Remembering Al Gore’s Uncle
Posted on March 31, 2009 at 11:32 pmTom Humphrey recalls his encounters with Whit LaFon:
I called Judge LaFon back when he was accused of drug trafficking and various other misdeeds by World Net Daily as part of a curious smear campaign that, rightfully I suspect, never got any traction in mainstream media. But it was a big deal among the right-wing radio clan.
The allegations were so sensational, I gave him a call just to see if he’d say anything. (The Gore gang wasn’t.) He answered the phone, but declined any comment on the record. I left that one lay.
I saw him some time later at an event honoring veterans at the state capitol. He was a frail old gentleman wearing one of those American Legion hats and a name tag. Introduced myself, chatted a moment, and mentioned the effort to contact him earlier.
He said Al had told him to be quiet about that “pile of (animal excrement),” but that it was absurd conjecture and had made him madder than anything he had ever experienced — and he was really like to vent about it sometime. I gave him a card with my phone number. He never called.
Blogger Cancels HBO
Posted on at 11:28 pmWell, except for that last sentence, it’s fine.
Nothing Is Over
Posted on at 10:28 pmSen. Doug Henry (reportedly) tells a constituent that the fight to preserve Bells Bend is not over.
What’s It Like Being A Limbaugh?
Posted on at 9:36 pmRush’s cousin lets you in on the feeling:
Well, he’s the relative you don’t see much, who shows up on Christmas Eve on his own plane with an anchor lady you didn’t know he was dating until your friend’s dad told you the night before. He’s fairly loud, but all the Limbaughs are. He’s that one over there with the cousins singing rowdy Christmas carols around the piano. Yeah, the one with the cochlear implant, the guy holding a humidor. He’s Cousin Rusty, and he’s OK.
Sometimes he invites you to his house for Thanksgiving, you and every single one of your relatives, all expenses paid, and he puts you up in a resort that makes you feel like a movie star. He gives you a room key that doubles as his credit card and you can’t help but charge Chanel sunglasses on it for everything he did the previous year that had made your job as a new teacher in a liberal high school any harder.
He’s the guy who puts “March of the Penguins” on his home movie theater screen for the little cousins to watch and makes sure his candy bowls are filled with jelly beans and doesn’t swear when my nephew tries to throw his antiques down the stairs. He’s the guy who came from nothing to something and knows what it feels like to miss Missouri.
One Thanksgiving he stands in front of all us relatives in his Versailles-looking living room, and before my grandpa prays over our meal, Cousin Rusty apologizes. He says he’s afraid he has made it tough to be a Limbaugh this past year, and his voice breaks like I have never heard it do before. Cousin Rusty is OK.
Now that I’m at Columbia University, some relatives like to ask about the “climate” at school, and if I’m becoming “liberal,” like it’s a disease. I don’t think they understand that you don’t have to agree with your family to love your family.
Yet when people ask me about him or when I hear my name during roll call the first day of a new semester, I still get this complex. Will they like me less? Do they already have a view of me? Have they pegged me as loud, opinionated and ultra-conservative? Should I raise my hand less? Do they think I’m looking at their Obama buttons with disdain? Should I wear a T-shirt announcing I didn’t vote for Bush or McCain?
Would it be OK if I did?
Free The Donkey
Posted on at 8:52 pmThe new TNDP blog has now officially soft launched. I’m still not a fan.
Free the Donkey! Bring back the Mouth!
Al Gore’s Right Hand’s House Party
Posted on at 8:19 pmDru Fuller reports:
Roy Neel and Jenny Clad will host a house concert with Maura O’Connell June 4 to raise money for the Maternal and Infant Health and Outreach Worker program. Tickets to Roy Neel’s front porch picking are $60. Call 322-4178 to take part.
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McCain LBJs Obama
Posted on at 8:16 pmSnap:
“The second thing I would have done, probably, is went ahead and announced the overall additional 10,000 troops, rather than be accused of a Lyndon-Johnson-style incrementalism,” said McCain. “Because it’s very clear what General McKiernan asked for.”
Jeez, It’s Just Where Empire’s Go To Get Defeated, Chill Out
Posted on at 7:18 pmJohn McCain attempts to put the Afghani front in the War on Terror in perspective:
“It’s [Afghanistan's] not as tough as Iraq, and don’t let anyone tell you that it is, because when we started the [2007] surge, Iraq was virtually in a state of collapse.”
Getting Ready To Play The World’s Tiniest Violin Just For Sen. Joe Haynes’ Lack Of Photo ID
Posted on at 7:16 pmMary Mancini is moved by an impassioned plea.
Shooting The GOP Straight
Posted on at 7:09 pmBob Krumm gets real with his people:
Republicans, here’s some tough love: Aside from the defense of our nation, getting federal spending under control is the most important issue America will face now and into the future. This budget proposal is a “we’re not as bad as the Democrats” plan. It is not a good plan. It is not even a tolerable plan.
