When, exactly, did the Cold War start again?

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters.

Thoughts on the Presidental Race

(Fleshed out from an email to my dad)

I had my doubts about Hillary at first, but she seems to be the juggernaut at this
point. I think she could win it, but any of the Democrats will have to try pretty hard to lose this one, especially given the atrocious Republican field. When a schmuck like Giuliani is your front-runner, you’ve got problems.

Edwards (the mutlimillionare who gets pricey haircuts) is having trouble positioning himself as a populist. Go figure. It’s a shame, because his message is pretty good.

I wouldn’t count Obama out of this race yet. He’s a damn good speaker, and I think his message of unity and hope will really resonate if he can get it out to more people. It remains to be seen whether Hillary’s huge war chest can drown his message out.

I have to say my favorite candidate of this cycle is Ron Paul, though. The guy is batshit crazy, but has a small and devoted internet following. (mainly because he’s anti-war) This piece by Daniel Miessler pretty much nails him. Here’s a summary:

• Against Federally Supported Public Education
  Your parents are poor? Guess you’re not getting a high school diploma.
• Against Federal College Loans
  How many of you have stafford loans?
• Against Federal Consumer Protection Groups Like The FDA
  The classic libertarian argument: Well, if products are unsafe, people will die and customers will stop buying it. I’m sure the families of the deceased will be comforted by that.
• Against Environmental Protection.
  So NastyMcCorp dumps toxic waste in your backyard. You can’t turn to the EPA to help. Instead, you should just sue them! So then it’s the best lawyer your broke ass can afford vs NastyMcCorp’s gamut of high-priced lawyers. Sounds fair.
• Doesn’t Believe in the Separation of Church and State
  I’m not even going to talk about this - it’s just complete lunacy.

Yeah, this guy will do great as a national candidate. . .

Primary Process

The current presidential primary system has the first four, and arguably most important, primaries in the following states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

My biggest problem with this arrangement is that none of those states have a major urban area. Las Vegas is pretty far down the list in terms of city size, and is odd enough demographically, that I don’t feel like it does a good job of representing urban interests.

As much as people like to play up the red state/blue state split, or the Northern-Southern angle, I think the real divide in this country is between the urban and rural populations. Because of the nearly even split, Missouri really exemplifies this dynamic. Urban and rural areas split very neatly on issues like educational rates, transportation issues, energy policy, and so on.

Look at this map of the 2004 US elections broken down county by county. To a large extent, what you see are mountains of blue surrounded by lowlands of red. That’s the urban-rural split in action. In essence, what the Democrats are doing here is leaving their base out of the primary process, which seems foolish to me.

2008 Primaries

I’ve been following the 2008 primary race pretty closely, but I haven’t written much about it. Honestly, at this point, it’s hard for me to get strongly behind any one of the Democratic campaigns. It’s not because their ideas are lame, or their personalities are lacking. I think it’s because after eight years of Bush, they all look so good that I can’t make up my damn mind.

Single Payer

What is Single Payer health care? Watch this video for an easy-to-follow explanation.

Terror Update

Days the color-coded terror alert system has been in place: 1,958
Days spent at terror alert level Blue or Green: 0

For those of you counting, that’s over five and a third years.

Short Iraq Film

I thought I was completely numb to the events in Iraq, then I saw this short documentary by the Guardian. Definitely worth watching, but not for the faint of heart. It gets graphic at times.

Why aren’t these images on the news? After all, these are scenes played out daily in Iraq. Shouldn’t Americans be exposed to what they have done? What they voted for? What they overwhelmingly supported only a few short years ago?

QOTD

“Our generation must be the one that says, “We must halt global warming.” If we don’t act now, it will be too late. Our generation must be the one that says “yes” to renewable fuels and ends forever our dependence on foreign oil. Our generation must be the one that accepts responsibility for conserving natural resources and demands the tools to do it. And our generation must be the one that builds the New Energy Economy. How do we do it? It won’t be easy, but it is time to ask the American people to be patriotic about something other than war.“

– John Edwards

(emphasis mine; full interview here)

Health Care Crisis

USA Today has a piece on the health care crisis in America, focusing specifically on Houston. In fact, they profiled Ben Taub hospital, right next door to where I work, as one of the best examples of the problem. A few points really jumped out at me:

• 30% of people in Harris county (which is essentially Houston) have no insurance. That’s the highest rate among the top ten metropolitan areas in the US
• In order to qualify for Medicaid in Texas, a family of three must make less than $4,822 in income.

