Funmurphys: the Blog

Is That Much Straw A Fire Hazard?

Tom Maguire is a joy to read, not just for his insight, but for his language as well. When I came across another instant classic of his I just had to check, and sure enough, he's the only one who shows up for the quip "Is that much straw a fire hazard?" - at least until this post does. And yes, the whole post is as good as the quip.

I think I'll start pushing the Liberal:Conservative as Woman:Man analogy after Tom documented how a liberal woman reading a conservative man's writing simply didn't understand him. At all. And neither Tom or I had any trouble understanding him.

Can't Drill Our Way Out Of It

At first blush I didn't much care for the response that we "can't drill our way out of" high gas prices, but then I read the full text of Sen. Obama's remarks and was somewhat mollified. But then I thought for a moment, and I was back to thinking the remarks are wrong:

"If we reduce our consumption of oil, that's what will reduce gas prices, the presumptive Democratic nominee said in a one-on-one interview with The Post-Crescent during a campaign stop in Kaukauna.

"There's really no other way of doing it."

"We can't drill our way out of the problem because there's just a finite amount of oil out there and you have got increasing demand from countries like China and India."

Ok, so what's my beef. Well for one thing, back when I took my Econ 101 class from a Marxist I learned that both a decrease in demand and an increase in supply will lower cost. So to say that a decrease in consumption (i.e. demand) is the only way is flat wrong. But I was temporarily molified by his modifier that there's just a finite amount of oil out there. And then I thought and realized that there is just a finite amount of anything out there (wherever you draw your boundary since ultimately the Universe is a closed system) so really the only time that makes any sense is if you are currently up against a limit in your ability to increase supply.

Are we there? No way, not with all the oil in the US that is politically out of reach, and the refining capacity we don't have because of political considerations, and the inefficiency in the government oil producers which control most of the oil right now, we could increase supply without much difficulty. So in the short term, i.e. my lifetime, we can in fact "drill our way out of it". In the long term, the economics of something else will make more sense than oil and we will switch over to that. Again and again.

So while I wait with anticipation for solar energy to get cheap and efficient enough to power all our energy needs, I say drill away.

Today's Quote: A Trio From Mencken

"There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."

"The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

"I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time."

--------------- H.L. Mencken (I'm guessing after a politician was nominated to run for President)

An Unforgiving God

Eamon Fitzgerald reflects on the Pope's visit to America :

Yes, of course, many crimes have been committed in the name of God, but no Christian leader was ever as barbaric as Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao, or Pol Pot or Saddam. Those monsters were not constrained by a moral order based on the dominion of a forgiving God. They were God. They were unforgiving.

My Debate With Senator Obama

Barry:

The AP reports Obama "dismissively" talked about the debate yesterday "and the line of questioning from ABC News' moderators, arguing that it focused on political trivia at the expense of the problems facing average voters." At a rally in North Carolina, Obama "drew roars of approval" when he "mocked" the "tough questions" sent his way during the event. ABC World News reports Obama "took issue" with the nature of the debate questions, saying, ""Forty-five minutes before we heard about health care; 45 minutes before we heard about Iraq; 45 minutes before we heard about jobs; 45 minutes before we heard about gas prices."

Kevin:

Birds of a feather flock together

Clinton Agonistes

I have to feel sorry for Hillary Clinton. Only just a teensy bit, though. Here she was inevitable, Obama left for dead before Iowa, and now she's on the brink of losing the nomination. And so she fights back with her "experience" and her "who do you want to answer the phone at 3AM at the Whitehouse" - but left unsaid is that John McCain wins both those battles. If those arguments persuade you, then why not vote for McCain in the general if you vote for Hillary for those reasons in the primary. I have real problems with McCain-Feingold, but at least it's major legislation. What's the legislation with Clinton's or Obama's name on it? John McCain has a huge track record in the Senate - Clinton has some, and Obama has what, if anything? McCain isn't my first choice (Thompson), or my second choice (Romney), but I certainly feel comfortable with him answering the phone at 3AM, and I certainly feel comfortable with his track record of leadership and experience in office.

So when Hillary hammers Saint Barry on his experience and dovishness, all McCain has to do is replace Obama with Clinton and Clinton with McCain and he's set.

Clinton: "Prius Owners Won't Get Mortgage Deduction"

I know I'm just a country bumpkin from Missouri, but when a politician says this:

"In addition, Hillary will end the tax incentives to companies that ship jobs overseas, and invest those resources in creating good, high-paying jobs here in the U.S."

I can't help but think

"In addition, Hillary will end the mortgage income tax deduction to individuals who buy Priuses, because they are shipping those good, high-paying jobs overseas. Instead, they should buy cars manufactured right here in the U.S."

Of course, you'll never hear a politician actually say that, although for the life of me I can't see the difference between a company buying products from overseas and an individual buying products from overseas. Companies are just aggregators of all the people necessary to make a product for the purchasers of the product. Economically or morally, it makes no difference if the purchaser or the company aggregates from foreigners - the foreigners are employed just the same (not that there's anything wrong with that). In fact, from this nativist point of view, isn't better to buy from a company that outsources than from a foreign company because the outsourcer preserves more American jobs?

A Simple Proposal

I have not paid close attention to the Presidential race so far. It's far too early. However, I know the general outlines of what people will complain about - too much money will be spent, the campaign will go on far too long, too many people will be bothered by pollsters and candidates alike, and too many states will bypassed because they "aren't in play". I have a rather simple solution. I propose that in return for a small renumeration from all the other states, but large enough to eliminate our income tax, presidential elections be held in Missouri alone. We are the Bellwether State after all -- Missouri has voted for the winner of every Presidential race in every election of the past century except one (1956). And in the last half-century, not only have we picked the winner, we were amazingly close to the popular vote.

Think of all the advantages - far less money spent, a much shorter election, nobody outside Missouri disturbed by either the candidates or the media, and nobody has to feel like they've been unfairly ignored by the candidates (ignored yes, unfairly, no). All this and the same outcomes! What's not to like about it?

Media Incompetent - Film All The Time

I'm told not only are there a whole bunch of candidates for next year's Presidential election, they are holding debate after debate between them. I see this information in blogs, but never on TV. Apparently, at some of these debates the sponsoring media organization (I don't think calling CNN a news organization is factually accurate) is fooled, like Justin Timberlake, by people claiming to be undecided or average voters. The latest debate was the worst in this regard, as apparently CNN was fooled repeatedly by political operatives pretending to be, well, normal people. As this was somehow tied in with that other politically neutral group, YouTube, and thus the internet, I think CNN stuck in a timewarp in so many ways still believes the (in internet years) old saw that "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog". How very 1993 of them. If you scroll down at the link, you'll discover the reality - not only can anyone figure out you're a dog on the internet, they know your breed, likes, dislikes, favorite activities, and most importantly in this context, your political affiliations.

This is true for not just dogs, not just people, but media organizations as well.

The Joys Of A Democrat In The White House

In some ways I look forward to a President from the Democratic party. Overnight, the Democrats will be for the war on terror. I know that right now the right is calling the Democrats the Surrendercrats and otherwise calling out the lack of a Democratic backbone, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that with a Democrat in the White House the Democratic party doesn't just rattle sabers, it slashes away with great gusto. Bill Clinton had no trouble attacking other countries, and the Democrats didn't say boo. Our attack on Serbia over Kosovo was pre-emptive, our airforce bombed Serbian state television -- killing civilians and members of the press -- because we didn't like what they were broadcasting.

And lest we forget, it was the Clinton administration that invented "extraordinary rendition. It was Peace Prize winner Al Gore who defended the procedure in interal deliberations thusly: ""That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass."

Since the mainstream media isn't just made up of Democrats, but has become a chief supporter of Democrats, the tone of stories will change overnight. Our successes in Iraq will at last be reported; the economy will improve overnight (except for those areas that the Democrats want to change, so healthcare will still be in crisis, and the deficit will be mentioned only in the context of the need to raise taxes). And with the press not feeling the need to smear Bush any way they can, the tone of overall reportage in general will improve, while the stores about how bad the US is will dramatically decline, so much so that our stature in the world will improve (which naturally will be described as result of the policies of our wise and beloved Democratic President). Yes, the stories the US press pushes are picked up internationally; the idea that somehow our press stops at the waters edge and has no influence on how the rest of the world sees us is laughably naive. It's human nature to assume that a country's own press is more accurate than any foreign reportage.

You might think I'm cynical - but I don't. I think I'm quite scientific, since I've seen this happen before.

Government Popularity Continues Slide

Here's a headline you're not likely to see: Bush twice as popular as Congress. Not that that's saying much, although more people think Bush is doing a good job than people think the average newspaper is accurate, which again isn't saying much.

Now I think it's normal for most President's approval to trend downward with time because the art of governing in America is the art of comprimise while most Americans want victory on the issues that are important to them. At the start of a Presidency, the only thing people hold against him are promises not made. Over time, a President is bound to not deliver victory on more and more issues important to particular Americans. It's harder on a President who lost party majorities in Congress and therefore can deliver on very little - although he can still keep his opponents from delivering victories for their supporters.

Since President Bush serves in interesting times, everything is magnified. While the war is clearly a big driver, the President's failure to deliver on Social Security reform and his difference with his base on immigration reform are another two big hits to his approval. A mainstream media that continues to bend the truth to "get Bush" at all times is no help to his approval ratings either.

I think the real question is why is the approval rating of Congress so low, and what does it mean for America?

Al Gore Wins Nobel Peace Prize

As I'm sure you already know, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. This is greated as big news in some quarters, or as an affirmation of the correctness of his global warming scare job. Look, if Al Gore really believed in what he's peddling, namely we all have to make significant lifestyle changes to reduce our carbon emissions or we going to face deathly consequences, he'd change his own behavior. But he doesn't - he burns through carbon based energy at a rate far beyond the average American. Maybe Al Gore is entirely correct in his predictions - but I'm not going to believe a man who doesn't practice in the slightest what he preaches.

So what does his victory really represent? Coupled with other recent Nobel Peace prize picks, it is clear that the European leftist elite, not content with rendering their own countries impotent, are trying to influence American politics to their liking. If the Nobel Peace Prize committee wants to reduce the presitge of their own award, have at it boys. If they think that a bunch of Norwegian elists sway my thinking, they are sadly mistaken.

SCHIP

I read in the papers about President Bush's heartless veto of SCHIP -- and that's how it's always described, heartless, like he's taking money from orphans or is going to personally infect these nameless masses of kids with some horrible disease and then sit back and laugh in the White House as they aren't treated because they don't have "access" to health insurance - and I had a couple of thoughts.

First off, I thought after the Democrats raised the minimum wage in this country, nobody was going to be poor anymore. Silly me. Too bad they didn't have a set of bench marks for that feel good but harm some while helping some others kind of non-solution. The way to raise wages isn't by legislative fiat but by helping people to be more productive.

Secondly, where were all these handringers when President Bush was proposing tax cuts for parents? What a novel idea, let parents decide where they want to spend their money for the children, not Washington.

The crazy thing is, the fight is over just how much the program gets expanded, and oh by the way we're already covering kids above "the poverty line".

Before we get caught up in all the partisan back and forth, with deception the rule of the day, or go all gushy because children are involved, let's think. What kind of healthcare system do we want - one with more third party pay, or one with less? And how do we want to pay for programs - with targeted taxes on one group to help another group, or with broad based taxes to help broad swaths of society? Do we want a battle over icons, another meaningless skirmish between two political parties, or do we want to think clearly about public policy? Because in the mangled words of a real political titan, here we go again -- down the path of slogan wars and demonizing not just what we don't understand, but what we don't want to understand.

If Moms Ran the World ...

The flying nun got everybody stirred up the other day by saying:

“May they be seen, may their work be valued and raised, and to especially the mothers who stand with an open heart and wait – wait for their children to come home for from danger, from harm’s way and from war. I’m not finished. I have to finish talking … if the mothers ruled the world there would be no goddamn wars in the first place.”

The left is decrying "censorship" because FOX cut the cussing (and the rest of the statement with it) out.

Personally, this underscores you're on solid PC ground claiming women are superior to men (not just the flying nun, but entire women's studies departments claim this), but you're in trouble if you claim men are superior to women -just ask Larry Summers who was disinvited to speak by the University of California Regents after they were reminded of Dr. Summers remark that it would be worth researching whether the dearth of female professors in the hard sciences was due to innate sex differences. How is this different than saying mothers are more innately fit to run the world than fathers? Just asking.

I also have to wonder at the condition, if moms ran the world.

Umm, don't they already?

Saint Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Jesuits) famously observed "Give me the child until he is seven and I will show you the man". I not so famously have observed that women in general, and mom's in particular, have the children -- boys and girls -- to at least seven. I'd pay money to see a discussion between Mr. Jason Whitlock and Mrs. Sally Field on this subject do we have insufficient fathering in this country?

At the risk of raising ire from the right people, I'll also point out that "momma's boy" is not a compliment.

So my answer to the question What would life be like if moms ran the world, I have to say not much different. Actually, I take that back. If we mean only moms ran the world in a dictatorial fashion, then there would be more emphasis on reducing risk across the board - physically, economically, etc. And there would be more emphasis on religion. And we'd all wear clean underwear under penalty of law. I say this because these are two areas where men and women are different - women are more risk averse and more religious, and everybody knows about moms and clean underwear.

But an end to war altogether? No.

Ann Coulter Interview

I'm not a fan of Ann Coulter's an insult too far style of attention getting, but I did find this interview funny:

FB: Sexual harassment is a big issue in certain industries such as politics and the modeling business. Do you think people who trade sexual favors really get ahead?
AC: It seems to have worked for Hillary.

FB: You are a brilliant self made and accomplished woman. Would you ever date a model?
AC: Is the model a Republican?

FB: Which is the Bigger Disaster... a) Britney Spears at the VMAs... b) The New York Times.
AC: At least there's hope for Britney.

The comments would be even more funny if they weren't such a sad commentary on the current state of political discourse.

Craig, Gore, and Begley: Hypocrisy Examined

I think charges of hypocrisy are thrown around far more than warrented. The most common case is where someone who advocates what we shall call virtue is found not to always act in accordance with that virtue. For me the person would be a hypocrite not just because they sometimes failed to live up to their standards (only the standardless person would not then be a hypocrite), but the person who advocates something as a virtue they really don't think is a virtue and who have no intention of living up to it as a standard.

So do I think for example that Senator Craig is a hypocrite as some have suggested for being a closeted conservative homosexual while not supporting a liberal homosexual agenda? No, I don't think so. I think he should resign for soliciting sex in a public restroom, but I don't think he's a hypocrite because his politics don't match someone else's idea of what they should be because of his sexual orientation.

I think Al Gore is a hypocrite because while he tells us that because CO2 emissions are going to wreck the planet and kill millions, we need to change our lifestyles to reduce carbon emissions, he has not made any such changes in his lifestyle (nor is he alone in this).

Which brings me to Ed Begley Jr. I've seen his show on HGTV a couple of times (it's on after Design Star) and he's the anti-Gore. While I'm a global warming sceptic, I appreciate that making changes in the atmosphere's chemistry may not be a good idea without a much better understanding than we possess. Begley seems to live the lifestyle he advocates, and he makes a fear free pitch. He doesn't say you need to change everything or we're all going to die; instead he tries to give practical advice on how you can save energy (and money) in a pretty non-judgemental way:

I think there will be a lot of takeaways; that’s the thing that we’re going to try and stress, that people should grab the low-hanging fruit first. Not everybody is going to buy a hybrid car, an electric car, put up solar panels, or maybe even do solar hot water — that may be out of people’s budgets — even though it’s a lot less than solar electric. But people can afford a light bulb. They can afford a thermostat if it’s going to put them into profit in six months. They can afford perhaps some insulation, if they have a little piece of dirt in their backyard or front yard, they can plant some vegetables, they can afford to compost, or ride a bike or take a bus. Those things are quite affordable; indeed they’re quite cost-effective.

Who gets better press coverage - Al Gore, or Ed Begley Jr. Who should? I'll take Ed any day of the week.

Who Keeps Returning the Bums to Office?

David Bernstein asks a good question, Why should Larry Craig Resign? While he makes a good point, namely that other Senators have done far worse regarding their legislative duties -- a critique I'm pretty much in full agreement with -- one has to ask whey don't the other Senators resign, and I have to wonder why incumbents are such heavy favorites for reelection given how badly so many of them perform. Why don't we ever turn the bums out, and will the current catasprophically low approval ratings of Congress lead to fewer reelected bums?

Universal Healthcare for Soldiers

I'm shocked, shocked to discover that politicians brazenly lie. Or that it would be Claire McCaskill this time.

Have you ever noticed how when it's a Democrat in the White House, the credit for good news goes to his administration and blame for bad news goes to "the government", but when a Republican is in the White House, just the opposite occurs?

Pelosi and the Plane

I think Speaker Pelosi is being unfairly attacked over "Air Pelosi". Just because I disagree with many of her political positions, that doesn't give me the right to distort her positions or otherwise treat her unfairly. As Speaker of the House she's supposed to get the use of an airplane - just like Dennis Hastert did. Maybe I'm just a fool, but I don't believe the claims she demanded something bigger and better than what Hastert got - they play to the political dislike of her. I'm friends with many people who have political positions that I disagree with (some even to the right of me), and I'm no less their friend because of it. Why do we treat people who we have different political positions differently than those we do agree with? Why are we willing to believe the worst of those who have different politics?

And even if the worst were true - if Speaker Pelosi did demand Air Force 3 - the biggest jet after AF1 & 2 to ferry around her and her pals, would that somehow invalidate her political positions? Would the military campaign in Iraq be justified by that? Would hiking the minimum wage now be discredited? Universal Healthcare run and funded by the Federal government would have been just the ticket except Nancy Pelosi demanded an overlarge plane to fly around in? Of course not.

The United States has enough real enemies that we don't need to treat each other like enemies.

Republican Hopeful Thumbnails

McCain: I don't like him, I hate McCain-Feingold, no.

Romney: Who?

Giuliani: I like him, clearly a good executive, the only thing he can do about abortion and gun control as president is appoint good judges, yes.

Kerry Snubs Troops

In the lastest example of a Seinfeld scandal (the length of a Seinfeld scandal is directly proportional to the strength of its vacuum, which is why 3 years later the saga of the plastic turkey continues) it's official - John Kerry wasn't snubbed by soldiers in Iraq, he snubbed them. For a pair of reporters.

Let's give three cheers (or if Brother Byrd is reading, two Hallelujahs and an Amen) for the political acumen of John 'Malpractice' Kerry. Maybe somebody should give his staff T-shirts that read "Kerry went all the way to Iraq for a photo op with the troops and all he did was talk to a lousy pair of reporters".

You've got to know you're base. If you're John Kerry, who's more important, a whole bunch of ignoramuses who blew their schooling and wound up in Iraq, or a couple of reporters for the New York Times? Kind of a no-brainer, isn't it?

Bryan Preston actually apologizes for calling Kerry "lonely" - which rates two Hallelujahs! and and an Amen! for Brother Preston from this corner at any rate. Although I will note that since loneliness is an emotional state it can't be determined from a photograph - you can be lonely sitting at a table full of people (remember the start of Freshman year anyone?) and whatever the opposite of lonely is sitting all by yourself.

Flap apologizes an a more Kerryesque style.

Just to get out ahead on big John, here's the next Kerry scandal of Sienfelding proportions.

I'm Bob Dole

I'm a 35, which puts me right under the picture of Bob Dole at this quiz. Funny, I picked that we shut cut farm subsidies, something I don't think Bob "Kansas" Dole ever advocated. Maybe we both have good senses of humor. I'm not a fan of the single axis political interpretation, and a bunch of the questions were pretty much toss ups for me (e.g. which do you distrust more, IRS or FBI). While fun, I don't think that reducing my politics to a number is useful, unlike my credit score. If it were, I suppose I could just put up a daily post consisting entirely of "35".

via Ed Driscoll

Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss

Will there be less corruption or more corruption now that the Democrats have taken Congress? While you might find it hard to image that it would be more, Don Surber looks at the incoming congress and concludes that based just on those we know already are crooks, it will be more. I suppose I can't complain since I knowingly voted for a convicted felon in the past.

