Would they have asked Bill Clinton this?

Heavens, a Mormon is running for President! Lock up your daughters!

Although I haven't picked anyone else either, I'm not a Mitt Romney backer. And I've never lived among significant groups of Mormons. But the ones I have known have been good people, and I know BS when I hear it.

By now everyone has heard of Al Sharpton's latest asininity, about Mormons, but the corker has to be the SOB who asked Romney if he had slept with his wife before they got married.

Ah yes, nothing could be more significant in a politician than whether they're HYPOCRITES! And why not? It plays into the MSM's biases - non-lefties have higher standards, so they're more likely to fall short of them. Far better to elect the kinds of whorehopping degenerates you're likely to find as, say, senators from Massachusetts.

I'd like to flip this logic on its head. Let's ask the candidates "Are you a hypocrite? And if not, doesn't that mean that you have no meaningful standards at all for your conduct?"

As for Romney, what should he have said? Where are David Letterman's Top Ten List writers? I'm no Scrappleface, and I'm sure I won't come up with 10, but here goes:

"Why don't you save that question for the debates?"
"It depends on what the meaning of 'have sex' is"
"I was before it before I was against it"
"Yes, but I'm not a Democrat - I wouldn't pull out until the job was done"
"As many times as you have with your mother" (risky in more ways than one)
"I'm no Jack Kennedy"

Mickey Mouse competition

"Dancing with the Stars" just ended with a touch of justice - we're finally free of this year's winner of the Master P award, Billy Ray Cyrus. I can't see how anyone besides a Howard Stern fan could have ever voted for him based on his dancing skills. Heather Mills outperformed him for sure, but she was voted off two weeks ago. After Billy Ray who can they follow up with - Larry Flynt?

Oh no, not on ABC. We couldn't have a smut peddler on Disney's network.

Yes, Disney owns ABC. Disney also happens to purvey "Hannah Montana", a show starring....Billy Ray Cyrus! Who also records music on the Disney label. Somehow no one saw fit to acknowledge that, and this week host Tom Bergeron even prompted Billy Ray to mention his album.

Hmm, am I suggesting anything? Not yet. But I wouldn't be shocked in the slightest to find that the show had a production meeting every Tuesday morning with the producers, suits and the judges. There, like the producers of professional wrestling, they would decide what is to happen next in order to get and sustain high ratings. If they can work what amounts to a big commercial into what is nominally the entertainment part of the broadcast so much the better. How else to explain Billy Ray's scores from the *judges*?

Not convinced? How about that huge sloppy wet kiss they gave in the form of a retrospective of his time on the show? Yeah, he's "entertaining" to some, but then so is professional wrestling.

Of course the voters haven't distinguished themselves either, and I shudder at the thought that they might be using similar criteria to vote in *political* elections. Good grief, Joey Fatone finished next to last behind Ian Ziering?

Oh sure, it's cool to some to rip on Joey's former band, NSync, and Joey has probably rubbed some fans the wrong way. But if you want to watch Ian Ziering, I'm sure his old show is in reruns somewhere (and Billy Ray's show is in production still). If you don't like good dancing, fine - don't watch the show. Or at least don't vote, so the rest of us can see the better dancers.

Yeah, I'll keep watching. Likewise, sometimes I don't turn the channel when pro wrestling comes on. It doesn't have to be a competently judged contest or even honest competition to be entertaining.

Weaving gold into straw

Sometimes people don't appreciate how management can foul things up. Being here in Chicago, I use the 1990s Bulls as an example. Suppose Phil Jackson had benched Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen and played BJ Armstrong at center and Ed Nealy at point guard. Would the Bulls have won 6 championships in 8 years that way?

Or perhaps Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense ought to be pulling a plow?

Now I have a journalism example too. It appears that incredibly gifted columnist/blogger/father James Lileks will now be a reporter.

Associated partisans

Greensburg, KS was obliterated by a super strong tornado a few days ago. And what did the Associated Press want to write about?

In Kansas, the governor said the state's response was limited by the shifting of emergency equipment, such as tents, trucks and semitrailers, to the war in Iraq.

"Not having the National Guard equipment, which used to be positioned in various parts of the state, to bring in immediately is really going to handicap this effort to rebuild," she said.

Sharon Watson, a spokeswoman for the adjutant general's office, which manages state resources during emergencies, said the state has a shortage of heavy equipment transport trailers, pallet-sized loading systems, Humvees, dump trucks and other large equipment that would be help move massive amount of debris.

"We are never at 100 percent because we are allocated a certain amount from the National Guard Bureau. With the war, we are much shorter than we would be. We have about 40 percent of what is allocated," Watson said.

And they say that *blogs* don't have editors. Is it news when a Democrat administration (funny how that detail was omitted) taking a cheap shot at the war in Iraq? If this is what passes for news reporting, why not add something like "Democrat leaders lost no time in politicizing yet another natural disaster in hopes of wringing advantage from the blood of the victims."

If the Red Cross or other private groups had programs for relief they went unmentioned. But we did read this:

City Administrator Steve Hewitt said his job Monday would be to get city government working again. He said he needed to find employees, get purchase orders out, pay employees and bills _ in short, create commerce again in Greensburg.

"Get government going _ that is our No. 1 priority," Hewitt said.

I would expect that someone who made a living from the govt would say that. But "create commerce again"? Sheesh, is the govt the only thing going in Greensburg? And does it belong in the article?