash litters the hallways and atrium of the the low- to medium-income apartment complex at 905 Third St. SE. Carpets are stained and filthy. Fire alarms dangle from the ceiling. Water fountains are broken. Residents say cockroaches are taking over. Birds can be heard in the ductwork. Fire alarms are frequently pulled as a prank. Water leaks are commonplace. Walls are smeared with unknown substances. Flooring tiles around the edges of the walls are wet and deteriorating.

One day in late April, the stench of urine in the elevator was overpowering.

What were the problems with Al Gore's "National Example"?

The non-profit organization has been struggling to stay afloat the last couple of years. Low occupancy rates, financial mismanagement, lack of leadership and little board oversight have plagued the organization. MAHP officials say a shortage of money and staff have caused the organization to fall behind on maintenance of properties...

Occupancy rates that had sunk to 70 percent in 2004...

Now a developer wants a 10-year, 100% property tax abatement even though the riff raff have been moved out of the area and the building next door has been successfully converted to condos. The developer also wants hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of taxpayer-financed streetscaping around the building.

What a racket.

Well, at least the government is out of the property management business.

Talk about a rathole!

This is the same bunch who think they can run health care better than private businesses!

TIFs Floating On A Sea Of Alcohol

Nicholas Johnson:

[The members of the City Council in Iowa City] continue to think that TIFs floating on a sea of alcohol is our voyage through economic development to the promised land...

That's such a good line. I had to point it out.

Johnson is also right to knock the University of Iowa and the Iowa City government for continuing to punt on first down about the issue of alcohol.

Let's ask some bigger picture questions:

Was underage drinking such a big problem between the early 1970s and 1986 when the age to buy a beer or liquor in Iowa was either 18 or 19? I bet it wasn't.

Was binge drinking a problem in college towns back when the drinking age was 18 or 19? Probably not as bad as today.

Did Iowa City have more bars when the drinking age was 18 or 19 than today? (I know the answer to that question: NO).

The problem of drunk driving, one of the reasons for raising the drinking age, has been decreased thanks to public awareness campaigns as well as politicians finally getting somewhat tougher on offenders. I still think that drunk drivers, especially drunk drivers who kill, get off too leniently.

You know, the way the 55 mph speed limit was imposed on this country was the same way the 21-only drinking age was: a bunch of nanny-staters in Congress and a Republican President decided to monkey with the Commerce Clause to shove a new policy down our throats.

Guess what?

The 55 mph speed limit was a failure.

So is treating 18, 19, and 20 year old adults like children - or criminals.

I swear, if I ever accidentally tune around my AM radio and hear Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh talk about how Republicans are for "limited government" I am going to puke.

Even in super-lefty Iowa City, at least according to stories in the Press-Citizen, there are a lot of people who endlessly bleat on about how anybody under the age of 21 who gets into a bar is somehow a binge drinking alcoholic criminal who should be kicked out of school and their parents told.

Seriously.......WTF???? What is the matter with these people? Why are some people, and this goes all the way across the political spectrum (except maybe with "small L" libertarians), so freaking anal about a 19 or 20 year old drinking a beer in a responsible manner?

Alcohol abuse and stupidity have absolutely nothing to do with the legal drinking age. Look at the Johnson County Auditor, Tom Slockett. That guy is 60 years old and has been caught twice drunk driving. Should we make the drinking age 61? Come on!

David Yepsen: It's The Poll Numbers, Stupid!

David Yepsen, the lamestream's "King" of political commentary in Iowa, turns in one of his worst columns ever today.

A snippet:

[Hillary] didn't weather their attacks too well in the last debate and has dropped a few points in the national polls.

What were the "attacks" about?

Bueller, Bueller???

Why, you'd never know it from reading Yepsen's column.

I'm surprised that Yepsen didn't flat-out call those guys a bunch of misogynists for beating up on poor poor Hillary, The Smartest Woman On The Planet ™.

You know, it's like there's some sort of self-imposed embargo going on in the Iowa lamestream media when it comes to asking Hillary Clinton questions - much less mentioning anything critical in opinion pieces - about the issue of granting licenses (and, subsequently, voter registration cards) to illegals.

Kay Henderson at Radio Iowa could only throw softballs to Queen Hillary in a recent interview.

Yepsen's column is expected coming from the Des Moines Register, a newspaper where so many people in high positions of authority (Carol Hunter, Linda Lantor Fandel, Rekha Basu, and the rest of the Editorial Board) believe that illegals should be given driver's licenses.

