Romney Gaffes: A Bug Or a Feature?

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There’s a well-worn cliche among computer geeks that goes: “That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”

It started as a way to deflect criticism of software that just didn’t work as advertised (or failed to work at all) by claiming that whatever weird glitch was driving the user up the wall was always intended to be that way.

For a while there, I was wondering if “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature” might explain the recent Mitt Romney International Gaffe Tour 2012.

As you may have read, Romney kicked things off by dissing the British hosts of the Olympics on his first stop, earning the unenviable nickname of “Mitt the Twit” from the tabloid newspaper The Sun, and worse epithets from several others.

He then went to Israel, where he told a crowd that Jews in Israel were more successful than the Palestinians because of their “culture,” which managed to be both a slam at the Palestinians and more than a little stereotypical of the Jews — after all, wasn’t Romney just trotting out the old anti-Semitic trope that “Jews are good with money”?

Of course, this also fails to take into account that maybe, just maybe, the Palestinian economy is struggling because their movements are severely restricted and a good chunk of the country is sequestered behind a 25-foot wall. Just a thought.

Then it was on to Poland, where a Romney press spokesman responded to shouted questions from frustrated reporters by snarling, “Kiss my [rude word]; this is a holy site for the Polish people. Show some respect.”

Am I the only one who finds “Kiss my [rude word]; this is a holy site” hilarious? The spokesman then told a reporter to “shove it,” in a way that suggested he wasn’t giving advice on getting the doorknob unstuck.

Now, at first glance, all of this may have made Romney and his people look inept and unprofessional. But then I had second thoughts. After all, even now, Romney’s still trying to shore up his credibility with the Rabid Right.

And what better way to do that than treating other countries (even allies) with contempt, kicking the Palestinians in the teeth, and telling the press to “kiss my [rude word]”? Were all these gaffes a “bug” in the campaign software or a “feature”?

But when you dig a little deeper, you find that these missteps were just the tip of the gaffe-berg. There were others, like Romney having to cancel a fundraising dinner in Israel because it was scheduled on a holy day of fasting.

He also praised the Israeli health care system for keeping health care costs at “8 percent of GDP,” forgetting perhaps that the Israeli National Health Insurance Law “sets forth the state’s responsibility to provide health services for all residents of the country,” according to their Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

And yes, there’s an individual mandate. Romney praising “socialism”? That’s gotta be a gaffe-and-a-half.

But it was Romney’s treatment of the press that finally answered the question for me. It wasn’t just the guy telling off reporters. Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren griped that there’d been no press access to the MittBot in Poland and that reporters felt like they were “in a petting zoo … trapped in a bus while Polish citizens take pictures of us.”

Here’s the thing: You can trash talk the press, you can put them in crowded buses, you can put them up in roach motels — but you cannot deny them some sort of access, even if it’s illusory. They’ll sell their souls for the thrill and the prestige of feeling like they’re “inside” with the movers and shakers.

A candidate who gives them that thrill can tell them the most outrageous lies, and they’ll print them verbatim, singing the candidate’s praises all the while, extolling his “manliness” and explaining away his gaffes. You can feed them total BS, but you can’t starve them.

George Dubbya Bush was great at it. John McCain cooked baby back ribs for the press and let them ride the tire swing at one of his houses. They loved the guy, giving him pass after pass.

Time’s Mark Halperin even earnestly argued that McCain not remembering how many houses he had was “terrible news for Barack Obama.”

But remember when Sarah Palin’s press spokeswoman responded to a question about whether Palin would take questions by jeering, “From who? From you? Who cares?” How’d that work out for her?

So, on third thought, I’m going to have to go with inept. This trip showed one thing: Mitt Romney is not ready for the world stage.

The Jokes Just Write Themselves

Report: Sarah Palin quits bus tour halfway through, retreats to Alaska | The Raw Story: "WASHINGTON – Amid diminishing media interest, Sarah Palin has quit her high-profile bus tour halfway through and returned to Alaska with her family, according to RealClearPolitics."

Wow. Who would have thought that Sarah Palin would give up on something halfway through?

