Because I’m such an exciting guy, thinking “are they ever going to release The Norm Show on DVD?” and then Googling for the answer is the sort of thing I do on a Saturday night. It’s a topic that often comes up when I think about funny TV shows: Norm Macdonald is my favorite comedian, and The Norm Show featured a wienerdog named Wienerdog.

I was happy to find that during an extended lapse in my Norm-Show-DVD-checking routine, it was announced that Shout Factory is releasing a box set of all three seasons on September 7, 2010! Fellow TV nerds may recognize Shout Factory as the folks who released Freaks and Geeks (a boring, somewhat humorous show whose hype I wish I had ignored) on DVD.

Amazon is taking pre-orders for The Norm Show at $45 a pop. All the cool kids are pre-ordering it. On the bright side, you can do so even if you aren’t cool, as evidenced by the fact that Amazon accepted my order.

In my last post about Franklin County Clerk of Courts Maryellen O’Shaughnessy, the Democrats’ candidate for Ohio Secretary of State, I touched briefly on an important question: What kind of raises were low-level Clerk’s office staffers receiving while O’Shaughnessy was cranking her Chief Deputy’s salary up to $105,000? You may want to get caught up if you’re going to be voting in Ohio this November.

I mentioned how strange it was for a candidate endorsed by boatloads of unions to devote such a huge portion of her salary budget to a single administrator. “Strange” was, of course, sarcasm: it’s not uncommon for Democrats to talk in heated tones about the avarice of private employers and the wonder of workers’ unions while ignoring their own low-level employees. Think of the hypocrisy you get when a socially conservative Republican is caught in an affair, except with taxpayers as the saps getting screwed.

O’Shaughnessy’s campaign site lists sixty-nine endorsements as of earlier this evening (PDF screen cap; Excel spreadsheet). Thirty-five of those endorsements are from union groups. Of the 50% of O’Shaughnessy’s endorsements not from union groups, one is from the far-left Secretary of State Project, a PAC that hearts ACORN and Secretary of State Brunner and hates anything in the same neighborhood as responsible voter identification. Keep the union endorsements in mind while we take another look at salary data from the Franklin County Auditor (2007-2010 spreadsheet; March – June 2010 spreadsheet).

Clerk of Courts staff compensation, March 26, 2008 to March 17, 2009:

Clerk of Courts staff compensation, March 17, 2009 to March 16, 2010:

* Update, 07/21/10: Mary Austin-Palmer was hired 04/20/09 at $40.87 an hour, which means her first raise was $5 / hour, or 12.2%

March 17, 2009 to March 16, 2010, the first 1-year period when O’Shaughnessy was Clerk from beginning to end, was marked by a smaller increase in the average salaries of low-level employees and a sharp increase in the Chief Deputy’s salary. This doesn’t even account for the enormous additional 10.9% raise Chief Deputy Mary Austin-Palmer received at some point between 03/16/2010 and 06/09/2010, or the $140,000 in new Admin positions created since O’Shaughnessy took office.

The Franklin County Clerk of Courts , one of the largest County government offices, is not currently unionized. Based on a simple search (view Excel source) at the Ohio Secretary of State’s website, “O’Shaughnessy for Ohio” has received more than $87,000 from various arms of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and their parent, the AFL-CIO, since January 1. Why such generosity from the unions to a candidate who, in her capacity as a public official, follows plainly inequitable compensation practices? Refer to the first sentence of this paragraph.

Politicians like Maryellen O’Shaughnessy are deeply concerned about the working class when the working class is represented by a union with a deep campaign fund. It’s a great racket, when you think about it: unions indoctrinate the uninformed among their members in the importance of voting Democrat, while steering members’ dues to Democrats who make it easier for unions to slip their feet in more doors. Democrats get to pose as heroes of the little guy, happily running hand-in-hand with unions as budgets tumble over a cliff… and private investors get the blame when everything hits the ground.

Unions – especially public unions – add an extra layer of bureaucracy that hampers productive activity, while siphoning their constituents of dues that mostly benefit union bosses and politicians. Maryellen O’Shaughnessy’s union associations and flagrant disinterest in the workers they claim to represent are two additional reasons to oppose any attempt she makes to move up Ohio’s political ladder.

