Daily Kos is apparently souring on Obama:

It looks like Obama is gun-shy after sticking by Jeremiah Wright. Now, he can’t move quickly enough to denounce his own allies. So he’s cross at Wes Clark, and he’s mighty cross at MoveOn as well! Who else will he be cross with as he kicks off “Operation Piss Off the People Supporting and Bankrolling His Campaign In Order To Prove He Hates the Dirty Fucking Hippies”. Now that the primary is over, he can turn his back on the people that brought him.

I was going to max out to him today, given I haven’t given Obama a dime yet (focusing on congressional candidates). But I changed my mind. He wants to send the message that he doesn’t need us, all the power to him. Message received. I’ll spend that $2,300 somewhere else.

I’m not entirely sure what to say about this, which is bad, seeing as the entire point of having my own blog is saying things about what I bring attention to. With that in mind, let’s see if I can force something profound and meaningful out of the morass that is my brain at this very moment.

People are starting to sour on Obama, and for good reason.  His followers are insane, doing crazy things like changing their middle names, shutting down anti-Obama blogs, and, for lack of a better word, proselytizing the Word of Obama to anyone who will listen.  This has been a problem for a while, and is a big part of the reason why his victory against Hillary was so narrow and drawn out to begin with.  Needless to say, if you can barely get half of the Democratic Party to vote for you, you’re going to have some problems in the general election, especially when the half that voted for you was the Democratic equivalent of the psychotic Chick Publications-subscribing Moral Majority folks that the Republican Party has to humor from time to time.  In other words, Obama may have picked up the support of the right half of the Democratic Party to narrowly edge out a victory against a tenacious opponent, but he got the wrong half to ride to the White House.

Fortunately, Obama is all about HopeChange… so, he’s HopeChanging himself in a way that is completely alienating the base that got him this far.  The question is, can he HopeChange himself enough to convince enough of America that he’s really not the focal point of a new youth rebellion that must be stopped at all costs while not actually alienating the youthful supporters that he relies upon to run his campaign?  By the looks of things… probably not if he’s already losing the Kossacks.

And I, for one, am well pleased.  Keep being weird, Obama.  The Republican Party is depending on it.

Via Dr. Melissa Clouthier - Democrats Gear Up For Denver:

DENVER — As the Mile High City gears up to host a Democratic bash for 50,000, organizers are discovering the perils of trying to stage a political spectacle that’s also politically correct.

Consider the fanny packs.

Okay, wait… fanny packs? Are we seriously going to trust the operation of the greatest country in the free world to people that wear fanny packs? Think about it for a second.  You have a choice…

This:

Or this…

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

But wait… it gets worse!

But Matt Burns, a spokesman for the Republican convention, looks on with undisguised glee at some of the Democrats’ efforts — such as the “lean ‘n’ green” catering guidelines.

Among them: No fried food. And, on the theory that nutritious food is more vibrant, each meal should include “at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white.” (Garnishes don’t count.) At least 70% of ingredients should be organic or grown locally, to minimize emissions from fuel burned during transportation. “One would think,” says Mr. Burns, “that the Democrats in Denver have bigger fish to bake — they have ruled out frying already — than mandating color-coordinated pretzel platters.”

Democrats say the point is to build habits that will endure long after the convention. To that end, the city has staged “greening workshops” attended by hundreds of caterers, restaurant owners and hotel managers. “It’s the new patriotism,” Mayor Hickenlooper says.

That’s right - when you attend the Democratic Convention, they want you to build habits that will endure long after you leave.  Sounds sort of like church, doesn’t it?  You go to a building where the rules of reality no longer really apply, you get lectured for a while, people claim the food and drink does strange and unusual things, and that you’re only supposed to eat and drink certain things, and then you go home.  With any luck, after the Convention, you’ll be ready to dive into dumpsters when somebody puts plastics in the aluminum bin, buy only unionized organic cotton clothing that’s made in the USA, eat locally grown food, and, for the love of Gore, if you’re colorblind, well, that’s the affliction of Bushsatan right there.

But wait!  An old foe is attempting to repent!  They’re embracing the message.  They’re playing along.  They want to do what’s right.  What do you do?

But it’s almost inevitable that principles, politics and profit will conflict. To wit: Coors Brewing Co., in Golden, Colo., will donate biofuel made from beer waste to power the convention’s fleet of flex-fuel vehicles. A green star for the convention — but it has rankled die-hard liberals, who boycotted Coors in the 1960s and ’70s to protest hiring practices that they said discriminated against blacks, Latinos, women and gays. Heirs to the Coors fortune have long been active in conservative causes and Republican politics.

Oh yes - because of a forty year old grudge, some people are upset that Coors has the gall to turn their beer waste into biofuel and actually donate it to the DNC. How dare they provide free fuel when they were oppressing my grandparents’ gay black Mariachi-singing girlfriends? Remember - these are the same people that think they know how to handle the Middle East better than Bush.  I suppose they do get the dynamics of pointless multigenerational blood feuds, though, right?

