Politics: November 2004 Archives
There will be no NASCAR near me. County and city officials decided it was not a good deal because not only would taxpayers have to pay the bulk of the hundreds of millions to build the new speedway, but the ISC would not even guarantee an annual event. Hooray! 
The author of "What's the Matter with Kansas?," Thomas Frank, was on The Daily Show last night.
He's pretty dumb.
He thinks he knows what your interests are, and how you should vote, and that if you disagree, you're simply wrong.
Yes really. Hey, I tried to warn you. OK, it's not like he has no points, but it all boils down to the depraved notion that he is more right about how you should vote than you are.
He doesn't like to tell you this though. He tries to hide his elitism. But he was confronted by David Frum on NewsHour, who said:
Frank replied:
Oh, but he is more likely to be right about your interests than you? Like I said: he's pretty dumb.
He's pretty dumb.
He thinks he knows what your interests are, and how you should vote, and that if you disagree, you're simply wrong.
Yes really. Hey, I tried to warn you. OK, it's not like he has no points, but it all boils down to the depraved notion that he is more right about how you should vote than you are.
He doesn't like to tell you this though. He tries to hide his elitism. But he was confronted by David Frum on NewsHour, who said:
Every person is the world's leading expert on what he or she feels and believes. And I don't think you ever want to tell people that they are mistaken about how, what their beliefs are and how they express them.
Frank replied:
We don't live in a world where everyone's interests are perfectly crystal clear all the time. People get things wrong all the time. I know I do.
Oh, but he is more likely to be right about your interests than you? Like I said: he's pretty dumb.
With 2.87 million votes counted, about 6,000 left to count, and county certification due Wednesday, the Washington race for governor is separated by 19 votes: 1,367,346 (Gregoire) to 1,367,365 (Rossi).
Of the 6,000 left, they are just about evenly split between counties favoring each candidate.
It seems entirely likely there will be a recount, because recount is automatic if the difference is less than 2,000. So unless the remaining ballots swing significantly toward one or the other tomorrow, which seems impossible, we will have a recount.
Stay tuned.
Of the 6,000 left, they are just about evenly split between counties favoring each candidate.
It seems entirely likely there will be a recount, because recount is automatic if the difference is less than 2,000. So unless the remaining ballots swing significantly toward one or the other tomorrow, which seems impossible, we will have a recount.
Stay tuned.
Many people attack the "Christian right" because they don't support using the government to help people in poverty. They say Christ told us to help the poor, so therefore Christians should support federal welfare and the taxes to support it.
As one liberal critic noted, "There is nothing in the Bible that supports tax cuts for the wealthy along with social service cuts for the poor. That's an inversion of all those scriptural statements on poverty..."
Apart from the sheer hypocrisy many such critics exemplify -- these are normally the same people who decry attempts to legislate religious beliefs -- it displays a fundamental misunderstanding of Christ's words, Republicanism, or both.
It is true that Christ called people to help the poor. What is not true is that he implied in any way that this should be done through the government. Indeed, if anything, it is the opposite, as the early churches were the instruments of charity. There are many reasons for this, but one that I'll make note of is the idea that charity is most effective -- on both the spiritual and material levels -- when it is performed more directly.
As to Republicanism, we must first identify the belief that the power to perform charity and welfare are, by the Constitution, reserved to the states, and not to the federal government. This was clearly the belief of the people who wrote, signed, and originally interpreted and defended the Constitution.
Simply put, many of us on the right are not against government welfare entirely, but a. against it being done on the federal level, b. in favor of all charity being done as locally as possible. We are much more open to charity in the state governments than the federal, but prefer it be done privately, directly, locally.
So when you see all this hand-wringing nonsense from the left, saying that the election of Bush represents a "a disparagement of the significance of the social fabric," ignore it, as they clearly don't understand the real point.
However, if you know a Christian who does not perform charity (this would most likely be yourself, since most charity is not performed in public), feel free to chastise him for not living up to the deal.
As one liberal critic noted, "There is nothing in the Bible that supports tax cuts for the wealthy along with social service cuts for the poor. That's an inversion of all those scriptural statements on poverty..."
Apart from the sheer hypocrisy many such critics exemplify -- these are normally the same people who decry attempts to legislate religious beliefs -- it displays a fundamental misunderstanding of Christ's words, Republicanism, or both.
