Shaun Kenney

Republitarian at his finest.

Obama’s cage has finally been rattled, attacking Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin and calling her — I kid you not — a pig.

In Lebanon, Virginia of all places:

The crowd apparently took the “lipstick” line as a reference to Palin, who described the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull in a single word: “lipstick.”

What is it with Southwest Virginia and gaffes that end political careers, anyhow?

UPDATE:  The offending remark on video.

The theme of “lipstick” has been an obsession with Democratic boosters attacking Palin over the last week. Obama staffers are denying a comparison, even though Obama followed up his comments with several sharp, direct attacks on Palin.

According to reporters there in Lebanon, the crowd certainly got the joke (at Palin’s expense).

His name? Democrat Barney Frank, and the $200 billion bill stuck to taxpayers by the Fed:

Taxpayers are now on the hook for as much as $200 billion to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and if you want to know why, look no further than the rapid response to this bailout from House baron Barney Frank. Asked about Treasury’s modest bailout condition that the companies reduce the size of their high-risk mortgage-backed securities (MBS) portfolios starting in 2010, Mr. Frank was quoted on Monday as saying, ‘Good luck on that,’ and that it would never happen.

This is total crap. Our friends at Save the GOP pile on

:

200 years ago, our citizens would have burned down the Capitol if something like the Fannie/Freddie mess had happened. Now days, it just tells us all to become bankers, after all, no banker pays any price for their mistakes in this country.

After having watched John Adams while Mrs. Kenney is reading the book, I can’t help but come to the same conclusion.

Jefferson is doing RPMs in his grave at Monticello right now…

Yes yes, I read 750 Volts. It’s a guilty pleasure, mostly because the stuff written is so well thought out you can’t help but notice. Kenton Ngo’s opinion is worth considering, no matter the disagreements on politics.

His post on the 2008 DNC Convention mirrors my own feeling about the RNC Conventions, and my reasons for not going to another one (unless my name is on the ballot or something):

Finally, it bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum. Floor fights and 1968 became distant memories as the confetti rained down. The convention itself made no pretensions otherwise–it was a four-day romp, but more importantly, a four-day infomercial.

Simularcum and infomercial are two good words for the spectacle.  Roman triumph is the phrase I prefer, only with no one is whipering “memento mori” to the triumphator.

There’s a difference between news and infotainment. In the instances of Olbermann and Matthews, both have clearly crossed the line into infotainment, and MSNBC has wisely decided that enough was enough.

Personally, I don’t mind a Hannity and Democrat to be named laterColmes arrangement, because at least there’s a bit of give and take. Full fledged one sided nonsense being spewed day in and day out is just boring.

Conventions? I watch them on C-SPAN. Debates? The same. Thinking people shouldn’t need the verbal garbage from commentators to explain what and how to think about what transpired.

I really like Google Chrome. In fact, I’m even willing to let it date my sister.

But unfortunately, I gotta admit that I really do miss the functionality of the Google Toolbar. Thankfully, I am not the only one who has missed our beloved Toolbar, and even better for the masses, someone is willing to do something about it!

Two days ago, I mentioned that the wildly popular, extremely useful Google Toolbar didn’t work in Google’s Chrome browser. I said I missed it. So do legions of other people, judging from the thousands of Toolbar fans who have read that post, and the 140 who have commented on it so far. Who knew that a humble toolbar could be so beloved?

I think it’s pretty much a given that Google will eventually either release a Toolbar for Chrome or essentially build in all of its functionality. But it’ll only happen on Google’s timetable, and I suspect it isn’t priority #1. And while Toolbar is cool, it’s not exactly advanced technology–what it does, mostly, is to provide fast access to various Google services.

Is it possible to put together a stopgap? After reading some of the comments to my original post, in which folks discussed putting bookmarks in Chrome’s Bookmarks Bar to mimic certain aspects of the Toolbar, I decided to try to fake the whole damn thing. Call it Project Fakebar, if you will.

Project Fakebar, you rock.

So sayeth the latest USA Today/Gallup poll among likely voters.

Sheck it!

Actually, if you have no idea what the Large Hadron Collider does (or will discover), the rap is worth tolerating watching.

If you’re a frequent reader of these pages, then you know that I am an avid subscriber to the UK Economist. That publication had been trumpeting this move for weeks, with barely a squeak out of yours truly. “Never happen,” I said, “this is America for crying out loud.”

Seems I was wrong.

Despite decades of free-market rhetoric from Republican and Democratic lawmakers, Washington has a long history of providing financial help to the private sector when the economic or political risk of a corporate collapse appeared too high.

The effort to save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is only the latest in a series of financial maneuvers by the government that stretch back to the rescue of the military contractor Lockheed Aircraft and the Penn Central Railroad under President Richard Nixon, the shoring up of Chrysler in the waning days of the Carter administration and the salvage of the U.S. savings and loan system in the late 1980s.

More recently, after airplanes were grounded because of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress approved $15 billion in subsidies and loan guarantees to the faltering airlines.

Now, with the U.S. government preparing to save Fannie and Freddie only six months after the Federal Reserve Board orchestrated the rescue of Bear Stearns, it appears that the mortgage crisis has forced the government to once again shove ideology aside and get into the bailout business.

“If anybody thought we had a pure free-market financial system, they should think again,” said Robert Bruner, dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.

Seems Professor Bruner was right, though I have to admit I am absolutely shocked that the federal government would bail out the mortgage giants at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

So much for the virtues of the free market.

From 30,000 feet up, it looks as if Virginia’s very own AG Bob McDonnell is making quite an impression enter the dragon divx at the Republican Naitonal Convention:

One rising star at the convention is Bob McDonnell, the GOP’s best hope for replacing Tim Kaine, the one-term-limited Democratic governor of Virginia. While the Democrats have yet to coalesce around a candidate, Republicans have united behind McDonnell, the Old Dominion’s attorney general, who was hustling between television interviews in the convention hall in St. Paul on Monday.

Good stuff.