Regarding Choices

If you come to a fork in the road, take it. -- Yogi Berra


Selwyn Duke wrote an article that stopped me in my tracks this week.

As many of you know, I have advocated the investigation of third party candidates as the eminently rational choice for your vote in November. After all, neither the republicans nor the democrats have much of a platform to offer, and there are dozens of people you or I would rather have as president than either of these choices. In fact, I can think of three that are actually running for president that are better qualified and preferable as choices, so why not pick one of those instead?

I have rejected many arguments against third party voting before now. I could hold each of them up to the light and see that they reflect only the self interests of the parties themselves. Then, Mr. Duke put an analogy in play that shows a few more facets.

Picture a bus traveling down the highway. At each exit ramp, you have exactly two choices. You can move right, or stay left. The third party candidates reside in an alternate place somewhere else that is not immediately accessible. To get to one of these better places, Duke advises that you would need Captain Kirk's help. So, as a practical matter, it is always about two choices.

His argument is that every choice presented in the past leads to the sequence of choices in the future. As much as we'd like to visualize the right guy in office, the best we can hope for is to take an exit that doesn't take us very far away from our desired destination.

In many ways, choices have been made all along, and the real leaders are either not involved in the race, or have already been eliminated. To belabor the analogy once, it's like we missed the best three exits, and now have a choice between one exit and another.

Perhaps choosing between them is a more rational choice to make than one of wishing for a warp in the space-time continuum precisely on November 4th. I recommend reading the article.

Cargo Cult Economics

If Reagan offered "voodoo economics", as his opponents charged, Obama is selling Cargo Cult economics. After World War II, New Guinea aborigines build model airfields to entice the gods to bring them "cargo". They watched American soldiers build airstrips and land cargo planes, and sought to accomplish the same through sympathetic magic. Given the culture of the aborigines and their observations, anthropologists aver, making radios and observation towers out of straw and coconuts was a rational response. Something similar might be said of the position of the American middle class. Spengler, Asia Times, Jan 29, 2008.

So, what is it, exactly, that this man proposes to do? Raise the minimum wage? Okay, more unemployment. Is that what you want? No? You want more jobs? Oh, okay, so we need to become competitive with China, Russia, Brazil, and India. But that means lowering the cost of production. That will at least require energy as cheap as it is in these other countries. We can't drill? No Nuclear power? Oh, okay, we'll invest in solar energy. and wind energy. That's all well and good. So, what do we do when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow? Might as well stay at home.

Like it or not, we are competing with the rest of the world to supply the goods and services that enrich our lives, and those of the rest of the world. When we saddle ourselves with significant competitive disadvantages, we had better have competitive advantages that greatly outweigh them.

So is there any competitive advantage to be gained in any of Obama's policies?

Game changer, or checkmate?

Some of life's greatest opportunities come unexpectedly. And this is certainly the case today.

I never really set out to be involved in public affairs, much less to run for this office. My mom and dad both worked at the local elementary school. And my husband and I, we both grew up working with our hands. I was just your average hockey mom in Alaska, raising...

(APPLAUSE)

We're busy raising our kids. I was serving as the team mom and coaching some basketball on the side. I got involved in the PTA and then was elected to the city council, and then elected mayor of my hometown, where my agenda was to stop wasteful spending, and cut property taxes, and put the people first.

...

If our state wanted a bridge, I said we'd build it ourselves. Well, it's always, though, safer in politics to avoid risk, to just kind of go along with the status quo. But I didn't get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that's not why the ship is built. -- Sarah Palin

While the democrats were at their self-absorbed best acting like sourpusses, whiners, and victims, Hurrican Sarah was bearing down on the dems version of New Orleans, 2008-style.

How does one attempt to equate John McCain to George Bush when it also means equating Sarah Palin to Dick Cheney? Heh. I know, I know, they both think drilling is a pretty good idea, and shooting is good fun, but I don't think a lot of people are going to see this election as being about Bush III any more.

The "party of change", incidentally, picked Biden. Talk about business as usual. People who want change are going to have a hard time seeing Obama as anything but a Chicago machine cog wedded to a lifetime east coast leftie.

One of the interesting themes at play will be that this Sarah Palin, who lives life to the fullest, truly does love America. I think people want a leader who loves America. Not would be leaders who are only proud of it when they get the nomination.

Help George Obama

A plea for help. Please do your part.

Update: More Help for George

Hitchhikers

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Forget Big Oil

At 7% profit it's a piker. Try Big Corn.

Ted's Next Bridge

Ted Stevens, senior Republican on the Senate Appropriations committee, and architect of the famous "Bridge to Nowhere" is finally put on the short bridge to oblivion. Let's all wish him a fast journey.

(Hah, you thought this was a Chappaquiddick story, didn't you?)

Al's Weather Report

And by the way, our weather sure is getting strange, isn't it? There seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory, longer droughts, bigger downpours and record floods. Unprecedented fires are burning in California and elsewhere in the American West. Higher temperatures lead to drier vegetation that makes kindling for mega-fires of the kind that have been raging in Canada, Greece, Russia, China, South America, Australia and Africa. Scientists in the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science at Tel Aviv University tell us that for every one degree increase in temperature, lightning strikes will go up another 10 percent. And it is lightning, after all, that is principally responsible for igniting the conflagration in California today. -- Al Gore, July 17, 2008

Like the old-timer on the front porch, he sits there in the rocking chair and nods knowingly like he's seen it all before. It's easy to dismiss his rantings as another in a long line of retired people who can't hear enough of his own opinions. Old people like to talk about the weather. But this is a twist, because now the old timer is saying the weather is worse than it was in the good old days.

He's right as far as that goes. We probably are having more weather than when he was a boy. I can attest to the 95 year flood in central Indiana. I can note that we are under a severe storm watch today, while having dealt with a drought a year ago. And just like the other old-timers sitting on the porch, Al Gore has exactly no chance of ever changing the weather. Zip. Regardless of how many trillions of our dollars he persuades our government to spend.

Yet, here he is, getting all sorts of added attention, movie and book deals, awards, and such just for giving his opinion on the weather (where do I sign up for that gig?). But here's the thing. Weather is a verifiable fact, and Al has no monopoly on that. We can all see the statistics if that sort of thing interests you. What's different is a matter of opinion. Al's opinion -- if you look at it in the context of the old-timer in the rocking chair -- is that (get this) ...the rest of the neighborhood caused the bad weather. Instead of nodding back, pouring him some iced tea, and changing the subject, we literally beg him to go on blathering.

Al will be gone before the damage he creates here will be attributed to him. He is getting a lot of attention for an old-timer, he can say whatever he wants and watch the fun go by. When the US finally figures out that his cause was an enormous ineffective rat-hole that will suck up enough resources to make The Great Society look like a trip to the Safeway, it will be too late to catch up to the rest of the world.

Pass the iced tea.

McCain buys Gore-baloney

"If the vice president says it's doable, I believe it's doable" -- John McCain

Rangel-ing with the Housing Crisis

Charles Rangel has his own solution to the housing crisis.