Nevermind that 77% of the people are against driver's licenses for illegal aliens.

Yepsen seems to think that the whole caucus race is nothing more than a numbers game. That's all he talks about in today's column.

Yepsen, you're wrong!

It's the issues, stupid!

We all know what Hillary Clinton thinks about granting driver's licenses to illegal aliens. She's for it!

And you know why she's for it? Her close advisor Tom Vilsack is for it. Giving away driver's licenses (and voter registration cards) to illegals was one of the last things Vilsack used his bully pulpit for while as a lame duck Governor last December.

It's amazing how some of the politicians and all of the media are walking through this campaign season with blinders on.

"Reporters" like David Yepsen just bend over for these ass clowns.

Is it any wonder why we hate our politicians and we have quit subscribing to and advertising in newspapers?

"If I Were King..."

Say your county has a convention center and exhibition hall that's losing over a million dollars of the taxpayer's dollars a year? What do you do?

If you were the King, like crooked Polk County Supervisor John Mauro wishes he was (and sorta is....) you'd move a few shells around in order to spend at least $35 million to expand and upgrade the "aging" (aren't we all?) 22 year old building - at least according to this story in today's Des Moines Register.

If I were the King of Polk County, John Mauro would be in prison.

"Why Isn't He Killing Her?"

John Dickerson, writing in Slate:

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — I've seen Barack Obama's show. I've seen the crowds. I've seen the audacity. I've seen the hope. I knew what to expect Tuesday night at his event at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, and yet after it was over I was still impressed. He was funny and passionate, and he connected with his big audience. When he left the stage, the room was on its feet and chanting with him. Nothing like that happened during the two days I followed Hillary Clinton. Her performances were solid and her audiences were enthusiastic, but they didn't interrupt her with applause the way they did with Obama.

A talented candidate works with the rhythm of an audience, taking it through a range of emotions—humor, passion, and anger. If the candidate does it right, the room feels more committed at the end of the event than during the opening jokes. That's what it was like when Obama spoke.

"Why isn't he killing her?" asked a colleague after Obama's hour-long visit. It's the persistent question for his campaign.

Obama has to figure out a way to get his supporters to caucus for him on January 3rd.

Cheers!

From the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

The Johnson County Auditor's Office is reporting that a technical problem has led to incorrect vote totals, leaving the razor-thin margin on the Iowa City 21-only ballot measure in question.

There is not word yet as to what the problem might be or how vote totals are affected.

The election did have exceptionally high turnout, and the controversial ballot proposal that would ban those under 21 from Iowa City bars after 10 p.m. was decided by only 236 votes out of more than 21,000 cast, according to vote tallies posted before the error was discovered.

Then a followup in the Press-Citizen:

In the most shocking of turnarounds, Iowa City's ballot measure to keep those under 21 out of bars after 10 p.m. is defeated after vote tallies were recalculated because of a technical error.

The initial wave of votes showed that the ballot had actually passed by a razor-thin margin of only 236 votes out of 21,182 cast, 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent with all 26 Iowa City precincts reporting, according to the Johnson County Auditor's Web site.

But then, shortly before 10 p.m., the auditor's office announced it had a "technical error" and that vote totals were incorrect.

At 9:57 p.m., vote totals were reposted, showing the ballot measure was actually defeated, 8,895 to 6,606, or 57 percent to 43 percent.

WTF???

Technical error?

Was a certain somebody drunk at the auditor's office again?

Expect to see the 21-only-after-10pm ordinance brought up for a vote up again in.... ummmm... what do you want to bet the next vote on the matter will be in early August of 2008 when all the students are gone? Yeah, I could see that happening.

Now watch this:

Softballs

Updated below at 1:15pm:



Kay Henderson at Radio Iowa throws a bunch of softballs at Hillary Clinton last Saturday after getting her AFSCME endorsement in Des Moines.

Examples of the questions:

Henderson: "Your campaign said 'piling on' -- other campaigns said 'whining' after the debate. I think earlier this year you said you were going to be ready to deck people. Do you feel like decking anybody?"

Henderson: "In regards to the transcript issue, would it not buttress your argument that you were involved and you had those eight years of White House experience if people were able to see the documents? Why shouldn't they be released expeditiously?"

Henderson: "It sounds as if some of records will be released in January..."

