.... and it has finally [at least at WaPo ] managed to figure out that President Barack Obama continues to receive advice on foreign policy and economics from many of the same people who advised President George W. Bush, and continues to advance many of the former President's policies in minimally modified forms. And the piece ends with an observation being made here for several months: All this leaves Obama in an uncomfortable position, drawing fire from conservatives while making his liberal friends nervous. It is a clear example of the difference between campaigning for president and actually being president. Ah, Demopublicans, what would we do without them? Oh. Yeah. We'd enjoy the potential of real political change in America.

How many points does it take to make a line? Today I have three. Point 1: The Obama administration backs away (but doesn't back away, but then again does) from the idea that a public option is essential to a successful health insurance reform bill. No matter what they say from this point on, they have wounded the public option as gravely as if it were an embattled Supreme Court nominee (remember Harriet Myers?) about whom a President says, I'm standing behind her 1000% percent . Point 2: Democratic Senator Kent Conrad says, “Look, the fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the U.S. Senate for the public option, there never have been.” . That last clause-- there never have been the votes for a public option --has been more or less ignored in the MSM thus far. That's a mistake: it is critical to the political process. The American political process--kind of like the free market-- always sets up a "middle" whether the parties or the candidates wa...

David Boaz of Cato looks at the poll numbers which suggest this might be happening and then he concludes: Libertarian—or fiscally conservative, socially liberal—voters are often torn between their aversions to the Republicans' social conservatism (and, for some of them, military adventurism) and the Democrats' fiscal irresponsibility. Usually they end up voting on the basis of economics. Research that David Kirby and I have done shows that libertarian-leaning voters have typically given up to 70 percent of their votes to Republicans. But in 2004 and 2006, that number fell off sharply. Republican congressional candidates barely held a majority of libertarian votes in 2006, and of course the Republicans took a pounding in that election. Why did those voters turn away from the Republicans? Well, Bush and the Republican Congress stuck to their social-conservative guns: they sought to ban gay marriage, limit stem cell research, and insert the federal government into Terry Schiavo’s...

... try this. Here's what the GOP is saying today about President Obama's plan to cull $200 Billion in savings through greater efficiencies in Medicare over the next decade: WaPo : Meanwhile, some Republicans are attacking the very notion of reining in out-of-control Medicare spending, charging that efforts to force hospitals and other providers to become more efficient would lead to "fewer choices and lower health-care quality for our nation's seniors," as House Republican Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) put it this week in a GOP alert. And here's what happened in 1996: NewsOK : Bill Clinton practically based his re-election campaign in 1996 on attacks against the Republican congressional majority for its plans to cut the rate of growth of Medicare. Note that no actual cut was proposed, only a cut in the rate of growth.... Clinton — employing what became known as "Mediscare” — blistered Gingrich and the Republicans. The AARP joined in the fun. The media m...

... appears, of all places, in HuffPo. Shermer, the regular skeptical columnist for Scientific American and longtime debunker of intelligent design claims, is always interesting, and his writings have always made me think he had a libertarian streak. Here he lays out what technically is not so much a definition of libertarianism, but a point-by-point description of what Libertarian government would look like. In the libertarian spectrum Shermer is pretty close to me, which means not radical enough for a lot of my libertarian friends. I would suggest that he is more properly a constitutionalist, but his points are worth examining: 1. The rule of law. 2. Property rights. 3. Economic stability through a secure and trustworthy banking and monetary system. 4. A reliable infrastructure and the freedom to move about the country. 5. Freedom of speech and the press. 6. Freedom of association. 7. Mass education. 8. Protection of civil liberties. 9. A robust military for protection of our liber...

A few days ago our friends in the Democratic wing of the Demopublican Party were all rejoicing at the seating of Al Franken in the US Senate to give them a fairly meaningless 60-vote majority (since the idea of any 60 Democrats agreeing on anything is pretty far out there).... Strangely enough, while they are doing the Franken victory dance and enjoying the bizarre roadshow that is Sarah Palin, they seem quite mum on the fact that their 60-vote majority is also dependent (at least for the next year and and a half) on the vote of Illinois Senator Roland Burris. Remember Burris? The guy even Dick Durbin said ought to resign? Except that he didn't, and the Illinois prosecutors abruptly forgot about pursuing his corruption case, and the Senate ethics investigation has ... evaporated. Today poor Roland announced that he's doing a Ted Kauffmann--not running again--only in his case it seems to be because nobody will give him any money. Strangely enough, it all escapes the notice o...

