Ahnuld to Congress: Giff Us $7 Billion!

Sat   4 Oct 2008   11:58 by McGehee in Chattanooga, TN Talk back [Get Offa My Lawn!] [Here's Your Sign]

California is continuing to jockey for a multibillion-dollar emergency federal loan despite Friday’s congressional approval of a rescue plan for the nation’s troubled credit market. “We’re not out of the woods yet,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said. The governor had sent a letter Thursday to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warning that the state may be forced to turn to the federal treasury for help if it cannot quickly secure a short-term loan for up to $7 billion. » State may tap feds for loan McGehee to Ahnuld: Get stuffed. The American taxpayer shouldn’t have to keep bailing out the Democrat Legislature that keeps spending your state into bankruptcy—apparently about every four years. I thought the 2004 bailout was okay, but the idea was that you only get one visit to the well. And thanks to the banking bailout, the well’s pretty much dry now anyway.

It’s Not Just Mail Carriers

Sun   28 Sep 2008   11:25 by McGehee 2 comments [Coweta County] [Here's Your Sign] [Wackadoodle]

Rude and distracted drivers in Coweta County—longtime readers of The McGehee Zone may already know about the tailgating and center-line crossing that goes on around here—have sent three rural mail carriers to the hospital this summer. Betsy Tomlinson, a substitute carrier who’s driven all 15 of Sharpsburg’s routes, described the trend and the increasing “near misses” more bluntly. “They’re rude. The drivers are just rude,” she said. She described impatient drivers who follow too closely, and then slam on their brakes at the last minute or “sling out” into oncoming traffic to pass the carriers instead of waiting until there are safer sections to pass. While postal carriers pull off the road when they’re able, the problem with Hwys. 154 and 16 is that there aren’t a lot of places where the carriers can pull over. “They’ll get right up on our rear end,” Tomlinson said. “I’ve had people behind me, follow me and watch me box the mail, stop after stop, and after they pass, they honk their horn at me. They get mad because I’m blocking their way, and I’m doing my job. Everybody out there is trying to do their job.” » Mail carriers feel they’re ‘sitting ducks’ for wrecks A couple of weeks ago on our way home from dinner in my wife’s car, we were aggressively tailgated by a driver who didn’t like that Chris was obeying the speed limit. No matter what she did this lunatic didn’t back off for more than a couple of seconds—and then as we turned off the highway toward home, Rage Boy honked to make sure we knew his bad behavior was all our fault. More recently, we were waiting to turn in at a local store, a left turn which mean we had to wait for oncoming traffic. When that traffic cleared, an idiot in a red pickup leaving the store honked at us for making our turn instead of letting him make his ahead of us. Doesn’t it seem to you that acting rudely at a woman driver when her husband is in the car with her is kind of a dumb thing to do? That may be why none of these nutless wonders followed us to reiterate their displeasure face to face. In my own truck, I was recently tailgated and nearly rear-ended by a woman in a pickup who was simply not paying attention to her driving. When I slowed to turn off, I watched in my rearview mirror and saw the precise moment when she realized she was about to plow into the rear end of my Bronco at 45 mph. And because my A/C is still out and I had my rear window partly rolled down for ventilation, I heard the screech of her tires as she locked up her brakes to avoid the collision. What I don’t know is whether she was wishing, as she drove on after I made my turn, that she’d worn her brown pants. If I’d been in anything less massive myself, I probably would have been. At least she had the good grace not to honk at me for her mistake. What will inevitably happen is that one of these rude yahoos will cross paths with another, and they’ll kill each other. Hopefully before they end up killing someone who’s merely stupid, or just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Watch Your Step

Sun   21 Sep 2008   11:21 by McGehee Talk back [Our Times] [Get Offa My Lawn!] [Here's Your Sign]

...that slope is slippery. In a change from the original proposal sent to Capitol Hill, foreign-based banks with big U.S. operations could qualify for the Treasury Department’s mortgage bailout, according to the fine print of an administration statement Saturday night. The theory, according to a participant in the negotiations, is that if the goal is to solve a liquidity crisis, it makes no sense to exclude banks that do a lot of lending in the United States. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson confirmed the change on ABC’s “This Week,” telling George Stephanopoulos that coverage of foreign-based banks is “a distinction without a difference to the American people.” » Foreign banks may get help I beg to differ… Leaving that aside, however: this is why getting the government into the bailout business is ALWAYS a bad idea. There is no logical stopping place. If the government can offer loan guarantees to Chrysler, why can’t it also bail out mortgage lenders? And if it can bail out American corporations, why not foreign ones as well? There will always be a good-sounding argument for taking it that one step further, and at what point does it finally become respectable to say, “Wait a minute, stop! That’s going a step too far!” I submit that the “one step too far” was taken over 70 years ago. Maybe longer.

Wed   10 Sep 2008   13:26

…apropos of nothing I don’t care if Obama meant to refer to Gov. Palin with his lipstick reference, since obviously most people saw it that way. I don’t think “I’m stupid” is any better a message for him to send than “I’m sexist.”

