There ain’t no Santa Claus

“The Republican nominee should be someone with vast and impressive experience in government and the private sector -- and a proven record. Voters chose a novice with plenty of star power in 2008 and will be inclined to swing strongly in the other direction in 2012. Americans will be looking for sober competence, managerial skill, and maturity, not sizzle and flash.”

Mona Charin, “Why Sarah Palin Shouldn’t Run”

http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2010/11/19/why_sarah_palin_shouldnt_run/page/full/

And the present and future political climate ain’t like two years ago. Call it what you want – Mobocracy or The People Has Spoke. The “vast and impressive record in government and private sector” Ms. Charin writes of is embodied in some person reclining beneath a giant mushroom in Easter Bunny Land, where there’s buzzing of the bees in the peppermint trees near the soda water fountain. Democrats might know that handouts grow on bushes, but Ms. Charin and other self-proclaimed Conservatives have yet to figure out that the times they have changed. All those columnist folks, the ones who write for big city newspapers or big-time blogs and announce the death of mainstream media are in the same leaky lifeboat. No matter how many fellow travelers they throw overboard because the drinking water’s about gone, they all face the same future with the same lack of understanding. People whose diplomas have the same university names, people who make the same amount of money, people whose bylines and mug shots appear in the same newspapers and TV talk shows and internet pages … there’s not a dime’s difference between any of them. – My opinion and I’m welcome to it.

Democrats got bashed last week ...

… because voters were mad at Bush. Ohh. I see now.

http://www.slate.com/id/2274043/

I'm drinking what???

“The Sunday Mail can reveal the State Government had planned a taxpayer-funded publicity campaign centred on handing out thousands of bottles of water from the largely idle $1.5 billion Western Corridor Recycled Water Scheme, in a last-ditch bid to convince Queenslanders that treated effluent was safe to drink.

“But the bottles of water - at least 40,000 - were never distributed. Instead they were stored in a warehouse before being secretly destroyed in May at a waste facility in Ipswich, west of Brisbane.”

But wait – There’s more!

“The bottles of recycled water were to supplement the thousands of bottles already imported by the Queensland Water Commission from Singapore's recycled water scheme.”

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/bligh-government-bungle-over-bottled-recycled-water/story-e6freoof-1225908234509

If I were Australian and I found out I had been given “treated effluent,” I might be angry. Drinking my own treated effluent is bad enough, but my government imported some from Singapore?

Linked from another story on Dave Barry’s blog.