21
Feb
Yummy. 300 just keeps looking better and better.
21
Feb
Oh, how a mere tenth of a pound can hurt - now, according to the government, I’m officially obese again, not just overweight. That’s actually a problem with the BMI formula, but that is a rant for another day.
And that tenth of a pound? It’s the kids’ fault. First we went to the brand-new Gaskins Rd. Cracker Barrel. Laugh at my unhipness all you will, but it was breakfast-for-dinner night, and Cracker Barrel is such a loud place that it’s a good place for boisterous little people. Then it was off to the PTA ice cream social/book fair, which featured ice cream (duh). The really good, full fat kind, not the stuff I usually eat.
Yesterday, we took a look at the big 3 GOP candidates for 2008, so now it’s time to take a look at the other side of the aisle.
Barack Obama
Obama has received a lot of press adulation as the Democrats’ anti-politician, a non-insider to take on the “culture of corruption” in DC. And to his credit, Obama at least pays lip service to the reality that both parties are to blame for the morass that is DC. This is, however, little reason to vote for a candidate. Outsiders inevitably become insiders, and the desire to reform government fades when one discovers that the power you restrain is your own. Lest we forget, the same thing was said about President Bush in 2000, and we haven’t exactly seen a reduction in the size and scope of government.
The biggest promlem with Sen. Obama is that he has no record to base a decision upon, and when one digs below the surface, there doesn’t seem to be much there there. Take his issues page on healthcare, for example. Fight AIDS through antimicrobials. Encourage exercise by fighting “sprawl”. Reduce lead poisoning. All well and good, but not exactly visionary.
His other positions are equally troublesome. Improving education by rewarding good teachers soods like common sense. But he proposes doing it through a government pilot program in which localities develop plans in cooperation with teachers’ unions. No, no, no. Empower localities to innovate, sure, but don’t hamstring them with the unions, who will only seek to prevent bad teachers from being fired.
Ultimately, Obama is famous mostly for giving a fiery speech at the 2004 convention. He hasn’t done much yet to show he is not a lightweight.
John Edwards
If Obama seems to be a lightweight based on inexperience and a lack of substantive ideas, Edwards is a lightweight, a faux populist in a multimillion dollar mansion, criticizing the class divide while he lives it. Edwards’ primary substantive proposal is his hideous healthcare plan, which would include substantial new taxes to pay its $120 million price tag, would create a massive subsidy of the sick by the healthy (by requiring coverage of all preexisting conditions) and would greatly increase the federal medical bureaucracy by expanding Medicaid to cover the uninsured. Ultimately, Edwards’ plan goes in precisely the wrong direction - though the plan speaks of Health Markets, the proposal reduces opportunities for market-based reform. It doesn’t increase price transparency or provide appropriate price signals. It increases, if that is possible, the divide between the payor and the consumer of medical services. Now it’s not just your employer who subsidizes your health care, it’s everyone.
Hillary Clinton
Ugh, just ugh. Hillary’s 1993 health care plan was horrible, and there’s no reason to believe it’s gotten any better. It betrayed her inherent fondness for government intrusiveness and micromanagement. But she’s different now, right? A moderate, not a liberal, or so everyone says. Therein lies the problem, and the reason President Hillary is simply frightening.
Take Iraq for example. She voted to autorize the war in 2002. Now that the war is unpopular, she tried arguing that she wasn’t really voting for war. When that didn’t help her with liberals and led to ridicule from conservatives, she really went overboard:
Clinton, the wife of former President Bill Clinton, has been criticized by some Democrats for supporting authorization of the war in 2002 and for not renouncing her vote as she seeks the U.S. presidency in next year’s election.
“Now it’s time to say the redeployment should start in 90 days or the Congress will revoke authorization for this war,” the New York senator said in a video on her campaign Web site, repeating a point included in a bill she introduced on Friday.
90 days? Who is she kidding? This makes Obama’s phased “redeployment” by March 2008 seem positively conservative. Disagree with the war, say you were wrong in voting for it, whatever. But don’t propose rash action that emperils both Americans and Iraqis just to get in good with your base. Don Surber’s reaction is like mine:
Finally, yesterday I praised Hillary for standing up to the Surrender Wing of the Democrat Party. Today she surrenders to the Surrender Wing. She will make Jimmy Carter look good as president. No principles. Just a power-craven madwoman. In a pantsuit.
Hillary’s hitting all the Pander Points. Throw a bone to the rabid anti-war left? Check. Meaningless attacks on offensive (to some) symbols? Check:
“I think about how many South Carolinians have served in our military and who are serving today under our flag and I believe that we should have one flag that we all pay honor to, as I know that most people in South Carolina do every single day”…
As Ann Althouse points out, this doesn’t mean much of anything unless she’s attacking all state flags. But Hillary doesn’t want it to mean anything. She proposes a troop withdrawal bill that she knows won’t pass. She appears to criticize Confederate flag waving good old boys without actually saying so, since she needs the Bubba vote. Her husband proved admirably that when you try to be all things to all people, you end up accomplishing nothing for anyone.
