Recently in Politics Category

I'm certain by now most of you have heard or read Elizabeth Warren's remarks about how because society gave you what you have, society can take what you've got:

I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.' No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own: nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory -- and hire someone to protect against this -- because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

There's so much wrong about this it is hard to know where to begin. I could talk the fact that the things she talks about that make it possible for people to conduct business -- other than the military -- represent a tiny fraction of the actual spending of the government. I could talk about how her argument -- even though she says we should be allowed to "keep a big hunk" of our own money -- has no real limits. I could talk about how the rich already pay their fair share, paying a higher percentage of their income in taxes than the rest of us.

But I want to be clear: the biggest fundamental flaw here is that rich people actually are the ones who gave all of that to us moreso than the other way around. Most revenue comes from rich people. They gave us roads, they gave us public education, they gave us police and fire and military. Rich people paid for -- far more than the rest of us put together -- everything the federal government does. The top 5 percent pays over 60 percent of all federal income tax. The top 1 percent pays 40 percent of all federal income tax.

And instead of thanking Mitt Romney, and other people in the top 1 percent, who pay about $800 billion in income taxes every year (not including the income taxes paid by their employees), and create hundreds of thousands of jobs, Warren and others on the left attack them as though they've done something wrong.

Granted, some a very small number of rich people don't pay their fair share. They dodge taxes and take subsidies and don't pay a higher effective rate than you and I do. But overwhelmingly, most of them do pay more than us, in both dollars and percentages. A lot more. They are the reason we have the government services we've got, and Warren pretends that these people, who are objecively the greatest contributors to the services she mentions, are somehow merely beneficiaries who are stealing from the rest of us.

I know, I call people liars a lot. But it's not my fault that there's lots of liars out there, and they aren't being called out for it. So I do it.

Senator Lisa Brown said the other day, "to reach the ultimate goal of amply funding basic education as we've now defined it is going to require a new dedicated revenue source."

She's a liar. She knows this isn't true. She knows the state can cut existing programs to pay for whatever they think they need for basic education, and she knows that it's not education that would require additional revenue, but all those other programs that the state's constitution says are not the "paramount duty" of the state.

We do not need to increase any taxes, let alone come up with new revenue streams, to cover basic education. This is a fact. It's other programs that would "need" additional revenue, and instead of lying and saying she wants that money for education, she should be honest and say precisely what other programs she wants that money for. The constitution says it's not for education.

Hold on to your pocketbooks. Governor Gregoire and the Democrats continue to cut education instead of arts funding, environmental causes, and many other budget items, in the hopes that citizens will want to raise taxes to pay for education.

See, no sane person would want to raise taxes to pay for art at a halfway house for child molesters, so the Democrats have conducted a strategy of cutting the most popular programs first, in the hopes that popular support will swing toward increasing taxes. So far, it hasn't worked, but now that the Supreme Court of Washington has ruled that public education is underfunded, that may change.

Resist. Demand cuts in other programs. Demand that education be cut last. And if your local politicians tell you we need to raise taxes for education, call them out on their lies.

Now, granted, I think any decision that says schools are underfunded is completely wrong. It's a given that better education can always be provided without an increase in funds. I am completely unconvinced that education is actually underfunded, though I would agree that the students aren't getting a sufficient education. But this is beside the point, which is that if more money is needed, we already have that money, in all of the other places where it is being spent that are not the state's paramount constitutional duty.

And while you're at it, demand that our state return to priorities-based budgeting. Every item gets a priority, and we spend revenues on the top priorities first, and when we run out of money, we stop. We don't cut top priorities. We don't fight over what to cut during a recession. We only fight over what the state's priorities are, and then they are laid out for all the voters to see. This is how families budget, this is how businesses budget, and this is how our state should budget.

According to Bill Wade, chairman of an organization of Park Service retirees, a law that allows guns in national parks is directly responsible for the death of Park Service ranger Margaret Anderson.

Of course, this makes no sense: from everything we know, Benjamin Colton Barnes was a fugitive, heading to the mountains to evade capture from another shooting crime. There's no reason of any kind to think he would have obeyed a law that said he couldn't bring his guns into the park, any more than he obeyed the laws that said he couldn't murder Anderson with his guns. It's insanity. It's not even within one of the possible realms of reality. There is not a criminal like him on Earth, ever, who would have been stopped from entering the national parks with his weapons before the new law that was passed in 2010. Indeed, there's a strong chance he didn't even know what the law was, because -- simply -- he has no reason to care what the law was, since he would have no intention of following it regardless.

Maybe I am being too hard on Wade. Maybe he's senile or somesuch. But my experience with anti-gun folks tells me that they will use lies and extreme language to exploit gun tragedies to suit their agenda, so I won't assume he is disabled, and call him what he appears to be: a scum-sucking liar.

Washington's new congressional districts, as expected, are designed to protect incumbents. (Caveat: while many, including myself, are treating these as though they are final, the commission hasn't voted on them yet, but they are set to do so within days, and I expect them to be approved.)

Rick Larsen, who beat John Koster by only two percent in 2010, was given the 2nd District by removing almost all of its rural areas. Similarly, Dave Reichert's 8th District was made more rural, solidfying his chances of reelection. So the 1st District -- which has no incumbent, as Jay Inslee is running for governor instead -- picks up the rural areas of the 2nd, and some of the more urban areas of the 8th, and kept some of its existing urban areas. And the new 1st happens to be where Koster, 2010's toughest challenger, lives.

Interestingly, although Koster (a Republican) has an Arlington address, he lives outside the city, in the unincorporated area northeast. Larsen also is originally from Arlington, though currently "lives" in Everett. Yet commissioners saw fit to put Arlington -- where Koster beat Larsen by double digits -- into the 2nd. It seems to me like it's a bit of a poke in the eye to Koster by Democratic redistricting commissioner Tim Ceis.

The most offensive part of the redistricting to me, however, is the new map for the ninth, which was carved out deliberately to give "ethnic minorities" a majority. I can't stand this sort of institutional racism.

Yes, I called it racism. This district is designed to get an "ethnic minority" candidate elected. Oh, they don't say it outright, but it's obviously true. They say they want to "[encourage] people of color" to participate, make them "feel their votes matter -- that they have the ability to swing future elections," and that the new representative will "be a champion for their interests." I happen to think that voting for someone -- even in small part -- based on ethnicity is racism. And the Redistricting Committee is making it a part of our electoral institution. So it is, indeed, institutional racism.

Granted, the extremely pale incumbent, Adam Smith, is going to be on the ballot in 2012, but the proponents of this district believe it will become more "ethnically diverse" (read: "nonwhite") in coming years, so when Smith is gone, they hope to replace him with an "ethnically diverse" (I mean, "nonwhite") candidate.

Y'all don't think the proponents of this new district will be satisfied if they continue to be represented by Adam Smith or some other paleface, do you? If they would be, then why bother with an "ethnic minority" district in the first place? It's obvious that Smith can be a champion for their stated interests: comprehensive immigration reform, and disparities in education and health care. So why is this change so important, since they already have someone who is working for their interests? Obviously their interests are not merely in the issues, but in actually having a nonwhite representative.

So if they think that voting based on ethnicity is important, then if no white candidates runs in the new 9th District (in the future, since Adam Smith is running in 2012), I am considering doing so myself (even though I am not certain I am actually white, I appear that way to most people), just to give white resident-citizens of the 9th a choice that the designers of this district map seem to think is so important.

I do not believe that there is any value whatsoever in grouping voters together by race. Some race-lovers may disagree, but I know plenty of conservative "ethnic minorities" who would rather live in a conservative district than a left-leaning one, regardless of its ethnic makeup. Playing to race just further instills in us that "people of color" are different than people of ... white? Non-nonwhiteness? No color?

Honestly, I don't even know what the hell these race-lovers are talking about half the time. But as for me and my house, we will ignore whatever color you think you are and I am.

Some years ago, Senator John Kerry voted for the Iraq war funding before he voted against it. He got in a lot of trouble because, in the end, his proposal would have funded the war, but in a different way than the bill that was passed, but people took that as him being against the funding. It's hard to keep up with that sort of story line. It's the sort of story that gets caught in the current and carried downstream no matter how hard you paddle upstream.

The Republicans are in the same, swift, boat now. They too are in favor of the policy (extending the payroll tax holiday), for even longer than the Democratic proposal. But because they want it to work differently, they are getting accused of being against the policy altogether. Now, some of them are against it, but there's a majority of both parties sufficient to pass it, if they could work out how to pay for it.

The only difference with Kerry is that there was a majority of both parties who got it passed without him, so the policy moved forward without jeopardizing the timeline. But the timeline is upon us now, and the House Republicans had no more time to get a better bill now.

Of course, this bill lasts only two months. I wonder if this wasn't planned by Boehner, frankly: he waits for the conservatives of his party to go home, he strikes a deal to pass it without them, they return next year angry and ready to fight, and they get a better deal for the remainder of the year. People are saying Boehner and the Republicans lost big here, but I'm not so sure. Yes, they take a small and temporary hit from people who are lied to into believing that they were against the payroll tax extension, but if they can pull off a better bill in two months, that will be quickly forgotten.

It's funny to me that so many people are accusing Boehner of being short-sighted, but they themselves can't see that just two months down the road, Boehner has an opportunity to turn it all around.

Many people say that uncertainty in public policy -- taxes, regulation, and so on -- is holding back the private sector. Other people say, that's dumb: if something makes sense for a business, the business should do it, regardless of the public policy.

Now, on its face, the latter argument seems silly. If I can get some equipment for $10 million, but it will only provide me $10 million in revenue over its lifetime, then that obviously makes no sense. But if government will give me a $5 million tax credit for it, well, now it might make sense for me, depending on what other costs are associated with it.

But it also makes no sense based on the other behaviors of government, in particular the tax code: most of the tax code is designed to manipulate private behavior, whether it's through encouraging home ownership, or charitable contributions, or changing the windows in your home. So on the one hand the politicians use public policy every day to manipulate behavior, and then when it gets to the point that those policies become uncertain, they tell us that their policies don't affect behavior.

Actions speak louder than words: if they ever get rid of all of these manipulative features of the tax code, I'll believe them when they say that they don't believe policy affects behavior.

All of you students and parents and teachers who are upset about K-12 education being cut: if you think that these cuts constitute having less than an "ample provision" for education, then please tell Governor Gregoire that her proposed cuts violate the Constitution.

She would likely tell you that we need more revenues to continue to make that ample provision the Constitution requires. In fact, what the Constitution requires is, essentially, to make ample provision for education first, and pay for everything else afterward. So if anything else is being funded, then they have literally no excuse for not making ample provision for education. No extra revenues are required, as long as other expenditures exist.

The Democrats are trying to get kids and parents and teachers to hate on the Republicans and others who don't want to raise taxes, and to convince them that supporting tax increases is the only way to fully fund education. They are counting on you to be ignorant of their constitutional obligations. Don't let them get away with it!