[Update: Increased precision of percent changes so they're all as accurate as the Chief Deputy figures; tweaked clunky phrasing of the opening sentence after the tables-o-numbers.]

Have you watched the video of Congressman Bob Etheridge (D-NC) calmly and patiently responding to a question from a presumed conservative activist?

In response to an ambush question on a Washington sidewalk, an elected representative of the United States slaps the camera out of a citizen’s hand, grabs his wrist and holds it despite repeated pleas to let go, and briefly pulls the guy around by the neck. No, a quick verbal brush-off or annoyed silence doesn’t suit Rep. Etheridge – only asking, “Who are you” like a drunken, entitled old record player while physically attacking his questioner will suffice. Treat a professed terrorist that way, and you’ll have the ACLU all over your junk. It’s okay if it’s a conservative, though, because those guys are asking for it.

Etheridge responded soon after the video was posted at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government. Despite his weak apology and the undeniable draw of a congressman attacking someone on film, there’s hardly been an outcry from the brave, self-important press corps that rabidly dissects far less serious mistakes made by Republicans. Representative Etheridge was caught on camera committing criminal assault against a nobody whose offense was daring to address a congressman in an unacceptable tone… and the Washington media’s response is to shrug.

Nonetheless, it’s a campaign year and Etheridge’s opponent has a few months to come up with a snappy tag line she can play on top of that video. In the interest of fairness (Democrats like “fairness,” right?), I’ve put together some materials that will help the Etheridge team with damage control:

Bob Etheridge is one entitled old coot.

This is a totally reasonable response to a simple question.

Bob Etheridge learnin' a young American some character.

[Update: Thanks for the link, Harvey! IMAO readers may also enjoy my brilliant box art for an Islam-based Mario knockoff or the classic Fun With the Ayatollah.]

Back in April, I submitted a public records request to the Franklin County Auditor and looked at recent raises given to County administrators. Most of what I saw was only remarkable in that it revealed bureaucratic restraint during a recession. But, as a past employee of the Clerk of Courts, I was disappointed to find that Clerk O’Shaughnessy had made some transparently bad decisions: hiring additional staff in her Administration office while giving hefty raises to the Chief Deputy.

Now that two months have passed, I thought I’d follow up with the Auditor for any recent Clerk of Courts staffing changes. Check out the Excel file from the Auditor, if you’d like. Even given what I saw in April (view Excel source), I was a little disgusted.

The “Dealer Services Liaison” is a second new Admin position created since Maryellen O’Shaughnessy took office roughly 18 months ago. Combined with the “Director of Business Operations” role added earlier this year, that’s $140,000 annually in new administrative salaries. During the same period, the salary of the Clerk’s top administrator has skyrocketed: it’s 20.63% higher than it was last March.

The current Chief Deputy has worked for the Clerk since April 20, 2009. What’s the biggest pay increase you’ve ever received after one year at a job? When was the last time you got a ten percent raise? This, in an industry where there is no competition… unless you count the more than 100 front counter, file room, and data-entry clerks paid less than $30,000 a year whose raises (or lack of raises) come out of the same pot. Strange behavior for a Secretary of State candidate endorsed by every union in the book.

From late 2005 to late 2007, I was an employee in the Clerk’s IT department. I got along with nearly everyone (as far as I know). I have no desire to drag the office through the mud, but one of the awful things about creeping bureaucracy is that it’s tough for outsiders to know what elected officials and the big-shots who follow them around actually do. How can you criticize administrator salaries when you don’t know who’s pulling the weight in an agency?

I know who’s pulling the weight at the Clerk of Courts, and it’s not the Clerk. This is generally acceptable, with an understanding that the Chief Deputy oversees day-to-day operations and coordinates inter-agency projects. Really, elected officials need only achieve a few things: hire competent administrators, make a handful of important decisions, and speak clearly to the public about what they’re up to. If an elected official bumps an unelected administrator to a six-figure salary while creating new positions which insulate said administrator from anything resembling $100,000 worth of work, the elected official has failed.

