"Stewart. Don't agree with me. It just makes me doubt myself."
-Michael J Fox, SPIN CITY

:D

Just kidding, Liz. :D As I have always said, I am certain that we agree on more things than we disagree on.

It's just the things we DO disagree on are whoppers!! :D

Michale.....

That was extremely well stated and I couldn't possibly agree more.

You should recognize the email addy.. :D

"I welcome Senator McConnell's decision to join me and members of both parties who support cracking down on wasteful earmark spending, which we can't afford during these tough economic times," Obama said. "As a Senator, I helped eliminate anonymous earmarks, and as President, I've called for new limitations on earmarks and set new, higher standards of transparency and accountability."

That doesn't sound like to me that Obama is for a COMPLETE ban on earmarks. Obama is simply saying he wants new limitations and higher standards of transparency and accountability..

Interesting side note...

Do a GOOGLE for Earmark totals Democrats Republicans and look at the 10th listing.. :D

10th out of 161,000 entries. Not too bad.. :D

Personally, I am of a divided mind about Earmarks.

Used properly, they are the source of a world of good for people and communities..

The problem is, like ALL good things, politicians pervert the process for their own greedy ends..

And, I think it a tad unfair to castigate McConnell for his earmarks without acknowledging that many of the KINGS of earmarks were Democrats... Such as the late John P Murtha, for example...

Earmarks are not a Right vs Left issue. It's a citizen vs a politician issue...

Ironically, I think Obama has this one right. Keep the earmark process but make it more limited and much more transparent. Complete public disclosure via the Web.. A "Weekly Earmark Listing" on government websites so we can see exactly what earmarks are pending and maybe even have a say in whether or not they go forward...

Michale.....

Just wanted to respond more formally to the idea raised in a recent comment to hold a ChrisWeigant.com Fall 2010 Pledge Drive.

First of all, thanks to David (a.k.a. akadjian) for proposing the idea. We've only ever held one pledge drive here at the site in the past four and a half years, in 2008, when we held a "Send Chris to the Inauguration" pledge drive. So I think it wouldn't be too annoying to hold a second one now.

Normally, I hate it when PBS interrupts my enjoyment of MacNeil/Lehrer ("The News Hour") or even of The McLaughlin Group to beg for money. I went into this in great detail during the 2008 pledge drive, which is still up on the site (although nothing other than this link now points to it, currently), so you can read all about it there.

I was going to just recycle the graphics and get them up and running here tonight, but I see (click above link) that the graphic I used was pretty downright specific, meaning I'm going to have to start from scratch again. So we won't have a fun (and annoying!) reminder up on the site probably until this weekend.

But the 2010 CW.com pledge drive is officially underway nonetheless!

We received our first PayPal donation today, from a name and email I didn't even recognize. What this means is that someone out there "lurking" (reading my stuff but not commenting ever) has already beaten everyone else to the punch, which should really cause a few reddened faces around here, I would think. Heh.

Seriously, though, I have not double-checked the PayPal link in quite a while to see if it's still working, but like I said, the first donation has already arrived via PayPal, so it seems to be functioning (again, I'll check this more thoroughly this weekend). You can use this link even if you don't have a PayPal account, to send donations using a major credit card, I should mention.

If you'd like to donate by snail mail (by check), contact me via email, or just post a comment here saying "Can I have your address?" I will not post this address publicly, for security reasons, but will email you the address at the email you use for your login here.

David has very generously put a marker down that he will match up to the first $250 donated up until Christmas, so that's a goal to shoot for. Michale has countered by stating he'll donate 50 cents for every comment he posts here until then (you really should set an upper limit to that, M... heh).

Last year, I was bringing in writing income separate from this site. This year, this income dried up due to the economy's problems, so we're just looking to cover the expenses of renting server space and domain names, really.

What else? Oh, I should mention that these are NOT tax deductible in any way, shape, or form. CW.com (in reality, Pamphleteering Press, our corporate overlord, so to speak) is a for-profit enterprise (theoretically, at least) and so I cannot offer you writeoffs for donations, sorry about that.

In any case, I am overwhelmed that the suggestion was made, and that it came out of the blue.

Oh, and David, if you're impressed you hear about Brazilian clowns here, I even remember a story from either 1980 or 1984. I looked for it on the intertubes, but could not find a cite in the easy places to look. Fridays are always extremely hectic, so I had to cut it out of the article (without a cite to prove it).

But in one of the Reagan elections, Bozo the Clown ran for U.S. President as a write-in candidate. His campaign slogan: "Let's put a REAL clown in the White House!"

I can't prove it, but I remember it happening, whether the internet also does or not...

:-)

I got a million of these bits of political trivia, just waiting to leap out! Heh....

-CW