I think Newt Gingrich would be a terrible nominee for President, and a pretty bad President. I think he doesn't lead effectively, I think he's essentially an American statist (not that government is the answer for everything, but that it is a big part of the answer for many, if not most, things), and I think he is erratic and prone to errors that can hurt the country.

But for the life of me I don't understand the hubbub over this Freddie Mac thing. Yes, it paid him a lot of money for his insights, whatever they may be, but there's no evidence he ever tried to convince legislators of anything on its behalf. And there's no evidence that their money influenced his own views or criticisms of the institution. It seems to me if anything that people should be upset with Freddie Mac for wasting its money on Gingrich.

And while I have some admiration for Michele Bachmann's tenacity and values and intelligence, my view of her character has taken a recent hit when she tried to convince debate viewers that the proof that he was "influence-peddling" was that he "took the money." So if you take money for A, that means you did B? Heck, taking money for A doesn't even mean you did A, let alone B. It's utter nonsense, and she knows it.

[Edited to change "Fannie Mae" to "Freddie Mac."]

I think Rick Larsen owes the Detroit Tigers an apology. I've seen his staff's offensive tweets next to the Detroit Tigers logo -- which at least one of his staff chose for their Twitter picture -- for a couple of days now. I'm not even a Tigers a fan, but I feel bad for them having to be associated with Rick Larsen's staff.

Maybe Michele Bachmann was right when she calls our federal government a "gangster government."

The Obama administration apparently didn't even mean it when -- almost two years after the plant was announced -- they said Boeing broke the law in opening a plant in South Carolina. They dropped the lawsuit today, even though nothing changed about that plant since the lawsuit was announced. But Boeing did agree to open its next plant in a union state, and suddenly the South Carolina plant doesn't violate the law?

All along, Obama was just using the threat of a frivolous, but expensive, lawsuit by the federal government to force Boeing to go to a union state with its next facility.

This is part of why the health insurance lawsuit is so important: Obama and the Democrats literally believe they have the right to force anyone to do anything, as long as it has to do in some way with "commerce." Fire your CEO, cut these benefits, increase those benefits, set your prices, build your plant here, provide this service and these products.

It's total insanity. They literally have no right to do any of it.

Obama and many others on the left are attacking the Republicans for on the one hand taking a pledge to not raise taxes, and on the other opposing continuing the payroll tax holiday.

Obama said just yesterday, "I know many Republicans have sworn an oath never to raise taxes as long as they live. How could it be that the only time there's a catch is when it comes to raising taxes on middle-class families?"

But, unfortunately, Obama is lying. They took no such pledge, and there is no "catch." The oath Obama refers to for members of Congress very explicitly does not cover the payroll tax. It reads:

ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and

TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.

It only refers to the federal income tax, and deductions and credits on that tax. The payroll tax is separate and not addressed, in any way, by implication or otherwise, in the pledge. This is intentional. If you read the state versions of the pledge, they refer to all taxes, but the federal version is only about the income tax.

Obama and his people are smart. They know this. They are just lying.

A few other points on this payroll tax thing are worth noting:

First, the Democrats have tremendous gall to say that the Republicans should oppose a tax increase on fundamental principle now, while at the same time saying they are just going to increase that tax in the following year anyway.

Second, the Democrats have for years attacked anyone who called preserving an expiring cut a "tax increase." Now they are using that phrase for that purpose every other minute. Of course, some Republicans have switched their language too, but I've not seen one say that it is wrong to call it a tax increase, as the Democrats have done for years. I've actually been called a liar by leftists, several times, for saying that allowing a tax cut to expire is a tax increase. I've not seen any of these same leftists call the Democrats, like Obama, liars for the same language. Funny that.

Third, this is not paid for. Anything that takes ten years to pay for, won't be paid for.

Fourth, it's just bad policy, even if it were paid for. We should be reducing income tax, not payroll tax. Payroll taxes are what pay for Social Security and Medicare, the two most serious financial liabilities our country faces in the future, both of which are in serious trouble. We need to address those entitlements as wholes, and not monkey with it for short-term political gain.

Fifth, and most importantly, the Republicans should address all this by proposing income tax reform that will lower tax rates, or provide deductions/credits, at about the same level as the payroll tax holiday, but will be permanent. That will effectively demolish the dishonest Democratic argument that the Republicans are against helping the middle class, while highlighting that Republicans really believe that the payroll tax holiday is just bad policy. Given the lateness of the hour, maybe concede to a six-month payroll tax extension while the income tax reform is worked on.

President Obama's people are out attacking Mitt Romney, saying that because he changes on the issues, he has no "moral core." So I guess that means if you say you will pull out of Iraq within a year and three years later we're still there; if you say we will close Gitmo and there's no plans to do so; if you say a health insurance mandate is wrong and then you make it the keystone of your plan; if you say you will end warrantless wiretapping, but then keep using it; if you say you believe the Second Amendment provides for an individual right, then support a ban on individuals owning guns in DC; if you say you will have more open processes and less lobbyists in government, but nothing changes; if you say you are against gay marriage, but then say you are in favor of it ...

Sorry, what was Obama saying about Romney?

I am not attacking Obama's positions and changes on positions here. I just don't understand how people can look at Romney and Obama and say, "yeah, Romney has no moral core because he keeps changing his views, unlike this Obama guy."

Of course, I am begging the question a bit here: Obama's strategy, as I've said for more than a year, is not to make himself look good, but to make his opponent look bad. He doesn't care if he looks even worse than Romney on the things he criticizes Romney for. All that matters is that people who might vote for Romney, don't. Obama knows he has at least as many significant changes in positions -- just in the last four years -- as Romney has had in his career. But it doesn't matter.

Make no mistake: not only is almost all of Obama's foreign policy, and significant parts of his domestic policy, just like Bush's, but his second-term campaign strategy is, too. Bush did something novel in 2004: he didn't really defend his own record much, but instead attacked Kerry. Not only did this dilute Kerry's support among independents, but it scared the voters on the right about the prospects of a Kerry presidency so much, it got them out to the polls in droves. How many people did you know who were voting for Kerry, instead of against Bush? Similarly and more remarkable, many people on the right voted against Kerry rather than for Bush.

(This is why the exit polls were so far off: the left was enthusiastic about opposing Bush, but the right was not enthusiastic about supporting Bush. And because he was not already in power, they were not enthusiastic about opposing Kerry, either. They were just scared Kerry might win, while the left was excited about the chance to remove Bush from power. As a result, the left was more interested in talking to pollsters, thus, the exit polls skewed heavily for Kerry.)

If you want to know what Obama will do next year, just look at what Bush did in 2004. So much for "hope and change." So much for a "moral core." But you all on the left will vote for him anyway, just like we all on the right voted for Bush.

So the left is hammering Gingrich over his "hypocrisy." But I can't figure out what they are talking about. Keep in mind that I do not really like Gingrich as a politician, and while I would vote for him over Obama, I would never nominate him for pretty much any federal elective office, and maybe not a state office either. So it's not like I am defending My Guy here.

But what did Gingrich do that was so wrong? After he was no longer in office, he was paid by Freddie Mac for a service, presumably performed it. There's no evidence of any kind that he lobbied, or that he made any decisions. So he criticizes the people who made the decisions, and people who took money from them while in office. So ... where's the hypocrisy? He criticized A and B, but he did neither A nor B.

Carl Bernstein, Boy Reporter, actually brought up the Clinton impeachment today as "another" Gingrich hypocrisy. You see, Gingrich went after Clinton for having an affair, and Gingrich had an affair, too! Small problem, though: Gingrich went after Clinton for perjury, not having an affair.

Now, I generally despise cries of "hypocrisy" substituting for actual criticisms. But in this case, if Gingrich were trying to make a campaign off attacking people for doing thing he himself did, that would certainly be worthy of comment. But so far, there is no evidence of any kind that he has done that. It's like if I criticized Tim Tebow for not having a good arm, and then someone said, "well, you're a hypocrite because YOU don't have a good arm either!" Yes, I don't have a good arm ... but that's completely beside the point, and it doesn't make me a hypocrite. Gingrich didn't criticize people for consulting for, or being employed by, Freddie Mac, and as best we can tell, all he did was offer them advice.

And this "hypocrisy" thing has become such an article of faith, despite evidence of actual hypocrisy, that anything Gingrich says is by definition hypocritical, apparently. On Morning Joe, they noted that Gingrich worked with an organization for health reform, that didn't fully agree with conservative views on health reform. But Gingrich has always worked with people and organizations -- from Nancy Pelosi to Ted Kennedy -- that he doesn't fully agree with, if he thinks they can help push an issue in the right direction. But to the leftists, this is just more "evidence" that he is a hypocrite.

And this is, by the way, at the same time that they complain that the right doesn't work enough with people "across the aisle." Yet when Gingrich does precisely that, he is a "hypocrite," or in the words of one of the panelists, "a terrible human being."

The saddest thing to me is that these people pretend to be rational, stating quite clearly that logic and reason are on their side, but then they abandon it to go after someone they decide to dislike.

If I am missing something here, by all means, let me know. I did leave out the amount of money Gingrich was paid -- somewhere around $1.5 million to his company, much of that going to himself, certainly -- but unless you can explain rationally why the size of money reflects poorly on him, instead of positively, I won't really care. I wish I could get paid that much money to give my opinions, and I see no reason to demonize anyone for it.

Most of the anti-1183 campaign has been based on lies, but the most recent ad about health professionals is just insanely false. It says that "public health experts speak out against 1183, and then it shows those "public health experts" lying through their teeth.

For example, Douglas Myers, MD -- President of the Washington State Medical Association -- lies that 1183 "will increase risk to public health and safety."

Sofia Aragon, JD, RN -- representing the Washington State Nurses Association -- lies that 1183 "will expand the use of hard liquor."

And Jim Cooper -- President of the Washington Association for Substance Abuse and Violence Prevention -- lies that 1183 will "lead to more senseless deaths."

Every single one of these claims is false. They are not backed up by anything more than biased conjecture. They are lies.

Douglas Myers, Sofia Aragon, and Jim Cooper are liars.

In a bombshell just days before the election, the Washington State Patrol says they have opened a criminal investigation of Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon for misappropriation of funds, due to a Snohomish County Prosecutor's office request. This is likely related to a taxpayer-funded Reardon staffer digging up dirt on challenger Mike Hope, although it could also be related to Reardon's taxpayer-funded trips abroad, to Europe and Australia.

So yes, I get it that Halloween has more children die than any other night. According to this study, most evenings one kid dies in a pedestrian accident, while on Halloween, it's 2.2 kids.

But there's gotta be a lot more than 2.2 times the number of kids out on Halloween, which means that as a percentage, the number of deaths in pedestrian accidents decreases significantly on Halloween. That's pretty awesome: it means either that pedestrian deaths don't scale linearly with the number of people, or that everyone is a lot more careful on Halloween in particular. It's probably a combination of both (probably, the more kids are out, the more careful everyone is).

