Medicare Prescription Drugs

Bush is eager to sign a prescription drug bill.

I’ve pontificated on this before, but this is a horrible idea.  I am furious at Bush for pushing this for political reasons.  There is absolutely no reason in the world that a Republican legislature and a Republican executive should pass this.

That being said, it has become obvious that something will be passed, so it is up to the conservatives in the conference committee to mitigate the damages.  The House version of the bill is the lesser of 2 evils, so I guess I’ll grudgingly give it support (grumble, grumble, grumble). 

UPDATE:  I need to rant a little more.  Here’s the intro to this article:

WASHINGTON - You’re 65, maybe older, and tired of paying hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollars for drugs.

So how is the government going to help?

That’s the wrong #$^% question!!!  It must be remembered that the government is merely the representation of the people.  So when you ask government to pay for something, you are asking your friends, family, and complete strangers to pay for it.  It is the same as taking a mayonnaise jar to each of your neighbors and asking them to contribute to your prescription drug bills.  Most people would be ashamed to do such a thing, but feel perfectly OK with sending a government agent, a.k.a. the I.R.S., to collect their neighbor’s money for their bills.  I’m sick and tired of people asking the government to solve their problems.  argh

Straw Poll & Dean

Morridx has some comments about the straw poll by MoveOn.org.  (He also commented under this post of mine)

Upon further reflection I had to say, ?Whoa!? I believe that they?re attempting to artfully coerce our friends who are Democrats. It would certainly be easier to defeat President Bush if everyone fell in line behind one candidate. I think this is a not-so-subtle position towards that end. Personally, I find it rather offensive; I regard a wide ? if not ridiculously so ? range of options to be the hallmark of a healthy political race.

 

That’s not a bad point.  There is definitely a well-heeled political strategy to try to minimize the damage done to candidates in the primary in order to help the eventual winner in the final election. 

However, it seems just stupid to me for MoveOn.org to back whoever polls best this early in the game.  I, for one, would love to see Howard Dean win the nomination, but only because I think he is unelectable in a national election.  Bush could sweep all 50 states if Dean was his opponent.  If MoveOn.org’s objective is to get a Democrat elected - any Democrat - then they should at least back an electable candidate.

Summerfest

Summerfest, an annual music festival in Milwaukee, started this weekend. 

Summerfest is one of the best things that Milwaukee does.  It offers a bunch of bands, food, etc. for all to enjoy.  It regularly attracts a million or more visitors every year and is the largest music festival in the nation.  But it has had its problems.

The last couple of years, the attraction of hip-hop bands and a teenage atmosphere has led to kids getting rowdy.  And by rowdy, I mean drunk, high, starting fights with each other, and harassing other visitors. 

I haven’t ever been to Summerfest, but largely because since I’ve been here, the news is filled with the reports of bad behavior at the festival.  As a father, I didn’t want to take my kids to a place where they are likely to be exposed to such bad behavior.  But things may be looking up.

In an effort to make Summerfest more family friendly, the Summerfest officials have removed many of the teeny-bopper attractions and many more of the music acts are geared toward pulling an older and family audience. 

Of course, many of the hooligans who look forward to Summerfest as a place to get drunk and raise hell, are upset, but so be it.  In our youth-obsessed culture, the vast majority of entertainment venues and acts are designed to attract the 14-22 and single crowd.  There’s nothing wrong with offering a festival for families and older folks.

I think that as the population ages, and with the US birthrate at its lowest level ever, that we will see this trend grow.  Entertainers are in the business to make money, and although the older crowd is harder to get, they are more loyal and have more money to spend.

t.u. and Affirmative Action

This isn’t a surprise, but the University of Texas will startup its discriminatory admissions practices again.  I just love this quote:

Affirmative action “gets to the heart of what we try to accomplish as an institution,” Faulkner said. “It’s important for us to have strong representation here of students from all sectors of society.”

Never mind education or intellectual enhancement, t.u. sees a racially diverse student body as the heart of the university’s mission. 

Sadly, I fear that my beloved Texas A&M is next in line to implement this racist program.

Sodomy Ruling

I know - I keep coming back to this, but Charles Krauthammer has a very interesting column about the ruling that I think argues Jed’s position very well:

Why then am I glad the court, for all of its sophistry, upheld affirmative action? For those who believe that affirmative action, for all of its noble purposes, is extraordinarily destructive to both its beneficiaries and its victims, and to both race relations and constitutional principles, it is tempting to wish it all swept away by the Supreme Court.

It is a temptation to be resisted. Issues of this magnitude should never be decided by nine robes. Affirmative action needs to be dealt with by the people in the legislatures and in referendums. I believe that the current dispensation is a travesty. But a very substantial portion of the population reads the Constitution—and the nation’s needs—quite differently. Under these circumstances, the issue should not be settled by judicial fiat.

We learned from the abortion issue the doleful consequences of such judicial imperialism. In 1973, changes in public opinion and action in state legislatures were altering the landscape on abortion. At which point the court stepped in and took the issue out of the political arena. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued before she ascended to the Supreme Court, ``Roe v. Wade ... halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believe, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue.’’ The result has been 30 years of strife and agitation, as a disenfranchised minority continues to carry the fight against policy for which it has no political recourse.

It’s just that I still see a Constitutional issue here.  Look at the Ninth Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The issue as to whether the Right of Privacy, or Right of Liberty, is protected by the Constitution comes down to whether it is a right at all.  If the Right to Privacy is indeed a natural right, then it is protected by the Constitution.  So what is a “natural right”?  How about this for a definition:

Natural rights are self-evident, all rights are by their definition natural, they are based on self ownership and the free will, there can be no rights other than those which are in nature.

