Linkmeister

Palin resigns!

My goodness!

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) announced this afternoon she will resign from office on July 26 and return to private life, a stunning decision by last year's Republican vice presidential candidate to leave office before the end of her first term.

I have been observing national politics in this country for about forty years, and I can't think of another case of flameout occurring so quickly after the politician's appearance on the national stage. Mark Sanford had been in Congress for six years before he became Governor of South Carolina. John Ensign had been in Congress for four years before winning a Senate seat in Nevada on his second try. John Edwards had been a Senator for six years when he and John Kerry lost the 2004 election, long before his affair took place. Larry Craig had been in the House for ten years and the Senate for eighteen before his arrest in the Minneapolis airport. David Vitter had been in Congress for four years before his election to the Senate.

Even if you go back in history, Wilbur Mills had served in Congress for thirty-seven years when he took that dip into the fountain in 1974. Dan Rostenkowski had been in the House for thirty-six years when he got caught exchanging stamps for cash at the House Post Office. Bob Packwood had served twenty-seven years in the Senate before his sexual harassment behavior became public knowledge.

Sarah Palin was elected Governor of Alaska in 2006 and today announced her resignation effective July 25, 2009. I think it's fair to say nobody in the Lower 48 (or out here in Hawai'i) had ever heard of her until Senator McCain announced she'd be his running mate on August 29, 2008. In eleven short months she's gone from VP candidate to lame-duck Governor.

One hump or two?

I understand why Obama is letting Congress take the lead on crafting health care reform; he's taken a lesson from the 1993 debacle when Congress was presented with a complicated package and never voted on it, and if Congress writes the reform its authors will be more inclined to fight for it. But I can't help thinking of the old line about camels: they're horses designed by committee.

I worry that whatever emerges is going to be either terribly watered down to reach the lowest common denominator or it's going to be so packed with givebacks to the big-money special interest groups that it won't do the job it should: ensure that the 47 million Americans who don't have insurance can get coverage, and ensure that the rest of us won't be sandbagged by private insurance companies who deny us coverage when we need it most.

This is not good

A few years ago I was given a T-shirt which has in large print on its front "Lead Me Not Into Temptation" and in smaller print below that "...Particularly Bookstores"

This ain't gonna help. It's at the bottom of my hill; it marks its books at two prices: $1 and $3. It opened this week, but I didn't know about it till I went into the mall to pick up a prescription today.

I walked out with two $1 books by Pratchett: Night Watch and Monstrous Regiment.

Blue Dog "Democrats"

Nineteen House Democrats wrote to Speaker Pelosi to say any health care plan must exclude coverage for abortion procedures or they won't vote for it.

Here are their names:

Reps. Dan Boren (D-OK); Bart Stupak (D-MI); Colin Peterson (D-MN); Tim Holden (D-PA); Travis Childers (D-MS); Lincoln Davis (D-TN); Heath Shuler (D-NC) Solomon Ortiz (D-TX); Mike McIntyre (D-NC); Jerry Costello (D-IL); Gene Taylor (D-MS); James Oberstar (D-MN); Bobby Bright (D-AL); Steve Driehaus (D-OH); Marcy Kaptur (D-OH); Charlie Melancon (D-LA); John Murtha (D-PA); Paul Kanjorski (D-PA); and Kathleen Dahlkemper (D-PA).

If one of these is your representative and you think any health care plan ought to include coverage of abortion, you might want to call and say that letter doesn't express your position and that you'd like your representative in Congress to remember that not all constituents think alike.

You fool, you fool!

Dear Governor for-the-moment Sanford: Stop digging!

The old adage is "It ain't the crime, it's the cover-up." Sanford seems to have taken that to heart. Once the crime was discovered, we've been treated to a seemingly-endless series of apologies for his behavior.

How many apologies can one man make? Were I you I'd either be holed up somewhere trying to reconcile with my wife and kids or I'd be instituting divorce proceedings so I could start a new life with my lover. I sure as hell wouldn't be sitting down with The Associated Press for a three-hour interview.

