Sunday, March 17, 2013

Karl Rove's Reply to Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin criticized in her folksy persona the strategists of the Republican party at the CPAC meeting in suburban DC for their failures in elections across the country as written here. Amazingly, failed Republican non-thinker Karl Rove rebutted Palin's assertion with the very same one repeated ad nauseum by left-leaning statists, that Palin had "quit" her Alaska governorship after her unsuccessful run for vice president with failed Navy pilot John McCain. There are a number of ways of looking at this. First of all, gangster politicians like Barack Obama, John McCain, John Kerry and battalions of others ran for higher office without resigning their incumbent position, in fact, campaigning for election while on the company payroll. Evidently, Americans are so accustomed to being fleeced by these power-mad psychopaths that they're unperturbed by such behavior and, in fact, consider it normal. Palin's integrity is so unusual that it's regarded negatively by these Bozos.
  Of course, if the supposedly conservative Republicans are ever going to get back in the batting order, they'll have to modify their message to dovetail with that of the progressives, luring in the voters with the same bait as that presented by the socialists.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Olympic and World Champion Marianne Vos Wins Ronde Van Drenthe

On a rainy, miserable weekend in the Netherlands the most dominant rider in the ladies' peloton returned from a foray into mountain bike competition to assert her credentials once more on the road.  In a crash-filled contest through the Dutch countryside, Vos was where she wanted to be in the meters before the finish, powerfully sprinting past Ellen van Dijk for her third consecutive win in the first women's UCI world cup event of the year.  It's the start of another successful road season for the super star of women's cycling.


Leah Kirchmann Runs Away at the Old Pueblo


Leah Kirchmann photo DSCN0327.jpg
Winnipeg, MB native and Optum Pro Cycling-Kelly Benefit Strategies rider Leah Kirchmann defended the title she won last year in the annual downtown Tucson criterium with an impressive solo breakaway, nearly lapping the field and crossing the line 40 seconds ahead of field sprint leader Erica Allar. Kirchmann attributed her success not only to team tactics but also to an increase in her time trial training.


DSCN0471 photo DSCN0471.jpg
Leah Kirchmann in her Canadian national champion kit last year.


  Exergy TWENTY16 track superstar Cari Higgins converted her banked track skills to a fifth place in the crit. DSCN0447 photo DSCN0447.jpg
Guam native and Cornell student Lenore Pipes finished 6th.
   photo DSCN0481.jpg
Minnesotan Terra James won a field prime with 13 laps to race. 

Results from Cycling News:


Full Results

Elite women
1 Leah Kirchmann (Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies)
2 Erica Allar (Care4Cycling p/b Solomon)
3 Joanie Caron (Primal Pro Women p/b BH)
4 Lauren Hall (Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies)
5 Cari Higgins (Exergy TWENTY16)
6 Lenore Pipes (Care4Cycling p/b Solomon)
7 Christina Gokey-Smith (Rouse/Oogie Racing)
8 Jennifer Valente (ExergyTWENTY16)
9 Morgan Patton (Team Novo Nordisk)
10 Lauren Stephens (FCS|Zngine p/b Mr. Restore)
11 Tiffany Pezzulo (Primal Pro Women p/b BH)
12 Anne Donley
13 Annie Ewart (Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies)
14 Amber Gaffney (Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies)
15 Alisha Welsh (Sabino Cycles Racing)
16 Cinthia Lehner (Pepper Palace Pro Cycling)
17 Jessica Prinner (Care4Cycling p/b Solomon)
18 Christy Keely (Pepper Palace Pro Cycling)
19 Irena Ossola (Team Kenda)
20 Melina Bernecker (Primal Pro Women P/B BH)
21 Anna Sanders (FCS|Zngine p/b Mr. Restore)
22 Marilyn McDonald (Landis/Trek)
23 Melissa Ross (FASTER Performance Center)
24 Terra James (Team Kenda p/b RACC)
25 Carrie Cash Wootten (Pepper Palace Pro Cycling)
26 Kelli Emmett (Giant Bicycle)
27 Whitney Schultz (SkiNourishment p/b Paceline Projects)
28 Gwen Inglis (Team Kenda p/b RACC)
29 Amity Elliot (Team Kenda p/b RACC)
30 Kaytie Scott (Primal Pro Women p/b BH)
31 Julie Cutts (Primal Pro Women)
32 Nichole Wangsgard (Primal Pro Women p/b BH)
33 Kapri Gonzales (Landis/Trek)
34 Chloe Black (Sabino Cycles Racing)
35 Colleen Gulick (Team Kenda p/b RACC)
36 Kat Carr (SkiNourishment p/b Paceline Projects)
37 Judy Jenkins (Landis/Trek)
38 Katherine Ross (Pepper Palace Pro Cycling)
39 Lindsey Durst (FCS|Zngine p/b Mr. Restore)
DNF Lee-Ann Beatty (Body by Vi p/b VeloVie)
DNF Lisa Ribes (Sabino Cycles Racing Team)
DNS Rachel Byus (FCS|Zngine p/b Mr. Restore)
DNS Kimberly Truitt (Landis/Trek)
DNS Stacey Jensen (Team Kenda p/b RACC)