Henderson: "So, when those are released, give us a hint. Will they reveal Hillary Clinton -- power broker? Hillary Clinton -- international ambassador of goodwill? Hillary Clinton -- policy wonk? What sort of picture will they reveal?

Henderson: "Isn't that frustrating?"

God forbid that any journalist in Iowa would dare to ask Queen Hitlery about whether or not giving a driver's license (and a Motor Voter registration form) to an illegal alien is a good idea.

Why are journalists so damn lazy at asking the important questions?

Contrast all that to Dave Helling's column in the Kansas City Star yesterday. Talk about unvarnished. Good work, sir! It's too bad you're not in Iowa sitting across from a potential candidate for president.


Update: Rasmussen is reporting that 77% of voters polled oppose drivers licenses for illegals. 88% of Republicans are against it. Chris Dodd is the only Democrat who has come out against the idea.

Any reporter who has access to Hillary Clinton and who fails to hammer her on the issue is guilty of journalistic malpractice. Same with Obama and Edwards.

Old Berkeley Hippies At ISU Going To Bat For Slave Labor

Cornelia Butler Flora, a professor of sociology, and agriculture and life sciences, as well as director of the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development at Iowa State University, wrote a pro-slave labor, pro-illegal letter to the Des Moines Register about the taxes that illegals pay and how keeping illegals around will help pay for Social Security for all the old white European crackers currently living in Aztlan. Or something.

Big shock, that.

Oh, look, she's a Berkeley graduate.

Just add her to the stable of far-lefty anti-American kooks in Ames.

ISU's got a religious studies professor, Hector Avalos, who is an atheist.

ISU hired that cunt, Ward Churchill-defender, and rape-excuser Elizabeth Hoffman as provost for a shitload of money.

ISU has distinguished English professor Neil Bowers, in defending Hoffman, slagged off the Boulder chapter of the National Organization of Women as a bunch of "malcontents".

ISU has John Hauptman as a professor of physics. Hauptman spends his free time working on the side as someone who regularly spits on our dead soldiers.

Nice bunch, eh?

Here's that "nigga" Mike Jones, hired for 2007's VEISHEA concert for which he got paid $21,000 for 30 minutes of work. What's my motherfuckin' name?

Quick! Put The Mona Lisa On Ebay While The Market Is Hot

From the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

University of Iowa officials considered selling its most prized painting this past spring.

UI considered parting with Jackson Pollock’s Mural of 1943, which is housed in the Museum of Art, because of what museum director Howard Collinson described as its extremely high market value at the moment.

“It is thought as something that has an extremely high market value at the moment,” Collinson said. “It is by far the most important piece in the museum and the most expensive piece in the museum collection.”

Collinson declined to speculate on what it is worth, but suggested comparing it to Pollock’s other works. Pollock’s No. 12, 1949 sold for $11.6 million in 2004, according to sgallery.net.

Selling the painting was viewed as an opportunity to diversify the collection, Collinson said, but the idea didn’t make it past the museum’s advisory board, and they are no longer considering it.

I don't know anything about art, especially that abstract stuff, but why the hell would a museum even consider selling one of their premier pieces?

Other than maybe somebody acting retarded and greedy.

According to this blog, art dealer Peggy Guggenheim donated it to the University of Iowa.

Why don't they just spray paint a fucking Wellmark logo over it in exchange for naming rights?

Meanwhile, in Cedar Rapids, the local dolts on the Chamber of Commerce are going ahead with selling a bunch of paintings by Grant Wood, Norman Rockwell, and Marvin Cone. Instead of just donating them to the local museum that already houses numerous pieces by Wood and Cone, the Chamber wants to raise some quick cash by selling out the local historic culture of art there.

Revenue is needed!!! More like G-R-E-E-D.

My Daughter Did Your Husband

The Des Moines Register has a big story about Walter Mondale endorsing Hitlery Clinton for president.

This is not news. John Deeth mentioned this a couple weeks ago.

The Mondales and the Clintons go way back:

It seems that Bill Clinton shares the curiosity we expressed in a recent Who's Who as to why Monica Lewinsky threw such a fit at the White House gates when she learned that Eleanor Mondale was alone with him in the Oval Office. That night he called Monica and asked her why she was so upset. According to Andrew Morton's new book, Monica replied by "citing the time when, while he was on a trip to California, Mondale had been with him until 3:30 in the morning, and had then gone running with him the next day" Clinton asked: "Do you think I would be stupid enough to go running with someone I was foolin' with?" Monicas instant reply: "Do you want me to answer that?"

