Having grown up poor I don't have a lot of sympathy for people on welfare. By and large, they seem to have been people who aren't able or willing to be responsible with their own lives and essentially rely on everyone else to support them. Often times, it seems, that it's just a matter that they don't think ahead. They don't think through their actions. Statistically, most welfare recipients are young females with 2 or more children and are under 25. Sure, you can bring up cases that don't ...
I suspect I'm not the only one who is thinking this. As a student of history I've come to a fairly simple conclusion when it comes to war: Wars only end when both sides decide that it ends. While this may seem straight forward, it a conclusion that seems to escape from many policy makers. Many of the problems we face in Iraq are the result of the enemy not believing they are defeated. The United States and its allies have fought a war as antiseptically as possible. Surgical precision ...
When I ask, "Why do liberals keep losing?" what I specifically mean is those who believe in American liberal ideals (which to a European means something different) are finding their political fortunes ebbing and their influence on the United States weakening. And it boils down to this: the left wing mainstream media and liberal politicians mistakenly think that their beliefs are held by the majority of Americans. They're not. They should know this because the polls on these is...
Liberal bias in the media is pretty established at this point. Established in the sense that any reasonable person who has put any significant effort into looking into the issue will have come to that conclusion. The main deniers of such bias come, naturally, from liberals. Debating whether there is liberal media bias, for me, is like debating evolution vs. creationism. I'm not going to waste my time debating whether evolution is a fact or not and I'm not going to debate whether liberal media bi...
Jimmy Carter was on NPR...again on Monday. During the obligatory Bush bashing, Carter said something totally insane: "I can't think of a time in this country's 200 year history when we've been more isolated politically." Really? One can almost picture Dolly Madison, freshly transported from the ruins of the freshly destroyed White House due to the British in 1812, into 2004 hearing that and slapping Carter across the face. Is Carter really that ignorant of American history? H...
So who's the bigger hypocrite? Rush Limbaugh for repeated condemnation for those people who become addicted to crack, heroine, and other illegal drugs. Or Members of the left who have preached compassion, understanding, and forgiveness as the answer to everything who demand now that Limbaugh should go to jail for his addiction to prescription pain medication?
Richard Gephardt's presidential hopes seem to be coming to an end. I would blame much of that on his poor understanding of the electorate. There's a saying in politics, "It's all about the numbers." Gephardt, who kept claiming polls don't mattered, should have realized that polls do matter and only sounded desperate when trying to deny this reality. But you have to give him credit, he truly seemed to believe that polls don't matter. Like I said, he just doesn't seem to understand ...
George W. Bush seems to have some sort of Crazedar. That is, he sends out some sort of subliminal signal to those on the left that drives them insane and lose all sense of perspective. This hasn't just affected politicians and activists, it's affected journalists too. So incensed are some left-winger journalists and activists that they have gone off and formed a new media network to combat the "growing right wing media influence". It's called Central Air Media . There's a certain militancy ...
It's going to be close in Iowa. According to Zogby , it's a dead-heat with John Kerry taking a slight lead. But most people don't realize how the Iowa Caucus works. It's not a straight vote. It's really a series of meetings to pick delegates. Each precinct has a different number of delegates to pick based on the number of registered democrats in that precinct. And the rule is that a candidate must get 15% of the delegates to be viable. So let's say there are 10 delegates availabl...
Right Wing News has some outstanding articles about the situation that Bush is in. One that I particularly agree with is that Bush is losing conservatives through his pandering. While I support Bush on his foreign policy, for the most part, I am strongly against some of the domestic choices he's made: The Tax Cut. I favor tax cuts. We are over-taxed. But a payroll tax would have been more effective I think for stimulating the economy. Deficits. I care about deficits. I care about the...
I sometimes think that the Internet is destroying the civility of political discourse. Many of my friends and I debate politics on a regular basis. Because we're friends, we know that each of us has views based on a set of honest, well thought-out principles. We aren't debating purely for trying to score points in some sort of imaginary game. We are exchanging ideas and beliefs and making each other think about those ideas and beliefs. But on the Internet, things are different. Civility is in...
It's probably a little early but this is my quickie prediction of what the next election will go like barring some unforeseen turn of events. Red are Bush states, blue are Kerry states. Prediction: Kerry chooses Edwards as his running mate. Bad idea potential 1: Kerry chooses Gephardt What Kerry should have done: Kerry should pick Bob Graham of Florida as his VP. The key states of this election: Florida, Pennsylvania. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania gives Bush enough of a chance t...
One of the biggest challenges in designing a US Presidential political strategy game is balancing the fun factor with accuracy. And nothing quite exemplifies this as much as coming up with political issues for the game to have. Ultimately, as political junkies, we decided to throw out wisdom and not make the political issues generic but instead contemporary. That puts the burden on us to keep updating the game but at the very least players will be able have an advantage in ...
I highly recommend reading this article: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/236jmcbd.asp It is a very good article that discusses why the US went to war with Iraq in the first place. It never ceases to amaze me that two things about the on-line world always remain true: 1) How little people know about the facts of history and 2) How willing they are to go on-line and demonstrate this. The United States and UK went into Iraq because it believed, correctl...
Based on electoral politics and some analysis here is how the campaign is shaping up. First, Kerry is going to win New Hampshire by a large margin. New Hampshire primary prediction based on local demographics, polling, and momentum: Kerry: 39% Dean: 25% Edwards: 13% Clark: 6% Which brings us to our second point: it's all over for Lieberman. It's also over for Clark. Lieberman will end his campaign after New Hampshire. It's also over for Clark. Edwards will be in a very difficu...