Her Name is Rio-- No, Really, her name IS Rio

Jim Geraghty over at the National Review engaged in a little smirky sacrasm defending the GOPs challenges of registered voters in New Mexico. He noted that there were a number of problems with newly registered voters in that state that indicate widespread fraud. His piece de resistance? A registration for someone claiming to be "Duran Duran.":

Now, unless A. Serwer thinks that there is actually a registered voter named "Duran Duran" in New Mexico, he ought to refrain from sputtering that those who disagree with him are 'racist' and 'paranoid.'

The person who is "Duran Duran" almost certainly voted under their real name, and thus got two votes in the primary. God knows how many of those 27 others exist; for all we know, one person might have cast all of them. Anybody who voted once had their vote diluted by the guy who cheated to vote two to twenty-seven times.

Check and mate A. Serwer! Oh, but hold on a minute. There's one little detail I should mention. Duran Duran is actually a voter. Geraghty was forced to tag this amendment to the end of the story:

UPDATE: I am floored by the fact that the white pages for Albuquereque, New Mexico has a listing for "Duran Duran." Mea culpa.

Doh!

More Fun with Family Values

There are so many lovely ironic tales of "family values" politicians falling from grace that Schadenfreude, Baby! did not even need to include Mark Foley. Remember Mark Foley? Two years ago CNN viewers were invited to obsess over his sexual e-mails to male congressional pages.

"After being caught sending explicit emails to underage boys, Florida congressman Mark Foley has resigned," Jay Leno quipped. "So his seat is up for grabs, which is what got him in trouble in the first place."

Foley slunk off in humiliation and in rode a Democrat, Tim Mahoney, on a white steed promising to restore integrity to the office. A socially conservative married father, Mahoney ran on a “Faith and Families” platform.

If you've followed politics at all, you've probably already guessed the punch line. Mahoney has bonked himself into a scandal of his own. He had an affair with one of his staffers and just for good measure, fired her in a mean and nasty recorded telephone call and then agreed to pay her $121,000 in hush money.

This story just goes to show that family values hypocricy is not the sole property of the Rebpublican party. But wait, our friends at Political Irony have pointed out yet one more twist in the story.

"...it will be difficult for Republicans to wave this an example of how Democrats are just as corrupt as Republicans, because Mahoney was actually a Republican who was recruited to run as a Democrat against Foley in the first place. Since being elected, Mahoney has voted with the Republicans almost as much as he has voted with the Democrats."

Oh dear.


Cartoon ^© Chan Lowe

Irony of the Day

From the Republican Party 2008 Platform:

"We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself. We believe in the free market as the best tool to sustained prosperity and opportunity for all."




Surviving the New Depression: Tip #94 from Steve Delahoyde on Vimeo.

Less Taxes [sic], More War!

There is something about a Republican delegate being robbed by a girl he picked up in a bar after advocating "less taxes, more war" as a government policy that makes the corners of the mouth reflexively turn up.

"I Guess He Wasn't Listening to the Speech About Family Values" gushed a headline in the Dallas Morning News's religion blog.

To be fair to Gabriel Schwartz, a lawyer from Denver, we don't know if he is a "values" voter or if he is a social conservative. So the story lacks the irony of, say, a Larry Craig. The delegate did, however, give this interview with Link TV. His "Bomb Iran" stance was so extreme that it made this reporter wonder if he wasn't a plant from The Daily Show.



After this performance, Schwartz told police he picked up a woman in the bar of a swanky Minneapolis hotel and brought her up to his room. She poured him a drink and when he woke she was gone, and so were up to $50,000 in jewelry, cash and other items.

P.S. The correct way to say that is "Fewer taxes, more war." (See the post on Worsplosion.) And grammar purists will note that since there is no signature in this posting that "p.s." isn't really appropriate either. I know. But I don't care.

Ironic Accidents

California State Senator Carole Migden, who voted for a state bill that fines people for using their cellphones while driving, rear-ended her state-issued SUV into a Honda sedan on Highway 12 in Solano County yesterday.

You already know the punch line: She was on her cell phone at the time.

Source: Engadget.

Mortgage Bankers Association Can't Pay Mortgage

Foreclosure filings of all kinds - delinquency notices, auctions sale notices and bank repossessions - were up 112% during the first three months of 2008 compared with the same period a year ago. Community advocates and policy makers are worried that the problem will worsen as the interest rates on as many as 1.8 million mortgages reset this year. (Source: CNN Money) Is there any good news for the family facing foreclosure? Maybe this will help:

The Mortgage Bankers Association-- the folks that came up with the great idea of giving adjustable rate mortgages to people who couldn't afford them-- are having trouble paying their mortgage, The Washington Post Reports.

"A year ago, the Mortgage Bankers Association was thrilled to sign a contract to buy a fancy new headquarters building in downtown Washington. Interest rates were low, the group's revenues were steady and the prospects for quickly renting out part of the structure were strong. But since then, the association has fallen on tough times as many of the subprime mortgages dispensed by some of its members proved dicey. Borrowers discovered the loans were more costly than they had anticipated. Foreclosures soared, and cheap, inexpensive credit dried up, slowing the economy. The result: The trade group is about to find it harder than it imagined to pay its own mortgage."

There don't seem to be many tears shed for the professional organization.

"They are certainly getting what they deserve," Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal research group, was quoted as saying.