Apparently, Bachmann's announcement (and probably Weinergate) took the spotlight off her, and without the spotlight, it's just no fun anymore. So she pulls the plug.

And there are people still insisting that this flake could be President of the United States.

Don't worry, though. She's addicted to attention, and the addict's got to have her fix. Pretty soon she'll say something stupid or inflammatory, or both, and the media circus will start up again, complete with the usual crowd of ninnies bleating about how all the attention being lavished on her for being ridiculous actually means she's serious.

Wow. I Thought Those People Were Supposed to Be So Polite

Sarah Palin snub by Margaret Thatcher aides infuriates US rightwing

The story: The Wasilla Snowbilly will be visiting London next month as part of her non-campaign for the Presidency. She will not, however, be meeting with conservative heroine Margaret Thatcher despite her desire to do so:

One Thatcher ally told the Guardian: "Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts."

Does anyone else find the most surprising thing about this story is that Margaret Thatcher is still alive?

Sarah Failin'?

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Say it ain't so, Sarah!

A recent story in this newspaper about the Moore County Republican Convention noted that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney "soared to the top Saturday" in the convention's "straw vote." Receiving only a "sprinkling" of votes were Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie - and Sarah Palin.

Only a "sprinkling" for Caribou Barbie? This seemed ominous to me, as it should to anyone aspiring to commit acts of political humor.

Then it got worse. According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released last week, St. Sarah of the Snows suffers from slipping favorability ratings. Only 58 percent of "Republicans and Republican-leaning independents" viewed her favorably.

This might not seem too bad, until you remember that right after Honorable John McCain picked the Wasilla Whiner to corral the all important drama-queen and grievance-junkie vote, those same voters had her favorability rating up to a whopping 88 percent. As recently as October, according to a story in the Christian Science Monitor, the Resigning Woman's favorability rating among those voters was 70 percent.

Most tragically, a recent front-page article on Politico.com lined up a veritable Who's Who of conservative pundits - George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Weekly Standard writer Matt Labash and others, to turn and rend the Quitta From Wasilla like a pack of wolves who've just noticed that one of their own has come up limping.

"She's becoming Al Sharpton, Alaska edition," Labash sniped, citing Palin's "frequent appeals to victimhood and group grievance."

Krauthammer piled on: "When populism becomes purely anti-intellectual, it can become unhealthy and destructive."

Asked if the GOP would remain the party of ideas if Palin captures the nomination, Will said: "The answer is emphatically no." (Somebody probably needs to tell Mr. Will: That horse left the barn a while ago.)

So is Palin's star fading in the political firmament? Are all but the most die-hard Palindrones suffering from Palin Fatigue? I sincerely hope not. That would be a disaster.

Why, you may ask, am I so unhappy about this? Don't I loathe Sarah Palin?

Nothing could be further from the truth, actually. I need Sarah Palin. I depend on her. She's an unending source of quality material.

Oh, sure, you've got your B-list wackjobs like Sharron Angle or up-and comers like Michelle "Crazy Eyes" Bachmann. But for a column that just writes itself, all I have to do is wait for Mama Grizzly to open her mouth and let the comedy ore tumble out, ready to be refined into gold.

Not only is a Palin column easy to write, I can always depend on those lovely folks in the Party of Love to whip themselves into a hate-frenzy and put those all important eyeballs on the page. As an experiment, I recently went back through some old columns on this newspaper's website and checked the reactions I got to columns that mentioned the Snowbilly Princess, as measured by comments on the column. The results were illuminating,

One on Jan. 9 entitled "Palin's Latest Weird Tangent" got 152 comments. A Jan. 16 offering called "Violent Talk in the Cross Hairs" mentioned Palin prominently. Result: 77 comments. Jan 23's "Everybody's a Drama Queen" made a passing reference to Palin's "Death Panel" lie and got 43 comments. But look at Jan. 30: "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us. " No Palin mention. 17 comments. Even I can do the math, if it's simple enough.

Said comments, by the way, usually include at least one instance of the tired old whine: "Why are you always picking on Sarah Palin?" The answer is: Never let it be said I don't know what the people like when it comes to getting their rage on.