Are you freaking kidding me? A 40-hour per week job at minimum wage pays around 10 grand, and if you’ve ever tried to live on that kind of salary, you know that they certainly need all the help they can get. Other states have more reasonable levels set: In Florida it’s $10,000, in California it’s $18,000, and the cutoff is $25,000 in New York.

The state has forfeited more than $900 million in federal money under the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) during the past six years because it wouldn’t put up 28 cents for each 72 cents in federal aid. Restrictions put in place in 2003 cut about 200,000 children from the program in a state with the highest percentage of uninsured children, nearly twice the national average.

Welcome to Texas: We don’t give a rat’s ass about children.

Hat tip to Mike for the link

QOTD

“Your current political opinions are interesting in inverse proportion to the number of times you use the word “fascist” or variants thereof. Likewise “communist” and variants thereof.”

Chad Orzel

McCain on the Daily Show

John Stewart takes John McCain to task. McCain’s presidential campaign has officially jumped the shark.

The more things change…

Four years ago, almost to the day, I took the political compass test.

My results then?

Economic Left/Right: -6.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.85

Today, on a whim, I took it again. My results:

Economic Left/Right: -6.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.74

If nothing else, I’m consistent.

Houston Janitors

Several sources have reported that striking Houston janitors were trampled by stampeding police horses as they were peacefully protesting. If so, that would be inexcusable. However, that’s not exactly the right story.

First of all, there wasn’t any real trampling. Here’s the video:

The cops use their horses for crowd control and herd the protesters back onto the sidewalks. Nothing wrong with that. No one was trampled or smashed to the ground by horses.

Another thing these sources don’t mention is that some of the janitors were trying to block a busy intersection, as they did several days ago. That action clearly falls outside their right to peacefully protest. They don’t have the right to endanger people and impede others’ rights to use the streets.

I’m no fan of police brutality and sympathize with these workers’ plight. However, I don’t think there was anything wrong with the way the cops handled this one.

Update: Mike has posted an update talking about the crappy treatment these protesters received while in police custody. If their allegations are true, then I 100% condemn the tactics used against them. It does sound a little like something out of Guantanamo.

So to be clear, I don’t have an issue with police getting protesters the hell out of the road. I do have an issue with sub-human treatment of prisoners.

Late Night Snark

“It has not been a good week for the Republicans. Actually, this election was like a divorce: they got rejected, insulted and lost the House.”

—Jay Leno

“On Tuesday night, in an ironic turnaround, Iraq brought regime change to the U.S.”

—Amy Poehler

Oh, c’mon - it’s funny!

As seen on Fark:

Trent Lott selected as Senate Minority Whip, because if there’s one thing that Trent Lott likes, it’s whipping minorities.

Colbert Quits

Go watch this great video from the Colbert Report last night. Or if you’re too lazy to watch, just laugh at the money quote:

Tomorrow you’re all going to wake up in a brave new world. A world where the constitution gets trampled by an army of terrorist clones created in a stem cell research lab run by homosexual doctors who sterilize their instruments over burning American flags. Where tax-and-spend Democrats take all your hard earned money and use it to buy electric cars for National Public Radio and teach evolution to illegal immigrants. Oh - and everybody’s HIIIIIGH!!

Live Election Blogging

Since I’m going to be trolling the internet all night, getting election results, I figure I might as well post about it.