The Right to Privacy is indeed an extension of self ownership and free will, and I find it to be self-evident.  In a state of nature, man has the right to seclude himself from his fellow man and conduct himself in private.  As such, he retains that right when he forms a civil society.

Based on the Ninth Amendment, the only way you can argue that the Right to Privacy is not protected by the Constitution is to argue that it is not a right at all.

UPDATE:  It also strikes me that this is related to the Right of Private Property.  People have a right to use their private property as they see fit.  As such, if they choose to build a house on it to facilitate their privacy, then we don’t have the right to peer into the confines of that privacy.  Just a thought…

UPDATE BY JED:

For almost 200 years, the Court avoided making use of the Ninth Amendment because it’s open-endedness created, in effect, a blank check.  If you start saying that something is a constitutional right because of the Ninth Amendment, where is the line between what is and what is not a constitutional right?  Who gets to decide?

Read the rest

Stock In Trade

Dean has a very good post about gift economies and how they relate to the blogosphere.

It’s too good to pick out a paragraph to post here, so go give it a read!

This Day In History

Edward IV is crowned King of England in 1461.  And Queen Victoria (the last of the house of Brunswick to rule England) was crowned in 1838.

The Battle on Monmouth was fought between the Americans and the British in 1778.

The Treaty of Versailles, ending WWI and sowing the seeds for another titanic struggle, was signed in 1919.

Liberia

Liberia is calling for the US to intervene.

Many Liberians want Bush to do more and bands of marchers, many driven from their homes by fighting, headed for the U.S. embassy for a third day chanting “We want peace, no more war.”

Most eyes turn to the United States because of its historical links with a country founded more than 150 years ago by freed slaves trying to establish a haven of liberty.

“Do they want all of us to die? They are the people we look up to. We think the Americans must help us,” said Rita Younger, one of those heading for the U.S. embassy…

And for many Liberians, it is only the Americans who could do the job.

“George Bush is the president of the whole world and everyone knows that,” said Martin Luther Wesseh, demonstrating outside the U.S. mission. “America owns Liberia. That is a fact. We learned it in school.”

These are the kinds of things that make American’s cynical about foreign intervention.  We just went through a whole war where “world opinion” was slamming us for intervening.  Now, with the rest of the world is sitting on their ass, Liberia is calling for America to help.

Honestly, I am not familiar with the details of the conflict to make a judgment as to whether American intervention would be appropriate.  On the surface, though, I do not see any American national interests at stake - save the general use of a destabilized region as a breeding ground for terrorists. 

UPDATE:  Now France is calling for the US to intervene!

Mr de Villepin, quoted by French news agency AFP, said: “The most pressing things are the ceasefire and the deployment of an international force.”

Taylor has been indicted for alleged war crimes
He said France and Britain had “assumed their responsibilities” to bring relative peace their former colonies of Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone, and that the US had a special role to play in Liberia.

“There must be a multinational force… Let us together find the best solution,” he added.

Basically, Mr. de Villepin is demanding an American force to be commanded by the French.  It’ll be “celibate day” in a Las Vegas brothel before we allow the French to command our troops.

Baylor Player

All right, Jed.  Joke’s over.  Put the guy back.

WACO, Texas, June 27 ?  Some of Patrick Dennehy?s teammates might be suspects in the disappearance of the Baylor basketball player, police said Friday.  

DENNEHY, A 6-FOOT-10, 230-pound center, has not been seen or heard from in more than two weeks.

Owen’s Toys

Come on Owen.  You couldn’t really have fun at 1M rounds-per-minute…

How about one of these mounted in the back of La Bamba?  Comes with 1,000 rounds.

Petty

I know this is petty, but this is a picture and caption from Yahoo:

El Nino, the weather pattern which has been blamed for extreme conditions in many areas around the Pacific Ocean, is over for 2003(AFP-NASA (news - web sites)/File/Str )

I know that this is just a file photo, but the Pacific ocean isn’t in it.  The Atlantic is on the left of Africa and the Indian Ocean is on the right.

Yikes

You know you drank too much when you wake up next to this:

1,000,000 Rounds a Minute

A guy in Austrailia is developing a weapon that can fire a million rounds a minute.  Instead of mechanical firing mechanisms, it uses an electric one.

While much of the technology is a closely guarded secret, the firing mechanism has no moving parts. Instead, it uses electronic ballistics technology. Unlike other guns, the only parts which move are the bullets.

This can be used in last-ditch defense efforts like the Phalanx.  

Of course, if the accuracy can be verified, it could also be employed for offensive capabilities.

Amazon (not .com)

It appears that the Amazon is being cut down at historic levels.

      PRELIMINARY FIGURES FROM the Environment Ministry, released late Wednesday, showed deforestation in the Amazon jumped to 9,840 square miles last year ? the highest since 1995 ? from 7,010 square miles in 2001.

Undoubtedly it is the fault of the Bush Administration’s failure to back the Kyoto Protocol.

Windshield Death

This “woman” got exactly what she deserved:

A jury sentenced Chante Mallard to 60 years in prison Friday for leaving an accident victim to die a slow death while lodged in the broken windshield of her car.

This woman hit a guy, he lodged in her windshield (legs sticking out if I recall correctly), she drove home and parked in her garage, and he slowly died of blood loss.  He could have lived if she had called 911 right away.  She willfully caused is death, even if she didn’t willfully cause the accident.