It is true that Christ called people to help the poor. What is not true is that he implied in any way that this should be done through the government. Indeed, if anything, it is the opposite, as the early churches were the instruments of charity. There are many reasons for this, but one that I'll make note of is the idea that charity is most effective -- on both the spiritual and material levels -- when it is performed more directly.
As to Republicanism, we must first identify the belief that the power to perform charity and welfare are, by the Constitution, reserved to the states, and not to the federal government. This was clearly the belief of the people who wrote, signed, and originally interpreted and defended the Constitution.
Simply put, many of us on the right are not against government welfare entirely, but a. against it being done on the federal level, b. in favor of all charity being done as locally as possible. We are much more open to charity in the state governments than the federal, but prefer it be done privately, directly, locally.
So when you see all this hand-wringing nonsense from the left, saying that the election of Bush represents a "a disparagement of the significance of the social fabric," ignore it, as they clearly don't understand the real point.
However, if you know a Christian who does not perform charity (this would most likely be yourself, since most charity is not performed in public), feel free to chastise him for not living up to the deal.
This race is incredible. As of Friday, Gregoire (D) was up by about 18,000, and then Rossi closed to within 4,000 before the weekend. Then Gregoire took another big lead on Monday, which Rossi closed to 2,000 on Tuesday, and now Rossi has widened his lead to 4,000.
With 2.6m votes counted, there's about 150K left, with only about 1/3 of those in precincts coming from those favoring Gregoire. Strictly by the numbers, Rossi looks to be in position to win; however, there could be as many as 90K provisional ballots (I am not sure if those are included in the 150K ... I think they are), which might swing it back toward Gregoire.
Counties must certify votes by Nov. 17, and if the gap is within 2,000 votes, there will be an automatic recount. Ugh.
And not for nothin', but a certain ces told me that I was a bit uninformed if I thought Rossi could win WA. :p
With 2.6m votes counted, there's about 150K left, with only about 1/3 of those in precincts coming from those favoring Gregoire. Strictly by the numbers, Rossi looks to be in position to win; however, there could be as many as 90K provisional ballots (I am not sure if those are included in the 150K ... I think they are), which might swing it back toward Gregoire.
Counties must certify votes by Nov. 17, and if the gap is within 2,000 votes, there will be an automatic recount. Ugh.
And not for nothin', but a certain ces told me that I was a bit uninformed if I thought Rossi could win WA. :p
Is there actually any good evidence that gay marriage was a deciding factor in Bush's re-election? People keep asserting it, but I can't find anything that shows it.
There's no doubt that morality was involved, but why say gay marriage was the big issue? To most people, abortion, what John Kerry did when he came home from Vietnam, the war in Iraq, etc. are all moral issues too.
And yes, evangelical Christians came out more to vote this time, but so did every other group of people, including 18-29s. Everyone voted more this time.
I am not saying it was not a part of the picture, but *the* deciding factor? What am I missing?
There's no doubt that morality was involved, but why say gay marriage was the big issue? To most people, abortion, what John Kerry did when he came home from Vietnam, the war in Iraq, etc. are all moral issues too.
And yes, evangelical Christians came out more to vote this time, but so did every other group of people, including 18-29s. Everyone voted more this time.
I am not saying it was not a part of the picture, but *the* deciding factor? What am I missing?
Four years ago, the Democrats decided they would undermine the GOP majority by sniping and complaining about every little thing.
Already this time, we see the Democrats blaming stupid people, "conservative" media, and a lying President for the Democratic Party failures.
We know the media is not slanted right, we know Kerry lied at least as much as Bush, and we know that the people who voted for Kerry are not any smarter than the people who voted for Bush.
But what point is there in arguing about it? They won't change their mind, even if they really believe it, and by engaging in the discussion you just aid their goal of dragging down the country so the GOP majority cannot be successful in its goals.
So ignore them. Dismiss them. Don't even try to prove them wrong. Think pearls and swine. Move on. If they want to live in negativity and the past and play the blame game, they are not worth your time. If they want to talk about how to move forward, then great.
Already this time, we see the Democrats blaming stupid people, "conservative" media, and a lying President for the Democratic Party failures.
We know the media is not slanted right, we know Kerry lied at least as much as Bush, and we know that the people who voted for Kerry are not any smarter than the people who voted for Bush.
But what point is there in arguing about it? They won't change their mind, even if they really believe it, and by engaging in the discussion you just aid their goal of dragging down the country so the GOP majority cannot be successful in its goals.