If Sarah Palin slips back into the obscurity from whence she came, I don't know what I'll do. I was depending on her to at least make a run for the GOP nomination. Because if she did - well, it would just be a matter of time.

Palin's the most thin-skinned politician in America. Somewhere along the campaign trail, someone will say something she deems offensive, probably to one of her kids, and the resulting meltdown will be epic. It'll make Charlie Sheen's manic orgy of self-aggrandizement look like a mild case of coffee jitters.

Well, we live in hope.

Palin's Latest Weird Tangent

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Does Sarah Palin want American kids to be fat? It might seem like it, considering her reaction to First Lady Michelle Obama's recent campaign against childhood obesity.

Obama, among others, supported legislation for healthier food choices in schools and praised parents for thinking about what kinds of foods their kids stuff down their greedy little pie-holes (I'm paraphrasing, of course). In a speech advocating good nutrition, she noted that she tells her children "dessert is not a right" and makes them eat balanced meals.

This, to the half-term governor of Alaska, is apparently some sort of harbinger of commie-socialist-Islamo-fascism. Or something. Whatever she thinks it is, she's served it up as her resentment du jour.

On a recent episode of her reality show, "Sarah Palin's Alaska," the Resigning Woman made a big ol' helping of s'mores. And since Palin is incapable of missing a chance to turn even a sweet gesture into an opportunity for sneering, she told the recipients the s'mores were "in honor of Michelle Obama, who said the other day we should not have dessert."

Obama, it should be noted, never said any such thing. But Palin is, after all, the woman who railed against nonexistent "death panels" during the health care debate, so we already know she has, let's just say, a flexible approach to the truth.

Palin continued her media snit when she went on Laura Ingraham's radio program: "What [Obama] is telling us is she cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat."

Again, this is exactly the opposite of what Obama has actually said, which is: "We know that ensuring that kids eat right and stay active is ultimately the responsibility of parents more than anyone else," and further, that "parents have a right to expect that their efforts at home won't be undone each day in the school cafeteria or in the vending machine in the hallway."

To Sarah Palin, however, anything any Obama is in favor of, even healthy food, is something EEEvil, to be opposed with all her might and main, and one doesn't quibble over little details like the truth when one is fighting EEEvil.

Remember first lady Laura Bush's ongoing campaigns for literacy? Good thing she wasn't a Democrat, I guess, or Mama Grizzly'd be going on Sean Hannity, lying that Mrs. Bush was trying to "tell us what we had to read" and burning books.

It seems, though, that Mama Grizzly may have just gone a little too far for even some members of her own party, such as Mike Huckabee, another former governor and potential presidential candidate. He told a radio talk show host, "Michelle Obama's not trying to tell people what to eat or not trying to force the government's desires on people. She's stating the obvious, that we do have an obesity problem in this country."

Huck should know; he himself dropped an astounding 110 pounds after his doctors told him he was going to die if he didn't. Nevertheless, wingnut blogger Ann Althouse, showing the class for which the far right is so well known, sniped at Huckabee for daring to criticize St. Sarah of the Snows by playing the Fat Card: "He's running [for president] against Sarah Palin. ... Ironically, Sarah Palin is the one who's thin."

Well, Ms. Althouse, Huckabee's the one who actually finished a full term as governor without quitting, so what's your point?

Mississippi's Haley Barbour, (another Republican governor who, unlike Palin, managed to finish his job) also praised Obama's efforts, as did former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who called those efforts "a proper role for the first lady."

Meanwhile, Ben Smith at the website Politico.com has pointed out that, in her 2009 State of the State address, Palin seemed to be extolling the same things that Michelle Obama did, like nutrition and exercise.

So the answer to the question at the top of the column is: No, Sarah Palin does not want American kids to be fat. She's just a small and petty person, an unprincipled demagogue, a political hack who's willing to lie and even to contradict herself to avoid admitting that any Democrat, especially an Obama, might have a valid point about anything.

Poor Baby

Palin attacks media over coverage of North Korea gaffe

Seems that the most thin-skinned politician in the US today has her knickers in the usual twist over how MEAN people are being to her because she slipped up on Glenn Beck's show and said North Korea was our ally.