That's not to say we shouldn't try to reduce that number; that is certainly a worthwhile goal. And that's why several years ago, Congress changed the switch from daylight savings time to regular time to after Halloween.

The problem is, though, that when the darkness shifted by an hour, my family, as with many others, started the evening's festivities an hour later. So there was nothing gained for us, except that it messed up the kids' sleep scheduled even more.

So, Congress, as usual: thanks for nothing.

Our entire nation depends, for our economic future, on an industry that gets hundreds of billions of dollars in direct subsidies from the federal government each year. This year, President Obama's administration is increasing it by tens of billions more.

Yet each year, the industry charges more and more money to consumers for the same product. Obama would have us think that the solution is to continue to give more subsidies to the industry, when the prices increase as subsidies do.

No, I am not talking about oil or gasoline, I am talking about higher education. Giving subsidies for education -- in the form of grants and loans for the students -- makes far less economic sense than a subsidy for oil (which is saying something). The amount a prospective student can afford to pay doesn't really change from year to year. Sure, they can get a job and so on, but other than that, it doesn't change much. So when government pays for a bigger and bigger chunk of the price, the colleges are free to simply increase the price. There's no real competition in pricing, because consumers will pay whatever they can pay and government will pick up the rest of the tab. The competition is all in what services are provided, so the colleges use the extra money from the higher tuition to provide more and more services, justifying the price increases ... but it doesn't give consumers a proportionally better education, it just keeps the college in the competition for more students.

So make no mistake: more money for grants and loans is not money for the students, it's a subsidy for the colleges, and students end up no better off. And, actually, they are far worse off, because this is all just being added on to their liabilities as a taxpayer, ensuring higher deficits and more debt.

Obama's plans to increase college grants and loans are nothing other than direct subsidies for colleges, and just make college more expensive.

Along similar lines of yesterday's post about inequality: does anyone actually care about what these protestors think, besides themselves? We've already established I don't care about anyone else's feelings, and I mean that in a very specific way: you are entitled to feel however you like, and it doesn't -- nor do I think it should -- affect me one way or the other. So yeah, some lady on the front page of CNN is "87 and mad as hell," but so what? Why should that have anything to do with me?

I am looking for substance, people. If you just want to not feel bad, move to Haiti where everyone else is worse than you are, but people are more equal.

But there is no substance. They are mad that other people have bigger houses, and so they want to take them away. That's all this appears to be, to me, as I roll through Westlake Plaza.

Vice President Biden said the reason for the protests is that a "bargain has been breached with the American people." What bargain is that? I know of none, and, as usual, he doesn't say. He just wants us to tap into the emotions, like he does. It's the 21st century version of "I feel your pain."

Well, I don't feel their pain, because I see no substance to their complaints. Biden compares them to the Tea Party, but they are inverted: the Tea Party wants government to leave them alone, and the leftist protestors want a more activist government that will take more from everyone else and give it to themselves.

One of their most often-made complaints is something that I hestitate to even mention because almost everyone on the right agrees with it, and it's not really their point: they want to end "crony capitalism." Well a strong majority of the people on the right that I know think that we should end government subidies for businesses, including ethanol and other farming, health insurance for employees, and so on. These protestors don't care about ending "crony capitalism" any more than most of the rest of the country.

No, what they really want is to simply use government force against things they think are "unfair" to make them more "fair." That's at the root of this. When banks charge 44 cents per transaction, and the actual swipe cost is only four cents, why, that's unfair! So Senator Durbin and President Obama swoop in and cap the fees at half the average. The problem is that, aside from the fact that banks have more invested in the cost than the actual cost of the transaction (such as printing cards, providing customer service, development of the systems, and so on), it's not the job -- or even the right -- of the federal government to decide what is and isn't "fair" in the free marketplace.

(Of course, a more practical problem is that the banks always win anyway, and Durbin and Obama knew absolutely that the banks would pass on the lost revenue to the consumers through increased fees. Frankly, I wonder if the Democrats set a cap on swipe fees just so they could demonize the banks when the banks inevitably raised fees on consumers to compensate. Why have merchants upset with banks when you can have the consumers upset by banks?)

Look, people, if you don't like the banks, then avoid them. Same goes for any other business. You can do it. It just means you can't be lazy and you have to do more for youself. I know the thought of being independent scares you, but the thought of a government capable of forcing any person or business to do whatever the people want at the moment is far scarier. And leftists, of all people, should understand that.

I would like someone who decries "inequality" to tell me one way in which someone else having more than you hurts you.

Please realize I am not talking about someone else having more power than you and thus being able to violate your rights without recourse. That is a separate problem. No one should be allowed to do that, regardless of how much wealth they have. What someone does to harm you with their wealth is not a problem of wealth inequality, but of insufficient protections of your rights.

I also don't care about your feelings. If you feel bad because someone else has a Bugatti Veyron and you can't afford a Ford Pinto, that's your problem. Your feelings are your responsibility alone.

And here's a hint: the fact that someone can do something you can't doesn't actually hurt you.

Your standard of how well off you are has -- or should have -- nothing to do with how much Bill Gates has. It is about how happy you are, whether you can provide education and food and shelter and clothing for your family ... the standard "standard of living" stuff. And while Americans have paltry wealth compared to the top 1% in America, they are fabulously wealthy compared to most other countries.

It is about you and your family, not about everyone else. Inequality is nonsense.

Can someone please explain to me why the Tacoma School District doesn't just fire people who don't show up to work?

I am not saying teachers don't have an unalienable right to strike. Of course they do. We all do. But none of us have any right to keep our jobs if we don't show up for work. They won't work; the district needs them to work; so, why not just fire them and hire new teachers?

What am I missing?

President Obama hates jobs.

Well, OK: President Obama hates private sector jobs.

Well, OK: President Obama hates not having a maximum of government power over businesses and jobs, and would gladly sacrifice private-sector, non-union, non-government-controlled, jobs for the mere opportunity to try to create far fewer jobs under the thumb of government, whether under the NLRB or direct government subsidies.

How else to explain taking $1.5 trillion out of an economy that needs capital to grow jobs? He certainly can't believe that it is better for job creation to funnel that money out of the private sector and into government only to come back to the private sector in ways he thinks is more appropriate, with strings attached every step of the way. That's just stupid. No, it makes much more sense that he simply wants government control over those jobs.

And similarly, how else to explain the Boeing situation? Here we have a company actually creating jobs, and lots of them. They decide, for many reasons, to open a new plant in South Carolina. Probably, one of those reasons is the lower costs of labor: not just in not having to pay union wages, but also in not having to spend time/money dealing with the union. So they open the new plant, and hire thousands of workers. Not a single union job is lost due to the new plant; on the contrary, more union workers have been hired by Boeing. The fact is that not a single person was harmed in any way by opening the new plant.

So: thousands of new employees hired, no jobs lost at other locations, making a product that's been creating, and will continue to create and maintain, even more jobs across the sector.

And what does Obama do with this success story? He tries to kill it. Literally. He is trying to shut down the S.C. plant, for no reason other than that the unions don't control the jobs there. Boeing did nothing wrong whatsoever, broke no laws, and violated no code, other than than the (in some states) unwritten rule, "thou shalt not hire nonunion workers." They are jobs, yes, but not the right kind of jobs.

When Obama says his main goal is to create jobs, we know he's lying. If that were his main goal, he would not be seeking to destroy thousands of jobs in South Carolina just because they are not the kind of jobs he approves of. He would not be taking $1.5 trillion out of the economy. Those are things you just don't do when you're trying to create jobs.

President Obama attacks Mitt Romney for flip-flopping on his health care plan, even though Obama was vehemently against a health insuance mandate during his campaign, and now is vehemently for it.

Obama attacks Republicans for not passing free trade agreements, even though Obama hasn't given the agreements to the Congress to pass. They literally cannot pass those agreements because Obama won't let them. It's the presidential version of "stop hitting yourself!"

Obama attacks Rick Perry for threatening Ben Bernanke -- which never happened -- when Perry said Texas would "treat [Bernanke] pretty ugly" for his "almost treasonous" devaluation of the dollar, while at the same time Obama says nothing about the many Democrats calling Republicans terrorists. He calls Perry's claim "irresponsible," without saying why, and I can't tell what he means: sure, Perry was flatly wrong that the devlauation is "almost treasonous," but he is making a perfectly responsible and rational point about how terrible for the country Bernanke's policies have been.

Obama is, these days, constantly arguing that we should put country before politics, while at the same time constantly putting politics before country, every single chance he gets. He literally hasn't spoken to the public in more than a month without making partisan attacks against the Republicans. That's fine, but to do that as President while saying we should put the country before politics? That makes you look like an utter fool, eclipsed only by the fools who believe you.

Frankly, I don't see how anyone can still take this man seriously as President. It'd be one thing if Obama had significant substance and was being dishonest in his rhetoric, but he really isn't doing anything of substance: just like in his campaign, he's all talk and no action, all style and no substance.

Millions of people voted for Obama because of some bizarrely nebulous vision of "hope and change," with barely any detail on what that meant in practice; and most of the few details Obama did offer -- no increased taxes on incomes under $250,000, pulling out of Iraq, closing Gitmo, lowering unemployment, fixing the economy, no health insurance mandate -- he's reneged on. We shouldn't be surprised: he was elected without much substance, and he's governing without much substance.

I don't say people shouldn't have voted for Obama in the general election, because at that point it could have been a lesser of two evils thing, if you love Democrats or hate Republicans or something: but how did it make any sense to pick the no-exerience, no-substance Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton? How could you possibly have been so easily suckered by this shyster's facade, actually believing that he could do all the magical things you thought he represented? Say what you like about Clinton, at least she's a serious person who knows how to get things done.

If this were 2010, I'd "hope" that Obama would "change" and actually try to lead this country instead of continuing to blame everyone for his problems and offer literally no solutions to the problems we're facing. I've given up on such hope. How about you?

Would it be inappropriate for me to note that we wouldn't be seeing riots like those in London, here in the U.S.?

Try to imagine what would happen here, even in Seattle. On the first night, people would perhaps be taken by surprise, we'd have a public outcry. Maybe we would think it was over, and not prepare for the second night. But by the third night, most every business would be under armed guard, and it wouldn't take many dead rioters before the whole affair would come to an abrupt end.

It likely wouldn't even reach a third night. Business owners would arm themselves and stand watch and people would die. And rioters, most of them, would understand this, and fewer of them would even bother coming out. We don't tend to have multi-night riots in the U.S.

There are exceptions, such as the "Rodney King riots." I was in L.A. at the time, so I don't forget it. But that was a much larger group of rioters, and while the shopowners abandoned by the police did arm themselves, many of the rioters were armed too. So I guess my point is that if it happens in the U.S., it will only be if the rioters outnumber the shopowners and cops ... which means, stay out of L.A. and you'll be fine. Even then, the federal government stepped in to stop the rioting and widespread rioting was finished by the fourth night.

