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POLLS CLOSED

I wish I’d done this a few months back, so we’d have some basis of comparison. Anyhow, please don’t try to mess around with this by voting more than once. I think it will be interesting to see if the Republicans outnumber the two third parties or not. I don’t think so, but it’s also possible that the third party types are more prone to post here.

The Truth Laid Bear isn’t afraid to predict the future:

I’m going to go on record and predict that the Swift Boat Veterans kerfuffle won’t just be a major negative for Kerry: it will be a campaign-killer. One thing that those of us who spend far too much time hyperanalyzing politics and world events tend to forget is that for the general public, stories like this are absorbed only as vague and general impressions.

Up until now, Kerry has gotten a pass on his Vietnam time: the general impression has been “He talks about it too much, but he was some kind of war hero back in Vietnam”. Now, there’s an alternate perspective: “Not only does he talk about it too much, but he’s actually a liar.” From the 10,000 foot view of the average voter, the Swifties don’t have to prove their case in a court of law for Kerry to take damage: they just have to throw a bit of doubt onto the lily-white image he’s portrayed thus far. In that, they’ve already succeeded.

But it’s not that bad: it’s actually much worse. The biggest problem for Kerry is that the Swifties’ attacks confirm what we really want to believe about him anyway. He’s been so damned annoying about his Vietnam record that we secretly want to think the worst of him, and now the Swifties have provided a rational basis for that gut-level irritation that Kerry inspires when he blathers on about his war record.

That’s my instinct too, but then, I’ve thought that Kerry was toast ever since the Massachusetts Supreme Court made homogamy an issue. The inimitable strategerist Bush failed to take advantage of that, but he doesn’t need to do anything about this huge hole in the prow of the Kerry campaign. Hitting a mine indeed.

Federal prosecutors in Seattle have charged 15 people involved in a marijuana smuggling operation with violations of the Patriot Act, the bill hastily passed by Congress in the wake of the 9-11 attacks to protect the US from foreign terror attacks. That’s a first, at least for the Seattle office, one government lawyer told the Seattle Times.

And no, clarified Assistant US Attorney Todd Greenberg, the Canadians and Americans under arrest were not sending their proceeds to Al Qaeda. They were indicted for conspiring with a Canadian marijuana-smuggling operation to deliver $3.4 million in profits from Washington state back

to British Columbia.

Still, all 15 were charged with one count of “bulk-cash smuggling,” a Patriot Act offense. For years, federal law has made it a criminal offense to take more than $10,000 out of the country without reporting it, but the Patriot Act changed that from a mere reporting violation to a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and the forfeiture of the cash in question.

And although there was no terror connection, invoking the Patriot Act was still appropriate, said Greenberg. “They’re trying to get money from here to support crime somewhere else, so it’s a way to crack down on that,” he remarked cryptically.

That certainly didn’t take long. The Patriot Act hasn’t even been around for three years, and already it’s being used for other purposes. A nice conflation with the equally fraudulent War on Drugs here. I note in passing that no country that bans the unreported transport of personal wealth can reasonably consider itself to be free.

Ron Paul writes:

To understand the nature of our domestic response to the September 11th, 2001 attacks, we must understand the nature of government. Government naturally expands, and any crises- whether real or manufactured- serve to justify more and more government power over our lives. Bureaucrats have used the tragedy of 9-11 as an excuse to seize police powers sought for decades, such as warrantless searches, internet monitoring, and access to bank records. It should be no surprise that the recently released report of the 9-11 Commission has but one central recommendation: bigger government and more spending at home and abroad….

Every generation must resist the temptation to believe that it lives in the most dangerous time in American history. The threat of Islamic terrorism is real, but it is not the greatest danger ever faced by our nation. This is not to dismiss the threat of terrorism, but rather to put it in perspective. Those who seek to whip the nation into a frenzy of fear do a disservice to a country that expelled the British, fought two world wars, and stared down the Soviet empire.

Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.

Offering protection in exchange for power is older than prostitution. If you value security over freedom, you are a slave at heart and you deserve to be treated like one.

Leo fails to grasp basic addition:

Vox, You miss the point and fall victim to faulty math! For Example, Bush has 40 votes, Kerry has 30 votes, and there are 100 votes out there that haven’t been voted or counted. Assume 30 of these votes are voted for a third party candidate. The reamining votes break 50 break for Kerry, and the remaining 20 for Bush. Kerry wins by 20 votes, BECAUSE, if the 30 voted for the third party were cast for Bush he would have won!

I can’t believe that some people are actually arguing that a vote for candidate Not-Kerry is a vote for Kerry after I demonstrated how it is MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to make this case. Leo’s logic here is simply insane. Yes, if the 30 that voted for the third party were cast for Bush he would have won, but then, if the 50 that were cast for Kerry were instead cast for Bush, he would have won too. All Leo has proved here is that a vote for Bush is a vote for Bush. Brilliant.

And if we further examine the logic laid out here, not voting at all is a vote for Bush. Therefore, I recommend that all of you who were going to vote for Bush simply not vote, as you are assured that your non-participation is a vote for Bush by a Bush supporter.

The GOP holds no claim on anyone’s vote. A vote for Michael Badnarik is just that, a vote for the Libertarian Party candidate. The same holds true for votes in favor of the Constitution, Republican and Democratic candidates. Anything else is just twisted and dishonest semantics. If the majority want Kerry, let them have him. They’ll get what they deserve, just as those who supported Bush in 2000 already have.

tz, High King Frog and Dr. Black have all started blogs of late. Scan the Reader Blogroll to your right and check them out. If you can’t figure out which one is High King Frog’s, well, you don’t deserve to get your passport stamped.

craigp wonders:

man, vox don’t like RUsh either? Ever since Rush lost weight he seems to just get better and better as far as I am concerned. A metaphor for the new leaner meaner fitter conservative. Vox besides Coulter and P.J. O ROurke what conservative pundits do you like?

