Late to the party again...

But The "Tea Baggers" on April 15th here in Alaska count among themselves one Chuck Heath, father of Sarah "Caribou Barbie" (Heath) Palin, observed at the Wasilla Tea Party wearing a grin and a "Joe the Plumber" sweatshirt, according to the Anchorage Daily News.
Question: Is there anything so galling as a former public employee who lives on a handsome retirement (payed for by the local taxpayers), and who so gleefully attends tax protest demonstrations? Word is that Chuck was an exceptionally good teacher, so I'm sure he feels he earned his retirement. fine. Why protest against others getting theirs?

Our local publicly-owned electric utility here in Alaska's Matanuska-Susitna Valley has completed its annual membership meeting, board elections and bylaw referendum. In other places news of this sort would rarely make the shopping fliers, but this is the Wasilla-Palmer-Mat-Valley, so its BIG news. The relatively new "liberal" majority on the Matanuska Electric Association (MEA)board was re-elected, even after ordering manager Wayne Carmony to cashier Bruce Scott and Republican political gadfly Tuckerman Babcock. MEA has long served as a Laundromat for Republican patronage jobs, which explains Scott and Babcock's tenure there. Frankly, it couldn't have happened to two of more deserving practitioners of the professional sinecure. Tuckerman, who ran for Alaska State House as a conservative "let the private sector do it" candidate back in 1990, never so much as threw a paper route, and has probably never known a "private sector" job. I'd say good riddance, but the slippery smug and unctuous Tuckerman will re-emerge in some other form, shape-shifter that he is.

A University of Miami study indicates that religious people tend to "live longer than the norm for their demographic group." This should perhaps be unwelcome news to secular humanists like myself. Upon reflection, however, the secularist and non-theistic among us must consider that the average religious person spends 3 - 6 hours per week in Sunday School and church,or on the way to and from church. We non-religious put those hours to other uses: taking a walk, watching football, reading, doing chores, having a mimosa in the hot tub, making love, sleeping in or writing blogs, all kinds of relatively more productive endeavors. I figure the religious have to live 2 - 8 years longer than we un-churched just to make up for all the time they wasted - in church.