For now, I leave comparisons of London and Wisconsin to the reader.

So, let me get this straight: every problem we've faced in the economy since Obama took office is Bush's fault, because it started before Obama took office. But the "Tea Party" has been a small minority in the House for less than seven months, and, according to the same Obama (via his advisor, David Axelrod), the downgrade is all the Tea Party's fault?

The hypocrisy on this is jarring. Even if the criticism made sense, the case being made here requires an amount of cognitive dissonance, between don't-blame-me-I'm-new and blame-them-they're-newer, greater than the American psyche can muster.

Of course, the criticism doesn't make sense. Yes, of course, the "Tea Party conservatives" -- I tend to just think of them as "conservatives" -- in the House did hamper Boehner's ability to get an all-Republican bill through the House. But this obviously raises the question: what was stopping him from getting a bipartisan bill through the House? He needed to get a bill the Democratic Senate would agree to anyway, because "Tea Party" support wouldn't pass a bill through the Senate. And oddly, the Senate never passed a single attempt at compromise until the final hours before the "deadline," and the Democrats in the House didn't support any bill until a few hours before that.

What the Democrats are really saying is that the "Tea Party" is to blame for not going along with a bill that the Democrats also wouldn't go along with. What makes this criticism even worse is that if the Democrats went along with it, it would've passed weeks or months earlier in both houses, whereas if only the "Tea Party" went along with it, it still wouldn't have passed the Senate.

Any objective view of the events shows that it was the Democrats that prevented passage of a compromise bill earlier on: they opposed all attempts to pass any legislation, never offered any of their own until the end, and opposed the exact same bills they villify the "Tea Party" for opposing.

But it's even worse than this hypocritical nonsense: on substance, the "Tea Party" proposal was the only one that, guaranteed, actually would've prevented a downgrade. Say whatever you like about the S&P statement, but the main concern was ever-increasing debt, and cut/cap/balance (along with similar proposals) would've fixed that problem, even if you don't like other results of it. No other proposals, including the one that passed, seriously deals with the debt. Obama's guaranteed continuing debt increases, and Boehner's merely holds out hope for some cuts in the near future.

It's a sad world to live in where a group of citizens can be ticked off, elect people to represent them, who then back the only plan that will actually solve the problem they were elected to solve, and (as a small minority) voice their opposition to a plan that the entire opposing party also opposes (because it won't solve the problem they were elected to solve), and somehow ... they end up with all the blame.

Someone please explain to me what is "broken" about our political system ... especially as opposed to any other time period since George Washington was President. I keep hearing it, but I am not seeing it. People apparently expect me to believe that it's a problem to have representatives who fairly reflect the views of the people who elected them, but I'm not buying it.

John Boehner's bill cuts discretionary spending by $917B over 10 years. That's $91.7B a year (I can do maths!) which I think isn't even inflation adjusted, and certainly is cumulative. So it means cutting our deficit from about $1.1T to $1T, which will then promptly begin growing again.

Yes, there's a promise of more cuts, but no one here can believe in any such promise. Future action is always negotiated. Raising the debt limit is real and can't be rolled back any time soon; spending cuts are at best very temporary, and if promised in the future, don't exist at all.

The biggest win for the right in this bill is that they got the Democrats to concede to spending cuts without revenue increases, even if the spending cuts pretty much only exist on paper. As Bill O'Reilly said last night, combined with the massive outcry from the "far left" about how terrible this deal is, and the cries from the "far right" about how this isn't enough cutting, this basically sets up the 2012 elections thusly: if you want government to spend less, you'll vote for Republicans; if you want it to spend more, you'll vote for Democrats.

It's still amazing to me that pundits and politicians on the left are continuing to push this line that the GOP is the "Party of No." The Republicans passed multiple bills out of the House -- none with Democratic support -- and the Senate Democrats killed each one. Finally when they got to the final bill in the House, the Republicans supported it in far greater numbers and percentages than the Democrats. Can someone please explain the rational basis for this "Party of No" stuff?

Not that I care if my party has such a label: I believe the job of an elected representative in government is primarily to tell constituents No. No, I won't protect your business with regulation and higher taxes on competitors; no, I won't give you a tax credit; no, I won't build you a sports stadium; no, I won't extend your unemployment indefinitely. Saying no is hard, but it's part of the job of any good representative, and attacking someone for saying "no" is, to me, akin to attacking someone else for having courage. If you want to say that a specific use of the word "no" is wrong, fine; but that, of course, isn't what they are doing.

What isn't amazing to me is that the left is continuing to trot out the claim that Republicans are "terrorists." The idea they are trying to get across is that Republicans will only agree to a plan on their own terms, or else they will "blow up" the country's economy. But the facts show clearly, as demonstrated above, that, from the beginning, it's the Democrats that have opposed every Republican offer; meanwhile, the Democrats refused to put any offer on the table at all. And in the final bill, the Republicans still backed it far more than the Democrats did.

Just who do they think they are fooling when they make such an obvious lie by saying the Republicans are the ones trying to "blow up" anything?

This level of self-deception is always amazing to me, though perhaps it shouldn't be.

Can someone please explain to me how the few Republicans who oppose Boehner's debt ceiling plan are "crazy," but the couple hundred Democrats who oppose it are ... not?

No, I didn't think so.

I mean, you could adopt the view of that idiot savant from the New York Times, Paul Krugman, who consistently pushes a textbook question-begging fallacy as though it were a rational point of view, and say that the Republicans are worse because they are wrong, and the Democrats are right, regardless of your ability to actually demonstrate that without resorting to mere opinion.

But other than by question-begging, you can't seriously back up the claim that the Republicans who oppose the plan are the problem, not when the Democrats are unanimously opposing the plan, and there's far more of them who could push the bill over the top.

So why do we keep hearing that the Republicans who oppose it are crazy and evil and stupid, but we don't hear the same about the Democrats? There's one primary reason: the Tea Party is the most influential grassroots political organization in a lifetime in this nation, and the left fears it and wants to discredit it.

I could go on about how the "cut, cap, and balance" approach that the Tea Party folks support is the only rational plan moving forward: the Boehner, McConnell, Reid, Pelosi, and Obama proposals would all result in increased spending and almost certainly decreased credit rating. Even if you don't believe that, however, it is certainly rational to believe that, as it is in line with what S&P has recently said; and further, it is rational to believe that if we don't being to actually cut spending now (again, something the other proposals do not do), that we have a greater risk of long-term financial problems than if we default now.

The Washington DC mentality -- mostly because of fear of losing their own jobs -- is to always put off what can hurt until tomorrow. There's no doubt that default now would hurt. But I think bankruptcy -- which is the likely result of continuing to increase spending and debt -- will hurt more, so without actual spending decreases (not merely cuts in projected spending, but cuts in year-over-year spending), I would not support a debt increase, myself.

I could also point out how people who say not raising the debt limit would mean default are lying, but I've proven that several times over already (as have others, yet the myth persists). Again, it would be painful -- cutting massively across government so that we do not default -- but, again, that's better than bankruptcy.

So I could go on and on about these things, and show that the "Tea Party" position is more rational. But if your position is just, as the Democrats keep (dishonestly) saying, that we just need to increase the debt limit, and that this is the most important thing so we can get back to the problem of jobs ... then why are all the Democrats opposing all of Boehner's very modest proposals?

It's not a handful of "Tea Party Republicans" taking us to the brink here. The math is very plain, even for math-challenged people like Krugman: it's the Democrats who are preventing the debt limit increase. They refuse to back a (laughably) modest proposal by Boehner, and refuse to come up with any alternative.

It is utterly irrational and malicious to claim that Republicans are "taking America hostage" because a handful oppose the bill, while Democrats are "justified" because ... well, they just are; or that the Democrats are standing up to Boehner's bill because they are "trying to ... save the world from the Republican budget. We're trying to save life on this planet as we know it today."

Think about that: Nancy Pelosi is literally saying that $80 billion in cuts per year over 10 years is going to destroy life on this planet ... after she ballooned per-year spending about 15 times that in her short time as speaker, and the yearly increases moving forward are going to far exceed the amount Boehner proposes to cut.

Then again, no one today should be naive enough to look to Krugman or Pelosi for rational thought. Apparently, though, they do.

Obama and most Democrats say we should do what they've always said we should do: have a "balanced" approach that has a combination of tax increases and spending cuts. Now, in fact, they actually propose increasing spending, but somehow this equates, in the media, to the Democrats "compromising" without regard to what their "base" wants.

But when the Republicans say we should do what they've always said we should do -- cut spending and don't raise taxes -- somehow they are afraid to offend their "base" so they refuse to "compromise."

It's pretty stupid stuff. What really gets me is how the media loves to say this is evidence that Washington is "broken," as if the fact of massive debt increases under Bush, and then far worse under Obama, are not evidence enough. If the Republicans completely capitulated and gave Obama what he is asking for -- tax increases and debt increases without any spending cuts -- the media would surely talk about how this was a "success" for democracy, an example of how Washington "can still work," even though it has set us on an accelerated course toward bankruptcy. Boehner and other Republicans would be lauded for their sensible compromise.

But if the Democrats gave in and we got "cut, cap, and balance," it would be, in the media, a massive failure, a complete and total surrender by Democrats, the end of the party as we know it, because how can it even exist if it won't stand up for its basic principles?

We see this passive-aggressive mentality in the recent flareup between Reps. Wasserman Schultz and West: the former -- the chair of the DNC -- gave a campaign speech on the floor of the House designed to hurt West with his constituents. She didn't use his name, and she didn't come out and say "he wants to kill old people," but she wanted to present people with the dishonest implication that West was sacrificing the health of the elderly for handouts to corporations. West responded, in a privare e-mail, with some nasty invective directly toward her.

The media, of course, thinks what West did was far worse. But I can't see it. What he said was more direct, but in substance, wasn't any worse than what she said. And at least he said it privately, instead of on the floor of the House (which violated House rules). And completely ignored is that while what Wasserman Schultz said about West was almost entirely untrue, what he said about her was almost entirely true.

We have this irrational style-over-substance, passive-aggressive, mentality, where if I call someone a liar, that's somehow worse than the lie I am referring to. So a process if "broken" if we cannot "compromise," but if we have a "compromise" that leads to bankruptcy, we have a process that is "working."

This sort of nonthink is no more evident than in the media's treatment of "fairness." On Meet the Press this morning, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin eloquently made the case for how great politicians of the past had a wonderful sense of fairness, which she essentially defined as being a moderate. But I defy her, or anyone else, to objectively explain to me how "cut, cap, and balance" is unfair to anyone. It's the beginning of the ultimate in fairness. We'd also need to have a flat-rate income or consumption tax, and continued cuts in the federal government, before we could be fair, but to me the entire federal policy of the moderates -- which is mostly leftwing-lite, including massive taxes on the middle class and wealthy, and massive expenditures to give things to people who "need" them -- is grossly unfair (not to mention unconstitutional).