The inner workings of a major political party are not--under any circumstances--pretty, particularly when that party is trying to recover from electoral disaster and sort out whether it intends in future to be conservative Libertarian or the Lawn Jockey Caucus of the Old Confederacy and Buffalo Commons Party. And, naturally [at least in the convoluted mental universe of blogging], the most qualified people to give them advice are the people who want them defeated at all costs. The semi-pious, semi-gleeful pseudo-advice pieces penned under the rubric of What the GOP needs to do are about as entertaining as they are non-partisan. So, of course the helpful liberal and progressive bloggers were more than willing to latch onto the racist commentary of Young Republican leader Audra Shay, with caustic observations that she proved that such thought among GOPers could not be dismissed as an individual case because--essentially--Michael Steele, Tucker Carlson, and Mike Castle--had not all jump...

... of the 21-year-old from Washington who just copped a plea for having sex with his dogs. After all, that's what commenters all over the country are doing. This is what happens when you participate in the cheapening of political discourse just to score points.

Here's the breaking news of the latest defense supplemental : Top House and Senate Democrats reached a tentative agreement on an almost $100 billion war funding bill Monday, including a generous new line of credit for the International Monetary Fund. At the core of the measure is President Barack Obama's war funding request, which included $76 billion for Pentagon operations. But the IMF funding is a top priority of Obama, who pledged the $100 billion line of credit at April's G-20 summit in London to help developing countries deal with the troubled global economy. Of course, that little extra for the IMF is all there is, right? Uh, not quite. The measure is expected to include eight huge C-17 cargo jets sought by the Boeing Co. and its allies on Capitol Hill such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash. The planes are on a list of program eliminations announced by Obama last month, but the C-17 program has tons of support on Capitol Hill, and the ch...

... from its eight-year engagement with the Clinton administration . It some days seems that President Obama sees his foreign policy and civil liberties decisions as a basis for keeping his political opponents from successfully opposing his economic policies : With President Obama’s policy shifts of the past week, he has found a new cheering section: Republican Congressmen. Senator Lindsey Graham (R - SC) in particular cheered the moves, lauding what he called “intelligent, well-reasoned decisions about trying to clean up the old system but not throwing it out.” If one was to go by the amount of problems the president had with the old system during the campaign, the paucity of real cleaning is nothing short of remarkable. His pledge to leave Iraq within 16 months went up in smoke just days after he took office. At this point he seems determined to leave as many as 50,000 troops in the nation indefinitely. But the moves of the past week were nothing short of monumental. His pledge of ...

I'm going to quote this post from Delawareliberal in its entirety, because; (a) it's short enough; and (b) nobody outside Delaware would believe it if I didn't. From The Great Depression is here : Let’s be clear, without this massive bailout, the economic system of the United States would collapse into a depression worse than the Great Depression. The system would “meltdown.” The Dollar would be worth nothing. Senator Christopher Dodd said that is what lawmakers were told last night. My God. You fucking Republicans are all to blame. Your advocacy of deregulation for the last 30 years is responsible. The greed that underlies your policies and that invades your supporters was your motivation. You put yourselves and your wallets first, and our country last. You should all be round up and shot. Seriously. This massive bailout will require massive tax increases on everyone. And I am talking about returning to 70% tax rates on the rich, like before Reagan. ...

You'll probably never hear this one in the MSM, what with Bill trying hard not to spit every time he says Barack's name, but.... It appears there is a legal case to be made that neither John McCain nor Barack Obama should be on the ballot in Texas come November 4 . Apparently, Texas changed its law a couple years back to require names to be submitted to the Secretary of State not 60 days before the election, but 70 days . And there is some uncertainty as to whether the GOPers and Dems even submitted placeholder petitions, with the intent to substitute actual names after their conventions. [They could easily have submitted Obama and McCain as the main candidates, but the law requires VPs as well.] I suspect that either (a) we will discover retroactively that they filed something; or (b) a carefully purchased Texas judge will simply set aside the law ala Frank Lautenberg's illegal replacement of Bob Toricelli a few years ago in New Jersey; or (c) at the very worst they'l...

So, under the Federal tax check-off system, $34 million of our tax money is going to fund the Dem and GOP conventions . Thirty-four million dollars of US taxpayer money is going to fund the Dem and GOP conventions? That's $34,000,000--not Federal matching funds but an outright grant of my tax dollars--going to fund the f**king political conventions of two American political parties -- neither one of which I belong to ? So pretty much what this boils down to is that while the Catholic Church can't get tax money from Presbyterians, Mormons, and Jews to fund itself, the Republicans and Democrats get to take tax money from Libertarians, Greens, Socialists, and Independents not to meet Federal matching fund requirements, but to pay to drop the goddamn balloons on the heads of Barack Obama and John McCain . OK, somebody--anybody--explain to me how this is one whit more ethical than an established church.

From a longer, depressing post at Disloyal Opposition , three excerpts: T SA now plans to centralize the process of checking names against the watch lists in its own offices. Under the Secure Flight program, airlines will be required to supply lists of scheduled passengers to the TSA's crack clerical staff, who will then issue a "yay" or "nay" to each individual's travel plans -- essentially formalizing the process of making air travel a privilege to be dispensed by government officials.... The information the government compiles on travelers -- in particular, their comings and goins -- is about to get a lot more detailed. The Border Crossing Information system, recently announced by the Department of Homeland Security, will track, to the extent possible, everybody's movements into and out of the United States: BCI shall contain border crossing information, as that term is explained above, for all individuals who are admitted or paroled into the United S...