McCain and Romney deserve criticism for pandering, but Hillary raises it to a whole new level.
Bottom line: all three of these characters are statists cloaking themselves in populist rhetoric. Obama seems the least bad of the three, at least so far. As bad as Bush and the Republican congress have been on spending and liberty, these characters are worse.
The latest issue of Cato Unbound takes on income inequality, with Alan Reynolds arguing that inequality has not risen since the 1980s, and Gary Burtless, Mark Thoma, Richard Burkhauser and Dirk Krueger & Fabrizio Perri responding to Reynolds.
I’m not familiar enough with metrics like the Gini Coefficient to wade into the debate, but even if inequality has increased, no one has yet adequately explained to me why it matters. America has never promised equality of result, only equality of opportunity. What problem are those concerned about inequality truly trying to solve?
[via Marginal Revolution]
20
Feb
Yesterday was, of course, President’s Day. I celebrated, if one can call it that, by taking both kids to the West End Chuck E. Cheese, since that’s where the little oxen wanted to celebrate last quarter’s perfect report card. That makes me either brave or stupid. I report, you decide. Chuck’s place is a den of temptation, what with the pizza and the robotic tool of fat Blue Bunny ice cream machine, but we made it through OK, if not psychically unscathed.
Helping the cause was a nice recipe for meatloaf, from Better Homes and Gardens’ Family Favorites Made Lighter cookbook:
2 slightly beaten egg whites
1/4 c bread crumbs
1/4 c finely chopped onion
1/4 c finely chopped green pepper
1/4 c skim milk
2 T snipped parsley
1/2 t dried sage
1/4 t salt
1/4 t pepper
12 oz. 90% lean ground beef
1 T catsupIn medium bowl stir together first 9 ingredients. Add ground beef and mix well. Pat mixture into 6×3x1.5 inch loaf. Bake at 350° for 45 minutes. Spread catsup over meatloaf before serving.
4 servings. Each serving includes 183 calories, 8g total fat, 18g protein, 7g carboydrate and 1g dietary fiber.
Happy Presidents Day! How better to celebrate than an early, seat-of-the-pants look at Campaign 08? This time around, we’ll look at the Big 6 on both sides of the aisle from the persective of a fiscally conservative, socially not so much so, quasi-libertarian (i.e. me). First, the Republicans.
Rudy Giuliani
Rudy has one big thing going for him. 9/11. Six years ago, he was largely seen as an efficient, if uninspiring, big-city mayor. The the planes hit the towers, and he became a statesman due to his calm leadership of the city through crisis. People still see him as the Nation’s Mayor because of that moment. He also has demonstrated an ability to get red state votes in a blue city.
But therein lies his liability. He was able to win in NYC as a Republican because he did well in GOP enclaves like Staten Island and because his moderate take on social issues like abortion and gun control did much to comfort Democrats put off by his approach to crime (the broken windows approach). Can he get enough conservative votes to make it through the primary?
Rudy’s take on social issues isn’t a liability to this voter - I agree with him on some, and I doubt he’d put his gun control policies into federal law. There’s a reason there hasn’t been a big city mayor in the White House since Grover Cleveland (yes, Virginia, Buffalo was once the 13th largest city in the US). Policies that look good when addressing urban law-and-order problems don’t translate well to national application. Rudy’s weakness among conservatives will be ameliorated to some degree by strength on crime and terrorism. Thus his early lead over McCain in GOP polling.
My biggest concern with Giuliani is that his positions on issues aren’t terribly well-known. What’s his take on BCRA (more on that later), civil liberties, judicial appointments, privacy, eminent domain?
Bottom line: Need More Information, but anybody who gets under Garrison Keillor’s skin can’t be all bad.
John McCain
The best thing about John McCain is that he’s been in the public eye as a Senator and perennial presidential candidate, so we know a lot about him. The worst thing about John McCain is what we’ve learned. McCain, of course, led the charge to inflict the BCRA on America, thus limiting the ability of Americans to speak on the issues of the day. All in the name of a “problem” that was largely defined by the outrage of the easily outraged. Show us the harm caused by money in politics and address the actual harm; don’t claim that the money itself is the problem. So we have restrictions on speech without a showing that there was a reason for the restrictions and without an analysis of whether the restrictions are the best way to address the”problem”.
Thus, the BCRA enters the Hall of Fame of bad law, joining the PATRIOT Act and the DMCA as the triad of solutions seeking a problem. McCain loses points big time for that one. Recent events show that McCain’s support for restrictions on liberty are the rule, not the exception. Consider the “SAFE Act” introduced by McCain earlier this month:
The Securing Adolescents from Exploitation-Online Act (PDF) states ISPs that obtain “actual knowledge” of illegal images must make an exhaustive report including the date, time, offending content, any personal information about the user, and his Internet Protocol address. That report is sent to local or federal police by way of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The center received $32.6 million in tax dollars in 2005, according to its financial disclosure documents.
Afterward, the center is authorized to compile that information into a form that can be sent back to ISPs and used to assemble a database of “unique identification numbers generated from the data contained in the image file.” That could be a unique ID created by a hash function, which yields something akin to a digital fingerprint of a file.
