third parties
 

I'm happy to report that the LaRouche campaign is still going strong. One of their operatives, standing right outside a hospital, just handed me a flyer that says "LaRouche: Bush-Cheney Could Cause More Americans to Die of the Flu Than Were Killed in the 9/11 Attack." I can't say that I've read the flyer thoroughly, but it's unclear how LaRouche is going to make 42 million doses of 'flu vaccine magically appear and save America. "Treat it like a military emergecy. You have all the relevant institutions tasked to come up with an approach to this and, whatever it takes, do the job" is a little to vague for me.

In unrelated news, newborn babies are tiny.

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"If you ever give Michael Moore the transmitter during a debate again, I will bomb you like you have WMD."

TM

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No caption, but comment. A friend of mine is seriously considering getting a nose job because people keep asking him if he's related to GWB.

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[sniff]

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Man, W is one pointy-eared motherfucker. He has elf ears.

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No, the one of him drunk in a bathingsuit that Penzke used to post. I need to book mark it.

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If that's not proof he is the devil, I don't know what is.

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Because voters will vote for the guy who's offering them money, even if it's fiscally irresponsible to do so. Hell, you've said you're voting for Bush because he's for cutting your taxes, notwithstanding his social conservatism.

And then there are the many people who want a judgmental, socially conservative government. They organize and vote.

third parties
 

They aren't much bigger than a fetus (and the premies are even smaller than some feti). Funny thing is, though, you aren't allowed to kill them like you can a fetus. Once they are born, they are no longer a privacy issue. Just before they are born they are a privacy issue..

Is this old news already?
 

Actually, they fired him for talking about the details discussed during a closed business meeting to the press, in contravention of his contract and company policy.

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Fair enough, though the priority I give to lower taxes is not out of greed - it is out of the idea that it is a limit on the amount of power government has over us. The flip side of it is that the more power (read-economic power) an individual has, the less likely the governments power will effect him, including on social issues. So I think we agree that we want government out of our lives, but disagree on the best way to accomplish it.

And in 20 years, I'll be happy to sponsor you for the party

Is this old news already?
 

In other news, the Titanic sunk because it filled with water, contrary to the terms of the specifications given to the shipbuilders, not because it hit an iceberg.

Is this old news already?
 

Right.

TM

Is this old news already?
 

hello invented that.

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"Hey Laura, Teddy here says he wants to take me for a ride in his new car. Isn't that niiiiiice?"

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Icebergs are judgement proof, but shipbuilders aren't so of course it was the shipbuilder's fault.

eta: Signed Yours Truly, John Edwards.

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"Hey Laura, maybe you oughtta drive. Well, maybe not."

Interesting argument based on Cold War deterrence stuff that Saddam acted rationally.

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That would be interesting, but its truly a hypothetical. I've been waiting for years for a third party to emerge. Call it the "Guiliani Party." I think it would have broad based support, provided that it could pull away enough recognizable people from both sides to give it legitimacy.

Is this old news already?
 

Although you jest, recent examinations of the wreck suggest that the Titanic sank because faulty rivets popped open.

• Recent discoveries indicate that the loss of the Titanic -- the greatest maritime disaster ever -- may have resulted from nonconforming product, not collision with an iceberg (although the iceberg is still a culprit).
  
  In 1996, Polaris Imaging Inc. explored the Titanic wreckage using low-frequency sonar to scan the damaged hull. Instead of a 300-foot gash, six lateral openings equal to the area of a closet door were found. Studies of steel plates recovered from the ship suggest that the 2,000 plates used in the hull varied in quality.
  
  On Feb. 10, 1998, Tim Foecke of the National Institute of Standards and Technology published a paper concerning a metallurgical study of iron rivets recovered from the ship. His research indicates that the rivets' microstructure may have contributed to their failure on April 14, 1912. Theoretically, the rivets could have popped along the hull's seams where the ship collided against the iceberg.
  
  Foecke found that, unlike standard wrought-iron rivets containing 2 percent slag, the Titanic's rivets had up to 9 percent, which made them brittle. In addition, the streaks of slag in the rivets didn't follow the normal pattern, which also weakened the metal.

The guy's name might make you think this is a joke, but apparently not.

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That will be the Republican party 2008.

