Couple things about this: 1) States don’t have rights, they have powers. 2) Invoking the language of states rights is not always because they’re racist.

Ok, three things. Our state politicos like to talk about this stuff a lot lately but I haven’t seen any of them refuse stimulus money or refuse all that free federal money for roads.

Breda on hate crimes:

Actually, if this legislation gets passed, it would mean that Ms. Quinn is somehow more of a person than me.

There’s this truck that drives around various parts of East Tennessee. On the side of the truck is a large, graphic image of an aborted fetus and some phrase that is no doubt catchy to pro-lifers. It’s an eyesore. I don’t want my kids seeing it. And, frankly, it makes me lose a bit of respect for the pro-life movement. It is offensive and I doubt it is very effective at getting converts. It is designed to shock. And, frankly, it is bad marketing. Though I find this truck offensive. Someone else may not. That doesn’t mean that I think we should ban this truck.

Some folks feel similarly about this recent open carry debate playing out on the gun blogs. Open carrying may scare the white people and all of that. And, you know what, depending on where you live, it may well. Remember the black dude who had his AR-15 strapped on at the protest? Lot of people weren’t fans. And I doubt he gained many converts, though he (probably like the truck driver above) did get quite a few attaboys from similarly minded folks. And that is the issue I have with the in your face open carry sorts. OC seems like it’s preaching to the converted. And not much more. Non-converts either won’t notice, won’t care, may become a bit curious, or may think you’re a loon. Rightly or wrongly. I don’t think it’s effective marketing. Simply, I don’t think the plan of acclimating folks to handgun carry by exposure will be effective. That’s based on my own experience with open carry. My experience seems to indicate that most folks won’t even notice. Or, if they did, they didn’t say anything. Conversely, no one flipped out either.

That doesn’t mean I think it should be banned. Or that I think you’re stupid to do it. Or that you should stay in the closet.

Also, open carry, as Jay reminds us, has lead to a few unpleasant encounters with the police. Which is why some folks think it should be a sort of last resort.

It also doesn’t mean that I think having such reservations is pulling a Zumbo.

The open carry folks are some of the most passionate and hardworking second amendment activists out there. And hats off to them. They’ve had some major successes in cases where I thought they would not have had such success. So, I may be wrong about all this.

But if you do it, get a good retention holster.

Tam on why she doesn’t OC:

I don’t generally O.C., mostly to avoid excessive face time with the Po-Po and conversations with the occasional goober that can’t resist a “Hey, you got a gun there! You ’spectin’ trouble?” or “Did you know that your gun’s cocked?”

Give up?

Kevin wonders if we can. It requires more than just a few folks paying attention. And I don’t think we have that.

Don’t let your dog hang out, illegally off leash, in gator filled waters.

Don’t feed bears. And don’t feed some bears while shooing away others.

454 Casul seems to work against big ass bears. Wow.

Phelps on racist:

You are killing the word “racist”. Just like you killed “fascist.”

Hippie, please.

I saw where PETA was upset that the president killed a housefly. Got me to thinking about pests and such. I am curious what the official PETA/vegan/animal rights groups’ position is on, say, termite control for your house. Or spraying your lawn for bugs. Or wasps nests. Mice in the attic. Etc. Anyone?

As far as I can tell, this guy is on trial for photoshopping the heads of minors onto the bodies of adult nude models:

It was during the suspension that a district investigator searching Stelmack’s office found a briefcase with the five images depicting the faces of two girls affixed to copies of a nude 19-year-old woman’s body.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s creepy and I wouldn’t want the guy as principal of a school but that’s illegal?

EG takes me to task:

This isn’t about their freedom to contract. This isn’t about their freedom to marry. These were already freely available, no one was getting jailed for performing a ceremony, and no one was having their legal contracts overridden. This is purely about the taxpayer subsidy for married couples being extended to same-sex couples

Not really. For example, there is no contract that recognizes that a gay spouse can make medical decisions for his/her incapacitated gay spouse such as exists under normal marriage. No matter what contracts you sign, that decision will be left to who is legally the closest family member. It’s about a bit more than a tax subsidy.

Dr. Helen tells us the new bible for diagnosing the crazy is out. Seems to be a continuation of the field’s trend to classify normal behavior as some sort of condition (to be treated, of course). The Doc notes it is written by a few, in secret, and with little oversight. What could possibly go wrong?

I’ve always said End the war on drugs and release the prisoners. Turns out, when you decriminalize marijuana that you have to lay off prison employees.

