... and in an extremely rare case I didn't post or even keep up with comments.

My younger daughter is recovering from pneumonia; I'm recovering from extended travel.

Ideas did not come. Motivation was absent.

I spent most of the evening playing Galactic Civilizations on a different laptop.

I'd endorse the game, but I don't know if they ever paid me anything; don't want to piss off the FTC.

Now it's Monday and we'll see what energy I can muster....

Jason says in a thread about whether Beau Biden will challenge Mike Castle:

For all the bluster by the tea party freaks on the right and the beard pulling concern about health care reform by liberals – most people simply don't care about politics. The average person knows more about Marvel comics characters and their powers than they know members of congress.

That’s why the NJ and WDEL radio covers all politics as a long celebrity/personality story. There is no discussion of a Mike Castle’s conservative voting record (for example) because the market for that type of story does not exist.

Important thing for all bloggers to remember: it is pretty well demonstrated that less than 2% of the electorate actually gives a shit about anything we say.

And of that 2%, 98% are already strongly committed to one ideology or another and just want to scrap; they're not actually there to think about ever changing their minds.

Which is what sometimes amuses me when people [including me] get all hot and bothered about our little flame wars and online controversies.

We really are the nit on the back of the flea standing on the zit on the butt of the elephant or the donkey.

From Anonone:

I do believe that the government should regulate what parents can allow their children to do and not do, like children should not drive cars or fly airplanes. If you take your child rock climbing and she is injured because she was too young, than there should be a penalty for that. Parents shouldn't risk their kid's life for cheap thrills when the kid may not have the maturity or judgement to know better.

The inherent premise here is that, due to the fact that a small percentage of parents across the nation will be stupid or even criminally negligent in raising their children, it is the legitimate role of government to protect all children not from abuse but from what some bureaucrat considers a sub-optimal parenting decision.

Ironically, these are pretty much the same bureaucrats who fail so miserably at actually preventing child neglect, sexual abuse, or physical abuse.

But I have to praise Anonone for the intellectual honesty necessary to say out loud what lots of people secretly believe: there is no aspect of your life that government should not regulate.

The runner-up award goes to those of you who believe (and you know who you are) that the government should mandate that you can only be naked in your own home if the shades are down and the curtains are closed.

Yep, once their server stops being attacked, the United States of Earth's new online game 2011: Obama's Coup Fails will be going gangbusters among players like DarthMal, FirstInfantryUnit, and EnemyWithin, all of whom quite evidently have too much time on their hands.

[DarthMal has, at last check, assembled a Patriot Army of over 7,000,000 loyal supporters.]


The game is really a quite capitalist enterprise aimed at bilking survival fantasy and gaming addicts out of their money ala World of Warcraft. You can play for free, but you cannot really get ahead until you start spending money.

[David Corn, writing for Mother Jones, notes that despite the Obama coup and Glenn Beck's death of an aspirin overdose in a FEMA relocation camp, the notion that [Ron] Paul can become president may be the most far-fetched fantasy of their entire enterprise.]

And, I'd argue, the money that these guys are spending on the game won't be going to GOPAC or to stockpile ammunition.

So far the reaction to this all is mild: HuffPo is bemused rather than outraged, and--ironically--Alex Jones of Prison Planet is outraged that the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin [whom he sees as government shills] are being portrayed as Patriots.

Just goes to show, I guess, that even the rightwing fringe has a righterwing fringe, which has a lunaticrighterwing fringe.

Unsurprisingly, there are those who don't get the joke. At Pam's House Blend they are already invoking David Niewert's much-overblown eliminationism meme to link it to the militia movement, and are drawing comments like this:

Don't be surprised when some of these badly named 'patriots' who are all actually the most loathsome of traitors to the Constitution decide to use this for a roadmap for violence in 10 or 11.

I am sure that it is only a matter of time before more of the blogosphere gets up in arms [oops, was that a military metaphor?] about Obama 2011, and starts demanding that everyone denounce it.

Which will in turn drive more and more folks to check it out and inevitably send more and more dollars into the coffers of the United States of Earth.

If you play this game, be advised, there are a lot better, more interesting games out there.

If you denounce this game, be advised that you lack any real sense of perspective.

Think of it this way: Saturday Night Live once pointed out that the US military was probably not that interested in recruiting young men who spent their time as boys playing with GI Joe dolls instead of going out there and kicking the shit out of other kids on the playground.

The same is undoubtedly true about the risk factors associated with potential militia recruits playing an online game.

The press release:

The Libertarian Party of Washington has endorsed the “Approve” Referendum 71 position.

Libertarians believe that people should be treated equally, that we all possess the right to equal protection of the law, as afforded by the 14th Amendment.

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” - 14th Amendment

Since the government gives benefits to heterosexual couples, it is imperative that we also extend these benefits to our gay and lesbian citizens as well.