Now, a normal person would just laugh it off and go , "Heh, yeah, I misspoke." Not the Resigning Woman, who never misses a chance to stir up resentment and anger among her supporters over how her delicate feelings are hurt. And, of course, she's gone to the old "Obama did it too!" counterattack.

Yeah, Sarah, the President has made a few stumbles, like the time he said during the campaign that he'd been to "fifty-seven" states.

Yes, I cut Obama some slack for a simple slip of the tongue, and you know what? I'd do the same for you, if you and your wingnut dimwit brigade hadn't been clamoring for two years that that slip really meant that Obama doesn't really know how many states there are, or that he meant Islamic states and that that showed he really IS a Secret Mooslim. Or something.

So you can just suck it up, dear. Sauce for the goose, etc.

I cannot WAIT for this woman to run for President. The meltdown is going to be EPIC.

NV Senate Candidate: You Can't Be Mean to Me! I'm a Girl!

The Washington Monthly:

Nevada Republican Senate Candidate Sharron Angle:

"...dirty tricks Harry [Reid] is up to his dirty tricks one more time and he's just trying to hit the girl," Angle said on the Alan Stock Show.

"You know, isolate that Sharron Angle, marginalize her and then demonize her," she said in a separate appearance on the Heidi Harris Show. "And he has been doing that to me and what we need to do is say, 'you know Harry, it's not going to do you any good to hit the girl.'"

It's the same bullshit we've seen in regards to Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann. Any time they're criticized, one of their supporters is bound to come out with some faux-feminist claptrap like "Sexist! You're just afraid of a successful and powerful conservative woman!"

UPDATE: As someone reminded me, the die hard Hillary Clintonites (aka PUMAs) did the same thing. And they were idiots, too.

You can't have it both ways. You can't claim to be a feminist and then try to use your gender as a shield from criticism of your actual record.

And isn't calling a woman a "girl" supposed to be a no-no? Guess IOKIYAR!

Rand Paul: On the Palin Track?

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On May 18, Rand Paul stunned the Republican establishment in the Kentucky senatorial primary by smashing Trey Grayson, the hand-picked choice of Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He was roundly cheered by the tea party activists, whose banner he waves whenever he gets the chance.

Then he immediately came down with an epic case of foot-in-mouth disease. When Robert Siegel of National Public Radio discussed Paul's criticisms of the Americans with Disabilities Act (which Paul sees as an infringement on the rights of businesses), Siegel asked if the same criticism would apply to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. You know - the one that says you can't have "Whites Only" restaurants and drinking fountains.

Now, most of us had regarded that sort of thing as pretty well-settled law. But on Planet Paul, no battle, no matter how ancient or ill-conceived, is ever really over. When Siegel asked if the CRA and the ADA were "just overreaches" by the federal government, Rand replied "Right."

Paul had also insisted in a recent interview with The Louisville Courier-Journal that the right to refuse service to people on the basis of race was a right protected by the First Amendment. See, on Planet Paul, it was the people being set upon by police dogs and blasted by firehoses while demanding basic human dignity who were the real oppressors.

By the end of the week, Paul was reduced to earnestly insisting that he really wasn't going to try to get the Civil Rights Act repealed. Well, that's a relief.

Not to be deterred by that controversy, Paul then went on to take up the cause of another oppressed minority: British Petroleum. You know - the people whose oil spill is killing the entire Gulf of Mexico.

Criticism of BP, and of business in general, Paul said, was "really un-American." We shouldn't be playing the "blame game," Paul said, because "sometimes accidents happen."

For good measure, he included the recent Kentucky mine disaster as one of those things that "just happen," with no one accountable, certainly not the company that owned the mine. This should be a real comfort to the people of the Gulf Coast, not to mention the families of the dead miners and oil rig workers.

See, that's the problem with the whole right-wing agenda. You come to the party for the low taxes and limited government, but then you realize that the deal also includes the government just shrugging and looking the other way if a company discriminates against you, kills or maims you, poisons your air or water, or destroys your livelihood. It's nothing personal, it's just business.