What is it about lawyers, anyway? The North Carolina Bar Association refused to allow Libertarian Mike Munger into its gubernatorial debate. The Virginia Bar Association refused to allow Libertarian William Redpath and the Green Party's Gail Parker into its senatorial debate on July 19: Kimberly Kovac, communications coordinator for the lawyers' organization, said the association considers polling information, coverage from the media and a level of financial support before deciding whether to invite a candidate. Neither Redpath nor Parker met the criteria, she said. Predictable, if despicable. Even the Roanoke [VA] Times chided the Dempublicans for their exclusionary tactics: Based on the news coverage, you might think Republican Jim Gilmore and Democrat Mark Warner are the only options to represent Virginia in the U.S. Senate. You'd be wrong. In fact, the Libertarian and Green parties both have fielded candidates. Shame on the Virginia Bar Association for not inviting...

From the press release carried by the Libertarian Party of North Carolina : Dr. Mike Munger, Libertarian candidate for governor, won't disclose the personal financial information requested by The News & Observer and the Charlotte Observer unless he's allowed to participate in the gubernatorial debates. "I categorically refuse to participate in this farce, unless I'm allowed to participate in the debates," the Duke professor said. He said he doesn't object to the request itself because both newspapers have covered all three campaigns fairly. "They believe the voters of North Carolina — and not some elite group representing the wealthy and the politically powerful — should decide," he said. "What I object to is the intrusive scrutiny of financial disclosure when I'm not to receive the benefit of simple fairness. The fact that McCrory and Perdue have excluded me from even one of the debates is an outrage," he said. "My opponents h...

Dear Mr. Head, Recently, my blog--Delaware Libertarian--carried the story of the NC Barr Association's decision to exclude Dr. Michael Munger from the gubernatorial debate it will be sponsoring this year . I wrote to you at the time to encourage you to reverse this decision, and also asked readers to communicate their views to you and your colleagues. While I regret that you did not respond to my email, you did have the courtesy to reply to one of my readers with the following: Months ago before any third candidate was qualified to be on the ballot we planned our forum for those who were announced candidates. Since then we have scripted our morning to the minute and even if we wanted to add another candidate we just do not have time now to do so. We are sorry that we cannot accommodate Dr. Munger's desire to participate and we hope you can understand our situation. Given that your debate is now one week off, I suppose that your contention that "we have scripted our morni...

The current mortgage crisis, the decline of the dollar, the rise of oil prices, the cost of America's imperialistic foreign policy, and the tax/spend mania of a punchdrunk congress have incited not just fear and panic, but a brace of "I told you so" posts from liberals and progressives around the blogosphere. These pundits suggest, almost smugly, that only they were correctly positioned by wisdom and ideology to have foreseen the coming debacle, but were rendered powerless to avert the tragedy by the evil forces of the GOP and its lemming-like followers. The evils, of course, are a combination of corporate greed, conservative economics, and government regulatory failure, all of which must be addressed by greater government involvement in the marketplace. Here's the take from the Left pole of the Delaware Blogosphere in particular: From Delaware Watch (See What Happens When You Don't Regulate the Looters): And when no one is minding the store, the opportunistic thi...

Tuesday March 4, 2008 Brian On Critical Assignment in Poorastan , near someplace no one really knows or cares about While increasing pressure mounts on the Bush Administration to admit that while it took four years to win world war II, and has taken over six to win the global war on terror, a lone man with a camera has done the unthinkable and actually found out what may have happened to Osama Bin Laden. For details, watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjxXX70_R0A Following this Bush Administration officials told this reporter, "no comment." While former presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani, known affectionately as "Rudy" to supporters, said, "since the events of 9/11 the country has been in an ideological struggle with radical islamo -fascism." When asked about the reasons why Osama is basically gone, he responded, "no comment." One can only assume that the 9/11 phallus has repeatedly penetrated the American public's consciousne...

Biofuels are a hot topic. It seems everyone, and I mean everyone, wants to weigh in on it, from Bill Gates to Fidel Castro. So I want to send out a special thanks to Jesus' General for posting on what happens when biofuels go bad: http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/2008/03/food-or-fuel.html The case can be made that Brazil already produces enough sugar cane ethanol to fuel the entire continent of South America; and that we could use the same technology without creating food shortages or following some of the more radical soylent green biofuel dystopias floating around in the policy-o-sphere like using thermal depolymerization on people....if you do not know about thermal depolymerization , please read about turning turkey guts into diesel and the same could be done to people; scary huh? I think so: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/11/1125_031125_turkeyoil.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization Now Libertarian phobic fantasies have been around fore...