I'm still waiting on that Michael Dukakis endorsement.

We Want Free College Sex!

Could there be a more unintentionally funny story than the one printed in the Des Moines Register this morning? ("Students challenge rising cost of 'the pill'")

The cost of certain name-brand birth control pills at "the company store" (campus health care clinics) went up from $15 a month to $53 a month.

Of course, the only students this affects are those without health insurance or those who would be afraid that the charge would show up on mommy and daddy's bill and they'd freak out.

The most hilarious part of the story is the first woman quoted in the article: a junior at Drake University, a school where tuition, room, and board is over $30,000 a year.

The increase in the cost is due to the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act, one of the rare things coming out of Congress that actually works.

Want a balanced budget while getting more financial aid? Perhaps those college girls will have to sacrifice a bit. $1.75 a day for pill protection is still a lot cheaper than a baby. And you don't hear men complaining about the price of condoms these days, do you? Thanks to the internet, men now have an endless supply of free porn.

Now for your Monday morning sex-themed entertainment: Missy Elliot!

More Rotten Parents

I don't understand the point of this story in the Sunday Des Moines Register about a couple of shitbag breeders from Audubon who got their four offspring taken away by the State.

What purpose does it serve to profile these people? Are we supposed to feel sorry for them? Are we supposed to feel sorry for the Iowa DHS workers? I just don't get it.

The 22 year old "mother", Carrie James, is clearly nuts.

It's amazing to me that James is walking around a free woman after pleading guilty to felony child endangerment. Anybody who would intentionally break bones in their own baby's body deserves to be sitting in prison at least until that child becomes a legal adult and the "mother" has entered menopause.

Contrast this to the treatment of Dixie Shanahan (now Dixie Duty), who killed her husband after he repeatedly beat her up, threatened to kill her, and threatened to cause injury that would result in an abortion of their unborn baby.

If you're protecting yourself and your children, you go to prison for 50 years (commuted to 10 years), but if you intentionally hurt your baby you get to walk around and procreate some more at taxpayer expense.

And if you go to prison for allowing your child to be beat up and abused, you (or at least Miranda Charbonneau) can be profiled by the Quad City Times a couple years ago for an article cheerleading a minimum wage increase, without mentioning all that icky background stuff.

At least nobody was criticizing DHS for failing to act before a child was killed. If that had been the case, Hillary Clinton-supporter Tom Vilsack would come out of the woodwork to trash grieving family members who tried to do the right thing. After the murder of 5 year old Evelyn Miller, Vilsack said (via Radio Iowa):

"...Vilsack reviewed five-years-worth of files kept by Department of Human Services social workers who investigated complaints about the child's welfare. On Monday, Vilsack said the complaints came from family members who had 'an ax to grind' and whose 'credibility' was 'a bit suspect.'"

That is possibly the cruelest, evilest thing that Vilsack could have ever said. It is amazing to me that no opinion columnist has ever picked up on that quote. It's so vile, and it speaks volumes about what a total piece of shit Tom Vilsack is.

Back to the Register story of today. In the comments of the article, many people are calling for these two to be sterilized. Do they really want the government to have the power to force people to be sterilized? I don't think that's a good idea at all.

I do think that if somebody like Carrie James approaches the State and asks for help to become sterilized that the taxpayers should pony up. It'll save a lot of money in the long run. Better yet, put a checkbox on the state tax form asking for $5 to go into a fund to sterilize shitty parents who will agree to have both a tubal ligation and a vasectomy done. I bet 90% of the people filling out the forms would check that box.

Selling Out

Marketplace Nurenburg by Grant Wood

The Des Moines Register picks up the story of the potential sale of several pieces of art owned by the Cedar Rapids Chamber of Commerce. These include paintings by Grant Wood, Norman Rockwell, and Marvin Cone.

The Cedar Rapids Gazette had this story over two weeks ago:

Four valuable paintings with strong Cedar Rapids ties will be auctioned in New York City next month after spending decades at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.

The paintings — two by Grant Wood, one by Norman Rockwell and one by Marvin Cone — are owned by the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce and have been on loan at the museum at least since 1983.

‘‘Owning valuable pieces of art really isn’t part of our mission,’’ said Amy Johnson Boyle, the chamber’s marketing director.

The chamber’s board for years has deliberated over what to do with the paintings, Boyle said. They could easily sell for more than a half-million dollars, but Johnson insists money is not the chamber’s main motivation.