Fairness means treating people equally, by the same standards. Fairness is the rule of law, where we don't let men change the rules to be whatever they wish after the fact. Fairness is, essentially, libertarianism/conservatism, where the government doesn't tell people how to live or what to do, let alone take what people have in order to bring about some desired social outcome.

You might think that it's a good thing to take from the rich to give to the poor, but it's not fair: it is, essentially, stealing, which is the opposite of fairness. When I give to charity, I don't do it because it's "fair," it's because I want to help people who need the help. I don't have this irrational self-loathing causing me to think that what I have isn't fair to other people. Of course it's fair: I didn't violate any laws or anyone's rights or do anything unreasonable to get what I have. So how is it not fair that I have it, that justifies anyone saying it is "fair" to take it to give it to someone else?

What bothers me isn't that someone has a different (and completely illogical) view of "fairness," or "compromise," or "broken": it's that the media almost entirely accepts these views as objective truth, when, if anything, there's a serious dearth of rational arguments backing up those views in the first place.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) accused Republicans of opposing the debt increase because they are racists.

Now, obviously, she is not stupid enough to believe such a thing. She has been in Congress for 16 years, and she knows quite well that what she's saying makes no sense. She also knows that no one else in Congress believes it, or will be swayed by her words.

So why say it?

There's only one reason: to perpetuate the lie that Republicans are racist so that black voters will be more likely to vote for Democrats. She hates black people so much, has so little respect for them, that she cannot honestly lay out the issues and trust them with making their own decisions about how to vote for based on the facts. She wants to keep them down and beholden to her, by lying to them about some group of "others" that's out to get them.

And frankly, President Obama -- whom I, along with many others, see as someone who can help heal our racial divides in this country -- should call Jackson Lee out for her overt lies to black voters, if he really cares about race relations in this country more than he cares about partisan politics.

(And on a side note, it's hard for me to care much about Roger Clemens allegedly lying to Congress, when Jackson Lee and many other elected representatives tell lies on the floor of Congress almost every day it's in session. Now, I know that what they say on the floor is protected, so I am not trying to draw legal equivalency to Clemens' hearing, but the fact remains that I just couldn't care less about liars accusing liars of lying.)

(On another side note, Jackson Lee also lies when she says raising the debt limit is required by the 14th Amendment. I agree fulfilling our debt obligations is required by the 14th Amendment, but it's indisputable that we can do that without raising the debt limit.)

Look, I just want to be clear here: when Obama and the Democrats talk about two or three or four trillion dollars in spending cuts over ten years, they are lying.

They propose to increase spending, not decrease it.

The total budget is currently less than four trillion dollars. If they proposed four trillion dollars in actual cuts, then we would have no spending less. So they aren't proposing that, obviously.

What they propose is to reduce the total deficits by that much over the next ten years. And that's not even very impressive, because it's compounded annually. If you cut a $100 billion program, that's $1 trillion over ten years. So you just need to cut $400 billion in the first year, and you're done cutting.

Considering we're well over a trillion dollars in the hole this year, cutting $400 billion from the budget seems completely lame.

Now, since Obama hasn't released any specifics, we don't know how this would actually play out. My guess is that it would be significantly cutting the rate of growth almost entirely across the board, so in year one you'd see maybe a hundred billion less than what you would've had ... but still a big net increase in spending over 10 years, and probably over every individual year.

The bottom line is that Obama is proposing tax increases, debt increases, and spending increases. And we are supposed to think that he's compromising? I want spending to be less in ten years than it is now. Heck, if we just spent the same amount every year, over the next ten years, in actual dollars -- not adjusted for inflation -- that would be a cut, and I'd be happy with it. We'd catch up with spending, and start to pay down the debt. I'd be willing to compromise on both the debt and taxes, if it meant that our spending would be actually cut.

But under Obama's proposal, our spending will continue to increase, as will our taxes and debt. Let's not pretend otherwise.

It's always seemed, from the beginning of this debate, nearly self-evident that it is not true that a failure to increase the debt limit equates to default. We obviously have enough revenue to pay our debt service, despite the lies from the Democrats. Almost every Democrat has repeated this absurd lie, and yet many people still haven't caught on.

I say it is nearly self-evident because all you need to know is that our revenues (over $2 trillion) are more than half our expenses (over $3 trillion), and that debt service is not nearly half our expenses ($164 billion in FY 2010; as we have no budget for FY 2011, because the Democrats didn't want to pass it an election year, I am unsure of the actual FY 2011 figure, but it's probably still well under 10 percent of revenues).

Therefore, we have more than enough money coming in to pay for our debt service, and we are in no danger of being forced into default come August 2. It's very clear, and very obvious.

It's bizarre that seasoned newspeople like Bob Schieffer don't even understand it. He was completely outclassed by Michele Bachmann a couple of weeks ago in this exchange:

BOB SCHIEFFER: Congress will soon decide whether to raise the debt ceiling, which has to be done in order for the government to borrow the money to pay the bills that are coming due. ... would you really vote against raising the debt ceiling and allow the government or force the government to begin defaulting on its debts?

REPRESENTATIVE MICHELE BACHMANN: Well, first of all it isn’t true that the government would default on its debt because very simply the Treasury secretary can pay the interest on the debt first and then from there we have to just prioritize our spending. ...

SCHIEFFER: Congresswoman, I have to take issue with what you say that ... the government would be able to pay its financial obligations. Experts inside and outside the government say that if we don't raise the debt ceiling, we face the United States having to default on its financial obligations. ... Are you saying these are scare tactics or are you saying that's not true ... how can you say that?

BACHMANN: It is scare tactics because, Bob, the interest on the debt isn't any more than ten percent of what we're taking in. In fact, it's less than that. And so, the Treasury secretary can very simply pay the interest on the debt first then we're not in default.

Of course, Bachmann was absolutely right, and the math is so completely clear, and Schieffer embarrassed himself and his network.

Default, I've been telling people, is a choice. If we do not raise the debt limit, and we default, it is only because President Obama chose to default. It is because he put other priorities ahead of paying the debt service. You can blame the Republicans for blocking an increase in the debt limit, sure, but Obama still has a choice ... and I'd turn right around and blame the Democrats for increasing spending -- and therefore, the debt -- more than any time since the second World War.

And that's really the point: we've tried many ways to get the government to reverse its spending habits. We've tried electing a fiscally conservative President with a Democratic Congress; we went with all Democrats, then put Republicans under a Democratic President; we tried electing all Republicans; then all Democrats again. All we learned is that at best, the deficit decreases during good times, sometimes even to the point of a surplus, but that spending continues to rise, and given our economic policies, we cannot count on the good times to continue.

So I'm fine with forcing massive federal spending cuts, if that's what it takes (and yes, I realize the cuts would be massive: almost all discretionary spending would be cut, we'd have to bring home almost all our troops, cut all spending on education and HUD and health and transportation, yadda yadda yadda ... sounds great to me). Call it draconian or evil or heartless or unwise; I don't care. Children often say the same thing when their parents take away their credit cards. Obama recently talked about managing the government's financial affairs like families do, but he wasn't talking about any families I know: they do not go out and get more credit cards or increased limits every time their credit cards run out. They prioritize spending. They, for the most part, pay the bills first (or do tithes or charity first, and then the bills, depending on their convictions), and then they divy up what is left over.

Obama and the Democrats, and, yes, many Republicans too, act like spoiled, entitled, children who believe any limits on their spending are unfair and unjustified and just who do we think we are, anyway?

Well, even the worst parents often wise up and take action, even if it's a bit late, and they cut those cards and make their kids get jobs to pay off the balance. Yes, Mr. President, let's act like responsible families: I urge Congress to refuse to up your limit, and to take away your credit cards, and to force the government to live within its means for once.

Frankly, I might even be OK with raising taxes if it corresponded with scheduled reductions in the debt ceiling; that is, if the government were forced to use that money to pay down the debt. As that's unlikely, I won't be supporting any tax increases, let alone debt ceiling increases.

If the Republicans held the line on this, I might actually be proud of my party's congressional delegation in DC, for the first time in quite awhile.

I've had many problems with Sam Reed's execution of his duties as Secretary of State. But I also think about the good things he's done and how bad it could have been otherwise.

Consider if Jay Inslee, for example, were Secretary of State. Would he have worked as hard to clean up the voter rolls, or required identification at polling places?

If Bill Gates Sr. came up to Inslee with an initiative titled, "Initiative Measure No. 1070 concerns taxation," would Inslee have forced them to change the title to something like, "Initiative Measure No. 1098 concerns establishing an income tax and reducing other taxes"?

I doubt it.

Now, granted, for every positive I could name, I'm sure many of you could name multiple negatives. We could have a debate on whether the law really did require him to certify Gregoire as the winner, or even if not, whether he exercised his discretion properly. I could rant for long hours about the idiocy of a blanket primary, and of a "top two" primary, or any other primary that doesn't fit the purpose of nominating candidates. I could go off on how terrible it is that Reed has helped spearhead the destruction of the secret ballot in Washington with the now-near-universal vote-at-home system.

But for all his faults, and for all our disagreements, Sam's been a conscientious and fair-minded public servant who has done a lot of good, and has done far more good than many on the left would have done in his place.

The case of Humberto Leal Garcia -- a Mexican national, by some reports an illegal alien, on death row in Texas -- is interesting to me primarily because of one claimed fact that I haven't been able to verify, but which has been repeated in many sources, such as The Daily Mail and FindLaw.

Most stories I've read say that the problem is that Leal Garcia was not notified, upon arrest, of his right to Mexican consular access. That may be so, and if so, it is a valid complaint for Garcia to make, although it should at most permit a new trial, and not -- as his defense now contends -- throwing out damning statements made before being arrested.

But apparently the crux of the matter is that he wasn't notified of his "right" to aid before he was taken into custody, a right no American has. If Americans confess to a crime before being taken into custody, having never been told our rights, we're up the creek without a paddle. But apparently a Mexican national -- even if here illegally -- has a right to be notified of his rights before being taken into custody.

Like I said, I cannot confirm all of this. I looked for, but did not find, the original Texas opinions, and apparently the Texas Supreme Court decision is unpublished. But if the case hinges on confessions made prior to arrest -- or even if statements are made after arrest, after being read his "Miranda" rights, but having never been notified of his Vienna "rights" -- then there's a big constitutional problem here, because our government, our laws, are giving a foreigner greater protection of the laws than American citizens get. That's a facial violation of the requirement in Amendment 14 to provide everyone equal protection of the laws, and it would nullify that provision of the Vienna treaty.

And yes, this could mean that Americans abroad will not get protections we want for them. But that is, by comparison to defense of the Constitution, irrelevant. If you don't want to take on the risks abroad, then don't go abroad. The Constitution's guarantee of equal protection matters infinitely more than what other countries may do in response to us following our laws.