Look, I’m not trying to claim that Republicans are perfect.  However, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Democratic Party is being taken hostage by a bunch of psychotic ex-hippies who are doing everything possible to relive their adolescence in some sort of wacky midlife crisis.  At some point, we need to ask ourselves which way our country should go - down the path of endless rules, forever chasing the organic, local, unionized dream where we bury balloons in compost piles to make sure they’re environmentally kosher?  Or, do we dare to run screaming from the Environmentalian Orthodoxy and decide that the Earth will still orbit the Sun if we happen to get a cheap DVD player from China?

I know which way my vote is going - I can’t afford organic unionized local products, thank you very much.  I prefer my products to be cheap, inorganic and very much not unionized (I do have strong holdings in Confederated Slave Bonds, after all).

Pretend, for a second, that you’re a state agency that wants to shut up a special interest group.  They want you to provide benefits to their domestic partners, even if they’re gay.  How do you do this without, y’know, actually doing this?

CARSON CITY (AP) - A Nevada panel that oversees health insurance benefits for state employees voted Thursday to extend coverage to domestic partners, including those of the same sex, despite budget problems that could make the $2.7 million cost unaffordable.

State Public Employees Benefits Program board members voted 5-3 to move forward despite concerns about the cost voiced by some members.

If funding doesn’t develop during the 2009 legislative session to pay for the expansion of benefits to domestic partners and their children, the regulation won’t take effect.

Candice Nichols, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Center of Southern Nevada, praised the decision, saying it “enables Nevada to recruit the best and brightest employees for the state.”

That’s right - you create a regulation and state that it takes effect so long as it’s paid for, then promptly ignore the fact that it is, in fact, not paid for.  Brilliant!

I wonder how many other “problems” can be solved this way?  Universal health care?  No problem - we’ll provide universal coverage to everyone and everybody so long as it’s paid for.  Universal housing?  No problem - we’ll buy every American a house, provided tax revenues are sufficient.  Heck, we’ll feed everyone, clothe everyone, and wipe everybody’s diapers… at least on paper.

Folks, I am a genius.

I spent the day today catching up on my RSS feeder, downing about three hours worth of blog material, almost Robot Chicken style - very quickly and somewhat schizophrenically.  There are two things that I learned:

1. Republicans have no idea what to do with themselves right now.  A fine piece detailing some of this is Tom Coburn’s op-ed on the Wall Street Journal - yes, he’s a religious loon from Oklahoma, but he’s a religious loon from Oklahoma that just wants the government to leave everyone alone (mostly).
2. Democrats are just ecstatic that they’re not Republicans.  After dealing with Daily Kos, FDL, TalkLeft, and Huffington Post, I can safely say with a certain measure of certainty that there were far more articles either detailing their future advances after the primaries (fair enough) or detailing all the different ways that McCain is screwing up.  The general narrative that I’ve been seeing from these places is something along the lines of, “Republicans want to take your civil rights, they got us into a stupid war, and they’re letting corporations run roughshod over you.”  The solutions, in order, are to ditch the PATRIOT Act (fine by me), pull out of Iraq as soon as possible (looks like it’ll be a moot point soon enough - and in a good way), and increasing taxes (now?) to fund social welfare programs.  If any of this sounds vaguely familiar, well, it probably should.  I’ll grant that left-leaning blogs don’t necessarily have to sell left-leaning ideology to the masses at this point; heck, just “not being Bush” will probably be enough to convince 40% of America to at least give it a shot at this point.

Therein, though, lies the problem - are these really the best ideas that anybody can come up with?  Are our health care choices, for example, really stuck between “Let the people that gave us the DMV run the show” and “Let insurance guys and the people that gave us the DMV run the show”?  While I’m at it, why aren’t there more co-ops, more “health unions”, a la credit unions?  Are our foreign policy choices really between “Nuke everyone and let God sort it out” and “Let’s talk to anybody with a pulse so we can feel good about ourselves”?  Are our choices really between a party that can’t find its soul and another party that’s just happy it’s not having to look for one?

Here’s what I want to know:  How many Democrats are actually excited about the platforms being presented by Obama and Hillary?  How many of them realize that the only reason either of those two are getting any national press right now is because they’re political freak shows (Blackula vs. Bride of Frankenstein!) that just happen to not be part of the Bush family tree?  Didn’t Kerry have the exact same platform as these two?  Didn’t Gore have a similar platform?  Didn’t both of those guys lose?  Is the new packaging really that compelling?

Can I ask another question?  Of course I can - it’s my own damn blog!  Deal with it?

What a lot of people seem to forget about Reagan is that, yes, he did have some attractive packaging (California actor and all), but he also had some pretty creative policy ideas.  He was the first Republican since Hoover (Coolidge?) to not jump on the Rockefeller Republican bandwagon (a.k.a. “Dynamic Republicanism”, or “Democrat Lite”).  Meanwhile, Clinton was the first Democrat to jump away from the reflexive FDR-Johnson “New Deal”-style liberalism that left the Democratic Party in a funk.  There is a theme there:  People don’t like the government telling them what to do. It’s a basic concept that politicians only seem to get about once every 20 years or so if we’re lucky… and, sorry, but we’re not going to be lucky this time around.

