I found it. I put it on my emergency back up blog by mistake.
Personalities, Policies and Past Performance
Nader, is that guy still getting press? Maybe until the tribes merge on Survivor All-Stars tonight.
We could go on all day about what, in addition to "Gore spoiling," transpired since 11/1/00 and makes his braying jackass run this week a poor replacement for a great perennial we lost when the statesman Harold Stassen passed on.
I was unimpressed by Ralph Nader's turn as the Green's candidtate in 2000. I saw him as more iconoclast than advocate and felt he was co-opting a globally aligned group in a fit that suited neither one's constituencies. What worked for them? A lot of Americans wanted what Steve did; an alternative that had, like, two issues and challenged the two party lock. I think that will come when we put Greens and Reforms in the Senate, not the White House. Those are the races and roles that can make coalition rule possible.
Which brings me to relevations I've had about our vice-president. That man was a really effective and admirable party politician who was a noted moderate voice, if not vote, in congress for several terms. I'd really like to meet him. I will also make it known that I don't buy that he is the evil mastermind running the show. If he were, Bush would look a lot better and could save his campaigning until after the our conventions and maybe the Iraqi elections.
Maybe his being a hard right voting loyalist and a loyal lieutennant of the GOP executives since Ford is why Cheney pushed my button originally but that was me just disliking one of the guys across the aisle from my guys on my issues. From there I saw Bush Sr and his NSA man start their mirror image careers that ended Bush in 92 and really started the Cheney we get today. Now that we are in a painful situation in Iraq and our current president may have been handed cooked intel to get us there I am looking at Cheney and Rumsfeld as longtime pols, pals, experienced pushers and pullers who may have tried to start a fire. I don't think he's a mastermind but I don't like him in the mix.
Historically Dick Cheney is a unabashed, 99% pure right winger hard liner and his record shows it. He is also consistent and reasonable within his views.
His appeal for me stops along the black and white line of his core philosophy drawn to the right of Reagan and well into the fading edge of my grey zone. That he is a "position of strength" tactician makes him more hawk than I like, of course that could have kept Iraq out of Kuwait originally if he'd gotten through to Hussein that week.
That seems to be the only item in his policy toolbox though. so for energy; closed door meetings with energy kings, for the environment; the same, for economics; a supply sider with a stomach for unlimited deficits, for social policy and education though; "no surplus right now but look at these tax cuts and wait for good schools to occur."
I think he was impressed with the corporate sector during his time with Haliburton. No congress, no courts, oil company shareholders don't often trade on philosophies and the only platforms are to take petroleum out of the ground. His bios say that he was not a salesman CEO, he was an operations guy in an executive role. A decision maker not a deal maker. I see that being something he brings to the vice executive which fits with the fact that we'll need a trial to get information from policy meetings with Enron execs. (for his sake I hope he let Scalia shoot first on the duck hunt)
What was his legacy for Haliburton? A corporate climate that has seen two notable war profiteering charges, no-bid contacting not making enough of a margin it seems. In addition the SEC has been digging into them for some time now and that may not preflect well on his tenure there. I have seen at least one argument that companies playing up phantom losses were within current rules and was a popular practice but making changes to purposely draw profit from tax loss didn't suddenly become ok when more corporations exploited the loophole. No sir, I don't like him and obviously for a lot of reasons that may or may not be fully realized by history or the courts. I think he's got a job that suits him but I don't think the job he's doing suits me or my desire for open, concientious leadership for the republic.

Tell Hewitt I'll listen to his show this week if he'll read your blog. Better yet, I'll make Steve listen with me.

