Rep. Steve Stockman demonstrates why govt. regulations are necessary

"My Lord, a few days ago we reported how Tea Partier and Texas Crazy Congressman Steve Stockman had the city Fire Marshal condemn his campaign headquarters as an unsafe workplace last month. This came out just after Stockman announced he was challenging John Cornyn for Senate - and I guess gives some insight into why Stockman is so against government regulations. But I didn’t realize it was this bad. We just got hold of the photos of the condemned property. And they’ve got to be seen to be believed."
--Josh Marshall, “WTF is All I got.”

Photos are here and, yeah, it looks like a freakin’ crack house. There are homeless squatters who have better digs.

Keep these photos in mind the next time some ‘bagger talks about ‘onerous regulations.’ Big gummint came along and shut Stockman’s HQ down — not because regulations on workplace safety are so insanely strict, but because Stockman couldn’t tell that asking people to work in this rathole was not OK.

"Burdensome" workplace safety and health regulations don’t exist despite people like Steve Stockman. They exist because of them.

Rand Paul doesn’t seem to be taking his plagiarism scandal well

I mean, just look at that photo. Actual quote from the story: “Paul admitted that he had ‘made mistakes’ and said new procedures were being put in place to make footnotes available ‘if it will make people leave me the hell alone.’”

A real levelheaded guy in a crisis. Cool under pressure. Born leader. Should totally run for president.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m enjoying this immensely.

Griper Blade: Cleaning Up After Pundits

After such a huge mess as the Democratic primaries, some clean up is in order. Political campaigns generally leave two kinds of detritus behind -- confetti and bullshit. I'll leave the former for those who are paid to sweep it up (and hopefully recycle it), while I deal with the latter.

Turns out the latter is recyclable too. The fertilizer spread in past campaigns feeds the current crop. We'll start out with a quote I found last night, from an Associated Press roundup of world reactions to Obama winning the nomination.

In Mexico City, hairdresser Susan Mendoza's eyes lit up when she learned Obama had clinched the nomination.

"Bush was for the elite. Obama is of the people," she said.

Of course, here in the US it's bass-ackward. Obama, son of a single working mother, is the "elite" -- because he's a latte-sipping Democrat -- and Bush, scion of a millionaire Washington insider, is the "regular fella" -- I guess because he speaks like a moron. This is the rule in the US because talking heads on that TV machine tell you so. It's repeated over and over, until the absolutely obvious isn't so obvious anymore -- night becomes day, hot becomes cold, elites become people from humble roots, and those from humble roots become the elite.

I give you this to issue one warning -- that TV machine is a bullshit dispenser. It's for entertainment purposes only. If you want information about the elections and what issues are at stake, get it in print. Television news -- especially 24/7 cable networks -- is crap. You watch that stuff and I can practically guarantee you won't become more informed -- in fact, it's a good bet you'll become dumber. When a Mexican hairdresser has a better grasp of the facts than a pundit on CNN or FOX, that ought to tell you something about CNN and FOX. If you want to know it, read it...

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