She said the chamber hopes local buyers step forward to keep the paintings in Eastern Iowa.

Nobody knows for sure, she added, how the chamber received the painting in the first place. ‘‘We cannot determine, based on the records we have, how those four pieces of art were acquired by the chamber,’’ Boyle said. ‘‘There’s no mention of it.’’ Museum director Terry Pitts thinks the chamber has owned the works for
at least several decades.

So somebody gave these paintings to the local Chamber many decades ago and these assclowns just want to go and sell the stuff in New York City.

Why don't they just donate it to the local museum?

You know, the local museum that already contains Grant Wood and Marvin Cone paintings.

Wouldn't that be easy?

Oh, no, no, no.... revenue is needed!

The head of the Chamber in Cedar Rapids is this woman, Lee Clancey. She's the pseudo-Republican former mayor of Cedar Rapids who supported Al Gore in 2000 and wants more illegals imported into the state as a source for cheap slave labor. It makes sense that she would give the green light to this.

Iowa's Tax Cheats Should Stop Reading Blogs

Kevin McCarthy, Iowa House Majority Leader

Joe at the Tax Update Blog:

It looks like the Iowa Tax Amnesty has fallen far short of its authors' expectations, says the Des Moines Register...

...House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy says the real fault is with critics of the amnesty, like the Tax Update...

...Right. People didn't take advantage of the amnesty because of those of us who pointed out that it makes chumps out of folks who pay their taxes, or who came forward to get out of trouble before the amnesty was enacted. That intimidated people who would otherwise straighten out their taxes. Who knew that people who don't pay their taxes were so sensitive?

McCarthy is the same clown who failed to push through a tougher drunk boating law because “Accidents rarely, rarely, if ever, happen on the water due to alcohol consumption. It’s just a fact.”

Jonathan Narcisse Is A Loser Who Doesn't Pay His Bills

Jonathan Narcisse is that entertaining guy you hear on Jan Mickelson's WHO-AM radio show every now and then, and who also recently got elected to the Des Moines School Board.

A lot of people don't like him because on the big issues Narcisse is too much of a straight shooter. The last thing other school board members in Des Moines want to hear is complaining about where all the tax money is going.

Today, the Register has a major hit piece on Narcisse, suggesting that he's some sort of loser who skips out on his bills and who is regularly sued.

On Narcisse's web site, he has an audio recording of his conversation with a Des Moines Register reporter where he tries to explain all the lawsuits.

If you listen to Narcisse's explanation of the 1991 judgment, it just doesn't fly. He blames it on identity theft, but before that he says he had co-signed on a car loan. The reporter says there's nothing in the papers about identity theft. Narcisse quickly changes the subject.

Gee, he makes a lot of excuses.

If you co-sign on a car loan and the other person doesn't pay, you're stuck! You've got to pay! Don't me a dumbass, be a man! Then never do that ever again. Talk show host Dave Ramsey calls that a Stupid Tax, and for good reason.

Do I need to listen any further? No, I really don't.

I don't want to hear the excuses about the unpaid rent on a house ($2400) or the unpaid storage fees for a truck ($5000!) or another car lease gone bad or not paying his attorney's fees or getting sued by the record companies for illegally downloading music.

The question I have for the Des Moines Register is: How come you didn't make this story public a long long time ago? This information has been sitting out there for years. What are you people, too stupid to figure out how to use the Iowa Court Search web site? Can't afford the $25 a month fee for advance case searches?

Does being a bum who doesn't pay his bills or court judgments disqualify Narcisse from sitting on the school board? I don't think so.

Does it make Narcisse a hypocrite that he doesn't pay his bills, but is an advocate for how the taxpayers' money is spent? Eh, that's a tough call. If Narcisse had misspent public money, then yes, definitely, but he hasn't. It's an odd form of projection, don't you think?

I must say that mishandling your personal finances over a long period of time is a major character flaw. And having a desire to become a public official with oversight on such things as budgets from taxpayer money is a big red flag in my book. I'm sure a lot of people, while they like what Narcisse has to say, would reconsider their vote based on what they know now.

I suppose the only person I can compare Narcisse to is Newt Gingrich. Gingrich has had a lot of really good ideas over the years, but his personal life is a mess.

Narcisse, in conversation with the reporter, is correct when he says that the Register should look into the public court records of other elected officials. That's got to be a gold mine of scandal!