The White House moves to end the War on Drugs:

The Obama administration’s new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting “a war on drugs,” a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.

Assuming they mean it for real and not in that same way they ended the other war on a noun by just doing the same thing and calling it something else, this is good. I suppose I’ll worry if the start calling it a Domestic Contingency Operation. We’ll see.

An admission:

The difference in this debate is that I have been arguing on the basis of what I believe to be true, and doing my best to explain why I believe it. Kevin, by way of contrast, claims to be able to literally ‘prove’ his case beyond any doubt whatsoever by recourse to detailed statistical data.

Well, yeah. And he did.

tgirsch has a fun little exercise on re-vamping the constitution. Admits general welfare doesn’t cover specific welfare. We’ve had these thought experiments before, here and here.

Seems one thing that libertarians, conservatives and liberals who are not in office can agree on is gerrymandering is bad. I think gerrymandering should be punishable death. Discuss.

Les Jones on whether or not health care is a right*:

If the Constitutional right to life implies a right to free health care then the right to the pursuit of happiness implies free hookers, booze, and cable TV.

Well, load the cost up on to the Debt Star.

* No, it’s not.

Fannie and Freddie had little to do with it. The CRA, even less.

[I originally had the full post mirrored to this site, but rather than monopolize Uncle's front page, I figured I'd just redirect you to Lean Left.]

CNBC is currently running a documentary entitled House of Cards on how we got into the economic mess we currently face. So far, it’s quite good. If you’ve missed it, it’s repeating at midnight Eastern time (11 PM Central). I’ve set the TiVo to catch the repeat.

UPDATE: Another review here.

From The Week:

I was eating in a restaurant at a shopping center in suburban Memphis when this happened. I didn’t hear or see any of it happen, but was around when the cops showed up. On the surface, it sounds ok: person A charges person B, person B warns person A that he has a gun, person A keeps coming, person B shoots person A dead. If that were all there was to it, I’d say it’s pretty cut and dry.

But there are a few things that give me pause. For starters, person B (the shooter) had been drinking in a bar before the incident. Compounding that, according to people on the scene (some of whom I know), person B was told that person A was “messing with his car” (I’m paraphrasing), and person B went out there specifically to confront person A. So while person A was indeed trying to fight person B, it’s unclear who started the fight, and it’s also unclear as to whether person B was justified in being afraid for his life. From what I’ve been able to piece together (admittedly from very limited information), without the shooter’s gun, the chances of anyone ending up dead or even seriously injured as a result of the altercation were pretty close to zero. And in any case, if I’m afraid for my life, I don’t go initiate a confrontation.

The crowd at the bar, many of whom know and like person B, seemed to have mixed opinions about whether or not the shooting was justified. The whole thing is a mess, and it makes me just sick. I’m glad I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve even considered pulling a weapon on someone, and I hope I never am.

UPDATE: There are a lot more details here, and they demonstrate the dangerous nature of rumor and innuendo in such matters. It apppears that my person A above was the one who had been drinking in the bar. And the details about someone charging someone else don’t get any mention. Second-degree murder charges have now been filed against the shooter (H/T: commenter chris).

So much for the Vice Fund being “recession-proof.” Oops!

There are plenty of reasons not to like Packers GM Ted Thompson, but unlike many of my fellow green-and-gold bleeders, I don’t think letting Favre go was one of them. Favre’s perennial will-he-or-won’t-he retirement drama had become a huge distraction, and the team was going to have to find a new QB, whether it was in 2008, 2009, or 2010. With Rodgers in his fourth year, now was the ideal time to see whether or not he’s good enough to be the starter. The numbers should speak for themselves:

Rushing:

Belied by the Jets’ 9-7 season versus the Packers’ 6-10 season, Rodgers had a better year than Favre in every Statistical category except fumbles lost (3 against Favre’s 2, though Favre fumbled more times) and completion percentage. All told, Rodgers was responsible for nine more touchdowns than Favre — six more passing touchdowns, and three more rushing touchdowns — while throwing nine fewer interceptions. In fantasy football terms, you did 90 points better if you had Rodgers on your team than if you had Favre.