Legislature shoots citizens

Well, that may be a little bit of hyperbole, but telling Internet retailers that they must collect Hawai'i General Excise Tax and rebate it to the state has had the predictable result:

Amazon.com Inc. has informed its marketing affiliates in Hawaii that it is ending its business with them in order to avoid collecting sales tax in the state.

[snip]

In an e-mail sent to Hawaii affiliates on Tuesday, Amazon said it would end its accounts with them effective June 30. "We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of the uncertainty and timing of a veto, and the possibility that a veto could be overridden," Amazon wrote.

Sucks to be you, Hawai'i bloggers with Amazon affiliate accounts. You'll just have to pay your (probably Mainland-based) web hosts out of pocket, rather than with the small commissions you earned from sales through that program.

Parking

A reminder: if you're parking on a hill, turn your front wheels toward the curb. To the right if facing downhill, to the left if facing uphill. See diagram (scroll halfway down).

Why, yes, I see this done incorrectly nearly every damned day.

Now get off my lawn.

Old-time music

Tiring day getting the car detailed ($100 + tax) downtown, so let me point you to an interesting website.

The Kingston Trio sang a lot of different folk songs back in the 1950s and 1960s. Jim Moran has taken up the task of finding YouTube performances by the Trio and then finding other versions on YouTube for comparative purposes. This may sound a little eccentric, but it's fascinating. One of the most interesting to me is The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. I'll bet you thought Roberta Flack originated it, didn't you? Not so. Her version may set the standard by which all others are judged, but it was first sung by Peggy Seeger, who also happened to be the person who inspired Ewan MacColl to write it. Seeger's version was followed by ones by the Trio, Johnny Cash, and -- wait for it -- Elvis Presley. Only then did Roberta Flack record it.

If you know your way around folk music, this site will fascinate you. If you don't, it will educate you. Check it out.

Summer music

NPR has a must-listen list of summer songs which is streamable. It's good, but I object to one thing. It has several songs named "Summertime," but none of them are performed by Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company.

I can fix that!

The opening notes of the guitar intro make this song immediately recognizable, at least to me.

Taxes solve everything!

Dear Senator Collins,

Why do you and your party always look first to tax policy to achieve things? This might have some impact on health care for individual Americans, but it will have zero impact on insurance companies' habit of denying or rescinding coverage and refusing procedures even for the customers they do deign to accept.

The idea of a government-run health insurance program to compete with private plans is troubling even to potential Republican backers of a health care overhaul like Senator Collins.

Ms. Collins said she would like to see the legislation “put more emphasis on health promotion, disease prevention, end of life care,” as well as tax credits for small businesses and self-employed Americans to ease their access to health insurance.

If I can't get a private insurance company to accept me because I've been taking blood pressure medicine for five years, what good is a tax credit?

Ah, romance

Forget the stadium messageboard method, this is the new paradigm for cyber-connected lovers.

Octogenarian detectives? Sure, why not?

Check out Christopher Fowler's Bryant & May series. The two gentlemen are detectives in London's Peculiar Crimes Unit, which is a dumping ground for cases which the regular Metropolitan Police don't want to try to solve. They've been doing this since London was suffering under the Blitz.

It's charming. Bryant's the eccentric, May is the solid dependable one, but both are intelligent. The best part for me is that you learn things along the way. In Book Two, for example, London's underground rivers play a major role. What? You didn't know London had underground rivers? Have a look.

Energy!

Jeepers. It was a cliffhanger (219-212), but the US House today voted in favor of reducing carbon gas emissions and at least making a stab at saving the planet.

Now the Senate, and it's gonna be even harder to do, since there are more climate change deniers there.

Baby steps. Upon reflection, it's a lot larger than a baby step. It's a leap forward across the first abyss; there are still several ahead, but it's a damned good start.