So ignore them. Dismiss them. Don't even try to prove them wrong. Think pearls and swine. Move on. If they want to live in negativity and the past and play the blame game, they are not worth your time. If they want to talk about how to move forward, then great.
For those wondering, in the race for WA governor, Dino Rossi (R) is still trailing Christine Gregoire (D), with less than 500,000 ballots left to count, by 4,000 votes.
Not that it means much, but Rossi was down by as much as 16,000 votes earlier Friday, and has closed in.
Not that it means much, but Rossi was down by as much as 16,000 votes earlier Friday, and has closed in.
A lot of people have apparently presumed I am anti-gay-marriage.
This is true.
Sorta.
Read on if you care.
I believe homosexuality is a sin. Am I certain of it? Nah. Can I argue pretty convincingly why it is, from the Bible? Including the New Testament? Yeah. Can I also argue why I think many Christians make way too much of it? Sure. But this is not about my religious beliefs, and that's the point.
Marriage is a fundamentally religious establishment. That does not mean you cannot be married if you are not religious, it only means religion created the institution, evolved it, and made it a cornerstone of our society. The state did not create marriage, it recognized what the churches had already created. And in doing so, it created a whole set of laws that go above and beyond what the religious establishment offered. They ended up creating something else, something separate, though intimately related.
At the time, there was no reason to think we might want to use those same laws for something other establishment than the husband-wife marriage. But now we do. And this causes a lot of confusion and anger, because we don't think of these as two separate things, but as one: marriage.
There was no reason to call it anything other than marriage. It's like in programming: I write a method called saveUserKarma(). But wait, I need to save other things about the user too. I could create saveUserEmailAddress(), but if I change the method just slightly, I can use it to save the user's email address. But the name doesn't really allow for that.
As I said, marriage is a fundamentally religious establishment. And if I remember correctly, the Constitution says something about Congress making no laws respecting an establishment of religion.
The answer seems pretty simple to me. Marriage is religious, which is why we have the problem: many people believe homosexuality is sinful, and gay people should not enter into the religious institution of marriage. Marriage as a civil instituion is not religious, but we have treated them as one and the same thing, for historical reasons. But government cannot legislate religious institutions.
So change the name. Simple.
Civil marriages for none, civil unions for all.
A civil union would be purely legal, a marriage purely social. A civil union would not be bound by anything having to do with beliefs -- including the incidence of love itself -- but only the legal union of two people (for starters ... one step at a time) for the purposes of sharing resources over some extended period of time. Two good friends or siblings would be treated the same as any loving couple who decides not to get married, or one who does.
Obviously, this creates many legal complexities, in that a civil union is not intended to be necessarily permanent, and marriages are. But we already have a framework for this in divorce law, and this might actually end up improving the divorce process itself. Further, it very likely would tend toward making the married family unit less stable and less significant in society, but that is a social problem I believe can be addressed by society, without government.
Is this not an idea libertarian-conservatives and liberals can get behind?
On The West Wing this week, a Congressman wanted the White House to back a bill dissolving all civil marriages. The show treated it like a joke, but I believe it is the answer to the problem.
This is true.
Sorta.
Read on if you care.
I believe homosexuality is a sin. Am I certain of it? Nah. Can I argue pretty convincingly why it is, from the Bible? Including the New Testament? Yeah. Can I also argue why I think many Christians make way too much of it? Sure. But this is not about my religious beliefs, and that's the point.
Marriage is a fundamentally religious establishment. That does not mean you cannot be married if you are not religious, it only means religion created the institution, evolved it, and made it a cornerstone of our society. The state did not create marriage, it recognized what the churches had already created. And in doing so, it created a whole set of laws that go above and beyond what the religious establishment offered. They ended up creating something else, something separate, though intimately related.
At the time, there was no reason to think we might want to use those same laws for something other establishment than the husband-wife marriage. But now we do. And this causes a lot of confusion and anger, because we don't think of these as two separate things, but as one: marriage.
There was no reason to call it anything other than marriage. It's like in programming: I write a method called saveUserKarma(). But wait, I need to save other things about the user too. I could create saveUserEmailAddress(), but if I change the method just slightly, I can use it to save the user's email address. But the name doesn't really allow for that.
As I said, marriage is a fundamentally religious establishment. And if I remember correctly, the Constitution says something about Congress making no laws respecting an establishment of religion.
