Old Gray Blog

DMV
I went to the DMV to get my license renewed. After waiting 45 minutes, I went to the window with my form, and was told by the bureaucrat, pointing to a line on the form: “I hate to break it to you, but your hair is no longer brown.”

Heartbroken, I slid my debit card to pay for the transaction and unwanted information. When the transaction went through, the bureaucrat said, “Congratulations. Big Brother has noticed and approved you.”

Then I had my picture taken. I did not smile.

Flap du Jour
Graeme Frost, a 12 year old boy, delivered the Democratic radio address prior to the President's veto of S-CHIP. He said:

“If it weren’t for SCHIP, I might not be here today. ... We got the help we needed because we had health insurance for us through the CHIP program. But there are millions of kids out there who don’t have CHIP, and they wouldn’t get the care that my sister and I did if they got hurt. ... I just hope the President will listen to my story and help other kids to be as lucky as me.”

Conservatives quickly weighed in:

Rush Limbaugh: “They filled this kid’s head with lies just as they have some of these soldiers about me.”

National Review: “Mr Frost [Graeme’s father], the ‘woodworker’, owns his own design company and the commercial property it operates from, part of which space he also rents out; they have a 3,000-sq-ft home on a street where a 2,000-sq-ft home recently sold for half a million dollars; he was able to afford to send two children simultaneously to a $20,000-a-year private school; his father and grandfather were successful New York designers and architects; etc.”

Michelle Malkin: “The Democrats chose to outsource their airtime to a Seventh Grader. If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man’s job, then the boy is fair game. As it is, the Dems do enough cynical and opportunist hiding behind biography and identity, and it’s incredibly tedious. And anytime I send my seven-year-old out to argue policy you’re welcome to clobber him, too. The alternative is a world in which genuine debate is ended and, as happened with Master Frost, politics dwindles down to professional staffers writing scripts to be mouthed by Equity moppets...”

Apparently, Ms. Malkin actually went to Baltimore, where the Frosts live, and obtained photographs of their house, and the private school which Graeme’s sister attends. She needs special education, you see, because she suffers from brain damage, which is why she is a CHIP recipient.

Anyway, who’s exploiting whom? Liberals, for getting somebody who was helped by CHIP to speak for it, or conservatives, who are calling the kid a welfare queen.

Well, both, I guess.

Still, I’m with E.J. Dionne, who wrote: “Most conservatives favor government-supported vouchers that would help Graeme attend his private school, but here they turn around and criticize him for … attending a private school. Federal money for private schools but not for health insurance? What’s the logic here?”

And: “Conservatives claim to be in favor of stable families, small businesses, hard work, private schools, investment and homeownership. So why in the world are so many on the right attacking the family of Graeme Frost?”

Story of the month?
MAIDEN, North Carolina (AP) — A South Carolina man who stored his severed leg in a barbecue smoker that was later auctioned off is locked in a custody dispute with a North Carolina man who found it.

John Wood's leg was amputated near the knee after a 2004 airplane crash. He asked doctors to give it to him so he could be buried as a whole man when he died.

The limb, which Wood had kept in the smoker in a storage facility after he lost his home, was bought by Shannon Whisnant last Tuesday in an auction held by the storage company because Wood had missed his monthly payments.

Whisnant initially gave it to police, who subsequently turned it over to a funeral home when it became clear it was not the result of foul play.

But Whisnant, who put a sign on the empty smoker charging adults $3 and children $1 for a look, now wants it back.

"He's making a freak show out of it," Wood told The Charlotte Observer for a Monday story. "He wants to put money in his pocket with this thing."

Whisnant, who was unsuccessful in his bid to get the leg from the funeral home, consulted with a lawyer and decided his best move was to persuade Wood to share custody and profits.

"It's a strange incident and Halloween's just around the corner," Whisnant said. "The price will be going up if I get (a stake in) the leg."

Wood, who is heading to Maiden to pick up his leg, said the two men can meet, but he is not interested in using the leg to make money.

"I just think it's despicable," he said. "I don't mind having the 15 minutes of fame, but I'm not looking to really profit off this thing."

Stop presses.
Upon winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. Gore was attacked by right wingers.

Here is a sample, from a blog called Grizzly Groundswell: “…[H]is 20-room, eight-bathroom mansion in Nashville sometimes uses twice the energy in one month that the average American household gets through in a year. The combined energy and gas bills for his estate came to nearly $30,000 in 2006. Ah, say his defenders, but he uses rainwater to flush his lavatories. Is there enough rainwater in the world, I wonder? [After all he is so Full of Crap]."

Where does Mr. Groundwell get this information?

The blogger also calls Mr. Gore a “lardbutt.”

Cackle update
Ms. Clinton appeared on MSNBC; CBS reported: “During the twelve-minute interview, the former first lady chuckled in response to Olbermann. But she never unleashed the highly-scrutinized, overly-analyzed belly laugh known as ‘the cackle’ that has been the focus of national media over the past few weeks. Which raises the question: Has the tightly-managed Clinton campaign put the kibosh on the cackle?”

Again, stop presses: Hillary Clinton did not cackle during an interview. She also did not twirl a baton. She did not put her thumb to her nose, wiggle her fingers, and say “layler layler layler.” Assemble pundits. Discuss.