Assorted Rants, Reader Beware

--In a radio interview with conservative talk show host Rusty Humphries, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who abandoned her position of responsibility to "go rogue", openly approved of those who were continuing to question Barack Obama's status as a native-born American citizen. Palin reminds me of people who win the lottery before they learn how to manage money. So they squander their prize with reckless spending. With Palin, the lottery win was McCain selecting her as his running mate in 2008. Her lack of expertise is in managing political capital, not money. And she is squandering it all with reckless speech. Well, maybe not all: she'll always have the conspiratorial nutcase wing of the political right at her beck and call. Do I see a Sarah Palin/Ron Paul ticket in the works?

--Recently, some Republican lawmakers have tried to use a recent misguided government study that was skeptical of women having mammograms for early breast cancer detection before age 50. They cried that this is an example of government health care rationing and is what we can expect if the Democrats' health care reform bill is enacted. But the study was just that: a study, nothing more. And as Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd recently pointed out on the Senate floor, our health care is now already constantly being rationed in minute detail, not by the government, but rather by the private health insurance companies. Which, by the way, enjoy protection as monopolies with their exemption from federal anti-trust laws.

--Regarding the Tiger Woods incident where he had an auto accident and seems to be covering up some personal meanderings, I couldn't care less about the personal business. But I AM concerned about the fact that he was able to get away with repeatedly refusing to talk to police officers following the accident without any legal consequences. Suppose you or I tried the same thing: how long would the police have waited before we were dragged out of our homes, possibly Tasered, and pushed into a squad car and driven off to jail, with charges of resisting the police being levied against us? This is another case of the law being applied differently, depending on how powerful and wealthy one is. Scary.

--The buzz around Gainesville is naturally about the upcoming Southeastern Conference championship game between the Florida Gators and the Alabama Crimson Tide on Saturday in Atlanta. In football. American football. You know, that weird sport where big people in astronaut-like gear and tight pants form lines opposite each other and then abruptly collide en masse, falling down all over the place and then getting up to repeat the process? And somewhere along the line, some points mysteriously get added to one side or another? With funny little guys in striped outfits running around, throwing flags, blowing whistles and wildly gesticulating with their arms? Yeh, that sport. I'm pulling for UF, but I am no fanatic, either. As Billy Preston once so eloquently put it, "Let the bad guy win every once in a while." Maybe I'll begin to care more who wins when someone shows me how that is going to make even a rat's @$$ of a difference in my life. [Note previous day's article and how irrationally I root for the Miami Dolphins.]