Stray Thoughts on Current Events

Judge Wapner may actually be more qualified than Harriet Miers. All kidding aside, I am glad that the opposition to Miers was bi-partisan. The crony-ism is really getting disgusting...

As for the Plame stuff... I know I'm not the first one to bring this up--but if Democrats were suspected of leaking her identity, would Republicans not be screaming "TREASON!" and calling for justice? My point in bringing that up is to highlight the folly of partisan politics. It's all about making the other side look bad so you can beat them in the next election...

Salem will be electing a new mayor in a couple of weeks. Wifey and I watched the last debate on Salem Access TV last nite. My candidate of choice, Kim Driscoll, should really let me re-design her web site. However, she won the debate hands down. It was a slaughter. She answered every question directly and intelligently. Her opponent, Kevin Harvey, definitely has a better web site. However, all he said was "creative ideas," but he didn't seem to have any... I wouldn't even call it dancing around questions, because he wasn't graceful or smart about it. He didn't sidestep questions, he mostly ignored them and said what he was going to say anyway. He attacked Driscoll and her rebuttals destroyed every negative point he tried to bring up about her. She referenced one of his "creative ideas," which is to eliminate fees for school bussing and athletics. Sounds great, but Salem has a 3.5 million dollar budget deficit. Driscoll asked Harvey how much the cuts would cost the town and how he planned to make up for it without raising taxes (since he has taken the hard-line that he will not raise property taxes). She ended her question with "be specific." He said the amount of the fees couldn't be stated, since it changes all the time and then went on to say how the superintendent of schools endorses his campaign... Driscoll rebutted by stating the exact amount of what the fees are and then pointed out that Harvey hadn't offered any plans to replace that money in the budget. The rest of it was quite simmilar to that... To all the Salemites out there: I think the choice is clear...