This is what $50,000 looks like.

I said it before and I’ll say it again: “environmentalism” and so-called “Global Warming” is a religion unto itself; hence, my typifying the Religious Left. It deals not so much in facts, unless they are — ahem — “inconVEnient” facts (sorry, Church Lady). It instead deals in faith.

I wrote about CFLs here and here. And here. I wrote about the first CFL mercury bulb break here — which resulted in a $2,000 bill — a pittance now, apparently.

All that I surmised about the insane Religious Left has surfaced once again:

A two-ounce (yes, you read that correctly; two ounces) mercury spill on a surface street has resulted in a $50,000 cleanup bill in Twin Falls, Idaho:

Local, state and federal agencies likely spent more than $50,000 to respond to and clean up a small mercury spill two months ago in Twin Falls, officials said this week.

The mercury, just about two teaspoons’ worth, was found the week of Sept. 15 in a parking lot outside an apartment complex at 359 and 341 Pheasant Road W. Investigators later determined it came from several thermometers intentionally broken by kids, and one family had to be temporarily evacuated from a contaminated apartment.

A number of public entities responded to the incident, including the Twin Falls Fire Department, Idaho Department of Environ-mental Quality and South CentralPublic Health District, and submitted reimbursement requests to the Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security.

On Wednesday, response costs for state and local agencies were still being tallied. But they’re expected to come in between $25,000 and $30,000, said BHS spokesman Lt. Col. Tim Marsano.

In addition, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency spent about $26,000 to bring in contractors for assessments of the parking lot, eight apartment units and other nearby areas, including other homes. Only one homeowner denied the agency access, according to an EPA report. The money came out of an emergency-response budget authorized through the Superfund program.

This nation has, clearly, gone off the Deep End. The fear of appearances and suits are the driving concerns. Requiring, naturally, more and greater stacks of governmental bureaucracy at every level. The “official” EPA report of the incident is here. Wow. What sacrifice.

Give me some napkins. I’ll soak it up, dig a hole, and drop in the napkins. Problem solved. And I will have gotten the napkins for free at Taco Bell. After having used their restroom for free as well.

We are a nation of blithering, indecisive, fearful, quivering Sheeple.

BZ

Demorats have proven, time and time again, that ideology clearly trumps race, though they frequently play the “race card” when it promotes their ideology.

Past examples would include just about any “minority” appointment or cabinet member employed by the former Bush Administration — which, by the way, selected a greater number of so-called “minorities” than had the Clinton Administration.

Proving that, on many occasions, you simply can’t be “black enough” for a Liberal Racist, or sufficiently left for the Left.

Recent case in point:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill.

“We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

You might want to refamiliarize yourself with the photograph capping this blogpost. I could be wrong, but Representative Artur Davis appears, to me, to be a black man.

With that in mind, in consideration of Mr Jackson’s comment, isn’t this a tad bit like the pot calling the kettle black?

Again, in keeping with this current administration’s tactics, any disagreement with policy or planning absolutely requires degrading personal attacks on those individuals or groups holding to said disagreement. Rep. Davis merely disagrees with Mr Obama’s healthcare bill.

Now, given that Mr Jackson is a black man, and that Mr Jackson is a racist and bigot, are you then surprised that he is excoriating a melanin-matching individual incongruent with his Leftist leanings?

I, myself, am not.

Racists, hypocrites all.

P.S.

On the other hand, Representative Jon Conyers (D, Michigan) is recently quoted as saying that our Mr Obama is being quite too amenable and “bowing down” to the GOP, and that Conyers is “getting tired of saving Obama’s can in the White House.”

Sarah Palin is getting much press recently for her forthcoming book, “Going Rogue.” Apparently it is being confused with a cheap Leftist comedy book — damned near identical — called “Going Rouge.” Get it? Har de har-har. Man, that’s clever. A purposeful shot by Leftists at attempting to confuse book buyers and get them to not purchase the Real Deal. It was enough to already confuse Fox News. And that’s how much she’s hated by the Left.

According to the Huffington Post:

Clocking in at over 400 pages, “Going Rogue” is, at its heart, one giant complaint about the conduct of John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. At the nexus of Palin’s grievances lies (former McCain campaign manager Steve) Schmidt, a character cast as out of touch, overly cautious, and vindictive.

The relationship between vice presidential candidate and the campaign manager doesn’t start off on the rocks — but it ends there. And though she claims they were “very comfortable with each other right off the bat,” she also describes Schmidt as “business to the bone.” During her vetting Schmidt plays it cool. When Palin admits “the one skeleton [she’d] kept hidden in [her] closet for the past twenty-two years,” Schmidt “didn’t bat an eye” — though he does “wince” when she mentions God. That oh-so-dark secret, incidentally, is a D-grade Palin received in a college course.

Palin complains of being “told to sit down and shut up” when she “spoke on the trail about Obama’s associations with questionable characters.” She bemoans the campaign’s unwillingness to tackle “Obama’s pastor of twenty years, Jeremiah ‘God Damn America’ Wright.”