Election Day Plus 1

This was an election where neither party deserved a win (IMHO, at least) but the electorate decided in the aggregate to throw the bums out and give the other bums a chance. The Republicans ran the way they governed -- not well. I can't recall any mention about the economy and how it's booming. The Democrats weren't much better, but they were better enough to win back the House and maybe even the Senate. It's my hope this doesn't spark a Republican search for purity but learning, as in learning from their mistakes.

I went to bed with Jim Talent winning and Amendment 2 losing, and awoke to find Talent lost and Amendment 2 won. While Amendment 2 won't actually change anything, Talent's loss will.

The minimum wage increase passed handily. We can all feel good about ourselves now. Too bad for the people priced out of the job market by this (maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.) Yeah, I know the supporters got people with big pointy heads to say this wouldn't affect employment, but can you name any commodity that when you raise the price on it people buy more of it?

What I don't understand is how slow the election returns came in for Missouri. This year voting was either touch screen or opti-scan, both of which log the votes immediately. We should have results seconds after the polls close. Instead, as I write this, there are 68 precincts still not reporting. Did the horse and buggy breakdown?

I feel virtuous today - I voted against a tax on other people (Amendment 3) and voted for 2 taxes on myself - one for the Parkway school district, and one for the Special school district. I would have voted for the tobacco tax (Amendment 3) if the backers had just been honest. I might not be alone in that (hint, hint).

Poll workers must have gotten a commision on touch screen voters because they were really pushing it hard. Glenn Reynolds would be so proud of me -- I voted using the new pen and paper method - the same one I took standardized tests in school with 30 years ago. I did so only because the line was so much shorter for the optiscan than the touch screen.

No word on whether Red Villa voted in this election.

I expect "Mission Accomplished" banners to be hung up in newsrooms across the country. No word if the newsrooms can put 2 and 2 together.

In similar news, Nicaraguans have returned Daniel Ortega to power. The tagline of this blog, The Triumph of Hope Over Experience was certainly in evidence yesterday.

You End Up Getting Your Foot Stuck In Your Mouth

I'm willing to accept that John Kerry was not trying to criticism American soldiers as stupid but mistakenly called them unmotivated, lazy, and ignorant. So I agree with Ms. Barber that Mr. Kerry is being unfairly attacked on this subject:

“I can’t overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.”

That’s a clear reference to Bush, who Kerry implies is dumb. But it came out like this:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

It's bad enough that he's being condescending. John Kerry is where he is today not through diligent application in school, but by being willing to do anything to advance himself no matter what.

But far worse is that he's trying to turn a policy disagreement into a stupid joke. Literally. Great, that's who I want trying to determine national policy. I guess that means Kerry's idol, JFK, is a dumb fratboy like Bush because he got stuck in Vietnam - the original "quagmire".

Not every politician can tell a joke, and it really isn't a senatorial requirement, but I don't think that let's JoKe off the hook. Besides, calling them stupid woudn't have been near as bad as things he's actually called them - war criminals.

What are the things Democrats complain about Bush?

That he's a poor public speaker? Guess what, this latest from Kerry only shows that Kerry's worse.

That he doesn't admit mistakes? Has Kerry admitted his mistake and apologized? Ha, he's gone the blame everybody else route. [And now belatedly apologized.]

That he's dumb? Hey, Kerry got worse grades in school. And he flubbed an easy joke.

Look, I find that Kerry is everything that the Democrats today complain about Bush (including the liar part) only moreso, yet not only can they stomach Kerry, they made him their Presidential candidate in 2004. The Democrats could have been a contender - they could have put the standard in Joe Lieberman's capable hands in 2004 but instead that went with a pathetic loser like Kerry and kicked Lieberman out of the party.

Political Strategist Straw Poll

I'm holding a referendum on Tom Maguire:

Is Tom Maguire

[ ] Not Smart Enough to be a strategist for the Democrats, or

[ ] Too Smart to be a strategist for the Democrats.

I don't want to bias the results by proclaiming my opinion, but let me just say that if Tom were to become a strategist for the Democrats the age of signs and wonders would clearly be upon us.

Of course he's too smart to be a strategist for the Democrats; he's too smart to be a strategist for the Republicans too. I could become President if Tom became my brain like a certain other, better known team (that actually is a team).

Romney Sets A Reporter Straight

I want to have Mitt Romney's baby:

That has to be the best smooth rebuke I've seen.

Via Powerline.

I Have A Dream

Here's a Democratic platform I can get behind. Too bad it's only satire, although I don't doubt that Scott Ott also wishes it wasn't. Could a Democrat today say with a straight face:

"Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty."

Other than Joe Lieberman, that is?

Lost In Translation

Here's my problem, when I hear the phrase "common good" I think "tragedy of the commons".

Perhaps my problem is that I've found I like economics outside the academic setting, where I found it boring and repulsive.

Faster Feiler Meets Confirming Best

A couple of years ago my Adult Bible Fellowship teacher (Ken Best) mentioned that people are wired such that the feedback they get from life tends to reinforce (or confirm) their prior opinions, and that's because how we process information depends on what we think it will tell us. I have to say I agree with this observation. Generally, it takes something big (e.g. 9/11) to cause such a disconnect that we actually reexamine our prior opinion, but normally we see what we expect to see and disregard the rest.

Mickey Kaus has championed the Faster Feiler Thesis, which essentially is that we have speeded up both the information flow and its processing for people. And I have to say I also agree with this.

Put the two together, and what do you get - increased polarization. Our opinion is converted from jello to cement in ever faster times. And if there are two sides to every argument, then we have two sides set like epoxy around every policy, every politician, around pretty much everything (those Taste Great/Less Filling ads aren't so funny now). Not only do we process the increased information flow faster, the increased flow drives us to become set in our positions ever faster.

Sound like real life? Perhaps how Bush Derangement Syndrome can become both widespread and hard to cure so quickly? Perhaps why so many people seem to be so completely convinced that they are not just right, but so right that any disagreement can only spring from impure motives -- or you're not just wrong, you're evil.

Who Wants To Be A Politician

Commenting on the latest media gotcha of a politician, my wife asked why would anyone go into politics these days. Why indeed.

One On One With Kim Jong-Il

Yes, this is going around so you can find it all over, and yes, it really is unfair to Madeleine Albright, but after She Who Must Be Obeyed opened her mouth, I couldn't resist.

A less funny, more traditional rebuttal was provided by Sen. John McCain. McQ delivers a fisking. Personally, I can't fault either administration too much because North Korea under Kim Jong-il was simply going to try and develop nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them no matter what anyone said. It was worth giving talk a chance, but once it becomes clear that's a waste of time, why continue? Now we need to talk to the North Korea's neighbors about what we are going to do, not talk to Kim.

And another thing, why is it the same people who criticize President Bush for acting unilaterally, or for the US acting like a bully, demand that the talks with North Korea only be with the United States? It's just more dead horse beating.K

Representatives Foley, Hastert, and Shimkus

I'm just glad that Mark Foley wasn't a Boy Scout Leader. Everything else about the sordid situation is just bad. And I have to agree with Dick Durban, someone I disagree with on about everything else, and that is:

Durbin also said the House Page Board should be abolished. Durbin said there are no senators involved in overseeing the Senate page program, and instead it is run by nonpartisan staff.

"The Page Board in the House should go," Durbin said. "It is clearly too political."

I don't want my representatives running the page program - it detracts from their time they should be spending legislating, they aren't going to be as good at as professionals, and even if it isn't political in itself, clearly it can become so at a time like this.

Hastert and Shimkus can stay, but the page board has to go.

Full Disclosure: My nephew was an intern with Rep. Shimkus several years ago -- and yes, his respect for Shimkus does color my thinking on this one.

Republicans and Me

I admit I was wrong. I thought that the theory that American system would create two parties that would be forced to the center in order to remain competative. This hasn't happened lately, as the two parties seem to be engaged not in a race to the center but to the poles, or in the case of the Republicans, never never land. I understand that the Democrats have moved to the left to satisfy the vocal minority out there, but I'm not entirely sure where the Republicans are going.

I don't consider myself a Republican for the reason I plump for principle over party. So while the Republican party has been the vehicle for conservatism, my loyalty is to conservatism, not Republicans. I'm both a social conservative and a fiscal conservative, so I'm prime Republican material.

My problem with the party these days is pretty much on the fiscal side, and I want to make something clear to Republican politicians - since you have (far) more control over the government than the culture, I judge you by the government under your control, and specifically for Congress the budgets under your control and the laws you pass.

For example, I'm against abortion for any reason besides saving the life of the mother, but I understand that (1) the laws on abortion has been taken over by the courts since 1973, (2) the attitudes toward abortion are not controlled by politicians. So guess what, as long as you do a good job on judges, you're off the hook. I realize how little you can accomplish, so I can't hold you accountable.

One last thing. While much is made about a revolt or dissidents in the party over interrogation techniques, I have to say finally. This is what the branches of government should be doing, and I have to wonder, where are the Democrats? At last we have a real discussion over issues, and the Democrats are nowhere to be found. So why vote Democratic if all they can do is partisan sniping?

Nobel Peace Prize?

What is the one thing a leftist thinks violence solves?

Better Government

I think we need two good, strong parties to make our government work. Otherwise, you get what we have now, which isn't pretty. So I don't want to see a purer Democratic or Republican party, which is what party partisans are always calling for - I'd like to see two sane, responsible big tent parties vie for votes while taking a long term view of the election process. Instead, what we have is one party taking advantage of the fact that the other has become, well, deranged. And the fact that the national media has joined the one party in its madness and is doing it's best to distort reality doesn't help - which is how you get a majority of people supporting private Social Security accounts but a majority dissaproving President Bushes plan on Social Security, which consisted of a nebulous plan for private accounts.

Border Crossings Reduced

Hmm, apparently sending the National Guard to help seal the border has already had an effect: fewer illegal immigrants are trying to cross, in a mixture of individual discouragement and higher smuggler fees. Let's hope Congress does its part so that they don't waste the time and effort of thousands of National Guardsmen.

Third Party Thoughts

The talk of the day is about a third political party. Oddly enough, it seems to be driven by disaffected Republicans hoping for a purer or better Republican party. Parties are odd things - since to be one of the two major parties you have to be pretty inclusive. What actually defines them? The Democrats think of themselves as the party of the little guy and the Republicans think of themselves as the party of mainstreet America, but are they really? And even when you say the Democrats are the party of urban and rural America while the Republicans are the party of Suburbia, that is a tendency, not a uniformity. Same thing goes for the whole Red/Blue state dichotomy - we're really just shifting pattern of purple.

I would have thought the Democratic coalition of disparate groups would be the first to crack because the members seem to be in actual opposition over positions, where the Republican coalition between fiscal conservatives and moral conservatives could better tolerate different areas of interest. For instance, the working class Catholic part of the Democratic coalition has to clash with both the anti-religous and pro-abortion wings of the coalition. The interests of Black parents and the teacher's union leadership are also in opposition. The amazing thing to me about the Democratic party is that it hasn't torn itself apart, but maybe the ability to unite around hating Republican presidents is enough of a glue to keep itself together. And perhaps that's why the Republicans do better at electing Presidents - the strain shows up the worst on a national scale.

Of course, what people when they talk about a new third party is a third major party, because there are more third parties already out there than you can shake a stick at. In my life we've had a couple of third party candidates -- John Anderson (who's policies for 1980 are amazingly relevant for today) and Ross Perot who might have actually won the election if he hadn't vacillated because of what he thought was a Republican dirty tricks campaign -- but they didn't leave a major third party behind.

The last third party to emerge was the Republicans themselves - and it wasn't driven by leadership but by principle - the fight over slavery. That sort of galvanizing principle is what's needed to form a new major party, not some isolated man on a white horse riding in to our rescue. And the party that fell apart during the relignment was the Whigs, kind of old school Libertarians, who weren't as old, organized, or successful as the Democrats. I'm not sure that a new party built along the lines of what commentators think the Republican party should be would actually spawn a brand new third party when it's more likely that it would simply reenergize and transform the existing Republican party. If the problem is that the party faithful feel their party leadership is out of touch, wouldn't it be more likely that a lot of incumbants lose primaries and a new party leadership be installed than a whole new party be formed?

For a new major party to form, you have to have significant numbers of voters leave both current major parties, so you have to have a principle that divides both parties. Otherwise you wind up with one major party, two minor parties, and that same host of insignificant parties. Is (more/less) immigration that principle? It sure seems to provoke enough emotional reaction; but I'm not clear that it would split both parties or that a third party could grow by planting that banner. The fight over slavery festered and blazed over decades before it forged a new party - I don't think we are there yet on immigration. I don't think it's enough for people to climb up out of their ruts.

Quite frankly, I see the Democrats in far more danger of an actual crack up than the Republicans. I don't want to underestimate the power of habit and hatred, but that is all I can see holding the Democrats together. And a crack up of either party would mean a realignment as different interest groups migrated between the parties. If one or the other were to break apart, the other one would be changed as well as an influx of new voters and an outflow of old voters would change the party whatever it's name is.

Communism Is Alive And Well

Tim at Random Observations has a look at the reality behind communist infiltration in the US:

Today, Haynes has come full circle. Years ago he laughed at the old Minnesota DFLers. Now, many of his fellow historians dismiss him.

"They still see Communist Party USA members as idealists focused on social justice -- just 'liberals in a really big hurry,' " he says. But Haynes is hopeful that the facts will prevail. Younger historians are more receptive, he says. "They don't have the same investment in the academic conventional wisdom as the Sixties generation, who often try to rewrite history to suit their own agenda."

What more needs to be said? When it's so abudantly clear from history that Marxism is a philosphy of death and destruction, why are there any Marxists left, and why are there so many teaching at Universities?

Bad Government, or Praise for Bureaucracy

Oddly enough, both meanings of "bad" work when applied to government - bad in the sense of immoral and in the sense of poorly run. When I look around, I see a lot of bad government - it's bad government that is the root cause of most of the problems worldwide. Bad government leads to the famine, chaos, and war in Africa; leads to the horrible suffering of North Koreans and Cubans (among sadly too many others), and leads to the instability and turmoil in South America.

But we're seeing good government in action in Washington. No, not the clueless band of politicians that currently inhabit Congress; but the continuing demonstration that we are a nation ruled by laws, not men. Yes, problems are looming like Medicare and Social Security, we are fighting a war with a nation divided, members of Congress are behaving not just irresponsibly, but criminally -- yet the economy is booming, people from the world over are trying to live here, life is good in general because governement doesn't "run" the nation, and the government itself continues to function well enough because it isn't "run" by the politicians. Come what may, we have confidence in our government to function adequately.

The Showdown That Wasn't

Remember when President Bush nominated Gen Hayden to be head of the CIA, replacing the resigning Porter Goss? We were told how Congress was sharpening their knives over this one, with even Republicans questioning the nomination. Senator Arlen Spector claimed he would use the hearings to delve into the NSA's programs for eavesdropping and collecting call information. Well, the whole intellegence committee got a full briefing, and a funny thing happened on the way to the big showdown -- he was voted out of committee 12-3, and he was confirmed by the full senate 78-15. Some showdown. And it points up once again, the more you know about the NSA programs, the more in favor of it you are.

Dennis "Haymaker" Hastert

The Congressional Search kerfufle has taken a couple of new twists: First, President Bush ordered the material seized to be sealed for 45 days. For some reason, this sparked wonderment in some quarters, although not in others. I'm firmly in the camp that this makes sense, for a couple of reasons: one is that the President has to work with Congress, so it doesn't make sense to get into a public shouting match with the leadership he wants to work with over something that really is the pervue of low level government (IOW the President and Congress really shouldn't get involved in a routine police matter). The other is that this allows the President to have a series quiet, private chats with the House leadership that has gone bonkers and allow the whole matter to drift off to oblivion, with the announcement of the resolution time to coincide with something of far more interest to the news media, like another disappearence of an attractive young white woman. And really the President is giving anything up - he made it clear that the evidence would not be returned, and a 45 day delay in a case like this is nothing - the FBI already waited 8 months to seize the material after serving a subpeona.

Another bizare twist is that Hastert has fired a shot across ABCs bow for their repeated claims that he's somehow under investigation (or in their odd phrase, "in the mix" - I never knew investigating Congress was like baking a cake) after the Justice Department has officially stated he isn't. ABC has revealed enought for it to be clear that in fact there is nothing new here. Will the obvious questions this raises be persued? Hell no. We won't go asking about the propriety of an investigator or investigators making these leaks (short answer is that whoever leaked it should be investitgated and fired), nor will we be asking why this leak, now? Speaker Hastert obviously feels that it is retaliation for his complaint over the search of William Jefferson's Congressional Office. Is there another motive? I just hope Denny shows as much fire and tenacity in going after ABC, which they so richly deserve, as he as in going after the FBI over the search (which they don't deserve).

And what's getting lost in all the subsequent plot twists? That all the evidence points to William Jefferson being a crook.

Guess The Neo-Con

Synchronicity happens. I'm reading a blog post with a quote from a well known person, and then I read an article and bam, you have a Reece's Peanut Butter Cups. Some writer for the Washington Post writes another attack on Neo-cons, which has become short hand for someone a lefty doesn't like (being Jewish doesn't hurt), and so I respond. See if you can guess the well known author of the following quotes.

For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago. The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe -- the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

Sure sounds like a neo-con, nattering on about God and the rights of man.

In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now. The experience of a number of European countries and Japan have borne this out. This country's own experience with tax reduction in 1954 has borne this out. And the reason is that only full employment can balance the budget, and tax reduction can pave the way to that employment. The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.

Sheesh, he's a supply sider too. Doesn't he know this is trickle down, voodoo economics, the kind that didn't work for Ronald Reagan or GW Bush?

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.

Typical neo-con going on about freedom but not the important stuff like universal healthcare. No doubt he wants the US to go stick its nose in other people's business and force them to be like America.

The 1930's taught us a clear lesson: aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war. This nation is opposed to war.

Can't neo-cons get over WWII? That isn't the only war you know. What about the lessons of Vietnam?

My fellow citizens, let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out. No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred. Many months of sacrifice and self-discipline lie ahead -- months in which both our patience and our will will be tested, months in which many threats and denunciations will keep us aware of our dangers. But the greatest danger of all would be to do nothing.

The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are; but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world. The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.

Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right; not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.

There he goes again, dragging God into it. And what's this guy going on and on about the difficulties for -- where's the exit strategy, where's the clear communication of a plan for total victory? All I hear is somebody who's in over his head, and doesn't know how to get out.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

This much we pledge -- and more.

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do -- for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

More of that imperialist talk about not permitting other countries not being up to our standards. And what's this talk about divided there is little we can do -- sounds like he doesn't value dissent. Although, something sounds familiar - haven't I heard that pay any price, bear any burden talk before? Hmm, I don't recall Wolfie or Perle saying that stuff.

Yep, that neo-con I've quoted here is none other than John Fitzgerald Kennedy -- JFK. Gosh, who knew that he was the father of neo-conservatism foreign policy, not Irving Kristol?

Not only is the tone strikingly like the neo-conservative of today (lending credence to their claim that they didn't leave the Democrats, but the Democrats left them) but a shocker is the committment to do hard things. Today the left is consumed with always taking the easy way on foreign policy. Don't rock the boat. Stability is a greater good than liberty for all.

In place of "support any friend, oppose any foe" we have apply pressure to our friends' butts, apply lips to our enemies' butts.

Bear any burden is replaced with the only fruit worth picking is the low hanging variety.

This is the rhetoric of Democrats and the left before Vietnam. They sound quite different today -- still suffering from a culture of defeatism over 30 years later.

I read the quote on economics at Steve Verdon's and was intrigued enough to follow the link to American Rhetoric where I found a bunch of JFK speeches. Reading them, I'm struck by how much the idealism in them is the same as in GWB (and the famous neo-con movement). Now of course I got to pick the excerpts I wanted, but I don't think I distorted JFKs views. And I'm not arguing that if JFK were alive today he would be considered a neo-con because I have no idea what the intervening 40 years would have done to his thinking; but the JFK who was President was far more like Reagan or GW Bush than any current Democrat (except possibly Lieberman).

William Jefferson and Denny Hastert

Politicians serve as a constant source of total amazement for me, even more than the blaze of stars in the sky at night away from city lights which leaves me slackjawed in astonishment. William Jefferson is a member of the House of Represenatives who looks to have taken bribes and is under investigation by the FBI. As part of that investigation, the FBI searched with a warrant Jefferson's congressional office and the US residence of the Vice-President of Nigeria. Oddly enough, it was the search of the congressional office, not the foriegn official's residence, that has raised a stink. Of all the hills to pick to die on, why the Republican leadership in Congress picked this one is beyond me, what with Denny Hastert demanding the FBI turn over any documents it seized as part of the raid, along with the comment "They took the wrong path."

