Archive for: August, 2008

Sarah Palin Facts

Aug 29 2008 Published by under Candidates, Politics

Josh Trevino, Ben Domenech and I are doing a little digging into some of the lesser known facts about our next Vice President Sarah Palin. We’re posting them at www.PalinFacts.com. Here’s a little sample:

  • Sarah Palin used to wrestle kodiak bears in Alaskan bare knuckles fight clubs.
  • Sarah Palin once bagged a caribou by staring it down until it died.
  • Sarah Palin turned down a job as skipper of a Deadliest Catch boat because it wasn‚Äôt challenging enough
  • Sarah Palin fishes salmon by convincing them it‚Äôs in their interest to jump into the boat.
  • Sarah Palin once guided Santa‚Äôs sleigh through an Alaskan blizzard with the light from her smile.

Bookmark the site or subscribe to the RSS for more facts.

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Are Obama-Biden Good for Women?

Aug 28 2008 Published by under Barack Obama, Candidates, Democrats, Jobs, John McCain, Pandering, Political Parties, Politics, Republicans

Not on equal pay and glass ceiling issues. After Biden’s cry for equal pay in his acceptance speech last night, I took a look at equal pay in his office and posted the following thoughts at The Next Right.

One of Joe Biden’s major applause lines tonight came when he demanded equal pay for women. That’s a worthy cause to be sure. But is Biden practicing what he preaches?

Maybe not.

Despite the fact that Biden employs 27 women and only 14 men (could that be a Clinton problem?), very few of the women and men share common titles. The one job where there is overlap is staff assistants. These are traditionally entry level low-wage jobs in congressional offices.

So how do Biden’s salaries stack up?

The average male staff assistant in Biden’s office (based on the most recent salary figures) made $39,162 in the time period.

The average woman in that position made $21,323.

Hey Joe! Before you demand something of others, maybe you should lead by example. Why not start by giving the women in your office a raise?

Update: It also looks like the highest salaries are reserved for men, despite their minority status. 4 out of 14 men made more than $40,000 in the period, but only 5 of 27 women cleared that mark. Two of the men earned $70k, but the highest paid woman made only $46,000

Update 2: Does Obama walk the walk? It looks like he’s certainly better than Biden. A review of his staff for the same period at least shows remarkable consistency in pay for the jobs carrying the same title. Although of the twenty highest salaries in his office, 13 are men and 7 are women.

Update 3: It also works going the opposite direction. Of the 20 lowest salaries in Obama’s office, 13 are women and 7 are men. (And please note, there is no overlap between those two lists, and I have not included anyone that worked less than the full time period.)

Update 4: For those who asked, one final note before I do some real work. Of the 20 highest salaries on John McCain’s staff, 13 are women, and 7 are men.

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Jackson Browne’s Desperate Cry For Attention

Aug 25 2008 Published by under Celebrities, John McCain, Music, Politics, Pop Music, Radio, Republicans

While driving to get a haircut with T2 yesterday, I was listening to the radio. The DJ on the stationtook off on a tangent about Jackson Browne and that, of course, led to him talking about the McCain ad over which Browne sued the campaign, the RNC and the Republican Party of Ohio.

First, the campaign didn’t make the ad, and neither did the RNC. Browne clearly needs to stick to songwriting because he’s no lawyer (and apparently, neither are his lawyers). Suing McCain and the RNC for an OH GOP ad is like suing McDonald’s because you got a bad cheeseburger at Wendy’s – based on the theory that they all make hamburgers and therefore share in the liability.

All three of these groups are separate legal entities. Suing one for the actions of the other is not legally supportable unless you can prove collusion, which is unlikely (and I’m not even sure that would support anything other than an FEC violation).

Second, Browne’s suit is clearly politically motivated. You don’t sue organizations that had nothing to do with the ad unless you’re trying to make a political point. Browne could have sued the Ohio GOP, but he knew that wouldn’t make news. So they named the RNC and McCain as well. This is about politics and the alleged infringement is BS.

Third, very telling about Browne’s suit is this passage:

The 59-year-old singer claims his reputation has already been damaged and is seeking more than $75,000 in damages.

Browne released “Running on Empty” ‚Äî the song and an album by the same name ‚Äî in 1977. According to the lawsuit, the album has sold more than 7 million copies.

So Browne is suing over a song that’s 31 years old. He’s claiming $75,000 in damages. It seems likely to me that Browne’s sales as a result of this little publicity ploy should result in more sales of the album/song than he has seen in years otherwise.

This isn’t about a musician who was grievously injured by the misuse of one of his songs by a politician he does not support. It is much more likely that Browne suing McCain was more about getting his name in the paper and moving some units of an old song that was likely to remain largely forgotten otherwise.

