Po’ Dede’s a little confused

Dede Scozzafava, the Republican congressional nominee who dropped out of New York’s special election last week to endorse Democrat Bill Owens, said Wednesday night that the GOP is “really not based on any sort of substance.”

If that’s so, how’d she get booted out? Wait, Politico might be playing loose with quotes:

Speaking with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Scozzafava warned Republicans that “you have ideology that’s really not based on any sort of substance that can move an agenda forward, that can really help people in this country.”

What if you want to move an agenda back?

“You know, the original Republican Party was all about less government interference in the lives of individuals. It was about promoting self-sufficiency versus government dependency.”

That’s debateable. If subsidized railroads and harbors and opposition to polygamy qualify as “less government interference in the lives of individuals”, OK. Their first President sure interfered in a lot of lives.

Domestic terrorists accuse Hillary of racism

How sweet it is when the Left turns on their own!

Nickel-n-dime pro-life

My wife had occasion yesterday to accompany a friend to an abortion clinic. The only part of the experience that bothered her was that, “by law, they said”, the mother had to be offered an ultrasound of the fetus. Mind you, she didn’t actually have to look at it; she had to be offered, and could decline, which she did.

Now, I understand how such a law could come to be. There are lifebots out there who would say, “If they only see that it’s a BAYBEE, they won’t go through with it, because BAYBEEZ are cute ‘n adorable.” True enough, but I’ve seen early-term ultrasounds, and if you can tell that’s a baby, you have more imagination than I have. And they probably figure this is pretty harmless, and not really an infringement of anyone’s liberty, though it does mean that the clinic has to have ultrasound equipment, which maybe they wouldn’t need otherwise (though having it is certainly a good idea). Conservatives figure that none of their laws infringe liberty, because they’re the pro-liberty party.

Maybe my conservative friends would see things differently if we applied this strategy to Blue Team issues. What if, every time you bought a gun or even ammunition, you had to be shown pictures of what that particular caliber does to human flesh, because, really, you might be ignorant of that, since most of us have never shot anyone. “Yes, the .308 is pretty gross; wouldn’t you rather buy a .22?” Or what if fast-food milk shakes came with a picture of a diabetic’s gangrenous extremities printed right on the cup? Let’s not even discuss cigarettes. We’re all dolts, and need to be scared into taking care of ourselves… Yes, life could become one big shop safety/driver’s ed film.

It doesn’t help my opinion of this that I’m so squishily pro-life as to be barely pro-life at all. It’s a really hard sell to convince me that “There ought to be a law” about darn near anything. But I have no way of proving with reasonable certainly that the fetus is not a human being, the preponderance of the evidence suggests that it is a human being, and if government exists for anything, it’s to protect the lives of human beings. That doesn’t offer a lot of wiggle room. One could argue, I suppose, that fetuses don’t enjoy the protections of citizenship (since the unborn are by definition not native-born), but that doesn’t get you anywhere; if it’s OK to kill people because they aren’t citizens, then let’s grab our baseball bats, go down to the WalMart parking lot and bash us some Mexicans.

Worse, in this particular case, I can’t help seeing the abortion as a goodness. This is a person with a messed up life, who has been crawling out of the messed-up part and can’t afford to slide back. The child would be a born cheesesucker. I really can’t gin up any judgement whatsoever. When Rusty tried to bait me about it, I said, “She’s going to Hell anyway; one fewer sin isn’t going to change that.” She was taken aback a bit, mostly I think because her ex was in the habit of telling her she’s going to Hell. But I’m sorry, pagan girls are held to a looser standard than pillars of the Lutheran Church like George Tiller. I don’t approve; I certainly wouldn’t want to pay for it. But I have absolutely zero interest in hiring some guns to stop her from doing it. Does that make me an evil baby-killer-enabling person? I don’t know, and I don’t much care. Auntie Ayn would say, “Contradiction? Check your premises”, but I suspect she might not have much truck with some of the premises at work here. Given the track record, I think I’ll get better input from the Holy Spirit anyway. But I’m writing this because I have contradiction and uncertainty, and this one is in my face.