I suppose I should be happy that the Republican congressional leadership is not playing politics, because clearly the political response would be to help carry the boxes the FBI seized and make a statement to the press with boxes in hand that it's a darn shame the Democrats tolerate a criminal in their midst. Instead they make a boneheaded claim that Congressional offices should be sanctuaries for illegal activity. Most people are going to wonder what's in your office, Denny. If a sitting President has to testify before a grand jury, then a Congressional office can be searched by the FBI.

Look, I understand the idea behind the separation of powers, so my question is what would be the correct path here? Congress has passed the laws which the executive branch is trying to enforce, and the FBI executed a search warrant duly authorized by a judge - in other words, the branches of government are doing their separate jobs. The FBI subpeoned the documents it searched for in September of last year, which subpeona Congressman Jefferson and Congress itself ignored alike. And in that eight month period, has Congress opened its own investigation into Congressmen Jefferson, or taken any action at all? Of course not. Back when they had a chance to act, they did nothing. Now they are up hopping on their hind legs bellowing about principle. But what's clear here is that the executive branch isn't trying to intimidate or influence the legislative branch -- a case which would warrant all the bellowing and in which case I would gladly bellow right along -- but a case where the executive branch and judicial branches are going about their constitutional and legislatively mandated roles of law enforcement.

I don't like the FBI raiding congressional offices, but then I like criminals even less and think they should be investigated, prosecuted, and incarcerated whether the criminal is a member of Congress or not -- especially if the criminal is a member of Congress.

Cutting Off Your Nose To Spite Your Face

I keep hearing talk by conservative bloggers about sitting out the 2006 elections to punish the GOP. Does the GOP deserve punishment? Boy, and how. But who exactly would we be punishing, and who would we be rewarding? Do you think Bush is bad on immigration for not being strict enough, why would you let the Democrats, who are far less strict, take over? If you think the Republicans are spending too much, why would you let the Democrats, who would both spend more and tax more, take over? If you don't care for Frist and Hastert, why do you think Reid and Pelosi would be an improvement. Yes, I would like to cast my vote for somebody, but believe me, if I need to I will cast it against somebody.

As far as punishment goes, you'll be punishing the whole nation, and yourselves especially. Yes, some congresspeople would be out of a job, for about half a nano-second until they joined K-Street and made real money for a change.

And what makes you think the message would be that the GOP needs to be more conservative? The Democrats could win in a walk if they moved to the center, but they have chosen (so far) to move to the left. Why do you think the GOP will be any better at reading the tea leaves after the fact then before the fact?

It's Official: Tony Snow

I didn't really expect Don Rumsfeld to be named White House press secretary, so I'm not disappointed that it was the loudly rumored Tony Snow who will be press secretary. Tony is bucking the trend - usually you work for a politician, then you go to work for the press (Stephanopolis, Mathews, Russert, and Scarborough (OK, he was a politician) come quickly to mind). Of course, Tony has already worked for a politician, and I can think of no more thankless job than working as a press secretary for a President's last three years whom the press hate. It's like being put in a cage with starving ferets for three years, and you're the only food in the cage with them. Will the press go easy on him because 1. he was a colleague and 2. he's got cancer? My money is on NOT in a big way because he worked for FOX and his illness is nothing next to the fact he's working for BUSH! Nope, it will 3 years of daily "Get him, kill the heretic!" for Tony.

Immigration: Mexico

Immigration has moved to the front burner in this country. Thoughtful people are writing thoughtfully - Jane Galt has a trio (is that a theme today?) of such posts:
Some rambling thoughts on immigration,
Unwanted guests?
More on immigration.

What I haven't seen is what is driving the issue today - it's really about Mexican immigrants and the large influx of illegal immigrants over our border with Mexico. Absent that large flow over a large border, we wouldn't be having this discussion. I guess nobody wants to sound like a racist, but what grabs people's attention isn't how many technically savvy people come in on HB-1 visas from Asia and India, but how many poor Mexicans are willing to risk death to live in the United States.

The stakes are high all around on this issue - for both Mexico and the United States. We really want to get the answer right -- and that does include all aspects of immigration, including how many HB-1 visas are issued.

And let's face it, its better to be poor in the United States than it is in Mexico. I can't say as I blame people who are trying to make a better life for themselves. But we need to balance everybodies interests, and not focus too exclusively on one particular group.

We need to take a dispassionate look at what we want the end state to be, and then figure out how to get there. I'd start with a Mexico that poor people aren't willing to risk death to leave. So our ultimate goal is a Mexico that has the political and economic institutions that are able to take care of all its citizens. Of course, we have to (1) survive in the meantime, while (2) we help Mexico get there. So that means that while we look at the range of options on how the US deals with immigration, we need to always be looking at the effect that these measures have on Mexico (and really all the countries that have people who want to get out). For instance, building a wall along the entire border - what are the effects on immigration, the effects on the US, the effects on Mexico - all these things need to be considered, not just one.

Gerrymandering

Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the gerrymander.

Gerrymandering is universally unpopular with voters and popular with politicians. And Stuart Taylor puts the case against gerrymandering quite well:

"The one-person, one-vote decisions of the early 1960s have had the unintended consequence of enabling politicians to choose their voters rather than the other way around".

I don't know which is worse, when one party gerrymanders at the expense of the other, or when incumbents of both parties combine to gerrymander at the expense of challengers of the other party.

One of the complaints is that as we have more and more safe districts, we have highly polarized politics. But what about the other extreme? If we drew districts to maximize competitiveness, would we be happy if a party that had 48% of the electorate managed to win 100% of the seats -- which might happen in a smaller state with every district highly competitive. Would politics become focused even more on appearance, on sound bit, on the immediate tactical advantage on election day to the exclusion of good governance? So is the choice between polarized politics or representation that isn't representative?

The other alternative is to take gerrymandering to the other limit, so that districts would be all equally safe which would mean that the representation in the legislature would most closely reflect the party makeup of the electorate. That would achieve the global result of accurate representation of the electorate, but people would feel even less connected to the political process. Heck, we could avoid all the expense and controversy associated with general elections and just hold primaries.

And if you think that most people vote for the person and not the party (you of course never do that, free thinker that you are), then gerrymandering wouldn't work. What makes gerrymandering break down isn't our rugged individualism, but that over time we move around and thus change the relationship between party and location, and that there are slow shifts in the electorate between the parties.

I don't buy the theory that safer districts have led to more political strife. I think what we are seeing is a return to normal (although unpleasant) levels of political strife and incivility that after an abnormal period of consensus that was due to the experiences and outlook of my fathers generation - the one's who grew up during the depression, fought WWII, and came home with the ability and desire to get along to get things done -- and this change happens to correlate with more effective gerrymandering.

We could just select districts based on compactness and carve them up by computer without regard to their competitiveness, but then who knows what you'll get -- which is why politicians will never agree to such an approach. Would we be happy if such a scheme meant the dilution of minority votes, or inadvertantly made uncompetative districts that didn't represent the relative strengths of the parties? Would we then have to step in with some sort of neutral commision to adjust the boundaries so that the districts conformed to notions of fairness, as if that isn't a political judgement in itself?

Is there even a good answer on how to draw legislative districts in a two party system?

And don't even get me started on the problems with one man, one vote.

Harry, Get Well Soon

Vice President Cheney accidentally shot a friend while quail hunting over the weekend and you'd think something of national import happened. I guess it was a slow weekend in the Natalie Holloway case. The VP's tardiness in notifying the media -- the 22 hour gap -- is driving some people bonkers. What difference did the delay make? None has been offered, so I'm left with nothing but Ecclesiastes: Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity.

I realize that the best way for the VP to have handled the situation from a PR standpoint was to have immediately notified the press, made a tearful apology on camera, and in general treat it as more important than Iran getting nukes. But really, should I care that the VP accidentally shot a fellow hunter? And who should the VP apologize to besides Harry Whittington, the man he shot? He didn't shoot the American people, so why does he owe us an apology? If all we want is to hear Cheney's apology to Whittington, what do I make of all this outrage over the NSA listening to private conversations?

OK , I do think at least one important question has been raised by this "scandal". Why is that preening doofus David Gregory on NBC's payroll? I had no problem with quantum physics, but I'm completely stumped by that one.

Actually, the handling by Cheney may not be so bad as people are saying. For one thing, the press corps has predictably behaved so wretchedly that they are sharing the spotlight with him. And he's built interest in the interview he's going to do, so this way he only has to apologize on camera once. And thirdly, all of us who think of ourselves as laconic he-men admire the way he's taken the laconic he-man approach to this. My inner laconic he-man has been stirred so much by the VP since since he and the President called New York Times reporter Adam Clymer a major league asshole (and of course the left was up in arms over that bit of truth telling) and Cheney alone told Senator Pat Leahy "'intercourse' you" when Pat was trying to play nice in private after blasting him in public. Laconic He-men are the same in private as in public, and expect other people to be the same.

I miss the Clinton presidency. Now there were real scandals and issues. Take eavesdropping on international calls. Every President since Alexander Graham Bell has done it, and every President, including Saint Jimmy, since FISA was inacted has said they still had the right to eavesdrop on international calls under the constitution. In other words, old news. But when Clinton was President, we got to see the claim resolved that per executive privelege Presidents should be immune to any non-Presidential lawsuits while President. Illegal wars? Heck, President Bush has congressional authorization. President Clinton had nothing when we pre-emtively attacked Serbia over Kosovo. Secrecy? Have you forgotten Hillary Care so soon? Maybe the VP should explain he grew up hunting with his father and all questions will cease. Hey, it worked when Hillary explained how she was able to make so much money in futures. I pity the Democrats who have so little to work with.

Alito Confirmed

In the category of unsurprising is the collapse of the fillibuster against Judge Alito and his confirmation. Only ardent leftists living inside the media bubble thought it was going to happen any other way.

The only real question is why Alito was confirmed 58-43 and Ginsberg 96-3. She wasn't the more qualified candidate; Republicans voted on ability, Democrats on politics.

VDS

I have pondered over why the left in this country favors wars that meet two simple criteria: (1) spill little or preferably no American blood and (2) do not involve anything that anyone would consider a vital national interest. So we intervene in Haiti or the Balkans without the anti-war left causing much stir. I've always found it odd that the anti-republican-war-left which always has such an exaggerated concern for the welfare of American Soldiers hasn't the slightest concern for foriegn civilians if the above criteria are met. And I think the reason is that they really do fear a "Vietnam quagmire" in every war, so it's vitally important to pick wars that don't cause American casualties (apparently the only benchmark of a quagmire) and wars from which we can just run away and not suffer any repurcussions.

Vietnam sure seems to be a turning point because before then the Democratic party had no trouble with warriors as president - men who weren't afraid to pay any price, bear any burden in the cause of Truth, Justice, and the American way, guys like Kennedy, Truman, Roosevelt, Wilson, Polk, and old Andrew Jackson himself. These guys spent blood and treasure in wars they thought vital to the national interest. Scoop Jackson was the last major Democrat politician of that tradition. As the generation that experience Vietnam fades away, I hope the Democratic party can get over the trauma and return to the American mainstream - the best government is the result of the competition between two fundamentally sound parties.

Isn't It Bliss, Don't You Approve

So how do I dislike the Alito hearings? Let me count the ways.

1. Ted Kennedy Any claim that I need to take Ted Kennedy seriously is an offense. The fact that Massachusetts returns the broken down old drunk to the senate every six years is the best indication that the power of incubency is too strong in American politics. Ted, the man's name is A-li-to, not Al-i-o-to. And for the record , it was Arlen Spector demonstrated who the real the 'lion in winter' is.

2. The Hypocrisy I'll just pick one big example so as not to bore you. The Senate Democrats tell me I need to worry that an organization Judge Alito was a member of 40 years ago, Concerned Alumni of Princeton, was racist and sexist. OK, but how about Robert Byrd? He was not only a member of the Klu Klux Klan, which pretty much set the standard for racist organizations, he was a leader in it. And he still calls people "nigger". And none of those Democratic senators has the slightest problem with Senator Byrd.

3. The Confirmation Process Confirmation hearings mix grotesque grandstanding with mud throwing by one set of partisans and mud removal by the other set of partisans in equal proportions, which leaves no time for an actual exchange of information with the confirmee. But when senators, who control the confirmation process, complain about the process like it's something they have no control over, excuse me if I wretch and wretch again.

4. The Intellectual Dishonesty A significant segment of the left is always going on about how the Constitution is a living document that adapts to the needs of the present. How does it adapt? Well, nine people in Washington, AKA the Supreme Court, get to decide. And by golly if they say that the constitution has spoken to them in a new way, or that the American people have changed, well then, the Constitutionality of an issue has changed. So what's up with this sudden devotion to stare decisis? How can a living document breath if it is put in the straitjacket of stare decisis? But what's worse, it's clear that approval/disapproval for someone holding such a position has nothing to do with traditional measures like judicial temperament, philosophy, or ability, but has everything to do with the person's politics. Because what's clear is you expect, even demand, that Supreme Court justices follow their own feelings and preferences, because that's what this whole living document hooha is about. So the whole point of a confirmation hearing isn't about finding out if a nominee is fit, but flinging so much dirt at a nominee of the other party that enough sticks to derail the confirmation. That and time on TV.

Lynn Swann For Governor

So Lynn Swann is running for Governor of Pennsylvania. Good for him. As a Republican. Hope he's treated better by the Mediocrats party than JC Watts was.

You Can't Handle The Truth

So, President Bush has finally decided to go after those Democrats who are smearing him by claming he lied or mislead about the intellegence on Iraq in order to drum up support for the war. It will be an uphill battle because not only will he have to contend with the Democrats, but the news media as well. The Democrats aren't that formidable a foe, but the news media is much, much smoother at lies and misrepresentations. Good luck Mr. President, you'll need it.

Law Reform

My biggest complaint with the civil justice system isn't the system itself, but us. You know, Americans. We're the ones who have adopted the idea that anything, and I mean anything can be litigated. Everything is open for review by fifteen strangers: twelve people of the street, two paid advocates, and a judge. There is no aspect of human interaction - business, personal, intimate, property - that can't be hauled into a court at a later date for a do over. You may be thinking great, we need more oversight. But there is a penalty for all this, both in terms of direct costs paid to the practitioners and the opportunity costs in changed behavior. And our civil system doesn't even protend to be speedly like our criminal system. Cases can drag on for years, which means that not only is everything subject to review, but it can be years before anything is final. That surely has to be a big drag on invention, risk taking, and business in general.

Another facet of the problem is that when you have breakthroughs in technology or science, everyone benefits. When you have breakthroughs in finance, everyone benefits as improved financial helps new ventures get financed. These breakthroughs are driven by the quality and number of people involved in these fields. But when it comes to law, it seems that breakthroughs there only benefit lawyers, which only increases the attraction to a field that is way over represented and talented in America. The explosion in class action lawsuits hasn't done a thing for the average person -- if anything it's hurt them overall, but it sure has made a bunch of lawyers wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice.

It used to be that farsighted rulers would periodically reform the legal code (Hammurabi was the first recorded). I know the legislatures across the land are too busy with far more sexy and immediate stuff, but I think we're getting to the point that we really need to consider the kind of top to bottom overhaul to rein in the reach of lawsuits and combine it with a wholesale pruning of government regulation. But that won't happen until we demand it. Just having a "business friendly" Supreme Court Justice doesn't cut it.

Thinking Out Loud

It's the consensus view that if Roe Vs. Wade were to be overturned, abortion rights would then move back to the states. I read it all the time, and law bloggers don't even discuss it, it's just assumed. But I wonder. How exactly would it be overturned? Would a majority say, sorry, we got it wrong, those pesky penumbras and eminations are so hard to decipher, a right to privacy doesn't cover going out and having a medical proceedure? Or more likely, would the court have to find a right of the unborn that is more compelling than the mother's right to privacy? And if that were the case, would it really go back to the state legislatures, or would abortion then be unconstitutional, and thus beyond the reach of the states?

California, Gays, Marriage

And in other news, the California legislature has redefined marriage to be between two persons. Governor Schwarzenegger has to sign the bill for it to take effect. I hope he doesn't. But at least the process is right - no judge's fiat, no official ignoring the law.

UPDATE: Governor Schwarzenegger has said he will veto the bill because it conflicts with an initiative passed in 2000 that prevents California from recognizing same sex marriages performed in other states. I suppose the Governor is sensitive to such initiatives since they have formed the backbone of his programs in California. It could also just be cover for a political decision that he would like to avoid.

Break Out The Black Arm Bands

Note to Justice John Paul Stevens: pull your head out of your butt:

"Home and business owners' contention that economic development doesn't qualify as public use "is supported by neither precedent nor logic," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. "

Stevens added that "because that plan unquestionably serves a public purpose, the takings challenged here satisfy the public use requirement of the Fifth Amendment."

I'm not a big fan of Justice O'Conner, but she got it right in her dissent:

In a strongly worded dissenting opinion, O'Connor wrote that the majority's decision overturns a long-held principle that eminent domain cannot be used simply to transfer property from one private owner to another.

"Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power," she wrote. "Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded -- i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public -- in the process."

The effect of the decision, O'Connor said, "is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property -- and thereby effectively to delete the words "for public use" from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment."

We're replacing bedrock rights clearly in the constitution like private property and replacing them stretches like the right to abortion, the right to healthcare and the right to free school lunches. A terrible day for the constitution, and more shredding, foot wiping, and overturning than John Ashcroft has ever done and will ever do.

BooYa!

Stanford students are big on word compression - reducing words to their first syllable. So Memorial Church becomes MemChu, Memorial Auditorium becomes MemAud, and Hoover Tower becomes HooTow. I think we can use this to predict politics. For instance, George Bush would become GeBu but John Kerry would become JoKe. Hillary Clinton would become HillClin, but Howard Dean would become HowDe (with Doody invariably added). Okay, maybe the analysis is not up to the standards of a MicBar, but fun for me anyway.

Speaking of John Kerry, did you notice that although his grades were ever so slightly lower than Bush's, it's always reported that they were similar or nearly identical. Would the headline have been the same if they had been ever so slightly higher? Anyway, JoKe has a good explanation of why.

Speaking of Howard Dean, maybe HowDe should just go back to the all purpose "yeaghhhh!!!" instead of saying anything else.

Here Come the Judges

I guess I'm the only political junkie in America who neither knows who won or lost in the great judicial compromise of 2005 nor cares. OK, that's not entirely accurate. But as I've said before, judges have only become an issue because we have allowed judicial activism to subvert the bedrock of representative government (that's a fancy way of saying judges have become an unelected force unto themselves that make sweeping decrees based on their own personal feelings while ignoring the clear desires of the people as expressed through referendums and legislation). And while judges do from time to time uphold their important role of safeguarding the minorty or upholding unpopular but necessary principles, all too often it's just a naked power grab for their own viewpoint. So frankly to me the whole fight is over the wrong issue, who gets appoint the tyrants, and not curbing the tryant's power.

Like all agreements with no enforcement power, who wins or loses depends largely on how much each group honors the agreement, and how much real agreement there was. For instance, the agreement is filibuster only in "extreme circumstances"? So what does that mean exactly - in the case of Supreme Court nominees, or in the case of "extreme" nominees with the determination of "extreme" up to who? And what if there is a difference of opinion as to what constitutes extreme circumstances, who adjucates and enforces the agreement? The merry band of 14 senators? On balance I'd say the Republicans came out on top as they have judges in hand in return for hazy future promises. Even with the lack of spine (or ruthlessness) demonstrated repeatedly by Republican senators historically, they managed to kick the can down the road as far as a showdown the electorate would notice while getting appointees who have languished for years finally approved.

Money and Judges

The fight over judges seems to me like the earlier fight over money in politics. We have a similar situation where once people didn't care that much, but now they do. It seems to me that the change in attitude is caused by a change in power. As long as politics didn't matter all that much to one's daily life, there wasn't that much money involved. But as the federal government changed into a 500 lb gorilla that touched everyone's daily life, and every business, money came pouring in. And trying to stop the money flow without changing the power structure is like trying to repeal gravity.

And I see the same thing in the fight over judges. The real issue is that all of a sudden judges matter. They aren't just a bunch of boring old guys in black robes; they are running school districts, defining the meaning of is, involved in elections, ultimately mandating goodness and/or evil. Is abortion really a constitutional right? Only as long as 5 particular judges say so. Can minors and the mentally deficient be executed? That isn't a concern of the governed, nor of their representatives in the legislature, that's a decision for judges. On and on it goes. And so now the fight is on because it's something worth fighting about.

Wise Words

Eugene Volokh picks up on a commentary by Burt Neuborn in The Nation about the left's (or progressive's) addiction to the court system where he warns that simply relying on the courts to render verdicts rather than persuading people is a mistake. I have to agree - the long term battle ground is hearts and minds, not 5 particular justices. And he picks three good examples - abortion, gay rights, and separation of church and state.

One of the things that irks me when discussing abortion rights is people who begin and end with "it's a constitutional right" period. Yeah, because 5 people said so, not on anything actually in the constitution mind you, but based on emanations from the penumbra of the Bill of Rights. I don't know what that literally means in a legal sense, nobody does, but in practice it means a majority of the Supreme Court can hand down any ruling they want and it's the law of the land. Not only is it non-persuasive, it's infuriating. There are other arguments for abortion, which I don't think beat the arguments against, but some of them are at least somwhat persuasive and not at all infuriating.

Quite frankly there is a danger if many important descision is usurped from the people and their elected representatives and made by the judiciary -- it destroys representative government with its art of compromise and softening the rough edges and makes politics a winner-take-all match between two sides that are dedicated to packing the judiciary with their own.

I'll go an example further - the famous Brown vs. Board of Education case that "ended" segregation in schooling. Only it didn't end segregation - public schools are still separate and unequal, only more unequal which is more important. Predominately black schools in the city of St. Louis are as a practical matter far worse now that they were in 1954.

And that's an important fact - there are limits to what laws can do, much more so that the limits on what majority culture can do.

What Njal Said

Donald Sensing takes up Tom Bevan's Op Ed that asks, among other things:

If one is convinced of the moral strength of the argument for saving Terri Schiavo (which millions upon millions of Americans are), and if one further adheres to the proposition that every innocent life is worth protecting and that we as a society must not countenance a system that results in the death of a single innocent soul, are we not then obligated to reconsider support of the death penalty under all circumstances except those in which confessions have been given voluntarily?

I'm a death penalty agnostic, but I don't buy this argument as a reason not to have a death penalty. Here's where it falls apart: "a society must not countenance a system that results in the death of a single innocent soul". Very few systems any human society sets up can make this claim, and certainly none that involves dealing death itself. It simply is an impossible standard, and to set it up foolishness. Set up a system that takes the fewest innocent lives is workable, but any is impossible.

And when I say any system, I pretty much mean any system. Our transportation system kills the innocents at an absolutely ferocious rate - 40,000 in cars and trucks a year in the US alone. Airplanes and trains are killers too. Horsedrawn vehicles, heck horses themselves were killers before mechanical transportation means came into effect. Energy - between coal miners killed, gas explosions, deaths at refineries etc. it too is a killer. Or how about something as mundane as keeping clean - people are killed in showers and tubs every year. And don't get me started on how many buckets kill kids every year. You might argue that since the purpose of these systems isn't to kill people, we should be more forgiving of such outcomes, but isn't that exactly backward?

Now go back to criminal justice, and you'll find that there are far more innocents locked up than executed. Why nobody worries about that is beyond me; why a life time wrongfully in prison being raped is nothing to care about yet wrongful execution, whoa, can't have that is beyond me.

The real standard is to minimize the undesirable effects, and death of the innocent is hugely undesirable. It's something that should and can always be worked on, but there is no absolute possible. We often say that our justice system is designed to let 10 criminals go free rather than wrongly convict 1 innocent person; yet we don't say we let every criminal go free rather than wrongly convict any innocent person -- because it not only sounds absurd, it is absurd. And yet that's the standard that is raised here.

After winding his way through other knotty problems (it should be remembered that the original knotty problem was solved by one of the original applications of thinking outside the box: the application of a sword to cut instead of fingers to untie) he formulates his larger question:

At its core, the dilemma is this: At what point are we forced to live within the law even if we disagree morally with some of the outcomes resulting from its application?

Now we have a good question. I don't know that I'd call it a dilemma as that implies a single decision whereas I think this kind of issue is neither a single decision nor a decision alone. As I said before, any system implemented by man is going to have problems, so I take it as a given that I will morally disagree with some of the outcomes of our legal system. And here my options aren't to only live within or without the law, but to try and change the outcomes and the very law itself. I would argue that it is my moral obligation to try and change outcomes and the law itself in those cases where I think the outcomes are wrong.

Frankly, I think a better question would be phrased:

At what point am I forced to live outside the law because I disagree morally with some of the outcomes resulting from its application.

In other words, at what point does my working within the law, because that should be my default position, become itself wrong? I think the answer my friend varies from person to person. The Declaration of Independence is one attempt to answer that question; I have to be thankful to our forefathers to bequeath a system of government where I don't have to rebel to effect changes in our laws.

Usurpers and Destroyers

I'm a death penalty agnostic; I still struggle with the issue. If I were in a voting booth with the stark choice before me: Abolish the death penalty, yes or no, I don't know how I'd vote (as I've written before). Oddly enough, the case that gives me pause, the case where I say to myself, "if anybody deserves the death penalty, it's this guy" -- that's the case that first the Missouri Supreme Court reduced the penalty from death and now the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that reduction in penalty. And I'm really unhappy with both courts -- not about what they ruled but how and why. I'm not alone in that -- if you think judicial decisions are all dry and windy dissertations without feeling, Justice Scalia's dissent will disabuse you of that notion rather quickly.

I'm unhappy because of the MSC decision in the first place because it ran directly counter to the precedent of the USSC. In the words of Justice Scalia:

To add insult to injury, the Court affirms the Missouri Supreme Court without even admonishing that court for its flagrant disregard of our precedent in Stanford. Until today, we have always held that "it is this Court's prerogative alone to overrule one of its precedents." State Oil Co. v. Khan, 522 U. S. 3, 20 (1997). That has been true even where " 'changes in judicial doctrine' ha[ve] significantly undermined" our prior holding, United States v. Hatter, 532 U. S. 557, 567 (2001) (quoting Hatter v. United States, 64 F. 3d 647, 650 (CA Fed. 1995)), and even where our prior holding "appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions," Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/
American Express, Inc., 490 U. S. 477, 484 (1989). Today, however, the Court silently approves a state-court decision that blatantly rejected controlling precedent.

One must admit that the Missouri Supreme Court's action, and this Court's indulgent reaction, are, in a way, understandable. In a system based upon constitutional and statutory text democratically adopted, the concept of "law" ordinarily signifies that particular words have a fixed meaning. Such law does not change, and this Court's pronouncement of it therefore remains authoritative until (confessing our prior error) we overrule. The Court has purported to make of the Eighth Amendment, however, a mirror of the passing and changing sentiment of American society regarding penology. The lower courts can look into that mirror as well as we can; and what we saw 15 years ago bears no necessary relationship to what they see today. Since they are not looking at the same text, but at a different scene, why should our earlier decision control their judgment?

However sound philosophically, this is no way to run a legal system. We must disregard the new reality that, to the extent our Eighth Amendment decisions constitute something more than a show of hands on the current Justices' current personal views about penology, they purport to be nothing more than a snapshot of American public opinion at a particular point in time (with the timeframes now shortened to a mere 15 years). We must treat these decisions just as though they represented real law, real prescriptions democratically adopted by the American people, as conclusively (rather than sequentially) construed by this Court. Allowing lower courts to reinterpret the Eighth Amendment whenever they decide enough time has passed for a new snapshot leaves this Court's decisions without any force--especially since the "evolution" of our Eighth Amendment is no longer determined by objective criteria. To allow lower courts to behave as we do, "updating" the Eighth Amendment as needed, destroys stability and makes our case law an unreliable basis for the designing of laws by citizens and their representatives, and for action by public officials. The result will be to crown arbitrariness with chaos.

I think the good justice nails that one, but he only considers the effect on judges. How about police and prosecutors, who all too often "interpret" laws to their own advantage. Why should they be left out? The MSC destroyed the stability and respect for the law in an attempt to achieve an outcome that a majority of the Court want but not a majority of the citizens of the state of Missouri - an end to the death penalty.

Supporters of the decision keep saying "The US has joined the rest of the world". Screw that. My ancestors didn't come here because the US is like the rest of the world. I don't keep living here because of the weather; I stay here because we aren't like the rest of the world. Why do non-Americans get a "vote" on how we live here? If I wanted the unelected to issue decrees, I could go live in Europe or Zimbabwe. Why this pean to peer pressure? When did conformity become a good thing? What happen to the bravery and importance of dissent? I don't want the United States Supreme Court looking at laws in Europe, ignoring the consensus of the European people which is different, and saying that some mythical foreign consensus should be imposed upon the American people.

But what about this consensus that executing killers under 18 is cruel and unusual punishment? Isn't that why we have elections and legislators and initiatives? What better way for an emerging consensus to emerge? It certainly beats some jackanape in a robe from taking the temperature of the American people by sticking a thermometer up his own ass, which is what just happened.

In urging approval of a constitution that gave life-tenured judges the power to nullify laws enacted by the people's representatives, Alexander Hamilton assured the citizens of New York that there was little risk in this, since "[t]he judiciary ... ha[s] neither FORCE nor WILL but merely judgment." The Federalist No. 78, p. 465 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961). But Hamilton had in mind a traditional judiciary, "bound down by strict rules and precedents which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them." Id., at 471. Bound down, indeed. What a mockery today's opinion makes of Hamilton's expectation, announcing the Court's conclusion that the meaning of our Constitution has changed over the past 15 years--not, mind you, that this Court's decision 15 years ago was wrong, but that the Constitution has changed. The Court reaches this implausible result by purporting to advert, not to the original meaning of the Eighth Amendment, but to "the evolving standards of decency," ante, at 6 (internal quotation marks omitted), of our national society. It then finds, on the flimsiest of grounds, that a national consensus which could not be perceived in our people's laws barely 15 years ago now solidly exists. Worse still, the Court says in so many words that what our people's laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: "[I]n the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment." Ante, at 9 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our Nation's moral standards--and in the course of discharging that awesome responsibility purports to take guidance from the views of foreign courts and legislatures. Because I do not believe that the meaning of our Eighth Amendment, any more than the meaning of other provisions of our Constitution, should be determined by the subjective views of five Members of this Court and like-minded foreigners, I dissent.

And as for the idea that there should be a bright line based strictly on age, well, again I'll let Justice Scalia do the talking:

Indeed, this appears to be just such a case. Christopher Simmons' murder of Shirley Crook was premeditated, wanton, and cruel in the extreme. Well before he committed this crime, Simmons declared that he wanted to kill someone. On several occasions, he discussed with two friends (ages 15 and 16) his plan to burglarize a house and to murder the victim by tying the victim up and pushing him from a bridge. Simmons said they could " 'get away with it' " because they were minors. Brief for Petitioners 3. In accord with this plan, Simmons and his 15-year-old accomplice broke into Mrs. Crook's home in the middle of the night, forced her from her bed, bound her, and drove her to a state park. There, they walked her to a railroad trestle spanning a river, "hog-tied" her with electrical cable, bound her face completely with duct tape, and pushed her, still alive, from the trestle. She drowned in the water below. Id., at 4. One can scarcely imagine the terror that this woman must have suffered throughout the ordeal leading to her death. Whatever can be said about the comparative moral culpability of 17-year-olds as a general matter, Simmons' actions unquestionably reflect " 'a consciousness materially more "depraved" than that of' ... the average murderer." See Atkins, 536 U. S., at 319 (quoting Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U. S. 420, 433 (1980)). And Simmons' prediction that he could murder with impunity because he had not yet turned 18--though inaccurate--suggests that he did take into account the perceived risk of punishment in deciding whether to commit the crime. Based on this evidence, the sentencing jury certainly had reasonable grounds for concluding that, despite Simmons' youth, he "ha[d] sufficient psychological maturity" when he committed this horrific murder, and "at the same time demonstrate[d] sufficient depravity, to merit a sentence of death." See ante, at 18.

...

In the instant case, by contrast, the moral proportionality arguments against the juvenile death penalty fail to support the rule the Court adopts today. There is no question that "the chronological age of a minor is itself a relevant mitigating factor of great weight," Eddings, 455 U. S., at 116, and that sentencing juries must be given an opportunity carefully to consider a defendant's age and maturity in deciding whether to assess the death penalty. But the mitigating characteristics associated with youth do not justify an absolute age limit. A legislature can reasonably conclude, as many have, that some 17-year-old murderers are mature enough to deserve the death penalty in an appropriate case. And nothing in the record before us suggests that sentencing juries are so unable accurately to assess a 17-year-old defendant's maturity, or so incapable of giving proper weight to youth as a mitigating factor, that the Eighth Amendment requires the bright-line rule imposed today. In the end, the Court's flawed proportionality argument simply cannot bear the weight the Court would place upon it.

The details are why ever since I heard them I've always thought that if anybody deserved death for his crimes, it was Christopher Simmons. And it's those details that should matter, not age.

On a side note, the state park Shirley Crook was murdered in was Castlewood -- the park my cub scout pack has camped in, and I posted pictures of just below. That beautiful shot from the bluffs - around the river bend on the left is the railroad trestle Simmons shoved her off of to her death.

I agree pretty much with everything Dale at QandO had to say about this decision, especially his final words: "It was never the Framers' intention that the court become a judicial oligarchy with the power to legislate from the bench. The clear intent of the Framers was to provide a government where the will of the people prevailed. That is why we have a government with congressional supremacy. Congress wields substantial power over both the executive and legislative branches for precisely that reason.

Clearly, it's time for congress to begin exercising their prerogative to bring the Supreme Court under control. "

A Father's Question

Terri Schiavo is back in the news as a Florida court decides her fate. My own view of the case is that her husband is trying to have the her legally killed so that he can take the money meant for her treatment and spend it with his new woman.

Tom McMahon, who has impressed me with his enormous patience with people who disagree with him (mainly in comment sections of other blogs), has a very moving and very personal post brought on by Terri's predicament on his son Ryan, who suffered a brain injury leaving him in a similar state. His bottom line: "When will they be coming for Ryan?"

Pound The Table

I've not been following the saga of Jeff Gannon/James Gluckart very closely, but it does put me in the mind of the adventures of Benedick and Claudio. I realize a lot of people are upset, but just because you can think up a scenario doesn't mean it's even close to reality. If I was upset over Dan Rather's fraudulent TNG story on Bush, and Eason Jordan's claim that the military targets reporters and more importantly his revelation that CNN deliberately lied to the public in order to keep reporters in Iraq where they were in reality hostages, why am I not too concerned in this case? Read on McDuff.

Mr. Gannon is accused of asking biased and/or softball questions. Usually one question is cited, which was undeniably both biased and a softball. But if that is the measure, then a lot of journalists should also be drummed out of the corps. And that apparently wasn't his typical question - although it may have been the one to bring on all the scrutiny.

Mr. Gannon is accused of being gay. OK, so that should somehow matter to getting a day pass? No, it's the hypocrisy. According to John Aravosis of Americablog.org "The White House wouldn't let him in the door right now, knowing of his background." Umm, so there are no openly gay people working anywhere in the Whitehouse, let alone attend press briefings? I find that hard to believe, nor have I heard of any such policy. No, it's the nude pictures and the possibility he was a gay escort. OK, so should the White House announce a list of prior activities based on moral issues as opposed to criminal ones that will proclude access to the White House (including press briefings) they will now investigate and enforce?

That's the problem to me with this line of reasoning -- are those upset honestly asking the White House to officially define who's a journalist and who isn't, and to enforce a morals test? Do they really want the White House investigating journalists to ensure their moral purity? Most journalists working the beat apparently don't want that. Which makes me believe the critics are just looking for a stick to beat Bush with.

But wait, Gannon is really some sort of Rovian mole, a political operative in disguise. Yeah, like Stephanopolous, Mathews, and Russert, all of whom worked for Democratic office holders.

And those day pases - access to the White House baby. Which apparently you can get by providing some basic info like name and SSN coupled with the ability to show up early and wait for one. Kind of like how I got access to Congress a couple of summers ago - we showed up and waited. Interestingly enough, we could never get to the ticket office early enough to go up in Washington's Monument, but we had no trouble getting access to Congress.

I'm sorry, but with all the real issues, both those within the media and those facing the country, I find it hard to get worked up about a guy with a checkerd past working (although not any longer) for a minor press outfit asking questions at press conferences 99.99% of the population of the country pay no attention to.

Britt Hume on Social Security

I managed to catch some of Brit Hume's Special Report tonight. I happen to think he's far and away the best anchor on TV and a top notch analyst, so I usually try to see his show. But tonight when introducing a story on the end of fox hunting in England, he ascribed the line "green and pleasant land" in reference to England to Shakespeare. Now I can't definitively say that the bard never wrote, let alone uttered those words, but I know William Blake used them in his poem Jerusalem that has gone on to be the favorite hymn of England. Not because I'm an expert on romantic poets (or poets of any persuasion), but because I like the Emerson Lake and Palmer version and Monty Python used the hymn in the dog kennels skit.

I've been following the links over at Instapundit in regards to accusations that Hume made another, more serious mistake in reference to FDR's plans for social security. Media Matters, Al Franken and now Kevin Drum accuse Hume of selective quoting, the worst Dowdification to change a meaning since Maureen perfected its use by routinely changing people's meanings to the exact opposite from what they really said.

Well, Cassandra at Villainous Company actually bothered to check the transcript and discovered that it wasn't Hume doing the selective quoting, it was the usual suspects: Media Matters, Al Franken, Kevin Drum, Daily Kos et al. Cassandra really hammers Franken but good and is well worth the read.

From Media Matters:

Earlier that evening, on FOX News' Special Report with Brit Hume, Hume provided the alleged historical basis for Bennett's claim:

HUME: In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, quote, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age," adding that government funding, quote, "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."

But Roosevelt was not advocating that the present system of guaranteed Social Security benefits "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans." Rather, he was proposing that both mandatory contributions and voluntary annuities would eventually eliminate the need for a different fund which was established to provide pension benefits to Americans who were already too old in 1935 to contribute payroll taxes to the Social Security system.

Roosevelt outlined the three major tenets he envisioned for Social Security in the January 17, 1935, speech that Hume quoted. As the Social Security Administration (SSA) has noted, these tenets are: 1) "non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance"; 2) "compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations"; and 3) "voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age."

It seems to me that their real beef is with Bill Bennet (and that is where the outrage started with Media Matters) taking Hume's abbreviated quote and running with it, rather than Hume, because as Cassandra noted, what Hume said was (in full):

Senate Democrats gathered at the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial today to invoke the image of FDR in calling on President Bush to remove private accounts from his Social Security proposal. But it turns out that FDR himself planned to include private investment accounts in the Social Security program when he proposed it.

In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age," adding that government funding, "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."

Last night, Senate minority leader Harry Reid likened the president’s proposal to allow Americans to divert a portion of payroll taxes into personal security investment accounts to "gambling." But in 1999, the Nevada Democrat proposed something very similar on our own "FOX News Sunday" saying, "Most of us have no problem with taking a small amount of the Social Security proceeds and putting it into the private sector."

Now did Hume not provide the whole quote? No, he didn't. But then he didn't pretend to, did he. He provided the part that bore directly on the claim that FDR wanted a voluntary contributory part. And if you've ever paid much attention to the news, you know that such shortening of quotes is pretty standard. The trick is to shorten the quote without changing the meaning. And Hume didn't change the meaning.

What struck me though was the actual language FDR used (let's roll the tape):

At this time, I recommend the following types of legislation looking to economic security:

1. Unemployment compensation.

2. Old-age benefits, including compulsory and voluntary annuities.

3. Federal aid to dependent children through grants to States for the support of existing mothers' pension systems and for services for the protection and care of homeless, neglected, dependent, and crippled children.

...

In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, noncontributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps 30 years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.

My ellipses note where I removed a portion of the speech referring to health insurance and unemployment compensation (news flash: FDR against government health insurance! Just kidding, but he didn't advocate it).

In light of FDR's clear call not just once, but twice for voluntary and compulsory annuities for old age benefits, it's clear that Hume was accurate in his assessment of FDR's desire for a voluntary part to old age benefits.

But what's amazing is the call for a self supporting system of annuities that would be started by 30 years of government (state and federal) funding. That isn't how Social Security is run - it's run as a pay as you go system and always has been. And if you honestly think that a pay as you go system is self supporting (especially with demographics rapidly becoming 2 workers for every 1 retiree), you really have no business opining on economics. I mean, if you think it is, then there wouldn't be a need for 30 year period of money coming from the government to fund them initially -- it would just be a compulsory government funded part and a voluntary annuity part for ever and ever.

Now contra Bill Bennet, that doesn't necessarily mean privatization, but it sure isn't the system we do have.

Now this is just one speech and FDR was a politician and thus accustomed to compromise and the art of speaking so the audience hears what it wants to hear, but based on this not only did FDR want a voluntary component to Social Security, he wanted pay as you go only for the first 30 years or so until the money that people had paid in could come back to them in benefits. Wow. I bet that's someting you won't hear Media Matters, Al Franken, Kevin Drum or Kos.

But It Sure Feels Nice

If brevity is the soul of wit, compare these two opinion pieces on Senator Boxer's content-free challenge to President Bush's re-election:

A Media professional

Some guy in his PJs

Which one does the better job of capturing the essence of the challenge?

Oh Yeah, The Election

If there's a wall of separation between church and state, why did I vote in a church?

As I'm going into vote, I see a sign about no cell phones. So I figure what are the odds I'll get a call. You guessed it, my phone rings just as I'm signing my name. You'd think from the reaction I just offered 50 bucks for a vote for the Socialist Workers party. I mean really, what's the big deal. The Fruit of the Murphy Loin's pediatrician has a sign please don't talk on the cell phone during the examination -- that I understand, although since it's a nice practice in the heart of West St. Louis county it makes me wonder what's wrong with people in a way that no election does -- but what is the burning problem with getting a phone call at a polling place. Somebody is going to tell me how to vote? I just don't get it. But I'm not about to get into an argument with a bunch of nice old people who have an ounce of authority once a year, so I turn the phone off without answering. Turns out it was my wife calling to ask how bad the lines were. I should have ignored the old people.

Once again I was able to vote using a butterfly ballot and a punch card without any problem, just like I have for the last 20 years I've been voting in Missouri.

What amazes me about polling is how people try to use them like a scalpel when really they are a club. If a candidates poll numbers change by 1% between two polls that have a quoted margin of error of 3.5%, you know exactly zilch. This statistical noise is invariable quoted as a sure sign that a candidate's message is working if an increase or support is ebbing away if a decrease. If a candidate is up by 5 percentage points in a poll with that same margin of error, then we know that either candidate could be winning. You ever see a poll reported that way? Only if it's a Republican that is up and it is the New York Times doing the reporting.

And polls are never as accurate as the quoted margin of error. The margin that's quoted is the mathmatical error of a random sample compared to a full population based on the size of the random sample. Mathematics has a wonderful neatness to it that real life rarely obtains. The sample is never random and people lie. There have been very few presidential elections that weren't inside the polls' true margin of error, and yet like lie detectors, which aren't, we follow polls with great fanfare and fascination. I have to admit though, it takes rare talent to screw up exit polls as badly as they did this election.

Why do people sit glued to the TV on election night and watch the returns like it's the Superbowl? Yes, the election is more important than the Superbowl (as long as the Rams aren't playing), but it's not like you miss anything by just turning the TV on the next morning and finding out the results. It's not like you get to watch the ballots being counted or anything; what you get is the same old people saying the same old things (with the exception of Brit Hume, Michael Barone and the occaisonal guest who actually has something to say despite the best efforts of the media to keep those people off the air). I understand all you people who tuned into CBS to see if Dan Rather would talk his own style of gibberish, or better yet, have a complete emotional breakdown on air. Understand, but not approve.

I, like my fellow Americans, was so looking forward to November 3 so that I could watch the idiot box without announcers telling me how awful some politician was over menacing music (or worse, how life would just be perfect if only I voted for some politician over saccherine music). Now if we could just vaporize the yard signs when the polls close, life would be complete. Except for the breast beating of the losers. I know the word was out for Bush suporters not to gloat (you'll notice this blog was a gloat free zone despite the fact that I voted for more winners than losers this election, a pretty rare event), but I wish the word had gone out to Kerry supporters to keep the wailing and gnashing of teeth private. Instead, I was treated to more insults by people who don't know me and have gone out of their way to not understand me than I've gotten since junior high. Can't we just insult the politicians before and after the elections, and leave me and my fellow Americans out of it?

Election Fallout

To all those priests, pastors, and bishops who urged their flock to vote for George Bush:

I hope you enjoyed your foray into politics, the Kingdom of this World.

From you I heard several non-Biblical claims during the course of the 2004 campaign:

1. That opposition to abortion is the greatest commandment, that it should take precedence over all other considerations when selecting a candidate to vote for.

Why not elect Jack Ryan as U.S. Senator from Illinois? He's against abortion. He just has this little problem of taking his wife to strip clubs.

Apparently the directive to oppose abortion takes precedence over the Pope's strong opposition to invading Iraq.

2. That it's okay to withhold Holy Communion from politicians who don't oppose abortion in public policy, and from members of your congregations who don't vote for anti-abortion candidates. (I wonder, are some parishioners required to tell who they voted for?)

3. That the ongoing presidency of George Bush will somehow overturn Roe vs. Wade; despite the fact that he has no plan to ban abortion, as he stated in the Tempe, Arizona debate: "no, I will not have a litmus test. I will pick judges who will interpret the Constitution, but I'll have no litmus test."

Well, you got what you wanted: George Bush is president for four more years. If you are correct then we should expect to see Roe vs. Wade overturned by Election Day 2008, or the abortion rate drop significantly, or at least substantial progress made in those directions. Put up now or shut up the next time around.

The calling to Christian ministry includes accountability by the leaders. I will be watching.

I'm aware that overturning abortion depends on more than just the president. Another principle of accountability is this: You get credit or blame for whatever happens on your watch. President Harry Truman had a placard on his desk saying, "The buck stops here."

We need one of those tire-ripping devices that they put on the entrance to rental car lots, to keep people from backing up.

Presidential Election Challenge - I'm Out !

Here's the hour-by-hour narrative of how I fared:

Tuesday, Election Day, noon. I think I'm pretty safe today. There won't be a projected winner until sometime tonight, so how can I find out who won the presidential election if nobody knows? Still, I take precautions. No checking out those news sites on the web. This cuts out CNN.com, MSN.com, the BBC, and the New Zealand Herald.

Tuesday, 1:30pm. I discover that if I'm very careful, I can surf the web. I can look at Mt. St. Helens, Longs Peak, and some weather stations. But all it will take is some "news ticker" across the bottom of the page and I'll be outta the game!

Tuesday, 3pm. I need to look up where is Bari, Italy. Do I dare use Google? Google has a big check box in honor of Election Day today, but no news ticker. Whew! Bari is on the Adriatic coast near Brindisi. I'd like to go there.

Tuesday, 4pm. I overhear some talk from Daran in the office next to me. "All the states are still gray." No winner projected anywhere. That's good for me.

Tuesday, 8pm. I overhear Christine talking on the phone that "it could be weeks!" That long to figure out who won, huh? It sounds like things are close.

Wednesday, 6am. I really gotta watch it today. I realize that there will come a time when I know that we have a winner, and another time when I know who that winner is. Or will I find out in one fell swoop? Who knows?

Wednesday, 7am. Off to work on my bicycle. Ack! There's the morning paper at the end of the driveway! That probably contains THE ANSWER. Carefully I walk backwards to the paper, and locate it with my feet. I pick it up behind my back, and carry it there to the front door. I drop it inside, keeping my eyes averted. That was close. Too close.

Wednesday, 7:05am. As I ride out the driveway I see two women taking their morning walk up the street. They're talking! Every conversation holds danger for me! Danger!!! I tighten my ear flaps and quickly ride out of earshot.

Wednesday, 7:30am. I get to work early, and there is nobody around. That's good. But Graham kept me up last night, and I need a cup of coffee. Oh, no! What do you think people talk about around the coffee pot on the morning after an election?!! But I need that coffee! I decide to risk it.

Wednesday, 7:35am. The coffee is not made yet. Drat! After several agonizing minutes watching the stupid coffee machine take forever to produce one measly cup of coffee, I scurry back to my office with the hot cup of coffee in hand. Safe!

Wednesday, 7:40am. Suspecting that the news might leak in through Daran's office next door, I close my own office door. Just as a precaution.

Wednesday, 7:47am. My brother Michael in Utah sends me an e-mail. The subject is: "Results (not yet)". Do I dare open it? Yes, I told him that I was playing this game, and I think he's playing it too. He merely informs me that he doesn't know the results yet, and that he carefully did not unfold the newspaper this morning. Whew!

Wednesday, 7:56am. Another e-mail from my brother. He says "Oh well, the conversations filtered over the wall. Presidential results known at 7:56 AM." I tell him that I'm holed up in my office with the door closed, desperately trying to keep the news from leaking in. I feel like the proverbial Dutch boy with his little finger in the dike.

Wednesday, 8:13am. Yet another e-mail from Michael: "Oops! I guess that the results in the presidential election are not known yet." Ha!

Wednesday, 8:27am. I'd really like to see how the Alan Keyes - Barack Obama Senate race in Illinois turned out, but I don't dare look.

Wednesday, 10:24am. Michael (my 'safe' news source) reports: "At 10:09 AM MST the news filtered over the wall that one of the candidates had conceded." Hmmm. Generally that means he lost the election. I wonder who it was, Bush or Kerry? What's going on out there?

Wednesday, 11am. I'm having lunch with a friend in the company cafeteria. The cafeteria! That was a dumb idea. Andy has been sworn to secrecy, but the whole company has not. Looking out the window, I don't see anyone wildly celebrating. Or jumping off the roof, either.

Wednesday, 1:30pm. I can't believe it! I made it through lunch! Andy and I found a nice quiet corner away from everybody else. He did tell me there was a concession this morning, and there will be an acceptance speech shortly. Andy said he could hardly believe that Ralph Nader won! Riiiiight . . .

Wednesday, 2:03pm. At the beginning of my 2:00 meeting someone says, "I was out electioneering yesterday. But we won't talk about that any more." Knowing this person, I'm pretty sure the remark means that Bush won.

Thursday, 8:24am. A new day. And I still don't know who won the presidential election! I'm pretty sure it must be George Bush, though, based on people's moods. Known Bush supporters are pretty cheerful, and known Kerry supporters are kind of subdued. I also think there would be more talk of "transition" and some excited or cynical speculation if we were going to change presidents. It's too normal out there. So Bush must be the winner.

I'm not going to sequester myself like I did yesterday. I'm leaving my office door open. But I will continue to avoid certain web sites. I will not peek. I will be the Master of My News Domain!

Thursday, 1:45pm. At the end of my Dynamic Meteorology class the professor said something about how he thought of writing in "Vorticity" on the ballot for president (I didn't hear the beginning of the conversation). The guy next to me groaned, "I'll take anybody but George."

That is not something you say if John Kerry won! When combined with the other clues I've picked up, I think I can safely conclude that George Bush won the 2004 presidential election. This takes me officially out of the 2004 Presidential Challenge at 1:45pm.

If one can make it safely through the initial news blast the game gets easier. I think I'll keep on ignoring the news just for the heck of it. I'll let you all know when and how I get full-fledged confirmation.

If you want to relate your own experience in playing the 2004 Presidential Election Challenge, please enter them as Comments for this entry. Thanks for playing!

2004 Presidential Election Challenge

Here's the challenge: Avoid learning who won the presidential election for as long as possible.

In 2000 I managed to make it for a whole month! But that was an exceptional year.

I think the networks will avoid projecting the winner until sometime late on Election Night, so Tuesday should be pretty easy. Wednesday will be more difficult. I have to avoid the newspaper, the radio, the Internet, and of course TV. But I have some meetings at work during the day, and probably somebody will spill the beans then. I'll request my wife's forbearance in telling me who won, although Christine is keenly interested in the outcome. My guess is that I'll make it until Wednesday about noon.

Who else wants to participate? Come on! Everyone who reads this blog is a news junkie, so it will require all your restraint. But you don't really have to know right away! You can do your job and go about your daily life for a few days without knowing who is going to be our next (or continuing) president. How far do you think you can make it? Until Thursday? If you decide to go on a backpacking trip in November just to avoid finding out, you deserve to win the challenge.

You're out of the game when you know that you know who won. I will post a follow-up entry when I find out. I will note the exact local time, and exactly how I accidentally found out. If you want to play, you can post similar information in the Comments section of that future entry. If you have to ask "What's the point of this?", you probably aren't the right person to play.

I'm going out now. You will not hear from me until we meet again on the other side of that Great Divide . . .

Thank You Maam, May I Have Another

I'm not one to criticize the family of politicians (minor children are strictly off limits in my book), but Teresa Heinz Kerry is exceptional. She throws around insults like breath mints. She's like Leona Helmsly, only with less charm.

Bush For President

The official FunMurphys endorsement for President goes to George Bush. While I don't think there would be much difference in the outcome domestically between Bush and Kerry due to the wonderful apparatus of divided government, I think there would be a huge difference between Bush and Kerry in how the War on Terror is fought.

The war we are fighting in not against a single man, or a single organizatinon even. Iraq is currently the central front on the War on Terror because it is the struggle for the future of a nation in the heartland of Islamofascism. Afganistan is on the edge - it's importance derived from being a nation fun by Islamofascists. Now that the Taliban is on the fringe, so too is Afganistan. Instead, Iraq is front and center because it holds the ability to demonstrate that Islamofascism isn't the future, but the past. And it borders the hotspots - Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia - of the Middle East.

Bush will stay the course in Iraq, Kerry would find a way to cut and run. The fate of Iraq isn't in our hands; it's in the hands of the Iraqis. But the best chance for moderate democrats to come out on top there (or at least come out somewhere other than another mass grave) is if the US stays committed and the Iraqi people feel that committment.

We would return to the years of watching and waiting - as we did when we knew that Al Qaida was running terrorist training camps in Afganistan but did nothing. We were content to hold high level meetings in Washington to talk about fighting terrorism, but we only acted in limited response to attacks against us.

We would return to the years of only doing the easy. As near as I can tell, Kosovo was good because it was easy, but Iraq is bad because it is hard. But you can't just do the easy stuff and get done what needs to be done.

We would return to pretending that the UN is something other than a failed institution, a snakepit of self interest, and non-corrupt.

We would return to a foreign policy of acting like the parent who nags their child but never does anything about their behavior. We would be deeply disappointed with Syria, Iran, North Korea, and the other evil dictatorships that are still too plentiful, but we wouldn't actually do anything other than sign another check to try and appease them.

I don't want to go back to those days, and that has been John Kerry's foreign policy for as long as he's had one. To marry a man and expect him to change is the folly of women; to elect a president and expect him to change would be an equal folly for the electorate.

The War on Terror is going to end with a lot of dead terrorists; the only question is how many they take with them. They are equal opportunity killers, as you can see by how many Iraqis they kill for trying to make Iraq a country for Iraqis. Our war is with Islamofascists, and if it goes well then they will be killed mainly by other Moslems; if it doesn't go well, they will be killed mainly by us, and sadly we will kill other Moslems with them.

Conservative or Liberal?

Okay, this whole election thing has gotten way too serious. it's time for some political fun!

In religious discussions I avoid the terms "liberal" and "conservative" because they aren't Biblical terms, but in politics they are fair game. And speaking of "game" . . .

There are (at least) two theories of how to teach children to read. For our purposes these two theories are

1. Phonics.
2. Whole Language.

"Phonics" is learning to read by considering the sound of each letter in the order that they are written, or "sounding it out." The child strings the phonemes together, and "C-A-T" becomes "kuh-ahh-tuh" becomes "cat".

"Whole language" refers to recognizing the entire word as a group, and pronouncing it as a whole word. The child is taught to learn and pronounce letter combinations. Using the example above, "C-A-T" is pronounced "cat".

There is debate over which method is best. Note that this debate centers around how to teach children to read, not over how adults actually read.

Here's the game: Sometime in the course of human events one of these theories got tagged as "liberal", and the other one got labeled "conservative". Can you guess which one is which?

I don't think there is anything fundamentally liberal or conservative about phonics or whole language. To me, they are competing theories of learning that have to be evaluated on their own merits. It's unfortunate that politics has interfered with what should be a straightforward evaluation.

To play the game, first determine in your mind which theory is conservative and which one is liberal. Maybe formulate a reason for your choice Then go to the comments section of this entry. I will post the answer there.

Good luck!

Political Ecclesiastes

I've reached that age when the political give and take has a certain dreary sameness over the years; when it becomes clear that many a partisan excuses faults in what he believes to be "his side" while condemning the same in "the other side". Long term memory is a terrible thing in a political junkie.

But there is something new under my sun - the desire for Bush to confess and recant his mistakes. Torquemada had less fervor than his modern brethren who demand with self-righteousness that Bush admit his mistakes -- although his direct methods were clearly worse than their Chinese verbal torture. I can't recall such a demand in the last, oh, thirty years. Not even of Jimmy Carter, the man of a thousand mistakes, both large and small.

Of course all Presidents make mistakes. I wish Bush would repudiate his signature of McCain Feingold's ruinous law, but that ain't gonna happen. Even Reagan, now so beloved of the Democrats despite their spittle at the time, made his fair share of mistakes.

Please spare me the faux pleadings of how you only want Bush to learn from his mistakes when it's clear that you only want to beat him upside the head with any admission of mistake.

More Politics From the Second-Graders

In my city, negative advertising from the political campaigns is percolating down to the children.

Isabel has a little friend Paulina from down the street, who goes to a different school. Yesterday morning we heard that most of her friends would like to vote for John Kerry. Why? "Paulina says that George Bush is going to put everybody on fire."

Um - are you sure she didn't say "set everybody on fire?" "No - George Bush is going to put everybody on fire." I thought I was well-informed, but I had never heard of this development!

This claim was a little easier to refute than last week's claim. "Honey, do you know that George Bush has been president for four years?" "Yes, Dada." "Well, if George Bush really wanted to put everybody on fire, he probably would have done it already. So I don't think the story is correct."

I'll admit that my logic was not air-tight. President Bush knows that putting everybody on fire would most likely encounter some political resistance. Maybe he's waiting until his second term to implement this dastardly plan, when he's not facing re-election. Yeah, that's it.

I still can't figure out what led to this claim. Did some parent say that Bush the war-monger is going to leave the world in flames? Is he going to make everybody mad? Is he going to "light the fire" of some evangelistic crusade? Your guess is as good as mine.

Talk about conspiracy theories! You heard it here first.

Debate Transcript

You can find a transcript of the first Presidential Debate here at the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/debatereferee/debate_0930.html

I kind of like reading the debates instead of listening to them! I can read at my own speed, review certain sections, search for keywords, and skip past any repetitive sections. I think the substance-to-style ratio is higher than with the live broadcast on TV. I didn't reach for my bowl of broken glass even once!

If you're going to comment on the transcripts, please have some grace with the two candidates. They are both speaking off-the-cuff, and it's pretty easy to snip out a fractured sentence that makes the speaker sound like he can't talk right. Try to quote whole paragraphs.

Special thanks go to the person or persons who typed in the entire program.

Substance over Style

Some substance-over-style reactions that echo my sense of last night's presidential debate. First from the Kerry Spot's roundup of reader comments in More Debate Reaction Than You Can Shake A Stick At (bullets added):

3) "While John Kerry showed poise and looked presidential, I think he is still flip-flopping on Iraq and the war on terror. To summarize his comments:

• It's the wrong war at the wrong time, but I'm committed to winning it;
• We're spending too much on Iraq ($200 billion), but I'd send more troops and equipment;
• I'll bring in more nations to help Iraq, but the other nations currently in Iraq were coerced and do not provide much assistance; Saddam and Iraq were a grave threat, but Osama is the only terrorist worth pursuing;
• Terrorists are pourng into Iraq, but Iraq is a distraction to the war on terror.

I still have no idea what he would do as President to fight this war on terrorism."

Next from the comments section of Reached Down Deep for a Good Post in the In DC Journal

While many viewers of the debate may not pick this up, I think Kerry took some extremely troubling positions in the debate:

1. His idea that taking preemptive action to protect the US should meet some "global test"...his codeword for unanimous international approval, something which is almost impossible to get
2. His idea of bilateral talks with North Korea. Clinton tried this and got snookered; this is what has led to our problems with NK today. Bilateral talks are a codeword for appeasement: basically, the US tries to buy NK cooperation, but of course NK cannot be trusted. Bush is 100% correct in that the only way to apply meaningful pressure to NK is through multilateral talks, largely because of the influence China has over NK. And Kerry's assertion to do both is laughable; once we give NK what they want in bilateral talks, the multilateral talks collapse. Once again, Kerry is trying to have it both ways.
3. His idea to abandon the nuke bunker busting bomb. This is reminiscent of his idea of a nuke freeze during the Reagan era: simply disastrous. Here is a weapon that could really strike fear into the heart of a man like Kim Jung Il and force him into cooperation, and Kerry wants to abandon it. Simply sickening. Basically, Kerry is establishing a moral equivalence between the US and these rogue states: since we are equivalent in Kerry's mind, all we need to do is to stop building nukes, and they will as well, for they have the same motivations we do. It's all so simple, see: we make nice, they make nice. Appeasement all over again.
4. His bizarre scheme to give nuke fuel to Iran: again, more appeasement, and reminiscent of Clinton's deal with NK.

I must say with the 4 above points, any one is sufficient to reject Kerry. One cannot overstate how disastrous those 4 policies of Kerry would be to the US.

Posted by: Another Thought at October 1, 2004 10:06 AM

And finally from Lilleks

Ask yourself this: you’re a dictator who has violated the terms of a peace treaty over and over again, and frequently shoots at the planes enforcing the treaties. Who do you fear the most?

1. The magnificent concert of allies in the UN, some of whom you’ve bought off, who are desperate to prove their legitimacy by prolonging the process into the 22nd century
2. The United States, Britain and Australia, who have several hundred thousand troops on your border and frankly are in no mood to put up your crap any longer

There are some substantial differences between the candidates, and once you peel back the anything you can do I can do better atttacks there are some serious contradictions in Kerry's positions. September 11, 2001 changed a lot of things, and adjusted our national priorities. I don't really get that in Kerry's remarks.

I'd Rather Eat Broken Glass

I would rather eat pieces of broken glass than watch the presidential debates. The spectacle of two grown men bickering and posturing and trying to get in some catchy zinger makes me wish for a New Zealand citizenship. There are moments of substance in the debates, but these are overshadowed by the focus on image and style and who could deliver the most clever put-down. The partisan debate audience cares very little about the issues - they are there to cheer on their candidate. They aren't there to learn anything. The media will anoint a "winner" and a "loser" based on some objective criteria like who sweat the most or who looked at his watch. I feel very embarrassed watching the debates.

Why should I watch the presidential debates? If I want to know where the two men stand on the issues I can look up their positions on their web sites, or look at the comparisons that routinely appear in the media. I'm familiar with their records (Bush more so than Kerry). I can use statistics to analyze what happened to the country or state over their term in office. If I want to evaluate their characters I can observe how they've conducted their presidential campaigns, what they've said and what has been said by their surrogates.

And yet - eating broken glass does not help me to fulfill my civic duty to evaluate the candidates and vote for whoever I think will do a better job of leading this country over the next four years. So I will watch at least one of the debates.

During some past presidential cycle a news writer observed that a presidential debate is one of the few venues that the candidate does not control. Speeches, news conferences, public gatherings - all these are mostly controlled by the candidates. Not so with a debate. We get to see how he or she will react in unknown circumstances. Are these circumstances relevant to presidential performance? Yes, because verbal debate is part of the political process, part of governing in this country. The debates are a data point we don't already have.

I will watch at least one debate. But I won't enjoy it!

Maybe I'll keep a bowl of broken glass on the coffee table nearby just in case.

Missouri, Proud Weathervane

We got good news here yesterday in Missouri -- John Kerry has decided against running political ads here. Of course, he may decide to run them after deciding not to run them, so I'm not celebrating just yet. But it tells me that as of right now, John Kerry is giving up. I'm not saying he won't win, I'm just saying if he's giving up on Missouri, the nation's political weathervane, he's giving up actually winning the Presidency. Now if I can survive the blitz of McCaskill and Blunt ads, I'll keep my sanity. I'm thinking McCaskill is going to win, but not before I have to put up with hours of lousy ads.

Is John Kerry a Christian?

My daughter attends a private Christian school. This morning she told me that her second-grade classmates "don't want to vote for John Kelly [sic] because he's not a Christian. They want to vote for George Bush."

I was appalled to hear this, but I restrained myself. Who told them that John Kerry is not a Christian? I explained that John Kerry is a Roman Catholic, and that the Catholic Church is one of the "denominations" in the worldwide Christian church. "We don't go to John Kerry's church because we are Protestant (Anglican), but his church also believes in Jesus." That was enough for a second-grader.

But I'm a big seventeenth-grader. Is John Kerry a Christian? The facts show that John Kerry describes himself as a Roman Catholic. His web site says:

"Not long after John Kerry was born, the family settled in Massachusetts. Growing up there, his parents taught him the values of service and responsibility and the blessings of his Catholic faith, lessons John Kerry carries with him to this day."

I have also seen a news photograph of John Kerry receiving Communion. This indicates that he is at least somewhat active in his church. So we can conclude that John Kerry is a practicing Roman Catholic. So far, so good.

A fair number of people claim that Kerry is not a true Christian because he doesn't vote against abortion. That stance may not make him a "good Catholic", but that's not the question here. I have heard laundry lists that a "true Christian" should: believe in Jesus, oppose abortion, be against homosexuality, tithe, attend church regularly, be in favor of a balanced budget, and believe that the earth is 6,000 years old.

Frankly, I have very little interest in definitions of "What is a true Christian?" that fail to cite the Bible by book, chapter, and verse. If the official definition of a Christian includes opposition to abortion, then the Bible ought to state that pretty clearly. So - what does the Bible say?

Romans 10:9-10 says: "That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved." (NIV) That passage tells us how to be saved, but it's not quite a definition of what is a Christian.

John 3:16 says: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." Again, this tells us how to be saved, but not what constitutes a Christian. (Maybe the Gospel writers cared more about Salvation than what exactly is "proper Christianity.")

James 1:27 says: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." Some translations use the phrase "true religion" here. I don't see anything about abortion in James 1:27, although one could argue that not opposing abortion is "being polluted by the world." Good luck with your exegesis.

There are lots of things a Christian should do, according to Jesus: love your neighbor, turn the other cheek, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, and be faithful unto death. In fact, a Christian should not sin! But as Peter learned after the resurrection, even the sin of denying Jesus does not kick you out of the Christian club.

The Gospels are more concerned about pointing the way to Salvation than about defining what makes a proper Christian. The Pharisees were very concerned about defining what makes a good Jew, and Jesus rebuked the Pharisees. I'll take my definition of "What makes a Christian?" from Romans 10:9-10:

1. Believe that Jesus is the divine Son of God, and make Him the Lord of your life.
2. Believe that Jesus rose from the dead on Easter morning.

That's it. Everything else is commentary.

I would like to ask Kerry personally about points 1 and 2. But until I find evidence to the contrary, I'll have to assume that he follows the position of the Catholic Church, which is in agreement with points 1 and 2.

I think John Kerry is a Christian. I think he's wrong about abortion. I hope he changes his mind.

I expect to see John Kerry in heaven when I get there.

No Trumans Here

The Post ran one of my letters to the editor after a long absence. I would have liked to have written at greater length, but brevity is the soul of wit (and the secret to getting a letter printed). I wrote in response to both letters and editorials - it was a Post editorial that labeled Zell Miller's speach "vituperative." I suppose I labor under the illusion that anybody, and I include the paper's staff, reads the editorials or opeds or letters to the editor. I barely know anbody who gets the paper, let alone reads anything beyond sports and everyday (comics).

I reproduce the letter for your reading enjoyment:

The responses to the Republican National Convention make it clear that the Democrats are no longer the party of Harry Truman; they can't stand the heat. The Republicans told the truth, and the Democrats thought it was hell.

The Democrats can't tell the difference between ad hominem attacks and factual takedowns. Pointing out that John Kerry was on the wrong side of a number of issues and votes is called vituperative; calling George W. Bush a moron, a fascist, a liar and AWOL and Dick Cheney a war profiteer and a coward for obtaining draft deferments passes as reasonable debate.

Considering the identical responses of mainstream media and partisan Democrats, it's clear that the media represent the view of partisan Democrats and not unbiased reporting.

Bush's Speech

After School Night For Scouting and Open House at school I was too tired to take on Andariel, so I watched TV instead while I unloaded the dishwasher. I didn't get home until about 9:20, so when I flipped on the TV President Bush was in the middle of the domestic laundry list. He was taking about partial privatization of Social Security, which made me simulaineously think "Amen, brother!" and "Quit talking about it and do something about it."

I hate that State of the Union Style speech -- promises mixed with applause -- so I flipped over to the ballgame. No, not the Rams losing to the Raiders (I bet Dodd's happy), the Cardinals stomping on the Padres again (oh yeah, the Cardinals sure did look "beatable"). I was happy my wife and son got to see a good game, but I was surprised when they got home at about 9:35 -- I thought it would be closer to 10. So after I got my sons take on the game and he went off to bed, we flipped back to the President and got to the good part.

I thought he did a fine job - he poked fun at himself, always a plus for me (although that shoulder shake thing he does when he laughs is either deeply annoying or deeply endearing, sometimes both at the same time), he was serious and determined, and he was clearly teary eyed when he talked about the sacrifices soldiers and their families were making in the war on terror.

George Bush could be a cub master - you have to like being the butt of most of the jokes. I just can't imagine John Kerry making jokes at his own expense let alone having fun with it. While I've always said it's easy to fake sincerity, it's spontaneity that hards to fake, I do think Bush's teary eyes were sincere. I know Bill Clinton among others could turn the waterworks on and off at will, but I don't think Bush can (I don't think Kerry's that good a fake, either).

I can't make any predictions or claims about the effects on the famed swing voters, but I don't think Bush hurt himself with the speech, and I do think he's pulling ahead of Kerry. I'll be honest, I don't see how anybody but a hard core Democrat could vote for Kerry. But I know perfectly reasonable sane and smart people who think Kerry is the better of the two for President. Bush wouldn't be my first pick out of everybody for President, but there's only two in the race.

Jason Goes To New York

My wife wanted to watch Zell Miller last night, so after I got back from working on the parade float and walking the dog, we turned on the TV to the convention. Since Zell wasn’t on yet, my wife called her Girl Scout co-Leader and then Zell came on. She was bummed she missed most of it, but I got to see the whole thing. Wow. It should go down as the “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” speech – an even better version of Howard Beale from Network.

I hope John Kerry took notes on the effective way to mention one’s military experience (“And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators”) – as little as possible and in context with the point.

Zell put on the hockey mask, revved up the chainsaw, and went to work on the objects of his wrath. He didn’t stop when he finished with politicians, he kept it up on Hardball. After that speech, the two Cheneys were anti-climactic and I didn’t stick out Dick’s speech for very long before I was back to handling Scout administrivia.

Tomorrow night is Bush – I have School Night for Scouting and Open House at school, but I’ll be back in time I hope. My wife and son are off to a Cardinal’s game, so she’ll miss Bush’s speech for sure. I’ll be torn – a politician speaking, or uninterrupted time to take on Andariel and go on to Act II. Decisions, decisions.

Political Wisdom

I try not to be a partisan. I try to understand what somebody truly means, not look for the gotcha! or blindly defend. I don't always succeed. Sometimes it's my fault; sometimes, the speaker is just too outrageous.

I didn't think I'd see this bit of wisdom topped:

"I will do the diplomacy necessary, and I have heavy cards to play -- I'm not going to lay 'em all out on the table, no future president, no president should negotiate this in public. But let me tell you, I've got big cards to play to bring people to understand the stakes here"

Who knew Big John was such a poker player.

But then the big daddy of politics preached the following from a church pulpit (thus demonstrating that God is merciful because he wasn't struck down):

"It's wrong to demonize and cartoonize one another, and to ignore evidence, and to make false charges and to bear false witness. Sometimes I think our friends on the other side have become the people of the Nine Commandments."

I guess it takes one to know one, eh perjurer-in-chief?

And In Other News

I haven't seen much of the Republican convention. I've been too busy with important stuff. Monday I night I helped on my cub scout pack's parade float (I'll be doing the same thing tonight). My wife and I were mystified to flip on the TV and see McCain booed by the audience and a reaction shot of a large hairy man who bore a striking resemblance to Michael Moore. Fortunately, McCain repeated the line that started the booing and so we realized that we were seeing Michael Moore being booed by an audience (he ought to be getting used to it by now). I didn't find the rest of the speech too riveting so I caught up on my reading of Science News. We then caught the beginning of Giuliani's speech and boy, it was good, but we went up to bed about the time he started detailing how Germany failed humanity by releasing the terrorists from the Munich Olympics. My wife doesn't need her beauty sleep, but I sure do.

Last night I had to do some scout paperwork/planning, and I did manage to squeeze in some demon slaying with my Paladin before the Amazing Race, so all I saw of Schwartzenneger's speech was the walk backstage from the podium. We watched the Bush twins, who don't even look like sisters, and I thought that they were better than 99% of celebrety award show banter, which isn't exactly high praise. When George introduced Laura -- who seems to have more sense than to be a politician herself -- my wife and I wondered if anybody in the game going on behind him realized they were playing in front of a national audience. Laura was Laura, which means I'd vote for her for any office, but I can take only so much speechifying, especially those that have constant applause lines. So after discovering there wasn't much else on TV, we toddled off to bed.

Fortunately, Conrad has some insightful observations of his own.

Veterans Speak Out

Dodd gave a heads up about C-Span showing John Kerry's testimony before a Senate committee in 1971 so I was able to watch it. I had a negative, visceral reaction to it. McQ had a much stronger, more personal reaction to Kerry's anti-soldier (yes, Kerry in opposing the Vietnam war did so in a manner that slimed and smeared every soldier who fought there) actions after he returned with his medals in hand:

Well I’m very angry as well, Becky.

I’m angry that a nation treated its soldiers the way it did 35 years ago. I’m angry that actions of John Kerry led to that dishonorable treatment. But more than that, I’m angry that now that we who were maligned and smeared by Kerry and the VVAW want to speak out about it, people like you want us to shut up.

Well we’re not going to shut up.

We kept quite about it for all those years and we’re damn tired of living with the lies Kerry and others told about us. We’ve as much right to speak as John Kerry. And we’ve got as much right to tell you and others he was full of crap as any other citizen of this country.

Its not just YOUR country. Its OUR country as well. And this is about how OUR country treated us because of the lies people like John Kerry and the VVAW spread.

When Kerry grows the balls to stand up and tell the Vietnam Vets that he was wrong, he lied and he portrayed them falsely and that he’s sorry for doing so, then perhaps, some real healing can begin.

Until then, I agree with John O’Neill ... he’s unfit for command.

Since I'm not a veteran, some will say I have no standing to comment on McQ's remarks. But as a citizen, I agee with him.

Promises, Promises

John Kerry is running an ad here in Missouri about how George Bush doesn’t care about healthcare but John does, and so much so he has a plan. The plan sounds wonderful of course – something for everybody, but it does have one big problem. The plan requires legislation to be passed for it to be implemented, and John Kerry is running for President, an office that can only veto legislation. I suppose it’s bad form to point out that Kerry has been a Senator for almost 20 years and so has had ample time to try to get this plan passed yet somehow has managed to propose nothing in his long yet unmentioned Senatorial career. I suppose it's too bad that big John has been so busy this year to show up for votes, let alone do all the hard work in actually crafting legislation, but once he's President apparently then he'll have time he needs to work on legislation.

Now John Kerry isn’t alone in this odd habit of politicians who run for executive offices; just about everybody who runs for President or Governor runs on a legislative agenda. Even the Libertarians do this, although they mainly talk about the laws they'll repeal, not pass. When candidate George Bush was running for President, he made tax cutting the main message of his campaign, and after his election he had to work with Congress to get tax cuts passed -- ones to be honest that were not exactly what he first proposed but what he was willing to accept.

Our lack of understanding is shown in other races, where for instance we vote for members of the House or any state office based on abortion when the only people who matter on that subject are US Supreme Court justices, and the President and Senate since they select and confirm Supreme Court justices. And that doesn't include all the platitudinous promises politicians dish out -- like how they'll lower crime without providing details (a colorful costume complete with cape usually springs to my mind) or they'll be good for families -- usually through shared values or somesuch, although they never explain if I'm supposed to adopt their values, or they'll adopt mine, or if it's even sanitary to be sharing values.

The problem isn't the politicians, it's the electorate that keeps voting for the politicians. We're the ones who lap up all these feel good but can't be implemented promises. The perversity of the electorate doesn't end there. The one thing all Americans can agree on is that our Congresspeople should work tirelessly for our interests while other peoples Congresspeople should work for the common good (which surprisingly enough is amazingly similar to our interests).

Cannae Again

Maybe I'm easily impressed, but I think the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth laid the best political trap for John Kerry I've ever seen. Hannibal would be proud.

Step one was to document and gather affidavits and write a book so that there was a wealth of credible material to draw from.

Step two was to put out an ad attacking Kerry's service. Believe them or not, Kerry and the media have reacted by being outraged that anybody would crap on a combat veteran like the SBVTs did. The fact that they were combat veterans every bit as much as Kerry was immaterial. "How dare you impugn him! He fought and bled for his country!" Let's face it, this is a strong defense.

Step three was to spring the trap. If you think the SBVTs were surprised by the reaction, you haven't been paying attention to their second ad where they recount how John Kerry crapped on every Vietnam combat veteran after Kerry returned from Vietnam. The art of political Aikido in action is beautiful to behold. All that anger for Kerry gets turned around and used against him. "How dare he impugn his band of brothers, men who fought and died for their country." The narrative becomes: if you thought you were mad at us when we said Kerry was a braggert, how should you feel when Kerry said all of us vets were rapists and murderers?

And what has to really hurt is that Kerry's attacks are all in the public record. Kerry is his own accuser; the credibility of the SBVTs doesn't matter on this attack. In a move of sheer brilliance, the SBVTs put on ex-POWs to testify to the emotional toll his accusations of atrocities took on them. What's Kerry going to do -- attack an ex-POW? McCain would lead the countercharge personally.

Kerry has only himself to blame for this. If he had run on his political record and his vision for the future, none of this would have come up, let alone matter. But by insisting that his actions 36 years ago mattered, that they were significant qualifications for office, he cannot insist that his actions 33 years ago don't matter and are significantly disqualifying for office. I mean if he isn't the same man he was 33 years ago, he sure isn't the man he was 36 years ago. What was he thinking? How could he have forgotten?

Back In The Straddle Again

John Kerry has come out against bringing troops home after he came out for it. Why the straddle? President Bush has announced that we will reduce troop strength in Germany and South Korea in move that has long been anticipated. In his opinion, Bush is going to screw it up. If Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow was Clinton's campaign theme song, Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better is Kerry's. [Thanks be to Dodd for the links]

Here's what gets me -- Kerry is complaining about withdrawing troops from two countries that have, shall we say, issues with America and with American troops on their soil and are at peace. He's worried that it raises questions about our commitment. His plan for withdrawing troops from Iraq, where Iraqis are fighting and dying along side our soldiers, doesn't raise questions, it answers them about our commitment in the negative. He wants to keep troops in two countries where they aren't fighting, but remove them from a country where we are fighting our enemies, including al-Qaida. That's better how?

The case for removing them from Germany is a slam dunk. Germany is threatened only by its runaway welfare state. Of course, when I think back on the proud history of Americans fighting alongside Germans against tyranny, oops, we never have. We fought against German mercenaries in the revolutionary war, against the Kaiser in WWI, against Hitler in WWII, and they declined to fight with us in the Balkans, Kuwait, Iraq, or Afganistan. Oh, they've sent forces after the shooting has stopped -- a few thousand here and there. But then we'll still leave one of our new Brigades behind -- a couple thousand troops to fly the flag and reassure the Germans that if the French ever do attack, we'll at last fire shots in anger together.

We'll still keep troops in Korea, but reducing the number and moving them to positions where they don't get annihilated in the first North Korean artillery barrage seems like a good idea to me and increases our freedom of action while reducing tensions with the locals. And isn't part of Kerry's foriegn policy to get foriengers to like us again?

Last night I happened to catch Norm Coleman on the Daily Show. He pointed out that debate is good for democracy, but that by and large we don't have them anymore in this country - instead we have partisan bickering (my words, not his). When Jon asked him why, Norm said because of this and gestured to include the show. Jon made the joke "Comedy Central is responsible?", but Norm had made his point -- if politicians are reduced to brief soundbites on TV, all they can do is bicker.

And that's all that is going on here. We've gotten to the point that politicians will say anything to win, and then say and do whatever it takes to stay in power. This isn't the fault of the politicians, it's the fault of us, the American people, for putting up with this kind of politics. We have the ultimate power - to demand that politicians be responsive through the vote, to demand that the media be responsive through the viewership. We just need to use it.

College Costs

Dave Nicklaus is a pretty sharp business columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He had a good column today about ever rising college tuition costs:

As in health care - another part of the economy where costs are out of control - third parties pay much of the cost of a university education. When the state government, the federal government or private philanthropists are paying much of the freight, the discipline that's inherent in most business-to-consumer transactions doesn't exist.

What's more, universities have a power that no ordinary merchant has: They get to look at your tax return. Don't think that scholarship, loan or work-study offer came out of pure altruism. Think of financial aid as a discount off list price, like the rebate on a new car. Thanks to the data you provide on your financial aid form, the university can practice almost perfect price discrimination, charging each consumer as much as his or her bank account will bear.

...

And, because universities have no profit motive, Vedder [Richard Vedder, professor of ecomomics at Ohio University and author of Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much] says, they are extremely inefficient. For every dollar that colleges spent on instruction in 1929, they spent 19 cents on administration. That rose to 33 cents by 1960 and 48 cents by the mid-1990s.

As for the faculty, Vedder makes a strong case that productivity has been declining while pay has risen steadily in the past 20 years.

Here's a prime example of how if you don't truly understand the problem, you'll never fix it.

Not Gone Yet

OK, I've gotten so many calls and emails begging me for one last post before leaving, I'm writing one last one.

"Universal healthcare" as in government funded, not as in open market, is pushed as a panacea in certain circles. These circles find it such an obviously superior solution, I rarely see any real supporting rationale for it (everybody else is doing it isn't a rationale that I, as the father of a teenage daughter, find real).

There are two main ways of allocating resources - one way that decreases the availability of the resource, and the other which increases the availability of the resource. Socialism, or single payer, or "universal healthcare" is the way that decreases the availability of the resource. This isn't a question of theory -- it's been empirically proven repeatedly. The free market is the way that increases the availability of the resource.

But healthcare is something too important to be left to the market you say. Or healthcare doesn't work like other goods because you have to have it inorder to live you say. Doesn't food meet those same requirements? Yet we allocate food in this country via the free market, and the crisis du jour is obesity. If we stopped allocating healthcare in this country via the current odd employer standing in for government system, and instead allocated healthcare via a free market, the crisis du jour would be longevity.

Forty Thousand Headmen

I haven't paid close attention to the Democratic convention, and doubt I will to the Republican one. One of the main reasons is that they don't matter. The nominee is a foregone conclusion, so all you have is a bunch of speeches in which politicians lay out a wonderful vision of why their guy should be elected. The problem is that the speeches are pretty much devoid of meaning. A long laundry list of ideas, visions and claims but no idea of the hierarchy of values of the candidate. I'm not claiming that these politicians are lying -- they aren't -- but the problem is when push comes to shove, which ideas, visions, and yes, values are more important?

You take a backseat to no one in defending America, and you take a back seat to no one in multi-national cooperation and alliance building. You see a clear danger to the security of America, so you take action. You begin to build that multinational alliance, but discover that the UN is willing to issue only threats, but not take action. What do you do? You discover that your allies agree that there is a problem, but think negotiation will resolve the issue without force. Do you negotiate, or use force? How long do you do negotiate before you use force? Just how do you balance the interests and desires of America against those of allies? Both are important, but how do you resolve the inevitable conflicts.

You can think of your own examples without trying too hard.

And it isn't just about politicians. I'm sure if you polled people, 98 out of a 100 would agree that honesty is important: you shouldn't lie. All 98 of those people have told a lie sometime in their life. They all had a good reason, good enough to do something they think would otherwise be wrong. No there would be a bunch of different reasons good enough, all the way from "if I told the truth I would be embarrassed" to "if I told the truth somebody would die". If you're trying to judge somebody's honesty, the question isn't whether they value honesty, but at what point do they start lying.

So if you want to hear a pleasing stream of platitudes, some delivered quite engagingly, tune into the convention. If you want an idea how people will balance competing values, look at their actions.

This And That

Comment Spam is starting to drive me nuts. Yes, I have MTBlacklist and I'm not afraid to use it. I think the answer is to sic pistol packing Tanya on them, though. I added a couple of sites to my blacklist this morning, and within five minutes I'd blocked seven comment attempts. My site traffic is up because now the little dears don't add one or two comments, they add ten or twelve. I'm sorry to say, but you can no longer use the word "poker" in the comments.

Yesterday I posted about Theresa Kerry, and now I'm the number seven search result for her at Yahoo! Isn't this blog thing great !?!

I'm not watching the Democratic Convention, and I hope to avoid the Republican one too. I think I'm with my fellow Americans on this one for a change.

Is it just me, but are the boys at Q and O adding posts faster than you can read them?

We were warned that The Passion of the Christ was going to increase anti-semitism, and it didn't. We were warned that concealed carry in Missouri would increase murders as traffic accidents and arguments over a can of peas wouldresult in wild west shootouts, and it didn't. I'm wondering why if the left worries about America being disliked in the world, they don't denounce Mikey Moore's 9-11 opus because it will increase anti-Americanism. Will Theresa Kerry tell the French to shove their un-Americanism? Hey, if the NYT could finally admit that they are indeed a liberal newspaper, anything is possible.

Compare and Contrast

In our never ending cycle of the scandal du jour, I'd like to take a look at a couple of recent ones. First up, Sandy Berger removing documents (and perhaps adding fake ones) from the National Archives. Sandy has offered the "I'm a chucklehead" defense. Look, nobody takes classified documents accidentally. The documents have brightly colored covers and back sheets, every page is distinctively marked, and a professional like Berger knows the rules about handling such documents. He knew exactly what he was doing -- we don't know what or why. But he was up to no good; he was trying to either cover his butt (most likely) or help the Kerry campaign. I think it would be a terrible precendence to laugh off both the mis-handling of classified documents or fail to consider he was putting his reputation above the safety of Americans.

And then there was Theresa Kerry's kerfuffle with a reporter. I don't think this is a big deal. Funny, but not a big deal. Yes, she's a hypocrite -- going on about civility and then going after a reporter -- but then we're all hypocrites. It's funny that the Democrats have been whining about being called un-American, and then she goes and calls people that. But the whole using the word and then not realizing it, well, I'm willing to cut her slack on that (although, again, very funny). She's not running for president -- her husband is. She goofed. No big deal.

I think it's interesting that a lot of the focus has gone into the "Shove it" part. I almost wonder if she didn't go back over and say it to deflect notice from her "un-American" remark. That's the goof. I think most Americans have no problem with somebody telling a reporter to "shove it" -- either the sentiment or the language. Most people are assuming that she went back over because she found out who the reporter was that questioned her; I think she may have gone back over because she found out she really did say "un-American".

But I think these two stories do point up the need to take what is serious seriously, and what is merely ironic laughingly. Partisans on the right will want to take Theresa Kerry's words in the worst possible way. Well, you're welcome to your paranoia. And for those who are partisans of the left, just remember that we're all human when somebody on the right goofs up. I think every American should take Berger's actions seriously. But we shouldn't make the avatar mistake - he isn't the represenative of all Democrats. The right shouldn't make him out to be, and the left shouldn't defend him because of that.

A More Full Transcript

There have been some shocking scandals recently what with Sandy Berger under investigation, Theresa Kerry telling off a reporter for doing his job, and Andrew Sullivan endorsing John Kerry for President because while Kerry may or may not support the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) banning gay marriage, he knows full well George W. supports it. Here at Funmurphys: the blog we've done some "real journalism" and discovered that the principals have been Dowdified - that is their quotes have had verbiage selectively removed to make a point the media wanted to make, but not one the speaker intended.

The abbreviated quotes:

"I inadvertently removed a few classified documents" -- Sandy Berger

"You're putting words in my mouth" -- Theresa Kerry

"The FMA wasn't everything" -- Andrew Sullivan

The full quotes:

"During the course of trying to deliberately remove every copy of a particular classified document, I inadvertently removed a few other classified documents"

"You're putting my words back into my mouth "

"The FMA wasn't everything, it was the only thing"

This post is based on what I thought was a (rare) pretty good comment of mine over at JustOneMinute

Oozy Rat In A Sanitary Zoo

Jonah G at The Corner reprints an email my father could have sent (if he sent email, that is):

Dear Jonah - When you say "trial lawyers," I think you mean "plaintiffs' attorneys." Or more specifically, "contingent fee plaintiffs' attorneys." I'm a "trial lawyer," but I hardly think you'd object to what I do all day long - defend corporate clients from malicious and baseless lawsuits filed by overzealous plaintiffs' attorneys. So, when you say "trial lawyers," be careful - you may be alienating an innocent sector of your NRO readership.

The phrase the Corner (and the GOP) is looking for is "ambulence chaser" (scum sucking pigdog isn't specific enough).

Kevin Explains It All

I just back from my stint at Webelos Camp (lot's of fun, wish I could have stayed longer) so I'll just post my letter to Andrew Sullivan (that he didn't include on his letters page) in response to his posts (post 1 and post 2) about Larry Speakes:

Andrew you knucklehead, Larry Speakes isn't making cruel jokes at the expense of the sick, he's trying to squelch "far-right crackpot" Lester Kinsolving.

Look again with fresh eyes.

Your first transcript has Lester asking about a "gay plague" Larry hasn't heard about – Larry's probably thinking "there he goes again." So he keeps needling Lester about being gay – do you have it, are you sure, no personal experience here, don’t put it those terms ("I love you Larry"). And Larry comes out and says what he's really thinking: "I thought I heard you on the State Department over there. Why didn't you stay there?" The only straight (sorry) answer Larry provides is in the following exchange:
Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?
MR. SPEAKES: No, I don't know anything about it, Lester.

Larry could have added that he only looks on Lester as a great joke.
In the second exchange Lester starts by asking about quarantining military personnel based on saliva transmitting aids. Lester let's the cat out of the bag when he notes his questions about AIDS have provoked "much jocular concern" – whereupon two people from the audience pipe up with jokes at Lester’s expense ("It isn't only the jocks, Lester" & "Has he sworn off water faucets?") In other words, the other reporters have been laughing at Lester and his questions about AIDS, not just Larry Speaks. So Larry brushes him off with "I have not heard him express anything on it" – it being quarantining military AIDS patients. Of course Lester has to keep pushing by asking a follow-up, so Larry again goes to squelch with "Have you been checked?" – and then we could quarantine you.

So by all means Andrew, let’s ask Larry Speaks about why he mocked Lester Kinsolving twenty years ago when Lester asked questions everybody in the room was laughing at.

My Eulogy for Reagan

The first time I heard of Ronald Reagan was in 1976 when he ran against Ford in the Republican Presidential primaries. My mother just loved Ronnie (she had hated Nixon with a passion). In the summer of 1977 (I think), Reagan addressed a session at the ABA convention at the Fairmont in San Francisco, and my mother was mad at my father for not getting tickets to see him. As fate would have it, we were walking down the side of the hotel just as Reagan left a side door to get in a waiting limo. We had to stop to let hm and his group by. My father and I waited, but my mother said nothing. It turned out she hadn't even noticed him.

In 1980 I would vote for Ed Clark, the Libertarian candidate for President, in part because Carter had already conceded by the time I voted in the late afternoon in California. In 1984 I enthusiastically voted for Reagan. I wasn't surprised he won by such a huge landslide in 1984. While taking a taxi ride to the airport in 1983 after a friend's wedding in New Haven (yes, Yale), the black female cabbie was cooing about Reagan; maybe she was just buttering up her two white boy riders looking for a tip, but I don't think so. The whole direction of the country had changed under Ronnie.

It's hard to believe in what poor shape we were in 1980. President Carter inherited a lousy situation and only made things worse. He blamed our problems on a miasma of negativity, not flawed policy. The economy was in a shambles with high unemployement and high inflation. Japan was poised to beat our economic ass and the Soviet Union was winning the cold war. Even the Boston Globe ran a fake headline "More Mush From the Wimp" about a Carter speech. The elites had thrown in the towel (where it remains today) and were yammering away about how the US had always been lousy and just plain wrong (just like today).

But Reagan's optimism was infectious. He said the problem with the economy wasn't something government should fix, but government itself. It took awhile, but his cutting taxes and reining in government regulation put the economy back on track (in the eighties, prosperity was called greed, when a Democrat became President in the nineties, it turned back into prosperity). He challanged the Soviets instead of retreating -- and I mean this economically, militarily, and most importantly morally.

The left likes to claim that victory in the cold war was bi-partisan. Well, the fight was bi-partisan up to the Vietnam war, when the left gave up. It began to embrace dictators of the left, like the Sandinistas. By the end, the left and the Democratic party were fighting against fighting the war all they could -- economically, militarily, and morally.

The left likes to claim that the politics of personal destruction started with Clinton. Ha. It started with the second politician in the depths of time and have continued ever since. From time to time it may abate, but believe me, Reagan was vilified by the left throughout his time in office and long afterward.

Reagan changed America and the world. Prosperity returned to America, and the evil empire of the Soviet Union was ended with a wimper and not a bang. And that's why Reagan was elected in a landslide in 1984, and why Bush Sr. was elected in 1988 (if we couldn't have Ronnie, at least we could have his VP), and why Reagan was one of the great presidents. Yes, he made mistakes on the little stuff. But he knew what he wanted to do, he knew how he wanted to do it, and through great perserverence he saw it through, in both domestic and foreign policy. I don't often admit this, but my mother was right to love him.

Bush Confesses

Apparently President Bush has finally decided on what the worst mistakes of his presidency were. Scott Ott has the story.

About time, I say.

Learn Something New

Well, now we know that likening someone to Hitler isn't name calling, it's just "irreverent comedy and smart deconstruction of the foibles of the right." I suppose that isn't so shocking since its de rigeur to say you're not a name caller right before calling someone a name. And I always thought that Hitler as a socialist was a leftist. Oh well, I'm hopelessly modern and still believe words have actual meanings.

What's really shocking is finding out that Hitler was "highly entertaining and had emotion, highs, lows, passion." No wonder he sent millions on one way train trips to the gas chambers. Glad to know it wasn't because he was a crazed Jew-hater.

The good news is that after reading this blog, nobody will accuse me -- boring, even-keeled intellectual dullard that I am -- of being like Hitler.

Zero Redeeming Value

I found this to be very funny. And despite my title, it does have an important point to make.

Tis the Season

Since Missouri is both a battleground and bellweather state, the political ads have started. I'm getting more tired of the "I'm state your name, and I approved this ad" formula than anything else -- yet.

I'm not outraged by the Bush ads showing the devastation at World Trade Center following the terrorist attack there. I am outraged at the lying sacks of shaving cream who work for MoveOn.org and their fraudulent ad. Of course, the organization itself is a fraudulent organisation (to borrow a meme from Kerry) as it came into being as a group of so-called political moderates to advocate that we just move on from President Clinton's legal problems. Somehow these moderates have consistantly acted as left wing partisans -- all the while claiming to dislike partisanship.

I also get to see ads for the Democrats running for the Senate in Illinois - after Rod Blago... won the race for Governor and credited his St. Louis media buys that covered southern Illinois, the Democrats especially run a lot of ads here meant for Illinois. Blair Hull is like a friend these days who pops in constantly without warning.

I've noticed that a lot of Democrats and some Republicans have difficulty with the difference between price and cost. Cost is what it takes to make or provide something. Price is what you are charged for the thing or service. Politicians are constantly telling me how they are going to lower the cost of something -- typically healthcare, ocasionally housing -- when all they are going to do is lower the obvious price and do nothing for cost. Are they going to do anything about the government regulation and oversight that adds to the cost? Heck no. They're going to have a single pay system dictate price. It's enough to make you vote Libertarian.

Just Wondering

Why is when a politician does something I don't like but someone else does, that's pandering to them, but when he does something I like but somebody else doesn't, that's standing up for principle despite opposition. Just curious.

Leadership?

Phil Carter has a post (and op-ed) about why he thinks President Bush's National Guard service record matters.

"Leadership by example is a principle that's hammered into every newly minted American military officer. ... Above all else, it means never asking your soldiers, sailors, airmen or Marines to do something that you wouldn't do yourself."

Armed Liberal at Winds of Change replies:

"It's well written, serious, accurate, and amazingly wrong.

I have to agree with Armed Liberal. Is Phil really saying that you can't be the civilian commander-in-chief if you weren't in the military, and you can't go to war as the CinC if you weren't in combat yourself? That sure seems to the be the logical conclusion of his statements. I guess Phil won't be able to vote for Edwards since John won't be able to provide leadership to the Armed Forces as his role of President requires.

In an earlier post Phil said "Was he really the kind of junior officer that we now want to be Commander-in-Chief?" And I also have to agree with Jeff Medcalf when he says:

Would it not be better to ask, "Has he been the kind of Commander-in-Chief that we would want to be Commander-in-Chief?" It's not like he's Kerry - with no record as CinC to run on. You can actually judge the President by how he's actually performed his duties. Why do you need or even want to look at his record as a junior officer in performing such an evaluation?"

Bush has amassed a pretty clear record as CinC, and as far as I can tell, people are not having a hard time making up their minds about how he's doing -- love it or hate it.

Assuming Kerry is the Democratic Nominee, how should I judge how he'll do? By then man he was thirty years ago, or the man of today?

John Kerry won his Silver Star for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action while in charge of a three-boat mission. As the force approached the target area, all units came under intense automatic weapons and small arms fire from an entrenched enemy force less than fifty-feet away. Unhesitatingly, Lieutenant Kerry ordered his boat to attack as all units opened fire and beached directly in front of the enemy ambushers. The daring and courageous tactic surprised the enemy and succeeded in routing a score of enemy soldiers. Later, the boats again were taken under fire from a heavily foliated area and B-40 rocket exploded close aboard PCF-94; with utter disregard for his own safety and the enemy rockets, he again ordered a charge on the enemy, beached his boat only ten feet from the VC rocket position, and personally led a landing party ashore in pursuit of the enemy. Upon sweeping the area an immediate search uncovered an enemy rest and supply area which was destroyed.

The John Kerry of then took swift and decisive action. Does that sound like the John Kerry of today who seems to be on both sides of every issue?

Would the John Kerry of today have earned that Silver Star? The John Kerry of today when comming under fire would keep on going without returning fire so that nobody else would have a cause to attack Kerry's boat, and leave it up to the Justice Department to bring his attacker to justice. He would carefully review his actions to determine why they hate his boat, and ultimately conclude it is because the French aren't on board. Then he would denounce his men as war criminals.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Snopes (AKA Urban Legends Reference Pages) debunks a picture showing John Kerry and Jane Fonda at the same podium at an anti-war rally. OK, there are a couple of things wrong with this picture. First, it's a fake. I'm not one of those who believe that lying in the service of Truth is possible, let alone desirable. (For the record, I'm OK with lying in the service of humor).

But an even bigger issue is what it says about its target audience. The target happens to be on the right of the political spectrum, but I think the left and the center suffer from the same problems, so I think it speaks to political discourse in this country (probably others, but I think I've generalized enough from one lousy photo as it is). OK, here's my problem. We know that John Kerry was against the Vietnam war: he joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he spoke at anti-war rallies, he testified before Congress against the war, and he heaved medals onto the Capitol grounds as a gesture of protest against the war. These are all well documented facts. Agree or disagree with his then views, they were what they were. So how does being behind the same podium as Jane Fonda change anything? Well, she's a symbol. Jane bad. Therefore, John bad because next to Jane. Can such simple symbolism truly be effective? No one's gone broke underestimating the public, or so I'm told.

While I can't believe in such simplicity of thought, I'm faced with it's reality. The doctored picture made the internet rounds, so somebody thought it truly meant something. I've read posts and comments at partisan political sites that were equally sophisticated and seen how often there is no discussion but simple shouting of slogans past one another. I remember a blogger when faced with the utter collapse of his claim against a particular politician responded that it didn't matter, the person could have done exactly what was claimed and therefore was just as guilty. Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is already made up. I suppose it's much easier that way - no need to think, simply reiterate the same tired symbology.

And I'm also confronted with my own shortcomings - am I just of guilty of twisting the facts to suit my own prejudices, am I swayed by such symbolism? Am I not human?

This is why it takes a jolt to change people's thinking. 9-11 was just such a jolt for some people, although not enough of a jolt for many others - which makes you wonder just exactly does it take to convince people they are wrong. I know that my thinking has changed on many a subject - I was filled with theory as a young man, and many did not survive first contact with reality. I'm convinced that had I stayed in the bubble of Academia, many of those theories would be blissfully intact.

Kiss Me, I Voted

I voted in the Missouri presidential primary today. Turnout was light - I was number twelve at my polling as of 6:55 AM. Given the weather - cold, and road conditions which range from not bad where I live to lousy (as in ice covered) more northerly in the St. Louis area, I wasn't too surprised. I think turnout will be light overall, as these lousy conditions are statewide.

I have to admit I voted for Howard Dean. Now while I don't think Bush is the perfect Republican candidate, I do think he would make a better president than Dean. But you get to choose which party ballot you vote in Missouri, and I have a feeling Bush is going to win on the Republican side. So instead of voting for Democrats I would actually want for President (Lieberman, Gephardt if he hadn't dropped out), I voted for somebody who I thought would do the best job of losing to Bush. I don't think I'm alone - at my heavily Republican polling place, the stubs on top of the ballot box were overwhelmingly green - i.e. Democratic. Of course it could be that the voters who did brave the elements were overwhelmingly Democratic -- the Republicans took the day off confident in Bush's primary victory; but I think there were more people like me voting for their man by casting a vote for someone else.

I'm partially retracting my prediction from yesterday. Polls mean nothing - turnout is going to be light, and Republicans voters are coming out and voting for Democratic candidates. I wouldn't be surprised if Bush doesn't get many votes and his challangers get more votes than expected. And on the Democratic side, I still think Kerry will win, but not by the margin in the polls.

A Man Who Doesn't Know

John Kerry came to town the other day. The Boston Globe reports the following exchange on the plane coming here:

"Kerry also underlined that he would begin trying to broaden his base of voters. At one point on the plane, Kerry said he hoped to woo hockey-mad Michigan voters by lacing up his skates and playing a scrimmage with some members of the Detroit Red Wings before the state's Feb. 7 caucuses. Yet in states such as Missouri, where the citizenry is less rabid about passing the puck, Kerry acknowledged that he needed to come up with some other way to connect with voters.

"I guess I'll ride a bucking bronco or a bull or something," Kerry joked. "I'm game. Whatever they got."

I guess John has got us confused with Texas. Here's a tip to all the politicians blowing through St. Louis before the primary - if you want to fit in and make a connection, just tell us what high school you went to. It's really that simple.

Character Matters

There is a striking contrast between the current President Bush and President Clinton, and it revolves around their character. No, I'm not trying to rehash old scandals, but I want to point out that while Bush has so far been bold and decisive, Clinton was a procrastinator. He got more done in has last week in office than he had in the rest of his presidency prior. Oh, he could move quickly when he had to, when his future was at stake, as he did with Welfare reform, but by and large it's amazing how little got done during his years in office - especially when you consider that during his first two years the Democrats had majorities in Congress and could only pass a small tax increase - no universal healthcare or any other pet project. After that it was either coopting Republican programs or scrambling to survive. It wasn't because he couldn't, it was because he wouldn't -- that's a procrastinator in (in)action.

I too am a procrastinator, so I understand the long periods of lassitude followed by brief periods of intense energy when a hard deadline looms. How long should it take to clean and staighten the downstairs? 30 minutes. Therefore, I'll start 15 minutes before my wife gets home and I'll be just finished when she walks through the door. That was Bill in the final week - desparately trying to cram a four year term into 168 hours.

Now that he's off giving speaches, he's apparently giving good ones, even by the standards of Jay Nordlinger and Ralph Peters. Maybe that's the ideal role for Clinton the procrastinator -- a firm deadline, and doing what he's good at.

Steel, then Blah Blah Blah

Victor Davis Hanson captures my thoughts (yes Virginia, even better than how I thunked them) on the 2004 State of the Union Speach. I think what you say and what you do is important in foreign affairs, but on the domestic front what you do is pretty much all that matters to me. So I listened to the first half of the speach, and when Bush started sounding like Clinton lite, I gave up.

Horserace results

The Iowa caucases demonstrate once again the political acumen of political reporters: The unstoppable Howard Dean was stopped by the left-for-dead duo of Kerry and Edwards. It's a military truism that no plan survives first contact with the enemy, and it's just as true of the press that no media prognistication survives first contact with reality.

The presidential ambitions of Dick Gephardt ended last night. The press is claiming that Gephardt's political career is over. While he isn't running for re-election to congress, I'm not so sure that he won't run for office here in Missouri. If not, I'm sure he can catch on as a lobbyist for a lot more money. I suppose it's nice that Gephardt has enough hold on reality to drop out of a campaign he can't win -- when will Kucinich and Sharpton wake up and smell the coffee?

Can Howard Dean come back? Of course he can. And according to the news reader on the radio station this morning, winning Iowa isn't a good predictor for winning the nomination in either party. But since those are the only results we have, that's all we'll hear about until New Hampshire, whereupon Iowa will become one footnote among many in a long campaign.

Hillary, Hillary, Hillary

What has happened to Hillary Clinton? She went from lousy wife of Bill Clinton to a Senator who has, dare I say it, done a good job. The old wisdom was that she was the cool mastermind behind all the money scandals, and he was the randy chump behind all the sex scandals. Could it be that now that she is free of him (yes, I know they aren't divorced, but still) she's put her past behind her and is on the high road? I don't know. It could all be an act, it could all be maneuvering for 2008. But while I can't know her motivations, I can know her acts, and frankly, I'm impressed. She's been consistant on Iraq, she's toured Afganistan and Iraq. If doing the right thing also is smart politically, do I applaud doing the right thing or snark about politics? I applaud doing the right thing, which I think she has done (sound of me clapping). I think it was the right thing for President Bush to spend Thanksgiving with soldiers in Iraq; I think the same thing for Hillary to spend even more time at Thanksgiving.

And yes, she's criticized President Bush about his handling of Iraq and Afganistan. I'm not one of those who think any criticism in war time is a bad thing. For me, it's all about achieving the goal, and if the criticism is contructive, then right or wrong, it's a good thing. Like a lot of others, she thinks we don't have enough troops in both countries. I think that's hard for either one of us to judge, but in my opinion she's probably wrong about Iraq, and possibly correct about Afganistan. Like a lot of others, she thinks the UN should be more involved - and I couldn't disagree more. Some people are upset that she actually told the troops that while Americans wholeheartedly support them, there are many questions at home about the administration's policies. I think that is a pretty accurate statement, and the truth is always a defense in my book. Other remarks indicated that we need to do more in both countries and that the outcome isn't assured. Well, again, true statements. We need to be committed to getting the job done, and not cutting and running. If her criticisms are politically motivated - so what? Let's judge them on their own merits, and not try to guess motivations. They are at least serious and proscriptive, not just a repetition of Bush Bad.

Do I trust Hillary Clinton? No, I have too good a memory. Would I ever vote for her? Um, probably not. I like to vote for my felons after they've been convicted (which I did in the last election), not before. But it depends on who she's running against.

A Different Take on Plame/Wilson

A couple of bloggers I admire, Tom McGuire and Jon Henke, have a similar take on the latest Plame/Wilson development - a spread in Vanity Fair (OK, also Tim Noah, who I don't admire). And by and large, I think they are right. But I think there is something else to notice, beyond the foibles of human nature. Joe Wilson served our country ably and courageously during the Gulf War as acting ambassador to Iraq for which he got zero public notice; Valerie Plame served our country ably and courageously for years for which she got (understandably) zero public notice. What they are recognized for now has been on his part a willingness to criticize President Bush beyond any factual basis (the more strident the criticism, the greater the recognition); and on her part simple victimization. This is crazy. Talk about your perverse incentives. There is something wrong with the press when real, well, heroism, is ignored and this kind of crap is rewarded.

I Don't Even Know How To Spell Moron

Orrin Judd points out a funny article about how celebrities think Americans are a bunch of dummies, or worse. To be fair, it's only some celebrities - and usually a compassionate, leftist one. Still, it's a funny collection, and I think it says far more about the particular celebrities who make the remark than about Americans.

Veterans Day

My father was a submariner during WWII. Two cousins were in Vietnam; one didn't return, the other returned minus most of his hearing. An uncle was a doctor in a MASH unit in Korea (he hated the TV show M*A*S*H). A great uncle was in WWI. I want to take this chance to thank them, and all the other Americans who have fought for our country so that (among many other things) I can sit here and write my inane scribblings secure in the knowledge that I won't prosecuted or persecuted for their content, even with I discuss religion and politics.

He's Not Just A Pretty Face

Polipundit points out that Tom Delay has gone into comedy:

"I think the leading economic indicator is the Democrats have stopped talking about the economy."

Two Good Posts

No, not me, but Jon at Q and O.

First he points out that the National Taxpayers Union has crunched the numbers and found that the average Democratic Congressperson has called for far more new government spending than their Republican counterparts.

Then he points to a Washington Post article about Saddam, the war, and WMD that relies heavily on results of interrogation of Tariq Azziz. Lots of good stuff in the article and in Jon's analysis.

My Last Arnold Post

Yeah, I know, promises promises. In case you just awoke from a coma, Arnold was elected governor of California in the recall election. This has caused a lot of hyperventilating and wishful thinking. It seems that a lot of people credit Arnold's celebrity or moderation for the victory. I think that is right in some ways, and wrong in others. The Man Without Qualities linked to a poll in USA today from shortly before the election that tracked the results fairly well. And in that poll is a fact that I haven't seen addressed by any commentator - namely that with Arnold out of the race, Davis would have been recalled and McClintock would have been elected governor by a margin only 2 percent less than Arnold's if McClintock wasn't in the race (56% vs. 58%). So my interpretation of the figures is that people wanted Davis out, didn't want Bustamante (whether he was tainted by Davis or couldn't stand on his own two feet isn't clear), and didn't care too much about the differences between Arnold and McClintock. But I do think Arnold's celebrity and moderation earned him votes over McClintock because voters thought he could win - and it was more important to defeat Davis and Bustamante than to elect a particular candidate. Since this idea doesn't do anybody or parties any good (except, perhaps, McClintock), I guess I'm not surprised you haven't heard it advanced anywhere.

Long National Nightmare Finally Over?

I'm referring, of course, to the California recall election. I have a sneaking suspicion that if Missouri had a recall election, not only would it have not generated the same amount of coverage in California as California's did in Missouri, it wouldn't have generated the same amount of coverage in Missouri.

Thanks to the LA Times (official cheerleader of the Keep Davis campaign), we know that Arnold (you really don't need his last name to know who I'm talking about, and I can't spell it anyway) liked to compliment women while he groped them. What we don't know is that Grey Davis liked to belittle them while he shook and non-sexually abused them. Some choice. Well, if I lived in CA, I'd be voting for McClintock anyway.

Now that the same "feminist" brigades that lept to Bill Clinton's defense are now denouncing Arnold for the same behavior towards women, we can all see that it isn't about the women, it's about the abuser. Thanks for clearing that up. Of course, there was a difference: Arnold has now apologized and said what he did was wrong; Bill Clinton still has others talk about a vast right-wing conspiracy. If Arnold had been a Democrat, he would have claimed that we barbarian Americans are too uptight about sexual matters and that such behavior isn't just tolerated in Europe, but positively celebrated (along with mistresses, naturally).

Voices Arnold Should Heed

Arnie for governor has been covered from every possible angle but one. He should listen to some advisors who are uniquely qualified: fellow celebrity republicans. While liberal celebreties tend to dabble in politics (with the notable exception of Bill Bradley), conservative ones actually run for (and somehow get elected to) office. I have done Arnold the favor of collecting just some of the wisdom of celebrity republican politicians.

Is Arnold qualified for governor? Well, as Sonny Bono (another celebrity of modest acting ability) said, "Don't let a lack of qualifications stop you from pursuing your career goals. I was never qualified for any of the positions I achieved."

What should Arnold do about the fiscal crisis facing California? He should remember the words of wisdom of Congressman Fred Grandy, AKA Gofer of Loveboat fame, who said "Why is Congress so out of touch? We're not. We are responding faithfully to the schizophrenic signals you're sending us, which is 'cut our taxes and increase our entitlements and do it in a noble manner so that we can have pride and respect in you.' "

How should Arnold approach government in California? He should take to heart the words of Ronald Reagan, another actor turned California governor, who noted that "A government that is big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take everything you have." Congressman Steve Largent considered that important enough to quote it himself.

How long should Arnold stay a politician? Not very long if he listens to Fred Grandy, who opined about politicians that it "is a good job for someone with no family, no life of their own, no desire to do anything but get up, go to work, and live and die by their own press releases... It is a great job for deviant human beings."

Should Arnold go on to Washington? Not according to Senator and TV star Fred Thompson, who observed of his time in our nation's capitol, "After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood."

Oh, and here's a little something for Gray Davis from Bill Bradley: "Becoming number one is easier than remaining number one."

Texans flee to Oklahoma

I suppose what you think about Democrat legislators in Texas fleeing to Oklahoma depends on your political orientation. It sure seems undemocratic to me for the minority legislators to keep from losing a vote through non-voting means. The point of a democracy is that the people decide; this isn't about some fundamental rights of the minority, nor is it about doing what is right the only way possible. This just undermines democracy - if you lose an election but are unwilling to accept those results, you are usurping authority. And it tends to provoke a non-democratic response.

Decent, Honorable Men Can Disagree

Walt Harrington writes about the Bushes, father and son, he knows in a particuarly good op-ed in the Saint Louis Post Dispatch.

"What I've never mentioned is that I didn't vote for George W. I disagree with him on the Supreme Court, environment, abortion, the death penalty and affirmative action. So I voted against this good and decent man. It pained me to do it. As an anointed liberal columnist for The New York Times, Maureen Dowd is paid to have strong opinions, to argue that if George W. Bush opposes affirmative action it's because he's an insensitive wealthy white man, one of the last acceptable slurs in our society. Well, I support affirmative action but there are good arguments against it. I support a woman's right to choose but there are good arguments against it. I oppose the death penalty but there are good arguments for it. Even as President Bush seems to be moving the country inexorably toward war, I can't fall back on the easy explanations of his critics: He's trying to prop up his sagging popularity, or avenge his father's failure to oust Saddam, or save the world for Big Oil. I believe George W. Bush believes Iraq is a deadly threat to the U.S.

It baffles me that grown people must convince themselves that those with whom they disagree are stupid or malevolent. It's a poison that creates uncivil debate and self-righteous political correctness. Yet, truth is, I didn't always think so open-mindedly. I used to be quite a self-righteous twit in my youth. Coming to know the Presidents Bush and Bush changed me, helped me learn that no class — rich or poor —has cornered the market on decency or wisdom."

Some of us have outgrown the self-righteous twit stage, some of us seem to be perpetually stuck in it, and some of us waver back and forth.

It's A Beautiful Morning, National

President Bush won big on election night. The Republicans picked up enough seats to control the Senate, and increased their margin in the House. Jim Talent beat Jean Carnahan - yeah! I think the election was in part a referendum on Bush's conduct of the war, and the American people endorsed it. The odd thing about Bush is, he keeps his word. He said no assault on Iraq before the elections and we haven't. He said the US would act with or without the UN, so if you're pinning your anti-war hopes on Russia and France, don't. Saddam's days are numbered.

On the domestic front, I hope the Republicans don't repeat the mistakes of the '92 Democrats who had control of both houses and the Presidency. They then lurched to the left, fought with themselves on pet projects like universal healthcare, and passed idiocy like a big tax increase, all of which PO'd the electorate off so much the Republicans swept into power in Congress in '94. So my hope is that instead of fighting over the whole loaf, or continuing to compromise at half a loaf, go for three-quarters of the loaf. Pass what you can, reform and revise existing programs rather than start new ones, don't split between moderates and extremists, govern well, in other words, act like you expect to be in power for a while and don't get in a big rush to get big changes rammed through during your moment in the sun. I'm hoping for more and sooner tax cuts, a ban on partial birth abortion, partial privatization of Social Security, a permanent elimination of the estate tax, a rein on spending, judicial nominees getting a fair hearing, and better copyright and internet law.

Social Security Problems

The Social Security Trust Fund is going south because it is neither secure, a trust, or a fund. It is an accounting device, deliberately chosen to allow politicians to say one thing but do another.

Social security has always been funded on a pay as you go basis. The government levies an income tax on most people (there are those who are exempt because they are covered by other plans) and hides half of it by having the employer pay it. This money goes into the general fund with all the other tax dollars, and social security is paid to its recipients just like all the other stuff government spends money on.

There is no investment. There is no trust fund. All the money from the social security payroll tax is spent, and then the government writes an IOU to itself in the form of a bond.

The beauty of the system is that the same entity that agrees to pay the bond in order to meet its social security obligation is also the entity that determines its social security obligation. If the government decides it would rather cut benefits than default on the bonds, raise taxes, or borrow, then benefits are cut. Social security recipients have no legal claim on the money. It isn't theirs, and it isn't owed to them in any legally binding sense.

Contrast that with a pension fund. As the obligation is incurred by the company while the worker is employed, the company (legally) must set aside money to cover the payment in the future based on expected returns. The company holds the money in trust for its retirees, and the retirees do have a legal claim to the money and are legally owed the money. The trust money is invested so that it grows while the worker is employed and even after she starts drawing a pension.

The two systems are nothing alike. And no company can legally run a pension fund like the government runs social security.

The problem with any pay as you go system, like social security, is that you have to have enough people paying in so that they can support those who are receiving the money. And in a few short years, namely 2016, there won't be enough people paying in due to demographics. So at that point, we will turn to the Social Security Trust Fund, and instead of cold hard cash, we will find promises. And then our elected representatives will be forced to decide what mix of borrowing, tax increases, benefit reductions and other budget item reductions we will adopt to allow us to continue to pay Social Security.

And we will confront the exact same choice to the penny with our vaunted Social Security Trust Fund or without it. Having this fund does absolutely nothing for us but lull us into a false sense of security. You can't rob Peter to pay Paul if you're Peter.

If we took the excess social security taxes (to current social security obligations) and instead of the government spending it and giving itself an IOU, we legally transferred it to future recipients, to be actually invested, when 2016 rolls around and we open the lock box and find IOU's, we could reduce the money the government would have to scrounge (again by raising taxes, borrowing, or reducing benefits and other government services) by the amount of money that was transferred to the then future, now current, recipients, thus achieving what the Social Security Trust Fund and all that Lock Boxes in the world are designed to do but cannot do.

I'm Throwing My Hat Into The Ring

Now that the New Jersey Supreme Court has decided to man the barricades for voter choice against legislative restriction, I've decided I'm going to run for Senator from New Jersey. I know I didn't file in accordance with the law, obtain the necessary signatures, nor win a primary, but what the hell, neither did Frank Lautenberg (for this election). And if they even mention I'm from out of state, well, don't the voters of New Jersey deserve a choice? All those other mooks running for office are from in-state, and so lack diversity. All I have to do is go straight to the Supreme Court of New Jersey, and they'll put me on the ballot. If they did it for Frank, why not for me? And if they don't, I'll slip the NJ secretary of state a fifty, and if the Supreme Court can ignore, oops, I mean interpret, a law, why can't other state officials. Don't they have to interpret it when they execute it too?

Forrester is appealing to the United States Supreme Court as I write this, and I fully expect (based upon the Court's previous decision in a similar circumstance) that the USSC will ask the NJSC what part of "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof" don't you understand?

But I think Forrester and the GOP would be better off with the NJSC decision as a bloody shirt. If left standing, it would energize GOP voters nationwide, not just in New Jersey, and would give Forrester an issue to run on. If overturned, it will have the opposite effect. However, given the importance of every Senate seat to its control after this election, I'm not surprised that they are standing up for the rule of law and clear gain for themselves.