Assortment of links and other crap

by: Eric B.

Fri Sep 14, 2012 at 11:33:43 AM EDT

It's one of those days when a morning crawl of news sites and Google alerts and social media links turns up lots of grist for the mill. Alas, it's also sunny and the pull to enjoy it before the sun takes its winter nap is strong enough to mean that there isn't time to post about all of it indiidually. Fortunately, God gave us a solution in aggregation.

Onward!

*--Just the other day, I posted something about how benevolent overlord Rick Michigan isn't the extremist teabagger that some on The Left have tried to paint him as. Case in point, who said this (okay, you know the answer, but...):

He compared raising Michigan’s gas tax and vehicle registration fees to getting an oil change on a new car.

“If you don’t make that investment (in an oil change), how much money is it going to cost you to replace an engine?" Snyder said. "This isn't any different.

“Too often we look at the public sector as a cash-in-cash-out thing. Over a 30-year time period, I think we’re saving money (by raising the gas tax and vehicle registration fees). It’s actually a reduction of cost.

When is the last time any Republican elected to prominent office in the state of Michigan said anything like this? Maybe not since Milliken. Certainly not in the last decade. This is also why everyone -- Democrat and those few sane Republicans left standing -- ought to be out, going to work hammer-and-tong, 25-hours-a-day on the silly TABOR-style ballot proposal. Enough with the dumb equivalencies that 25x25 and/or Protect our Jobs are just as bad because their good ideas to be enshrined in the wrong place. It's a terrible, stupid idea that would be enshrined in the wrong place.

*--Speaking of which, the latest polls have majority support for Protect Our Jobs, the home health care union (this is the one that the silly asses at the Mackinac Center have been calling an SEIU scam for the last three years), and the two-thirds majority for a tax hike. Yeah, I know, it's polling for ballot proposals. Again, however, you can argue that Protect Our Jobs and 25x25 don't belong in the constitution. Neither does the two-thirds for a tax hike, and in addition to that it's also an incredibly stupid idea.

*--McCotter's staffers start to wind their way through the legal system.

*--You will pledge allegiance to freedom or face the state's wrath! To answer your question, yes, I did indeed note the irony in that the greatest human trumpets for freedom are always the first to tell you how to express appreciation for it. Some of us had ancestors who left Europe to get away from this kind of thinking.

*--Fred Upton, so recent off kicking the stuffing out of Mad Jack Hoogendyk, shows off how he did it. After decades as a moderate, he positioned himself as a barking mad extremist. On display in an Op-Ed in the Moonie Times, he says that it's necessary for us to ignore future energy sources for fossil fuels. He also announces his continued support for politically-named legislation and leaves the extremist's calling card, making up his own facts. 1. Solyndra, no matter how often this nonsense gets repeated, didn't fail because it received government assistance; it failed because the Chinese pulled the rug out from under it by flooding the market with solar panels produced below a cost the company could manufacture them for. 2. The Keystone pipeline won't pump oil in the form of petroleum, it will pump a synthetic version refined out of tar sands. It's literally like a junkine who can't find a decent fix, so he'll settle for the shit cut with battery acid instead of baby formula.