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Mrs. Bill Clinton's Travel Diet

This article from the UK's Daily Mail, which seems to cover US politics more effectively than any domestic paper, tells us about Mrs. Bill Clinton's passion for both chilis and air travel.  A new biography of the former First Lady by BBC reporter Kim Ghattas, who rode along with the Secretary of State a distance corresponding to 12 1/2 times around the planet, marvels at the stamina and endurance of the celebrated woman.  My, my.  Don't commercial pilots and crew members cover even more miles in the ordinary course of their working lives?  What's so hard about riding around in an airplane, eating free catered food and having internet access, along with a stable of servants?  It isn't like she's been walking from Quito to Cairo.  And what, exactly, has the pasty-faced power-seeker accomplished by burning up about 5 million gallons of  JP-4?  Most of the heads of state and their attendant thugs have adequate cell phone access, why not give them a call while baking some cookies for Bill?  Is peace breaking out in the middle east?  What else can this architect of international diplomacy brag about when she makes her run, as a 69 year-old, in the next presidential election?

There's a probably apocryphal tale about author Edna Ferber on a coast-to-coast flight asking the pilot to fly lower over Texas as she needed to gather the information to write her acclaimed novel "Giant".  No doubt the aerial travels of Mrs. Clinton have similarly made her an expert on the rest of the world.
 

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Deification of Politicians

 In a democracy, or the much-lauded democratic republic, which is ostensibly the framework of government in the US, men are to be governed, not ruled, by the desires of the majority, circumscribed by the rights of the minorities, through the rule of law.  Humans, being what they are, seem to have dismissed that concept from the very beginnings of the country.  As soon as the Hessians embarked for their return to Europe there was talk of making George Washington a monarch.  A giant memorial to the father of the country was erected not far from the headquarters of his plantation.  His Gilbert Stuart portrait once adorned the plaster wall of every American schoolroom, his eyes following you as you got up from your desk and  walked out the door to the bathroom.  Even today, a couple of hundred years after his last official act, he takes a look at you as you pass a buck to the parking lot attendant.

 
Phallic symbol erected in the District of Columbia, in fact, in the city named for Washington, as a symbol of the country's love and respect.

Another much venerated politico was the commander-in-chief elected in 1860, who presided over the lethal offensive upon the independent southern states.  Abraham Lincoln personally ordered the military actions that culminated in the deaths of almost three quarters of a million fighting men, some as young as 14, their wives and children, and the destruction of their lodgings and livestock, all supposedly to free the slaves.  During this period and later he and his successors also engaged in the attempted extinction of the native tribes whose lands stood in the way of the railroads for whom Lincoln had been a legal representative.  This earned him, too, a sacred spot in the national capital.

  The Lincoln Memorial in the city named after Washington. Lots of  US towns are named after these two.
 Image result for lincoln memorial statue
  The statue inside the memorial of Honest Abe himself. Nothing idolatrous about it.

Of course Washington and Lincoln are major league politicos and deserve their god-like status.  Since their passing other, lesser elected public servants have had their memory perpetuated in marble or sometimes the more economical granite or even concrete.   The political backwater that is Minnesota, for instance, once revered "The Boy Governor", Floyd B. Olson, in office from 1931 to 1936.  While it's likely that present day Gopher Staters have no idea who he might have been, their despondent but appreciative forebears saw fit to memorialize him with an impressive statue on the capital lawn, unaware that even this tribute would fail to immortalize their progressive champion.
  Image result for floyd b. olson
   

Depression era Minnesota Governor Floyd B. Olson.

Hubert H. Humphrey, the "Happy Warrior" slithered into politics from a career as a druggist in small town South Dakota, winning election on his second attempt as mayor of Minneapolis, later becoming a US senator from Minnesota and eventually the Vice-President under Lyndon Johnson.  He was so beloved by the progressive Democratic Farmer-Labor party that he had been so instrumental in organizing that they not only have built a capitol lawn monument to him, they named a domed sports stadium after him.

 
Humphrey did a lot of pointing. 


Very impressive monument to any politician, the scene of the death throes of the 1987 St. Louis Cardinals and the 1991 Atlanta Braves, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome is slated for demolition in 2014. Will its namesake be forgotten?  How can it be that a memorial to a people's champion can be destroyed?