The answer seems pretty simple to me. Marriage is religious, which is why we have the problem: many people believe homosexuality is sinful, and gay people should not enter into the religious institution of marriage. Marriage as a civil instituion is not religious, but we have treated them as one and the same thing, for historical reasons. But government cannot legislate religious institutions.
So change the name. Simple.
Civil marriages for none, civil unions for all.
A civil union would be purely legal, a marriage purely social. A civil union would not be bound by anything having to do with beliefs -- including the incidence of love itself -- but only the legal union of two people (for starters ... one step at a time) for the purposes of sharing resources over some extended period of time. Two good friends or siblings would be treated the same as any loving couple who decides not to get married, or one who does.
Obviously, this creates many legal complexities, in that a civil union is not intended to be necessarily permanent, and marriages are. But we already have a framework for this in divorce law, and this might actually end up improving the divorce process itself. Further, it very likely would tend toward making the married family unit less stable and less significant in society, but that is a social problem I believe can be addressed by society, without government.
Is this not an idea libertarian-conservatives and liberals can get behind?
On The West Wing this week, a Congressman wanted the White House to back a bill dissolving all civil marriages. The show treated it like a joke, but I believe it is the answer to the problem.
I am told that it is wrong for a group to hate another group for having different personal beliefs.
I am told this by liberals.
Why then do the liberals hate the people who voted differently from them?
What am I missing? Why is this not hypocrisy?
I am told this by liberals.
Why then do the liberals hate the people who voted differently from them?
What am I missing? Why is this not hypocrisy?
I was driving home from hockey tonight in Seattle (I scored a goal and was +3 in a 3-2 victory, our first of the season!), and I was following a pickup truck with five stickers on the rear window. In clockwise order from the top left, they were representing George Bush, the Boston Red Sox, an American flag, the New England Patriots, and Apple Computer.
Did somebody clone me and not tell me? Fess up!
Did somebody clone me and not tell me? Fess up!
A bunch of people say they want to leave the country because of the election results. I have mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand, I decided in my youth that if someone doesn't want to be with me, I didn't want them with me. I think this philosophy saved me from a great deal of angst in middle and high school.
On the other hand, Lincoln used force to prevent a bunch of people leaving the last time. Preservation of the Union is important. While I'd cut loose a "friend" in school who was being a jerk, I would try to maintain a relationship with my brother.
I could flesh these thoughts out more, but I doubt the overwhelming majority of people who say it are serious about it anyway ... which just made me think of this.
On the one hand, I decided in my youth that if someone doesn't want to be with me, I didn't want them with me. I think this philosophy saved me from a great deal of angst in middle and high school.
On the other hand, Lincoln used force to prevent a bunch of people leaving the last time. Preservation of the Union is important. While I'd cut loose a "friend" in school who was being a jerk, I would try to maintain a relationship with my brother.
I could flesh these thoughts out more, but I doubt the overwhelming majority of people who say it are serious about it anyway ... which just made me think of this.
It isn't completely over yet, but it looks like it. (This just in: Kerry just now conceded.)
And all the Democrats I know are just making excuses. It's the media's fault, they were unfair. It's Bush's fault, he lied. It's the people's fault, they are stupid for believing the lies, or don't know what is in theirs or the country's best interests.
It's like they are all Yankees fans, trying to explain away how they got beat by the Red Sox. You lost, fair and square. The quicker you own up to that fact, the quicker you can try to fix your obviously broken party. And let me offer you a suggestion: the people of this country don't like your values, and you need to do something about it. And yes, that includes gay marriage and unrestricted abortion, and it includes your view of the Middle East.
And it's not that people are stupid: on the contrary, they are far smarter than you give them credit for, because despite your attempts to cover up your party's far left values, they saw right through it.
I hope the Democrats die because of this. Just like the Republican party of the 1850s, which arose from the ashes of the dominant parties ignoring the key concerns of a great number of people, I hope a new party is formed that is socially moderate and fiscally conservative, like the Democrats used to be. Not that the Republican party doesn't have problems of its own, but there's overwhelming agreement on its platform (if only they would govern according to it!).
In Washington, it looks like the GOP gained the Attorney General as it seemed we would, and the governor's race is just tied, which is far better than any in the media thought the GOP would do. Rossi is leading the Democrat Gregoire by 1,000 votes out of 1.9 million, with over 2/3 of the precincts in. We won't know this one for awhile.