- posted by MrFares @ 6:27 AM

 
I hope I can remember it to recreate it
Well if that doesn't just take the cake. I published a big comment on Nader and Cheney last evening and here it is not. Bummer.
- posted by MrFares @ 6:23 AM

 
More on Protectionism and The Left

This excellent piece from Tech Central Station beautifully illustrates how protectionism is embraced by the left. The author shows clearly how those "fair trade" requirements so beloved of the left (the EU, Democrats, and the nut cases who show up to protest at every trade conference -- and these aren't libertarians or Young Republicans, Steve) -- "environmental and labor standards" -- actually hurt those most in need of help, workers in developing countries. My favorite line: "The self appointed proponents of the interests of the poor are using the economic leverage of the rich countries to secure their preferred social policies, all the while attacking the rich countries for being rich and proclaiming themselves to be high-minded."

Free trade means just that. Yes, in the short term, it means that some workers in developing nations will work for "substandard" wages in "dirty" environments (by the standards of U.S. industry), but in the longer term, those countries will become rich enough to afford our labor and environmental standards, and their workforces paid well enough to become markets for our products. Japanese manufacturing workers, for example, had a huge wage differential with their U.S. counterparts through the `50s and `60s, but by the `80s this differential had all but disappeared. Remember when U.S. industry was supposedly going to shut down because everything was going to be manufactured in Japan? Japanese automakers now build cars in the U.S. (as well as lots of other countries).

Free trade works; "fair" trade harms workers in developing countries while providing no benefit to consumers in the developed world. With the exception of a few oddballs like Pat Buchanan, the right understands this, but once again, the left misses the lesson. Where Steve and I (I think) agree, however, is that the Bush immigration reform plan also fails on this score; importing third-world labor standards via essentially a guest-worker program serves to exploit the most desperate and unskilled at the expense of the American middle class. It's a bad policy.
- posted by Tom Pick @ 10:10 AM

 
Protectionism: Sometimes Right (and Sometimes Left) but Never Just "right"

I asked Steve for his opinion on stock option expensing, and I appreciate the (for the most part) thoughtful reply, but I was taken aback by this: "But first, let me begin by pointing out to Mr. doody-head name-caller Pick that protectionism, despite being anti-laissez-faire, is historically a Republican drum - who can forget its most recent serious beaters Pat Buchanan, and the Perot/Republican anti-NAFTA coalition? - so calling it a "liberal policy" is just so much more short-sighted partisan puffery from the petulant Mr. Pick."

What on earth did I do to deserve to be called "doody-head name-caller", and "petulant" as well? These are hardly descriptors I would seek for myself, so please either back up your charges or rescind them!

On to the other points: Buchanan was once a free-trader and a Republican, but is now neither. Perot pulled off a splinter group of the party and handed Bill Clinton the election in 1992; but protectionism was not then and is not now a plank of the Republican party. When George W enacted the temporary (very temporary, as it turned out) steel tariffs, he was attacked from the right. That said, I'll remind you again that I'm not a Republican schill but a small-l libertarian, a philosophical position from which defense of free trade is a given.

So, YES, protectionism is indeed Liberal; Bill Clinton had to fight against his own party for trade-opening measures. Gephart ran on a platform of opposing NAFTA or anything else that would promote free trade. Even liberal senators like John Kerry, who voted in favor of NAFTA, now fight to distance themselves from the fact that they once did the right thing in order to appease the noisy idiots on the leftist ramparts of the party. No "short-sighted partisan puffery" about it.

Still no word about our membership in the Northern Alliance, so remember to keep bugging Hugh Hewitt about this matter.
- posted by Tom Pick @ 2:33 PM

 
Briefly
Mark is right that I stepped past his point. Thank you for restating it. I will not embrace it tightly since it remains to be seen if intelligence was cooked to bring the U.S. from the rhetoric cited into full scale combat operations. Any of Tom's outlined scenarios may be valid. I did't mean to deny the plausibility of their menace but the validity of the administration's drumbeats to war.
As for Cheney. Tom's called me out as immoderate and I'll admit the comment was. It was offhanded and misplaced. To that name tagging though, I don't think that even if I was right of Rush I would tell you that "Nixon's still the one." Moderates aren't fence sitters; they just aren't left/right ideogogues. I've disliked Cheney since the Reagan presidency. I'll try to pin that opinion on some specifics for this group soon and post it.
- posted by MrFares @ 10:00 PM

 
And Now for Something Completely Different -- "Offshoring" Our Jobs and the Effect of Option Expensing

I found this article interesting because a) it's got a great title, b) Steve is an accountant, and c) I'm concerned about the number of US jobs moving offshore, but still not convinced that political intervention is wise or would be effective (and concerned that any such action may turn out to be yet another case of the cure being worse than the disease, which is so commonplace with liberal policies).

