Palin for President?

Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska intends to resign from office.  Sarah Palin is running for President.

WASILLA, Alaska - Sarah Palin made a surprise announcement Friday that she will resign as governor of Alaska in a few weeks, saying she will try to "effect positive change" from outside government.

How, in the name of Goodness, is the Republican Party to save itself NOW?  She has all of the electability and pizzaz of Rod Blagojevich, for Goodness's sake.

There are several possibilities:

1. The Republican Party has gone screw-the-pooch, bucck-nekkid on YouTube© Mad-Beyond-Belief whackadoodle.
2. The Republican Party has finally decided that this representative-government shit is a drag, and let's go for the Bolivian-Cuban-Paraguay junta approach.
3. Sarah flew to Argentina, also, too, 'coz she's the secret soulmate of Terry Sanford.
4. Somebody's got some fearsome negatives up there in Alaska, up there.
   

Time will tell.  Save yer canned goods, the Apocalypse Boyse are horsing up.
And read the letter right here. 
I'm very interested in the quote:

Todd and I are looking at more than half a million dollars in legal bills in order to set the record straight. And what about the people who offer up these silly accusations? It doesn’t cost them a dime so they’re not going to stop draining public resources – spending other peoples’ money in their game.
It’s pretty insane – my staff and I spend most of our day dealing with this instead of progressing our state now. I know I promised no more “politics as usual,” but this isn’t what anyone had in mind for Alaska.
Huh? If she's getting hounded by unsubstantiated legal abuse from the Left - nobody in the lower 49 can kick loose a dime for her Legal Defense fund? Something's smelling awful here.

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OR IS SHE PREGNANT AGAIN?

If so, the BTrog Blog predicts the following names:

1. If it's a boy, it'll be Twink (in honor of Michael Jackson.)
2. If it's a girl, it'll be Twit.  Junior.
   

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Mediocrity and its Excesses.

We little recognize that for which we trade our freedoms and abilities, for it is far more evanescent than the concrete benefits. It is easy to define a certain point, by which convergent vectors may be described; but divergent ones, too, point "somewhere." They may not describe a point, but they surely do describe something, indeed.

Consider, for instance, the TSA and the preservation of Homeland Security. We wait for interminable hours in the airports, to be screened and scrutinized. Surely, we can describe why we can do this - but we can only vaguely see why we should not. It is a waste of human time, multiplied by the hundred-thousand. For those who produce little, little is wasted. For those who produce much, a theft of even a few minutes is a theft nonetheless.

In the aggregate, what would the loss be to an economy, if one airline were to eliminate all the screening procedures, operate from its own airports to abstract the risk from the fellow-travelers, and act in the manner of a taxi service? Would it suffer the occasional plane being blown up - and if so, would that be a net financial loss, compared with the thousands of hours of human productivity saved?

That's an extreme example. But how often do we waste excellence in the service of mediocrity, and joyfully so?

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American Political Movements

For those unfamiliar with politics in America, I must point out a new phenomenon.

But first an aside. A worthy thing it is, that we have sporting events set aside for persons who, through no fault of their own, but perhaps from birth catastrophes, fetal anoxic distress or chromosomal aneuploidy, are physically fit but mentally infirm.

These competitions are called The Special Olympics. They reward agility, teamwork and health, and are universally delightful to both participants and their loving families. Some of the participants are indeed so impaired that they are unable to distinguish between the Olympics Special and Olympics Regular. Thus, the award on the mantelpiece will be a source of pride, and the coming Vancouver Winter Games in 2010 and the London Summer Games of 2012, will be watched by many "defending champions" with admiration for their "fellow competitors."

For those as decrepit in body as mind, we have Tea Parties. Many of the participants, in fact, believe that they are part of some sort of Political Movement. They will watch the upcoming televised Republican National Convention in a few years bursting with the same sort of pride.

There are, to be sure, just as many dreadfully impaired sorts who are part of the Global Warming Movement - but Global Warming does not offer the shibboleth of abject stupidity as an entrance fee. Indeed, there are many obnoxious dolts who are proponents of Global Warming - but that alone does not suffice for identity with cretinhood.

Tea Partiers, briefly, are those who wish to organize to have everything change, except for the things which they wish to stay the same. That does not suffice for evidence of nincompoopery. The fact that their mathematical skills are so rudimentary as to cast into doubt, say, their ability to make change, is worrisome.

Cut all the taxes. Balance the Budget. Do not touch Defense. Those three tenets are sufficient to create a mathematical univese which cannot be solved.

They also rally around the phrase "No Taxation Without Representation!" which calls into question their ability to parse the sentence. Defend the Constitution and Restore Our Christian Nation, is another paradoxical mandate.

These things are what suffice for American Political Debate. They are not at the complexity of mental gymnatics of the question, say, "Is a slug really a snail, or something different?"

I hope that this suffices as informative for our non-American readership.