Now the stigma attached to Rodgers is that there were several games where the offense had the ball late in the game with a chance to tie or win, and they didn’t get it done. And there’s some validity to that. But in most of those cases, they never would have been in that situation if not for terrible defense and special teams. As it is, the Packers were fifth in the league in scoring, at 26.2 points per game (Jets: 9th, 25.3), despite being 17th in the league in rushing, at 112.8 yards per game (Jets: 9th, 125.3), and despite having the most penalized team in the league in terms of yards, 984 yards on 110 penalties, an astounding 61.5 yards per game in penalties (Jets: third best in the league, just 569 yards on 77 penalties, 35.6 YPG). The Packers were also 5th in the league on third down, converting 44.2% of the time (Jets: 14th, 41.1%).

Meanwhile, the Packers’ defense was 26th in the league against the run, allowing an average of 131.6 rush yards per game (Jets: 7th, 94.9), and 23rd in the league in points allowed, at 23.8 (Jets: 18th, 22.3). If the defense hadn’t scored an NFL-best 7 defensive touchdowns (Jets, T-3rd, 5), a lot of those games would have been a lot worse.

Special teams, however, is where it gets really ugly: the Packers tied the Ravens for worst in the league in return yardage, 20.1 yards per return (Jets: T-14th, 23.1); they were 27th in punting average, at 41.4 yards (Jets: 23rd, 42.9); and 28th in punts downed inside the 20, at 15 (Jets, 27th, 16).

Looking at the numbers and the particulars of the two teams, it’s clear that the Packers have many problems, but the QB position isn’t one of them. The Jets finished with a better record than the Packers, but they were statistically better in almost every category except QB play, where the Packers were clearly superior.

So enough ragging on Rodgers and pining for Favre already. Rodgers played exceptionally well, especially for a first-year starter on — let’s face it — a bad team.

Blogged from beyond the grave.

I’ve long argued that the problem with economic libertarianism is that it ignores basic human nature, more specifically the tendency of people to strongly value their short-term wants and needs over their long-term best interests, such that they will favor the former heavily over the latter, and do so in ways that are harmful not just to their own best interests, but to the best interests of the economy as a whole.

E-Mart makes the case far beyond my poor power to add or detract. Go read.

Just ask a simple question about why vegetarians are so widely ridiculed/marginalized. Holy cow. Four pages of comments, and growing!

Also, an unrelated bonus flame:

One larger point here is that, while “rising stars” like Sanford and Jindal may be individually compelling, they must operate within a Republican Party that has enthusiastically embraced ignorance on a whole host of subjects, economics included. The issue is whether they can escape these constraints.

Publius does a nice job summing up what’s at the heart of the liberal/conservative divide on “social conservative” issues:

The social conservatives’ positions tend to empower government over individuals. If they got their way, the public would be forced to submit to the government’s decision-making. The more liberal position, by contrast, allocates power to individuals – no one is forced to do anything. (Admittedly, this is not really a constitutional argument – just an additional explanation for why the Christian Right tends to scare people).

Take, for instance, the granddaddy issue of them all – abortion. The Christian Right position would require every single person in a given jurisdiction to give birth. (Yes, some would argue that it’s simply about letting the states decide – but still, they prefer this position because many states, and virtually the entire South, would ban abortion). Thus, the decision-making power here would belong to the government. Individuals would no longer be free to decide.

The pro-choice position, by contrast, ensures that individuals – not the government – will ultimately make these private decisions. Individuals remain free to have, or not have, abortions as they and their God see fit. And everyone remains free to persuade their fellow citizens of the values of bringing all pregnancies to term. But in the end, the individual – and not the state – would make the final call.

This pattern repeats itself across a number of issues. For example, gay marriage doesn’t require anyone to do anything. It merely allows consenting gay adults to be married. Gay marriage bans, by contrast, grant that decision-making power to the state.

Similarly, rights to contraception don’t require anyone to do anything – the ultimate decision remains with the individual. Contraception bans, by contrast, allocate the decision-making power to the government.

Same deal with school prayer. Banning school prayer in public classes doesn’t prevent anyone from praying privately at the school. But allowing public prayer, by contrast, would force non-Christians to sit through prayer sessions in a publicly funded school. Again, the decision to participate in prayer would be made by the state, not the individual.

The larger point is that these examples illustrate why many people fear social conservatives – simply put, many of the latter’s preferred positions would use the state to intrude on people’s lives and dictate very private and personal decisions to them.

Now, I think this is largely true. But at the same time, if you expand beyond the so-called “social conservative” issues, there are plenty of places where it’s the liberals who would be doing the forcing. Environmental issues, for example, or gun control.

That said, I think the fact that compliance is somehow enforced is not, in and of itself, necessarily a bad thing. It depends upon your view of the thing being enforced.