Green Eyeshade Killers

My take is that Mr. Glassman is probably correct in his points here, but I'll admit to not being an accountant and I'd like Steve's take on this. Still, I do have some understanding of financial statements and for the life of me I can't figure out how a company could possible expense something whose value changes daily, can never be known for more than a few minutes with any certainty, can change dramatically within a short period of time, and may not end up being an expense at all. The notion of expensing stock options, besides being a bad idea for the reasons Mr. Glassman cites, simply doesn't make any sense to me.

Steve, what say you?

Oh, and Hugh Hewitt is still AWOL regarding our membership in the Northern Alliance. I'm still a fan, but beginning to question his judgment.
- posted by Tom Pick @ 7:41 AM

 
Scott, Your Left Side is Showing

"Dick Cheney is just a crooked thug" -- ?? That's hardly something a "moderate" would say, which exposes your true placement on the political spectrum, which is what I suspected all along. That's okay, but I prefer honesty. In addition, there is no evidence that Vice President Cheney is either crooked or a thug -- actually, the guy has a bad ticker, and I suspect that even Nancy Pelosi could take him in a fair fight.

Regardless, the quotes Mark provides are merely part of a much larger mosaic. It wasn't only members of the Clinton and Bush administrations who believed that Saddam had WMD and posed a gathering (NOT "IMMINENT"!) threat. The UN believed that (how many resolutions were passed between 1991 and 2003? A dozen?). French, German, Russian, British, and US intelligence all believed it. Democrats believed it. Republicans believed it. Most if not all of Saddam's neighbors in the Middle East believed it. The Kurds and Iranians (who actually experienced gas attacks) certainly believed it. So...which of the following would a reasonable person conclude from all of this?

1) All evidence and opinion to the contrary, Saddam never had WMD.
2) He had them at one time (hence the experience of the Kurds and Iranians), but he either used them up or destroyed them well before 2003.
3) He hid them really, really well.
4) He moved them out of the country.

Possibilities #1 and #2 above seem nonsensical; why wouldn't he have just let the inspectors in, saving his position and fortune? #3 is still possible, but becomes less and less likely with each passing day (and each passing arrest of former Baathist execs who would be in a position to know). That leaves #4, in my mind, as the most likely possibility (with Syria the most likely location). It may not actually be the case, but seems most reasonable.

But not of course to die-hard lefties, who shall forever remain convinced, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and absolutely NO direct evidence in support, that "Bush lied." Unfortunately, for the hard left, this conclusion has now gone beyond the status of being a potentially provable or disprovable contention and reached the level of a religious belief, something held in the heart that transcends any earthly rules of evidence. How pathetic.
- posted by Tom Pick @ 7:31 AM

 
I see, Bush and Clinton are like peas in a pod
Both had concerns about WMD in 1998.
They also both evaded service in Vietnam by going to England or someplace. I have seen and heard these sorts of broad brush tactics in the alternative media and I'd like to give Mark some credit for using actual text of real comments but the question is not what was said but to what purpose and what was done as a result.
I toddled past Snopes.com to confirm that these are real quotes. They are, but the qualifying context takes a lot of the puff out of the punch. http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp
Please regard the extensive documentation and context below the document in question.
I'd add that in light of the recent quotes from the White House on job creation I'd agree on the point that Bush is a liar but also go one better and call him kinda dopey.
Dick Cheney is just a crooked thug.



