“*if anyone knows an alternative to this horrible word, please provide it”

Ahistoricism; neophilia

We would wish that Reagan and Schwarzenegger would have ignored the industries from which they came, even if personal friends were involved.

Then we could examine the House of Representatives, and determine what percentage of the approximately 4,000 bills and resolutions (this year, so far), relate to “honoring” some local hero.

http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/

Like you, Chris, I would wonder how our public employees find time to do the work we sent them there for… much less personally enrich themselves in such short amounts of time.

Entertainer – put-butts-in-seats profession, public pays price of admission

Politician – *keep*-butts-in-seats profession, public keeps paying

(Thanks for the thought. PS, Kara never slams the closest republican? Might want to check on that.)

*if anyone knows an alternative to this horrible word, please provide it

“I do wish TAC had blogged the Cap and Trade bill session a little more closely, though….”

Hear hear. Although maybe “TAC” *has* blogged about it, it’s just that it ridiculously hosts some unknown multitude of blogs (5?), so meaning that on one or more of ‘em somewhere someone has said something informative and/or interesting about same and we just don’t know it because we aren’t nuts enough to try to follow every one.

Lots of interesting issues going on, and for some reason TAC and/or its bloggers don’t want to run one handy place to learn about same.

Nuts to ‘em I say: Go off topic Matt and tell us about this Cap and Trade thing, about which I’ve seen absolutely no succinct summary or critique. If TAC/its bloggers don’t wanna run one lively, wide-ranging, consolidated blog site we’ll just turn this one into same going off-topic as we wish.

My contribution (as hopefully distant from any Michael Jackson connection as possible): Has anyone noticed that recent SCOTUS decision saying that it’s unconstitutional for school administrators to strip search their charges? With Clarence Thomas being the only holdout, the rest voted to ban same.

Variety of interesting issues involved in same (e.g., the inability of public school administrators to recognize reason), but what gets me about “conservatives” on the courts these days is that their “conservatism” seems so weighted in favor of the State. For all their affection for “original intent” what about the beyond-fundamental fear of the Framers of the natural tendency of the government to impose upon liberty? How did modern judicial “conservatism”—so staunchly suspicious of the New Deal’s intrusions into private property matters—suddenly start defining itself as the paladin of governmental power?

Pure reactionism to the Warren Court? Given technology and the lessons that Mr. Bush gave us about the ability of government to strip search damn near the entire electro-magnetic spectrum of phone calls and emails and etc., isn’t it perhaps way past time for “conservatives” to rethink that seeming fundamental orientation?

Cheers,

Reagan, a famous entertainer in a past career, was simply giving props to one of his successors in the put-butts-in-seats profession.

I do wish TAC had blogged the Cap and Trade bill session a little more closely, though. I watched it on TV, since I didn’t have work today, and so I spent the afternoon watching them argue over this awful thing, which passed mostly (I think) due to Boehner’s complete failure as a persuader.

That will assist us in determining whether Obama sycophants, 2 years from now, will have been proven to be right on the Stimulus, and now the Cap and Trade bill.

We will know more about whether jobs are created, or chased overseas, whether or not we were able to bully the rest of the world into accepting our environment-standards, and whether or not the public could swallow +$1 per gallon gas, and +$125 per month electric bill, as well as federal regulation of local building codes. We’ll know whether the average Joe The Plumber was able to come to love their hybrid automobile.

It’s always a crap shoot for politicians to laud show business types. It’s best to wait till they are in their dotage to get too close.