Need further evidence that Browne’s political activism has hampered his sales, leading to his latest publicity outing? Try this from Billboard.com

With his first four albums, Browne built a loyal following that helped him break into the mainstream with 1976′s The Pretender. During the late ’70s and early ’80s, he was at the height of his popularity, as each of his albums charted in the Top Ten. Midway through the ’80s, Browne made a series of political protest records that caused his audience to gradually shrink…

Browne hasn’t released a new album in six years, instead pursuing “intimate (read: small), acoustic shows around the globe”.

Unable to draw an audience, and unable to sell his unique brand of burned out hippy protest albums, Browne is left with only one option: strike out in a ridiculously frivolous lawsuit at a campaign that has nothing to do with your claim in a desperate attempt to get attention.

Well, Jackson, you’ve succeeded.

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@MatthewStoller: Getting It Wrong For 30 Years

Aug 25 2008 Published by under Stuck On Stupid

After my post this weekend regarding Matt Stoller’s venomous attack on cancer patients (oh, and John McCain, too), it looks like some others have been doing some digging on Matt’s unsubstantiated claims.

Jon Henke at the next right also took issue with Stoller’s claim that POWs suffer more illness than others. What did he find?

Stoller provided no citation for his claim – and I cannot imagine what the link could be between being a former POW and getting cancer (he does not offer suggestions) – so I checked. According to a Institute of Medicine study of WWII and Korean War POW’s, he’s wrong.

In summary, excepting psychiatric illness, this report shows little evidence of wide spread ill health among former prisoners of war compared with their non-POW veteran counterparts.

While there are some medical conditions associated with POW’s, they are largely things like joint pain and issues related to the physical duress. These are quality-of-life, and not mortality, issues. Otherwise, there is “little evidence of wide spread ill health among former” POW’s.

The Institute of Medicine study did except psychiatric illnesses – which, I assume consists of PTSD, readjustment to civilian life and the like – which would seem in one degree or another to most veterans of war. I checked on that, as well. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, which did research specifically on the subject of “the relative cognitive status of US Navy Vietnam-era POWs”…

The few statistically significant differences between repatriated POWs and controls showed better intellectual functioning in the POWs.

Yup. As I suspected, Matt Stoller just made that up – as he does with most of his “facts”. There is little to support the idea that POWs suffer anymore health problems than others, and in fact, POWs seemed to be more mentally acute, rather than less.

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When Are The Democrats Going To Denounce Matt Stoller?

Aug 23 2008 Published by under Bloggers, Craziness, Stuck On Stupid

My dear friend Matthew “Go Ahead Punch Me In The Face” Stoller is at it again.

It is very likely that McCain has cancer or some other serious illness. There’s no reason McCain wouldn’t let reporters look at his records otherwise. McCain is 72 years old and he was a POW, a member of a group with high rates of illness due to ill-treatment on the part of their captors.

Stoller makes the claim that McCain is hiding something despite the fact that earlier in the same post he points out that reporters were invited to look at his records – albeit with conditions. It’s simply not true that McCain won’t let the media look at them (as Matt states before contradicting himself). What McCain refused to do is let our ridiculous stable of yellow journalists give him a drive by colonoscopy, so to speak. He chose not to let them pour over every minute detail looking for something they could exploit to make news.

Stoller, compared to real journalists, doesn’t actually need facts. He just makes stuff up, or quotes what sounds like they might actually be facts without ever backing them up. For instance:

[McCain] was a POW, a member of a group with high rates of illness due to ill-treatment on the part of their captors.

Is that true? Sounds like it could be, but who knows. Did he actually do any research to verify that claim? He certainly didn’t cite a source. Did he make it up? It would be his style.

Further, Matt jumps clearly afield with this little bit of stupidity

Cancer is relevant to the Presidency. Misleading the press about one’s health is relevant to the Presidency. This is not just a dude looking for a job, he’s going to have his hand on the nuclear trigger. Imminent death from a terminal disease kind of skews your perspective on this, you know what I’m saying?

Actually, Matt, I have no idea what your saying. Most people that I have been close to who died after a long fight with terminal illness (three grandparents among them), had developed an incredible respect for life. They had come to intimately understand the fragile nature of it and felt it was precious – not something to throw away.

Stoller, on the other hand, seems to imply that someone close to death from a terminal disease would be more than happy to take those around him down with them. That’s simply not a logical argument to make if you account for the number of deathbed confessions, last minute searches for God, and people trying to reconcile themselves with the great beyond.

Yesterday I was challenged by a pair of lefty Twitter users for not denouncing Jerome Corsi, an extremist fruit cake unfortunately aligned with the GOP. Now, anybody who has asked me about Corsi’s book has heard me decry his brand of venom. I had not, however, posted on the topic, so somehow I was abetting Corsi.

If that’s the measure we are to use, where are the Democrats who will step up and denounce Stoller for his repeated and over-the-top, Anne Coulter-esque diatribes? Why is the left, which was quick to challenge me, so unwilling to call out Matt Stoller and his absurd rants?

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