Details on how the system would work are missing from McCain’s legislation and are left to the center and ISPs. But one method would include ISPs automatically scanning e-mail and instant messaging attachments and flagging any matches.
McCain would expose internet users to an incredible amount of surveillance and tracking, all in the name of creating a database of “suspicious” images. And what is the problem this legislation addresses? Not child pornography, which ISPs are already required to report. It’s just another restriction on freedom to solve a non-existent problem.
McCain also is also showing signs of crass political opportunism, in order to shore up support among conservatives. McCain is running hard to the right on abortion:
Republican presidential candidate John McCain, looking to improve his standing with the party’s conservative voters, said Sunday the court decision that legalized abortion should be overturned.
“I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned,” the Arizona senator told about 800 people in South Carolina, one of the early voting states.
McCain also vowed that if elected, he would appoint judges who “strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States and do not legislate from the bench.”
Contrast this with McCain in 1999, back when he was courting the “maverick” vote:
I’d love to see a point where it is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations.
McCain is thus falling into a trap set by Republicans themselves in 2004. When is a flip not a flop? I’d much rather support a candidate that I disagree with on some issues than one who statements I don’t trust.
Bottom line: There’s a reason Senators don’t become President. And Rudy’s the real GOP Maverick in this race.
Mitt Romney
Lots of people have reservations about Romney based on his Mormonism. I have reservations about Romney based on his intolerance of non-believers. Romney this weekend:
Let me, uh, let me offer just a thought. And that is, uh, one of the great things about this great land, is we have people of different faiths and different persuasions. And uh, I’m convinced that the nation, that the nation does need, the nation does need to have people of different faiths but we need to have a person of faith lead the country.
I realize that a lot of people agree with Romney. A lot of people would go further, and say “we need a Christian to lead the country.” I am not, however, among them. We need the best leader to run the country, whether that person’s belief structure is based on faith or some other moral center.
Romney is just as bad as McCain in pandering for votes. I’ll just quote the Captain here:
That seems rather convenient. We’re likely to remain in a conflict with radical Islamist terrorists for years, which means that he won’t have to address his previous position even if elected for two terms. Instead — and this is really rich — he now runs to the right by endorsing a Bill Clinton policy meant to transition to a more liberal standard. At the same time, he says he opposes discrimination of gays and lesbians. If that doesn’t make heads spin, I’m not sure what will.
Romney also confirmed his support of the surge in Iraq as “the right thing to do”. He has supported the surge since its pre-announcement debate; this just answers the foolishness in Congress last week. Romney also insisted that he now takes a pro-life stand on abortion despite running as a pro-choice candidate in 1994. In this, he relies on federalism, claiming that abortion should be left to state legislators and not to Congress or the courts. However, he also supports a federal Constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman, which seems a little inconsistent for a federalist.
In a sense Romney had no choice - he had to pretend to be a moderate to get elected in Massachusetts. But which is the real Romney?
Bottom line: The long shot, but conservatives hate him less than Rudy or McCain.
Giuliani seems the best among this bunch, but it’s really early yet. Polling suggests many Republicans agree.
Tomorrow, the Democrats.
19
Feb
Made it through another weekend successfully, which has always been the biggest challenge. There’s so much time to fill and so much food available.
I’ve added a sidebar widget for tracking my progress. I started writing some script to grab data from Google Spreadsheets and run it through Plotkit to create a chart, but then remembered that EditGrid includes charting already. So the widget grabs the chart from EditGrid as well as the data that appears underneath. When I update the spreadsheet each morning, the sidebar updates automatically.
18
Feb
Today’s weigh-in shows the problem with the Hacker Diet/Fatblogging weigh-yourself-every-day approach. Did I really lose a pound and a half and then gain a half pound back. Not really - you have to look at the overall trend line. Next up, use Google Spreadsheets and the docs API to make an automatically-updating sidebar widget.
Hopefully, I’ll see 220 by the end of the week.
See the NY Times for a neat article on using the public face of a blog to shame yourself into staying on track. Debtblogging.
[NYT link via Ann Althouse]
17
Feb
Piiza-and-a-movie night. Ugh. Used to be half a Tony’s Special from Tony’s. Now it’s one slice of a small pie and a side salad. Still, progress is progress, and dipping below two and a quarter feels good.
17
Feb
Tyler Cowen points to this bit from Slate on John Amaechi:
He [Amaechi] writes that the pros play the game for a lot of reasons—money, fame, groupies, self-esteem—but that very few NBA players love basketball. “The fan sitting at home … wants us to love the game like he does,” he writes. “If he knew why we really play the game, for the most part, he might not love the game. He might not even watch it.” The average fan, gay or straight, will probably find that contention more troubling than a former player’s homosexuality.
Does any fan actually think NBA players love basketball? I sure don’t. Some players do, for sure. Reggie Miller always struck me as one. Scottie Pippen must love the game to try to come back now, since he certainly doesn’t need money or fame. Love of the game is one reason March Madness is better than the NBA Finals.