After re-reading this to see if this is actually going somewhere, I realized something - this post derailed faster the monorail in the Simpsons.  Jesus - I’m waiting for Leonard Nimoy to beam in and “save the day” or something.  It’s embarrassing.  Hell, Hunter Thompson wrote more coherent thoughts than this.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to apply the opossum/fire extinguisher to the problem here and just call it a night…

This is not good:

The souvenir vendors outside Hillary Clinton’s campaign appearances have added a new badge to their wares that reads “Chelsea in 2016″ with a picture of the former first daughter.

First IMAO, and now this?  The field is becoming increasingly crowded - almost ludicrously so, perhaps.  Even so, I remain undaunted in my indomitable commitment towards this country, this campaign, and the necessity of spreading a message of keeping your damn pants on while I’m in your house… y’know, unless you’re hot.

HINT:  If you’re male, you’re not hot enough to start taking your pants off in front of me.  I don’t care how uncomfortable that shirt is - you can tuck it back in later.

(Nope.  Not over it.  Not even slightly.)

The situation: Huckabee makes a complete and total ass of himself, cracking an ill-advised joke where the punchline involved Obama getting a gun pointed at him.

The reactions on the right: Oh thank God. I know I wanted nothing to do with the Huckster; fortunately, I haven’t seen anyone else jumping on his bandwagon, either.

The reactions on the left: Huckabee thinks it’s funny to point guns at Democrats!  He should be forbidden from being on TV!

I’ll have to admit, it’s extremely rare when both sides of politics agree with something, but it’s hard to argue with the herd on this one - Huckabee is a moron who needs to stop.  Now.  Thankfully, he may have finally stopped himself… and for that I am thankful.

BREAKING NEWS: The much more highly regarded Frank J. of IMAO fame has declared his candidacy for the office of President of the United States in 2016:

I’m going to campaign on getting the federal government back to the basics. That means focusing on having it only do what citizens can’t do for themselves: Kill bad people in foreign lands. Also, nuking the moon.

Though I agree with my esteemed opponent’s view on killing bad people in foreign lands, I disagree with his policy on deploying nuclear weapons to the moon.  I also believe that the federal government still has a useful role in killing bad people in native lands.  Fortunately, I have almost a year of semi-solid (colloidal?) campaigning under my belt, acquiring support from all corners of the country (well, some corners, at least), so I believe that, though I do not have the level of infamy of my opponent, I still possess a strong enough campaign machine to overcome this challenge.

Until 2016!

If US News is right, the Republican Party is in some seriously deep shit (H/T Ace):

Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and defeated contender for the GOP presidential nomination, is currently at the top of John McCain’s short list for a running mate. At least that’s the word from a top McCain fundraiser and longtime Republican moneyman who has spoken to McCain’s inner circle. The fundraiser is less than thrilled with the idea of Huckabee as the vice presidential nominee, and many economic conservatives—turned off by the populist tone of Huckabee’s campaign and his tax record as governor—are likely to share that marked lack of enthusiasm.

The article then goes on to explain some of the “logic” behind picking the Huckster, with this little gem near the end:

3) Economic conservatives and supply-siders may balk, but the threat of four years of Obamanomics and higher investment, income, and corporate taxes might be enough to keep them on board.

Yes, because, when given a choice between four years of Obamanomics and the untimely demise of a 71 year old man leading to Huckanomics, believe me, the choice is clear. I mean, you can either have higher taxes from a politician with a messianic complex, charisma and a rather funny relationship with God, or you can have higher taxes from Obama. Great!

The one bit of good news in all of this is that, if Huckabee is chosen as the VP candidate, assuming that McCain loses (which, by the way, he almost certainly will if he tries to embrace the same “compassionate Christian” crowd that led to Bush’s rise), this will pretty much mean the end of any serious relevance for the Moral Majority crowd in Republican politics. Reagan did a wonderful job of creating a coalition between conservative Christian groups and small-government conservatives; unfortunately, the conservative Christian crowd has effectively usurped the small-government types and taken the Republican Party hostage. Consequently, instead of focusing on smaller government, we’ve instead had to deal with such wonderful diversions as the Defense of Marriage Act.

I’ll be honest - even with Army of Dog’s metaphor regarding poker and politics, assuming that the Huckster is, indeed, going to be the Republican’s VP candidate, it’s going to make it extremely hard for me to vote for anyone this time around. Yes, it’s true that McCain, by himself, would be a better President than Obama or Hillary - I’m certain of that. I’m not anywhere near certain enough, however, that, were the unthinkable to happen to McCain, that Huckabee wouldn’t just give us the exact same government that Obama would give us, only with religious undertones on top of it.

How does everyone else feel about this? Does Huckabee as the VP change the calculus for anyone?

Update: Awww crap…

John McCain, who as the Republican candidate for president has spent the past two months trying to consolidate right-wing support, has a problem of disputed dimensions with a vital component of the conservative coalition: evangelicals. The biggest question is whether Mike Huckabee is part of the problem or the solution for McCain.