- posted by MrFares @ 2:22 PM

 
Freedom Now Has the Pope's Support

Outstanding news for any freedom-loving capitalist, but particularly to those of us in the Catholic faith (and I need to find a way to get this piece to my parish priest, who still likes to use the term "social justice" as a club with which to bash "the rich," which is to say, anyone who has a job):

The Pope and Capitalism

As the author points out, and much to Steve's chagrin I'm sure, "John Paul II reminds us that property rights are natural rights. He also underlines the significance of the freedom of human action and freedom of people's economic activities...the free market is the most effective way to use society's resources...The free market, he writes, is the best way to promote the welfare of families...Free-market capitalism offers the antidote to bankrupting socialism...He criticizes the conception of the welfare-state. Interventionism and bureaucracy deprive people of the responsibility for themselves, thus promoting over-regulation of the market. The welfare-state wastes human energy and creativity. Bureaucracy serves the bureaucrats, not the society."

The Pope points out that morality and ethics play a crucial role in the proper functioning and the social value of the free market (but then, I've never argued otherwise). God bless him.

Still no word from Hugh Hewitt on our membership in the Northern Alliance. A reminder to all our readers that a deluge of supporting e-mail wouldn't hurt.
- posted by Tom Pick @ 10:45 AM

 
Penguins, Homosexuality, Human Nature, Nomadic Cultures, Socialism, and Day 10 of "Where's Hugh?"

Now for the challenge of making this content live up to the headline: a bunch of us recently had an e-mail exchange that began with a NY Times article about homosexuality in the animal kingdom. The informal exchange finally reached the point where we decided to take in online. Herewidth, the best reconstruction of this thread that I am able to assemble.

I don't dare display the entire NY Times article, Love That Dare Not Squeak Its Name (February 7, by Dinitia Smith), for fear of the full weight of the gray lady's copyright lawyers coming down on me, although it's tempting due to their ludicrous login requirements, but here's a brief sample in addition to the afore-linked title:

"Roy and Silo, two chinstrap penguins at the Central Park Zoo in Manhattan, are completely devoted to each other. For nearly six years now, they have been inseparable. They exhibit what in penguin parlance is called "ecstatic behavior": that is, they entwine their necks, they vocalize to each other, they have sex. Silo and Roy are, to anthropomorphize a bit, gay penguins. When offered female companionship, they have adamantly refused it. And the females aren't interested in them, either.

At one time, the two seemed so desperate to incubate an egg together that they put a rock in their nest and sat on it, keeping it warm in the folds of their abdomens, said their chief keeper, Rob Gramzay. Finally, he gave them a fertile egg that needed care to hatch. Things went perfectly. Roy and Silo sat on it for the typical 34 days until a chick, Tango, was born. For the next two and a half months they raised Tango, keeping her warm and feeding her food from their beaks until she could go out into the world on her own...

Before them, the Central Park Zoo had Georgey and Mickey, two female Gentoo penguins who tried to incubate eggs together. And Wendell and Cass, a devoted male African penguin pair, live at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island...

This growing body of science has been increasingly drawn into charged debates about homosexuality in American society, on subjects from gay marriage to sodomy laws, despite reluctance from experts in the field to extrapolate from animals to humans...

"For some people, what animals do is a yardstick of what is and isn't natural," Mr. Vasey said. "They make a leap from saying if it's natural, it's morally and
ethically desirable."

But he added: "Infanticide is widespread in the animal kingdom. To jump from that to say it is desirable makes no sense. We shouldn't be using animals to craft moral and social policies for the kinds of human societies we want to live in. Animals don't take care of the elderly. I don't particularly think that should be a platform for closing down nursing homes."

Mr. Bagemihl is also wary of extrapolating..."

There's lots more, but you get the picture, and if not, here's the full article (login required).

Steve led off the comments: Well, that's the last time *my* kids go to a zoo.

Tom: Hmm, interesting -- I had no idea there was such a thing as an "African penguin."

Agreeing with researcher Bruce Bagemihl, cited in this article, we should be careful to extrapolate too much from this. Cannibalism, infanticide, and the eating of living creatures (while they're still living) are also common in the animal world, but that hardly makes those behaviors desirable for humans. Not that that says anything about the rightness/wrongness/whatever of homosexuality, it's just an observation.

Steve: What I take away from this - specifically Bagemihl's arguments - is a reinforcement of what Marx said: there is no "natural" state of humanity. We should be skeptical of any argument that proceeds from the premise "people always...." or "it's human nature to...."

Tom: Ouch, be careful with that one. Denial of "human nature" and a conviction that humankind could be "remade" to fit some idealized model led to the mass murderous regimes of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

There are certain elements of human nature, nearly universal (there are always exceptions, e.g. psychopaths, but such exceptions do not of course disprove the general rules) that must be recognized by any power structure. The instinctive protection of children (particularly by their mothers), self-interest, survival (fight-or-flight), responding to incentives, and so on. A society ignores or denies these, as we've seen, as its own peril.

Steve: I disagree. I maintain that arguments from "human nature" fail on epistemological grounds. Its not just that there may be the occasional psycho- or sociopath, or even that whole cultures may fail to exhibit some trait that is taken for granted in another. How could we possibly know that
some behavior is not the result of decades or centuries of enculturation?

There is also the practical problem of definition. For example, some people say "people always act in their own self-interest" (technically called psychological egotism). SO the natural counter argument is Mother Theresa - what did she get? The answer always given: satisfaction. Well sure, so defined, everyone always does what they choose to do, but that's meaningless - it tells us nothing more about the human condition than we knew before.

So too with the human nature designation. Those who use it will always find some way to squeeze any counter-example into their model. Its just not a fruitful category, and its bad science.

I look at your list below and see at least two entries where I can name cultures who do not share some of those traits except in the most tortured interpretation. Take "instinctive protection of children". In some Arab cultures, notably the Palestinian, the children are often on the front lines of armed struggle by design. And often their mothers proudly carry pictures of their martyred children. Take "self-interest". Explain the property-less cultures of the Plains Indians or socialist Sweden. You can redefine self-interest enough to get there, but why bother?

This has been pretty good - you should cut and paste it into the
blog. (Another rare instance of Steve and I in agreement!)

John (whom I'd characterize as center-left politically, but I'll let him correct me if that's not precise): I don't plan on speaking to everything, but as for the 'property-less' cultures, Sweden isn't very property-less, actually Austria is more property-less, and even there every family I met owned a car.

As for the plains Indians, you are now discussing a nomadic culture, in which the act of amassing property has greater cost than in a non-nomidic culture. It's not that people in nomadic cultures do without property, it's just that they have developed a culture that allows them to amass property easily while they are camped (we would call it stealing) and then allows them to shed said property when it's time to move on.

[Out of sequence here, but we got mixed up with a couple of different threads.]

John: While I don’t think homosexuality is immoral, it is not for the reason that it is ‘…a result of natural forces that cannot be controlled…’ but because I don’t think it poses a threat to society in general or members of society in particular – as opposed to pedophilia.

Tom: You're debating the wrong opponent -- I'm the libertarian, Mark's the social conservative.

That said, I oppose the oxymoronic "gay marriage", not because of any moral judgement regarding homosexuality, but because unlike heterosexual marriage (as the basis of the family), there is no or at best extremely little societal benefit from gay unions. I agree that they are not a threat, but they aren't beneficial either. The state should remain silent on the issue: live with whoever you want to live with, but don't ask the state to bless -- oops, I mean confer legal preference on -- your choice of union if provides no broader societal value.

Steve: I'll debate.

The reason that gay marriage, although kind of silly, is necessary is that by favoring heterosexual union in various ways, we are discriminating against gays by not offering the same opportunity.

This is an interesting area, in that it depends crucially on the question of whether gays choose their orientation: if they did, you could counter that they chose to give up those preferences (like survivor benefits). It is on that basis that I have no constitutional qualm with the tax break for children; anyone can choose to have (or at least try to have) children (even though on societal grounds I see no reason for the government to be sponsoring pregnancies). I am assuming that gays do not choose to be gay, as most will tell you is the case. And yes, you can come up with numerous anecdotal examples of other unusual fetishes that are therefore being deprived in some way, but I think homosexuality is a well-established constant in the human population in general and our culture in particular, not just a passing fad or niche (like polygamy).