What does it mean to "hate the rule of law"? I've used the phrase often, and I've explained it, but we're due for a recap. Time magazine subscribers may wish to pay special attention.

To hate the rule of law doesn't mean to hate the law. Someone can love the law, but hate the rule of it. The rule of law means an obligation to follow the law, whether you like what it says or not. Many lawyers love the law, because it's a puzzle to be solved in their favor, to twist it into an argument backing their preferred case: they cannot stand the idea of just following what the law says. They hate the rule of law.

Shred the Constitution

In the last week we've seen a perfect example of hatred of the rule of law from Richard Stengel, editor-in-chief of Time magazine. Stengel wrote the cover story to Time's recent issue, called "One Document, Under Siege" under the cover of the U.S. Constitution being shredded, with the caption "Does it Still Matter?" In the piece, Stengel does his best to retell the story of the Constitution in such a way that backs up his essential premise, which is perhaps best summed up as: the Constitution has absolutely no meaning outside of what the Supreme Court says it means.

He claimed one of the most obviously false and malicious statements ever written about the Constitution, writing, "If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn't say so," despite the fact that the Tenth Amendment does explicitly say so: all powers not delegated to the federal government, by the Constitution, are reserved to the states and the people, respectively. That is nothing but a limitation on federal power. Stengel dishonestly doesn't even mention the Tenth Amendment.

James Madison, famously, said much on the subject, even saying that the Tenth Amendment was superfluous, but that adding it could do no harm. He said in Federalist 45 that the federal government's powers under the Constitution were "few and defined," contrasting to the states' powers as "numerous and indefinite." He said on another occasion that throwing open any matter to federal legislation "would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America."

Stengel goes on to imply Article I, Section 8 grants unlimited power through the "necessary and proper" clause, and he even quotes it. But despite quoting it, he somehow misses the part where the "necessary and proper" powers are explicitly linked to "carrying into execution the foregoing powers," that is, the enumerated ones. The Constitution doesn't grant the power to Congress to do anything at all the Congress deems "necessary and proper," it has to relate to one of the other, enumerated, powers.

Again, Madison thought that by specifically drawing up what the federal government could do, this sufficiently implied the federal government could do nothing else. Stengel, however, flips this on its head, implying that because it lists off so many powers, this implies that there are no limits. He never stops to ask: if the government is unlimited, then why explicitly grant specific powers, and add to that any additional powers "necessary and proper" for those specific powers? Why not just write, "the government can do as it wishes," or just not mention powers at all?

And this is, of course, why Madison consented to including the Tenth Amendment in the Bill of Rights, because people like Stengel would so badly misinterpret the document, thinking that the federal government can basically do whatever it wishes, which means that "the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."

But because Stengel doesn't believe in the Constitution at all, it really doesn't make a difference what Madison wrote, or where he wrote it. Stengel literally ignores the explicit text of the Constitution when it doesn't suit his designs. Let that be a lesson to us.

Federal Power is Whatever We Decide at the Time

And I don't exaggerate: Stengel really believes the Constitution has no meaning, at least, not outside of the Supreme Court. He denies Justice Felix Frankfurter's assertion that "the ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it," saying on This Week: "[Something is] unconstitutional if the Supreme Court decides it's unconstitutional." That's it. There's literally no other way to know. We certainly can't read the Constitution to know. George Will pressed, and asked, "Does Congress have the constitutional power to require obese people to sign up for Weight Watchers?" Stengel replied, "I don't know the answer to that."

Fellow panelist, Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson, said he does know the answer: "If they decide that they will, they will have the power to do so."

These people are everywhere, in the media, in the government, and they simply do not believe in the existence of, or government obligation to secure and respect, our rights. In fact, Will might have been the only one of the five on the panel to disagree with Stengel.

In the greatest contemporary example of federal powers, Stengel called the notion that government can't mandate the purchase of health insurance "kind of silly," saying that, well, it crosses state boundaries, so it's justified (just how he justifies using the text of the Constitution to defend a law that hasn't been before the Supreme Court, when he believes only the Supreme Court decides constitutionality, is unknown).

Stengel added, "the government can ask you to do things," to which Will interjected, "It's not asking us, it's mandating." Stengel persisted, "It asks us to pay our taxes. It asks us to register for the draft. It asks us to buy car insurance if we want to drive our car around."

Stengel is here, too, being deceptive: the 16th Amendment explicitly grants the power to mandate that we pay income tax, and Article I, Section 8 explicitly grants the power to collect some other taxes. Following this model, where is a similar section of the Constitution that allows it to force us to buy insurance? And car insurance is not mandated at all: we don't have to drive on the public roads, and many people do not have car insurance. To follow this model, we'd only have to require purchase of insurance from people who were going to use public health facilities. And many people -- including myself -- believe the military draft is entirely unconstitutional, for much the same reason that the health insurance mandate is.

Stengel was falling all over his own arguments, and nowhere was this more clear than when he compared the Constitution to a blueprint for a house: "It doesn't tell you what color curtains to have or whether to have it two stories or three stories." You see, we can make all our own decision that aren't in the blueprint, right down to the number of stories in the house! The problem is, of course, that house blueprints -- like the Constitution -- have far more requirements in them than Stengel wants us to believe.

Yes, the Constitution is very much like a blueprint: there's a whole bunch of specifics you have to follow. You have to keep the home within certain guidelines, you have to include certain features, and you cannot change any of the requirements without approval. Within that blueprint, there's significant room for discretion, but you can't go over the property boundary, you can't dig too deep, you can't build too high, and you have to have a certain number of toilets. If you go outside of those requirements, you will get slapped down. The blueprint is clear and, except through the agreed upon amendment process, immutable.

So yes, that is just like the Constitution.

Amend or Pretend?

Now, these statements by these people should scare you, if it's new to you. But it shouldn't be new to you. There's a huge number of people -- and as Will has pointed out, it's been a battle for a hundred years now -- who simply believe the Constitution doesn't matter, as Stengel believes. It's a document that has no meaning outside of the Supreme Court, and the Court is, of course, free to interpret it however it wishes. According to these people, we literally have no rule of law, but only rule of men.

Dyson was the panel's defender of one of the oldest assaults on the Constitution: that it must remain flexible so that, for example, blacks could have rights. He -- a black man himself -- even expressed the notion that, "Were it not for some vibrant reinterpretation of that document and appealing to its living legacy, none of us could be here. I wouldn't be here talking to you, not as an equal, at least."

Ignoring Dyson's incredible statement that only a court's interpretation of a written document can foster significant change toward equality, Will asked, "do you amend the Constitution by the casual weak interpretation of it, or do you candidly, when you want to change the structure of the government, change it by the amendment process they provided?" Dyson beagn to respond, but moderator Christiane Amanpour jumped in with, "We're going to discuss that after a break." They never did, unfortunately. Perhaps Dyson kicked her under the table during said break.

But I see no "vibrant reinterpretation." I see the passage of amendments that mandate equal rights for Dyson and everyone else, with or without his pigmentation. I do see decades of the courts ignoring those amendments, but it is nearly impossible to argue that our current interpretations are somehow not directly in line with the original intent of them. I defy Dyson, or anyone else, to tell me how "no State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" does not mean that on state shall be allowed to deny to any person the equal protection of the laws.

What's really startling is that the reason the 14th Amendment was not interpreted to protect the rights of black people for so many years is because of the rule of men: the Court was -- through racism and fear -- unwilling to interpret the amended Constitution as it was written and intended, to protect the rights of black people the same as white people. Dyson is literally arguing for a system that prevented black people from getting their rights far earlier than they actually did: the rule of men.

Rule of Men Recognizes No Rights

It barely needs stating, to my mind, but I'm obviously wrong, because people like Stengel are all around, so I'll point it out clearly: if only the Supreme Court decides constitutionality, then the government does not recognize any rights at all. We may claim rights, and fictionalize government recognizing them, but if the Court can choose on a whim to recognize them or not, then they aren't rights at all: they are merely privileges it wants to grant us at the time it rules, which it may rescind at its pleasure. If Stengel is right, then Jefferson and Madison are wrong: our government does not exist to secure our rights, and is not limited. Even the Constitution's Preamble itself is wrong, as Stengel's argument is that we have no liberty, and therefore the Constitution cannot exist to secure the blessings of liberty.

The main purpose of the Constitution was summed up in Federalist 10 by James Madison. He remarked on the problem of "faction," which is "a number of citizens ... who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community," and warned that "when a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government ... enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens." He said "the great object to which our inquiries are directed" was "to secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government."

The whole point was to protect us from majorities taking our rights. And the rule-of-law haters like Dyson and Stengel and a hundred years of progressives before them, want to push us directly into that model, where the Constitution literally doesn't matter. It's just something to be molded into whatever we wish it to mean at the time, such that it protects no rights whatsoever, provides no guarantees of any kind, and ends the cause of true justice.

Summation

I could go on and on, and pick apart the statements from Stengel and Dyson, each one, slowly and brutally. But it'd be fruitless; there's so much there and I have so little time. Instead, I'll just leave with one of the most brilliant statements on the Constitution you'll ever hear on Sunday morning talk, from George Will:

... the framers of the Constitution wanted to strengthen the federal government, but they knew that government is a. necessary, and b. inherently dangerous. And therefore, in the act of creating a more competent federal government, they sought to limit it.

James Madison, the architect in the definitive commentary on the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, specifically in Federalist 45, said, the powers delegated to the federal government by the proposed Constitution are few and defined. That's either true or it's not. ...

It's one thing to say it's open to interpretation, which it obviously is. It's very open-textured language. ... I mean, when you say unreasonable searches and seizures, what's reasonable? We argue about that. But to say that the Constitution is a living, evolving document ... is almost oxymoronic. A Constitution is supposed to freeze things. It is an anti-evolutionary device as Justice Scalia has said. It is intended to put certain things beyond the reach of transient majorities. That's the language of Justice Jackson in a famous case.

The point of the Constitution is that majorities are dangerous, and we have to protect against them. Hence, when Oliver Wendell Holmes said, if my fellow citizens want to go to hell, I'll help them, because that's my job, he was saying the Constitution exists to enable majorities. That's exactly wrong.

The Orwellianly named Marriage Equality Act, now the law in the State of New York, further solidifies the state's power to restrict who can get married, and who cannot. Far from granting marriage rights to all people equally, it merely broadens the category of whom may marry.

And it's not merely an oversight: the law states explicitly that the intent is to only allow homosexual marriages that would be otherwise legal, if not for the fact of the two partners being of the same sex. So other marriages are intentionally and explicitly left out of this legislation. There is no actual equality here: the marriage of gay brothers -- despite the fact that there is absolutely no more reason to restrict their marriage than there is that of any other gay couple -- is still illegal under New York law.