And finally, you may thank me for the GOP victory. All day yesterday I wore my lucky Patriots hat and shirt, that I wore for 21 straight Patriots victories, that I wore for those 8 straight Red Sox victories in the playoffs. I know the Pats lost this past Sunday, because they got blown out in the first half, but guess who wasn't wearing his lucky shirt for the first half of the game?
And all the Democrats I know are just making excuses. It's the media's fault, they were unfair. It's Bush's fault, he lied. It's the people's fault, they are stupid for believing the lies, or don't know what is in theirs or the country's best interests.
It's like they are all Yankees fans, trying to explain away how they got beat by the Red Sox. You lost, fair and square. The quicker you own up to that fact, the quicker you can try to fix your obviously broken party. And let me offer you a suggestion: the people of this country don't like your values, and you need to do something about it. And yes, that includes gay marriage and unrestricted abortion, and it includes your view of the Middle East.
And it's not that people are stupid: on the contrary, they are far smarter than you give them credit for, because despite your attempts to cover up your party's far left values, they saw right through it.
I hope the Democrats die because of this. Just like the Republican party of the 1850s, which arose from the ashes of the dominant parties ignoring the key concerns of a great number of people, I hope a new party is formed that is socially moderate and fiscally conservative, like the Democrats used to be. Not that the Republican party doesn't have problems of its own, but there's overwhelming agreement on its platform (if only they would govern according to it!).
In Washington, it looks like the GOP gained the Attorney General as it seemed we would, and the governor's race is just tied, which is far better than any in the media thought the GOP would do. Rossi is leading the Democrat Gregoire by 1,000 votes out of 1.9 million, with over 2/3 of the precincts in. We won't know this one for awhile.
And finally, you may thank me for the GOP victory. All day yesterday I wore my lucky Patriots hat and shirt, that I wore for 21 straight Patriots victories, that I wore for those 8 straight Red Sox victories in the playoffs. I know the Pats lost this past Sunday, because they got blown out in the first half, but guess who wasn't wearing his lucky shirt for the first half of the game?
On MichaelMoore.com, I saw one of the many voter complaints, from my county, in which someone claimed that our voting machines didn't tell people to submit their votes. I responded, and they apparently removed the initial complaint.
I note this to say hey, good for them for removing it, and also, don't believe everything you read on sites like this. Take it all with a grain of salt. Here's what I wrote, FWIW:
I note this to say hey, good for them for removing it, and also, don't believe everything you read on sites like this. Take it all with a grain of salt. Here's what I wrote, FWIW:
Someone else reported problems with voting machines in Snohomish County. I have used these machines thrice, once in the summer registering voters (we had a demo), and once in the primary itself, and once today.
I agree the machines are a bit difficult to use, but cannot agree that the users are not told to submit the final results. The way these machines -- from Sequoia -- work, is that you are given options, you select your choices, and then you select the big yellow NEXT button at the bottom (or BACK, to go back).
You keep hitting NEXT and making choices until the choices are all done. You see a page with all your choices, and then two more big yellow BACK and NEXT buttons. You are directed to select a choice to change it. When you hit NEXT, you then are told one last time, hit SUBMIT or hit REVIEW to go back and make changes. You do that, and you are done, and your voting card ejects.
Even if someone sees the list of choices and does not see the same big yellow NEXT button they've hit several times already to get to this point, the voting machine cannot be used until the process is finished and the voting card is ejected (unless a voting worker overrides it and cancels out the whole process), so if someone leaves before completely finishing, the voting worker just needs to hit NEXT and SUBMIT to finish it.
Again, it may not be ideal, but it is not as bad as the other user made it sound. And it's the same systems in use nationwide by anyone who uses Sequoia, so it's not some Snohomish County plot (and we have a far left liberal Democrat Conrgessman representing us here, Rick Larsen, so I don't know why they think we are a bastion of Republicanism).
I predict that if Kerry wins, there will be a lot of people ticked off, but we will as a nation accept it and move on.
I predict that if Bush wins, there will be a lot of people ticked off, and we will see violence in the streets, with hundreds of thousands of knuckle-draggers complaining that democracy is dead and Bush has stolen the election and hijacked the government.
Of course, we will only be able to find out if one of my predictions is accurate.
I predict that if Bush wins, there will be a lot of people ticked off, and we will see violence in the streets, with hundreds of thousands of knuckle-draggers complaining that democracy is dead and Bush has stolen the election and hijacked the government.
Of course, we will only be able to find out if one of my predictions is accurate.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