So while I agree that there is no intrinsic obligation on the part of the State to favor gay marriage, if we are going to favor the committed pairing of heterosexuals, we ought to favor all such pairings. I should add that if the reason for extending such favor is child-rearing, then the logic holds, since gay couples may have their own children from previous relationships, adoption, etc. Or we could just say that the only way you qualify for marriage benefits is to actually have children, which would suit me fine, although there would be a (specious) ADA claim from the infertile.

[Back to parallel thread.]

Steve: Ambiguous syntax: I didn't mean to extend "property-less" to Sweden, just "socialist". And as for nomadic cultures, the Arabs had (have) a very firm grasp of "mine" and "not mine", even when stealing. Some Indian groups do not; they recognize most everything as "ours". Now you can call that an extended notion of "self", but it will start to look pretty silly when trying to defend the idea that people act principally for "themselves".

John: At least some tribes (Arabs) have a concept of property that we inherently understand, so on to other nomadic tribes. In nomadic tribes
there is a cost to amassing and retaining property. You have to transport it from place to place. In such a culture, it would be very much in the self interest of it members to minimize said transport. It's not that they don't have property, or make use of property, it's just that it's in each member's self interest to not accept the responsibility of ownership of property.

Steve: Fine. Then what do we learn about humans from saying "they always act in their own self-interest"? What eternal truth have we thereby uncovered that we didn't know before? That they respond appropriately to their circumstances, which will sometimes require them to favor the
collective good over what we would interpret as personal gain? That they interpret "personal gain" differently, but still act to maximize it? So what?

The problem is, the next comment Tom will likely make, or one who favors such lines of thought, is "yeah, but if you took the Indian out of the Plains, you would take the Plains right out of the Indian and he'd be grabbing property to store in his apartment as fast you can say 'wakenahpatenan'". And we have absolutely no more justification to say that than to say that if you put Tom on a horse and sent him back 200 years, he'd be working for the good of his adoptive tribe as fast as you can say "dances-with-gophers".

John: Among other things we learn from saying “they always act in their own self-interest” is that there isn’t really any such thing as “Noble
Savages” or “Materialistic Westerners” or “Godless Communists” or any other label designed to define “others”. In the end we are all just people born into circumstance trying to get by as best we can.

Steve: Well, on the one hand, amen to that, brother.

On the other hand, we could have learned that by simply saying "people always act as they are conditioned by circumstances to do, unless they're stupid" and avoided the metaphysical commitments of "human nature".

You know how I hate metaphysical commitment.

Scott (excellent comment BTW): This must be my stop, the intersection of penguin and Camus.

Many types of penguins are found along the Western coast of Africa and they are also all over South America even as far north as the Falkland Islands. Penguins just seem to want to be penguins and the fact that they can have a homosexual family just makes me think that the notion of utility is best applied to larger groups. If all penguins were spouses but not biological parents there would be issues but for some penguins to be different is not a threat to penguin continuity and just reinforces the strength of other penguin behavioral components like nesting. If we hear about penguins that suddenly decided to leave and become astronauts or vote Democrat or drink themselves to death I'll reconsider whether those are still penguins.

The difference between a Penguin and a Communist (or Republican) is that while both exploit societal and individual utility and find specific compensation for their efforts in food, safety, and pooled DNA inheritance the penguin doesn't wonder about the motivations of other penguins and compare them to his own to find something greater than the maximum utility. In human society we work within a cultural norm that offers a lot of general compensation strategies to achieve these things. We form nations, found religions and choose alternate news networks. We work them out as groups over centuries and try them out to fit our situations. Layers of these strategies define our cultural associations from family to nation. The only norm for humans is that we make these efforts. Any one person or culture that doesn't is discarding the reason for finding the specific compensators.

What motivates a Catholic saint as well as a Liberian child fighter or a Midwestern corporate trainer to do well at all? Regardless of circumstances I think that the self-interest of each individual is to struggle to achieve a purpose, have values, and seek definition.

Mark: [Nothing of value to add, although I'm still holding out hope. Besides, I'm pretty much outnumbered 3-to-1 without him.]

End thread

It may take me some time to come up with a thoughtful response to all of this. In the meantime, still no word from the right brain on the left coast about our bloggership in the Northern Alliance. I'm still a fan of Hugh Hewitt, but his lack of responsiveness is disappointing.

- posted by Tom Pick @ 12:56 PM

 
Day 6 of Where's Hugh, and Making Steve Think

First off, I welcome Mark back to contributing to the discussion. Excellent points all, I'll leave it to Steve to explain why competition is bad but any variety of "marriages" are good.

Second, it's now Day 6 of our campaign to join the Northern Alliance. Helloooo?

Finally, I found this commentary, "Bleeding Heart Libertarianism" interesting, and figured heck, Steve, this is worth reading for the headline alone. The author raises some interesing points; I agree on the theoretical level, although I'm not sure I'd back this specific revenue plan. I do support the notion of a consumption tax, but I fear this particular plan may be too simplistic; we have millions of baby boomers expecting that they will start collecting Social Security checks within the next five years or so, and any long-term solution to the insolvency of our federal government has to at least acknowledge the elephant in the room. Unless I'm missing something of course.


- posted by Tom Pick @ 12:32 PM

 
Hugh Hewitt, the Democrats, and the Super Bowl Halftime Show

Because Hugh was offline over the weekend (actually he was here in Minnesota enjoying our recent balmy weather), we'll call this officially Day 3 of our effort to join the Northern Alliance. I'll send him another email request today, everyone else feel free to do the same at hhewitt@hughhewitt.com.

Much of the blogosphere is currently consumed with the Democratic presidential primary; I haven't written anything about this because the whole spectacle is, to me, like a game between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers; there's no point in watching it because it's not possible for both teams to lose. The only participant with a lick of sense is Joe Lieberman, and his single-digit support reveals how few Democratic voters are willing and able to display any intelligence.

Talk of the Super Bowl halftime show filled the airwaves yesterday; I missed the revealing moment, stuck under my kitchen sink attaching a new (non-leaking) faucet. But I get the gist. The question that seemed to keep coming up in relation to this display of tastelessness (among other things) was: is our culture really that debased? The answer: yes, of course it is, and we are running serious parallels to the last days of the Roman Empire. But, thanks to the sorry state of public education in this country, the kind of audience that enjoyed the "music" and gyrations of the likes of Janet and Justin probably have no clue what the Roman Empire was, and would be surprised to learn that it fell. Another question was: how much worse can it get, where could the halftime show go from here?

I think I found the answer in this commentary from an insurance publication. Long story short, a young Florida mother was killed last year in a "Toughman" competition -- basically, voluntarily getting into a ring and letting someone beat the crap out of you. Like All-Star Wrestling except that the participants are ordinary people, and the fighting is real. Now, her husband is suing, claiming that she thought the competition would be "safe and fun." I hung out at some pretty tough bars in my younger days, but I was at least intelligent enough to generally avoid letting anyone beat the crap out of me, and it certainly never occurred to me that sticking around for a beating would ever qualify as "safe and fun."

I see no value in these contests other than the Darwinian benefit of weeding out the most incredibly stupid people among us (and thereby reducing the number of John Kerry voters this fall). But we are the new Roman Empire, so don't be surprised when Toughman comes to the Super Bowl halftime show, and we're all treated to more than just exposed skin and dirty dancing; we get to see modern-day Gladiators go at it.

The Roman Empire was eventually crushed by crude hordes from the north, so I guess in our case that means the Canadians will come take us over. Could be worse, at least we'll get cheap prescription drugs.

- posted by Tom Pick @ 11:08 AM