If we want to talk equality, then let's be honest and truly equal; otherwise, as in this case, "equality" is just a synonym for selfishness.

At least New York went through the legislature, rather than trying to shoehorn anti-equality rules into the 14th Amendment, such as David Boies and Ted Olson are doing in the federal case against California's Prop. 8. If you want to discriminate against incestuous marriages, fine, but don't pretend the 14th Amendment says it's not OK to discriminate against gays, but it is OK to discriminate against siblings.

This is a fantastic statement by Rep. Mike Kelly to the Education and Workforce Committee.

Once upon a time, John Yoo, legal scholar and former official of the Justice Department under President George W. Bush, wrote a memo.

Well, he wrote several memos. Most of them were uncontroversial. But some of them did not escape notice by opponents of the Bush administration's policies, as Yoo basically said that Bush had, from the Constitution, whatever authority he wished to have to defend the nation, and Congress was incapable of limiting this authority by statute.

Most scholars and citizens, on all sides of the political fence, think that's silly. The Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power to limit the President in most matters, especially those pertaining to the use of the military. The Constitution says nothing about a "shift" to the executive branch during a time of war: and indeed, it gives Congress the sole authority to determine when we are in a time of war.

Apparently Mr. Yoo now works for the Obama administration, because it would take exceptionally novel thinking such as Yoo's to come up with the notion that when the War Powers Resolution says the President may only "introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities" under certain circumstances -- none of which exists in Libya -- it only limits the use of sending actual soldiers into hostilities, not the use of the armed forces generally. Even though that's what it says.

(Oh, and by the way, everyone who says the War Powers Resolution doesn't require the President to get prior authorization to go into Libya is wrong. That would only be true if Libya consituted a "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." Absent that, the President needs a declaration or war, or some other statutory authorization, from Congress. The 60-day requirement presumes that the initial requirement for the use of force was met.)

Ignore the words of the law, says Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: that's not what the people who wrote the resolution had in mind. And besides, this is going to "be over before you know it" and everyone supports it. But if everyone supports it, why invent such an obviously controversial interpretation of the War Powers Resolution instead of just complying with it? It's, at worst, not much more difficult to comply with than it is to fight with.

There's only two reasonable possibilities: either Obama simply wants to defend what he sees as the legitimate powers of the President whether he needs to or not, or he fears what will happen if he complies with the War Powers Resolution.

The former, while perhaps noble, isn't likely here. Obama and his people certainly have never been big believers in broad executive power, though, granted, that changed when he took office. But this sort of defense of executive power usually comes from presidents who want to protect that power for those presidents that follow, and there's no reason to think Obama's very interested in that.

Worse, however, it is even less likely that Obama sees this as a legitimate use of executive power: even if he believes, as many do, that the War Powers Resolution is unconstiutional and needs not be complied with in the first place, the way to fight that in terms of defending executive power is to actually make that case, not to invent a ridiculous legal argument that literally means the President can launch an unprovoked nuclear attack against Canada without congressional approval, as long as there's no American soldiers actually in Canada.

So no, Obama doesn't believe this is a philosophically necessary case to make. That leaves us with believing he fears the result of bringing this to Congress. The question is: why? I leave that to your imagination.

So speaking of how Robert Reich can't add, I wonder whether Rob McKenna can. He says we should spend the same amount of money -- as a percentage of our budget -- should be the same now as in 1980. I don't have all the numbers (and would greatly welcome them if someone's got them), but I suspect this might end up giving us much more money, even adjusted for inflation, for education than we had in 1980.

Where is the significance, except in pure symbolism, of a percentage of the budget? I can see none at all. And what especially bothers me is that, as I understand it, per-pupil spending for K-12 has increased dramatically since 1980. So where's the actual need for more spending on education at all?

And don't even get me started on higher ed: we should slash it to the bone. We shouldn't fund any of it, at all.

But even if you disagree with me about relative levels of spending on education ... can we at least agree that tying those levels to the size of the budget makes absolutely no sense whatsoever?

I am a huge Boston Bruins fan. I haven't missed a game in more than a decade. I spent most of my life in Massachusetts, and love all four of the major sports teams there.

But now I've lived in Washington for nearly a quarter of my life (how time flies!), and I've come to a conclusion: Seattle is a horrible sports town.

I don't mean to belittle the fans and players and teams themselves. I've met a lot of great fans here, and the teams ... well, they try hard. And I am not talking about public financing of stadiums (although if I were to do that, I'd note that the homes of the four championship teams from Boston are all privately funded: if you're going to steal Boston's terrible idea of the Big Dig, Seattle, why not also steal Boston's great idea of private financing of sporting venues?).

I am talking about the fact that not every Mariners game is televised. In a true sports town, that's anathema.

I am talking about the fact that KING 5 won't show the Stanley Cup Finals Game 7 -- even when the Canucks are in it! -- and instead show local news, Evening Magazine, Inside Edition, and Jean Enerson's "Northwest Newsmakers." Honestly, I've been watching KING 5 for my news for years, but I'm giving up. I'll still record Up Front with Robert Mak, but that's it. And even then I'll probably record the rebroadcast on KONG 16 (where KING relegated the Cup broadcast to).

I was back in Boston for the Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Not only did they show the game on the main NBC affiliate, WHDH 7 (because why wouldn't they?), but tornados were sweeping the region that evening, and Governor Deval Patrick held a news conference during intermission, and WHDH cut off the governor's news conference to get back to the game. Would a Seattle station cut off Gregoire to get back to a hockey game? Heck, would Gregoire wait to give a news conference about a public emergency declaration until intermission of a hockey game?

And, OK, here's where I'll criticize the fans a bit: I am also talking about the fact that the fans usually don't seem to care when they lose. "We're just happy to be here" seems to be the Seattle sports motto. Seattle fans, you need to grab the bull by the horns and demand victory. No excuses about being in a small market: defeat is failure!

Of course, this isn't nearly as bad as Vancouver, where losing is justification for tearing your own city apart. At least when I lived in L.A. County and Rodney King's attackers were acquitted, those idiots had a real gripe about their civil liberties and government failing to provide justice.

But the morons up in Vancouver, their team got beat by a superior team. That's all. It's cause to be depressed for a day, or week, or even decades, but to trash your own city ... I'd say it's senseless, but that would be doing an injustice to nonsense, which makes more sense than that.

Granted, my Boston -- and in terms of sports, it will always be my Boston -- has been the most successful city in American sports history over the past decade, but I remember the lean years well: being swept by Oakland twice while I lived a half hour from Oakland Coliseum; the Celtics' future literally dying twice (with Len Bias and Reggie Lewis); the Patriots going 1-15 my senior year of high school, and 2-14 my first year of college; the Bruins winning the President's Trophy only to lose to amazing goaltending by Bill Ranford and a hard-nosed Edmonton Oilers team (much like the Canucks lost to Tim Thomas and the Bruins this year).

From February 2002 to now, though, Boston's seen three Lombardi Trophies, two Commissioner's Trophies, a Larry O'Brien Trophy, and now a Stanley Cup. I'm happy. And that some sore losers -- who are fans of a team full of miscreants and thugs who bite and flop and are generally hated around the league -- are trashing their city over losing to my Boston Bruins only makes the victory sweeter.

And, frankly, Vancouver makes Seattle look like a great sports town by comparison.

"The Truth About the Economy" is a classic video from MoveOn and Robert Reich. In it, Reich -- an "economist" -- complains that since 1980, our wages (excluding the super-rich) have "barely increased" despite a much larger economy.

There's a lot that can be said about his arguments, such as the fact that he doesn't factor in the rise of the size of the labor force, and that staying flat according to inflation is actually pretty good. But the funniest part is when he later in the video argues that our "anemic recovery" is caused by a reduction in "purchasing power." But he just said we have a "barely increased" purchasing power.

I could spend a lot longer than two minutes and 15 seconds ripping this video apart. But have it yourselves. You might want to cover his assertion that low tax rates created low revenues, even though they are the same tax rates we had before, with higher revenues. Or his awesome assertion that rich people have all the political power which means lower taxes and less money to go around, which means massive cuts ... even though we are spending more money than ever.

My favorite part would probably be that he blames civil unrest between different groups on high taxes, as the middle class fights over "scraps" (where "scraps" means "barely increased" of what was available in 1980, apparently).

Reich, if you're reading this: you disprove your own claims when you admit that our wages have increased. We are better off. The problem is that government -- which has continued to live off debt and deficit increasingly since 1980 -- is now incapable of continuing on its path. And you want to scare people into thinking that soaking the rich will solve the problems, when we know it can't.

1, 2, 3, Go!

Some asked me when I might follow up on my song "Osama Bin Laden, You Ruined My Birthday" (for which I won a coveted Schrammie award). Then, driving into work last week, hearing news about the porn cache Bin Laden had in his compound, it struck me that he probably used his terrorist information network to make some extra money on the side and became the number one provider of porn to the Greater Abbottabad region of Pakistan.

Lyrics:
Up in north Hazara
Was a man who was wanted by the feds
By the feds
He killed thousands of people
They say, because he was a holy man
A moral man

But you have to pay the bills somehow
The rent won't pay itself, so now
He gets what people want
He gets what people need

Chorus:
He's the Porn King of Abbottabad
He's the Porn King of Abbottabad
He's the Porn King of Abbottabad

In the back you'll find the good stuff
Big hits like "The Beauty and The Whore
... of Lahore"
If you don't have the rupees
We can probably work out a deal
What a deal

You can do a job for me
Strap on this vest and count to three
I hope you watched the film
No more chance to watch the film

Even the most devout sheikhs
Need to indulge now and then
Now and then
A man can't be expected to
Look at the same six women all his life
What's left of his life

R E S P E C T
You'll find out what it means to me
When I play this movie
And pretend that I am holy

I keep hearing that President Obama made a tough decision somewhere in the process of giving an order to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. What was that tough decision, and why was it tough?

Let's first set aside the utter nonsense of the idea that this reflects on Obama's ability to get things done, as opposed to Bush. It's stupid and no one of moderate intelligence cares. The only thing Obama did that might possibly have had a significant effect on the process -- setting aside the "torture" issue -- is making Leon Panetta the CIA Director, and there's really been no indication that made a significant difference.

Similarly, as to torture: we cannot know, with any level of certainty, whether we'd have been better off -- in terms of intelligence, American deaths, or anything else -- with more torture, or with less. If you think you know, you're wrong. Let's set this aside, too.

So, as to Obama's tough decision, let's first identify Obama's main goals -- in descending order of importance -- going into his decisions, which I presume will be uncontroversial: he wanted to get Bin Laden (dead or alive); if Bin Laden is killed, he wanted verification (i.e., a body); he wanted direct access to any intelligence Bin Laden had.

Let's also identify some the relevant factors involved: we were uncertain if Bin Laden was actually there; and Pakistan -- to be brief, and polite -- is a delicate diplomatic situation for us.