Do over, and bring back a better budget proposal, or make plans now to cease to exist as a party.
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Gore Power
Posted on at 6:09 pmIt has increased the further he has has gotten from government service:
The greatest irony of Gore’s career is that he’s arguably more influential outside of government than when he was nearly atop it. His lecture series on global warming became a blockbuster Hollywood film, then won him a Nobel Prize. Yet he’s criticized by conservatives and lampooned in the television show South Park.
Gore took no post in the Obama administration, though he almost surely would have had one if he’d asked. Yet in many ways, he has more freedom to advance his agenda unencumbered by government obligations.
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Senator Alexander Wants To Stop The Runaway Obama Debt Train
Posted on at 6:01 pmI don’t recall hearing this much about the Bush runaway debt train, but maybe I am misremembering:
“We haven’t had as much debt as the president proposes since the end of WWII when we were spending and borrowing whatever we needed because we were fighting a war,” Alexander said. “This amendment would force the Senate to find 60 votes for a budget resolution if a budget called for a total public debt beyond 90 percent of the gross domestic product in any given year.”
The Alexander amendment would raise a point of order against any budget resolution that estimates a gross federal debt exceeding 90 percent of GDP in any year covered in the budget. The point of order could only be waived by a 60 vote majority of the Senate. According to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, President Obama’s budget begins its first year with a total debt of more than 95 percent of GDP and grows the debt to over 100 percent of GDP in 2017.
Ramping Up The Funding
Posted on at 5:49 pmBen Cunningham thinks it unseemly that a Tennessee town spent $600,000 to light up their interstate exits.
Viewing War From The Enemy’s Perspective
Posted on at 5:46 pmDaniel Larison with the insight:
As I said earlier this year, one need only think for half a minute about what our response would be and what our responses have been to what we regarded as purely unprovoked attacks, and it is fairly easy to understand what the response of another nation would be under similar circumstances. Did 9/11 cause the vast majority of Americans to ask, “How did our government get us into this mess?” Obviously not. It did cause most people to ask, “Why do they hate us?” to which the official and popular answer has been, “Because they are irrational maniacs bent on destroying our way of life.” Even to the extent that it was permitted to discuss the possible role our policies had in generating hostility and resentment against us, the conclusion in mainstream circles has always been that those policies were basically sound and necessary. Of course, the public tends to accept official answers during an emergency and in the years following it, even when these answers come in the form of propaganda that insults their intelligence, and in an emergency solidarity with the government tends to push everything else to the side. So even in the unlikely event that a majority of Iranians saw the Iranian nuclear program as the intolerable danger to international peace that Washington says it is, rather than the legitimate national pursuit most Iranians actually see it as being, launching strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities would ensure that whatever dissenters there are would be radicalized and pushed into the arms of their leaders, whose oversimplified, perhaps largely false, description of the motives of the attackers would become the widely-accepted one.
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You Don’t Want A Messianic Apocalyptic Cult Controlling Atomic Bombs
Posted on at 5:33 pmWell, you really don’t do ya?
Quote Of The Day
Posted on at 4:49 pmThe most elemental fact about the Limbaugh career might be that, outside of seriously corrupt dictatorships, nobody has made as much money from politics as Rush Limbaugh.
Corker On Gill: “Chrysler Is Toast”
Posted on at 4:32 pm
Via Steve Gill:
On the financial viability of Chrysler, Corker admitted that the auto giant is in its final days. “I will say in this particular case Chrysler is toast. They have no ability to be a standalone.” Corker also noted that Fiat will essentially acquire Chrysler for nothing and that U.S.taxpayers will never recover the billions in bailout money “loaned” to the company.
Senator Corker also expressed concerns about the Obama Administration’s willingness to give up on the dollar as the primary world currency. “I do want you to know that we have begun meetings with the IMF on this whole SDR (Special Drawing Rights) issue and it in fact becoming currency in leiu of the US Dollar…”
Metro Schools Sacks Human Resources
Posted on at 4:09 pm…for allowing sex criminals to be hired on their watch:
Four Metro Nashville Public Schools human resources employees were asked to resign, following a district investigation linking lax hiring practices with the employment of a support employee who was hired while under investigation by another school district.
MNPS announced the resignations in a press release, and did not name the support employee involved. Calls to spokespersons for MNPS were not returned…
…The resignations follow a wave of three MNPS employees charged with sex-related counts in the last month. Donelson Middle School employee Ronald Boykin has charged by Metro Nashville Police on counts of sexual battery and assault by an authority figure, and officers learned at the time of the arrest that outstanding warrants exist for Boykin in Chattanooga. Bob Epley, who supervises Metro school bus drivers, has been charged with hiring children to perform sexual acts. And earlier in March, Kennedy Middle School Principal Ronald B. Anderson was arrested on 12 counts of sexual battery by an authority figure.
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