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...

Democrats are talking about "Two Americas" in which they crudely separate Americans into two categories: The noble have-nots and the corrupt haves. Calling such a description an oversimplification would be charitable. Republicans and Democrats talk past each other because they, fundamentally, don't understand each other.  There is no "compromise" really possible because they approach their positions from completely alien points of view.  When someone tries to pro...

In my earlier article on misjudging the American character , I argued that the world needs to give up this notion of demanding that we become introspective about 9/11. They need to stop trying to get us to ask "Why do they hate us?".  It ain't gonna happen.  Americans, as history has shown, will do whatever it takes to overcome an enemy. Whatever it takes. I pointed out that in 1945 the majority of Americans, according to polls at the time, supported the elimination of the J...

When I speak on-line on various sites, including JoeUser.com about the role of government, it becomes apparent quickly that many people think of the government as some sort of independent entity that is not connected to us.  Those people tend to favor having the government solve all kinds of problems, including problems better left to individuals to solve for themselves. People like me, as I discussed in the philosophies of the left and the right are wary of having the government do anythin...

Recently there was some debate about the current fiscal deficit. When people talk about balancing the budget, it is important to know what we spend money on. When someone just parrots "We need to cut defense" or "raise taxes" it gets frustrating because those things won't necessarily solve the problem. The real problem is much more complex than that.  In reality, the federal government has slowly morphed into a social program provider. Bush hasn't helped things either...

The political season brings out the worst in both sides. Too many people treat real world politics as a game. Not as a computer game , but a game of intellectual exercise. What they forget is that there are monsters out there. And once in a great while, a monster gets loose. In the 20th century, Hitler and his ilk were allowed to run amok across Europe and besides the 30 million or so who died in actual in the war, another 12 million were executed simply because they weren't the correct race...