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My gut is that you will see that part emerge only when one of the other parties takes a dive. The model for a party going away and being replaced is the Whigs getting replaced by the Republicans, and in our system, I think its very unlikely to happen any other way.

Maybe 30-40 years ago, Massachusetts used to have multi-person state legislative districts - two or three reps elected from each district. In that system, a third party could have emerged more easily on a statewide level, but it never did.

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Or: Libertarians. There is already a party for you, too.

Not to be entirely cynical (or flippant), but you can usually buy them (or buy your way free of restrictions) if you have money. What, you didn't know there are effectively different social freedoms/rights for the rich and the poor? See: abortion. The debate is, as a practical matter, irrelevant to anyone with the means to hie themselves across the state border (or to Canada in the event of fed. regulation). See, also: voting. Voting is a much less effective way to cause your gov't to represent your opinions than gaining access to and incurring obligation from your representatives by judicious use of funds. See, also: 4th A/5th A/criminal rights. OJ.

BR(I vote we adjust our terms to "progressive" and "conservative," which shall not be confused with "Democrat" or "Republican", which are political parties each of which espouse some progressive and some conservative causes, or "liberal" which is what Adam Smith, the Institute for Justice and I are)C

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The only reason to see a rise of a third party is if there's a significant bloc of voters not served by the two existing parties. In fact, there is a party that serves the voters sebby is thinking of. It's called the Democratic Party. As baltassoc noted, the party has moved quite a bit in the last several years. E.g., over GOP opposition, Clinton balanced the budget. If you're looking for a party that's fiscally responsible and not socially conservative, that's your party, and John Kerry is your man. The people who argue otherwise are looking at the Maxine Waters of the world and caricatures of their own devise.

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No, the Dems are still too in favor of stuff like environmental regulation and food and drug regulation and, oh, ERISA-type protections for Sebby to like them. Sebby wants to be able to dump his car oil and sewage wherever he thinks best, to have to go inspect farms and slaughterhouses himself to make sure his food isn't utterly disgusting and, after he starts his own business, take away people's pensions when things start to go bad. It's not THAT hard to find people to hire who won't notice that they have no enforceable contractual promises for stuff like that.

Seriously, I think that people who want all those kinds of regulations to go away have a point. I just think that having large, densely populated urban areas and markets across the world makes the information costs for replacing the governmental regulation too high. Honestly, it would not occur to me not to dump oil on the ground or whatever. I only know it's bad because I know you aren't allowed to do it, and I asked why.

This is soooo totally outable to a libertarian friend of mine, but I'm 99 9/10% sure he doesn't know this place exists.

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These people confuse the living piss out of me. I don't get them at all. Why? Where does this desire to control other people you don't even know come from? Am I missing that gene? I think I got the gene that blocks understanding why people want to meddle in other people's business. I just don't get it. Its hard enough to keep control of your own life in this world... why the fuck would you want to go fucking around with other people's lives? Am I nuts? I've tried looking for studies about what sort of personality defects make people want to control others, but I find little good literature (lots of stuff about the Nazis and such). Other than fear, the anthropoligists offer no explanation for the phenomenon. Why is "live and let live" such a hard concept for so many? This is an earnest question - I think it goes to the heart of the present political debate.

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Oh, OK, sorry for the misunderstanding. The Democratic Party is still against all that stuff. For motherhood, apple pie and national security; against oil and sewage dumping, farm non-inspection, and pension theft.

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Parenthood.

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I don't want 3 or 4 more of these types on the Supreme Court. Other than that W is a moron, this is the main reason I'll be voting for Kerry.

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It's easy to spin that way, but it really is a pain in the ass to comply with regulations. I think that while it seems inefficient, it's more efficient than having all these individual actors roaming around doing their own things and then having to fix it (which is nearly always more expensive than just doing it differently the first time around) when you get sued, or whatever. I mean, WAY easier to dispose of my oil properly than to compensate people for the diseases they get from polluted groundwater, or to dig up all the earth that was touched by the oil and then find someplace to dispose of that hugely larger hunk of stuff.

But, obviously, opinions differ.

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Cash money in any reasonable amount says no fucking way. He will never make it through the Republican primaries for the same reason that the conservative Catholics are going after Kerry -- abortion.