Some U.S. Christians are not reconciled to McCain’s candidacy but instead regard the prospective presidency of Barack Obama in the nature of a biblical plague visited upon a sinful people. These militants look at former Baptist preacher Huckabee as “God’s candidate” for president in 2012. Whether they can be written off as merely a troublesome fringe group depends on Huckabee’s course.

[…]

Nevertheless, the word is that some evangelicals dispute Huckabee’s support. One experienced, credible activist in Christian politics who would not let his name be used told me that Huckabee, in personal conversation with him, had embraced the concept that an Obama presidency might be what the American people deserve. That fits what has largely been a fringe position among evangelicals: that the pain of an Obama presidency is in keeping with the Bible’s prophecy.

Okay, granted, this is Robert Novak writing this, so I’m not entirely sure how credible this is.  That said, it would be really, really nice if we could finally get away from the Nutbar Fundie crowd that seriously believes that American politics are best viewed through the lens of prophesy.  Seriously, these people are the Republican equivalent of Code Pink, and, in much the same way and for many of the same reasons that I would laugh a little if a meteor wiped out all of the washed out former Boomer grannies that make up Code Pink, there is little that would thrill me more than for the same meteor to jump out of Berkeley and rebound into whatever backwater part of Alabassippigiasas the fundies hail from.

There are times when insomnia pays off… like this, via Instapundit:

That’s right - 57.  Now, one of two things are at play here.  Either he’s really, really tired and is actually forgetting how many states there are in the Union, or he has the driest sense of humor of any politician in history.  I mean, we’re bumping into Calvin Coolidge territory here, Mr. Bet money that he’ll say three words and he replies with “You lose,” Mr. Teapot Dome himself.  That’s pretty dry.

Whichever way it goes - I’m laughing.  Hard.

I couldn’t make this up if I wanted to…

TALLINN, May 8 (RIA Novosti) - Estonian farmers have received tax notices for methane emissions from their cattle, the country’s opposition party, the People’s Union of Estonia, said on Thursday.

Ruminants produce large quantities of methane gas through belching and flatulence when they digest grass, which accounts for about 15-25% of overall gas emissions, according to different estimates.

[…]

A year after joining the Kyoto protocol, authorities in New Zealand proposed introducing a flatulence tax saying that New Zealand cattle are responsible for 90% of the country’s methane emissions and 43% of greenhouse gas emissions.

We have met the enemy… and it is cow gas. I’m mostly curious about what they hope to accomplish with a tax such as this, other than making gobs of money and applying it towards… cleaner farting cows? Hybrid cows? Hydrogen fuel cows? Of course, we know better - this has nothing to do with global warming or cow gas. It has everything to do with Kyoto providing a certain segment of politicians the cover they need to come up with innovative ways to seize their citizens’ money without having to justify what they’re going to spend it on.

Thank goodness we said no…

One of my favorite left-leaning blogs is Firedoglake for one reason, and one reason only:  Unlike a lot of progressive-leaning blogs that try to be semi-moderate, Firedoglake is more than willing to be completely and totally up front about what their ideology is all about.  In fact, I kind of think of Firedoglake as the Michael Savage of the liberal blogosphere - he’s just a bit farther out there than most of his competition.  As I’m sure you can imagine, I don’t agree with him much.  There was one thing he said, though, that I did agree with…

At the EPI talk, Bernstein made a scary prediction:  The first thing McCain would do after taking office is to go after Social Security and Medicare.  Privatizing either or both would be a disaster for working people in this nation.

(Note:  Yes, I know the link is bad.  I don’t know what’s going on over there.  It does show up in my RSS reader, though.)

Now, I know what some of you are thinking - why on the FSM’s Green Earth am I suggesting that privatization is bad?  What the heck am I thinking?  Well… the title of this blog entry should give it away:

It’s not a free market if you’re not allowed to leave.

The reason free markets work is because you have the option to participate or not.  If you don’t want to buy a car, you don’t have to - you can find an alternative (ride a bike, buy a truck, etc.).  Similarly, car manufacturers have an option to participate or not - will they sell you the car you want at the price you’re asking for?  What kind of support will they give you after the purchase?  There is some risk in all of this - you may not be able to pay, the car might not be all it’s cracked up to be, the manufacturer may go out of business and no longer be able to support your car - but there’s also plenty of reward for everyone involved, too.  Even so, if you can’t afford the risk, you don’t have to participate in the market.

Simple enough, right?

Herein lies the problem with privatizing government programs while still requiring people to pay into them - the people that are being supported by government programs are, hopefully, the people least capable of affording risk.  If something goes wrong (market failure in Social Security accounts, a set of piss-poor medical providers in Medicaid), the people who will bear the brunt of the risk will be the people least capable of assuming the risk.  Worse yet, since it’s a government program, we’re demanding that everyone assume the risk whether they would receive any reward from it or not.

That’s not right.

So, what’s the solution?  From where I’m sitting, there are two possibilities:

1. If the government must provide something (and I have my doubts on this), the government should focus on minimizing risk while providing the desired benefit.  The end result won’t be a lot of fun, mind you, but it beats relying on a program that goes insolvent due to a set of bad risks (or, for that matter, paying into an insolvent program).
2. The government should not provide that service and should not require its citizens to pay for that service by legislative mandate.  Period.