Like, “Why aren’t you in jail too?”

This afternoon, Dr. Eduardo Torres Cuevas. the director of the Cuban National Library will be speaking in NYC, and Robert Kent suggests a few questions that could be respectfully asked of him.

Election wrapup

OK, there were things to be happy about last night: Virginia, the removal of the odious Jon Corzine, the defeat of the Communist Rick Nagin in his quest for a Cleveland Council seat.  The Cuyahoga charter amendment was a good thing overall. Yes, Hoffman losing in NY23 was a bummer, but it was a fair fight, and at least the liberal will wear the proper ID tag.

But locally, I’m not seeing any of the revulsion to government that I’ve pipe-dreamed of. In my county, both the Democrat-backed judges won (though at least my candidates came in 2nd in 3-4 man races). All 3 statewide issues passed handily, with the casino gambling issue coming in the closest. That’s not  a clear-cut issue of principle, but stupidity and veniality as usual.

The Rethuglicans will make much of their wins, and one can understand why. But one swallow doesn’t make a spring. We live in a country increasingly dominated by cheesesuckers, and it’s going to take years to repair the damage sustained to American culture in the last century.

Nevada LP Senate candidate shot by police

Via LRC, this sad story:

I was pulled over for driving straight through an intersection in a right turn only lane. I did signal for my lane changes to the left.

After exiting the vehicle at the officer’s request, I was standing with my back to the vehicle. The car’s open door was to my right. My hands were raised above my head. I was calmly speaking to the cop attempting to talk my way out of being taken to jail over an unpaid High Occupancy Vehicle ticket.

With my hands raised above my head, the cop shot me with a taser in the chest.

Duensing has a heart condition, so he freaked, pulled the electrodes, and ran.

Various figures have been discussing whether Jim was “resisting arrest”. What they haven’t addressed is this: why did the cop taze Duensing, presuming this is an accurate account of what happened? He wasn’t going anywhere or being threatening. They knew who he was. And in the midst of all kinds of finger pointing, this was one of the few commenters to nail it:

Brian S // Nov 2, 2009 at 3:35 pm

Let’s not lose sight of the real issue here – the cops shot a senatorial candidate multiple times, immediately before an election. How coincidental can this be, really?

I wish Jim a speedy recovery.

Bye, Dede

This isn’t so much about the Scozzafava suspension, as about Ace’s reaction to it.
He contrasts Limbaugh’s pragmatism with Beck’s purism (Glenn, not Billy…who really is a purist), and sides with Limbaugh. As usual with slaves of the Duopoly, he misses the point.

The Hoffman thing is a fluke, because it happened in one of the few states with a functional 3rd party system, because of the possibility of multi-line candidacy. It’s not going to happen somewhere like Ohio. Nobody was insisting on ideological purity in a Republican; a bunch of people just decided to vote ideology instead of party, in a rare situation where that was possible.

The way forward is not to arguable about successful electoral strategies within the Duopoly. That’s a non-starter, because the battle will always be about power instead of ideology. What we need is a free and open electoral system in this country, and instead of lobbying for short-term goals, Republicans and Democrats both need to work for a system where every party plays by the same rules. If a minor party needs 40K petition signatures to get on the ballot, so do the Democrats. If they can lose ballot access by getting too few votes, so can the Republicans. And get multi-line like in NY (you know, that right of free association?) Now, that will be a hard sell, because it isn’t in the interest of the Duopoly to do it. but if we make it in the interests of the individual politicians to make it happen, it could happen. At that point, with a lively spectrum of options, the Left will “split the vote” as often as the Right, and pragmatic, “what’s in it for me” voters will be choosing different folks from we ideologues.

Zelaya’s back!

It looks like he’ll be pretty impotent, but you never know.

Heck of a job there, Obie.