The Collapse of a Candidacy, a Party, and a Movement

Mon   1 Sep 2008   19:36 by McGehee 1 comment [Get Offa My Lawn!] [SARAH!] [Here's Your Sign] [Wackadoodle]

Whose? Well, that depends. The Palin-haters are in full-throated howl with innuendo as the main course, thoroughly seasoned with their insane preconceived notions of what kind of person could possibly (1) live in Alaska and (2) be a conservative Republican. Just check out the comments here for a small sampling, scattered in a long (and growing) thread. They’re so far out there that their candidate is begging them to spin it down a few thousand RPMs. (h/t SBP at the Protein Wisdom Pub.) They won’t listen. Sarah Palin threatens everything these people have told themselves about themselves, and there is no depth to which they will not sink to preserve it. An ultimate descent into madness would be inevitable, had they not already sunk deeply into that pit long ago with their “stolen election” fantasies and their “Bush let 9/11 happen” nightmares. Undoubtedly they’re hoping to stampede Sen. McCain into throwing Palin under the wheels of his campaign bus, but he can neither do so, nor accept an offer by Palin to let her do it herself. And there’s no reason why he should. The question is whether he realizes it. Update: Anyway, I’m supposed to be concentrating on my real writing. So, to all of those vile creatures out there who have no moral qualms about raining character assassination down on a 17-year-old girl just because her mother happens to be a successful and popular Republican who has accomplished more in two years as governor of Alaska than Barack Obama and Joe Biden have in all their combined years in the U.S. Senate: Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

It’s Dukakis-Bentsen!

Sat   23 Aug 2008   8:10 by McGehee 5 comments [Get Offa My Lawn!] [Here's Your Sign]

We interrupt this blogging hiatus to bring you my reaction to breaking news: Michael Dukakis named Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas as his vice presidential running mate early Saturday, balancing his ticket with a seasoned congressional veteran well-versed in foreign policy and defense issues. Dukakis announced the pick on his Web site with a photo of the two men and an appeal for donations. A text message went out shortly afterward that said, “Mike has chosen Senator Lloyd Bentsen to be our VP nominee.” » Dukakis selects Bentsen as running mate This suggests that John McCain will have to pick Spongebob Squarepants to be his running mate. Biden: “I knew Dan Quayle. I worked with Dan Quayle. Dan Quayle was a friend of mine. And Spongebob, you are no Dan Quayle.”

The Perfect Image
Wed   2 Jul 2008   23:53 by McGehee 1 comment [Here's Your Sign]	If I wanted a picture to illustrate the “can’t help themselves” level of stupidity exhibited by some people, it would be the one associated with this old article I stumbled on while following some silly internet bunny trail this evening. Of course, it’s really unfair to the squirrel, because it really didn’t know any better—whereas people (theoretically) do.

The Shape of Things to Come, if Obama Is Elected

Mon   30 Jun 2008   11:09 by McGehee 78° and partly cloudy in Coweta County, GA 2 comments [Get Offa My Lawn!] [Here's Your Sign]

Back in the ‘70s, when “Doonesbury” was still occasionally funny, Garry Trudeau had fun with Jimmy Carter by imagining him with a Cabinet-level “Secretary of Symbolism.” In keeping with the notion that Barack Obama would be a second Carter term… Unity, N.H., is not just small, it’s small and out-of-the-way. The town has no major roads, just winding country ones. It has a single school, the elementary school, no large retail center and no parking. It is an hour and a half from the nearest sizeable airport, and hotels for traveling press are nowhere to be found. Who in the world would hold a political rally for several thousand people here? Barack Obama would. Unity might be one of the worst towns in America in which to hold a major political rally, but symbolically it was ideal for the Obama campaign. Where better to have Hillary Clinton join Obama on stage in a display of party loyalty, showing her supporters that there are no hard feelings for her loss to Obama and urging them to work hard to make him President, than in a town named Unity, where in the New Hampshire primary in January the vote for Obama and Clinton was evenly split—107 apiece? For the attendees, the choice of location would be a nightmare. For the Obama campaign, a campaign based entirely on symbolism, it was perfect. » Used in Unity If America is going to elect its first black president, don’t you think he should be good for something besides symbolism? How is he not making a token of himself here?

Not Necessarily Not the News

Sat   21 Jun 2008   15:49 by McGehee [Here's Your Sign] [Nature]

Matt Drudge, here’s your sign. Drudge has deemed it headline-worthy to point out that Phoenix could see a high temperature of more than 115°F. Granted, such temps are undoubtedly more common in Tucson or Yuma, but Phoenix isn’t exactly in Arizona’s snow-belt. Hell, I may have seen a temperature of more than 115° in Sacramento while I was growing up. Probably not an official temperature, mind you, but that was before they started putting official weather stations on hot blacktop or next to heat-spewing air-conditioner units.

…apropos of nothing
Sun   15 Jun 2008   10:55 by McGehee [Asides] [Here's Your Sign]	In 1976, the American people invited Jimmy Carter to become president and mind the public’s business. He wasn’t very good at it, so in 1980 the American people invited him to go home and mind his own damn business. He’s not very good at that either.

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