• Woohoo! Dems retake the House convincingly, with lots of opportunities for pickups left!
• Wow - In VA, with 97% of precincts in, the Dem trails by less than 8k votes (out of 2.2 million)
• I’m amused at how early this evening, the major sites were calling races before ANY votes were in, based on the polls.
• Holy shit - VA is ridiculous - 1700 votes divide them with only a few precincts left. 1700 votes out of 2.3 million cast? That’s insane…
• CNN has by far the best live map. It breaks it down by county, ballot measures, etc. Don’t bother with anyone else’s site.
• Tom “Mr. Corruption” Delay’s old district has been called for the Democrat Nick Lampson. I can’t speak for Texas, but Houston isn’t so bad sometimes.
• The Governator will win another term in CA - no surprise there…
• I always find it interesting how many more women vote liberal/democratic. I think it’s the whole ‘nurturing’ role - being more concerned about other people than some men are. Call me stereotypical, but it may be true.
• Webb pulls ahead in VA!! This comes with less than 20 precincts left. There will be a recount, by VA law, but it’s likely to not matter, since most of VA is on electronic voting machines (so I hear).
• Claire is closing the gap in MO. 50-47, with many KC-area counties yet to weigh in. That’s her biggest stronghold of support, IIRC.
• Geez - Kansas, home of Creationist state-school boards now has a dem gov, dem att. general, and has picked up a few house seats. The Republicans really did fuck up in this cycle.
• Jackson County is only a third of the way in - that’s where Claire was prosecutor back in the day and should will even up this race quite a bit.
• Stem cell amendment slightly behind. Given that it was polling well, and that Claire has tied herself to stem cell research very closely, it’s likely that a lot of the ballots yet to be counted will swing dem. Good news for the McCaskill campaign.
• Wow - Webb is leading with a very narrow margin, and by VA law, it looks like there will be a recount. If MO and MT both go dem, then that will be one ugly-ass court battle for control of the Senate.
• With 80% reporting, Claire takes a narrow lead!
• Lieberman beat out Lamont in CT earlier today, which is a shame. Lieberman may be a prick, but at least he’s a prick that will caucus with the Dems.
• Claire is up and the stem-cell amendment is up, both by over 10k votes. Also interesting: the MO minimum wage hike is passing overwhelmingly.
• McCaskill is up over 10k, with 81% reporting. The best part? Clay county, part of KC, hasn’t weighed in at all yet. That’s Claire’s base. I’m calling this one for McCaskill right now.

Yup, Claire leads by 25k right now - this one’s over. Tester looks like he’ll win comfortably in MT, which leaves VA. The published results show Webb with a 2700 vote win. This will undoubtedly be challenged in court, and it’s clear that every provisional ballot and absentee ballot will be gone over with a fine-toothed comb. I’m feeling optimistic, though, and I believe that Webb will emerge from the mudslinging victorious. That means that the Dems pulled off the perfect storm tonight and took back both Houses of the Senate!! I’m calling it a night!

Missouri Voting Rights

Some FYIs on voting tomorrow (which I’m sure you’re all planning to do!)

• The polls open at 6am and will be open until 7pm. Any voter who is in line at 7:00 pm is allowed to vote.
• Missouri does not require that you show a photo ID at the polls. There were issues today already: when Robin Carnahan, the MO Sec. of State showed up to cast her absentee ballot, she was repeatedly asked for photo ID, even though it is not required by law. The MO requirements are as follows:
  

  1. Identification issued by the state of Missouri, an agency of the state, or a local election authority of the state;

  2. Identification issued by the United States government or agency thereof;

  3. Identification issued by an institution of higher education, including a univeristy, college, vocational and technical school, located within the state of Missouri;

  4. A copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, government check or other government document that contains the name and address of the voter;

  5. Driver’s license or state identification card issued by another state.

• If you are not on the voter roll for some reason, ask for a provisional ballot. This will allow you to cast a ballot right away. The election board will later determine whether you were eligible and your vote will be counted.
• If you have any problems voting, and aren’t sure what to do, call 1-866-OUR-VOTE. It’s a hotline staffed by election law specialists who will be able to help you out.

Please, pass this info on to all your friends, to make sure everyone’s vote gets counted. Happy voting!

Amendment 2

I voted for MO Amendment 2 on my absentee ballot yesterday, but I’m somewhat ambivalent about the whole thing. Do I think that funding science is important? Absolutely. Do I think that the MO consititution is the right place for this type of material? No, not really. These specific types of statutes really belong in laws, passed by the legislators of the state.

I’m voting for it nonetheless, because if it fails, it will be such a boon to the anti-science, fear-mongering, evangelical assholes in the state. I also don’t see any other way that Missouri is going to allow stem-cell research in the foreseeable future. So here’s to progress, even if we have to go around the legislature and directly to the people to get it.