Since it’s almost 11:30 at night, and since my vision is starting to blur, I’m going to stop here… but I’ll be back.  Oh yes, I’ll be back…

Well, over 1700 words, actually, courtesy of Art Levine:

As voters go to the polls today to choose between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, there’s an overlooked peril facing all voters this year: a failing election system and GOP-led vote suppression. All these obstacles undermine fair and accurate voting, leading to potential meltdowns and the disenfranchisement of voters, especially African-Americans, the elderly and students.

Indeed, the Election Protection coalition is already reporting some disturbing accounts from the Indiana and North Carolina primaries from early callers to their 1-866-Our-Vote hotline. As Election Protection reported earlier today:

This morning, in South Bend, Indiana, a freshman student at St. Mary’s College, excited to vote for the first time, left the polling place in tears because she only possessed a private college ID and was unable to vote. The poll workers, nuns at a local convent, were trying to help the young student through her problem. While they were helping her, they realized that some of their fellow nuns, who had just arrived at the polling place, also could not vote because of the photo ID law. Not only was this group of nuns disenfranchised, but so would be four floors of retired nuns in their convent. “The situation this morning in South Bend is a glaring example of why Indiana’s onerous photo ID law erects an unnecessary barrier to the ballot box and disenfranchises legitimate voters,” said John Borkowski, Esquire, a partner at law firm Hogan & Hartson and Lawyers’ Committee board member who witnessed this incident firsthand.

Is it really that hard to get a picture ID?  Perhaps my opinion is skewed due to my parents hooking me up with a state-issued identification card when I was seven, but it doesn’t seem to be all that hard to walk into a DMV, fill out a little paperwork, and get an ID card.  Heck, how does a college student operate with only a campus ID?  I mean, in order to get my campus ID, I had to show them my driver’s license, so… how does this work?

The best quote, of course, was at the end:

As Robert Fitrakis, an Ohio voting rights attorney and editor of the Free Press alternative paper, told me for the Altnernet article, “The system is still broken and instead of voting being a universally guaranteed federal right, it lingers under the shadow of Jim Crow and states’ rights.”

Sadly, I get the fuzzy logic at play here.  The crux of the “problem”, as defined by “progressives” like this guy, is that, since minorities, the elderly, and students are less likely to have photo ID, they will bear the brunt of regulations that require a photo ID in order to vote.  Consequently, photo ID requirements disenfranchise minorities, the elderly, and students more than other groups, and, since those are groups that predominately vote “progressive”, this must be construed as a “GOP dirty trick” or something similar, in the vein of Jim Crow laws.  To be fair, this might all be true - it might be a clever little conspiracy to keep poor old black students from voting, which might disenfranchise them.  Alternatively, it might be a way to make sure that only people that are supposed to vote (i.e. non-felonious citizens of the United States) are the ones that actually vote.

Here’s what I could use some help with:  In order to open a bank account, you need to provide ID.  It’s not enough to just show up with some money - the bank will want to know who you are, using government-issued documents.  In order to drive a car, you need to provide ID.  In order to engage in any meaningful non-cash financial transaction, in fact, you need to provide ID, or at least have provided ID at some point to someone so you can use their ID.  In fact, almost anything worth doing in this country requires a government issued ID of some sort - buying alcohol, tobacco, joining the military, and so on.  How is it that all of this is okay but requiring an ID for the most important responsibility of an American citizen is “disturbing”?  Maybe it’s because I’m white, maybe it’s because I have an ID, or maybe it’s because I’m a rationally thinking human being, but something doesn’t seem right here.

It’s not very often that someone not named Rachel Lucas links to me, and even rarer still when I disagree with that somebody, but here it is… courtesy of Gary Micander:

There has been an uproar lately about Hillary’s comments regarding Iran, and her promise to “obliterate” them if they were to attack Israel. At face value that comment makes me really mad. The idea that we, as United States Citizens, feel the need to preemptively destroy things that are not currently direct threats to us is ridiculous. I’m not advocating that we wait until the nuke has been launched to do something either. I’m just saying that in and of itself, Iran attacking Israel does not directly threaten us. It does not give us the right to “obliterate” a country because they have attacked another country and thus proven they have the ability.

What he misses is this:

CHRIS CUOMO: You said if Iran were to strike Israel, there would be ‘massive retaliation.” Scary words. Does ‘massive retaliation” mean you’d go into Iran? You would bomb Iran? Is that what that’s supposed to suggest?

CLINTON: Well, the question was, if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, what would our response be? And I want the Iranians to know that if I am president, we will attack Iran. And I want them to understand that. Because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their society. Because whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program, in the next 10 years during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That’s a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that. Because that, perhaps, will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish, and tragic.

