Assorted Items

I've had a lot of stuff I've been meaning to post but haven't had time in the last few days so I'm going to condense it all into one gigantic (ginormous?) entry. Hold on for the ride, here we go!

Check out The Town Crier's reponse to last week's fiasco at Baruch College. His post bashes Republicans (which I won't quote here) but as much as I'm a proud Republican, he actually does have a good point. Here's a snippet:

Quit your sick holocaust analogies, Sharon is not sending anyone to Majdanek!
...
When the tv news shows a clip of you getting up in front of hundreds of people [actually, it was 1,200-ed] and you call the Prime minister of Israel an a--hole [actually, that's what the crowd called Romanoff, not Sharon-ed], all the world sees is Jew against Jew, a picture no different than the Neturei Karta guys at the parade [or the Neturei Karta guys who were outside protesting with Arabs, alongside the orthodox and Lubavitch-ed]. While the enemy sits quietly and patiently letting you make tushies of yourselves. You think you are helping when you act like an idot, but your horrifying display of disrespect, chutzpah and Jewish disunity does us a ton more collective damage than any of the potential good you think you accomplished.

And, while TTC goes on to rail against Bush, here's a reason why I don't think I can support Bill Frist even if he makes it as his party's nominee in '08. His logic is terribly flawed, perhaps even backwards. Despite the photo-op, it is apparent that his AIPAC-sponsored visit to the region just a few weeks ago was an abysmal failure.

And, speaking of '08, if things keep up the next occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will be able to lay claim to an even broader "mandate" than the current one. Here are some stats on Election Day '04:

• Minnesota had the highest citizen-voting rate at 79 percent, and North Dakota the highest citizen-registration rate at 89 percent.
• Citizens age 65 and older had the highest registration rate (79 percent) while those age 18 to 24 had the lowest (58 percent). The youngest group also had the lowest voting rate (47 percent), while those age 45 and older had the highest turnout (about 70 percent).
• Among citizens, turnout was higher for women (65 percent) than for men (62 percent). The turnout rate for people with a bachelor’s degree or higher (80 percent) was greater than the rate for people whose highest level of educational attainment was a high school diploma (56 percent).
  

WaPo takes Tom DeLay to task for saying that supporters of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005 (which passed DeLay's House of Representatives last week by a wide margin) were voting

"to fund with taxpayer dollars the dismemberment of living, distinct human beings for the purposes of medical experimentation."

and he called the research a

"scientific exploration into the potential benefits of killing human beings."

Well, he's already proven that he's qualified to discuss these issues. After all, he said last week,

"Even though I was an exterminator, my education is in biology and biochemisty, so I think I have a certain understanding of these things."

Actually, as proven above, not so much of an understanding of these things after all, huh?

This is not a way for AG Spitzer to get campaign donations from rich people on Wall Street. Then again, does he even need funds? Who's running against him anyway?