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We relied on the common law in these areas for years, and it didn't work well. That's why these laws were passed.

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Oh, hell, of course there are two sets of rules. But its not fair that people with money have to go to Canada to have certain medical procedures performed which more than half the country thinks they should have a right to receive domestically. And its not fair that a poor or a rich person shouldn't be able to get those procedures domestically because of the views of someone 1000 miles from them who they've never met. We're not "all in this together" in this country. I shouldn't have my morals dictated to me by sam, the Bible Thumper from OK. No offense to Sam, but Sam should mind his own goddamned business and be happy to live off govt subsidies derived from my taxes. He's the last asshole who should be telling me what I can or can't do in my home or to my own body. When he starts pulling his weight, then I'll give his religious bunk some airtime. Until then, he should be damn grateful to me.

I am not telling anyone how to live. I am vehemently arguing that they should have as much freedom as possible. I am arguing for personal responsibility, the concept to which so many of these judgmental people pay so much lip service. yet when I say people should be personally responsible, they say "No... I only want you to be personally responsible until that responsibility allows you to do something I don't like. Then I want the govt to step in and enforce my moral code on you. Even though I've never lived a day in your shoes and my moral code probably doesn't work practically for a person in your shoes." I say Bullshit. If you don't like what I'm doing here in heathen Philly, well fine. I don't like the way you practice what i see as backward values in OK. So lets be content to leave each other alone.

I'll leave them alone - why won't they leave me alone? Why do they need to tell me what to do?

Another Endoresement for Bush!!
 

This ought to make the Bushies proud.

Iran endorses a second Bush term as better for Teheran's interests.

How come none of you Bush supporters pointed this out?

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Modernity and technological change threaten their traditional way of life, and they react by seeking to use government to try to preserve it.

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Are you my husband? (I would say it's a definite "yes" except for that "no offense to Sam" part.)

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Well, my good and kind man, I'd suggest it has something to do with the understanding of the social compact. All of society, all of law, all of civilization, is a social compact. What was that book I read, oh yeah, Guns Germs and Steel, explains the development of humankind through different parts of the world, starting in Africa. Evolution, including societal evolution, is often based on no more than an accident of nature. Oops, did the early Africans kill off all the domesticatable mammals in the Beginning? Well, their descendants will do better in Asia. Just a gigantic series of accidents.

So, one day in the gathering stage (and in multiple societies), humans figured out how to leverage the battle for food through crop-cultivation etc. etc. etc. Next thing ya know, in every society someone steps up and says "hey, that Mountain just spoke to me, he says I'm the messenger". Literally, a cynic might think the original Priests were just trying to get out of their share of work (they were the first people excused from tending crops).

But the question is begged, why did people believe them when they stepped forward? In different places all over the world, some dude steps forward and says the Creator just spoke to him, and people buy into it. Its like, like, we want to believe in something.

Anyhoo, social contract. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I agree to avenge your murder, you agree to avenge mine. Heck, we'll call the vengeance thing The Justice System. Otherwise, why the fuck do I care is your wife puts a hatchet through your skull? Its like a gigantic deal for society.

Welp, over time, people begin to think about whether the deal is fair. Some people begin to wonder, do we sell out some people? Next thing you know, slaves are being freed, women are getting the vote, gays are getting civil unions. People are all being allowed to buy into the system. That same instinct that tells someone, hey why should black people be bought and sold? Why shouldn't women be allowed to vote? Why shouldn't gays get civil unions? Well, that's the same instinct that tells others to help out society's defenseless others. I'm not sure there's a name for it, but I don't think I understand why anyone is opposed to it either. Why is someone opposed to helping out the defenseless in society?

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Well there's a much more productive way to repsond: adapt. But I guess thats too Darwinian for them.

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Sweet pea, I know. And I agree with you. But a lot of people want to roll them back because they feel that the regulation is worse than the mess created by common law tort stuff, or whatever. And, since I charge a zillion dollars an hour to interpret regulations for people, I have some sympathy for where they are coming from. And, some regulations unintentionally have bad side effects. But overall, I think having, oh, say, nondiscrimination standards for tax-preferred retirement savings is better than not regulating it. Or scrubbers in smokestacks. Or whatever.

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Many try that too.