Here’s the deal - there’s a big difference between Iran attacking Israel and Iran nuking Israel.  To be perfectly honest, Israel is perfectly capable of defending itself from pretty much any conventional attack that could come its way from its neighbors.  It’s proven this time and again.  Israel, however, isn’t very big - as this rather handy simulator illustrates, a 4 megaton nuclear bomb would wipe Reno and Sparks combined off the map.  To put this into perspective, the distance between the western edge of Reno and the eastern edge of Sparks is about 11 miles across.  Israel, by comparison, is about 20 miles across at its thinnest near Tel Aviv.  The largest nuclear bomb ever detonated, Tsar Bomba, weighed in at 100 megatons.  Now, it goes without saying that Iran isn’t going to be throwing around any Tsar Bomba-sized bombs anytime soon, but one strategically placed atomic or nuclear device would effectively split Israel in half.  That would be a little difficult to recover from without permanently appropriating the West Bank to serve as a nuclear bypass.

That said, it’s not because of Israel’s strategic position that we should have an issue if Iran nukes Israel.  It’s because there is only one country in the entire history of the world that has ever used nuclear weapons against another nation, and, as that nation, we’d kind of like to keep it that way.  Interestingly, so would the recipient of that nuclear assault, which brings up a very important point - nuclear war is a very, very bad thing.  It is not merely regional - nuclear fallout knows no boundaries.  Furthermore, if it’s okay for Iran to nuke Israel if the mood strikes them, what’s to stop Pakistan and India from getting fresh, or China from nuking, say, Taiwan?  Is that really a world we want to live in?

The answer, of course, is no - nuclear war must never be acceptable.  Ever. It’s way too destructive at even its most “benign” to be tolerated.  We just can’t afford to treat nuclear war any other way.  The best way that we’ve come up with to prevent just that has been deterrence - if you nuke us or any of our friends, we’ll nuke you and your friends, and vice-versa.  Thankfully, Iran doesn’t need friends to keep us from nuking them - our society and culture actually values human life, so we’re not going to unilaterally nuke them.  Even so, though, Iran, along with every other country, needs to realize that the next country to use nuclear weapons in an offensive capacity against another country will be the last… because, by the time we’re through with that country, nobody else will ever dare to do something like that again.

I don’t, and won’t, praise Hillary for much on this blog, but on this one issue, I’m in certain agreement with her.  A nuclear attack against anyone, whether it’s the United States, Israel, or even lowly Liechtenstein, must never be tolerated.  Until someone comes up with a better way than deterrence to convince even the worst tyrants that nuclear war is not an option, that’s what we will have to use, and the only way that works is if we threaten anybody who thinks about nuclear war with complete annihilation - and mean it.

If somebody has a better idea… I’m listening.

So, Nevada has the Senate Majority Leader in its ranks, who is well known for his proclivity towards earmarks - you’d think we’d be rolling in federal loot, right?

Wrong.

Nevada is dead last in money from federal agencies. Why? Well, there are a few reasons:

The reasons included the state’s tight purse strings and demographics.

It often takes a commitment from the state to give money to get federal money, and Nevada isn’t spending the money, administrators say. With Nevada’s percentage of senior citizens isn’t as high as the rest of the nation, there’s less Social Security and Medicare money flowing to the state.

Also, it turns out the Navy doesn’t spend enough here:

While Nevada lags in spending by the Army and Navy, Air Force spending is higher.

Yeah, I know about Fallon NAS, but still… we’re landlocked, people! We have absolutely zero navigable rivers in this state, unless you count the Lake Mead part of the Colorado River that forms our southern border. Of course Naval spending in this state is weak.

Meanwhile, Medicaid in Nevada just isn’t getting the job done, apparently:

Nevada’s Medicaid program — which provides medical insurance for people who don’t have health insurance — is close to having only the coverage required by federal law, said Charles Duarte, administrator for the Nevada Division of Health Care Financing and Policy.

“The bottom line is that we have a relatively basic program,” Duarte said. “When you look at spending per capita on Medicaid services, we routinely rank near the bottom or at the bottom.”

For instance, 28 other states have the Medically Needy Program for people not eligible for Medicaid to deduct what they spend for medical treatment to qualify for Medicaid. The federal government requires state governments to match Medicaid contributions and Nevada does not have money set aside to do that, Duarte said.

Nevada’s lack of Medicaid programs shows up in higher health insurance premiums, said Dwight Hansen, director of financial services for the Nevada Hospital Association.

When people have no medical insurance, their health worsens and they seek treatment in emergency rooms. That care is more expensive and the uninsured can’t pay, so the hospitals have to look for other places to recover the costs for their more expensive treatment, Hansen said.

“That cost then gets shifted over to the only people the hospital can shift it over to and that’s the insured population,” Hansen said.

And as health insurance costs rise, fewer employers can afford it, leaving a higher percentage of the population without insurance, he said.

“You get into this cost spiral that makes things worse,” Hansen said.

One of these days, I’m going to go off on why it’s absolutely asinine we’re making hospital emergency rooms pay for the uninsured. This is the equivalent of saying, “Okay, we know you can’t afford food, so here’s the deal - if you go to a Red Lobster, you get free food. Otherwise, you’re on your own.” Uh… what?! On what planet does this policy even come close to making sense? Yeah, I get that we’re trying to make sure that everybody has some basic level of care and that people in need aren’t getting thrown out of the hospital, but forcing hospitals to throw the uninsured in the most expensive part of the hospital seems somewhat counterproductive to me. Then again, I’m mildly mystified why hospitals don’t just remodel their ERs and have a little community health center right next to it - whenever someone uninsured comes in with the sniffles, they get taken to the community center where, what the hell, they can get treated for “free”, just like the E.R. It would be cheaper for the hospital, I’m sure. Or, better yet, we could just get over this idea that people should be providing goods or services for “free”. That would be helpful, too.

This is somewhat inspired from Rachel’s post about child tax deductions and partly from the comments in there. Long story short, here’s Rachel’s objection to child tax credits:

Here’s a debate question: is it fair for people to pay less tax simply because they have chosen to have children? I’m sure you can guess where I stand (I say it’s bullshit), but I’m curious to hear logical, sound defenses of this policy. Yeah, if I had kids, I’d take the deduction, but I don’t think I’d feel comfortable saying it’s actually “fair” that the day I popped a baby out I suddenly deserved to pay less tax than the day I did before.

The comments generally steer around the following ideas:

It’s fair, because…
- The children pay into social programs later in life.
- It saves money on social programs by encouraging parents to take care of the children (my take, by the way).

It’s not fair, so we should…
- Flat tax! Make everyone pay some percentage (funny how it’s always a far lower percentage than what we’d actually pay if we went with this, by the way - it wouldn’t be 3%, people).
- Sales tax! That way people notice the tax and start encouraging the government to tax less.

I’m going to state the obvious right here and now - one problem we don’t have in this country is people not realizing they should be taxed less. If we actually had that problem, we wouldn’t be running up trillions of dollars in debt. The trouble we’re having is that there is a big disconnect between what our country takes in taxes and what the people think the government should provide for them. Furthermore, the trouble with sales taxes is they are extremely regressive. Think about it for a sec - if you’re poor, you’re probably spending damn near 100% of your income on goods and services. If you’re rich, you’re probably spending a lot less and saving a lot more, and why not? If you’re making $1,000,000 a year, how much of that can you spend? That’s why we have an income tax - strange as it sounds, it’s a little more fair for everyone.

This brings me to the problem of a flat tax. In order for a flat tax to work, you have to assume that the government is not providing any services to the poor. Why? Well, if we are providing services to the poor (health care, food stamps, housing, etc.), all we’re doing is taking money from them that we’d probably they rather use on actually getting themselves out of poverty. Pretty simple, right? I mean, think about it for a sec. You’re poor. We’re giving you money so your life doesn’t completely suck. Then, we’re going to take your money so we can… be fair? How does that help you not spend our money again? It’s the same reason we have a child tax credit - letting someone keep a few grand a year so they have a better chance of taking care of their children beats the hell out of the government spending tens of thousands of dollars for each child that ends up in foster care or in an orphanage somewhere. It’s also the same reason that I think it’s 15,000 shades of stupid that we tax Social Security.

Now, if you want to argue that eliminating social services would be nice, well, yeah, it would be nice, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon. So, as long as we’re doing that, let’s not knee-cap people that are receiving aid by throwing a flat tax in there that would only force them to need more aid to pay the tax and would keep them on aid longer because we’re taxing their ability to get out of it.

As part of my plan to grow this blog a little, I’ve begun to lurk around some blogs that I usually don’t agree with, if only for no better reason than to have something to write about when blindly parroting everyone else gets a little old. Thankfully, it doesn’t take much for somebody to come up with something absolutely mind-bending, especially when that somebody is Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft:

Fire David Shuster

After being previously suspended for his sexist remarks, it is clear that David Shuster has no remorse. Shakes and Media Matters have the story:

During the April 22 edition of MSNBC Live, guest host David Shuster said to senior campaign correspondent Tucker Carlson: “Before we get to predictions, Tucker, I want to present you … It’s a pen. It’s ‘Jabber Jaw Pens.’ And when you listen to it here.” At this point, Shuster pressed the top of the pen — a likeness of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s head — and the mouth began to move as the pen began audibly laughing.

So, David Shuster should be fired for handing a pen to someone? No… there’s a far more sinister motive:

How could NBC possibly think this outrageous sexism could be acceptable? Fire David Shuster. NOW.

That’s right - he’s a sexist for creating a pen that mocks Hillary’s laugh. Not because he said that Hillary needs to stay barefoot in the kitchen, not because he said that Hillary doesn’t have the balls to be President, and not because he tried to grab Hillary’s ass. You see, only lesbians are allowed to grab other women’s asses - it’s not sexist when that happens. But if a guy does it… oh, boy howdy is he going to be in for a world of hurt.

A coworker of mine one said, “Do not attribute to malice that which can be just as easily attributed to stupidity.” The Hillary pen was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, stupid. However, in order for something to be sexist (or, really, any -ist), it has to insult her in a way that demeans women in general. Saying that she has a lousy laugh does not demean womankind. It just means she has a lousy, distinctive laugh. Nothing more.

This reminds me of something that I read on Cardozaisms fairly recently, about how some people were trying to call McCain “racist” because he described himself as an “American” candidate. What cracked me about it was that the same people that call McCain “racist” and call Shuster “sexist” are the same people that also claim that, when people criticize Obama’s choice in friends and religious figures, they’re attacking his “character” and that we need to focus more on “policy”. Not that any of this is surprising, of course - hypocrisy knows no bounds in politics or talk radio, so why anyone would expect any different is beyond me.

I fired up some left-wing radio this morning and, within two seconds, I heard this on the Stephanie Miller show, trying to explain away Obama’s Level II Kinsley Gaffe:

What he was trying to say was that people shouldn’t have to rely on things other than the government.

Yep - that’s pretty much what I thought he meant to say, and, from where I’m sitting, that’s a hell of a lot worse than any of the so-called “right-wing talking points“.

I know I should stop writing random long-winded polemics and actually write something witty around here, but, damn it, I can’t help myself today… especially when someone baits me like this:

With this post I inaugurate a new category that I’ve avoided until this point: Politics. I spent an inordinate amount of time today reading politically themed articles and blog posts. Most of that can be blamed on reading David Colborne’s blog and then following the ever expanding tree of links from there. I find myself doing something similar to this every few weeks, and I always come to the same conclusion at the end; I really know nothing about politics.

Okay, okay - I’m not going to use this as another excuse to engage in a bit of ex-post-modernist-facto infinite mirroring. I swear!

All of this brings into my mind the ideas of Socrates. He may very well have been on to something with his belief that the general member of society was not equipped with the knowledge to properly choose a ruler or rulers. I mean, we see the people that win American Idol; they are usually the most talented but also tend to conform to what society wants in the categories of looks, clothing, and attitude. Are these categories at all relevant to their singing? In some respects, they are a part of the performance. They are not, however, directly related to the person’s ability. Can we really believe this is a vastly different group of people than the ones going to the polls to elect our Commander-In-Chief?

Of course not, and that’s why it works. Hear me out…

The great and wonderful thing about an absolute dictatorship is that, if you have an absolutely brilliant dictator, your nation will achieve heights like none other. This has been proven throughout history by the likes of Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, and Alexander the Great. There’s just one problem - for every brilliant ruler you might get, you’re also going to get four or five absolutely terrible leaders who, as absolute dictator, have the complete and unerring capacity to spread that terribleness all over your country, like some sort of moldy cheese paste.

This is where a limited government buoyed by popular vote comes in.

The popular vote makes sure that, at any given time, the government represents a majority of the people that are being governed by it. If, at any time, the government stops representing the majority of the people that are being governed by it, they’ll elect a new one at some point. Because the government is limited, it doesn’t matter who the majority of people throw in there - they’re not going to have the power or the control required to really screw things up… and, even if the people elect someone with the mind of a peanut, they can reverse course in a fairly short amount of time.

In a way, this is very similar to how American Idol works - none of the artists maintain popularity long enough to have any serious impact on our culture. Consequently, instead of guiding and shaping our musical tastes like some sort of vicious conformist oligarchy leading us down the path of ruin, we are instead treated to a series of mediocre, ultimately forgettable musicians with varying levels of talent and charisma.

Now, is it true that we miss the highs that we might enjoy were we to just throw caution to the wind? Of course, but, with any luck, we’ll also avoid some of the lows.

Hat tip via American Digest:

It is good to see that Natalie Portman is starting to grow her hair back, though… V for Vendetta damn near scarred me on her for life.

I’m beginning to wonder if I need an Ace section… but, man cannot serve two masters.

The latest bit of snark from the top of my RSS feeder (hello, alphabetical order!) just brightened my day:

Hillary +16 In Indiana

Which is good, considering that 90% of the state doesn’t even have TV or radio, but instead relies on a slower, traditional method of communication involving carving crude “Messenger Runes” into neighbors’ foreheads and genitals.

So any breaking news is limited in speed according to how long it takes you to catch, pin, and inscribe your neighbor. Plus the limited number of onlookers who can see your message carved into him before he dies from blood loss.

A friend of mine lives in Indiana. He works at a Staples there. I suspect they may sell these “Messenger Runes”, but I’m not seeing them in their online catalog. It’s probably a regional thing, sort of like Fleischmann’s Mayonnaise and Kum & Go (We Go All Out!).

On the off chance you’ve been living in a cave somewhere, Our New God has detailed as well as anyone the stupidity that is Obama’s verbiage:

To a crowd of wealthy Californians on Sunday, Barack Obama described small-town Pennsylvanians:

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Jesus in a meadow. What classic bullshit.

Since Fraulein Lucas has already said everything that needs to be said about this incident, as has just about every other blog on the planet, I’m not going to say much about it… except for this:

Am I the only one that’s reminded of this South Park episode? Y’know, the one where Token encourages all of the rich people to go to South Park and they take the town over… and all the rich people just happen to be black? Look - the problem that people are having with Obama isn’t that he’s black. It’s that he’s just like the “richies” in that South Park episode.