Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Friday, October 06, 2006

Election season is here. How can I tell? The first sign for me is the increasing number of stupid comments being made by incumbants of the US House of Representatives at kiss and shake gatherings. Wisconsin Representative Frank Lasee suggested that it should be at least legal and maybe mandatory for teachers to carry a little heat in the classroom.

I'll let that sink in for a few minutes.

This guy's a Republican who, if he follows the general trends of his party, thinks most teachers are basically incompetent to teach someone else's children (his are probably in private school somewhere) and yet he thinks we should put loaded firearms in their hands? Don't get me wrong. I think the recent spate of school shootings deplorable but maybe this guy should work on child porn, parenting skills and violence on TV and videogames issues instead of turning algebra class into "High Noon" in Tombstone.

The next sign is the increasing font size found on the Drudge Report. At this rate, by the time election day rolls around Matt Drudge will have one HUGE word for you to click on. Today's headline was about Nanci Pelosi and a comment she made about needing a woman to clean House. Of course, Drudge focused on the inflammatory line but if the substance of her comments is considered there's a lot to recommend them...at least to me. She wants to eliminate the federal deficit (not the debt) which I'm all about. I've been calling for that for the last five years. Want to run a war? Do it but then tell the American people they have to give up something to fund the troops. I love the troop support but what we as a nation are doing is supporting them by loading the young men and women that are fighting on our behalf with a load of debt that they'll spend the rest of their lives paying off. You want to spend $2 bllion a day (the cost of the war) then you gotta cut $2 billion a day out of people's art funding and scholarship money and local police force enhancement grants. On the flip side, if you want to cover every child in the nation with some sort of health care plan then you've got steal that money from another program or you have to raise taxes. I have to balance my budget, our students at Gordon have to pay their bill in full before we allow them to take classes and I think the Federal Gov't should adopt a pay as you go program. She also wants to enact legislation that breaks the link between lobyists and legislators. While I doubt that any legislation she might try to enact will work for very long (money always finds a way to power-it should be the Davies' First Law of Historical Action or something) it at least sends a message.

Anyways, here in Georgia, the Republican Governor is pimp slapping his electoral opponent and, in what may be one of the most amazing, audacious and effective political strategies I've ever seen, mananged to make a martyr out of the person his Democratic challenger beat in the primary after a long and viciously negative campaign. Sonny Purdue, in a single commerical, turned defeated candidate Kathy Cox into a victim of his opponent, Mark Taylor, and a martyr for his campaign. It's about as politcally brilliant a move as I've ever seen. Kind of slimy but politics usually is. The whole sausage metaphor really applies here of course.

Well, I've got a splitting headache so I'll sign off. Hopefully I'll have the post mid-term update sometime this weekend.

Thanks for reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |