Jeffrey Quick's Blog

Entries in the Category "politics"

Academics for Ron Paul

There's a nice list of faculty supporting Ron Paul here. I'd join, but I don't see any librarians, and maybe they want "real" academics. There's a nice selection of Ohio profs, but from Case only Dr. Peirce. Anyone else want to sign up?

Missing women

It began with Lady Liberty, whose normally-active webpage went into suspended animation in May. I'd met Liberty through a Usenet flirtation, and had met her in person several times, the last with my wife. We weren't particularly close, and I hadn't viewed her site for awhile, so it was a surprise when I noticed it several months ago. I wasn't particularly alarmed, because she said she'd been on vacation, and I knew she was trying to get escape velocity to go out West. Maybe she'd established something there, came back to wrap things up, and then went back. Or...maybe "chucklehead", her ex, decided to do something not-nice. Certainly it wasn't like her to just let things dangle.

Then there was the retirement of Claire Wolfe. That was not left to dangle; she explained very clearly what she was doing, and why, on her blog and on theclairefiles.com (now thementalmilitia.com). We'd never met; I'd given her a few tips on playing recorder, and she had some kind words for my music. But for all her legendary stature (is it Claire Wolfe Time yet?), she always seemed like family. I was in denial about this a bit, and went to her blog, hoping to find another post...but she's let her web-hosting account expire. (The content is mirrored here.)

Now, in a time when governments claim the right to disappear people, it should be more than obvious that people have the right to disappear themselves. I have no rights to anyone's time, or to demand that they never change. And at least (unlike The Artist Formerly Known As Lady Liberty) I know that The Artist Formerly Known As Claire Wolfe is doing fine. But damnit, I miss them. And a world where semipublic figures just drop out of sight is a scary place, even if they drop out for the best of reasons. But I echo Wendy McElroy's blessings (Mac, don't YOU drop out now!)

The radical atheist left cleans up Venezuela

Tax 'em to death: alcohol, tobacco, luxury cars, artwork. Make sure a poor man can't buy a beer on the street.

The president has a long list of other "New Man" recommendations: don't douse foods with too much hot sauce, exercise regularly, eat low-cholesterol foods, respect speed limits. He also wants parents to stop buying Barbie dolls — and breast jobs — for their daughters.

The question on every Alabaman's mind: can the New Socialist Man buy sex toys?

The personal, the political

"The personal is political."

There's a good old slogan from the '60s. I'm not sure just what it was originally intended to signify...probably that one's personal whims and desires are grist for the political mill, worthy of having laws made over them. But if true, it follows (because of the "is of identity" - and don't go Clintonian on me here) that the political is personal, that any political act that affects me negatively is a personal wrong committed by the legislators who voted for the law. They don't get to hide behind "the will of the people" because "the people" don't exist, only individuals who benefit or are harmed by any particular legislative act.

Continue reading "The personal, the political"

How Che became a fashion statement

"Che Guevara has become a brand. And the brand's logo is the image, which represents change. It has becomes the icon of the outside thinker, at whatever level - whether it is anti-war, pro-green or anti-globalisation," she says.

Outside thinker?! The man who fought to establish the ultimate Establishment, which is well on its way to being established?

As time went on, the meaning and the man represented by the image became separated in the western context, Ms Ziff explains.

It began to be used as a decoration for products from tissues to underwear. Unilever even brought out a Che version of the Magnum ice cream in Australia - flavoured with cherry and guava.

And people are out there worrying about Indian blankets with swastikas on them?

Actually, this is a fascinating story, naming all the people who were responsible for creating the Che Brand: Alberto Korda (the original photographer), Jim Fitzpatrick (who turned it into a graphic), and even Jean-Paul Sartre (who may have given the photo to Dutch anarchists.) But what's missing...perhaps too hot for the Beeb...is a real examination of how the face of a political terrorist became acceptable causal wear, and what that means for us as a society.

UPDATE 10/10 - Capitalist exploitation of Che might be acceptable, but the Guevara family draws the line at Islamist exploitation.

UPDATE 10/16 - And Humberto Fontova (the one-man anti-Che lobby) tells the story about the guy who should have been on all those Che shirts.

One way to get a politician's attention

Said Ward last month, “If this (zone change) doesn’t go through, I lose my home, I lose my shop, I lose everything I got.”

After Thursday’s 5-7 vote was cast, Ward stood and walked steadily toward the council.

“Johnny (Piper), I know I can’t speak,” Ward said over the mayor, who was telling Ward the public comment period had ended.

“Y’all have put me under,” Ward said, pulling out a small silver handgun. “I’m out of here.”

A gunshot punctuated his sentence, and Ward fell at the feet of those sitting in the first row.

My take on this is a little different from Beck's. In one sense, Ward was seeking an unearned value, by having his house declared more valuable so that he could secure the loan he needed. Yet his house was worth less solely because of the artificial market distortion of zoning. It would be interesting to know just what reasons the council majority had to refuse his request, besides that they could, or to know if zoning had been imposed before or after he got the house. Yet Billy's main point stands:

A nation of people bred now to everything but freedom will generally find it unimaginable that a man might simply have enough of the mortal indignity of so-called "public servants" arbitrarily deciding on the terms and conditions of his life, as if it is theirs, and not his.

And if it's not your life, but somebody else's, and there is no way to get it back, it's not totally unreasonable to take your life, so they can't have it. Not my choice or yours, maybe, but not the choice of a madman either.

Mr. Atkins, do not mingle with other passengers

We flew to Oakland Airport, were ready for a beer,
The airport man 'e up an' sez, "there's no deplaning here.
Behind the baggage trailers, that's where you'll leave the plane."
I gets into the plane again an' mutters, half-insane:

O it's GI this, an' GI that, an' "GI, go away";
But it's ``Thank you, Mister Joseph,'' when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's ``Thank you, Mr. Joseph,'' when the band begins to play.

(with thanks to Rudyard Kipling)

This test will not be graded

I know better than to take a stand on this one. But I have to ask questions. Do the blind have a right to force people to drive cars that make noise? Do people have a right to breathe clean air? Does one right override another? Do people have a right to streets free of unnecessary noise, even if it inconveniences the blind? If the blind have a right to noisy cars, do the deaf have a right to cars with flashing lights?

Justify your answers using any cogent theory of rights.

Knock 'em all down, let God sort 'em out

Cleveland tore down an empty century home on the city's East Side last month after a bank spent more than $19,000 to fix it up.

On the near West Side, a crew last May knocked down an empty two-family house after Councilman Brian Cummins e-mailed the Building Department asking that it be taken off the wrecking list. A prospective buyer had already fixed the garage and rewired the house.

In June, a crew demolished a Revere Avenue house that the Union Miles Development Corp. and another nonprofit development group, Neighborhood Progress Inc. wanted to renovate.

Frank Ford of Neighborhood Progress said the nonprofit persuaded the lender that owned the property to drop the price from $49,000 to less than $10,000.

Before the deal could go through, the house vanished.

Yep, gotta destroy blight. That's the ticket.

Who would move into a city with such a cavalier disregard for property rights?

It used to be enough to kiss babies...

...now you have to offer them each $5K in order to be elected:

"I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account that will grow over time, so that when that young person turns 18 if they have finished high school they will be able to access it to go to college or maybe they will be able to make that downpayment on their first home," she said.

OK, Hillary, you go first. You can afford to gift a few more children than I can. Oh wait...you want to take the money from the children in order to give it to them. I see...

And from her adoring audience, our local embarrassment:

"I think it's a wonderful idea," said Rep. Stephanie Stubbs Jones, an Ohio Democrat who attended the event and has already endorsed Clinton. "Every child born in the United States today owes $27,000 on the national debt, why not let them come get $5,000 to grow until their 18?"

Uh, because then they'd owe $32K on the national debt? Really I don't know who is a bigger idiot, Tubbs Jones or Devlin Barrett, who couldn't get her name right or find the contraction for they are.

UPDATE: Taranto presents the same answer to the Tubbs-Jones question as I did, minus the insults descriptors constantly and casually used on George W. Bush. Boortz has a good description of the likely devolution of the Hillary 5K.

UPDATE 2: Apparently the American people don't like this idea much more than I do.

The Tanja Nijmeijer comedy hour

The Columbian army caught her with her pants down...literally...and captured her diary. So how does a nice middle-class Dutch girl join a Marxist terror organization?

Now 23, she visited Colombia in 2000 as part of a Danish tour aimed at exploring Marxist experiments in South America. Her diary says she returned in 2002 and joined FARC.

Yep, send some impressionable kid out there. Sweet 16 and just been FARCed. As soon as she was of legal age, back she went...for life in a live-action pornographic sitcom:

"The chief has fallen for a girl with big tits," Nijmeijer reports in a Nov. 2, 2006, entry. "But it appears she brought some venereal disease with her. The chief says the government sent her in order to infect and weaken the rebel leaders."

It's got to suck to be her right now.

Alan Keyes again?!

Oh, puh-LEAZE! After two crash-and-burn candidacies, he wants to try again? Who does he think he is, the black Harold Stassen?

"lowlife" to demand resignation over a DUI

Let's see...when a senator gets caught looking for anonymous gay sex, he should resign. But if a drunken state representative evades police at speeds of up to 100 mph, (an act that could endanger far more people) that's a different matter.

Naifeh said he was aware of “naysayers” who were attempting to turn Briley’s situation to partisan advantage.

“I think that’s pretty lowlife. I have absolutely no use for those people,” said Naifeh.

I guess it depends on which party you're a member of.

Larry Craig digs deeper

Let me start by saying that Sen. Craig should not have resigned over his PeeWee Big Adventure in Minneapolis. That case should have been decided by Republican primary voters. Idaho is not Massachusetts, but voters there seem perfectly comfortable in returning Barney Frank to office, so who knows what they'd do in Brokeback Country? And if it was wrong to impeach Bill Clinton over sexually harassing his employees, it should be equally wrong to evict a senator for sexually harassing a plainclothes officer. If, as the Democrats claimed, it's "all about the BJ", then Craig is home free, since he didn't even get one. (Yes, I know, it was about lying under oath about a BJ, but let me accept the liberal argument here.) And if (per my gay friends) "a mouth is a mouth", then certainly he deserves the same legal protections.

Resigning over pusillanimity, on the other hand, sounds like a better idea every day. Now we have hints that Craig might not resign after all, because his lawyers say that his arrest was unconstitutional, as he was on his way to the Senate:

"The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place."

OK, so Article I/6 isn't the sexiest part of the Constitution, but Larry swore to uphold it. If he forgot that passage was in there, what other contents is he in ignorance of? And surely he either forgot or was ignorant, or he would have made that argument to Sgt. Karsnia. Moreover, since the Senate is ever mindful and protective of its prerogatives, it should be standing solidly behind him. The problem is that "Sen. Craig" wasn't arrested. Some pervert was arrested, who turned out to be Sen. Craig. The purpose of that bit of the Constitution was to keep the several states from mucking with the legislative process by arresting legislators who would vote contrary to its interests. There's no evidence that Karsnia had any intent to influence legislation. Now, it may be well to adopt an absolutist interpretation of I/6, given the number of trivial laws on the books that could be used to detain a legislator. But I don't think it would fly with the American people to let Craig off scot-free on I/6 grounds.

But the most pathetic statement is the claim from Craig's people that they are going to "clear his good name." This shows a real confusion between morals and law. It is now impossible to clear Craig's name. The only way to do that would to have been to prevail on the facts in a trial by jury. If he convinced a jury that he wasn't out for some cheap stress relief, his name would be cleared. Instead, he pled guilty, either because his name was unclearable or because he couldn't be bothered at that moment to clear it. This caused a change in venue to The Court of Public Opinion, which has so far greeted Craig's testimony with howls of derision. Even if acquitted on the Constitutional technicality, he would stand convicted of being a pervert and a coward, and somebody incapable of making a decision. OK, Larry, you resigned...so resign already, for the good of your party, the republic, and to save the last white crumb in the burnt toast of your career.

You got the T-shirt, now buy the hair

MIAMI — A former CIA operative and Cuban exile plans to auction what he says is a lock of Che Guevara's hair, snipped before the Argentinean revolutionary and friend of Fidel Castro was buried in 1967.

It's the next best thing to filling your backyard pool with formaldehyde and floating Lenin in there. Build yourself a reliquary from the gold teeth of dead capitalists, and keep it safe.

Too bad the families of some of Che's victims didn't get to collect similar mementos of their loved ones.

The right to vote

Sen. Bill Nelson has a fine whine going about the Democrats refusing to count the votes in Florida's moved-up primary. Of course, he blames the Republican Florida legislature. And he has a point, to the extent that the Republicans have not come forward to disqualify Republican votes.

But there's this "right to vote" nonsense:

Four decades ago, our nation belatedly enacted a law to guarantee every U.S. citizen an equal right to vote.

First of all, there's no general right to vote for President. It's not Constitutionally mandated that presidential electors be chosen by popular vote. In fact, given how much they've mucked up the process in the past, I'm surprised that Florida hasn't decided to choose its electors via the legislature, as many states did originally.

There's even less a right to vote in a party primary. 'Scuse me, but to vote for MY party's candidate, I have to pay my dues, get named as a delegate, and go to the national convention, which is not cheap. Have MY voting rights been violated? Or how's this: the state of Ohio says I'm a Republican, because that's the primary I vote in (I can cause more trouble that way.) So are my voting rights violated because I can't also vote in the Democratic primary, given that I'm not either party, and might well vote for either party's candidates in the general election? Political parties are private organizations, and the government has no business holding elections for a private organization, and still less business writing those private organizations into the ballot access laws. And if the Democratic Party has so violated principle, why doesn't Nelson quit the Democratic Party?

It's good to see that the commentors are no more sympathetic than I am.

A Paw full of money for Hillary

The Paws are working-class Chinese-Americans who live in a single-story lime-green refinanced house near the San Francisco airport. Paw Paw is a postman, Maw Paw is a homemaker..evidently taking care of their 4 adult children who live there. They're mostly registered nonpartisan, and are sporadic voters. But in 2004, they saw the light! They gave big to John Kerry, and now even bigger to Hillary Clinton. Isn't it great when children of immigrants finally throw themselves body and soul into the American political process, and give until it hurts?

Some racists have wondered whether a certain Norman Hsu who allegedy used to live there has given the Paws money to give to, well, the same candidates that Hsu has been contributing to. It's totally unfair to think that the Paws would do such a thing. They probably just think that Hsu knows something...something the Paws would rather that anyone else not know. Chinese money has always been important to the Clintons, and the Clintons have responded in kind. And anybody who finds fault with that is a racist. Of course.

I agree with Black on Black Crime on something??

They're rallying to show support for Michael Vick, who they say should get probation as a first-time offender.

Now, I think dogfighting is sleazy and disgusting. I wouldn't participate, and for the Falcons to give him the heave-ho is perfectly appropriate. But...why should it be criminal? If we give the state the right to legislate against people fighting their dogs, we've given them the right to prescribe how people will care for their livestock...or whether they will even HAVE livestock. Joel Salatin hammers this connection (particularly about raw milk vs. the drug laws) in his new book, Everything I want to do is illegal (which I'll be reviewing here when I'm done). But notice that BOBC can't make the principled connection: they're arguing that the punishment is too severe, rather than that it's not a legitimate government function. I suspect they really don't want to go there, given how many of the probably benefit from illegitimate use of government.

"A more fair distribution of the sunrise"

Cindy Sheehan's buddy Mr. Chavez has moved Venezuela's time back by half an hour, joining such renowned and trendy places as Newfoundland...all "for the children", who won't have to go to school in the dark. He couldn't just change school time, could he?

John Edwards, pick up the clue phone

"I'm going to be honest with you -- I don't know a lot about Cuba's healthcare system," Edwards, D-N.C., said at an event in Oskaloosa, Iowa. "Is it a government-run system?"

This was 3 days after he said he'd watched Michael Moore's Sicko.

I guess the important question for Edwards is: can you sue the Cuban system for malpractice?

Your neighbor can figure out how you voted

Thanks to Ohio's open records law, you can get a list of poll sign-ins (in order) and a time-stamped record of who voted.As James Moyer of Columbus (if it's the one I know, a great guy)figured out, you can merge the two lists, and figure out how individuals voted.

This shouldn't be hard to fix. All we need is for Preacher Man to issue an Executive Order voiding that part of Ohio law, and preventing voting records from being made public. I mean, they're going to steal the elections anyway, so why do we need to check?

Preacher Man don't need no steenkin' bill.

I guess that Gov. Strickland decided that he didn't need a bill to ban those evil gambling machines, that he could do it all with an executive order. Hey, aren't those the things that get Democrats all in a lather when W. uses them?

Well, Ohio, that's what you get when you vote in a clergyman.

Ron Jeremy: making a list and checking it twice.

You know, it's just possible that some newspaper might hire somebody who is under legal working age. Not likely, but some hot homeschool kid, hey, ya never know. So why shouldn't the Federal government have a comprehensive database of journalists? For the children, you know?

My wife asks, "How do I get on the list?" She thinks that every woman in the country should get herself registered as a porn actress, just to gum up the works.

Thank you, Mr. Beck.

British and American rights: un mot.

From email:

An Englishman wrote:

I have no knowledge of the US rights,

They're the ones the British used to have, but forgot to write down. We Americans wrote them down, but forgot how to read. So we're very much in the same boat.

"Rigid formalism"

That's what San Fran supervisor Gerardo Sandoval called it when 3rd-generation Chinese-American Ed Jew voted against a hate speech resolution against Michael Savage, on First Amendment grounds. And it is a First Amendment issue. The Board of Supervisors members can say anything they want individually. When they act as a Board, if they're condemning somebody's speech, they're suppressing it, even if they don't have a law to beat the speaker with...because, don't worry, they'll find one. Which would be kind of ironic, given that Savage's "hate speech" seems to be "I want the government to enforce the law." I'm appalled that only one out of ten supervisors broke ranks on this. I've got to wonder if Jew's "rigid formalism" extends to the rest of the Constitution...the 2nd Amendment, for instance.

Rove: who cares?

OK, I haven't said anything about Karl Rove, because he really doesn't matter. Nobody has seen the President wandering around with a Celsius-room-temperature IQ because "his brain" has left him. Reactions here have been muted, but then our favorite adjunct-professor-of-moonbattery hasn't been in. I really don't see anything changing.

Richard Viguerie thinks that Rove mattered, but not the way they do at the Kos. He blames Rove for everything leftish that Bush did, for playing the conservative base like a cheap violin. If he's right, then the DUmmies should be sad that he's going, as he did so much to elect Clinton femme.

The unmentionable candidate

I finally found out who #5 in the Iowa straw poll was, with 9.1% of the vote. I knew all Sunday that Ron Paul didn't make the Big 3 (at least, after Diebold got done with him), but I had to wait to read Vox Day's blog to know who # 4 and 5 were.

There's an entertaining eyewitness account from "farmer Tom" in the comments, including this:

On the other hand, if you have big bucks, Romany had them, then all you had to do to win was get the bodies, warm breathing but unthinking bodies to vote. Romany had buses from every one of the 99 counties in Iowa and large counties had more than one. He had also rented over a hundred golf carts. His strategy was very simple, get as many old geezers as you can, give them a free ride to Ames, don't make them walk from the parking to the event, feed them the best food in town, Hickory Park Barbecue, then carry their stuffed, portly ass over to the voting machine. Along with this plan, never mention change in any other than rhetorical fashion, so mr and mrs geezer think the SS and medicare checks will keep coming, and ta da you gots yourself a winner.

This sounds so much like the Republican I'm closest to (who voted Bush in the primaries). It's a bit unfair to call them "unthinking" -- they've thought through exactly what's best for them. The barbecue is just a foretaste of the Big Gravy Train to come. the Eucharist of Socialist Salvation.

Sure, I'm disappointed that Paul didn't do better. But he's still in the game, to the extent that the media allow him to be.

Hillary's poster child for the housing bubble

Here is the sad tale of Kristi Schofield, who just lost her home.

Both Jim Geraghty and Billy Beck focus on these folks not appearing to have a clue as to what an adjustable rate mortgage is. Ok, granted, that's inexcusable. But let's look at the beginning. The initial payment on the ARM was $2400. Assuming half of income (not half of take-home) went to housing (a pretty damn lean budget), service on this loan would require an annual family income of $58,000. How many $58K jobs are out there? I've never made that much. Our first year of marriage, when Rusty was still at WCI, we made more than that. But if something had happened to either of us, we wouldn't have been able to keep up payments. So at their lowest payment, they were buying a rich man's house. Now, under the same givens, they need to be making $144K. But from the beginning, they were living beyond their means. It wasn't some accident of the housing market. And these are the people Hillary wants to bail out: gamblers. Why doesn't she just go to Vegas and hand out taxpayer money?

Kristi wrote in to Geraghty, but hasn't yet given permission to publish, so maybe we'll get the other side of the story. But the numbers don't lie.

NYC Council bitched off

The New York City Council, which drew national headlines when it passed a symbolic citywide ban earlier this year on the use of the so-called n-word, has turned its linguistic (and legislative) lance toward a different slur: bitch.

The term is hateful and deeply sexist, said Councilwoman Darlene Mealy of Brooklyn, who has introduced a measure against the word, saying it creates “a paradigm of shame and indignity” for all women.

Reactions have not been universally positive:

They may not have been the kinds of reaction that Ms. Mealy, a Detroit-born former transit worker serving her first term, was expecting. “They buried the n-word, but what about the other words that really affect women, such as ‘b,’ and ‘ho’? That’s a vile attack on our womanhood,” Ms. Mealy said in a telephone interview. “In listening to my other colleagues, that they say that to their wives or their friends, we have gotten really complacent with it.”

Having grown up in Michigan, I can tell you that Detroit is an unsung nexus of insanity. Just what does this bitch lady think she's doing in passing an unenforceable law? I'd like to see the NYC cops go to a rap concert and start making arrests. Does she think she will change attitudes towards women by symbolic or even effective acts? If people can't use the b-word, they'll use the c-word (which of course is "chienne"). This is clearly an attempt at establishing thoughtcrime.

Scott Jordan of Individual-Sovereignty@yahoogroups.com, who alerted me to this, says "It's just in time for Hillary". But we don't need to protect the junior senator from New York from such aspersions. Since Bill is such a notorious horndog, it therefore follows that Hillary must be a bitch. Do you really want to contemplate the alternative?

God love the Italians

Can you imagine a Republican saying this?:

So politicians in the UDC do not make love? Of course, I recognize Christian values. But what has that got to do with going with a prostitute? It is a personal matter. This affair has nothing to do with family values. I cannot be branded a bad father and a bad husband simply because after five or six days away from home, an occasion presented itself.

That was Cosimo Mele, 50, (now former) Christian Democrat UDC MP, caught with 2 hos and a bag of blow.

I can't praise what he did. But a wise woman once said to me, "If you ain't proud, don't be it." I don't see a lot of shame there.

EEEvul Branson and Rutan

Here's a prime moonbat screed for you. Apparently, private space travel is a bad thing because, when the feces hits the rotary air mover, they'll be up there, and the poor folks will be down here. Forget for a moment that any survival is better for mankind than no survival, or that space travel in currently dependent on earth support. It's bad because poor people can't afford it. By which standard we all ought to be walking.

And this is the kind of thinking that gets you a doctorate in history from Yale?

And speaking of PETA,

Why don't they say something about China's mistreatment of Tibetan animal lovers?

At the edge of the parade ground a friend helped Zhouma to put on her many layers of heavy ceremonial robes, including a chuba decorated with otter skin. “We have to wear this because we are dancing. But people who aren’t performing don’t do so.” By way of explanation, and in an oblique reference to the Dalai Lama, she added: “He said we shouldn’t.” Any government official or state employee who does not don his fur at the five-day festival would be sacked, Tibetan sources said.

Dancers and performers taking part in the opening ceremonies faced stiff fines if they appeared without a skin trim. Mostly students and nomads, they have been paid 50 yuan a day to take part in training and will lose it if they leave their furs at home.

PETA bitches about Cleveland Zoo

...because too many animals have died there.

PETA is asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to levy "harsh penalties" against the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo after a 1-year-old kangaroo was struck by a zoo train Tuesday....

In May, a female wolf was killed by other members of her pack. In 2005, three wallabies died after eating a corpse flower, a toxic plant that was placed in their enclosure by a zoo employee; a Grant's zebra died from a ruptured aorta after being kicked by another zebra; and a gorilla died after he was anesthetized for an examination. In 2003, a lion died after being attacked by another lion.

Let's see, of 6 incidents, half were animal-on-animal attacks. Just how responsible are zoo employees for these? Since animals are people too, maybe we should be administering the same punishment to the wolves, lion, and zebra that we do to humans who murder: put 'em down. And if that's not acceptable, it's because people are animals too, in which case it's perfectly appropriate for me to rip Debbie Leahy's throat out with my teeth. As for the rest: do gorillas generally die under anesthesia? Should we quit administering it and just chain 'em down and cut 'em open? Do you know what a corpse flower is, or that it's toxic to wallabies? Should everyone know that? That leaves us the train incident..and the driver has been fired and the train shut down until a fence can be built. So tell me, just how was Cleveland Zoo negligent?

Wisconsin Democrats Commies to pass single-payer health care?

I missed this debate on my visit to DDR-West. I must have been too busy making music or otherwise having a productive life. But apparently the Republican House is the only thing keeping Wisconsin from providing quality health care to every citizen committing economic suicide:

Democrats who run the Wisconsin Senate have dropped the Washington pretense of incremental health-care reform and moved directly to passing a plan to insure every resident under the age of 65 in the state. And, wow, is "free" health care expensive. The plan would cost an estimated $15.2 billion, or $3 billion more than the state currently collects in all income, sales and corporate income taxes. It represents an average of $510 a month in higher taxes for every Wisconsin worker.

Employees and businesses would pay for the plan by sharing the cost of a new 14.5% employment tax on wages. Wisconsin businesses would have to compete with out-of-state businesses and foreign rivals while shouldering a 29.8% combined federal-state payroll tax, nearly double the 15.3% payroll tax paid by non-Wisconsin firms for Social Security and Medicare combined.

This employment tax is on top of the $1 billion grab bag of other levies that Democratic Governor Jim Doyle proposed and the tax-happy Senate has also approved, including a $1.25 a pack increase in the cigarette tax, a 10% hike in the corporate tax, and new fees on cars, trucks, hospitals, real estate transactions, oil companies and dry cleaners. In all, the tax burden in the Badger State could rise to 20% of family income, which is slightly more than the average federal tax burden...As if that's not enough, the health plan includes a tax escalator clause allowing an additional 1.5 percentage point payroll tax to finance higher outlays in the future. This could bring the payroll tax to 16%. One reason to expect costs to soar is that the state may become a mecca for the unemployed, uninsured and sick from all over North America. The legislation doesn't require that you have a job in Wisconsin to qualify, merely that you live in the state for at least 12 months. Cheesehead nation could expect to attract health-care free-riders while losing productive workers who leave for less-taxing climes.

Wasn't John Galt's last known employer in Wisconsin, or somewhere near there?

I suppose Mano Singham is shopping for his cheesehead hat even as I type this.

UPDATE 8/9: John Stossel encourages Wisconsin to go for it, so we can see socialism in practice, and adds this data point:

Does it never occur to the progressives that the legislature's intrusion into private contracts is one reason health care and health insurance are expensive now? The average annual health-insurance premium for a family in Wisconsin is $4,462 partly because Wisconsin imposes 29 mandates on health insurers: Every policy must cover chiropractors, dentists, genetic testing, etc. Think chiropractors are quacks? Too bad. You still must pay them to treat people in your state.

Want to buy insurance from another state, like nearby Michigan, where an average policy costs less? Too bad. It's against the law to buy across state lines. Your state's Big Brother knows best.

Sheehan vs. the income tax.

The Democrats are the party of slavery and were the party that started every war in the 20th century, except the other Bush debacle. The Federal Reserve, permanent federal income taxes, not one but two World Wars, Japanese concentration camps, and not one but two atom bombs dropped on the innocent citizens of Japan – all brought to us via the Democrats.

Yep, that's Crazy Aunt Cindy.It's really refreshing to hear her come out against the Fed and the income tax...maybe she's been listening to old Ron Paul speeches. But for the woman who snuggled with Hugo Chavez, the woman who was the former darling of the Left to renounce their favorite tool of income redistribution beggars belief. Is she coming to her senses, or has she just found a new brand of nuts?

LBJ, radio, and corruption

Here's a nice tale on how the late Lady Bird Johnson, with help from hubby,used the power of the FCC to become a broadcasting tycoon. And at the time, the FCC was close to being abolished...a move LBJ prevented .. which to my mind was a worse sin than Vietnam.

"Dry 'til 21" not saving lives.

Hmmm...apparently, forcing the states to raise the minimum drinking age to 21 really didn't save lives.

Housing policy: pot, kettle, black

This Commie slags Bush for allowing high-risk mortgages in order to create more Republicans, and not doing enough to help borrowers, then turns around and supports all kinds of neo-New Deal intervention in the housing market...in order to create more Democrats.

It's not that he can't conceive of a government which doesn't take on the job of housing its citizens, because he cites the bad old days of half down and 10 years. But it doesn't occur to him that the last time we had a free market in mortgages, the country was on the gold standard, and that in today's inflationary environment, there'd be a lot more mortgage money competing for a home. And gods forbid that in today's instant-gratification world, people actually save for a house, that people buy a house that fits their income, or that "the rich" be allowed to pass on houses without estate tax.

A better idea in Wisconsin

Heard on the local radio: a Republican legislator wants to cut funding to the University of Wisconsin Law School, because there are enough lawyers in WI. It's actually about the middle of the pack in lawyers per capita. The governor thinks its a ridiculous idea. I dunno; if there are enough, why should the state subsidize more? Or subsidize even if there aren't?

Back to our usual topic?

I suppose there are readers who miss the pungent political commentary here. Well, tough. I haven't had time for surfing, or TV, and if I don't see it in the top of the paper sticking out of the coin box, I don't know about it.

I did have an interesting breakfast conversation though, with a Canadian freelance violinist who credits Canadian healthcare with making her freelance career possible. I never thought of that as a surreptitious arts subsidy. But then, her mother is on a waiting list for a nursing home. But oh gosh, the American system is so horrible... I wasn't argumentative, but I'm sure I rolled my eyes a few many times. Had another guy last night raving over Fats Moore's latest movie. But I'd had enough Belgian ale to not be argumentative (I'm a mellow drunk, not a mean one.)

Off to try to get some practice in before tonight's concert.

Lovely! Another private law!

From a Repugnican yet, proposed on the courthouse steps with little Emily's grieving parents in tow.

The screwup pharmacist has already been punished. Suddenly we need excessive training for technicians just to cover a pharmacist's butt?

"If it saves one child's life..." Humbug!

Poor felons are more equal than others

“Nonviolent offenders should not be serving hard time in our prisons. They need to be diverted from our prison system.!” --Hillary Clinton.

Unless their name is Scooter Libby, of course.

Hat tip to Taranto.

Oh, and by the way, Mme. Clinton... if Libby should do time for lying under oath to a federal grand jury, when's your hubby going to report for his?

PETA vs. Michael Moore

This is too good...PETA busting Michael Moore for being a pig-eating pig. It's so much fun when the Left forms a circular firing squad. Now Moore needs to make a movie about animal rights, full of his usual truthfulness.

Peter Mehlman, psychic

You could argue that even the world's worst fascist dictators at least meant well. They honestly thought were doing good things for their countries by suppressing blacks/eliminating Jews/eradicating free enterprise/repressing individual thought/killing off rivals/invading neighbors, etc. Only the Saudi royal family is driven by the same motives as Bush, but they were already entrenched. Bush set a new precedent. He came into office with the attitude of "I'm so tired of the public good. What about my good? What about my rich friends' good?"

How can anyone not see it? It's not that their policies have been misguided or haven't played out right. They. Don't. Even. Mean. Well.

Wow! Mehlman can not only look into Bush's mind and examine his motives, but into the minds of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, the Emperor Boukassa and the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld.

This isn't even moral equivalence. It's a statement that the above worthies are the moral superiors of Bush.

There are a lot of countries now being run by well-meaning tyrants. If Bush is that horrible, why doesn't Mehlman emigrate to one?

Jodi Rell, go to Hell

Connecticut’s governor, a cancer survivor, vetoed a bill that would have allowed people with certain serious illnesses to use marijuana, saying it was fraught with problems and sent a mixed message to children.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell said Tuesday that she struggled with the decision.

Of course, you could have let doctors and patients struggle with the decision...after all it's their struggle.

What's wrong with California?

Back in 1909, California progressives enacted a eugenics program which resulted in the forced sterilization of 19,000 people. Oliver Wendell Holmes, reviewing the case of the “socially inadequate” Carrie Bell, in the landmark Buck v Bell, concluded that “her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization.” That makes the California eugenics statute a “nanny law.” In light of that misstep alone, you would think that Californians would be eager to enact legislation which severely curtailed the powers of their own government, and meted out harsh penalties to overbearing moralists. But the opposite is true.

And here's a summary of how they're still "fixing" things.

Thanks to rightwingprof.

Race over the top

So what's more appalling: to say (if he said it) that a particular AIDS victim "deserved what he got", or to say that the politician who said that should be "removed from office" and "not be allowed to serve on any committee with appropriations"? (By what power or under what law?)

You know, Mr. Rajner, that's why we have elections. If the voters think Rep. Hays is a big enough jerk, they'll remove him. Keep your powder dry until the campaign.

200 years for a FOIA request

ONDCP assistant general counsel Daniel Petersen, in a marginally literate letter, told Tom Angell of Students for Sensible Drug Policy that he could expect an answer to his FOIA denial appeal "by June 22, 2207".

It was a typo, of course, but aren't we paying these people to be accurate? Worse, when Angell went public with the letter, Petersen made a threatening phone call. Rather abusive behavior from the holder of a job for which there is no constitutional warrant, wouldn't you say?

Border bars are hurting

It didn't take a graduate degree in economics to predict that bars along the MI, IN, and PA borders would be hurting, and that bars on the other side would be booming, as the result of Ohio's smoking ban. It's just another case of moralism trumping people's livelihoods, just like Hope Taft's war against the pre-made Jello shot guy. But this time it's the sacred will of da peepul that Debbie Longley's hours be cut by 3/5. Suck it up, Deb; this is democracy.

And in related news, the university's Smoking Task Force Group sent out a link for a survey at surveymonkey.com. Given that most smoking at Case is legally out of control of the University anyway, I don't know what they were looking for...maybe encouragement to make campus smoking even more restrictive. (Expel anyone caught smoking in a dorm room! Yeah, that's the ticket!) I doubt they were really interested in anyone's opinion, because the message was sent from a no-reply address, and the survey link just defaulted to www.surveymonkey.com. At least we've been warned that there's a Trash Force at work.

More on the Rev's fight against evil gambling machines

Rev. Gov. Strickland is so anxious to ban video gambling that he's willing to see the bill attached to the must-pass state budget. But oh no, this isn't about gambling. "Ethically run enterprises" like the state lottery are OK. Evidently it's all about "the will of the people". So, if "da peepul" voted to load all Methodist ministers into boxcars and ship them to West Virginia, Ted would be down with that?

OSU: more sense than Case

Our flagship state university decided that it just wasn't prudent to raise $4M to host a partisan political event. At least Case is a private university, not directly dependent on public looted money, so if the former management wanted to spend big on currying favor with the ruling class, it was their own business. Maybe they learned from our experience...but it's still humbling for "cow college" to have better sense than us.

There's a reason Ohio went Democratic

...and it was largely because of moralism. Ken Blackwell was way too connected to the Religious Right, to the loons who've lobbied to close down the stripper bars. Worse, he was none too scrupulous about democratic process. So the state went for Strickland. Not me; I voted for Peirce. I am very hesitant to vote for anyone who has ever parked a "Rev." in front of his name.

And I was right. Ted is a moralist too. I always suspected that his campaign against bringing in food for meetings was as much about gluttony as the budget. Now he and his sidekick Marc Dann are going against the evils of gambling...specifically, mechanical "games of skill" with cash payouts, and instant video horseracing. He's oh so careful not to hurt Cedar Point and chuck E. Cheese...but Ted, isn't that where the gaming industry hooks 'em early? And if gambling is such a problem for Ohio, why are you going against the little private guys? Why aren't you campaigning to end the state lottery?

MASShole lobbies for john doors to open outwards

BOSTON -- If Bellingham resident Douglas Flavin has his way, all public bathroom doors in Massachusetts will open outward, not inward.

The Legislature's Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight reviewed the bill Wednesday. State Rep. James Vallee (D-Franklin) filed the bill on Flavin's behalf.

"[Think] how easy it would be to prevent germs and disease," Flavin's wife Tracy told BostonNow. "If state residents could open bathroom doors with a knee or elbow instead of a handle."

Flavin also claimed it would prevent litter resulting from people protecting their hands with paper towels.

A representative for the state Department of Public Safety told the newspaper that the state building code does not specify the direction public bathroom doors must open.

There are actually people who open stall doors with paper towels?? Look, they have sinks with germicidal soap for a reason, and if you can refrain from picking your nose before you get to the basin, you should be home free. Besides, people's hands are full of germs before they enter the stall, and they'll leave them on the handle of an outward-opening door.

This story leaves more questions than it answers though:

1. What's Flavin's problem? Is he immunocompromised? Is he a doctor or bacteriologist and can show how many illnesses will be prevented? Or is he just a neurotic whiner?

2. Does the bill control new construction only, or must all stall doors be retrofitted to open outwards? And how will the cost of this compare to the cost of the illnesses avoided?

Well, research time...here it is:

HOUSE . . . . . . . No. 3258 By Mr. Vallee of Franklin (by request), petition of Douglas Flavin for legislation to require that doors to public toilets be constructed to open outwards. State Administration and Regulatory Oversight.

Chapter 111 of the General Laws is hereby amended by inserting after section 33 the following section:—
Section 33A. The entrance door to all rooms containing toilets or water closets available to the public or to persons engaged in the production or service of food shall open outwards.

That's it. That's all. It's apparently the bathroom owner's job to fix it, but there are no penalties stated for not doing so.

Vallee seems fairly sane, for a politician. He's a military reservist, so he can't be that divorced from reality. I suspect that the way this went down is that Flavin harassed him to the breaking point, so he submitted a lame, badly-written excuse of a bill, figuring that he'd be a laughingstock but that Flavin would be ten times the laughingstock.

My boss' take: "Some people just shouldn't use public restrooms. Is that okay?"

"Well...Depends."

Cut the power!

"There is an overarching lack of trust in anybody with power," said Democratic strategist Stephanie Cutter. "It's not just President Bush. It's Congress. It's our CEOs. It's Hollywood. It's Wall Street. There's just an overwhelming lack of trust with authority and the people who have it."

So the solution attempted by both parties is to find a candidate with authenticity, who appears honest, with the thought that somebody can apply power and still be trustworthy. They don't get it. We don't trust power, period, because it corrupts. There is only one candidate for President who has renounced the use of power, and he's been trashed by the media and the Republican Party. Saying (like Edwards) that you were wrong about the war, while offering the electorate the usual stolen goods, is not going to convince people that you can be trusted with power.

Oh boy, the Joo-haters just found my blog!

Apparently, sometime during the past 24 hours, a certain group of people have found this post and posted comments. Supposedly the link came from TheBirdman.org, but I didn't find it over there (not that I spent a huge time looking). Ah, what to do? Shall I approve the posts, edit them, or what? Well, I'll take on the substantive one, from appollonian:

This above-noted "Libertarian" is just another moralist-Pharisaist, most probably Jew, not worthy of any serious notation/response

But you're responding, aren't you? Do you always do things unworthy of das Herrenvolk? For the record, even though with my beard and curly hair I have passed for Jewish (particularly among Lubavitchers and anti-Semitic African-Americans), my ancestors for as far back as I am aware have been Gentile. I can't absolutely rule out being Jewish under a "one drop rule", but then, neither can you.

For again, obvious problem for original blog entry/post is all the brainless question-begging and presumption: WHAT IS MORAL?--and there is no basis, hence definition, but as for Immanuel Kant, "hey, we just feel like we want there to be 'morality,' so therefore we declare not only 'morality' to exist, but we think it's so cool be be 'moral' as we feel that 'space-kadet glow' as we pretend to 'moralism.'" It just makes me feel so "good" and "cool," u see, as I pretend to be "moral"--especially in everyone elses' faces--so these people imagine unto themselves. Moralists are just people with inferiority complex--moralism then makes them feel good, see.

OK. You don't believe that morality exists. Then I guess it's OK with you for me to use you for target practice. After all, it's just my desires against yours.

(2) "Rights" are properly matter of social contract and agreement--as so excellently and definitively laid down by Thomas Hobbes in "Leviathan." Jews then never had any "rights" in Germany (or anywhere), being mere recipients of German charity, the poor German volk too unwitting of Jew anti-humanity.

If rights are contractual, they don't exist, except as privileges; they can be renegotiated at the drop of a trigger. And even if they are contractual, then Jews would have had rights in Israel, as they could contract for them there. Fortunately, you realize that you can't cut Jews out of human rights unless you first cut them out of humanity. That exposes your game.

So much for Jews, anti-human filth, scum, and the murderers of Christ, who affirm such Christ murder in their filthy book, Talmud.

So why would they kill one of their own?

CONCLUSION: Thus we see the empty arguments of original poster falling like confetti through the air--as there's no substance whatsover, the argument consisting of nothing more than subjectivistic wishful thinking (as regarding "moralism")

Not at all. Basically, the only hit you scored on my argument is the claim that morality has no objective existence (a claim that 99.9% of humanity soundly rejects). Let's accept that argument for a moment, and rephrase my main point: Would you like it if thugs with guns forced you into a boxcar and took you to another home? Did Hitler have benign intent toward the Jews? If not, how relevant is the actual scale and success of the Endlosung to its moral evaluation?

Terrorist caught with his pants down.

Terror leader arrested having car sex near Arafat's grave

Israeli forces raid jeep of longtime wanted militant caught in compromising position

This is beyond comment, I think.

Corzine tells the truth

"I'm New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, and I should be dead."

Finally, a policians tells the truth. I agree: he should be dead.

We knew this was going to happen. And if he restricts it to 30 second PSAs, it's not necessarily a bad thing. I know it's too much to ask for a PSA that says, "Wear your seatbelt, don't drive 91 miles per hour, and don't read text messages from your wife's paramour while driving." I think that would dilute the message. Though you can't dilute the message of the crip hobbling out of his chair in crutches.

But of course that's not all that's happening:

Also this week, New Jersey's law enforcement authorities launched their largest ever seat-belt compliance campaign. Seat- belt violations are a primary offense in New Jersey, which means police can stop and issue tickets to drivers and front-seat passengers solely for not buckling up.

While seat-belt use in New Jersey is at an all-time peak of 90 percent, one of the highest rates in the U.S., ``we must continue to strive for 100 percent compliance,'' Pam Fischer, director of the state's division of highway traffic safety, said in a statement announcing a ``Click it or Ticket'' campaign.

Thanks to Taranto.

"Good Riddance Attention Whore"

...is the title of Cindy Sheehan's retirement letter.

A few quotes and comments:

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a "tool" of the Democratic Party....

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used.

Though she never admits it, this is proof that in fact she was the tool of the Left. Nobody keeps around a tool that doesn't do the job or that is unsafe to use. And since the job was always to hurt the Republicans, and Sheehan started hurting the Democrats, they pulled the money plug. Later, she argues about the war issue not being partisan, yet she says:

I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?

So...Republicans bad, Democrats good, Bolivarian Revolutionaries even better?

Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives.

That's sadly true.

Good-bye America ...you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.

You can't cuddle with Commies like Hugo Chavez or their ideological cousins back home, and be accepted by any self-respecting working individual. Since Cindy really was just a tool, she couldn't keep her message focused on the war. All of her supporting constituencies had to get their licks in, so it became about the Left as a whole, and Cindy in particular, instead of the war.

I feel a little sorry for her. I understand activist burnout, though I've never understood folks who throw the rest of their lives away like she did. What she doesn't admit in this letter, though she comes close, is that her whole run was ineffective. Since she did no "good", then she did the country no harm, and maybe we should all let her go in peace

The land of bad teeth

Britain has a reputation for people with bad teeth. This may not be only because of British cuisine, but rather a government construct:

The Government accused dentists of putting profit "before patient care" and called for an investigation.

But dentists' leaders said a new contract meant practices were given the same fee for treating people who needed one filling as for people who needed 11. Under the system, dentists are paid for "units" of activity worth between £14 and £30 and are given a set target to reach.

Practitioners said yesterday that people who require lots of fillings and repeat visits took up extra time, but they did not bring in extra money because they counted for the same number of units as people with good teeth.

John Chope, a spokesman for the Dental Practitioners' Association and a dentist in Holdsworthy, north Devon, said: "We have been forced into an impossible position. If you spend a lot of time treating one patient who needs a lot of work, you are not treating the other patients who need maintenance work.

"If you don't treat the patients who need maintenance, you miss the Government target for the year and get fined. You could even be told that you have broken your contract and refused another."

So, let's see: if you treat the patient whose mouth looks like, er, mine, you don't make any more money, and you're penalized for not moving enough bodies through the door. And this is called "putting profits before patients"? And this is the kind of health care system Hillary wants?

Green not clean, and blood for oil

Evidently many of the new environmentally-friendly clothes washers don't get your clothes clean unless you run them through twice, which negates the purpose (sort of like the 1st-generation low-water toilets, which often needed to be flushed multiple times). My parents recently got a new washer and had to jimmy something inside because it would not provide hot water on the hot cycle.

The issue here is not being ecological (which is as hard to argue against as motherhood and apple pie), but government mandates that do not and cannot consider individual needs and desires.

Consider this comment. from the guy who is urging people to send their dirty underweat to the Department of Energy as a protest (comment 16 under the link above):

Several commenters attack the proposition that CAFE (the federal automotive fuel economy standards) kill people as right-wing propaganda. In fact, that proposition is supported by the National Academy of Sciences’ 2002 report on the program. As summarized in its Finding 2, vehicle downsizing, some which was due to CAFE, contributed to 1,300 to 2,600 deaths in one representative year. http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309076013&page= 3#pagetop
Since CAFE has been on the books for several decades, its cumulative death toll is staggering. But what’s really remarkable is that, to my knowledge, no advocate of CAFE has ever admitted that it’s ever killed anyone. Meanwhile Congress is moving to make it even more stringent and thus deadlier. In short, we’ve sort of got an escalating “blood for oil” war, only it’s being waged on American civilians by people who aren’t candid enough to admit that lives are at stake.

Gods, even the left is trading blood for oil!

Scraping the bottom of the cannibal pot

When there's no money to feed (let alone pay) the army and the youth thugs who are propping up the government, you know the end is near. It's likely to be messy,with soldiers living off the land, to the extent that there's anything on the land to live on. But for the people of Zimbabwe, sooner will be better than later. It was Claire Wolfe Time there a long time ago.

Note: "cannibal pot" is a meme of Billy Beck. You're eating from it too. I have no intent to imply that some races are more inclined to anthrophagy than others, especially given that the man who brought cannibalism to its greatest refinement was a German economic theorist resident in London.

House votes for energy shortages

Rep. Bart Stupak, aka "Stupe from da Yoop", has led his colleagues in the charge to save us from the eevul oil price-gougers...without quite defining what constitutes price-gouging. That's very convenient, as it means that enforcement can be reserved for very special Enemies of the People, while fear rules the rest.

Most of my campus readership (assuming I have a campus readership) was not yet born the last time this little stunt was tried. The year was 1973, the tyrant-du-jour was Richard Milhous Nixon, who on March 6 imposed price controls on oil and gas as OPEC began its production cuts, and we saw gas go from 30¢ or so to a whole dollar.

For example, when President Jimmy Carter announced in 1980 that his administration was beginning a phased decontrol of oil prices, leftist groups such as the Citizen/Labor Energy Coalition predicted that by 1990, crude oil prices would rise to nearly $600 a barrel, a prediction repeated by a straight-faced mainstream news media. (Before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in the summer of 1990, oil prices stood at about $18 a barrel, so the "energy experts" were off by only $582.)

All of this brings us back to Hawaii's pricing scheme, but one must keep something in mind. This was pretty much the same policy that the U.S. government followed back in the 1970s when it controlled prices at domestic wellheads, and at the pump. Any reader who was driving a car during that decade can remember the chaos that incurred, especially whenever there was turmoil overseas.

The government's logic went like this: if we keep the price at the wellhead low, then the savings will be passed on to consumers. However, by placing price controls on crude oil, the government managed to do two things. First, it created shortages of crude oil, as producers saw no incentive to take many risks to drill for more oil. (Yes, the government claimed it had "incentives" built into its policies, but these were the usual byzantine sets of bureaucratic incentives that had no basis in economic reality.) Second, it drove producers to purchase the more available crude oil that was made available from the Middle East. For all of the talk of "dependence" upon "foreign oil," government policies were the driving force in encouraging oil companies to look overseas for supplies of crude.

Policies guiding the pump price were just as bad. Using the logic of "Classical" economics, the government figured that if it took about a month for crude oil after it was pumped from the ground actually to find its way into a vehicle, then pump prices could not increase until a month or so after crude prices went up. Thus, consumers, anticipating price increases, went on "buy now" binges, which quickly used up existing supplies, causing gas lines and the infamous "out of gas" signs that littered gas stations.

Now, if one gas station charges too much, I go elsewhere. If everyone overcharges, well, I have less money in my pocket. What happens if there's a gas shortage? I can't get to work, I lose my job, and I have NO money. Clearly, if price gouging means I can get gas I desperately need, it's a good thing.

And the penalties on this thing are ridiculous. $2 million and 10 years for some gas station owner somewhere? Mao would never have treated an Enemy of the People so inefficiently. Might as well just shoot them and charge the family for the bullet.

Strickland refuses to sign strip bill

Good for him! Yes, he should have vetoed it as unconstitutional, but there was a veto-proof majority, and you pick your battles. It's the legislature that lacked guts:

The Legislature took up the bill after a group called Citizens for Community Values collected enough signatures to require lawmakers to consider it. If the Legislature had failed to act or passed a bill that did not satisfy the Cincinnati-based group, their members could have collected more signatures to put it before voters in November.

I'd have been for making them collect the umpteen thousand signatures and letting the voters have their say. I really don't think that your average citizen has the hardon about strip clubs that this pervert does.

Little Green Footballs takes the heat

...for rigging their online poll by excluding Ron Paul. Unfortunately, not everyone was as reasonable as I was. So we all got a big Eff You from the Big Bad Pajamasmedia Player, who has now degenerated into a Usenet-worthy troll. Hey, it's your website; if you want to shoot yourself in the head with it, be my guest.

Will the last one out of Palestine please turn off the lights?

Apparently, the ambitious young are doing what they always do when confronted with a massively incompetent government and no chance to advance themselves: voting with their feet. And the Mufti of Jerusalem isn't having it:

"Based on [the ruling of the prophet Muhammed and his friends], emigration from the blessed lands to live permanently in other countries is not permitted in terms of religious law. The people living in these areas must remain in their places of residence, and not leave them to infiltrators and conquerors, and they will thus perform an act of honor, and will be a support for the Al-Aqsa mosque... and will merit the good tiding of the prophet...

If they had rule of law in the territories of the PA, they probably wouldn't need rule-of-mullah.

Little Green Footballs sends Ron Paul to the showers

Over at little green footballs they've had enough of Ron Paul.

I’m going to be removing Ron Paul’s name from any further LGF straw polls, because his supporters are deliberately spamming our polls to make it appear as if Paul has more support than he does....

They aren’t “cheating,” as in voting multiple times, but they have sent out emails and posted the link to our poll at several spots on the web, urging people to go vote for Paul. The end result is the same—the poll results are skewed, and it’s not an accurate measure.

Even if they weren’t doing this pathetic maneuver to artificially pump up Paul’s support, I’d very seriously consider removing him anyway, because I found his remarks last night about 9/11 insulting and dangerous, and highly offensive. But make no mistake, he’s not being removed simply because I disagree with him—he’s off the LGF poll because I don’t want my site being used to falsely inflate his popularity.

This is just pathetic.
If somebody supports Paul and votes for him, he's not "spamming a poll", he's expressing support. Now, granted, the people expressing support may not be Republicans, and the only poll that counts is your own state primary. But is lgf going to remove any other candidate whose supporters are caught trying to pump up the numbers? Everybody does that on Internet polls, and if a candidate doesn't, he's clearly too stupid to be President. What he's doing here is trying to define the terms of the debate...which is what bloggers do, after all. But you can do that with reason, or you can do that by silencing opposing viewpoints. And it strikes me that there's a real hit in credibility to those who do the latter. If Paul is indeed a "nut", that case can be made by a rational appeal to foreign policy priorities, or to the DSM IV. But if a "nut" gets that much support, there there are a lot of nuts in the country, and we live in a system of representative government. Or are the Pajamasmedia neocon bloggers sour on democracy these days?

And anyone who would link to Eric Dondero's self-serving posturing (except for me, that is :-) )has no credibility anyway.

I'd post this there in the comments, but registration is closed...so what is he afraid of?

Many students, doing hard time

Alberto Gonzales and the rest of the Bush administration are supporting the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, which would:

* Criminalize "attempting" to infringe copyright. Federal law currently punishes not-for-profit copyright infringement with between 1 and 10 years in prison, but there has to be actual infringement that takes place. The IPPA would eliminate that requirement. (The Justice Department's summary of the legislation says: "It is a general tenet of the criminal law that those who attempt to commit a crime but do not complete it are as morally culpable as those who succeed in doing so.")

* Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software. Anyone using counterfeit products who "recklessly causes or attempts to cause death" can be imprisoned for life. During a conference call, Justice Department officials gave the example of a hospital using pirated software instead of paying for it.

* Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations. Wiretaps would be authorized for investigations of Americans who are "attempting" to infringe copyrights.

* Allow computers to be seized more readily. Specifically, property such as a PC "intended to be used in any manner" to commit a copyright crime would be subject to forfeiture, including civil asset forfeiture. Civil asset forfeiture has become popular among police agencies in drug cases as a way to gain additional revenue, and it is problematic and controversial.

* Increase penalties for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anticircumvention regulations. Criminal violations are currently punished by jail times of up to 10 years and fines of up to $1 million. The IPPA would add forfeiture penalties.

* Add penalties for "intended" copyright crimes. Certain copyright crimes currently require someone to commit the "distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period of at least 10 copies" valued at more than $2,500. The IPPA would insert a new prohibition: actions that were "intended to consist of" distribution.

* Require Homeland Security to alert the Recording Industry Association of America. That would happen when CDs with "unauthorized fixations of the sounds, or sounds and images, of a live musical performance" are attempted to be imported. Neither the Motion Picture Association of America nor the Business Software Alliance (nor any other copyright holder, such as photographers, playwrights or news organizations, for that matter) would qualify for this kind of special treatment.

OK, this is war. Life for piracy? I don't think so. It's time for some radical steps:
1. As far as possible, use only open-source software.
2. Boycott the recording industry and any label which is a member of RIAA. Trade live recordings, small labels, use alternatives like Magnatune.
3. Boycott the entertainment industry. No theaters, no movie rentals. Read BOOKS, damnit. Yes, they're IP too, but no sane person copies an entire book.

If we're going to be treated like the entertainment industry's cash cow, then we should quit giving milk.

No tickee, no shirtee

Kansas and Missouri are a little hesitant to provide tax refunds to people without Social Security numbers.

Critics say it's a double standard for states to accept income tax payments from illegal immigrants, but not provide refunds when there has been an overpayment.

"Either you accept all of the payments and (give the) refund, or you return everything," said Maria Aranda, who helps immigrants file taxes at the social service agency El Centro Inc. "To me, it's either all or none. You can't have it both ways."

Well, not really. The state issues refunds directly and is thus responsible, while a third party collects steals taxes for the state. Anyway, if they shouldn't have taxes collected, then they also shouldn't get the goodies the taxes pay for.

I'm all for the refunds being given as long as they're given in kind: a one-way bus ticket back across the border.

A vote for Satan

Some Bible-thumper named Bill Keller (who by the looks of the picture goes to John Edwards' hairdresser) has managed to make Al Sharpton look like a moderate statesman concerning Mitt Romney:

"If you vote for Mitt Romney, you are voting for Satan!" he writes in his daily devotional to be sent out to 2.4 million e-mail subscribers tomorrow.

I guess Mitt now has a lock on the death-metal vote.

"For the nearly 200 years this cult has been in existence they have strived for mainstream acceptance. They are the most devious of all the cults since they have always tried to portray themselves as 'just another Christian group' when in fact, they are no more Christian than a Muslim is! Their deception starts with their name, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Sounds like a Christian church doesn't it? Some Mormons have recently changed their name to simply Community of Christ to disguise even better who they are in an attempt to lure people in."

OK..but RLDS/CofC have always resented the title "Mormon".

There is no excuse, no justification for supporting and voting for a man who will be used by satan to lead the souls of millions into the eternal flames of hell!"

I guess John, Son of Cain is right out too, then.
By the sounds of it, this fruitcake would vote for Hillary before Romney...which proves how mentally disturbed the Religious Right is.

"We don't own anything here"

Start ripping and sharing those Sheryl Crow mp3s. She just gave you permission.

Gay Cold Warrior

A board member for Equality California has come out swinging at the Bible-based Capitol Resource Institute, which works on behalf of family and biblical values in California, especially among its lawmakers.

"If you continue your efforts, we will BURY you," said an e-mail from Ben Patrick Johnson, to his "colleagues" at the CRI, according to a statement from the Christian organization.

I'm no fan of Bible-thumpers. But given who said "we will bury you" first, and how that ultimately turned out, Mr. Johnson might want to rephrase that.

Free T-shirt idea

Thanks to Humberto Fontova, I got a great idea for a T-shirt. But I'm not an artist at all, not even in the minimal sense this would require, and I'm way busy. So if any of you want to cash in at CafePress, be my guest.

(Front):
If Che...
[image of Che Guevara]

(back):
...why not Cho?
[image of Cho Seung-Hui]

"But..." one might argue, "...they're totally different people." That's right. One was a mass murderer, and the other was a Virginia Tech student.

Holocaust denial: getting to the core

A man was just booted from a libertarian Yahoo-group I'm on, for Holocaust revisionism. He's been advocating this viewpoint on a number of libertarian lists. I'm not going to blacken the man's name here (he's doing quite a good job of that himself) so we'll just call him Mr. Wacko.

For those a little fuzzy on their theory of rights, note that this is not a case of censorship. This is fundamentally different from what Germany does to such folks. If a man makes a drooling ass of himself in my living room, I have a right to tell him to leave. So does the owner of a Yahoo list. Case closed.

That being said, I have no clue on how a self-identified libertarian can support Holocaust revisionism or revisionists. None. I can understand supporting the rights of these folks to spew their nonsense hither and yon. Truth will out in the end. But that's different than making their arguments for them.

Most people faced with Holocaust revisionism never understand the ultimate issue, and take the wrong tack in dealing with their arguments. One school takes on the revisionist arguments on a factual basis. Yes, there are holes in revisionism that you can drive a boxcar through. But discussing fact and interpretation is what historians do, and this just legitimizes revisionism as history. The other major school regards deniers as crazed anti-Semites and refuses to engage them in anything deeper than mockery and sarcasm. This "proves" to the denier that they have no argument.

There is a better way.

Let's for a moment accept virtually every Holocaust denial/diminishment argument ever made, as fact: the gas was for disinfection, not murder, they were fed so they could work, the starving inmates were starving because Allied bombing had disrupted supplies, yada yada. Let's go even farther, ditch the testimony of Mein Kampf etc. and say that Hitler loved the Jews and that he rounded them up in concentration camps for their own good, to save them from the "spontaneous public demonstration" of Kristallnacht, and was going to ship them to Israel as soon as the war was over.

Now, in libertarian theory, is it moral for a state to remove a group of people from their homes and take their property, even if it's for their own good? Of course not. Consider the universal condemnation of Kelo vs. New London among libertarians, regardless of Holocaust viewpoint. And that was a case where the victims were compensated for their loss. Yet I have never read an argument that the Jews were not transported, or that they were transported voluntarily. That thing cannot be argued: the camps exist, people were arrested, they had to pay exhorbitant taxes in order to leave the country, and had to leave their wealth behind, they were forbidden to carry so much as a club as weapon, let alone firearms. And every one of these violations of individual sovereignty was performed because of their ideas about a hypothetical superhuman, or their ancestors' ideas about that hypothetical superhuman...because of a collective identification.

Yet I have never heard a Holocaust denier admit that what the German government did was wrong. I've never once heard somebody say, "Da Jooz exaggerated what was going on so they could get Israel, but what was going on was wrong and shouldn't have happened." It's clearly not that they don't care about what happened, since they care so passionately about what they think didn't happen. So one must conclude that they approve of Hitler wanting to rid Germany of Jews. Further, I've never seen a hint from them that, had the Nazis actually done what history accuses them of, that it would have been wrong.

The arguments of Birdman Bryant et al that the Holocaust didn't happen because people weren't deliberately murdered remind me of the argument that waterboarding isn't really torture because it doesn't maim anyone. Since it isn't torture, we should stop using it, because it's obviously ineffective. But since it's used for the purpose and intent of torture and is effective as torture, it seems pretty obvious that torture is what it is. Likewise, if a whole bunch of Jews die while you are violating their human rights, the difference between murder and negligence is of no moral import.

The treatment of Jews by the NSDAP government is a big stinking turd. When you whitewash a big stinking turd, you are left with a big stinking turd with whitewash on it...and people who look at you and wonder what kind of insanity causes one to whitewash turds. The libertarian movement doesn't need that kind of crazy, regardless of how much organizational work they might do, or their commitment to the cause.

UPDATE 6/1: Comments to this post have been closed. I have a life, unlike those with a passion of Endlosungverbesserung

10 Steps to fascism

Ace of Spades and rightwingprof are frothing all over themselves over Naomi Wolf's Guardian article, with Ace contributing a sentence which is literally stuck on stupid. Well, yes, the article is kind of stupid. But the 10 steps are certainly valid, and what is stupid about the piece is the idea that Dubya has actually taken those steps, and that those steps are original with Dubya, when actually they've been standard operating procedure for some time now, among both parties. So in the interest of non-stupid discourse, let's look at Naoli's steps:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

Like Communists under Wilson, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson, militias under Clinton, global warming under shadow-President Gore

2. Create a gulag

Like Roosevelt did for the Japanese...only he did it to American citizens and residents instead of POWS

3. Develop a thug caste
...like union enforcers, gangstas, violent protesters, people trashing Republican offices

4. Set up an internal surveillance system
...ECHELON?

5. Harass citizens' groups
...militas, churches, pro-life groups

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
She exaggerates here, but I have to give the Bush admin credit for reviving this Lincoln-era standard, and I can't think of a Democrat to pin it on (maybe Wilson). Don't worry; there'll be one soon enough.

7. Target key individuals
Here's she's complaining about the US Attorney idiocy. But key individuals have ALWAYS been targeted

8. Control the press
BWAHAHA! the Left OWNS the press. And where it doesn't, it's agitating for revival of the "Fairness Doctrine" so that it WILL.

9. Dissent equals treason
She's got the gall to cite the Palmer raids, from a Democratic administration. Then there's global warming hysteria, the Bonus March, HUAC, Johnson's attitude toward Vietnam protesters...

10. Suspend the rule of law
Done bit by bit through the "Living constitution"

But hey, I've heard Naomi works for Al Gore. All of the above are just in preparation for a revival of Europe's first Green administration (organic agriculture, anti-smoking, alternative fuels, genetic research, population control and, uh, recycling)

"Hanging from the tree of liberty" is racist??

Well, so think some black lawmakers in PA, objecting to a sign which objected to the thoroughly objectionable Rep. Angel Cruz and his proposed 2nd Amendment violation without mentioning Rep. Cruz' ethnicity.

I don't get it. Evidently:
1. Nobody but black people were ever hung from trees anywhere, so that any mention of tree hanging is an automatic invocation of lynching.

2. The lawmakers objecting were never taught the subjunctive mood in school, and believe that "should be hung" is semantically equivalent to "we will hang you", and thus a "terrorist threat"

This is before we get into the worthwhile but politically loaded question of whether violation of the Constitution should be a hanging offence. Being a civilized man, I'd settle for lethal injection, though hanging is already a compromise for the more-deserved drawing-and-quartering. Can anybody doubt that if the target of ire were Dick Cheney instead of a Puerto-Rican victim disarmament advocate, these wouldn't be the voices objecting?

Hillary wants to clean house

We have ta reform our government. The abuses that have gone on in the last six years -- I don' think we know the half of it yet. You know, when I walk into the Oval Office in January of 2009, I'm afraid I'm gonna lift up the rug and I'm goin' to see so much stuff uh-nder thar.

. . . I was listening to Squawk Radio the other night and heard this. Yeah, she was getting a bit Ebonic there, but if Darling Husband can be "the first black president", I don't see why Hillary can't take on a bit of her audience. The more interesting question is why she's afraid to lift that rug. My wife opined that Laura Bush is too down-to-earth to mess around with lifting the carpets. What Hil is really afraid of finding is her husband's used condoms...eight years later.

Graf Bloomberg von Neuyorkstadt

Bidinotto takes apart Michael Bloomberg's proposal to tax people $8 for driving into his city. And yes, it's his. Bidinotto explains "stolen concept" elegantly, but doesn't make Mikey pay for his. Taxation is capitalism IF NYC and everything and everyone in it belongs to Mikey. Then he's free to charge admission to "his" property, just like any amusement-park owner. Thus, Bloomberg is claiming ownership. You'd think that this would be obvious to NYC residents and that they would act accordingly, but then you would have thought that when Mikey stole all the public buildings in the interest of health. Apparently Mikey is going to have to start claiming the droit du seigneur before residents wake up. And even then, they'll be saying, "Being mayor of the Capital of the World is a stressful job; he needs the relaxation."

If Mikey wants a lesson in capitalism, he should look at how cars are managed now. Having a car in NYC is a royal PITA. Nobody in their right mind drives there unless they absolutely have to. They're surrounded by disincentives already, in time and money. So it's a fair bet that NYC's streets and garages have already found their highest use. In a free market, those who can't afford what a vendor charges will go elsewhere. That's very close to what's happening in NYC in general, just because it's so expensive to live there. Now, what if truckers decided not to spend that $8, sat in their rigs, and watched the citizens barbecue each other to survive?

Beth...Jeff 'n' Elsie...I love you guys, but you're corpses on furlough as long as you stay there. There's a lot of art and artists that I'm going to mourn when (not if) the Big Apple gets cold-pasteurized. But I didn't drink the Kool-Aid Flav-r-aid that one has to be in NYC to have a career.

Thanks to Beck...who personally suffers because of New Yorkers' desire to be owned.

32 students PLUS the 1st Amendment?

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) - A University of Colorado student was arrested after making comments that classmates deemed sympathetic toward the gunman blamed for killing 32 students and himself at Virginia Tech, authorities said. ... At Oregon's Lewis & Clark College, another student was detained by campus police Wednesday shortly before a vigil for the Virginia Tech victims when he was spotted wearing an ammunition belt. Portland police later determined that it was "a fashion accessory" made of spent ammunition, and said the man did not have a weapon. The belt was confiscated.

John Edwards: man of the people

That son of a mill worker supervisor spends more per month on haircuts than my family has ever spent on groceries.

'Nuff said.

CDC wants gun control

...nail guns that is.

Actually, I suspect that most nail gun injuries are a result of getting hammered. :-)

Thanks to the inimitable Ms. DeCoster.

Paging Tim Bartels and Jennifer Swift

The British may soon be permitted to do dynamic entry on your home to collect on parking tickets. Children are being fingerprinted before they can check out library books. And you two willingly live there??

Mrs. Edwards' neighborhood

She said:

"I wouldn't be nice to him, anyway," Edwards said in an interview. "I don't want my kids anywhere near some guy who, when he doesn't like somebody, the first thing he does is pull a gun out. It scares the business out of me."

Edwards views Johnson as a "rabid, rabid Republican" who refuses to clean up his "slummy" property just to spite her family, whose lavish 28,000-square-foot estate is nearby on 102 wooded acres.

He said:

Johnson said he has lived his entire life on the property, which he said his family purchased before the Great Depression. He said he's spent a lot of money to try and fix up the 42-acre tract.

"I have to budget. I have to live within my means," Johnson said. "I don't have millions of dollars to fix the place."

"I thought he was supposed to be for the poor people," Johnson said. "But does he ever socialize with any poor people? He doesn't speak to me."

Johnson said he has put his property on the market, in part blaming the high property taxes for his decision to leave. He also wants to move for another reason.

"I don't want to live somewhere where someone's always complaining about me," he said.

He can come live in my 'hood. As for the Edwards', between Ike sighting in his gun in the back yard, the machine-gunners in the quarry, my roosters, pink henhouse and Gadsden flag, Jeff Wells' dog and parties, the abusive men who abandon stray women in front of Gino Adkins' place, and our determination not to vote for any more taxes, I don't think they'd enjoy Windham Twp.

Alabaman wants you to buy terror-free gas

They've been trying to get Country of Origin Labeling on food for awhile now, without success. Now some idjit in Alabama's legislature wants COOL for gasoline, so you know when you're buying from terrorist states.

Petroleum is fungible. It gets mixed at the refinery. Any gas coming out of there will probably have a "bad guy" label on it, so all gas will be terror-linked. The tracking and labeling process itself will add costs to the gas.

But let's say it "works", that people see that their gas is coming from Iran or Venezuela or whoever the demon du jour is, and avoid buying it. What then? Alabaman stations will only sell kosher gas, bidding up the price. But since gas demand will remain steady, other parts of the country will get the trayf gas, perhaps at a small discount. So Alabamans will be paying through the nose to accomplish nothing.

I remember a quaint Southern custom involving tar, feathers, and a rail. Maybe it's time to throw Rep. Todd a party.

“Do you know who I am?”

"Yes, ma'am. You're "under arrest".
Not how it played, but the way it should have played, in the case of N'awlins councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, caught doing 100 while running flashing blue lights.

H-1Bs scarfed up in a day

Congress, in their concern for older IT workers being forced to accept a competitive wage, capped the number of H-1B tech visas at 65,000. For the 2007 visas, there were 150,000 applicants the first (and only) day applications were accepted.

"The congressman [Kucinich] believes it puts middle-aged professionals at a disadvantage because they're facing competition from people who are willing to work for less money," said spokeswoman Natalie Laber.

but

Employers like Iyer, meanwhile, are eyeing their options. He said he will search locally for talent but will prepare to send more work to Canada and overseas.

"Sometimes it's just plain impossible to find the skill here," he said. "The projects have to get done."

You can only cartelize labor if there's some way of restricting worker access to the jobs. In IT, there isn't. It's about as practical for your programmer to work in Bangelore as in California; communication and supervision might be harder, but you don't have to pay to bring him over. If you make him a team leader and do the whole project over there, you don't even have the communication issue. So tell me: since the foreign go-to guy is going to get the job anyway, what's better for America: to bring him over here, pay him lower-end American wages, and collect taxes from him (including Social Security he won't collect), or let him stay home, pay Indian wages, let the Indian government get fat on the tax revenue? All that's before we even deal with the rights of an individual to contract with whom he will.

I know there are scads of Case tech guys who read Case blogs. So tell me: how has this cap benefitted YOU? What am I missing in my analysis?

First they hid away our cold meds...

...because they could be used to make meth. Now Rep. Talibdin El-Amin, D-St. Louis, wants to prevent Missourians from making crack...by limiting sales of baking soda.

Maybe because of that Moslem-ish name, he hasn't brought up the terrorist angle. When I was a kid, I had a rocket that ran on vinegar and baking soda. Banning baking soda is the only way to keep such high explosives out of children's hands, without taking away the soccer mom's salads. Can't have the kids getting interested in model rocketry, where eventually one uses real explosives. Besides, somebody might actually bake with the stuff, contributing to the country's rate of diabetes.

I think it's a rather draconian solution. Wouldn't it be better to leave crack production and sale in the hands of trained pharmaceutical professionals?

Michelle's Law goes into effect Friday

...and teenagers are already discussing the problems and the lack of justice, as well they should. And Debbie and Ray Sanderbeck, whose private law this is, should just go to Hell. But if they did, they'd be lobbying for stupid laws there, and I have family in Michigan.

Cleveland Council paints with a broad brush

...or a wide nozzle. The Safety Committee has proposed that sale of spray paint be banned to minors, unless accompanied by an adult. Mike Polensek's argument seems to be that other cities have such a law. He might have asked whether those laws were working, whether Toledo is now a clean, graffiti-free city, before harassing local businessmen who are harassed enough.

I'm real sympathetic to the impulse. I'm really tired of being sold tagging as "urban art". I've seen some fairly complex stuff. But it's art like rap is music. And I have a big issue about other people's property being worked with. But I'm not sure law is the right approach. It's a violation of the rights of good kids who use paint legitimately, and I've seen no evidence that it would limit graffiti. Cleveland's problem is too many laws combined with too much lawlessness, and those factors seem to grow in tandem.

Daylight Savings saves nothing

The Dark-n-Dreary Morning Act of 2006 has gone into effect, and the power companies have observed what the Energy Department predicted: that there is no measurable savings in energy use. There was some increased energy waste: the energy of programmers who had to fix computers' clocks to fit Congress' whim. But at least our Leaders were seen to have been "doing something". I'd like to see the originators of this bill really do something...like allow themselves to be burned for energy.

Guns and drugs and Mexico, oh my!

I wanted to blog this yesterday, but was way too busy and sleepy. But I was coming home with my wife from the tax man, and Rollye James was on (I hadn't heard her before; she's good) talking about it.

So...the Attorney General of Mexico, Eduardo Medina Mora (who seems to think he's Elliot Spitzer or somebody) is demanding that we block guns and drug money from coming into Mexico. James' succinct point was that it's Mexico's job to police Mexico's borders, not ours, and if we really wanted to stop the drug cartels, we'd legalize drugs. All dead on.

Mexico can stop the gun flow. They have no problem issuing long jail terms to some hapless Yanqui who got caught with so much as one loose .22 cartridge in his truck, so why not real gun runners? Well, because it's an economic problem: arresting the gringo brings money; not arresting the drug lords brings bribe money. But more to the point, just as guns (pace Sarah Brady) don't jump out of their holsters or gun cases and fire themselves, guns also don't put on wet suits and swim the Rio Grande.The problem is not guns crossing the border; it's people carrying guns across the border. Now, if Mr. Medina Mora is suggesting that we should stop the flow of people across the border, well, yes, we can do that. But it's quite opposite to the policy that the Mexicans have been advocating. The proposition we're being asked to buy is this: smuggling people=good, smuggling guns and drugs=bad.

So how come we Americans are moral defectives because we like to use drugs, and the Mexicans are not moral defectives for not being able to maintain a clean and just law enforcement system? And does that have anything to do with a country which has abundant natural resources, a warm climate, and hard-working people having to rely on foreign remittances to keep its economy afloat? There are former parts of Mexico that are leading world economies all by themselves. And if Aztlan is ever created, we'll be able to test the proposition that it's a problem of misrule. Not that we haven't already tested the proposition a thousand times.

Bob Barr to lobby for Marijuana Policy Project

Most commenters on this site are dubious and unimpressed with Bob "Barr Amendment" Barr's new job, one going so far as to snark, "Ahh, yes...the Libertarian Party - The Party of Principle!", conveniently forgetting that Barr wasn't a Libertarian in 1998.

Is he one now?

This is a move in the right direction. I'm still skeptical about Barr's Road-to-Damascus conversion, but if indeed he really gets it, he could be a powerful champion of liberty. I think we should give him the benefit of the doubt.

A Goreocracy for Ohio?

INTRODUCED

SB 128 CLIMATE COMMISSION (Miller, D.) — To create the Ohio Climate Commission for the purpose of studying the probable impacts that global climate change will have on the state of Ohio and for the purpose of recommending appropriate state responses to address global climate change and problems likely to be associated with it.

The Ohio Dept. of Agriculture does a pretty good job. I'm sure they can advise Appalachian farms on orange growing.

Oh, no! Usury!

And speaking of Cuyahoga losers, a few went to Dee Cee to complain about lenders:

Witnesses at the hearing also described how high-interest, short-term loans from "payday lenders" suck low-income workers into a perpetual state of debt. David Rothstein of Policy Matters Ohio, a Cleveland-based research institute, told the committee that Ohio has more payday lending locations than McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's restaurants combined.

Look, anyone stupid enough to borrow money at those places deserves to be put out of their home. That they have any good reason to exist at all is largely due to area banks, whose policies exclude the poor. When National City charges a non-account holder 10% to cash a check drawn on National City, the cash shops look pretty good. But there are way too many people geared to instant gratification, and folks like Rokakis are determined to deny them their education, simply because people with a longer-range view who have provided their own security are less likely to put them in power. And what would be worse for the city: overpriced capital, or no capital available at all?

Cuyahoga: 6th biggest loser

Cuyahoga Co. has achieved a dubious distinction: 6th largest population loss in the country since the 2000 census. The only bigger loser that wasn't involved with Hurricane Katrina was Michigan's Wayne County, which contains Detroit, a city whose raison d'etre anymore appears to be to make Cleveland look good.

I'm one of those Cuyahoga escapees. I mostly bailed for love (and I've sometimes wondered, on that morning commute, just how much I love). But I left a town that is overgoverned and under-serviced. We don't have downtown Republicans endorsing cigarette taxes for the arts. If our county commissioners tried to strongarm a gun show out of existence, they'd probably get their own private gun show. Windham Village constantly turns down an income tax to support the admittedly overextended police, perhaps because they've seen what happens when cops have time on their hands. And our roads are better-maintained. It's not perfect: our schools suck too, and we have a county bus system that is twice as mismanaged as RTA. And we have crime. But we don't have a city government micromanaging us or sucking our sustenance for their pet projects.

If the city gave me 5 acres of brownfields to transport Black Water to, and exemption from zoning and property tax, I'd consider coming back. For better or worse, this is where it's at for me professionally. But that isn't going to happen, because I can't dangle "28,000 jobs" in front of anyone. Cleveland gives away the town to developers, then mistreats Joe Sixpack. And then they wonder why Mr. Sixpack leaves.

New Mexico House does science

Seven months after a conclave of scientists downgraded the distant heavenly body to a "dwarf planet," a state representative in New Mexico aims to give the snubbed world back some of its respect. State lawmakers will vote Tuesday on a bill that proposes "as Pluto passes overhead through New Mexico's excellent night skies, it be declared a planet."

The resolution, House Joint Memorial 54, was introduced by Rep. Joni Marie Gutierrez (D-Dona Ana County). It reiterates the importance of astronomy to the state of New Mexico and calls for March 13 to be "Pluto Planet Day."

And the Indiana House of 1897 voted to make pi equal to 3. That didn't make it so.

Mayor Frank throws tantrum over state gun law

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson is suing in Cuyahoga Co. Common Pleas Court for the right to violate the constitutional rights of Clevelanders, and will continue to enforce laws that are no longer law. Apparently we're the only city in the state with gangs running amok with Evil Black Rifles, and something MUST be done.

To his credit, our new Democratic AG, Marc Dann, is not impressed.

Give it up, Frank. The city has more pressing needs.

Another nanny in Lakewood

Mike Skindell wants to save the kitties and the kiddies, so he wants us to pay 3¢ a gallon to add a bittering agent to antifreeze sold in Ohio. It's not enough that the containers are almost impossible to open, or that the stuff looks gross.

Kucinich busted by FEC

Y'all know that I don't much like The Kooch, but I really have to feel sorry for the guy. He's got to come up with $137K to reimburse the Feds for money he wasn't supposed to spend, because his campaign had already failed when he spent it. Now, granted, since he was spending stolen money to begin with, there's a limit to my sympathy. But it's been over two years since that election, and the FEC have only finished audits of TWO other candidates (minor ones at that). It seems to me almost impossible for a campaign to keep up with the arcana of Federal election law...which makes me wonder if the real intent of the law was to keep campaigns clean, or to discourage campaigns. I suspect the latter, since they started at the bottom of the list (Lieberman and Nader) instead of with Kerry.

Scooter's guilty; who cares?

OK, we have Ann the Outrageous weighing in on the Libby trial. And yes, it was a miscarriage of justice, a political trial, and I should be upset. But I'm not. Libby was convicted of the same "crime" as Martha Stewart: lying about a non-crime. But there was a difference: Martha was minding her own business, doing what Martha does: making money. Libby was involved in government, and this government in particular. We don't get too upset when somebody in an organized crime syndicate gets whacked in the course of doing business; we figure that if he didn't want to get whacked, he shouldn't have been involved in organized crime. The same applies to government (even if we sidestep the question of whether government is an organized crime syndicate). In the grand scheme of things, some guy with a name like an Ayn Rand villain having to do some time is about as important as Anna Nicole Smith. In a D.C. whose main urban-design problem is far too few lamp posts for the number of people who deserve them, what happened to Libby pales in comparison to the case of a Kathryn Johnson or Cory Maye, people who were minding their own business until the State came in and destroyed their lives. I feel bad for Libby's family, though.

Coulter's main point is that Republicans need to do unto others as they have been done by. If they don't (and it's arguable that they do and have; some would include Whitewater and the Clinton impeachment), the reason is that they still care about the country, not because they're gutless. Well, bring it on, I say. Let's have both parties brawling in the courts. Let's have President Rodham try Bush for war crimes, then the 'Pugs can impeach Hillary for campaign finance violations (assuming Peter Paul doesn't take a walk in Ft. Marcy Park first). You want partisanship, beotch, you can watch it bring the country to its knees. Then maybe people will get rid of both of the two evils.

Open letter to Rep. Kathleen Chandler

Dear Rep. Chandler,

It was nice of you to share your thoughts on the state of the state.

The 2nd paragraph of your letter presents a melange of contradictory ideas in a single long sentence: " If Ohio's economy is to ever fully recover we must focus on funding education appropriately, stop the over reliance on property tax, ensure college tuition is affordable for working families, and invest in making an environment friendly to small businesses and entrepreneurs." Or, to restate it in condensed form, "If Ohio's economy is to ever fully recover, we must spend more money." Now, where is that money to come from, but from small businesses and entrepreneurs who, thus having the expenses of government thrust upon them, will decide to go elsewhere? And if we do invest bribe such businesses to come, it will be to tax them in the future, when they will leave. Meanwhile, our current businesses will be paying for the bribe, and thus not investing in their own expansion and improvement.

And what is "appropriate" education funding? Personally, I think that public education should be financed by a per-head tax on all school-age children, equal to the statewide average cost of educating those children, with a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for private tuition or homeschooling materials. Clearly, you don't think that "property tax" is an appropriate way to fund education. There's a case to be made for that, since those who own no property still get to vote to tax those who do. However, it at least gives the voters of an area some say in how much they will fund education. I understand that you call yourself a Democrat, and thus apparently believe in democracy. Why would you remove choice from voters, just because some mobs constituencies are wealthier or more generous than others?

As for college tuition, it has been demonstrated that tuition rises with tuition subsidies; the more money we give people to attend college, the more college costs. This isn't surprising, given that students not paying their own way have little incentive to hold colleges accountable for costs. The same is true in the medical field, but then, you probably want to socialize that as well.

As for your comments on SB 117, they're clearly partisan, as this is a case for the courts to clarify. But if the 1978 act (or was it really 1878?) is "one of the strongest business rape consumer protection laws in the nation", might it also have something to do with Ohio's poor economy?

And then there are your "helpful" instructions on the "Earned" Income tax Credit. You are quite correct that "more than $100 million that rightfully belongs in the pockets of hardworking Ohio families ends up bottled up in Washington", though your figure is off by a factor of a million or so. If the EITC is our "most effective anti-poverty program", then why are most people getting it still on the dole? I've spent large portions of my life living and working with poor people, and not once have I ever heard anyone say, "I'm gonna get me a job or two and make a bunch of money so I can collect the EITC." Anyway, the money "rightfully" belongs to the people it was stolen from, not to the intended recipients; if we're going to use moral language, we should all agree on which moral principles we're acting on, and most Americans, if asked point-blank whether it's moral to take money from one by force to give to another, would say it is not. They only get confused by language like "government money", "taxation", and other misdirectors.

Lastly, I'd call your attention to a conspicuous omission in your newsletter: which Ohio laws do you intend to repeal during this session?

I thank you for taking the time to communicate, and hope that it was actually you writing the newsletter, rather than a staffer, as it was a much more productive use of your time than voting on bills.

Your constituent,

Jeffrey Quick

California's drug legacy

Most of America's truly horrible ideas began in California, including this one, whose centennial we observe tomorrow:

On March 6, 1907, Gov. James Gillett signed amendments to the Pharmacy and Poison Act making it a crime to sell opiates or cocaine in the state without a prescription. The act made California a national leader in the war on drugs seven years before Congress enacted national drug prohibition with the Harrison Act.

That wasn't the beginning though:

In 1875, San Francisco passed the nation's first anti-drug law, the Opium Den Ordinance, aimed specifically at Chinese opium smoking.

The opium law was a success, sort of:

The raids broke the back of the opium-smoking culture, but the addicts moved on to morphine and heroin. The board proceeded to launch a pre-emptive attack on "Indian hemp" or cannabis in 1913.

At the time, cannabis was virtually unheard of in California. Nonetheless, the board warned of an influx of cannabis-using "Hindoos" (actually Sikhs) from India, and prevailed on the Legislature to ban the drug lest the habit spread to whites. Ironically, only after being outlawed did marijuana become popular, eventually being used by millions of Californians.

I think a minute of silence is called for. Tomorrow at 4:20 is as good a time as any.

Fine whines in Gaza

I heard on the radio yesterday that 80% of Palestinians in Gaza are dependent on foreign food aid.

Gaza used to provide 75% of Israel's produce, plus $100m in exports.

Gee, I wonder what happened?

And the evil Zionists even left synagogues to turn into military bases:

Mr. Abir blamed the Jewish state for the desecration of the Gaza synagogues by Palestinian Arabs, claiming the decision to leave the structures intact was part of an Israeli conspiracy.

Israel "left the synagogues behind so the world would see the Palestinians destroying them," Mr. Abir said.

Free Palestine...with $20 additional purchase, cigarettes and alcohol excluded.

Filthy capitalism for clean air

Moron More on Gore:

Gore helped found Generation Investment Management, through which he and others pay for offsets. The firm invests the money in solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe…

As co-founder and chairman of the firm Gore presumably draws an income or will make money as its investments prosper. In other words, he “buys” his “carbon offsets” from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself. To be blunt, Gore doesn’t buy “carbon offsets” through Generation Investment Management - he buys stocks.

And it is not clear at all that Gore’s stock purchases - excuse me, “carbon offsets” purchases - actually help reduce the use of carbon-based energy at all, while the gas lanterns and other carbon-based energy burners at his house continue to burn carbon-based fuels and pump carbon emissions - a/k/a/ “greenhouse gases” - into the atmosphere.

The Virginian sees a kind of carbon-based sumtuary law in our future:

The danger is that the use of “carbon offsets” will create two things that re morally monstrous: a de-facto sumptuary law and the impoverishments of the poor and powerless of this planet.

The creation of an aristocratic elite that differentiates itself from the hoi polloi by its ability to buy “carbon offsets” while the rest of the planet is forced by environmental laws into a smaller and smaller carbon straightjacket is not so far fetched.

Meanwhile, the smart money is shorting alternative-energy stocks.

Ted Strickland keeps his girl in line

Wow, I'm impressed. Ted Strickland has announced that if the legislature passes Dem. Rep. Edna Brown's (of Toledo, the real Mistake on the Lake) mandatory HPV vaccination bill, he won't sign it.

"The governor believes this is a relatively new medical treatment and our initial approach should be a cautious one," Dailey said.

The wrong reason, and it leaves the door open, but I'm still pleased that he'd buck one of his own party.

Why do evangelicals ignore Ron Paul?

That's the question Rev. Chuck Baldwin asks here. But he misses the answer: evangelicals don't support Ron Paul because they are not small-government conservatives. They really want government to impose their moral values on the rest of the country, and they want the goodies that government can provide. That's why they wet themselves over Bush's "Faith-based initiatives"; they wanted to get their own ladles in the cannibal pot. And Ron Paul has proven that he isn't going to give them what they want. Oh yeah, he's pro-life (the one area where I disagree with him, but he makes it an internally-consistent position), but he's not pro-War on Drugs, Porn, or Iran. And Falwell and Robertson have had Beltway Fever for way too long, and would do well to relocate their ministries to a state not bordering D.C.

An inconvenient truth about Al Gore's energy usage

I want to be a greenie, just like Al Gore. Can I use 221,000 kwh of electricity this year, just like my hero?

Tip o'hat to Boortz.

UPDATE: Gore's excuse. Carbon offsets. eh? Can I buy those at Home Depot, or do I have to go to some hippie store in California? Maybe some Amish stand has them, next to the whoopie pies.

Obamamania

Obamamania hit Kulas Library pretty hard yesterday. One of our student workers asked off to attend a sudden meeting she had. No problem, as she did the right thing and got somebody else to work her shift. But then that person wanted to leave early too, to go to the Obama rally, and it turned out that Person 1 was actually working the rally so that she could get in...I guess they gave out 7000 tickets for a 3000-capacity space. I guess it was just as well I not know that; I still would have let her go, but I would probably have been more grudging about it.

I came home, and Rusty was all pumped, having heard the beginnings on WTAM on the way home...and was ticked that there was no TV coverage. My receiver doesn't get AM, for lack of an appropriate antenna, and Mon. is TV night for her, so she wanted to be in the living room...but she wouldn't move the stereo in her room that was blasting down the hallway while I was trying to work. So I went into my survival supplies and broke out the Grundig (which sounded better anyway). I told her I was going to let her listen alone, because I wouldn't be able to resist making snide comments, and why burst her bubble? By that point the fluffers had been getting the crowd up for an hour and a half. Finally, the Great Man spoke, for about 20 minutes. I asked my wife what he had said, and it was the usual...pull the troops out, give the teachers more money. Personally, since Democrats think other countries usually have better ideas than we do, I think we should pay our teachers a wage equal to the average of teachers in the 4 countries on either side of our academic ranking. They should get paid what that kind of teaching is worth; sounds perfectly fair to me.

Sorry, I don't get what the fuss is about. Obama is a fresh face, and he's not the Hildebeast. But I haven't heard any ideas out of the man, and the hoopla is entirely out of proportion to the presentation. If I were a Christian paranoid, I might even suspect that it's the work of Satan, and we're headed for the Obama-nation of Desolation.

Liebertarian? What's Boortz smoking?

Boortz muses on the possibility of Joe Lieberman jumping parties. Well, yeah, it could interesting and all. But then he says:

How about switching to the Libertarian Party?

Yeah, right, Neal. Look, the main substantive difference between the Democrats and the Bush admi. is the Iraq war. It's really the only current idea they have, the rest of their ideas being stale rehashes of economic ideas that failed so long ago that the Republicans think they're conservative ideas. So Lieberman going 'Pug is at least within the realm of the possible. But he's in no way a philosophical libertarian, and given that majority opinion about Iraq in the LP these days makes Cindy Sheehan look like a neocon, there's really no motive for him to jump in that direction. Nor would his presense be welcome by anone besides Boortz, who is buddy-buddy with Bob "no drugs, no Wicca" Barr, who is now an LP Region Rep, and who really needs to be Zumboed on the drug issue.

Modest proposal for electoral reform

The dextrosphere has been abuzz about the Democrat's idea that unionization should not be subject to a secret ballot, but that petition signatures should be sufficient. They point out that this is self-serving for the 'Crats (it is), and that the net result would be more unions, because employees who would be intimidated into signing the union petition could not then secretly vote against the union. And such intimidation does happen, as my wife (who is anything but a shrinking violet) can tell you.

It seems to me that the Right is taking the wrong tack on this. They should be taking the principle involved in this and feeding it back to them good and hard. What the Democrats are saying is that secret ballots are unnecessary. Well, if that's the case, why are we spending so much money on fancy voting equipment? Why don't we just make each person's ballot a matter of public record? After all, if you think it's moral to loot your neighbor, then you should be proud of that. And since intimidation doesn't matter, when you vote for a law or a candidate who harms a particular industry, it should be perfectly OK for a company in that industry to lose your resume after checking the voting records. If all Americans are responsible for all other Americans, shouldn't all Americans be accountable to all other Americans? No more of this "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" If we're paying attention, I can guarantee that public policy will do a 180 in a libertarian direction.

When is a gas tax hike not a gas tax hike?

OK, maybe the state highway patrol needs money to run driver's licence examinations (Why can't insurance companies do that?) and check on motorists who are broken down or in accidents.

To plug the hole in the patrol's budget, Strickland wants to cut a good chunk from an obscure state discount on the gas tax given to wholesalers to offset evaporation at the pump. The change would net the state $38 million annually.

I'm not too concerned about how the legislature plays the budgetary shell game. But this worries me:

Strickland said Ohioans would be "protected at the pump" because the evaporation benefit to wholesalers - not retailers - would be cut. But the head of a group that represents 400 Ohio gas wholesalers said gas prices would eventually rise as a result.

"You're taking $40 million out of the economy and giving it to the patrol so they can go around and give people tickets," said Roger Dryer, president of the Ohio Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association.

Strickland's proposal would chop the wholesalers' discount from the current 1.3 percent to 0.35 percent.

The governor said there would be "no justification" for wholesalers to raise gas prices in response to his proposal.

"When this benefit was originally provided, technology wasn't as good as it is today in terms of evaporation loss," he said. "We're trying to hold retailers harmless and asking wholesalers to absorb a reasonable reduction in the benefit."

This bespeaks a worrisome level of economic illiteracy. Does Strickland really think that since wholesalers really don't need the evaporation credit anymore, that it somehow hasn't figured into their price structures?

Damnit, Ted, if you're going to tax us, then tax us. Don't pussyfoot around. You're a Democrat; we expect economic rape.

Obama: man of principle?

I've recently had the pleasure of reconnecting with an old friend who is blogging. It's way cool to be able to be involved with her life and thought (and being a underemployed Gemini, with 2 blogs yet, there's quite a bit of her out there.) But there are lapses...

Like this, in which she tried to convince me that Barack Obama is a principled man. What principles, Andee? What fundamental rules of governance has Obama articulated, or lived through action well enough that they could be deduced? And you want him to talk to the Sunday school teacher from Georgia? Riiight...Carter had more principle than anyone named Clinton, but were they the right principles? I mean, Hitler was a pretty principled guy too, in his way.

In any case, given the reality of the Two Majors, if he's principled, he'll have to abandon principle to get elected. She hasn't voted Duopoly in 15 years. She's seen jackboots in her face (long story that I used to have links to, but they're all dead). And she's captivated by a fresh pretty face? I'm disappointed.

Zundel gets 5

I really hate to stick up for a sleazeball like Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, but this is a free speech case. And if willful denial of reality were a crime, we'd have to lock up most of the US population. His website (the "crime" for which he was convicted) isn't even hosted in Germany; do they think they have a right to police the Internet?

Canada booted him through a 9/11 law:

In February 2005, a Canadian judge ruled that Zundel's activities were not only a threat to national security, but "the international community of nations" as well.

A Canadian law, passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, allows the government to hold terrorism suspects without charge, based on secret evidence that does not have to be disclosed to a suspect or his defense.

Zundel was deported a few days later.

Evidently a terrorist is anyone who you say is one.

"Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar"

...and sometimes it's an excuse to sic the cops on a member of another party. In this case, the siccer is Rep. Keith Ellison and the siccee (no jokes, please!) is Tom Tancredo. And I really don't think that cigar smoke was the only or even the primary issue here. I doubt a Democrat has had as much fun with a cigar since...no, let's not go there.

Unity '08

A friend alerted me to these folks, who seem to think they will save American democracy from polarization and partisanship.

Pardon me, but this is a crock.

First, there is no center in American politics. The duopoly parties actually have fairly clearly-demarcated positions: the Democrats want to control your money, the Republicans want to control your body. The "center" is control, and when we have a fairly centrist government like that of the "compassionate conservative", we get control of both bodies and money. And the electorate reacts against either form of control, depending on their mood, by voting for the other form of control. Both parties belong on the sinister side of the American political spacial metaphor...with even the theocratic Constitution Party to the right, the Libertarians farther on, and with anarchy as the terminus. (the terminus of the left would be de jure slavery, I suppose.)

They correctly diagnose the problem and opportunity: utter disgust. NOT ONE of the mooted duopoly candidates can unify the country. So what's their solution? Have the citizens pick a candidate over the Internet. The candidate has to pick a running mate from the other party (Independents have to pick one from one other party, and give the left-out party a cabinet post). So this was "everyone will win", see? They don't hate the parties; they just want to issue a wakeup call. And who is reponsible for this inew idea? Political operatives -- the same bunch of people who gifted us with the dysfunction we have.

If I had time on my hands and were fonder of conspiracy theories than I am, I'm be looking for membership in the CFR, people getting Soros money, and other establishment ties. What this smells like to me is an attempt to co-opt third-party activity by establishing a third non-party, so you don't have to vote for vanilla or chocolate, but can have TWIST instead...the same old product, full of high fructose corn syrup and soy phytoestrogens, but with a new flavor. (I don't see anything new, or very definite, in their platform.) If this movement became extremely popular, they could get citizens to insist on removing the current 3rd-party barriers (Under current law, their plan to nominate after the Big 2 conventions is just not going to fly), which would be good for real 3rd party. But a group that powerful would become a de-facto first-and-only party. And nothing will change.

Vox Day serves me crow,

here,with a rich mole poblano, re my comments on Amanda Marcotte, late of the John Edwards campaign. As a blogger, I really should have known better than to take words at face value: Edwards is a politician, his lips were moving, therefore he was lying.

But the whole episode has been bizarre. As Vox points out, it probably wasn't Edwards but one of his operatives who got the idea of using Marcotte, and that operative will probably quietly disappear in a week or so. In any case, it showed no comprehension at all of the blogosphere. We're seeing this more and more: politicians figuring that since the bought Old Media are going under, they have to blog. When they do, they are consistently wooden and boring. So they hire a blogger, who, in order to not cause public offence, has to be wooden and boring too. Blogs are by their nature countercultural. It might be possible to do a viral Edwards campaign, but if you're going to do that, it has to be sub rosa; you don't shout to the rooftops, "Hey, we got one of the biggest bloggers out there to blog for Edwards!"

I still think though that, having made the mistake of hiring her, and her having made the mistake of taking on the job, they should have brazened it out. This is a hit on their credibility, and it shows both of them as fundamentally gutless. That it had to be a bullying moron like Donohue that brought her down is worst. Yes, it would have been inevitable; if she didn't screw up on Edwards' site, she would have done it on her own (and why didn't he pursue an exclusivity agreement?)

The moral of the story is: if you want to run for office, keep it clean, reasonable, and not too bizarre. And if you can't do that, and get busted by your words, stay in there like you meant your words, because if you didn't, you had no business writing them. The classic example is Tom Alciere, who had won election to the New Hampshire legislature but gave up his seat in the furor over comments he made again and again on Usenet on the moral propriety of defending yourself with deadly force against the police, no matter what they want from you. That argument has theoretical validity, but if you make it, you're going to have an awfully hard time, both practically and ethically, in becoming the cops' employer...which is what Alciere did. And his response should have been, "Look, you guys deserve to get hurt, but I don't want you to get hurt, so I'm going to do my best to get all the illegitimate BS laws off the books, so there's no reason for you to get hurt." But he pulled an Amynda and backtracked on his words (but couldn't remove them from Usenet). I try to write so that I will never have to do that (questioning Vox Day's intelligence excepted...hey, I'm saving one of the breasts for Spacebunny...)

Amanda and Melissa safe, for now

John Edwards isn't going to fire his two new bloggers for being, well, bloggers. And that's a good thing. It would have cost him more in the long run to cave to the likes of Donohue, than it has to apologize and deal. If Edwards didn't read them, then he should have; either way, he accepted what he was getting. And Democrats don't fire people for sleaziness; they make their wives Senators instead. So you have to wonder why intelligent people like Vox Day were so sure that Amynda would be tossed to the wolves. I mean, aren't wolves a protected species?

Ken Blackwell finds his voice

Kenny has written a damnfine piece on the connection between the civil rights movement and the 2nd Amendment. I'm suspecting the man might do more for the cause of freedom as a writer than he ever did as a politician. No, I'm not taking back the nasty things I said about him, yet, any more than I'm in a rush to call Bob Barr a libertarian. But I have to give props where props are due.

Stossel on Boston terror freakout

As you'd expect, John Stossel has an interesting take on the Lite-Brites of Death fiasco:

Terrorism is horrible, but your chances of dying in a terrorist attack are relatively low. You're more likely to be killed hitting a deer with your car. (Two hundred Americans die on average every year from car collisions with deer. Including the toll from 9/11, the average number of Americans to die each year from international terrorism since 1981 is 145.)

Believe me, I'm not looking for swarthy men with C-4 when I drive those country roads at night.
But he misses here:

Excessive fear of terrorism hurts Americans, too. After 9/11, many people chose to drive rather than fly, leading to 1,000 additional deaths in automobile wrecks.

It isn't fear of Islamic terrorists that causes Americans to do that; it's fear and distaste for their own government's agents.

Carleton manages the news

Carty Finkbeiner (the man who has almost singlehandedly wrested the Laughingstock of Ohio trophy from Cincinnati, who took it from the original holder, Cleveland) got his hands slapped real good by Federal judge James Carr. It seems Carty got a burr up about a local radio station and stopped inviting them to press conferences...then had one of their reporters barred from attending. the judge was not impressed with the idea of press conferences being invitation-only events. Details from Bovard.

Stuart saves America

It looks like Al Franken is running for Senate, and should get your vote because he's good enough, he's smart enough, and doggone it, people like him.

Actually, that's a little unfair. Franken actually does have a platform. Unfortunately for America, it's a bit like the last platform Saddam Hussein stood on.

Looting for arts starts today

I didn't realize that the Tax on People With Unpopular Habits was really an inventory tax, that smoke shops have to pay tax on their present inventory whether it sells or not. Of course, I should have; how else could one guarantee compliance? This is going to shake out a lot of marginal outlets. And the folks too far out to be bothered to come downtown for art will have no problem buying their smokes out of county.

This gentleman is quite well-spoken:

John Coleman, manager of Cousin's Cigar Co. on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, said he has been preparing for the impact of Issue 18 for months -- cutting back his inventory from 300 cartons on hand at all times to about 100.

Coleman, whose store specializes in imported cigars and tobacco, said he will scale back his cigarette business even further if customers head for the county lines.

"This tax increase is a tyranny of the majority," Coleman said. "And no one will stand up for the rights of those who choose to enjoy tobacco. Cigarette retailers across the county will be forced out of business, the arts will not be bolstered a bit, and in the end it is a terrible sort of prejudice."

Merck out to buy vaccination laws

$360 a dose is a lot to spend for every 12 year old girl in the country. But don't worry, girls, it's for your own good. Merck's purchased legislators say so.

There's a draft in this voting booth

Jenny Brunner, Ohio SS (seems like a more fitting abbreviation for Secretary of State) of the party of Lyndon Johnson and Charles Rangel, is carrying on her party's tradition by supporting the draft...for poll workers....something only proposed in 2 other states and implemented in none. Gotta love that adventurous leadership!

"Just like jury duty!" Considering the quality of juries these days...

Let's see...the problem we've had in Ohio with poll workers is that they aren't well enough trained or up on the ever-changing technology for stealing counting votes. So we're going to staff the polls with people who don't want to be there and don't care? What's next, drafting voters? They're going to great extremes today to shore up the legitimacy of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Actually, if we're going to throw out the 13th Amendment anyway, why can't we chuck the state constitution and draft LEGISLATORS, by random lot. They would certainly be more representative of "the People's will" than the ones we have, no more corrupt, and since they would not be running for re-election (not having been elected to begin with) they'd have to take graft directly (which is far easier to police; just look for the foil-covered Franklins in the freezer).

Planned Parenthood a little confused on property rights

"It's bad enough that pharmacists think they could refuse to refill a prescription, but Plan B has over-the-counter status," says Mary O'Shea of Planned Parenthood of Greater Cleveland. "It has the status of cough drops. How does a pharmacist think he has the right to say no to this?"

Uh, Mary...
the pharmacist can refuse to stock cough drops, if it's his store. He doesn't have to sell Plan B pills...or aspirin...or Bibles....or burqas. It may be bad business, or stupid in a hundred other ways. But he has as much right to say no as Planned Parenthood has to not sell anti-abortion books.

Tancredo wants Black Caucus shut down

"It is utterly hypocritical for Congress to extol the virtues of a colorblind society while officially sanctioning caucuses that are based solely on race," said the Colorado Republican, who is most widely known as a vocal critic of illegal immigration.

Well, I say, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em; start a Caucasian Caucus. Of course, you know how that would go over. And Tancredo is the wrong guy for the message, since he's already been accused of being a racist.

The issue here is freedom of association. Congress believes that their members have a right to gather in race-oriented groups and to exclude members of other races. Indeed, freedom of association gives them that right. But they deny that right of free association to the general populace. If I decided not to rent the bottom of my duplex to purple people, I would have the National Association for the Avancement of Purple People filing a lawsuit. The further issue is that of Congress being above the laws they form for the rest of us. Maybe if Stephen Cohen took the uncollegial action of suing the Black Caucus for discrimination, something might change. Unfortunately, that something would probably be "Cohen's chances of re-election". But what's wrong with Congress following our rules?

1st Amendment void in Brazoria TX

If Mayor Ken Corley has his way, using the "n-word" in his town will be punishable by a $500 fine...unless it is a "term of endearment" and nobody complains. Not that any civilized person would want to use that word, endearingly or any other way. But where will we draw the line? The F-word will be worth, what, $100? I mean the 4-letter one; I'm sure that "f-----m" will merit the death penalty.

Modest proposal to improve SOTU speeches

OK, I didn't watch Bush last night. Almost anything from anyone that could be considered a "public policy proposal" will make me unhappy, and I'm way too busy these days to make myself deliberately unhappy. Reading the transcript, I'd have to say that it's less objectionable than most (including his first), and he did a deft job in kissing the Pelosi's posterior. But it's still just an announcement for an upcoming auction of stolen goods.

All patriotic Americans need to band together to control the rhetorical and policy excesses of the State of the Union speeches. What I propose is that friends gather together to watch, and whenever a new initiative is proposed, they should down a shot of their favorite distilled beverage. This can unite our fractured political landscape and foster bipartisanship. Republicans will drink to Bush's proposals; Democrats will drink to forget them. And vice-versa, of course, when the other wing of the Boot On Your Neck Party holds the office.

This will require great self-sacrifice. If practiced conscientiously, the outcome of any SOTU would be acute alcohol poisoning. If we can get enough Americans involved enough to die for the Presidents' promises, maybe he'll quit making them.

New front in the abortion war

There's a small problem with abortion providers practicing medical confidentiality:

"In all 50 states, sexual activity with underage children is illegal. Also, every state mandates that if a healthcare worker has reason to suspect that an underage girl is being sexually abused, they are required by law to report that information to a designated law enforcement or child protective services agency. That agency is then responsible to investigate the possibility that the child may be the victim of sexual abuse or statutory rape," according to Life Dynamics.

Now there's a movement to cut off Planned Parenthood's Title X money for violations of these laws.

To some extent, the abortion industry has painted itself into this corner by fighting parental notification laws. It really should be up to the parents to prosecute abuse. Yes, that's harder when one parent is the abuser, but if both parents are notified, chances are good that something will happen. When parents aren't notified, the State must be hyper-vigilant about the rights of the child, which means they need the information.

If this strategy is successful, we're left with the case of the 20-40% of pregnant girls 15 and under who were impregnated by minors (per the story's stats, which I'm skeptical of) not having access to abortion. That will undoubtedly make some folks happy, but I'm not one of them.

Why conservatives are hopeless, Take 2

Today's example is from Carl Hames of Little Elm, TX, writing in the Feb. '07 Mother Earth News:

I am a die-hard conservative Republican ... not particularly convinced that humans are causing global warming ... But for the life of me, with solar power being so easy to install and so cheap ... I don't know why every state doesn't mandate that every new home being built must come with a solar-electric system. It's a no-brainer. I'm going to send this suggestion to every member of our State Assembly.

...with public schools being so easy to send to and so cheap...
...with abortions being so easy to obtain and so cheap...
...with local police SWAT funding being so easy to obtain and so cheap...
...with government health care being so easy to obtain and so cheap...
...with ID chips for animals being so easy to obtain and so cheap...
...with eminent domain for redevelopment being so easy and so cheap...

Why doesn't "every state mandate", Carl? I haven't the foggiest. I mean, it's not like any of them actually believe in private property.

Ney: bend down and give me 30

OK, so Bob Ney is a lush. Not surprising; no sober man would have done what he did.

But this guy sounds almost as bad:

Bill Livingston, a GOP ex-congressman from Louisiana who also served on the Ethics Committee, said the compressed Tuesday through Thursday work week adopted by Republicans let congressmen operate without enough supervision by peers, and said longer hours imposed by Democrats might remedy matters.

“There’s a reason Bob Ney ran into problems,” Livingston said. “It’s because people weren’t watching him.”

'Scuse me? These are the guys "we" hire to set rules for the rest of us (or so the mythology says). If they can't govern themselves, how can they govern us? And who will act in loco parentis for wayward Congressdroids, and who in turn are their parents?

Be afraid, very afraid...

...of 30 million underachieving and very horny Chinamen, aka "cannon fodder". The military has always been a stepping stone for the underclass, and rape has always been part of war.

Liu said the sex ratio imbalance was not connected to China's family planning policy. "It is more a result of the deep-rooted notion in Chinese culture that men are superior to women," she said.

I suppose she had to say that, though it's rampant nonsense. When the policy is "one child", abortion is not only permitted but encouraged, and you have the technology to sex the fetus, I think we'd have the same outcome here.

Ron Paul for President!

OMG! Ron Paul has thrown his hat in the ring.
He's not going to get the nomination. Any party which claims to speak for limited government, yet has John, son of Cain as Presidential front-runner, is not going to go for Ron Paul. But if he makes it into the Ohio primary, he has my vote. And if he gains the nomination and the LP candidate doesn't step down, the party deserves to go down in flames.

House votes price controls on labor

I bet you didn't see that headline in your paper. But it's the truth. You probably saw something about a "boost in wages", as if Congress actually had that power.

Workers at the Wendy's in Cuyahoga Falls are cheering about their new-found wealth...oh wait, there ARE no workers and no Wendy's there; it got closed up by the voters of Ohio, acting under the delusion that they were granting a "boost in wages."

At least a federal minimum-wage boost will equalize the misery. But Steve LaTourette knows better than he voted.

Paul Hackett, hero

I haven't been a fan of anti-war Democrats in general, or of Paul Hackett in particular. But I was impressed to read that he'd chased some bad guys down and held them at gunpoint until police arrived. Of course the civilian AR15 is not an "assault weapon" (assuming that word to have some objective meaning besides "scary gun"), but the reporter tried.

Gotta love this line:

"He said he had done this about 200 times in Iraq, but this time there was not a translation problem," the police report said.

Strickland begins with a bang

Our governor has a different idea of "10 days" than the legislature does, thus beginning his regime with a constitutional crisis.

It's hard to feel sorry for the Republicans in this. If they'd done their work instead of waiting until the last minute, and if Taft hadn't fecklessly pocketed the bill, this wouldn't be an issue. I'm mildly in favor of the noneconomic damage limits, but hey, it's a new regime. If they're such an obviously good idea, the legislature can override the veto, yes?

But what's just bizarre is this:

Attorney General Marc Dann, who, like Strickland, is a Democrat, said he would "vigorously" defend the governor's veto. But he also said he would offer legal counsel to members of the Ohio General Assembly if it wanted to sue.

Can you say "conflict of interest"?

Ohio's next employee-health crusade

Jacob Grier calls pizza "the widowmaker":

Driver-sales workers — pizza delivery guys, vending machine stockers, etc. — clock in as the fifth most dangerous occupation with 38 deaths per 100,000 workers every year. The risks of traffic accidents and crime combine to make this one pretty perilous profession.

In other words, dialing up a pizza from Domino’s is just as bad, probably even worse, than lighting up in a bar. If smokers can’t force bar and restaurant workers to inhale their fumes, then surely people too lazy to cook or pick up their own dinners shouldn’t be able to force drivers to risk their lives delivering food. No worker should ever have to choose between his safety and his livelihood. How many innocents must die bearing midnight snacks for the gluttonous and slothful before we put a stop to such irresponsible behavior?

The lesson is clear. For the sake of the pizza delivery guys, we must ban pizza delivery. Working together, we can have a Delivery Free DC by 2008.

The sky is falling! Pesos for pizza in US

The dextrosphere has its panties in a bunch over the decision of the pizza chain Pizza Patron to accept pesos as payment. Evidently this is the first stage in the adoption of the Amero, shameless pandering to illegal immegrants, and The End of America As We Know It (TEOAAWKI?).

I grew up in (or rather, near enough) a border town (Port Huron MI) that the issue was not "Will you take Canadian dollars?" but "What's your discount rate on Canadian dollars?". And vice-versa, of course.

This is a chain-wide decision, not just for border outlets, so the claim is that the parellel doesn't work. 'Scuse me, but Pizza Patron is a private business. As such, it has a right to accept payment in any way it sees fit, be that Federal Reserve Notes, pesos, euros, gold, Liberty Dollars, or crack rocks. (OK, it's not legally permitted to accept crack rocks, but it has a right to...see the difference, Grasshopper?). As long as they continue to accept the stuff that says "this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" (the paper that Case gives me under pretense that it's real money, a pretense that my creditors fortunately also share), I'm cool with it.

Addendum: actually, I'm cool with it even if they don't take Federal Reserve Notes. It IS their business. But I wouldn't be happy if I really wanted a pizza and had no pesos to pay for it.

On his last working day...

"Milhous" Taft decided his reputation couldn't get any worse, so he vetoed a bill to restrict spycams at intersections, citing "home rule".

If the Village of Windham decided to legalize marijuana smoking within village limits, or NOT ban smoking in restaurants, I'd like to see how that "home rule" business would play.

Don't let the door hit you on your behind, Bobby.

Another employer driven from Ohio

BPNC Distillery has left Ohio, largely thanks to harassment instigated by our now blessedly-former First Lady, Hope Taft. Brian Pearson's crime? Manufacturing pre-made Jello Shots. Ironically, he's now in Temperance (MI), right across the border, where they know how to treat an entrepreneur and former Marine.

The Religious Right won't be able to ruin Ohio's economy any more. Now it's the unions' turn.

A Ford, not a Lincoln

On day when People's Employees (except wife) have day off to honor death of only non-elected* President of glorious Fatherland, capitalist running-dog Joseph Farah remembers Gerald Ford.

*One of my colleagues took offence at this, claiming that Ford was "one of two". Without debating the facts, I am willing to change that to "Only President to serve without pretense of election".

All the best lists

I occasionally twit Mano Singham for leftism. But he's spot on here. If you aren't on some government list somewhere, you aren't doing your job.

As a matter of strategy, I'm not sure it's worthwile to get on as many lists as possible. Surveillance is expensive, after all, so why give them more reason to tax us to spy? On the other hand, enough spying can lead to the collapse of the system. It didn't help the East Germans that a quarter of the population was working for the Stasi. Ignoring the government's list-making and getting on with life is probably best. This also means not volunteering information for lists. That's hard to do nowadays, with employers increasingly becoming an enforcement arm of the state (can you say "fascism"?). Case demands my socialist insecurity number and takes Danegeld out before I see it, just like any employer. At least they aren't using it as a library ID number any more. And I don't use it any more than I absolutely have to. Nor do I co-operate with private snoops. "What's your zip code?" the cashier asks as I hand her CASH. "99999" I answer...she blinks, but they don't pay her enough to argue. And they don't pay me to do their marketing research.

Brits, stay home!

Really, I mean it. I love you guys, and this country could certainly use your money. But if you're going to lose your privacy for the simple act of visiting the States, why come here?

Nobel Prize is unethical in Colorado

"The people" in Colorado have imposed new ethics rules on their legisrapers. And now that calmer legal heads are examining the wording of the initiative, they're finding that it bans state college professors from accepting Nobel Prize money, and children of public university employees from accepting many scholarships. One can understand the impulse behind the law; eight legisrapers are leaving office early so they'll still be able to become lobbyists. But the solution is not amateur-drafted regulation, but a total separation of economy and state, so that it's not worthwhile to lobby.

Iraq is a success because...

..of 13% GDP growth. So says Kevin McCullough.

Now, prosperity is generally a sign that some things are being done right. And given the economic dysfunctionality of Baathism (even allowing for the effects of the embargo), growth would be expected upon its removal. But I have to wonder how much of this is Broken Window Fallacy, how much American pump-priming. And there's something a bit ghoulish about this, like praising Fascism for making the trains run on time.

Anarchy In Chicago

Chicago is as anxious to enforce its new fois gras ban:

But Mayor Richard Daley is no fan of the ban--just this week, he called it "the silliest law" the City Council has ever passed.

Perhaps that helps explain why the Health Department is in no rush to boost their compliance checks.

"In a world of very limited public health resources we're being asked to drop some things so we can enforce a law like this," Hadac said. "With HIV/AIDS, cancer, West Nile virus and some of the other things we deal with, foie gras is our lowest priority."

as restauranteurs are to obey it:

When the letter came from City Hall threatening punishment if he continued to serve foie gras at his North Side restaurant, Doug Sohn framed the warning and set it beside his cash register.

Think of how many more laws would benefit from such treatment.

Walter Williams hits one out of the park

...re ethnic profiling. I think this is the first time I've ever seen Williams complain about being a victim of racism.

A law-abiding Muslim who's given extra airport screening or a black who's stopped by the police is perfectly justified in being angry, but with whom should he be angry? I think a Muslim should be angry with those who've made terrorism and Muslim synonymous and blacks angry with those who've made blacks and crime synonymous. The latter is my response to the insulting sounds of car doors locking sometimes when I'm crossing a street in downtown Washington, D.C., or when taxi drivers pass me by.

And this is precious, for clarifying the relationship between morality and reality:

You say, "Williams, are you justifying religious and racial profiling?" No. I'm not justifying anything any more than I'd try to justify Einstein's special law of relativity. I'm trying to explain a phenomenon. By the way, I think some of the airport screening is grossly stupid, but I'm at peace with the Transportation Security Administration. They have their rules, and I have mine. One of mine is to minimize my association with idiocy. Thus, I no longer fly commercial.

Where's CAIR when they could do some good?

Hookah bars are scrambling to not be a casualty of the Ohio Dictatorship of the Proletariat's anti-smoking law. But some of their patrons deserve a little pain and suffering:

Vip Garg, an ex-cigarette smoker and a doctor at MetroHealth Medical Center, said it didn't occur to him when he voted for November's anti-smoking measure that it would cover the water pipe.

Aww, poor boy! And this is a doctor? You'd trust your body to somebody that stupid? (both to suck hookah in spite of the health risks, and to think it wasn't "smoking").

Anyway, in this wonderful multicultural country, shouldn't there be some religious or cultural exemption for Middle Easterners?

"Stiff" opposition for Hillary

I want one!

Orson Welles reincarnates in Belgium

Flemish separatists are more plausible than Martian invaders. Thousands of Belgians wept at the partition of their country, only to find that the TV broadcast was a hoax.

So what's the big deal? You're all in the European Union anyway. But if the Flemish did secede, I would certainly raise un Trappiste in their honor.

Pubs vs. "the public"

Oh my, some barkeeps are flouting the Dictatorship of the Proletariat's new smoking ban, because there are no enforcement teeth in it yet, leaving county health commissioners to pewl and moan.

Good on 'em, I say. Whose bar is it?

At least they didn't call it "Michelle's Law"

Another pair of weepy parents have had their way with the Ohio Legislature. It always happens like this: something happens to a young person, a law is proposed "for the sake of the children", and suddenly parents are being told how to parent. 'Scuse me, Debbie and Ray, but if it's such a bad idea to let teens taxi teens, why did you let Michelle get into that car? And if she did it without your permission, what makes you think that kids will obey the law, when they don't obey their own parents?

I grew up in the sticks, and some of the most personally enriching events of my early life happened when I drove at night with teenagers. I think particularly of the trip at night to Rochester MI (a good 50 miles or so)with Tom Wright, Nancy Huiser and Sharon Fockler to hear Lyle Nordstrom's Oakland University Collegium Musicum, which opened me to early music. That would have been 1973 or 4. We were all Good Kids, so our parents were cool with it, though I'm sure they worried. Now they'd worry about their kids getting busted.

We're prolonging adolescence, and treating more adults like children. Why don't we just make adulthood a capital crime? That would be one way of dealing with Congress; can't have one if there's nobody alive old enough to serve under the Constitution.

Why we're losing our freedom

This poll from WorldNetDaily says it all:

Should Rep.-elect Keith Ellison be seated in the upcoming Congress?

No, he'd be unable to uphold an oath to the U.S. Constitution, since Muslims put the Quran first 43.98% (1601)

No, Congress needs to do the right thing for American security and block his seating 26.84% (977)

No, he's unfit for office due to his links with the Nation of Islam 9.23% (336)

Yes, he was elected by Americans. Why is this question even being asked? 5.66% (206)

Yes, there is still no religion test in the Constitution 4.70% (171)

Only if he takes his oath on the Bible 4.51% (164)

No, in a post-9/11 world, it is obvious he shouldn't be seated 2.91% (106)

Only if he doesn't take his oath on Quran 1.10% (40)

Other 1.04% (38)

Yes, there are millions of Muslims who deserve representation 0.03% (1)

In summary, 88.6% of 3640 respondents think the Constitution is a "goddamned piece of paper" (as their Fearless Leader is alleged to have said). And don't go on about the inaccuracy of Internet polls...you actually have to register for WND's polls, so they're more likely to reflect actual readership. The Red Team allegedly supports the Constitution, remember? And for even one to vote for not seating a legally-elected Congressman on the basis of religion...well, it explains the past five years, doesn't it?

(For the Constitutionally-challenged, #5 is the correct answer, though I counted #4,9 and 10 as acceptable.)

Kookcinich '08

Sorry, Dennis. You're going to do worse than in '04. Give it up before you hurt yourself.

One of the least forgivable things that the folks at Acres USA ever did was to print an interview with The Kooch. This could have been a good thing, given that Kucinich is one of the few pols out there whose ideas on agriculture policy weren't written by ADM or the Iowa Farm Bureau. But alas, it was almost entirely about The War...which Dennis, being a peacenik, really has nothing substantive to say about. I mean, after the Battle of Trenton, he would have been obsessing about fish kills in the Delaware from the Continental Army's oars.

At least ther'll be a lot of free blog humor the next several years.

O Canada, we stand for heat for thee

In the midst of one of Canada's coldest winters in recent history, Stockwell Day (Public Safety minister, and a man who had too much personality to become Prime Minister) has been catching flak for his mockery of global warming. This in a country whose main problem (besides one language too many) is that it's too damn cold.

Particularly cute was the Green Party leader:

Green Party leader Elizabeth May said she wasn't surprised by Day's comments.

"Mr. Stockwell Day sums up what David Suzuki said about parliamentarians, that they're all ignoramuses,'' May said in a telephone interview.

Then presumably if May were elected, she would also be an ignoramus. Not that that would be a change, mind you.

Day's comments reflect his ignorance about his own portfolio as minister of public safety, May said.

"The most significant threat to Canadian security is climate change, not terrorism.''

How's that? Because the country that provides Canadian security (the US) would fry? Or because of the hordes of Yanks buying time-share condos on Great Slave Lake?

$90K in the freezer gets you...re-election

I can't flaming believe this. N'awlins elected a CROOK over a BLACK WOMAN, largely because the "wrong people" supported her.

But I found this grimly amusing:

The law firm Jefferson founded became the largest black-owned practice in the South. He created a political organization, the Progressive Democrats, which fielded candidates for the school board, assessors' races, state House seats and mayoral contests.

When we discuss similar organizations of the 19th century, the term used is "machine". Why not now?

One veto override, one to go

OMG! The legislature spanked Bob Daft re his gun law veto. I really didn't see that one coming.

Now for the Senate...

Frank Giglio: Cleveland's New Homeless

As if Cleveland didn't have enough of a homeless problem already, now they're making homeowners homeless. For their own good, of course.

Nobody is in the right here. Free Times has exposed Cimperman as a lying scumbag on the issue of Giglio's home. Nobody in their right mind doubts that this is part of a concerted effort to get Frank out. I have any number of homeowning friends whose houses would fail inspection on the same grounds as Frank's. If the Department of Building and Housing applied the same level and manner of enforcement to all of Cleveland, they could probably knock the population figures down to 5 digits.

On the other hand, Frank is a pig. Worse, he is a pig who has defended his piggishness on the religious grounds of being a Neo-pagan, which I personally resent.

But he's a pig who owns his own sty. That's the main issue. By what right does a city remove a man from his own home? And why in Goddess' name would anyone buy real estate in a city where such things were condoned?

Shut up and wear your horns!

A British judge has blocked a man from exposing the married public figure who cuckolded him:

In his ruling, the judge said: "There is a powerful argument that the conduct of an intimate or sexual relationship is a matter in respect of which there is 'a reasonable expectation of privacy'."

He did not accept the submission that there was, or should be, a general legal principle that there was no legitimate expectation of privacy for a person who conducted a relationship with another person's wife.

A wise woman once said to me, "If you ain't proud, don't be it." Mr. CC obviously convinced himself that what he had done was right, or he would not have done it. So why is he afraid of exposure? There's a "powerful argument" that the public has a right to know who not to leave wives alone with. To legally block the forces of social opprobrium is social engineering of the most blatant sort.

The "people's will" kicks in tomorrow

"The people" get their public smoking ban tomorrow, and not everyone is happy about it:

"I certainly have sympathy” for people who still fire up, Kollar said. “One customer said that this thing starts Dec. 7, and so did [America’s involvement in] World War II. He said, ‘Another war’s about to start.’ I said, ‘Whoa!’¤”

One can hope.

Harry Quick got to vote

Cuyahoga Co. had 12,000 more ballots cast than voters signed in, in the past election. I'm sure Harry was one of them.

That's not sloppiness. You get the signature, you give them the machine card. It's not rocket science. If there's any precinct where there are more than one or two overvotes, any poll worker who was there needs to be barred from poll working, because somebody there was obviously involved in fraud.

Rights, government and iguanas

The same anonymoose came back to play after I slapped him once, and he was a little more reasonable this time, so I'll treat his argument seriously.

Rights and abilities are granted by limiting others; that is the very basis of our government. We protect life by outlawing murder. We protect free speech by preventing violence. We offer equal education by removing religion. We protect health by controlling food quality and contents. We allow drinking by limit the amount to protect life and the right to travel with risking ones life. We protect our economy by controlling trade.

Continue reading "Rights, government and iguanas"

No iguana meat for you!

The Food Nazis in New York City have been working overtime to Americanize the diets of recent immigrants:

NEW YORK -- A food safety inspector noticed an interesting special posted in the front window of a market in Queens: 12 beefy armadillos.

In Brooklyn, inspectors found 15 pounds of iguana meat at a West Indian market and 200 pounds of cow lungs for sale at another store. A West African grocery in Manhattan sold smoked rodent meat from a refrigerated display case.

All of it was headed for the dinner table. All of it was also illegal.

Of course, the inspectors are all covered under the Eichmann defense...just doing their job to keep poor immigrants safe.

Ruiad Nasher, who immigrated from Bangladesh in 1995, manages the Master Mini Market in Brooklyn and was caught selling more than 50 pounds of chicken from an unapproved source this year. Nasher bought the chickens from a poultry market in Brooklyn, and said he didn't know he was violating state law.

"In Bangladesh, you didn't have all these rules," he said.

Sad but true. I wonder if he came here in search of freedom?

Meanwhile. I just found out about the FDA boilerplate that all eggs for retail sale MUST carry. Being a law-abiding American, I have made the following label for my egg cartons:

You are an informed consumer
so you know that eggs have 0 g trans fat and all about "SAFE HANDLING INSTRUCTIONS: To prevent illness from bacteria: keep eggs refrigerated, cook eggs until yolks are firm, and cook foods containing eggs thoroughly."
but the FDA makes me tell you anyway.

"Besides having money what has Capri done wrong?"

So asks bobsmith@yahoo.com.

Run for public office. And run for public office under a party that believes in redistribution of income. In short, she's going to have her hand in my pocket so that she can feel good about herself. I'd like to see a legislative rule stating that before you can vote for any tax to help individuals, you have to donate to charity all assets beyond the average net worth of your constituents. Ain't gonna happen, but it would be fair: give your money before you give mine.

I don't hate Capri personally...never met the woman. And I don't envy her wealth. As far as I know, her family earned it fair and square, and if she wanted to lead a Paris Hilton lifestyle and blow it all, I wouldn't have boo to say about it. What I resent is somebody using their financial power in order to gain financial and paramilitary power over me. And even if her motives were absolutely pure, I resent do-gooders.

Do I think the rich should stay out of politics? Hell, I think EVERYONE should stay out of politics.

Jesus, Gary and Joseph!

Those wacky campus activists are at it again, this time with an "ACLU nativity". Of course, Jesus is missing; the ACLU doesn't want anything to do with Him. Or is that a comment on the fecundity of "Gary and Joseph"? If you believe in the miracle of the Incarnation, it's not much more of a stretch to think that God could do His own transgendering on Gary, if it suited His purposes.

Aside from that little interpretive infelicity, good job, McDonald. Now it's time to defend that evil exclusive religious figure, Santa Claus.

Little Capri

Capri Cafaro got from her party what she couldn't get from the voters: a political seat, Marc Dann's OH Senate seat to be exact. How long until we can vote her out?

I started a little bluesish song about her a couple years back. Maybe one of these days I'll record it...but it keeps changing.

Little Capri, little Capri,
gonna spend all Daddy's money.
Spend all his cash, all you can get;
You'll never beat Steve LaTourette.

Lttle Capri, Little Capri,
Face that looks like Hillary,
Did you ever work for a dime,
Sell your plasma just one time?

Little Capri, Little Capri,
Stupider name than Tiffany,
Got a job from Democrats,
Worker's party needs fat cats.

Little Capri, Little Capri,
Got a job from your party.
Not appointed 'cause you're cute,
Got the job because you have loot.

My, that was quick

It seems like just yesterday (actually it was the day before yesterday)that I blogged about improvements to Ohio's gun laws. Well, it's been passed by both houses, and as I suspected, Daft has promised a veto (which the legislature has already said they would override.)

Fingerbutt wins the award for most inane argument:

Sen. Eric Fingerhut, a Shaker Heights Democrat, during a floor speech, said that gun control is more imperative in urban areas than in rural areas. He chastised his Senate colleagues for pushing a bill that hurts Ohio's large cities.

"If you don't respect my constituents, you don't respect me," he said.

Well, I don't respect him, but that's besides the point. What's interesting to me is that HE doesn't respect his constituents. I haven't read the statistics, but based on observation, I'm not convinced that the crime rate per capita is much lower in the country; it just seems like there is more crime in the city because there are more people there. Po' trash is po' trash, regardless of location or color. So here's Eric saying that we need gun control more in the cities, because my constituents are more evil and irresponsible than your constituents. That's pretty typical for a liberal -- but jeez, guys, you get dissed and still elect the guy? Or is it a Shaker thing, and y'all know that Eric is trying to save you from the unwashed masses on the other side of those roadblocks?

It looks like a fine bill overall. Too bad about the journalist access provision, but we'll fix that later.

OH gun laws to be improved?

It looks like the Ohio Senate has come up with a CCW/local preemption fix that the State Highway Patrol can live with. Now let's see if they can get it through before the next session, and if lamest duck Daft will sign it. Kudos to Jordan and Aslanides!

Beer as cheap as bottled water

...is a holiday tradition in Britain, where the stores drop prices to lure shoppers. Of course, not everyone is pleased:

Paul Waterson, president of the Scottish Licensed Traders' Association agreed: " This type of price-cutting just encourages people to drink excessively outside of a controlled environment like a pub.

"The supermarkets want to sell alcohol in the same way that they sell bread or eggs, but you can't. There is a moral responsibility that comes with it."

So, do low prices encourage the overconsumption of milk and eggs? Hey, people drink over the holidays. I know I consume more than usual. Cheap beer wouldn't be the come-on it is if people weren't out for it to begin with. And where does "moral responsibility" end? Will the British someday have to input cholesterol numbers in order to buy eggs?

The king's highwaymen own the game.

Did you know that "severing parts from roadkill is illegal without a permit or tag from a state game official or a police officer"?

Me neither.

I'm somewhat in sympathy with road workers; a headless deer IS grosser to pick up than a whole one. But out where I am, the only crew cleaning up roadkill are the hawks. And damnit, if I hit something and it damages my car, I want to get SOME good out of it.

Honkies only need apply

At Boston University, the College Republicans have instituted a scholarship for which you need to be at least 1/4 Caucasian. So far there are no takers. Perhaps no self-respecting Caucasian would apply for such a scholarship. If so, where does that leave other minorities who apply for similar scholarships? You can disagree with these folks on the basis of taste, but not on principle.

Cleveland borrowers will have to think...

...now that the Ohio Supreme Court has decided that state lending law trumps home rule. A good decision, it was. But why does that sow Resnick think that "predatory lending" is even a valid concept? Any party in a financial deal will seek their own advantage. If a borrower doesn't examine their deal carefully, whose fault is that?

Art too much for Oberlin

It's kind of a hippy-town thing to regard store windows as a venue for edgy art. My girlfiend, Dianna Talley, was pushing the envelope in Ann Arbor in the late 70s. And in Oberlin, evidently caroler-bashing snowmen and kids making meth with their chemistry sets are OK.

But even Oberlin has its limits. And the edge in Oberlin is...gingerbread Nazis.

Now me, I think it's healthy to regard Nazis as a bunch of crumbs stamped out of the same mold. It's a pity that they're sweet, to be sure. And I haven't seen (and now can't see) their context in the window. I suspect that the same people who say "Never again!" don't want to be reminded that it happened once before. Which is fine, except that things shoved down the historical memory hole tend to come back up. And as a response, it validates shock-art, because, well, somebody was shocked.

The hardware store owner won't be inviting the window dresser back. Understandable I guess. But what did all that weird stuff have to do with hardware anyway?

Hey, Clay...

If Hoyer v. Murtha was a "landslide", what was Boehner v. Pence? Besides just sad?

H. Res 288 and freakout in the dextrosphere

rightwingprof brings my attention to H Res.288, which carries Muslim water by tut-tutting over bad things said about Islam and the Koran. Evidently 7.62mm Justice and Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler are also upset. RWP refers to it as "legislation to destroy the 1st Amendment."

OK, whackjobs, let's get a couple of things straight here:

1. It's not legislation. It's a resolution. Nowhere is this document is there any specific infraction tied to a specific legal penalty. This thing does not have the force of law. The only force it might have would be to collect a few more Muslim votes. If Conyers wants to kiss Dearborn booty, it's no different from anything Christian congressmen have been doing for years...and I haven't heard yelp one out of y'all about THAT destroying the 1st Amendment. I agree that it's a violation of the spirit of the Establishment Clause. However, the law doesn't deal with spirit, but with facts.

2. This is very old news; the thing was introduced 18 months ago, and has apparently gone nowhere. I don't stay up at night worrying about what flaky crap Dennis Kucinich has attached his name to. Neither should you.

Attention Wal-Mart shoppers: Edwards wants a Playstation

OK, I'm going to take John Edwards at his word: that he didn't ask a volunteer to get a Playstation 3 for him, let alone get one from Wal-mart.

So...is his internal political education really that crappy? Was the kid really that clueless? Or, since he wanted one for himself, did he figure that using John Edwards' name would facilitate that? Since he did this all on his own, if he had been successful, would John Edwards' Playstation have gone to his kids instead? Did he figure that Wal-Mart was big and bureaucratic enough that it wouldn't notice suce a thing?

If I were Edwards, this guy would be volunteering for somebody else. But if I were Edwards, I wouldn't be picking on Wal-Mart either. Well, heck, I wouldn't be Edwards...though the looks and the money wouldn't hurt.

UPDATE:
This line from Taranto (re "the young kid")is too good not to include:

So have a little sympathy for the populist John Edwards. After all, these days good unpaid child labor is hard to find.

Uncle Miltie's dead

this one, not this one.

If Friedman had done nothing else, writing one book that had an effect on one man in one country would have been enough to ensure his place in history:

"I had read only one book on economics — Milton Friedman's Free to Choose. I was so ignorant at the time that I thought that what Friedman wrote about the benefits of privatization, the flat tax and the abolition of all customs rights, was the result of economic reforms that had been put into practice in the West. It seemed common sense to me and, as I thought it had already been done everywhere, I simply introduced it in Estonia, despite warnings from Estonian economists that it could not be done. They said it was as impossible as walking on water. We did it: we just walked on the water because we did not know that it was impossible." -- Mart Laar, former prime minister of Estonia.

Hsieh WHAT?!

NoodleFood has been a bastion of sanity in the blogosphere, but of late, I really think the Hsiehs are losing it. First there was the whole big thread of assent and support to Leonard Peikoff's notion that Objectivists should vote Democrat because theocracy is a bigger threat than socialism. Sorry, don't see it, at all. It can certainly be argued that the GOP has sold out its libertarian wing to the Religious Right..and Nov. 7 showed what that got them. Americans, even screaming-in-tongues, snakehandling nutjobs, are not at core theocratic. OTOH, socialism is as omnipresent in modern American thought as air is in the sky, to the point that the highest ranking elected Republican espouses socialist policies. Even ceding the tactical advantages of blocking the theocrats first, one is left with the recommendation to compromise with evil. What would Rand do?

In any case, rational voting as a concept is pretty much a non-starter. The Duopoly appeals solely to emotion. That's why they try to kick minor parties out of debates: because the outsiders beat them. Information is filtered, and presented in little emotion-stirring snippets. I'm not sure fear of Hell is any worse a reason to vote than fear of Social Security cuts. It's hard to get enough information to make a rational decision. that doesn't mean one shouldn't try. But to expect the electorate to revamp their decision-making process is hopeless. Ain't gonna happen in our lifetimes, even if St. Ayn comes flapping down from the clouds with little Athena-wings.

Then there's Paul, trying to find a new term to cover waterboarding, because evidently instinctive panic at perceived threat of death is not the same as excruciating pain and is therefore not torture. I suppose that, since he doesn't believe in angels, he can't argue about hom many can dance on the head of a pin, so he has to make this argument instead. I don't see him lining up to experience this non-torture, so somewhere his mind knows that a spade is a spade. It's fairly benign and non-destructive as tortures go, and sometimes torture might be a lesser evil. But there's nothing to be gained by avoiding reality.

It's kind of ironic, given the whole anti-religion thing, that the dictonary definition of "torture" that Paul cites uses the word "excruciating". I guess that if you didn't actually nail Jesus to the cross, and took him down whenever he became too weak to raise himself up to breathe, that wouldn't be torture either.

The Republican's problem diagnosed

...by rightwingprof, who notes how Christian conservatives have driven libertarian Republicans from the party. As usual, he minces no words:

We're at war, and the President has God knows how many judicial appointments waiting in the wings and any number of other pressing issues that are crucial — and Bill Frist thinks it's a good idea to fight the evil internet gambling menace instead.

What a mouthbreathing, drooling moron. And who, again, are the idiots who elected this dickhead?

Worth the read; most of it is a lot more reasonably-phrased.

Guns N' Roses vs. Oktoberfest

Email from my dad:

Read your blog and if freedom means you can perform for an audience while breaking the law and while being soused, inspite of the majority opinion. Then I want no part of Libertarianism either.

Evidently their fans have no problem with GNR being soused, and they're the only ones whose opinions matter. As for "the law", it's a red herring here. What business is it of the State if people choose to drink onstage? Seems like the only ones with a legitimate interest are the audience, the band, the promoters hiring the band, and the owners of the venue. Everyone else needs to butt out. Certainly "majority opinion" has no relevance here; if that's the moral and legal arbiter, why don't we just shut the band down? What we're dealing with here is a Christian blue law. I would also add that YOUR SON has drunk onstage many times, had open beer cups, lifted them up to "Ein prosit". Different state laws and social context here, but BY THE LAW (which is what you're considering sacred), the Joe Wendel Ensemble, doing an Oktoberfest in Maine and doing their usual Oktoberfesty things, would be CRIMINALS. Now, as a German-American, do you think the state has a legitimate interest in stamping out German-American cultural expression?

And while I'm picking on that email:

It scares the beJesus out of me to see Bush kissing up to Pelosi and Reed.

That was a foregone conclusion back in '99...you Pugs should have ran from that "compassionate conservative" crap the minute it left his mouth. IN PRINCIPLE, Bush is as Commie as Pelosi; he's just more "moderate". He still thinks your money is there to help the disadvantaged (or to be more precise, our children's money). It might be marginally better to be raped with 5" rather than 9". but it's still rape, and it's not conservative.

Shut down those dark Satanic (puppy)-mills!

"There are hundreds of puppy mills in the state, close to a thousand, and many of them operate underground to avoid regulation," Hughes said.

And Mr. Hughes thinks the solution to this is...more regulation?

I don't approve of inhumane dog-breeding farms (less perjorative term than "puppy mills"). But I really don't see how they are a legitimate concern of government. And when a legislator's view of the problem is as diffuse as this, the likelihood of the innocent being persecuted increases.

Michael Schiavo kills again

OK, maybe that's a little unfair; there's no evidence that Schiavo's campaigning for pro-euthanasia candidates cased them to die of starvation actively hurt their cause. But it's worth noting that they all went down to defeat.

Another vendor off the list

Last night, I was listening to WCPN, and heard one of those "advertisements that is not an advertisement" (since public radio doesn't have advertisements, don't you know?), this one for "Great Lakes Brewing Co., the ecologically and socially conscious maker of Christmas Ale."

I turned the radio off.

Now, what was that supposed to mean? Anyone who has been reading here for very long knows that I am "ecologically and socially conscious.", though the exact content of that consciousness would probably appall the typical NPR listener. And why should I care about that more than that Great Lakes is "conscious of brewing traditions" (which I can taste) or conscious of anything else?

There are a few things which GLBC does that are "ecologically conscious", I suppose, which I approve of. Making spent brewing grains available to small farmers is one of those. I don't have the science to say with certainty whether those deals are of ecological net benefit; intuitively it would seem so, but it depends of the energy costs of the entire transaction, including growing the grain again for feeding straight, transport, etc. I can be fairly certain, though, that if that did not make economic sense, it would not be happening. Spent brewing grains have nutritive and thus economic value, and both parties must find the deal attractive in order to participate.

And "socially conscious"? Some people might consider a socially-conscious brewer to be an oxymoron, though GLBCs pricing shows a concern with keeping their product out of the hands of street people. How can one brew in a socially-conscious way? They're producing a product. They may treat their employees better than the average business (and given the skills needed from a brewmaster, they'd best treat theirs well), or they may practice charity. But again, these are business decisions, and really aren't relevant to the beer I drink.

But really, I am treating this expression as if it were meant literally, as an attempt to impart information. It's a slogan, not a statement. If we parse it connotatively rather than denotatively, it says, "We're a cool, hip bunch of Green Commies." "Social consciousness", like "social justice", means "Willing to rob one to support another."

Now, actually, I don't have a problem with GLBC holding this position. I don't have to know somebody's politics in order to do business with them. Their product meets my needs, or it doesn't. But, strangely, the only product information offered was the announcement of their seasonal brew. And that was offered after their political statement. Apparently, their politics is more important than their beer.

All right, then. I'm in the market for beer instead of politics; it'll be a long 2 years, and alcohol will help. There are lots of brewers who brew as well (or better!) as Great Lakes. So...thanks for the effective advertisement, and good-bye.

Losers at the Supreme Court

A day after voters defeated abortion restrictions in three states, hundreds of protesters gathered in the rain outside the court. Anti-abortion advocates curled up in the fetal position along the wet sidewalk, forcing pedestrians to step over them as abortion rights groups chanted and held signs nearby.

Considering who won yesterday, looking like a fetus is the last thing I'd want to do. I mean, if there's an absolute right to an abortion, is it still active in the 200th trimester?

I'm glad the Religious Right got their butts kicked. I'm sorry that it took a huge turnout of commies, cheese-suckers and economic illiterates to do it. But that's what happens when you try to run other people's lives: you inspire a backlash. If these folks spent half the time spreading the Gospel that they do lobbying for laws, we wouldn't need anti-abortion laws, because nobody would be getting abortions. They need to live their lives, teach their truths, and make babies. In 30 years or so, the culture will change.

Disheartening evening

It isn't the Democrats winning...we expected that. They will of course claim to have a mandate, when they didn't win election so much as the Republicans lost it. And so they will overact, and find themselves tossed out.

It's the general trend of minding their neighbors' business, with the minimum wage hike, Smoke Free Ohio, and the Cleveland arts levy. I always want to believe that The People are wise, not that The Masses Are Asses. But democracy is the modern version of the Divine Right of Kings, and every once in awhile you'll get an electorate which is the equivalent of the worst syphillitic rotters of Renaissance Europe.

I had Peirce and Fitrakis together at 5-6%, and they're doing about half that. I thought Strickland would eke out a win, and it's been more of a blowout. Thus far, Portage has been doing better for Peirce than the state as a whole (2.5% vs. 1.8%), which is a comfort.

There's both hope and disappointment at http://www.lp.org/. Apparently the 'Pugs were successful in training their idiots to write in the Hyphen Lady for DeLay's old seat. It's Too Early To Tell, but Lampson is ahead. And the margin of victory is about that of Smither's total. Which means that Libertarians will be blamed again for not supporting theocracy, warmongering, and Socialism Lite, as if we somehow owed the Republicans our votes.

And in a moment of madness, I made an 8:30 dental appointment, so I won't be torturing myself much longer.

Everyone in NY is a drunk.

In the Vampire State, they're so anxious to punish drunk drivers that they forgot to read the fine print.

Now you can be arrested for the amount of blood alcohol your body produces naturally.

Prosecutors say they won't enforce the law until it's fixed. A good thing, too, because, as Beck points out, by the standards that The Powers That Be suggest we use to nark on possible drunk drivers, 85% of the people on the road are obviously plastered. This law would just create a tool for conviction. Think of how safe we would be if the entire population were behind bars. Oh wait...maybe we are.

They so want air time

PuffHo has a script to use so that Democrats can take over talk radio today.

Knock yourselves out, guys. I want to hear all the Democrap talking points loud and clear today. Take all the rope you want; the tree is over yonder.

Thought for the day

I think about the history of ATMs when I hear all the nervous Nellies wetting their pants over electronic voting machines. I believe those worries are totally misplaced. Now don’t get me wrong – there’s a 100% chance that the voting machines will get hacked and all future elections will be rigged. But that doesn’t mean we’ll get a worse government. It probably means that the choice of the next American president will be taken out of the hands of deep-pocket, autofellating, corporate shitbags and put it into the hands of some teenager in Finland. How is that not an improvement?

--Scott Adams

Thanks to Claire Wolfe.

Which principles?

Rick Santorum is perhaps the most principled elected politician in Congress...

So says rightwingprof, after a laundry list of flagrant thefts of taxpayer dollars and federalization of power attributed to Santorum...all of which he apparently thinks are good things.

So tell me, Dr. Bond: just what principles does Rep. Santorum hold? Or did you really want me to deduce them from the evidence presented?

Jeffrey's personal voting guide

Here are my recommendations and comments for Tuesday, if anyone cares:

Continue reading "Jeffrey's personal voting guide"

Three-monkey Republicans opening the senses over Internet poker

"I've been a loyal Republican for over 30 years, and I'm quitting the party I once loved," said Jim Henry, 55, who lives outside San Francisco. "Not because of the Mark Foley scandal or Middle East policy. But because the Republican Party wants to stop me from what I love to do: play poker over the Internet."

Well, I'm glad you're seeing the light, Mr. Henry, now that it's your ox being gored. But tell me, how many times in the past 30 years have you supported laws to stop somebody ELSE from what they love to do? For example, where do you stand on the War on Drugs?

My Republican adventure

Last night's Wendel gig was in a church rental hall in Fairlawn, an Oktoberfest for...the Summit County Republican Party. I knew I was playing for the 'Pugs, and didn't figure that my personal opinions should get in the way of my professional duties

It almost didn't happen that way though.

Continue reading "My Republican adventure"

Corsi's getting better

At last Jerome Corsi is giving us some dirt on Ted Strickland more relevant that whether he's into forgiving those who flash children. The residency and voting-frequency issues are absolutely legit. Of course, he has to poke his nose into Strickland's marital living arrangements, and mention that Strickand has never been in business for himself (trie of many politicians). And most bizarrely for a conservative, he writes:

The one consistent feature of Ted Strickland's career is that since his first try in 1976, he has been running for Congress from Ohio's southeastern 300-mile Sixth District that runs along the Ohio River bordering Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, a district that has consistently been ranked as among the poorest in America despite Strickland's nearly 12 years in office.

Does he actually think that politicians create wealth?

City Club getting gamed

The City Club of Cleveland is taking a look at its role in political debates after most candidates this year found a way to manipulate the format.

Yes, packing the hall with your supporters and giving them prepared questions to ask isn't in the spirit of the thing.

But...

I do believe the City Club has held debates in which not all candidates were invited. If they've played bipartisan politics with nonpartisan debates, they are no better than Betty Sutton's supporters...or Case Western.

It would be fairly easy to rein in spoiled brats like Blackwell and Strickland. Legitimate organizations like the City Club, League of Women Voters etc. should simply invite everyone on the ballot, and if a D or R takes a snit, let them stay home. If they want to organize their own political infomercial, let them use their own money. And let the press cover the DEBATES and not the INFOMERCIALS. All it would take is a few of the enabling organizations (in the 12-Step sense) to stand on principle, and the games would cease.

West Virginians for the Byrd

He uses two canes, and his hands shake. But even the kids like him because...

"It's not that we deserve more money than other states, but if he wasn't there, we probably wouldn't get as much as we should," said Ally Hagsett, a Marshall University sophomore and Republican. "While he's alive, we'd better get as much as we can."

...he brings home the swag.

At 88, it's about time for him to put on his robes of white. Again.

Union asks Canada Post to censor mail

That's what it amounts to. And if the post office won't, its workers will.

In a government monopoly, this labor action was totally illegetimate, as it constitutes de-facto censorship. Not that the Canadians have any problem with that; in the '70s listening to CBC, I used to marvel at mention of the "Ontario Board of Censors". But on the other hand, couldn't the religious loons who sent this mailing out have sprung for some envelopes? Sort of a "don't ask, don't tell" policy for anti-gay literature?

Christopher Soghoian, American patriot

A 24-year-old computer security student working on his doctorate at Indiana University Bloomington has created a Web site that allows anyone with an Internet connection and a printer to create and print fake boarding passes for Northwest Airlines flights.

"I don't want to help terrorists or help bad guys do bad things on airplanes, but what we have now is what we in the industry call 'security theater.' It's made to make you think you're secure without actually making you secure," Soghoian said. "As a member of the academic research community, I consider this to be a public service."

Naturally, the TSA doesn't agree. Nor do a whole hoast of bloviating opportunist politicians (but I repeat myself) like Edward Markey.

Soghoian points out that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) publicized the same security hole in April 2006. "Perhaps Sen. Schumer will end up being my cellmate," Soghoian said.

One could hope...

The page is down, but Chris' homepage is here.

Candidate sues with the wrong argument

John J. Sullivan, independent candidate for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, is suing CBS for not including him in the televised debate. Both sides are standing on the 1st Amendment.

Much as I hate to say it, CBS is right here. Sullivan's free speech right doesn't include an obligation for CBS to provide him a soapbox. Their station, their rules, end of story.