Is Donna Brazile Commenting On The State 29 Blog?

Go look.

They Were Headed To New York To Pick Up Their New Drivers Licenses And Voter Registration Cards From Hillary Clinton

From the Associated Press:

The Iowa State Patrol searched Thursday for more than a dozen people who fled following a traffic stop along Interstate 80 west of Des Moines.

The patrol stopped a white minivan in Dallas County about 9 a.m. and as many as 15 people jumped out and ran into a cornfield and a wooded area.

Two people were caught and a patrol plane and a K-9 unit were assisting in the search for the others.

Patrol Lt. Doug Mollenhauer said the van's occupants were believed to be illegal immigrants and that the patrol had contacted officials with Immigration and Custom Enforcement for direction on how to handle the incident.

Maybe they were heading to New York to get drivers licenses and voter registration cards from Hillary Rodham Clinton?

Maybe they were headed to the DeCoster's for work? Let's ask Lt Gov Patty Judge.

Maybe they were headed to Tom Harkin's office to get their Social Security checks?

Or they were going to pick up their fake Social Security cards from Chuck Grassley?

Perhaps they were driving over to Rekha Basu's home to clean out her gutters?

Or to visit Carol Hunter's office at the Des Moines Register for a fiesta?

Or State Representative Wayne Ford's office at the Capitol to show him their phony Mexican Consulate cards?

Or they were looking around for Tom Vilsack to give them a job.

Maybe they were going to rake up Cedar Rapids Chamber Of Commerce President Lee Clancey's yard.

Bienvenidos to Marshalltown!

You don't want to have to pay more for your hamburger, do you?

Look at how many state and national politicians want to give illegals another free pass. They want to give them all drivers licenses, voter registration cards, Social Security, welfare, free health care, in-state tuition at college, etc... They love that cheap slave labor, yes they do. They love exploiting the migrant minority. They love the meth importers. They love raising your taxes for ESL. Yes, they do. They can't win without cheating, can they?

Listen, Eliot Spitzer did some good work as the NY AG by fining that crooked Clark McLeod over $4 million for illegal "spinning" of his stock. If it had been up to me, McLeod would have spent the rest of his life in a Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. But Spitzer's plan to give New York drivers licenses to illegals is insane. I-N-S-A-N-E. Even most hardcore Democrats know that such a plan is political suicide.

What is with so many prominent Democrats? (and a few RINOs) Have they completely lost their minds? It is time to clean house.

Viva La Revolution!

I'm Eighteen

John Deeth:

Iowa City may have problem drinkers, but Iowa City does not have a problem with underage drinking. Rather, Iowa City has a problem with an unjust and unenforceable law. While that's not on the ballot, we in Iowa City can still send a message about prohibition for a class of legal adults.

The 21 year old drinking age is worse than a joke. It's an insult to young adults, whether they drink or not. But the holier than though, we know what's good for you attitude of the 21 bar supporters is insufferable and comes down to: "we want to protect you by taking your rights away."

Their political naiveté is also remarkable. The yes forces either thought a council that had many times voted the issue down would magically change their minds when presented with the petition. Or they fell into the fallacy so common to special interests: "everybody I know is for this, we can't lose." The reason we have a 21 year old drinking age in the first place is that MADD moms vote and students don't. Guess what? This time they did. Did Rick Dobyns and Jim Clayton really expect that the students and bar owners wouldn't organize and get people to vote?...

...When you're 18, you're an adult. End of story.

Others phrase it old enough to fight, old enough to drink, but the pacifist in me steers away from that. Yet the principle is the same. We need to separate the issue of alcohol abuse from the false issue of the legal age. Our society decided on the legal age in 1971, at the height of the Vietnam era draft.

I've known 18 year olds who can drink responsibly. I'm 43 and I can't, so I do the only responsible thing and stay sober, 22 years now. And perhaps it's because of my own hard won sobriety that I feel so strongly about the disconnect between alcohol abuse and age. Some of the problems ordinance advocates cite are real: the permanent spring break, date rape culture, the noise and mess along routers from apartments to bars. But these problems need to be addressed through other solutions. Take age off the table, and deal with alcohol abuse as alcohol abuse.

Because when you're 18, you're an adult. End of story.

Hear, hear! I totally agree with you. Read the whole thing.

Now for this morning entertainment, Alice Cooper (sober 26 years, by the way....) Featuring eventual Iowa resident, the late Glen Buxton on guitar!