Paul also has another congenital defect of the tea partiers: He's against Big Government, unless Big Government puts money in his personal pocket. According to The Wall street Journal, Paul wants to slash government spending - but not Medicare payments to physicians. The fact that Paul himself is a physician (he's an ophthalmologist who says 50 percent of his patients are on Medicare) is, I'm sure, pure coincidence.

The firestorm finally grew to be too hot for Paul. He canceled an appearance on "Meet the Press," and now he's singing the old familiar tune about how the liberal media have it in for him.

Now, it's entirely possible that Rand Paul will not blow his lead and that he can win this one. We are, after all, talking about a state whose state song contained lyrics about "darkies" until 1986.

But if he doesn't win, there's always another career path he can follow, a path which I like to call "the Palin Track." On the Palin Track, you turn possible victory into crushing defeat for your party by saying one nutty thing after another, get roundly mocked along the way, then go on the lecture circuit, taking a hundred grand an appearance to tell everyone it was a liberal media conspiracy that did you in.

Like Sarah Palin, it looks like Rand Paul is going to be another one of those gifts that just keep on giving. And that was just his first week. What's next? Will Rand Paul compare the government's lawsuit against Goldman Sachs to the Holocaust? Will he start arguing in favor of secession?

Well, we live in hope.

But John McCain Is An Honorable Man

MSNBC:

"I understand the opposition to it, and I've had these debates and discussions, but the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to."-John McCain, 2006 talking about "Don't Ask Don't Tell"

"At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy."- John McCain, 2010, the same day Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen came to him (and other Senators) and said "Senator, we ought to change the policy."

Wait, it gets better:

"Senator McCain has not changed his policy on Don't Ask Don't Tell" -McCain spokesperson Brooke Buchanan.

They're not even trying to pretend any more that they have any principles at all. They're lying to our faces, they know it, we know it, and they just don't care.

And, of course, the chickenshit Democrats will never pick this up and run with it, and the media will let it drop, because John McCain was a POW.

Meanwhile, the big story is that Caribou Barbie is pretending to have her knickers in a twist, because Rahm Emanuel called some leftists "fucking retarded." SIX MONTHS AGO.

Because, you know, she's always been such a friend to the Left. And she's always been right out front when conservatives refer to liberals, or the President, as "libtards." Hasn't she? No? I wonder why....

Panderin' Palin

Sarah Palin on Wingnut Talk Radio:

"I think the public rightfully is still making it [whether President Obama was born in the US] an issue," Palin said. "I don't have a problem with that. I don't know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers."

Sarah Palin on Facebook a few hours later:

Stupid Conspiracies

Voters have every right to ask candidates for information if they so choose. I’ve pointed out that it was seemingly fair game during the 2008 election for many on the left to badger my doctor and lawyer for proof that Trig is in fact my child. Conspiracy-minded reporters and voters had a right to ask... which they have repeatedly. But at no point – not during the campaign, and not during recent interviews – have I asked the president to produce his birth certificate or suggested that he was not born in the United States.

So Sarah Palin, Ms. Roguey Maverick, Ms. "I'm just a hockey mom," talks like a "birther" when she's on right wing talk radio, then backs off it when she's not.

There's a word for that.

The Resigning Woman Strikes Again

Tri-City Herald : Mid-Columbia news:

Sarah Palin visits Washington State and bails out again:

Palin had announced on Twitter that she would be running the 5k race organized by the Benton-Franklin Chapter of the Red Cross.

She didn't finish the race, opting to leave the course early to avoid more crowds at the end. About 40 minutes into the run, word started trickling out to people gathered at the finish line that she was gone.

A few days ago, she reportedly left a book signing early, leaving angry crowds chanting "quitter!' and "sign our books!"



Has this woman ever finished anything other than a pregnancy?

The Lazy Way to Successful Punditry

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I tell you, folks, I'm weakening. I'm about to do something I thought I'd sworn off forever.

I'm considering joining the Republican Party again.

Some of my long-term readers may recall my joining the GOP back in '05 and '06 and writing about it in this column. Not because of any ideological change of heart, but precisely because the GOP had no actual ideology other than IOKIYAR: It's OK If You're A Republican.