Bu this "bipartisan=nonpartisan" crap has to stop. I'd like to see CBS taken into court for making illegal campaign contributions in-kind to the Democrat and Republican. Of course, our campaign finance laws are ALSO a gross violation of the 1st Amendment, but as long as the courts continue to deny the obvious, we might as well use the law to our advantage.

T -11 days: will you vote for the status quo?

I let out a little fart of disgust about the 'Fraid Chickens (Teddeth Blackland), and it gets linked to the Peirce campaign blog. Thanks, I'm flattered, but I feel like I haven't done anything or enough or whatever. There's no time in my day to campaign. All I can do is shout out the idea that voting for the lesser of the evils isn't working.

It's like pulling teeth though. I've got a friend who claims to be a socialist (hey, I'm working on him), and he can't bring himself to vote for Fitrakis because Blackwell scares him so badly. "But Strickland is 12 points ahead in the polls!" No matter. It's as if people were hypnotized. The same people who don't drink mass market beer or drink mass market food, who don't listen to Top 40 radio...will still vote for mass market politicians.

I enjoyed the College Republican stunt though. I've done my share of concrete work, and there's no shame in working a float or trowel. Being a Congressman, on the other hand... And Dr. Peirce has too much class to whine on the blog about his supporters being sent to the back of the bus to a hill 1000 feet away from the action. However I, being a former cement worker, don't have that much class (per Ted Strickland), so I can say THAT SUCKS!

Uncovered meat

To the Muslim cleric in Australia who blamed the victim in some gang rapes:

Not every animal likes the same kind of meat. And you don't wear a hijab. So it's your fault if Big Bruce has his way with you, isn't it?

Save 'em, then send 'em back.

A van full of illegals flipped in Texas: 1 dead, 20 injured.

Before the anti-immigrant crowd starts frothing at the mouth about the costs of this tragedy, I want to say that the authorities handled this perfectly. They got people to the hospital ASAP. Human life is human life, and it needed to be saved, regardless of legal status. If I were in an accident in Mexico, I'd want emergency care.

But there's one more thing to be done: once these patients are stable, they need to be life-flighted to the nearest Mexican hospital. That's what I'd want the Mexicans to do for me, if I were in that situation. Golden Rule and all....

Ballot language "counts"

Speaking of proposals to rob smokers...

Arizona has one on the ballot for early childhood education and health. It's 80 cents a pack, according to its supporters. But what it says in the ballot language is ".80 cents", i.e. 4/5 cent per pack. Their secretary of state says, "that's a highly technical reading". But the law IS technical, by nature. It was a technical reading by which Ken Blackwell disenfranchised the Libertarians in 2003, and folks like rightwingprof were telling me to suck it up, that Kenny was just doing his job by enforcing the law. Well, Clay, where do you stand on this? I say that if they can't even articulate how much they are going to steal, they don't deserve it, and if the voters think otherwise, then backers should come back to them for the other 79.2 cents.

Worst part of the story is this leadoff by Mary Jo Pitzl
(isn't that the diminutive of "putz"?)

Early-childhood-education and health programs on next month's ballot could lose millions of dollars if a misplaced decimal point is interpreted technically.

'Scuse me, kids aren't going to lose ANYTHING, not even if this proposal fails. If it passes, they are going to get either .80 cents/pack or 80 cents/pack that they didn't have before. This is just another case of the assumption that "all your money belongs to us."

"I'm the only one allowed to exploit my wife."

Oh, this is rich:

Michael Schiavo criticized Bob Casey Jr. and Pennsylvania Democrats yesterday for using the death of his wife, Terri, as a weapon against U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) in the Senate race this fall.

This from the guy who started TerriPAC, to funnel money to opponents of those Congressmen who voted for intervention in his late wife's case?

Danish cartoon paper off the hook

A Danish court dismissed the Muslim lawsuit against Jyllands-Posten over "those cartoons".

The lawsuit said the cartoons depict Muhammad "as belligerent, oppressing women, criminal, crazy and unintelligent, and a connection is made between the Prophet and war and terror."

Hmmm, maybe these organizations should be suing other Muslims. Some of them are making some pretty explicit connections between the Prophet and terror.

Pervert poker

"I'll see your child flasher and raise you a cokehead."

Two more weeks! Will I live that long?

Anyone notice that Bill Peirce doesn't have any opinions about whose staff is more twisted? And hasn't been engaged in negative campaigning?

Why polls are meaningless

When "Hillary Clinton" is put up against McCain or Giuliani, she pulls different numbers than if "Hillary Rodham Clinton" is put up against the same names.

Is the electorate really that stupid? Do they only have a 5-syllable attention span, so that they forget she was the Prevaricator-in-Chief's co-president? Does she sound more important or powerful with a longer name?

Such wonderful people

The Seattle Post-intelligencer goes on at length about two charming women, Jennifer Kolar and Lacey Phillabaum, wondering amidst the praise how such perfect people could be convicted eco-terrorists.

Taranto notes that, had their terrorism been directed at abortion clinics instead of scientific laboratories, they wouldn't get that kind of treatment from a major newspaper. Indeed, where are the warm fuzzy stories about Islamic terrorists or anti-government extremists? Maybe they're looking for penpals who could turn into romantic interests after they're free...especially given that it was probably Phillabaum's boyfriend who ratted on her.

I think that genetically-improved poplars are a wonderfully Green goal, myself...but then I'm an animal-exploiting, fossil-fuel-guzzling anti-government extremist, so what would I know?

Smoking gun?

The tiresome Jerome Corsi has announced the "smoking gun" in the Strickland non-scandal: the arrest records for Strickland's former campaign manager.

Yeah, so? Yed was either guilty of bleeding-heart liberalism for keeping him on, or of cowardice in not dealing with it forthrightly. And if either of those were an impediment to high office, well, this would be a far different country than it is.

Enough already.

Second Halloween

This morning, my wife referred to Election Day as "the second Halloween."

I laughed, and laughed. then I laughed some more. And the more I think about it, the funnier it gets.

Like the Celtic New Year, this is the time when the dead walk the earth. In some particularly Celtic places like Chicago, they even vote. Terrifying things happen as midnight approaches: major party candidates are elected. The opposing mobs of goblins attempt to make this even scarier, muttering dark phrases like "Speaker Pelosi". Deeds (voting) are done in secret, votes are counted in darkness. Like rumors about tampered candy, tales spread about Diebold machines stealing the election. But the elections were stolen by law long ago, so why does it matter? Candidate talk incessantly about the recently dead, and who will be dead if they are not elected.

And there's trick or treat for everyone. Politicians offer a treat but deliver the same old tricks. If taxpayers refuse to pay for the treats promised by the politicians. they get tricked out of their home and freedom. The treats destroy the health of the body politic, but nobody dares to offer anything healthy; that would either be too expensive or, if homemade, would be considered poisonous. Their chocolates bind up production; their caries-inducing candies inhibit our ability to feed ourselves. And the candidates go door-to-door, too, asking for votes. They have rules about how they can beg, just like municipal trick or treat rules.

Everyone is wearing a mask. Republicans disguise themselves as Thomas Jefferson, Democrats as the friend of the worker, Libertarians as Republicans. Greens wear their ghoul-green masks to hide their red complexion. We know the bigger kids can do more damage if crossed, but they're all just children, and none will act responsibly, though the innocent little Greenies and Libbies are at least teachable. The big kids have already TPed the neighborhood, and now there's no way to clean up the poo they've been flinging. In Detroit Waco, they'll even burn your house down.

And of course, the whole exercise is "for the children". The use of that phrase should be an impeachable offence.

What would happen if people decided that one Halloween was enough, and just stayed home? What if everyone's hopes for getting free candy for mindlessly repeating a slogan ("trick or treat!") were permanently dashed? What if we dropped something totally unexpected into the outstretched bag ballot box? What if Mickey Mouse got a majority of the vote? Why don't we celebrate Election Day like Guy Fawkes Day, but realizing that the treason is above the floor of Parliament instead of beneath it? In short, why don't we just grow up, and leave the games to the kids?

Modest proposals for a proposed island

The Army Corps of Engineers wants to build a 100-acre island off the coast of Cleveland, for about $100m. -- of which $25m needs to come from local government.

Given the current setup, with a river that has to be dredged and a society that's agreed it's government's job, well, the toxic sludge has to go somewhere. We'd might as well get some acrage for it.

But what to do with it? I think we should make it the seat of local government. In 40 years, when the island is done, our leaders will be complaining that their municipal buildings are old and inefficient. Having a huge moat around them will be good for Homeland Security. We can bring people in on little motorboats, carefully screened. We can even house workers there. After all, the desire to rule others is a disease, and an island can help enforce a quarantine. When we finally weary of local government, we can mount a naval blockade and starve them out. And think of the charm in saying "The mayor was voted off the island".

Alternatively, we can build it exactly between the US and Canada, and make it the new UN headquarters. No cars to generate tickets that diplomats don't pay, no nightlife, no fun.

The two-way wall

Taranto doesn't quite get it:

Second, although we are not a fan of the U.S. Mexico border wall, there is an essential difference between a wall to keep people in and a wall to keep people out. Prisons and houses are not the same thing, even though they too both have walls.

Au contraire, prisons are houses for prisoners, and houses can be made into prisons. The difference between houses and prisons is in who holds the keys. Given that it's the government that will hold the keys to the border wall, what is to stop some administration some time from deciding that Americans really need to stay here?

Rallying the troops to plunder the poor

I came to work to find a rally for Issue 18 (the proposal to rob the poor to pay for the art of the rich) happening on the front lawn of Severence Hall. Yeah, like that's really going to make me contribute to the orchestra. They had some guy on stilts almost falling into traffic. A woman waved her sign at me; I waved a finger back. Gee, I wish I still lived in town, just so I could vote no. Maybe I can cast Harry Quick's vote. :-)

"But this isn't a tax on poor people, it's a tax on smokers. And smokers can change their behavior." Well, so you say. I'm married to a smoker. She's tried to change her behavior several times since she's been with me, and failed...and she's a fairly competent person. And poverty largely comes from bad choices in life (including smoking)...which can be changed. So why don't the poor just change their behavior? Really, I don't see how one can be a socialist (as most artists are, philosophically) and support Issue 18 at the same time. It clearly focuses on a habit associated with the poor, and taxes it to benefit the well-off. It's not like we're going to have free concerts by major rappers in Cleveland. And we're not taxing, oh, any wine with a cork in the bottle. That would make way too much sense.

But in a further outrage:

Backers of Issue 18 filed a formal complaint on Tuesday with the Ohio Elections Commission against tobacco company Philip Morris USA and Lorain County resident Gerard Seman, registrant of the Web site www.smokeissue18.com.

I've known Garry Seman for years, and he wouldn't take money from Big Tobacco. I'd certainly like to see the evidence they've invented. I guess it's just inconceivable that somebody would oppose their little shakedown on the basis of principle.

Well, guys: I'm writing this on a computer and server owned by a University Circle institution, who are not responsible for the content of this message. I am. Now, do you have the stones to go after a fellow practicing artist -- a composer and performer -- for campaigning against you?

Geauga and Holmes Counties have a problem:

They don't have enough food stamp users.

It's all the fault of those Amish. How dare they assume they can survive without government aid? Or raise their children...it's for the chillldrennn, ya know? One in 5 qualifying families in Geauga is Amish, one in 3 in Holmes, and they aren't applying.

The guys on the ground in the local Department of Job and Family Services know the answer is "ain't gonna happen". But Jeanne Carroll,(Phone - (614) 466-4815) deputy director of the state's Office of Family Stability (as if a burrocrat could make families stable), claims that "we can't assume they don't want the benefits". After all, somewhere there may be an Amish hypocrite. So the state is going to spend more money so that they...can spend more money.

I invite Carroll (along with Agriculture Secretary Fred Dailey and his flunky Lee Ann Mizer) to go to the Hell of the Amish. I am certain the Amish would not agree with this sentiment, but I'm not Amish and can do what I want in that regard.

Blackwell piles on

...with the "soft on perverts" accusation.

Teddeth only have themselves to blame for this. If they'd allowed people with a real grasp of the issues -- like, oh, Bill Peirce -- to debate with them, they wouldn't be able to roll in the mud, because they'd only make themselves look bad by doing so. As it is, there's no yardstick present, people aren't allowed to see that there's a better way, so even "Jimmy Carter Jr." (Strickland) comes off looking good.

Janet Reno, "champion of justice"

From Balko, news that the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers gave Jackboot Janet an award and a standing O.

Janet Reno oversaw and is largely responsible for Waco. She sent armed thugs into the private home of a peaceful family. Janet Reno is responsible for Richad Jewel and Wen Ho Lee. This is the Janet Reno who as a prosecutor in Florida pursued a number of bogus "recovered memory" cases, and wrongly prosecuted at least one man for child sex abuse, then refused to admit her error, allowing the man to fester in prison for more than a decade.

I wanna barf.

AP plays partisan politics

Three web pages on the race for DeLay's old seat, with many mentions of "the hyphen lady" (Shelley Sekula-Gibbs), who is a write-in candidate.

The name conspicuous by its absence? Bob Smither, the other ballot-qualified candidate, who is polling at 25%.

So much for objective reporting.

Another national socialist

Cult of the supreme leader? check.
Belief in racial superiority, with killing of members of other races? check
Forced eugenics, euthanizing of the handicapped? check.
Militarism, desire for territorial expansion? check.

Adolf Hitler? Try Kim Jong-il.

And what was that about fascism being the opposite of communism?

Foleyating Strickland 2

World Net Daily is still at it.

Pullins insisted he doesn't "give a hoot about how the Stricklands live their private lives."

"But what I do find interesting," he said, "is the whisper campaign that has been going on behind the scenes for months and the efforts by liberals and some conservatives to shut down any discussion of the issue."

In other words, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?"

Come on guys, show me the stained blue dress, and I will believe. Otherwise, you're only making yourselves look bad.

Food stamps in 4 hours

Orange County leads in providing "services" to illegals. And of course, as always, it's "for the chillllldrennnn"

"The Mexican man is macho. He doesn't want to come to this country and beg," said Alfonso Chavez, the Community Action Partnership's outreach coordinator. "I tell them this is a program that will help the children. The kids are American-born, and they have a right to this program."

So there's now a "right" to the fruit of somebody else's labor? Let's party like it's 1861!

The brass risk their ...

The assistant defense secretary for homeland defense has to go to war:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Paul McHale, a top civilian Pentagon official and a former congressman, has been recalled to active duty as a Marine reservist and will be sent to Afghanistan, The Associated Press has learned.

Well, he's been there and knows what it's about, so this is kind of a waste, when there are folks in Dee Cee more deserving of a Mideastern vacation. But it's a positive trend; let's not stop now.

Cincy-area kids won't get their hides tanned?

Hamilton Co. has decided that they don't have the authority to ban teens from using tanning beds without a doctor's prescription. So they want the STATE to do it.

Funny, as a child I lived in the Goddess' tanning salon (the beach) and haven't had skin cancer yet. That may be the difference between artificial and natural. Or it might be that the epidemic of skin cancer that caused California to pass a similar law is caused by something else...malnutrition maybe?

CAIRie Nations of Minnesota

I didn't pay much attention to the Twin Cities Moslem taxi deal until this morning, when I read Daniel Pipes' article. Pipes is worried about the precedent of setting up what amounts to a dual transport system. I'm more concerned about cost-free discrimination. Of course, the cabbies always could discriminate, and did. (Anyone can. There is no way to force an individual to not discriminate; you can just make him jump through hoops to do so.) But the MAC has basically said that discrimination on the basis of religious practices is OK. Well, I'm waiting for the Christian Identity cabbie to hang a "No coloreds" sign in his window; after all, that's his religion. Somehow I doubt that will be given the same respect. But giving a green light (perhaps literally!) to discrimination can cut both ways, as those with booze (or even those who think a cabbie should shut up and drive instead of imposing his religion on others) can simply quit patronizing Muslim cabs. Apparently the deal is already dead in the water, as cab companies are afraid of losing business in a consumer boycott. But if their employees are already turning down fares, why are they still employees? If I refused to do my job, I wouldn't have it. Even if they're leasing their cabs, why isn't there a clause in the lease? After all, turning down fares reflects badly on Yellow Cab or whoever the driver is driving for.

It seems that a great deal of the problem could be dealt with by the duty-free stores, who are sending out their booze in transparent plastic bags, making it obvious which fares are carrying. They should switch to tasteful paper handle-bags, maybe solid royal blue with "Allah akbar" in gold Arabic script along the top. "I just bought some copies of the Koran," the fares could say. Alas, the cabbies would buy that for about 5 minutes. Better they should just get with the program and realize that in America, Allah has bigger problems to worry about than whether your customers break the minutiae of Islamic law.

Frank begs: take the ciggie out of your neighbor's mouth

Mayor Frank is coming out against the right of private property smoking in bars, and in favor of Issue 5.

I have to wonder how folks in the old 'hood view this, seeing as how smoking tends to correlate to poverty. I thought we'd fired Cleveland's nanny when we got rid of Queen Jane.

I'm just glad I don't work for the Cleveland Clinic. Those guys are going to get propagandized big time in the next month.

The naked civil servant

This is certainly odd behavior.

But tell me, if it was after hours and nobody but the all-seeing spycam saw him, what makes it "public indecency"?

Foleyating Strickland

Today's bit of poo-flinging comes from WorldNetDaily, citing Bizzyblog. Evidently Ted "'Fraid chicken" Strickland was one of only 13 congresscritters to vote "present" on a 1999 resolution condemming an APA paper supportive of pedophilia. His reason, as expressed in a one minute speech, was that the House was incompetent to critique the methodology of the study. That is certainly true, and a laudable point to make. But if Ted had refrained from voting on every law requiring technical knowledge he did not have, he would have amassed such a libertarian record that I would have no qualms about supporting him for governor. That's pretty obviously not the case; it's not how Congress works. And I also understand why Ted didn't make a principled stand and vote "NO".

The questions being debated are "Why did Ted vote that way?" and "What does it say about him?" Strickland's wife is a psychologist (I believe he is also), and he may have felt an impulse to protect the profession. And Ted is a former minister and a Christian man after the manner of Jimmy Carter. Whether you want somebody who is afraid of making judgements and is under his wife's thumb to run Ohio is a fair question; personally, I think we've had enough of that with Bob Taft.

But that's not where WND wants to take this. They're mostly spinning dirt that Brian Flannery had dug up for the primary. Ted had hired a staffer who had previously flashed some children. Either he didn't do a thorough background check, or decided it wasn't relevant to the job. And Ted went to Italy with this man...oh my, bunghole buddies for sure! Never mind that it was a trip that all the staffers were to make, but in the event only one could go. Was Ted to cancel? What if he'd gone with a woman-not-his-wife? It seems that the only way that trip couldn't be spun sexually is if he would have brought a child....uh, no, scratch that...

Then there's the "firestorm among Ohio bloggers", with only Bizzyblog being cited. BB is fairly reasonable about this; his points are that Foleygate and its accompanying Democratic hypocrisy make this fair game, and that Strickland has tried his best to not reveal any opinion or platform during this campaign, so that any information on his character is relevant. And the conclusions he draws are general character conclusions. He does not imply that Strickland is a pedophile. WND, on the other hand, wants to leave you with that impression without saying it.

This didn't stick when Flannery said it; it's not going to stick now. I really hate watching desperate politicians and their media shills. And I especially hate politicians which are so devoid of ideas and principles that the only way to discriminate between the fungible product is smear black over it. Play fair, or don't play at all.

Vote third-party -- ANY third-party -- or stay home. Screw them all!

Winston Churchill's great-grandson...

...continues the fight against tyranny, and may pay the penultimate price. May the Gods bless this hero of Australian capitalism.

Peirce campaign disses League of Women Voters

They caught one of Blackwell's toadies on video claiming that it is "federal law" that debate participants have at least 15% poll support. They were quite right to nail that; it has only applied to Presidential debates, it is not "law", and it shows that Blackwell supporters have not-a-clue about that thing called Federalism (i.e., Ohio has the right and power to run its state elections as it sees fit, even including charging a poll tax to vote for governor). But, contrary to the panel in the youtube show, it has been many years since the League of Women Voters ran the Presidential debates, as the LWV would not rig their debates in the Duopoly's favor, and the Duopoly would not play otherwise (somewhat like the current situation in Ohio). The 15% rule is the creation of the Bipartisan Debate Commission, which took over from the LWV. "Bipartisan" of course is not "nonpartisan". All it would take to change the 15% rule would be for a Duopoly candidate to refuse to play by it. This will never happen.

It's too bad the Peirce video had that error in it. But it's understandable, and not nearly as horrible as this little Blackwelloid stunt:

On a side note that’s just funny, while we were driving down to Cinci from Cleveland, we happened to get passed by one of Blackwell’s SUVs carrying what looked like his campaign manager. We paced them for long enough for me to lean towards the window and flap my arms like a chicken. The next thing I know, they actually were stupid enough to pull behind us and turn on the flashing blue lights (who knew the Secretary of State had such perks?). Of course, they quickly turned them off and sped past us while glaring out their windows. I think the multiple Peirce stickers might have been a clue that abuse of power would have been a really stupid idea.

What would the bust be for? Terrorism? Dangerous driving? Playing chicken on a freeway?

"You can't execute my client, because we'll riot!"

So says Ramsay Clark, for Saddam. Extortion (which is generally illegal) seems like a rather novel legal argument. The threat of violence if a verdict went a certain way has been discussed before, concerning various American trials, but I don't recall it ever being mentioned by the defence attorney. At least he didn't say that in the courtroom, though that would have been something to see. Perhaps Clark is really a legal genius, setting up an appeal for Saddam on the grounds that his counsel was incompetent.

Those inclined to riot over Hussein getting the Eternal Sand Nap already think this is a kangaroo court; having a kangaroo court made up of gutless wonders is not going to pacify Iraq. I suppose that, rather than sentence him, the Iraqis can just quietly put a bullet through his head and blame a rogue American soldier. Why not? They hate us anyway.