In the debate about whether to bail out the Big Three automakers or let them go into Chapter 11 (an issue about which I’m still genuinely on the fence), one of the commonly-repeated talking points I keep hearing from the anti-bailout crowd is that Chapter 11 would allow the automakers to “dispose of legacy costs.” It’s pretty clear what that actually means, however, and why the Chapter 11 proponents don’t want to call it what it is: Screwing the pensioners.

Now some will doubtless object that the federal pension insurance will cover the pensioners, but there are two problems with this. First, this insurance will only pay a fraction of what the pensioners are currently receiving, and secondly, it makes those payments on the taxpayer dime, which means that from that perspective, we’re screwing both the pensioners and the taxpayers.

Now maybe this is unavoidable at this point — maybe the pensioners can’t fully be saved. I don’t know. But when we’re talking about real people, real benefits, and real jobs, we should at least be honest about what it is we’re talking about doing.

Seems to me that both parties are demagoguing the holy shit out of GM’s woes and what, if anything, to do about them. Speaking for myself, I’m open to being convinced in any direction. On the one hand, I’m not in love with the idea of bailing out a company that has made mistake after mistake after mistake and whose business model is almost certainly unsustainable; on the other hand, I’m not eager to screw a bunch of workers and pensioners out of their retirements or do away with the country’s 8th largest employer, either. So what to do?

Blindly partisan crap from either side need not apply. I’m looking for even-handed, well-reasoned arguments about what to do, not demagoguery. Anyone aware of some good essays?

UPDATE: The consensus here, unsurprisingly, has been to let GM fail. Kevin at Lean Left argues in favor of a GM bailout. Check it out.

Rich: Because I acknowledge that the Bible condemns homosexuality as a sin, I am intolerant, even though I support civil unions for gay couples as being fair and just under the law of man, and even though I drove an hour and a half to demonstrate my opposition to an anti gay hate group.

To my conservative/libertarian friends: Chill the fuck out. It’s a bad day for you — and believe me, after 2000, 2002, and 2004, I know exactly how you feel — but the world doesn’t end because of this election. Remember how you told us, upon the expiration of the AWB, that there wouldn’t be blood in the streets because of that? And remember how you were right? Well, I can tell you: You’re going to get to keep your guns. You’re probably not even going to see a renewal of the AWB — you’ve got enough Senators for a filibuster, and you’ve got Feingold. So you’re going to be fine.

Yes, you’re going to get some liberal social policies that you don’t approve of. Them’s the breaks. But I expect more of a return to the “horror” of the Clinton years than anything like the Carter years. And I expect Obama will waste no time moving to the center and disappointing his leftier base on some issues. So even that won’t be as bad as you might think.

Where to go from here? Use this as an opportunity to do what my party, the Democrats, wasted too much time not doing — you could argue from about 1994 to 2005 — cleaning up your own house. Get rid of the dead weight. Your side should be every bit as embarrassed by the Ted Stephenses as mine should be by the Robert Byrds. And while you’re at it, start lobbying the other party on the issues you care about — if guns are your thing (as they are for so many here), then angle for more Feingold Democrats.

And maybe — just maybe — we can actually see about finding some common ground. And maybe I’m a Chinese jet pilot.^*

Anyway, it’s not the end of the world, and this too shall pass. You’ll get over it. And if you wait long enough, the Democrats will screw themselves, as parties in power always do, and it will once again be your turn to fuck everything up royally.

Note to Uncle: Thanks to outstanding beer bets, we now officially owe each other a beer. I’ll have to make it a point to get to East Tennessee, so we can each drink two beers, and then keep right on a-drinking. And then, after several beers, in the true spirit of the South, go shootin’!
Gloat err, Note to Tam: Where’s your Palin now? “See ya at the polls,” indeed!

^* Bonus points for getting the reference without the benefit of Google.

This isn’t going to help Tennessee’s image any, and you can be sure the Brady Bunch will demagogue the holy shit out of it.

* – I should note that it’s very good news that the plot has been thwarted — the bad news is the inevitable spin that will come of it.

[AKA All Linky, No Thinky: Tgirsch Edition, AKA "What I'm reading today."]