QatD Electoral recommendations

Nobody from around here reads this blog anyway, so my making recommendations is rather silly. But for those interested in my thoughts on The Great Issues Facing Our State Yada Yada, here goes:

Ohio Issue 2: creation of Livestock Care Standards Board

Hell no!

First, because I have no natural right to do such a thing. If I were to walk onto the farm of one of these guys who got the yard sign  from Farm Bureau, waving a gun around and saying things like, “Get these cattle off this feedlot NOW and onto pasture. You don’t have any pasture? Sell the cows!”, I’d be very lucky to leave there vertically, and rightly so. Nobody in their right mind would argue that I have any right to do that. If I don’t have such a right, how can I validly delegate that right to the government? Not only have I no right to vote “yes”, but I have an affirmative duty to vote “no” to cancel out the asshat who thinks that, because he hid in a voting booth, it wasn’t really him sticking it to his neighbors’ farm.

Second, because it will fail in its declared intent. HSUS has already announced that this will not be sufficient to stave off a ballot drive, so we are likely to have California farming rules PLUS a useless bureaucracy. If the CAFO and egg factory guys can’t make a moral and economic case to the public for what they’re doing, maybe they shouldn’t be doing it.

Third, any such board can and will be captured by the big money players, and your home chicken flock will be forced into cages because letting them free-range leaves them vulnerable to predators. You ever see what a stray Black Lab can do to a flock? I have, and it’s not pretty. Downright cruel, in fact.  And no killing your spent hens unless you have a multi-thousand dollar machine to euthanize them. You don’t hand over a loaded gun to just anyone.

Ohio Issue 3: Casinos

Don’t vote!

If this were a vote on principle, a constitutional amendment saying, “The General Assembly shall make no law respecting gambling”, I would be so there. It’s not. It’s a vote on giving another sweetheart deal to big gambling interests. On one hand, we have people who think that Ohio’s economy can be saved by encouraging Ohioans and a few out-of-staters to piss money down a slot. Casinos produce nothing. Sure, it would be a miniscule liberalization of Ohio gaming law. But on the other hand, we have Christianists anxious to save sinners from the vice of gambling. A plague on both their houses, I say. I don’t have the right to stop people from gambling, so I sure don’t have the right to establish a monopoly.

Judges

David Brode

Tommie Jo Marsilio

It’s very hard to choose judges on the substantive issue: do they actually believe in the Constitution and natural rights? My belief is that association with either of the two criminal conspiracies against the Constitution is circumstantial but persuasive  evidence that they do not…which leaves the above as the outsider candidates. Both appear to be as qualified if not more qualified than their opposition.  And Marsilio deserves a break : she was fired by the prosecutor because he didn’t like her style of campaigning, plus her parents really really wanted a boy.

Twp. trustee:

Damned if I know

Neither has distributed any substantive campaign literature, and Rusty, who has met at least one of them, is not enough of a policy wonk to ferret out their positions. We’ll probably go with Todd Phillips, as the same people who supported the odious Kevin Knight last time are supporting Jesse Wirick. If either of you search-engines this up and want to tell me what you won’t do, I’ll consider it carefully. (Beckie Dean could do it; why can’t you?)

 

3 narcs bite the dust

Since the DEA is an American civilian “law” enforcement agency, would somebody mind telling me what they were doing in Afghanistan? Were they “advisors” sharing their invincible expertise on ending drug production?

Apparently, the agency has been strong-arming their pilots into going over, with threats of demotion, and sending their “problem children” out of the country. I have a little sympathy for those who thought they were getting a domestic job.  But fundamentally, I have no more sympathy for the DEA than I have for your typical Waffen SS member, and for the same reason.

In the past year, the DEA has launched an ambitious plan to increase its personnel in Afghanistan from about a dozen to nearly 80, greatly expanding its role, particularly in military actions against drug traffickers.

So were these guys counted in yesterday’s “14 casualties”? Are they soldiers?  Sorry, I will never celebrate the death of an American soldier….but I’m celebrating now.