“I will forever question the campaign for prohibiting discussion of such association,” she writes. “All the more since these telltale signs of Obama’s views, carefully concealed with centrist campaign-speak have now been brought into the light by his appointments and actions in office.”

Can’t say as I, with the above information, much disagree with Palin’s assessment of McCain.

Texas Fred writes about Sarah Palin here, saying:

Well… I guess Sarah Palin is a Great Pretender. Playing to the masses. Putting on the dog, as they say. And it all came out looking like a seriously bad version of Northwoods Barbie.

Sarah Palin’s life reads a lot like a reality program too, Jon and Kate comes to mind. Dysfunctional, didn’t finish out the contract, accusations of improprieties, lots of similarities. Personally, I want my politics to be a reality program, but I want it to be an accurate representation of LIFE, not some shrill voiced QUITTER that doesn’t represent my family values or work ethic.

I hate a quitter! Sarah Palin will forever be known as a QUITTER. You just don’t walk out on the job of Governor of Alaska because the *pressures* of the job were too much for you to take and because it was playing havoc on your family.

If Palin, or ANY of her supporters think for one minute that the pressures she would face as President or Vice President are less than those she faced as a state Governor, you are sadly mistaken! If she quit over those lesser pressures, what do you think she’ll do if it’s a GLOBAL crisis? What happens when she has to face the life or death decisions that ALL Presidents face?

Wake up folks, Palin is playing a part, that’s it, she is yesterdays news and even then she didn’t carry that much credibility. Then she became a QUITTER. Is thatwhat you want in the White House? Do you want someone that’s better suited to reality TV or someone that can LEAD this nation?

I’d have to say that, now, Texas Fred is correct though — up to the moment she stepped down as Alaska’s Governor — she once had a chance.

I customarily thought that the vetted and perceived value or threat of a potential candidate could easily be measured by the slanderous and libelous things portrayed about them by their opposition. The more the Left attempted to skewer Sarah Palin, the more I tended to like her. She was a pro-gun hot chick who rankled the Left because she wore short skirts, had a square jaw, an hourglass figure (no cankles, like some people we know), was far more Conservative than her running mate, didn’t source from the east coast or from anything having to do with the Ivy League, wasn’t an attorney, didn’t believe in abortion, had a Downs kid, had an actual intact marriage.

Yes, of course, she wasn’t perfect but there is no such thing as a Perfect Candidate.

Conservatives harken back to Ronald Wilson Reagan but in point of fact he predominantly stepped away and avoided any kind of confrontation with Terror in its myriad forms when President. A response to the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing? Mostly terse words. “In fact, there was no serious retaliation for the Beirut bombing from the Americans,[16] besides a few shellings.”

And Iran/Contra. The battles between the Secretaries of State and Defense (Reagan chewed through four National Security Advisers in six years ) and their adversarial policies. We forget that Reagan never submitted a balanced budget to Congress despite his commitment to fiscal restraint, and the national debt tripled during his presidency. Reagan was, in the end, a man of contradictions. But, Lord, how I felt so much better about my nation when he was around, how he rallied my country, how he left behind so many better words bigger than himself.

That said, I rallied around Sarah Palin because I believed that, as is being revealed now, McCain trotted her out as a Show Horse but then muzzled her. Go on, yes, we can reference her shrill voice (though I still liken Hillary and Nancy to Rosie Perez and Fran Drescher — like split nails dragged across the proverbial chalkboard). Her Frances McDormand accent.

But, ultimately, when she canceled her Day Job, she doomed herself. She proved she couldn’t take the heat. Either she couldn’t take the heat or her heart just wasn’t “in it.”

In any case, the microsecond that happened, she jettisoned all the power cables from the Mother Ship.

Texas Fred also asked, in his post: “What has happened to the idea of *straight talk*?”

I responded, in the comments section:

Fred, I can tell you why NO ONE wants to speak freely, clearly or truthfully anymore, and I can do it in two words:

FREE CHEESE.

The American electorate, the bulk of it, is only concerned with its Free Cheese. What can the “gubmint” GIVE ME?? is the rallying question from the great unwashed masses.

Politicians know this, and know that, without skyrocketing promises of MORE Free Cheese, they stand a snowball’s chance in Hell of acquiring much of any political seat.

The PEOPLE have brought this about; I believe every bit as much AS the politicians themselves.

The American electorate has lost its courage and is becoming more and more accustomed, through education, through youth, through the courts, of having their Free Cheese mindsets VALidated.

We’d best be talking, if we want to save this country, about a lot of NO! in our immediate future.

You know, Fred, any politician truly capable of saying NO! to the electorate?

Really? Honestly?

WHO is there?

So I ask that question to ALL of my readers:

WHO is any kind of a viable Conservative presidential candidate for 2012?

And can they say NO?