Plunderbund

John McCain is a supposed “straight talker”. He even has a “Straight Talk Express” (bus and plane). When it comes to his military record, he’s neither straight talker or straight shooter it seems. The questions that his campaign doesn’t want to answer, let alone be asked, could easily be dismissed.
All […]

Eric wrote this earlier today in reaction to Obama’s speech about race.
I got the sense today that Barack Obama was tired. Tired of the hatred and fear-mongering insanity that has gripped not just Republicans, but Democrats as well. I know I get tired when I have to endure the same types of slurs I saw […]

Lots of videos, I know, but they’re just too good not to share. Lawrence Lessig outlines two new movements in America; Change Congress and Lessig for CA-12… maybe. This really is a fantastic video.

We’ve been talking a lot about firearm regulation here at Plunderbund this past year, and I even mentioned in passing I was taking a CCW/handgun safety course earlier in December. Last week, I purchased a handgun. As of today, I’m licensed to carry that handgun concealed. I wanted to relate my impressions […]

There’s been lots of smoke out in the blogosphere recently about Marc Dann. And while Dann’s performance hasn’t been quite at the level I might have hoped, that doesn’t really excuse the kind of personal mudslinging that’s been going on sans evidence. I don’t want to link to the RABid post in question, […]

American prominence on the world stage has not been due to some issue of “national character”; our people are not inherently different than people anywhere else in the world. But we have, in the past, had better educational resources, and a greater emphasis on science and engineering. But no longer.
Back in September, […]

This article by Rick Perlstein perfectly underlines what a bunch of sissies we’ve been over the entire Ahmadinejad visit. I’ve made this comparison elsewhere - why can’t be behave like we did when Nikita “We will bury you” Khrushchev visited during the height of the Cold War in 1959?
Nikita Khrushchev disembarked from his plane […]

I’m pretty sure I’ve posted this before (probably on my old blog), but I think it’s poignant, so I’m going to post it again. (What are you gonna do ’bout it, huh?)

Rumors are that Michael Mukasey will be tapped by Bush to be the new Attorney General. I don’t know a lot about the man, other than the disappointing fact that he ruled that US citizen Jose Padilla could be held without charges as an “enemy combatant” by President Bush (even tho he did force […]

Wingnuts are always going on about “angry liberals”. Well, no shit.
Think about it. Since 1998, we’ve witnessed the first presidential impeachment since the 1860s, the first presidential election to go into “overtime” since the 1870s; the first attack on the continental United States since 1812; the first major preemptive “war of choice” in U.S. […]

George Will in yesterday’s WaPo (emphasis mine):
Those who today stridently insist that the surge has succeeded also say they are especially supportive of the president, Petraeus and the military generally. But at the beginning of the surge, both Petraeus and the president defined success in a way that took the achievement of success out of […]

OK, so the headline is a little snarky. But frankly, I refuse to live in terror. Yeah, something pretty significant happened a few years ago today; but I’ve never been one big on anniversaries. My daily calendar has a picture of a 1969 Dodge Charger on it for today, and no other […]

When I finally got close to the front of the line at my polling place in 2004, a pollworker told me to cover my T-shirt. It had the words “Vote Explosion” on it.

Seeing as I had nothing to cover it with and had just spent 3 hours in line, I politely pointed out that there was no partisanship expressed by the shirt. Vote Explosion was just a loose group of friends registering folks to vote at rock shows. She replied that they were trying to avoid even the slightest possible implication of impropriety.

OK, fair enough. Polling places are supposed to be inner sanctums of nonpartisanhip. Neither voters nor pollworkers may wear political shirts, stickers, or buttons within a 100 foot radius. Although the words “Vote Explosion” aren’t explicitly partisan, neither are the words “Eagle Forum” or “MoveOn.” I think it was a wise move to err on the side of overzealousness, and simply prohibit T-shirts bearing all of the above.

The guy behind me in line loaned me his sweatshirt, and I was able to step forth to express my partisanship in the privacy of the voting booth. As an ongoing tribute of thanks to sweatshirt guy, ever since that day I’ve stowed an extra large, plain T-shirt in my purse whenever I go to vote - just in case a fellow voter is asked to cover up.

Until I read Monday’s Columbus Dispatch, it had never occurred to me that I might someday want to offer my spare shirt to a pollworker.

In the ol’ mailbag yesterday:
Just months after beginning his inventory of underused state properties, Ohio Treasurer Richard Cordray joined Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman and City Council members to cross a significant site off the list and help bring nearly $200,000 dollars into state coffers.
A […]

Our boys over at RABid (HT BSB) had a cow yesterday afternoon… Quoting from a “Patton Revisited” video they posted…
Thank god, I really wonder where we’d be today if some of our current members of Congress were residing during World War II. I think we’d all be speaking German right now and the world […]