I like plenty of political pundits. I like Jonah Goldberg, Thomas Sowell and Rod Dreher, I like Victor Davis Hanson, John Derbyshire, Ramesh Ponnuru and Jay Nordlinger at NRO. I like Bob Novak, Mike Adams, Doug Giles, Larry Elder and Michael Massie.

If you notice, most of the above names are not TV and radio people, or at least don’t see themselves that way first. TV and radio folks tend to write poorly and to think in rather superficial terms. Neal Cavuto is a nice guy, but I’d rather read the complete works of Mercedes Lacky AND Robert Jordan than one of his dreadful columns, and as for the purple pen of Brave Sir William, well, you already know what I think of that. I suspect that it’s partly a matter of ego and preference for fame over knowledge, and partly that the mediums foster quick but shallow thinking. It’s more important to get a zinger over than actually make an incisive point in a talking-head fest – the White Buffalo would not only rule, but absolutely DOMINATE on a Fox News show.

One thing I absolutely love about the blogs is that I will not only get called on my assertions, but that people have time to prepare their best shot. I can either respond off the top of my head or sit back and think the matter through for a while. And while I can more than hold my own in any verbal slangfest sans intellectual content, when I want to do that I hang out with tha boyz in my fantasy football league.

TS shares a horror story:

Very good article – more like this please! I especially like the Fred Reed quote, as I married a child support bomb who eventually exploded with no visitation, and found out the child wasn’t even mine (that doesn’t matter at all in most states, and not very much in all of them). Tomorrow marks three years since I’ve seen my children, because even though she is a child molester she is still of the superior race, I mean sex, I mean “gender”. The hundred pounds of irrational anger is a bit light though, because once they have a successful child support career locked up, it usually runs more like 150, 160, 175, to 200 pounds.

Sounds like TS picked a real winner. This is the sort of story that causes men to put off proposing marriage even after they’ve bought the ring. Not that TS sounds especially inclined to date these days, but in the future, I would suggest that he have his sister or someone who cares about him do the selecting.

Some people can’t be trusted to handle their own dating decisions, and if something like this ever happens to you, you should probably assume that you’re one of them. In such cases, outsourcing is vastly preferable.

BC writes:

I am a 60 year old female who enjoyed (and agreed with) your column. When I was growing up in the 50’s, women were women and men were men. The feminist movement did more damage than good. Have you noticed that every single TV commercial makes the woman look smart, smug, superior, and sarcastic. Males are portrayed as dumb nitwits that are dependent on woman to make even the simplest decision. Why are men putting up with this? Where’s the outrage? Women in movies and TV shows are portrayed the same way. It’s sickening. Are women taking their queue from this propaganda? I have been disappointed to observe little girls as young as 5 acting the same way. Even the cartoons give little girls the stronger role and the poor helpless little boys are at their mercy.

Who said men are putting up with this? They’re not, and the television industry is panicking because the all-important 18-34 segment refuses to watch anything but sports anymore. And why should they, considering the choices are between playing Doom 3 and committing mass virtual mayhem or watching supercilious actresses spouting off unwitty dialogue written by self-loathing homosexuals to mock the poor helpless male characters.

Television is a weird little universe where a man will always lose a sports competition to a woman, where a woman always gets the last word and where she will always be loved for herself no matter what an unpleasant, unbalanced lunatic she is. The bizarre problem is that a young boy reading a Conan novel generally recognizes that it is not real, but a woman watching Allie McBeal, Sex in the City or whatever shows have replaced them in the female pantheon is all too prone to not only take it seriously, but to actually identify herself with and model her behavior on one of these fictional, fantastic characters.

If you ever hear a woman saying “I am SOOO [fill in the blank with fictional TV character here]”, run. I mean, it’s not like women take men who attempt to act like James Bond seriously either.

Okay, not at this down wave, no way. But I do admire Google for their willingness to take on the Wamphyri of Wall Street and their monopoly on access to the markets.

Why Wall Street wants Google to fail…. If Google’s offering works for the company — that is, if it raises money at a good price and at a low commission to boot — then this IPO would legitimize an alternative to the traditional IPO that will diminish the power of Wall Street investment banks. Other companies, companies with lower profiles than Google, will have a new alternative for raising money. Wall Street doesn’t even like to think about that possibility.

If, on the other hand, Google’s IPO fails — if not enough investors bid, or if the price is too low, or if the IPO sinks, leaving hordes of angry individual investors and the company with egg on its face — then the auction model will go back on the shelf and Wall Street investment banking will go back to business as usual.

That’s why I don’t think you can trust anything Wall Street says about the Google IPO: The investment banking establishment has too much at stake and too many institutional conflicts of interest to make them credible on this offering.

It’s the wrong time, an incredibly bad time for this. Google would have had a very successful launch if they’d done it nine months ago, now, it’s probably too late. But if it fails, it won’t be because the concept was faulty, only the timing. It’s a pity, but then, the return of the roaring bear will do more to put Wall Street back in its place than a newfangled IPO possibly could.

Don’t ever make the mistake of confusing Wall Street with capitalism. Wall Street is designed specifically to limit capitalism as per government regulations; it contradicts the activities of a genuinely free market.