Links, and if this is my Snowmageddon I want a refund

by: Eric B.

Fri Feb 24, 2012 at 10:41:17 AM EST

Used to be, just a short year or so ago, that on snowy days like today you could count on Detroit News doodler Henry Payne to ink up another of those darling cartoons with someone standing in the blowing snow, icicle hanging from his nose, saying to someone else who was similarly evidently cold, "Golly, if global warming gets any worse, I'll have to put another layer on." Or, something like that. It was like clockwork, those cartoons. What's changed? Who knows, but I kind of miss those days.

Onward!

*--Speaking of the weather, the UAW is gathering right now in Detroit to protest Willard Mitt "Mittens" Romney's continued assaults on labor unions (the UAW's Bob King has an Op-Ed in the Freep). At the same time, Willard's campaign connives to make it look like 1,200 people fill Ford Field. Obama's point man on the auto bridge loans, Steve Rattner, takes Willard to task on the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times. Meanwhile, Mad Jack Hoogendyk says he wouldn't have supported the auto industry, and he's running against Fred Upton as point man in Club for Growth's campaign to purchase itself a second Michigan Congressional seat.

*--The national punditocracy tells us all the time that Willard is a man of Michigan. Most Michiganders disagree. If you wanted to chalk this up to provincialism, you'd have a point. After moving to Jackson when I was 7 and growing up there, I would occasionally still get people who'd tell me I wasn't a real Jacksonian because I had the bad luck to be born in Pittsburgh.

*--The last bit on the Republican primary next week, a story in the Chicago Tribune about Democratic meddling. It's not just the MDP, but an Obama Super PAC purchasing ad time.

*--Pete Hoekstra has taken to campaigning with Herman Cain, and it ain't working out too well. In fact, I had to ask why anyone in their right mind would be touring around the state with the disgraced Cain until I remembered that Hoekstra still has a primary to win. Meanwhile, Hoekstra demonstrates his national security chops by being befuddled over why we'd go to lengths to avoid giving the bad guys an easy propaganda win. I realize that his personal views are probably more nuanced than to believe that it's bad to go out of your way to antagonizing people who may be currently sitting on the sidelines of a conflict, but it does reinforce my suspicions that on the right, it's widely held that war as an endeavor is a lot more like playing a massive game of Stratego than a complex mix of diplomacy and deliberate military action.

*--Maura Corrigan says that booting people off welfare hasn't hurt anyone. Gilda Jacobs, president of the Michigan League for Human Services, as does someone from the Salvation Army says that's not the case. Meanwhile, the number of people on employer health care plans has dropped further in Michigan in the last decade than anywhere else but California.

*--An ethics violation is going to be filed by Santorum man and notorious gay basher Glenn Clark.

*--Factory farms, the likes of which enjoy the unfettered support from the Michigan Farm Bureau (to the detriment of actual family farms), do indeed create antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

*--The laborers are the latest union group to endorse Dan Kildee in the 5th Congressional District race. In the 8th, Lance Enderle calls Mike Rogers a "liar" over drilling in the Great Lakes (every Michigan Republican voted the same way as Rogers, by the way, and that includes Tim Walberg who previously has said he actually does support oil and gas drilling in the lakes).

*--In a move as unsurprising as a February snow, paperwork is filed to recall Janice Daniels, the daffy tea bagging mayor of Troy.

*--Dear Stephen Henderson: University presidents never think it's a good idea to allow the formation of another union on campus, their previous academic experience aside. And, while there are 400 people who are overtly opposed, that would leave a remaining 800 to be heard from. The proper way to gauge the support of those most affected is to allow them to vote.

*--Psst, Magic Frank: Bjorn Lombard Lomborg thinks climate change is a serious problem.