This November I’ll almost certainly be voting for Maryellen O’Shaughnessy’s Republican opponent, Jon Husted, for Secretary of State. This would have been the case even if I hadn’t seen the irresponsible way Clerk O’Shaughnessy rewards her administrative staff. But, having never met O’Shaughnessy, the data from the Auditor tell us two things:

1. Clerk O’Shaughnessy doesn’t hold taxpayers in very high esteem.
2. Clerk O’Shaughnessy is not especially conscientious.

I can only assume O’Shaughnessy thought nobody would notice. So much for that.

[Update: It gets worse.]

Media coverage of Israel’s refusal to let a stunt backed by Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood break its blockade of Gaza is standard fare, when you consider that most news outlets employ people who hate Israel. Take, for instance, an AP story today about another “aid” ship seized by Israel, “Israel remains defiant, seizes Gaza-bound aid ship:”

A defiant Israel enforced its 3-year-old blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza on Saturday, with naval commandos swiftly commandeering a Gaza-bound aid vessel carrying an Irish Nobel laureate and other activists and forcing it to head to an Israeli port instead.

The bloodless takeover stood in marked contrast to a deadly raid of another Gaza aid ship this week. However, it was unlikely to halt snowballing international outrage and demands that Israel lift or at least loosen the devastating closure that confines 1.5 million Palestinians to a small sliver of land and only allows in basic humanitarian goods.

Israel’s blockade is the only defense of a nation beset on all sides by enemies who want to push them into the sea. Wouldn’t it be more intuitive to label the continued “aid vessel” traffic as “defiant,” instead of the Israeli government? Hamas - the elected governing party of Gaza – is dedicated to Israel’s destruction. The useful idiots crying about Israel’s blockade have no excuse save ignorance for siding with genocidal maniacs, but they do so proudly.

As for those truly suffering in Gaza – how is it that Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Hamas escape blame? Why is Israel the only nation demonized for the suffering of people used as pawns in an ongoing effort to destroy the Jewish state? To read the Associated Press take on the situation, you’d think enforcing a blockade was worse than regularly launching rockets at Israeli civilians. Don’t worry, the AP mentions that pesky “rockets and mortars” issue… in paragraph 28.

Charles Krauthammer’s weekend article at National Review provides invaluable context. A highlight that I found more than a little shocking:

Oh, but weren’t the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel’s offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel, and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza – as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.

The plight of Gaza’s people can be blamed on many parties. Israel may be on the list, but they’re definitely not at the top. Nonetheless, the Associated Press continues reporting as if Israel is the root cause of every problem in the Middle East. Who will clueless Westerners blame if Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran (but I repeat myself) have their way?

I read a lot of stuff online throughout the course of a week, but rarely do I enjoy anything more than Mark Steyn’s weekly articles at The Orange County Register and Maclean’s. In his latest Maclean’s op-ed, Steyn continues what has been a years-long critique of the European welfare state. Though it’s familiar ground for Steyn it’s one of his best articles in recent memory.

The great thing about Mark Steyn, if you’ve not read him before, is the way he can make a really good joke out of the most depressing social insight. Look no further than the title of this week’s article, “Beating swords into welfare cheques.” The quote, in full:

Absolved from having to pay for their own defence, Continentals, like Canadians, beat their swords into welfare cheques, and erected vast cradle-to-grave social entitlements. Even under the U.S. security umbrella, they proved unsustainable. Why? Because Europeans stopped breeding. And, even with unprecedented levels of immigration, they’ve been unable to halt population decline.

Steyn discusses growing evidence for his argument, such as birth rates in Germany – the supposed economic powerhouse that’s going to save Europe from its financial woes. He also relates how, with Greece burning (both literally and figuratively), some of the “respectable” publications here in the States are warming up to opinions previously dismissed as far-right xenophobia.

My favorite quote from Steyn’s editorial, which you ought to read in its entirety:

How fair thou hast been – but only for the moment, and the moment is passing. Europe’s economic crisis is a mere symptom of its existential crisis: what is life for? What gives it meaning? Post-Christian, post-national, post-modern Europe has no answer to that question, and so it has 30-year-old students and 50-year-old retirees, and wonders why the small band of workers in between them can’t make the math add up.