THIS IS JOURNALISM?

Even in the Washington Times: “Hundreds turn out to cheer at GOP darling’s book tour,” referring to the first stop in Sarah Palin’s book tour in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

GOP darling. How, um, ... snotty.

At least the Times was embarrassed enough to change the sub-headline; by mid-morning it became “Hundreds turn out to cheer at GOP's former vice presidential candidate.”

JUST GO

Time for the power elite on both sides to get up and get out.

A TASTE OF THINGS TO COME

Government’s done so well with the swine flu pandemic:

In the metro area, free swine flu shots are only being made available to people in priority groups: pregnant women, people who live with or care for children younger than 6 months old, health care workers, anyone 6 months to 24 years old, and those age 25 to 64 who have health conditions that put them at higher risk for complications from the flu.

"The vaccine supplies that we have received are not ample enough to vaccinate the general public," says Mary Anderson, spokeswoman for the Montgomery County Health and Human Services. "Eventually, there will be plenty of vaccine so that anyone who wants to get a vaccination will be able to get one."

Yep. About the time the flu season ends.

PALIN-ODES?

Victor Davis Hanson assessing the Palin phenomenon:

I would trust the judgment of someone with Palin’s background on matters of Iran or Honduras or Putin far more than I would someone of Obama’s resume.... We know now that you can do nothing and still finish as the head of Harvard Law Review, or win a Nobel Prize, but if you miss an antlered moose, or run out of gas in the tundra, or fall overboard on a salmon boat, there is no Norwegian committee or Harvard Law Dean to bail you out.

And a point I’d like to see repeated over and over again:

[W]hat I learned over years of farming—dealing with California labor, environmental, legal, and tax regulations, pruning, tractor driving, listening to my grandfather, and handling unsavory characters, understanding plant physiology and fruit-production, etc.—I think gave me a different, but in the long run as good an education as a BA/PhD in Classical languages.

Better, I’d say. The snobbery of the non-productive “elite” is damning.

KISS YOUR FREEDOMS GOODBYE

Andrew Napolitano:

We do not have two political parties in this country, America. We have one party; called the Big Government Party. The Republican wing likes deficits, war, and assaults on civil liberties. The Democratic wing likes wealth transfer, taxes, and assaults on commercial liberties. Both parties like power; and neither is interested in your freedoms.

Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn't care about the Constitution, it doesn't care about your inalienable rights, it doesn't care about the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights, it doesn't even read the laws it writes.

Read it in full.

PALIN DERANGEMENT SYNDROME

Newsweek advertised its cover story on the release of Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue” by asking, “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?”

But the real question is ”How do you solve this problem without Sarah?”

By the way, who has better legs?

And yes, I am a dirty old man.

ROAD TRIP

I-66 from Manassas to Washington DC suffers from severe congestion daily. So what does the Virginia Department of Transportation do? Build more roads, or commission yet another study on how to get commuters out of their cars?

Three guesses; the first two don’t count.

Something might get done if the entirety of Congress were forced to live in, say, Haymarket and be required to be in their offices at the Capitol every day at 8 a.m. sharp.