“The children of gay and lesbian couples are entitled to equal protection, as well. Discrimination against the gay and lesbian community is also discrimination against their children.” Rachel Hawkridge, Chair of the Libertarian Party of Washington says “It’s horrible that people discriminate against loving, adult couples, but to discriminate against their innocent children is deplorable. It’s inhumane .”

Washington Libertarians urge all voters to “Approve” Referendum 71.

It’s the right thing to do.

Note the conditional sentence:

[condition]: Since the government gives benefits to heterosexual couples...

[requirement based on 14th Amendment]: it is imperative that we also extend these benefits to our gay and lesbian citizens as well.

I would have preferred the sentence to have been written to turn on discrimination not benefits, and most Libertarians would prefer that the government got the hell out of the marriage business completely. But until that happens, the State needs to be forced to play by the rules it created.

Unfortunately, our rightwing element of (faux) Libertarian Republicans does not agree. Note especially that agenda reference at the end of the first comment.

With reference to the Obama administration's continuing war against Fox News, specifically referring to the recent attempt to impose the exclusion of Fox from the White House press pool for an interview opportunity, I said,

The State having the power to restrict the free--even partisan press--is a greater danger to the American republic than anything that press might ever say.

To which Dana Garrett responded,

And if the Nazi press wanted to be part of the press pool and attend White House News briefings, then as far as your concerned the White House is OBLIGATED to oblige them?

You are the one who claims to be the constitutionalist. Please point out in the constitution where the President is obligated to recognize just any "news organization" as responsible purveyors of free speech.

And, amazingly, Hube fell for this line:

As often as I disagree with Dana, I must say he's on the money with the above.

Did anybody notice Dana palm that card?

Neither my statement nor anything in my post asserted that the Obama administration's attempt to exclude Fox News was unconstitutional.

Unwise. Yes. Dangerous. Check. Unconstitutional? Unfortunately, not.

Freedom the press, as asserted in the First Amendment, amounts to freedom from prior restraint, and the inability of Congress (or, later, thanks to the Supreme Court) or any State legislature to make laws that allow the government to view and censor in advance what a press outlet will publish. The only exceptions that the Courts have ever sustained have to do with national security.

But not every threat to the freedom of the republic is directly covered under the US Constitution, nor is every tradition or mechanism that has developed in the past 220 years explicitly addressed. The US Constitution does not address, for example, who is allowed to vote, only [and this in the amendments] who may not be restricted from voting for certain reasons. The US Constitution does not address the role of political parties in the government, because national political parties did not exist when it was written.

I made a statement of political philosophy: that the direct attempt to undermine a major news network by the President (regardless of that network's shortcomings) is dangerous. Dana, in an attempt to defend the indefensible (note that none of the other news networks went along with this either, and their coverage of this imbroglio is increasingly hostile to the President), tries his two favorite tactics: (a) reductio ad absurdam [would you protect Nazis?] and (b) making up a charge I did not make and attributing it to me.

By the way: what about the Nazis? Well, let's see. The White House press pool for interviews is an agreement between the press corps and the administration that all of them who belong to the pool will get to use common equipment for interviews and such [i.e., CBS takes its turn to bring the equipment and everybody else gets to use its microphones]. Belonging to the pool requires a network to (a) have all the requisite equipment and (b) to have White House press accreditation. Fox meets both criteria. If there were a Nazi News Network with millions of viewers and White House press accreditation, then damn right I would support their access.

But this is again being disingenious on Dana's part. Let's do it by analogy. Lots of people in American don't like the coverage done by Al Jazeera, but the outfit is a world-recognized major cable and satellite news network that the US government (under GW Bush no less!) recognized and accredited to have embedded reporters with the US Marines in the attack on Iraq in 2003. During that operation, Al Jazeera filed multiple accounts (some of which were challenged by our State Department as being extremely biased and factually in error), but the US government did not seek to yank AJ's pool access based on this.

Why?

Because Al Jazeera is not Al Manar, just like Fox News is not Dana's mythical Nazi News Network.

Here's a link to a brilliant documentary on Al Manar [the film is about halfway down the page], just in case you don't understand the distinction.

As for Hube: don't take Dana's bait next time.

From Alphecca:

After scores of deaths, the U.S. government government is taking a closer look at off-road recreational vehicles, known as ROVs.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission voted Wednesday to write mandatory rules to regulate the four-wheel vehicles, after more than 100 deaths since 2003. Riders have suffered dozens of injuries, too — some leading to amputations.

The actual stats are:

Since 2003, CPSC says 116 people have died, including young children, and more than 150 have been injured. Injuries have involved crushing fractures to legs, feet and arms and some riders have lost limbs.

The CPSC says it cannot wait on voluntary standards and market forces:

"This is an instance where the industry has not been responding quickly and effectively enough to the well-documented hazards caused by these products," said Rachel Weintraub, director of product safety and senior counsel for the Consumer Federation of America.

Ms. Weintraub, however, is--wait for it, technical term--full of shit. Forty percent of all those deaths can be linked to a single manufacturer, who has already recalled the vehicles:

In March, Yamaha Motor Corp. USA recalled more than 100,000 of its Rhino off-highway recreational vehicles for repairs after two models were linked to 46 deaths in the past six years. In many cases, riders were not wearing seat belts, the commission said. And in a number of incidents, rollovers happened on level ground at relatively slow speeds, the agency said.

Note that the CPSC admits that in many cases the deaths and injuries occurred because the operators were not wearing their seat belts. This is known to the sane as operator error and not manufacturer's defect.

But let's be rigorous here and look at other potential safety hazards the CPSC might soon want to become involved in:

During the last six years 237 skiiers and snowboarders have died on America's slopes and 261 have suffered serious injuries.

In the same period an estimated 28,200 Americans have died in swimming incidents.

Also, 43,100 Americans have died in car crashes (not counting 5,900 pedestrians struck and killed).

Over 9,000 people died in falls from public buildings, 5,500 kicked the bucket from accidental poisoning, and just over 1,000 people assumed room temperature from bicycle accidents.

In fact, the number of people who have died in ROV accidents is substantially smaller than the combined total of Americans who have died in a tornado (81) or from being struck by lightning (45).

Skiing and snowboarding is an apropos example here of why the CPSC is more likely than not to produce a new level of bureaucracy and more expensive vehicles without materially helping the people that they intend to save.

Since around 2003 the ski industry has been pushing hard to have the young, the elderly, and the inexperienced wear helmets on the slopes, as well as encouraging the regulars to do so. There have been dramatic gains in helmet use (among enthusiasts age 18-24 such usage is up 78% in the past five years), but--curiously enough--no clear improvement in mortality stats:

There has been no significant reduction in fatalities over the past nine seasons even as the use of helmets overall has increased to more than 33 percent, and to as much as 40 percent within the population at greatest risk—experienced young adult male skiers and snowboarders. The pattern of death seems to be affected by the use of a helmet. Most fatalities are due to multiple causes or injuries. Approximately two-thirds of those who die who do not use a helmet have as the first cause of death some injury to the head. For those who die while wearing a helmet, only about one-third have a head injury as the first cause of death. It seems that while the use of a helmet may shift the distribution of the first cause of death, it is not sufficient to reduce the overall rate of death. In incidents leading to death, it appears that the severity of the incident simply overwhelms the ability of the helmet to prevent death.

If you have been on America's ski/snowboard slopes recently, you will understand why this is.

Look, humans are hard-wired to be risk-takers, and if the state goes to excessive lengths to mandate recreational risk reduction they will only find other, even stupider risks to take. It's sort of why the war on drugs has been working so smashingly well.

If you want to hold accountable the parents of minors who die while improperly operating ROVs or while not using the safety equipment, go for it.

If you want to hold accountable manufacturers who do not correct--either through production changes or recall--demonstrated safety defects, go for it.

But if this is--as a lot of libertarians, and skiiers, and snowboarders, and skateboarders, and rock climbers, and soccer players, and so on will suspect--just the opening salvo in the latest round of the State deciding how much risk is acceptable for me, and for my children with a form of regulation that is the equivalent of using prior restraint to police inappropriate speech, then....

Why not safe a lot of money and stimulate jobs by mandating bubble-wrap utility wear for all of us?

spits

walks off muttering

Given these, I have to wonder whether our local bloggers are also applauding the White House attempt to impose its own restrictions on the press pool for network news:

Thursday, CNN, NBC/MSNBC, ABC and CBS all refused to go along with an attempt to toss Fox from a media pool that was supposed to conduct interviews with White House pay czar Kenneth Feinberg, who was unveiling restrictions on pay for executives of companies that accepted bailout money from the government.

Under an arrangement designed to save the networks money, a crew from one network shoots some White House events for all five outlets. The pool camera was supposed to shoot each network’s separate interview with Feinberg, but the networks were notified that Fox, which has been part of the pool arrangement since 1997, would not be allowed to question him.

The Obama administration relented after the other networks, in a gesture of solidarity, said they would take a pass on interviewing Feinberg if Fox was kept out of the mix. (Ironically, the effort to block Fox from covering what was arguably Thursday’s biggest news event came just a day after White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said decisions on who would be included in pools would be left to the media organizations, not his office.)

Unequivocal statement of principle (yes, Dana, it probably is a liberty fetish): The State having the power to restrict the free--even partisan press--is a greater danger to the American republic than anything that press might ever say.

While everybody is quivering in righteous populist anger over the impending restrictions on corporate pay and bonuses for the most bailed-out corporations, Goldman Sachs is salting away a bonus pool of, well:

As Wall Street firms typically do, Goldman set almost half that sum aside to compensate its workers. Through the first nine months of 2009, the firm socked away $16.7 billion, enough to pay the average Goldmanite $526,814.

The bonus pool is on pace to hit $21 billion for 2009, which would match the record bonus payout of 2007.

Goldman said it won't decide the size of the bonus pool till year-end. In any case, the payments will be substantial -- and will come just one year after huge sums of taxpayer dollars were funneled to financial institutions.

Of course, GS leadership (at least that much of as has not been recruited to run the Fed and the Treasury Departmet) asserts that it should be exempt from government regulation because it has paid back all $10 billion in government bail-out money.

That, of course, begs a few important questions.

Like how much other Federal money has GS benefited from?

It was one of the nine big banks that received loans from Treasury last fall. It received $13 billion in the costly, widely questioned September 2008 rescue of insurer AIG (AIG, Fortune 500). It has sold $22 billion in federally guaranteed debt under a plan the feds started to restore capital markets activity. And it has been a major beneficiary of the low interest rates the government has adopted in hopes of restarting the economy.

So the reality is that GS has received $45 billion (at least) in State assistance, and has only paid back $10 billion.

As a corporate welfare case, Goldman Sachs gives the lie to the idea that we have anything like a free market in the United States.

And they've done quite well:

While Goldman churned out $3 billion in profits in the third quarter, the economy shed 768,000 jobs, and home foreclosures set a new record.

More than a million Americans have filed for bankruptcy this year, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. A September survey of state finances by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities think tank found that state governments faced a collective $168 billion budget shortfall for fiscal 2010.

Goldman, by contrast, is sitting on $167 billion in cash, in the name of making sure it can withstand another market meltdown if that day comes.

Let's play that back again--$167 billion in cash reserves and has not been required to cover the other $35 billion in Federal bail-out money?

For clarity: I have no problem with huge profits in a free market, but when one corporation has (a) an incestuous relationship between its leadership and the economic directorates of the Federal government; (b) the luxury of not returning $35 billion in Federal assistance even though sitting on massive cash reserves; and (c) benefited from bold speculation with cheap, newly printed dollars and Federal support, this is NOT my definition of a free market.

Manny Ramirez after last night's loss to the Phillies:

"They were better than us," Ramirez said. "You saw what they were capable of doing."

No equivocation. No excuses.

From Mark Trodden of the University of Pennsylvania on recently taking his US citizenship test:

While the interview is relatively straightforward for someone like me (English speaking, with a long and continuous employment record, and married to a US citizen for well over a decade), one does have to go through the civics exam, in which one is asked ten questions chosen randomly from a list of one hundred, which one can study in advance from a booklet. The questions are not particularly difficult, and one only needs to get six correct to pass. However, being a good nerd, I studied dutifully, and made sure I could answer all one hundred correctly if necessary....

The ... problem for the geek taking the citizenship test is that if you get six correct before the examiner reaches ten questions, he just stops asking, and tells you you’ve passed. One must then avoid the temptation to say “No, come on, ask me the rest! I know the answers, honestly, just try me!” Pathetic, I know.

... because most of us are blogging primarily because we think we're smart enough to believe that the rest of the world is entitled to our opinion ...

Because we desperately need to be protected from naked people drinking coffee in their own homes:

(Oct. 21) A Virginia man was busted for indecent exposure after he was caught in the buff. In his own home. Alone.
Eric Williamson, 29, got up at 5:30 a.m. Monday and went to the kitchen to make some coffee. He was naked, but he was alone in the Springfield house, so he didn't think it mattered.

Wrong.

A woman and a 7-year-old boy were cutting through Williamson's front yard from a nearby path, according to WTTG-TV, Channel 5 in Washington. Through his front window, they saw Williamson having coffee in his birthday suit.

Fairfax County police showed up and arrested him. Williamson said he had no idea anyone could see him, but police said they believed he wanted to be seen by the public, said WTTG, a Fox station.

If convicted, Williamson could face one year in jail and a $2,000 fine. He plans to fight the charge.

"If I stood and seemed comfortable in my kitchen, it's natural. It's my kitchen," he told the station.

Police are now soliciting other people to come forward to say this dangerous man has been naked in his own home:

On Wednesday, investigators told FOX 5 they have reason to believe there may have been another incident in which someone saw Williamson naked in front of his window. They're asking anyone who may have seen Williamson in the nude through his windows to come forward, even if it was at a different time.

Police are especially concerned because the house is located across the street from a bus stop for school children. So on Wednesday, officers canvassed the neighborhood with fliers, asking anyone who may have been subject to an exposure to come forward.

This is my favorite line in the story from WTTG-TV:

Police wouldn't release the incident report or the name of the mother who filed the complaint. FOX 5 has learned she is a respected member of the community, and just happens to be the wife of a Fairfax County Police officer.

I know: soon somebody will comment, "What, you don't think it is appropriate for a police officer's wife to report a crime?"

To which I answer, "What's interesting here is that the Fairfax Police are now going all out to prove her allegations":

"Because this was being spun into a national story, and the idea you can't be naked in your own house-- we wanted to come forward and say in this case our officers believed there was probable cause the law had been violated," said Jennings.

Really? And that probable cause consists of....

"We've heard there may have been other people who had a similar incident," said Mary Ann Jennings, a Fairfax County Police spokesperson.

On the other hand, the guys with whom he shared the house suspect that Mr. Williamson may now be facing both jail time and a sex offender registry because ... he was either drunk or hungover from a drinking bout the night before.

Here's my question for the police sending out handbills about Mr. Williamson throughout the community: If they don't turn up anything, and you end up either not prosecuting him or losing the case, then how do you plan to apologize and give him his good name back?

Presumption of innocence my naked (oops) ass.

Regular readers will have long ago been introduced to ground-breaking Tarheel State Libertarians like Michael Munger and Chris Cole.

Now [h/t Libertarian Republican] you can add Matt Drew, the Libertarian candidate for Durham City Council, whose finish in the ward primary now entitles him to take on Democratic incumbent Howard Clement.

A visit to Drew's website discovers a candidate who is both thoughtful, civil, and willing to challenge perceived wisdom.

With respect to the idea that he cannot win the council seat in an overwhelmingly African-American population:

If you are a voter, go look in the mirror and honestly appraise yourself and your reasons for voting. If any of the reasons you voted for me include the fact that I’m white, I have a message for you:

Please stay home in November. I don’t want your vote.

If you find yourself in this position, I strongly urge you both to re-examine yourself and your motivations for voting. You also need to re-examine what Libertarians are about, because you clearly don’t understand anything about the person you are voting for. If you vote for me based on race, you do so with the understanding that I fundamentally disagree with you and will not represent your interests on City Council.

If one of the reasons you voted for Mr. Clement is because he’s black, I want you to do something for me. I want you to approach a man who has honorably served on the City Council for 26 years, a man who fought against open racism in the great Civil Rights battles fifty years ago, a man who has certainly seen and suffered more racial ugliness in his life than I can ever know, and I want you to tell him to his face that you voted for him because of the color of his skin. I hope that if you did that, he’d politely tell you where to shove it. And he’d be right, because you are insulting many of the ideals he and many others have paid a huge price to attain.

So how do you expect to win an election if this is how you characterize your opponent: a man who has honorably served on the City Council for 26 years, a man who fought against open racism in the great Civil Rights battles fifty years ago, a man who has certainly seen and suffered more racial ugliness in his life than I can ever know.

You do it by taking on his record:

My opponent, Howard Clement, has a simple theme for his campaign: Experience Matters. He’s right, of course. Experience does matter. Of course, this begs a larger question:

Experience doing what?...

What experience does my opponent have? He’s experienced in continual and rapid growth of government and taxes. He’s experienced in borrowing tens of millions of dollars (and paying millions more in interest) to build iconic edifices that continue to drain money from the city budget. He’s experienced in raising fees: a city fee increase went into effect a couple of weeks ago on the consent agenda, and wasn’t even discussed or debated. He’s experienced in deciding who gets corporate welfare support, the vast majority of which goes to large developers and large companies with little debate. He’s experienced in building skate parks in a year when critical programs are suffering budget cuts. He’s experienced with delaying what should be straightforward city decisions week after week … after week. He’s experienced in setting up programs like the Durham Youth Council that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to accomplish a goal that was already achievable.

What he doesn’t have experience with is reducing the footprint of government. He doesn’t have experience with ending programs, terminating city participation in failed projects like Rolling Hills, and cutting frivolous projects. As we move into what will likely be a decade of high unemployment, falling property taxes, falling sales tax revenues, and general belt-tightening, his response is to raise sales taxes to increase funding for yet another failed city program, our transit system. He continues to refuse to take the lead on the issues facing our water supply, as the process slowly grinds along with low priority and no sense of urgency.

Possibly this is too cerebral an approach to modern politics. Many local commenters on both edges of the ideological spectrum have argued (or have supported by their actions) the thesis that politics is not about rational discourse on public policy, but it's simply about winning.

They'd never consider acknowledging or complimenting their opponent's long record of service and historica role in the civil rights movement.

Matt Drew may not win, but he represents the sort of solid, substantive, civil candidate that any party should be proud to claim.

Here's what George Wahlen did:

One of the greatest of these living recipients [of the Congressional Medal of Honor] is George Wahlen of Ogden, Utah. Wahlen was a medical corpsman during the battle of Iwo Jima. Wahlen risked his life repeatedly by crawling out into the line of fire to administer life-saving medical aid. On two occasions he was hit by shrapnel and painfully injured, yet he refused to leave the battlefield. During twelve days of battle he is credited for saving a countless number of Marines. After World War II, Wahlen served active duty during both the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. He is also the only recipient to have served during war-time for the Navy, Marines, Army and Air Force.

I shouldn't have to tell you what Linda Brown did. But I'll give you a hint if you need it: she was a third grader in Topeka KS when the NAACP filed Brown v. Board of Education.

On the other hand, you may not have heard of Murray Gell-Mann, one of the most important American theoretical physicists since we claimed Albert Einstein as our own:

1929–, American theoretical physicist, b. New York City, grad. Yale 1948, Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1951. In 1953, he and the Japanese team of T. Nakano and Kazuhiko Nishijima independently proposed the concept of “strangeness” to account for certain particle-decay patterns; strangeness became the foundation for later symmetry studies. In 1961, Gell-Mann and Israeli physicist Yuval Ne'eman independently introduced the “eightfold way,” or SU(3) symmetry, a tablelike ordering of all subatomic particles analogous to the ordering of the elements in the periodic table. The 1964 discovery of the omega-minus particle, which filled a gap in this ordering, brought the theory wide acceptance and led to Gell-Mann's being awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize for Physics. In 1963, Gell-Mann and American physicist George Zweig independently postulated the existence of the quark, an even more fundamental elementary particle with a fractional electric charge; quarks are confined in protons, neutrons, and other particles by forces associated with the exchange of gluons. Gell-Mann and others later constructed the quantum field theory of quarks and gluons called quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Gell-Mann's interests have extended to the study of complexity, and he is the director of physics at the Santa Fe Institute, which he helped found in 1984.

I mention this because kavips seems to have an extremely odd idea of who the greatest living (or at least most beloved) American hero is.

Politics eats everything eventually, doesn't it?

From Coyote blog:

Cameron Scott meant this sentence as a withering critique of everything that is wrong with the government, from his point of view:

Transit riders shouldered four times the share of the MTA [Metropolitan Transit Authority] 2008 budget disaster [than] drivers did, but officials promised to seek more revenue from parking.

Holy cr*p! You mean that transit users shouldered four times more of the transit budget than transit non-users? Gasp!

The Bay Area where he lives is experiencing light rail disease. This is the phenomenon where middle class voters along heavy white collar commuting routes push for horrendously expensive light rail lines. The capital costs of these systems drain transit budgets into the distant future, forcing service cuts, particularly in bus systems that serve the poor. The result is that the city ends up with bigger transit bills, but less actual transit, and progressives like Scott scratch their head and try to figure out what went wrong. It must be because non-users of Transit aren’t paying enough!

There are legitimate and principled discussions to be held on the role of government in transferring wealth for defense, or health care, or environmental protection, but what underlies a lot of these discussions is that far too often too many people take what they want and convert it into what society needs.

In other words, they elevate personal, class, or political preference into a matter of social and/or economic justice.

To quote Thomas Jefferson: “EVERY DIFFERENCE OF OPINION IS NOT A DIFFERENCE OF PRINCIPLE”

My friends at Delawareliberal went all out describing Americans who did not believe that President Barack Obama did not deserve the Nobel Peace prize as wingnuts with no fewer than nine major posts.

The general theme was possibly best expressed by Delawaredem, who opined that when you have President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize, you have the recipe for Peak Wingnut.

The only problem, CNN now reports, is that a majority of Americans (which would require a lot of Democrats to make up that majority, one presumes) don't think President Obama deserved the Nobel Peace prize:

About a third believe the president deserved the prize, according to this week's CNN/Opinion Research poll. Fifty-six percent say they disapprove of the Nobel Prize Committee's decision to honor him, the survey found.

This would appear to mean one of three things:

1) Americans in general reality test much better than our local liberal/progressive bloggers, and realize that the primary reason President Obama won the Nobel is because he is not George W. Bush.

2) GOP rhetoric is a lot more effective than they thought in influencing public opinion.

3) Polling only means something when it concludes what you wanted to believe in the first place.

Come to think of it: maybe it means all three things at the same time.

And maybe, just maybe, we will start to see some of President Obama's supporters begin to pay more careful attention to his increasingly ineffective while increasingly interventionist foreign policy.

Nah. Probably not going to happen.

... like the Darfur region of Sudan.

It is important to read this entire NYT article on the impact of Major-General Scott Gration on the Obama administration's policy towards the genocidal government in Khartoum. You need to read it for yourself, because it is carefully balanced and subject to distortion if I pick out too many quotes about Gration himself.

But it is disturbing on multiple levels:

1) The continuing and apparently expanding use of US military personnel in diplomatic roles. To a greater extent than most previous administrations, President Obama appears to be relying upon military rather than diplomatic personnel to make critical assessments and carry out foreign policy.

2) The lack of transparency in our new foreign policy:

On Monday, the administration unveiled a new policy in Sudan, outlining an effort that officials said was aimed at ending the mass human suffering there, promoting a definitive peace and preventing Sudan from serving as a haven for terrorists.

Though the details of the policy remained classified....

3) The continuing emergence of foreign-policy-via-prolonged internal infighting:

The administration’s new policy signaled the end of one vigorous — some said heated — debate and the likely beginning of another. The administration deliberated for months in meetings led by officials steeped in Sudan’s bloody history.

People close to the talks said views fell generally into two main camps: one advocating a tougher line against Sudan led by the United Nations ambassador, Susan E. Rice, and the other calling for a more conciliatory approach, led by General Gration.

None of these are problems unique to the Obama administration, but combined with the painfully slow internal deliberations on Afghanistan strategy, what appears to be emerging is the image of a President who prefers to preside over internal debates rather than provide a specific, visualized structure of foreign policy. Some would argue that President Obama's willingness to listen to divergent viewpoints is a strength that was sorely lacking in the Bush White House, and there is some truth to that notion.

But it also bespeaks an administration that chews over virtually every foreign policy decision so many times that the original situation may have already changed by the time it makes a decision.

Hard as it may be to recall now, when the Afghan presidential election originally came off, the US State Department praised it as well-run and closely scrutinized, even as President Karzai's political supporters organized 800 completely fictitious polling places to garner phoney votes.

Now, thanks primarily to public pressure brought to bear by Peter Galbraith (resulting in UN election observer Kal Eide finally admitting that Karzai's election was fraudulent), the US has reluctantly joined those agreeing that a run-off will be necessary after first suggesting that we would not allow one.

In fact, this has no opened up something of a breach between the Obama administration and Senator John Kerry (who was, if you recall, one of the other finalists to become Secretary of State, and who might well be Hillary Clinton's replacement if she decides to quit and run for Governor of New York). Kerry says no decision about US troop levels should be made until there is a legitimately elected government in place:

"I don't see how President Obama can make a decision about the committing of our additional forces or even the further fulfillment of our mission that's here today without an adequate government in place or knowledge about what that government's going to be," Kerry told John Dickerson, host of CBSNews.com's "Washington Unplugged," during the senator's visit to Afghanistan's capital.

[Senator Kerry actually went into considerably more detail than this quote indicates.]

This caused Secretary of Defense Bob Gates to fire back, as Reuters reports:

ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT (Reuters) - The United States cannot wait for problems surrounding the legitimacy of the Afghan government to be resolved before making a decision on troops, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said.

Gates, speaking to reporters on board a plane traveling to Tokyo, described the situation in Afghanistan as an evolutionary process that would not improve dramatically overnight, regardless of what course is taken following the country's flawed August election.

"I see this as a process, not something that's going to happen all of the sudden," Gates said.

"I believe that the president will have to make his decisions in the context of that evolutionary process."

The Obama administration has tried to look for a way out of this dilemma by portraying discussions about a strategy shift in Afghanistan from defeating the Taliban to defeating Al Qaeda, as reported by the LATimes:

Reporting from Washington - President Obama and his top advisors are moving toward a strategy on Afghanistan that defines Al Qaeda as a greater threat to U.S. security than the Taliban, a view that could help them avoid the major troop increase sought by military commanders.

The evolving strategy represents a subtle shift for the administration, which has considered Osama bin Laden's network its top enemy while viewing the Taliban as a close ally of Al Qaeda that supports its ambitions. White House officials now are taking pains to make distinctions between the two groups, branding Al Qaeda a global terrorist group and the Taliban a local movement.

Such a strategy could let U.S.-led forces concentrate on their successful strategy of using unmanned aircraft and missile strikes against Al Qaeda operatives and outposts in the remote region along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Senator Kerry is not without his own answer for this, as he indicated in a CBS interview:

SENATOR JOHN KERRY: That’s correct. I– I– I do not believe that a counterterrorism strategy all by itself without a sufficient level of counterinsurgency will work because if you don’t have a presence on the ground that’s effective, it– it’s almost impossible to collect the kind of intelligence that you need to be equally effective in your counterterrorism.

[Kerry is not without problems in this area, however, as it seems from a 2004 interview that he was, ah, for the counter-terrorism strategy before he was against it. That claim, however, has to be taken with several grains of salt, as Kerry's 2004 comments were based on an Afghan situation that was considerably different from the one we face today.]

That all, of course, leaves Vice President Joe Biden's Pakistan-focused strategy out of the mix.

Thomas Barnett has a brilliant, edgy analysis of what this all means at Esquire, not just in Afghanistan but in terms of President Barack Obama's foreign policy leadership. I don't agree with everything Barnett says, but he makes a key point about a very bright but very young president, surrounded by older advisors still refighting their own previous wars, and that same President has far more preparation to handle domestic politics than foreign policy.

The potential result?

Underneath all this week's he-said/she-said over the war's future lies a self-inflicted wound: Our young president has lost sight of what matters in the military conflict that will define him, and lost sight of it to another Boomer-era vice president's guilty conscience.

That another vice president's guity conscience reference is a direct comparison of the roles of Dick Cheney in the Bush White House to that of Joe Biden in the Obama Administration [complete with a near rhetorical jab at Colin Powell]:

What's so intriguing and tragic about Obama's indecisiveness here is that it's been triggered by yet another vice-presidential, Boomer-era "wise man" determined to right the wrongs of the Vietnam era. With George W. Bush, it was Jerry Ford's chief of staff Dick Cheney who was determined to restore the power of the imperial presidency, and with Barry, it's Joe Biden (his '72 Senate upset win in Delaware was fueled by his fierce opposition to the war), who, along with 'Nam vets John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, counsels our JFK-ish president to get out of this quagmire now — while he still can. Despite all of Obama's campaign rhetoric about bringing a post-Boomer perspective to the White House, on this crucial call he appears as captive to that mindset as his two predecessors were.

And yes, the perverse influence that links them all is Obama's kitchen-cabinet adviser Colin Powell (aka Two-Face), who never met a war he didn't want to decisively win but likewise never met a post-war situation he didn't want to assiduously avoid. If you want a poster-child for how Vietnam still screws up presidencies, then General Powell's your man. Just understand that, later on, he'll deny everything to Bob Woodward.

Make no mistake about it: in a political sense, Barack Obama made two gigantic wagers in his presidency: health care reform and Afghanistan. I ultimately think he will bring out something close enough to health care reform to satisfy (if grudgingly) his base, and because it won't kick in until 2013 he will be running on that success.

But Afghanistan is a much trickier problem, and has far fewer roads that end in declaring victory.

It is an important thing to remember: the Great Society did not save LBJ from Vietnam.

So two weeks ago Tyler Nixon announced here that Mike Castle was running for Congress and that he supports him.

No surprise there.

Then Delawaredem references that post in Around the Horn a couple days ago and throws off the comment that he'd like to know what I think.

I answered and explained why I'm not supporting Castle (or Biden).

Then Eric Dondero of Libertarian Republican drops by, sees my answer to DD's post, goes back to find Tyler's original post, and suddenly we have

Delaware's Top Libertarian Endorses Republican Mike Castle of US Senate

Political Stunner!!!!

And in the process, Delawareliberal even gets a mention in passing at Libertarian Republican. I know they will be so proud.

Several observations are important in this:

1) Despite Eric's connections to Delaware he somehow misses the fact that Tyler was a fusion Republican/Libertarian candidate in 2008, and that Tyler--while possessed of strong libertarian credentials--has been a registered Republican throughout his political career.

2) Tyler has never claimed the title of Delaware's Top Libertarian, although his combined vote total in last year's election between Republicans and Libertarians has arguably made him the most successfuly candidate associated with the Libertarian Party of Delaware.

3) It would only be a political stunner--as everyone in Delaware already knows--if Tyler Nixon did not support Mike Castle, since Tyler has worked to elect or re-elect Castle as Governor and Congressman in virtually every race in recent memory.

And, oh yes,

4) Contrary to Eric's reporting, I doubt Delawaredem would claim to be the publisher of Delawareliberal, per se.

All of which goes to show you that while almost everything Eric wrote in the post was factually correct, the combined assemblage of the story presents an erroneous image of a segment of Delaware politics.

I don't think that was anything peculiar to Eric's reporting: he did fairly reasonable due diligence and got all his quotes and links correct.

But it does raise the point that when you read local coverage of politics anywhere being interpreted by people who aren't actually on the scene and personally knowledgeable about the players, you should be carefully skeptical.

Maybe folks are starting to understand:

WASHINGTON (CNN) - A slight majority of Americans think that the war in Afghanistan is turning into another Vietnam, according to a new national poll which also indicates that nearly six in 10 oppose sending more U.S. troops to the conflict.

Fifty-two percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday say the eight year long conflict has turned into a situation like the U.S. faced in the Vietnam War, with 46 percent disagreeing.

According to the poll, 59 percent of people questioned opposed sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan with 39 percent in favor. Of the 59 percent opposed, 28 percent want Washington to withdraw all U.S troops, 21 percent are calling for a partial American pullout, and 8 percent say the number of troops should remain the same.

"Has Afghanistan turned into Barack Obama's Vietnam? Most Americans think so, and that may be one reason why they oppose sending more U.S. troops to that country," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Older Americans are most likely to see parallels between Afghanistan and Vietnam - possibly because they remember the Vietnam War, rather than reading about it in textbooks."