Since Uncle’s on the beach enjoying his vacation, I figured I’d give you folks some blog fodder to get you all worked up:

• I voted today. Spoiler alert! I voted Democrat. *gasp!*
• The Guardian (UK): All the screaming you’re hearing about “voter fraud” is a bunch of crap. (FactCheck mostly agrees,as does PolitiFact.com.)
• Speaking of FactCheck.org and things that will get your dander up, they’re going after the NRA again. Sic’ ‘em!
• Larison briefly discusses elitism.
• A dyed-in-the-wool liberal endorses Murtha’s opponent
• Want to kill time with a stupid game? Try Truth Invaders.
• Nate Silver writes about why McCain isn’t doing so well right about now.
• Pattycakes is being screwed by The Man.
• xkcd weighs in on Scrabble. (For those of you not familiar with xkcd, it’s always important to read the hover text…)
• Vinny accuses Sarah Palin of socialism.
• Wondermark: Overthrow your corporate overlords, as long as it’s not too expensive… (xkcd hover text rule also applies here).

Have fun, and have a good weekend.

I know the Ayers issue is so three days ago, but for anyone still interested, NPR details the full extent of Obama’s relationship with Ayers over the years.

Of course, there are some who will always insist that this ought to be an issue, when there’s clearly no “there” there, but for anybody else, it’s worth checking out.

UPDATE: Vinny has more…

Earlier today, Uncle wrote:

I can’t find where taxes are lower for anyone under Obama’s plan.

If that’s true, then he’s not looking or not paying attention. See the non-partisan Tax Policy Center’s report (PDF) on the two candidates tax plans. In particular, note Figure 1 on page 41 — for the bottom four quintiles, both candidates cut taxes, but the average increase in after-tax income as compared to current law is much larger under Obama’s plan than it is under McCain’s:

Read the rest of this entry »

Slate has a good rundown of why Fannie and Freddie are symptoms of the current financial meltdown, not the cause.

To borrow from publius’ summation: essentially, “it’s not risky to lend to minority families, it’s risky to lend to rich white people.”

Taste the snark:

I await the Krauthammer column in which he points out the specific provision of the Community Reinvestment Act that forced Bear Stearns to run with an absurd leverage ratio of 33 to 1, which instructed Bear Stearns hedge-fund managers to blow up hundreds of millions of their clients’ money, and that required its septuagenarian CEO to play bridge while his company ran into trouble. Perhaps Neil Cavuto knows which CRA clause required Lehman Bros. to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars in short-term debt in the capital markets and then buy tens of billions of dollars of commercial real estate at the top of the market. I can’t find it. Did AIG plunge into the credit-default-swaps business with abandon because Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now members picketed its offices? Please. How about the hundreds of billions of dollars of leveraged loans—loans banks committed to private-equity firms that wanted to conduct leveraged buyouts of retailers, restaurant companies, and industrial firms? Many of those are going bad now, too. Is that Bill Clinton’s fault?

Crossed everywhere.

Over at my other blog, I did a write-up of why I don’t expect the Ayers attacks to gain much traction, if anyone’s interested.

[For the hostile audience here at SayUncle, perhaps I should call it my "flaming bag of poo of the week."]

This week, it comes from NYT Columnist Thomas Friedman:

Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”

What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.

I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.

Sorry, I grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and my parents taught me that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”

I can understand someone saying that the government has no business bailing out the financial system, but I can’t understand someone arguing that we should do that but not pay for it with taxes. I can understand someone saying we have no business in Iraq, but I can’t understand someone who advocates staying in Iraq until “victory” declaring that paying taxes to fund that is not patriotic.

How in the world can conservative commentators write with a straight face that this woman should be vice president of the United States? Do these people understand what serious trouble our country is in right now?

H/T: KTK at Lean Left

This is an excellent read from The American Prospect on just how we got into the financial mess we’re in today. It’s from an explicitly liberal magazine, but it’s very well argued, I think, and goes into a lot of detail. The kicker? It was published over a year ago.

National Review’s Kathleen Parker on The Palin Problem:

Palin’s narrative is fun, inspiring and all-American in that frontier way we seem to admire. When Palin first emerged as John McCain?s running mate, I confess I was delighted. She was the antithesis and nemesis of the hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood ? a refreshing feminist of a different order who personified the modern successful working mother.

Palin didn?t make a mess cracking the glass ceiling. She simply glided through it.

It was fun while it lasted.

Palin?s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I?ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I?ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.

Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there?s not much content there. Here?s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: ?Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we?re talking about today. And that?s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.?

When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama?s numbers, Palin blustered wordily: ?I?m not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who?s more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who?s actually done it??

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we?d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she?s a woman ? and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket ? we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.

What to do?

McCain can?t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP?s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

I thought it was the Left that was supposed to suffer from “PDS.”