Let's add in the fact that Obama said that he would not resist going in to Pakistan to get Bin Laden (or other high-value terrorist targets), if Pakistan didn't do the job.

This all adds up to a no-brainer to me. We have reasonable suspicion he's there, we can't trust Pakistan to get him (we can't even trust Pakistan to not warn him), we don't want to bomb him (so we can verify his body and gather the intelligence). Where's the tough part of this decision?

Obama and others have characterized the chance that Bin Laden was there as 50-50 or 55-45, apparently as an attempt to imply that this was a tough decision: but I'd say we should go in if there's merely a five percent chance: our intelligence points to the strong liklihood that even if Bin Laden isn't there, someone or something important to Al Qaeda or its allies is there. Where's the tough part of this decision?

They've also pointed out that if we're wrong, there could be significant repercussions. True, but those pale in comparison to the chance that we pass on this opportunity. Can you imagine if we said, "yeah, there was only a 50-50 chance, so we didn't want to risk it," and then an attack was launched and people died and we could've gotten the intelligence to stop that attack if we'd gone in, because we didn't want blowback from the ISI, which has been working against us for years anyway?

Again: I see no tough decision here. Do you? If so, what decision, and how was it tough? Please explain it to me, because I can't see any part of this decision that was, in the least bit, difficult.

(P.S. Last week I said the killing of Bin Laden didn't really change anything, and that's right; however, since then, we've found out more details about the intelligence gathered from the raid, and that could end up being a huge win.)

Q: Was Osama Bin Laden really killed Sunday?
A: Yes.

Q: Wait, didn't you say it was last week?
A: I originally used an AP report that it was last week. I can't find a retraction of the report, but it's not been repeated anywhere since, so I'm going with Sunday.

Q: Are we certain it's him?
A: The U.S. government seems certain, and they likely have good reason to be. It causes me to ask two questions though: how did they verify his identity so quickly (well under 24 hours), and will they release evidence to others to verify for themselves that Bin Laden is really dead? The White House asserted they used DNA evidence; in a separate AP report, John Brennan recognized the concern and said they plan on sharing evidence "to make sure that nobody has any basis to try to deny that we got Osama bin Laden."

Q: Great! So ... are we leaving Afghanistan now?
A: Of course not. We are not in Afghanistan to get Bin Laden (except for the relatively small group that's been dedicated to finding him), but to help bring the nation under control. Whether you think that's a good, or even realistic, goal, it's had almost nothing to do with Bin Laden (except that his actions served as the catalyst, of couse). Remember, Bin Laden went to Afghanistan in the first place because that's where the fighting was: they were fighting before he got there and they won't stop until long after he's gone.

Q: Well, at least he's dead. So ... we should celebrate, yeah? We've been hunting him for almost ten years!
A: If you like. But actually, we've been hunting him for more than ten years, since Clinton was in office and Bin Laden attacked the USS Cole.

Q: Oh, I forgot about that.
A: Most people seem to.

Q: You don't sound too excited. Again: we've been hunting for him for a long time.
A: That's not a question.

Q: *rolls eyes* OK, fine: why don't you sound very excited?
A: I normally don't.

Q: I expected you might in this case. Er ... but why don't you sound excited in this particular case? He killed lots of people, we've been hunting him for more than ten years, and we finally got him.
A: I am a strong believer in justice, but I don't take joy in it. It's just something that happens in response to something else, not a cause for celebration, from where I sit. At best, I feel relief in knowing he can't harm others in the future, and I'm not even sure how much of a danger he remained to us. I've wondered for the better part of the last ten years -- about nine of them -- whether hunting him was worth the resources, when we'd basically cut him off from being effective anyway.

Q: Umm ... really?
A: Pretty much, yes. I'm satisfied that justice has been served, but I am unsure if it was worth the cost, and even if it was, I'd take no joy in it. Sorry to be a downer. Make no mistake, I prefer him dead or incarcerated, and I believe the world is likely much better off for it, all other things considered equal.

Q: OK, well, putting yourself in the shoes of normal people, don't we have cause to at least give huge credit to President Obama? MSNBC said this will be one of the most significant achievements of his presidency.
A: None of us know much of what happened, but from what we know so far, if this is one of the most significant achievements of his presidency -- saying "yes, please kill this bad guy you found" -- that's pretty sad. From all appearances he didn't do anything that Bush, McCain, Cheney, Biden, etc. wouldn't have done. I'm not trying to take anything away from Obama here; I just don't see how this reflects well on him, when it's something almost anyone -- including me, and probably you -- would have done too.

Q: OK, but if Bush had caught Osama, you'd be saying how it reflected on what a great leader he was, right?
A: You're new here, aren't you? I tend to not give credit to anyone, including people I like -- and I am not a huge Bush fan -- unless they really did something to deserve it. Doing your job competently doesn't win you extra points with me. Bluntly put, saying Obama did something great here isn't much less of a stretch than saying he did something to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

You don't get much better than this video putting the decades-old debate between Hayek and Keynes to music.

If you've not seen the first part from last year, please check it out.

In finally releasing President Obama's birth certificate, the White House has conceded what many of us have known all along: that the countless times the left and the media asserted that we had seen Obama's birth certificate were all lies.

To those who merely watch MSNBC, they may be startled to realize that Obama hadn't released his birth certificate until now. Olbermann and Maddow and Matthews and the rest have been falsely asserting otherwise for years. Don't hold your breath waiting for apologies or retractions, though.

And the release comes pretty close to confirming what I've long suspected: that Obama didn't release his birth certificate all this time just to get some of his opponents, and various conspiracy theorists, riled up. He could've released it a long time ago, but chose not to. Granted, maybe Obama is merely excessively belligerent, and refused to release it because he felt he shouldn't have to, but we're often told -- and I mostly believe -- that Obama is a dispassionate pragmatist, so that story doesn't seem likely. What's more likely is that he didn't release his birth certificate simply because Obama himself wanted to make his birth certificate an issue. He succeeded.

This is demonstrated by White House statements, such as: "This whole birther debate has been really bad for the Republican Party," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said. But the discussion is "crowding out the debate" on more important issues and is a distraction, he added. So, as long as it hurts Obama's opponents, you don't release it; when it hurts your agenda, you release it.

Yesterday on Up Front with Robert Mak, the idea of a congressional district tailored to give non-whites a majority was discussed.

Three observations, and one conclusion.

First, we are being told by this district's creation (should it be created) that while not the only important qualification, having one's representation closer to one's own color has particular value: so important that we will gerrymander an entire district just to give nonwhites a better chance at having someone who looks more like them represent them.

Second, if such a district exists, there may not be any white candidates on the ballot, which is (see above) a bad thing for the white residents of the district.

Third, the Constitution of the United States allows any 25-year-old citizen living within a state to run for any House seat in that state.

Therefore, despite living well north of this proposed district, I am considering running for the House in this district -- should it be created -- although I'd gladly bow out should some other worthy white candidate run. But the proponents of this district are telling us that it's important that representation happens by skin color, so who am I to argue?

In all seriousness, the Constitution -- particularly the 14th and 15th Amendments -- as well as our more recent history and law, strongly imply it's wrong to give anyone preference due to race; indeed, that it is generally wrong for the government to consider race at all. I think it's important to remind those who seem to have forgotten.

Of course, a better way to deal with the problem than running for this district -- which, make no mistake, I may do, if I have the time and money -- would be for our representatives deciding the redistricting to be not stupid.

People seem to be wrapped up in this notion of who to blame for the impending goverment shutdown. But it's really very simple. There's lots of pieces, and I'll go over who is to blame for each one.

The Republicans, the Democrats, and the American people who kept voting them into office, are to blame for where this country is, as a whole. Forget the Fed and Greenspan and terrorists and the rest of it: we made this country what it is. We put ourselves in a place where our economy is in big trouble, our long-term obligations dwarf our ability to pay for them, our military is overstretched around the world, and we can't seem to get along with our neighbors without getting in fights, or, at least, staring matches.

Both parties -- mostly in Congress -- are to blame for not seeing and doing something to stop the collapse of the financial and housing markets. Democrats distorted the market by forcing it to give people money that shouldn't have gotten it, and Republicans some regulation that might have helped.

The Republicans are to blame for not balancing the budget in the 2000s when they had the chance.

The Democrats are to blame for rapidly increasing spending when they took over power in 2006 and 2008.

The Democrats are entirely to blame for the fact that there is currently no budget. They had complete authority and power to do it. Republicans were incapable of preventing it. The Democrats only didn't pass a budget because they didn't want to have that budget before the people in an election year because they knew it would be unpopular, so they shirked their responsibility.

Further, when they had a chance after elections, they didn't take it because they decided they wanted to try to force the Republicans to pass an unpopular budget, so they could do exactly what they are doing now: attacking the Republicans for terrible ideas that are going to kill women and seniors and children and poor people and students and unicorns.

The fiscally conservative Republicans are entirely to blame for the fact that we might have a government shutdown. These Republicans could compromise the reasons why the American people elected them and give us the same old nonsense that got us into this mess in the first place.

These fiscally conservative Republicans are entirely to blame for refusing to let this country go down the economic toilet by conducting business as usual.

Make no mistake: the Democrats wanted this to happen. The possibility of this impending shutdown is the reason why they didn't pass a budget in November or December. They wanted to come out swinging in this Congress, so they could try to nip this "Tea Party conservatism" sweeping DC in the bud. They've been planning it for months, and now they'll get to say, "see? this is what happens when you elect these extremists!"

But the Republicans could have rolled over and avoided this confrontation. Just because someone asks for it doesn't mean you have to give it to them; the Republicans made the choice to get here and risk a shutdown. And I thank them for it, because the problems associated with a shutdown pales in comparison to what will happen to our government in just a few years if we don't change course right now. There's no time left.

Yesterday a few hundred Labor protestors went to Olympia, and there was violence and arrests. Today about 5,000 of them are expected, along with more violence and arrests.

When the Tea Party is protesting, there's no arrests, no violence. And some of them even bring pitchforks!

So, just a reminder: Labor wants stuff given to them -- taken from other people -- and breaks the law and uses violence if they can't get it. The Tea Party wants to be left alone, and asks peacefully, using the democratic process.

This pattern is seen over and over again, consistently, throughout the nation.

In sports, a team can be penalized if their fans disrupt the game. Maybe we should have a rule that if protestors break the law, legislators vote against them. But then again, this is a legislature that breaks and bends the rules all the time, anyway: whether it's introducing bills without having time for hearings, or without any text at all, or pretending things are emergencies just to avoid having to answer to the people ... none of the left respects rules, let alone the rule of law. Labor protestors are just one more example.

(Don't be fooled by their rhetoric that they are merely anti-corporate welfare: while I agree with them on that score, a. I don't want to see those cuts while unemployment is still high, but rather, phased out over time or cut when the economy is much stronger; and b., the reason they want those cuts to corporate welfare is only because they want more government cheese for themselves.)