Back in those days, the knee-jerk Republican defense of everything from adultery to sexually propositioning teenagers to shoplifting suggested to me that whatever I did, I'd always find a host of defenders so long as I had the correct political affiliation. Not that I was going to do any of those things, mind you, but it was just nice to know.

Well, I left the party, but I have to say, I'm sorely tempted to join up again. Not just for the complete lack of moral accountability (even though the David Vitter and Mark Sanford cases show that that's still alive and well), but because it would make writing this column so much easier.

See, I'm basically a lazy person. It's a real drag sometimes when I'm writing this column to go back and actually check various sources to make sure that the things I'm saying about people have at least some basis in fact.

But if I were a conservative Republican, I wouldn't have to do any of that stuff. If I saw something that looked outrageous enough, I could write about it without having to check around and see if it actually happened. And if it turned out not to be true -- hey, who cares?

As an example, let's take de facto Republican Party leader Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh recently went on the air with a real blockbuster of a story: Time magazine reporter Joe Klein had uncovered a thesis written by Barack Obama while Obama was a student at Columbia University.

The thesis was supposedly harshly critical of the U.S. Constitution, stating, "The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy."

Only problem was, as Limbaugh was informed almost immediately, the story was a complete hoax, a satire posted on an allegedly humorous blog called "Jumping In Pools."

Joe Klein himself denied ever writing such a piece. "It is completely false," Klein posted on Time's online blog "Swampland." "I've never seen Obama's thesis. I have no idea where this report comes from -- but I can assure you that it's complete nonsense."

Rush, as the kids say, had been punk'd.

No matter, Limbaugh smoothly stated in his very next radio hour. He repeated the false quotes, then admitted that they were probably fake, but -- and this is the cool part -- he still stood by them because (a) he himself had been misquoted recently, and (b) he "knows Obama thinks it."

You can see how, to a lazy person such as myself, this would be very attractive. As a liberal, I can't get away with, for example, saying Sarah Palin once actually claimed she had foreign policy experience because she could "see Russia from her house."

As a liberal columnist, I'd have to point out that Palin never actually said that, but that that quote was instead from "Saturday Night Live" performer Tina Fey's hilarious impression of Palin. If I didn't, you can bet there'd be a deluge of letters lambasting me for making something up. And the defense "Well, it's a lie, sure, but I know Sarah Palin thinks that way" just wouldn't cut it.

But if I were a wingnut -- boy howdy, anything goes. I could make a crazy accusation, find out it's false within the hour, and stand by it anyway. Even after it's shown to be a lie, I could circulate the story on the Internet via chain e-mails that circle around in the Internet forever.

It's really tempting. Someone talk me out of it.

It's Only Treason When Liberals Do it

d r i f t g l a s s:

On Sarah Palin's speech to a group of 'high-flying global investors" in Hong Kong:

She didn't refer to President Barack Obama by name, the Wall Street Journal reported, but said she called his campaign promises "nebulous, utopian sounding... Now 10 months later, though, a lot of Americans are asking: more government? Is that the change we want?"

Some attendees were disappointed by her focus on her home state and her attacks on President Obama.

"Driftglass" notes:

...as all of you who escaped our nation's 25-year-long Conservative prefrontal Limbaughtomy remember, six short years ago when a singer blurted out a dozen unprepared words dissing George W. Bush at a concert in London (or, as wingnuts always ominously intone "On Foreign Soil!"), the Right absolutely lost its collective shit.

There were marches. Vigils. Coast-to-coast Hate Radio rants. A virtual embargo on playing the music of "The Dixie Chicks" anywhere in this Home of the Brave...

But while I might not care what the Wasilla Grifter has to say about anything, anywhere, every single fucking Conservative who pretended to be standing on righteous principle when they went full DEFCON 1 monkeyshit in 2003, and who now stays silent or cheers Caribou Barbie on needs to have their voter registration card confiscated and ceremonially burned atop a pyre of Tobie Keith records.

For starters.

Damn Skippy. Here's a little remembrance from the Dixie Chicks: