Archive for January, 2008

In pondering the stimulus package, I can’t help but wonder why we think that this is a good deal. Sure, each of us would like free money, but it isn’t really free at all. I mean, since we already have a deficit, wont this just be another loan from China? Wont most of it be spent at Wal Mart and Taget, effectively putting that money right back into the hands of the Chinese?

I know the counter argument, it will spur growth, which will ultimately lead to increased tax revenues to pay off the deficit. I would assert that a better use and bigger stimuli would be to rebuild infrastructure. Remember those bridges and levies that we are up in arms about for two weeks after every tragedy. What if we spent the 150 billion on rehabilitating our infrastructure, creating high paying jobs in the labor sector which would spur the economy. Killing two birds with one stone sounds like a better idea to me.

Maybe its just me.

It takes like a gallon of gasoline to make a gallon of ethanol, and federal subsidies are throwing everything out of whack and food is getting more expensive, and that’s all bad enough, and then I read this, from the Bozeman Daily Chronicle:

As predicted by experts last fall, spikes in the costs of barley and hops have led to more expensive beer … At Madison River Brewing in Belgrade, six pack prices increased by a dollar Jan. 1, and keg prices went up 5 percent … at Bozeman Brewery Co., keg prices went up $5 at wholesale, likely leading to $20 more a keg after distributors and bars ad mark-ups … hops are in severe shortage around the country … San Diego fires this fall burned many hops farms … droughts in Australia and floods in Europe are killing barley production … China is making more beer than ever … all of [the brewers] mentioned the ethanol boom, which persuade farmers to grow corn instead of barley and hops and channels more barley to feed lots where animals used to be fed corn.

I can stand a lot, but I will not stand for this - down with ethanol!

Well considering all of the people coming out to endorse the folks running for president I think I will take another swing at it. Obama is another JFK? Hardly. He may be young and give good speeches but where is the substance? I wrote the Gazette the other day with some of my concerns on this subject and am interested in where everybody weighs in here.

“The lady and gentlemen running for president need to show us what they are going to do for us if they are elected as president of the United States. Show us their support of their constituents in the Senate and Congress who are willing to go on the record to support them and actually get something done as president. Without them, the candidates can hardly get anything done without their support and votes.

Forget the “I will hit the ground running,” forget the “I am the candidate for change.” Forget the “I will bring back the jobs.” Let’s get serious here. For any of these candidates to bring about change of any kind, they’ll need to have the support of the Congress to bring about change.

Forget that either party can change the way that we teach our young to bring about change in the way we do business. Forget that, without them, we can hope to keep our homes, our fuel supplies and our hope of improving the great American lifestyles that we have worked so hard to earn. We are on the verge of losing not only our lifestyles; we are at risk of losing the success that everyone has strived to attain.

Forget that we will take care of our veterans; forget that we will be able to send our kids on to higher education.

The only poll is the one that shows who in Congress will support each candidate as our president. Please hear us!”

UPDATE: Somehow B.H.O. does not have the same ring as J.F.K. does it?

I’ve mentioned a time or two, though maybe not here, that I think the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act is one hell of a good idea. A far-reaching, visionary wilderness plan that would protect about 20 million interconnected acres of grizzly habitat and wild land. I don’t have high hopes of it ever getting off the ground, it’s too far ahead of the curve, but it’s still one hell of an idea.

I listened to some of the House subcommittee hearing on NREPA back in October, and caught some of Denny Rehberg’s horrified opposition to the plan. He instead talked about the virtues of another plan you may have heard about, the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership. This, according to Denny and a number of others, is a smart plan that brings opposing sides to the table to locally work out a compromise rather than allowing ‘outsiders’ to decide the fate of our wildlands. A couple of environmental groups and a few timber industry reps as well as a couple of other interested parties hammered out a plan for about 3.3 million acres in the Beaverhead Deerlodge NF, much of which lies right in the heart of the land being considered in the NREPA.

So what’s the plan? Briefly, it calls for roughly a half-million acres of new wilderness, much of which will be add-ons to existing areas. That may sound good on the surface to wilderness advocates, seeing as there haven’t been any new wilderness designations in Montana in the last 25 years or so, but it’s all ‘rocks and ice’ terrain that would be protected whether it’s designated or not simply due to it’s rugged nature. It has no value for commercial interests. No lower lying interconnected areas would be established. The timber industry in return would get roughly 700,000 acres for logging and roadbuilding, virtually everything they wanted in the first place, and more than the original FS plans would have allowed. Some compromise.  What’s most alarming is that if this plan is adopted it will cut the guts out of NREPA and effectively kill it.

I only have one thing to say to the Montana Wilderness Association and Trout Unlimited and the National Wildlife Federation who were all sitting at the table. Though I generally support and admire the hard work you do to protect our wildlands and wildlife, I think you caved in big time on this one. This is more of the same old business as usual approach to protecting wilderness that we’ve seen for decades now. Accepting a few table scraps while allowing industry to walk away with the feast is a giant step in the wrong direction. What were you thinking?

Tuesday was the day that filing opened for Montana candidates, and they came out in mass. You can see the long lists online. I am sure that we will get around to discussing many of them, but let’s start with candidates for Attorney General.

While I will admit that I know little of most of the candidates, I had the privilege of talking with Mike Wheat on Monday night at an event marking his announcement to run. While he talked in depth on fraud and internet predators, I was most impressed by his passion on public land. General impressions was that he was personable, down to earth and seemed genuine. Not knowing the other candidates and this should not be construed as an endorsement, I would say that we could do a lot worse than Mike Wheat for Montana Attorney General.

For the others, I’ll have to do a website comparison, which is how a lot of Montanan’s get their information on candidates in these types of races. Let’s see what we find:

John Parker (D): The blue in the sites logo is a little too blue. Let’s not kid ourselves, aesthetics are important in this type of survey. The major talking points from the front page are sexual predators, meth, environment and fraud. He is against all of them, except the environment. There is a picture of him with the Gov, which cant hurt. He doesn’t have an ‘Issues’ page, which is unfortunate and his endorsement page is a long list of people that I have never heard of, with the exception of Dave Wanzenried and Galen Hollenbaugh and a few others. I respect both, so that is positive in my book. his about page gave a very long list of accomplishments as a legislator and as a prosecutor. In general, I am not sure that a ten minute visit to his website sold me. Unfortunately, that is more time than the voters who do actually make the effort to figure this stuff out on the night before the primary will give most candidates sites.

Lee Bruner (R): Lee’s site is the least visually appealing of all, to me. However, it is the most useful because the first tab I see is labeled ‘Issues’ and they are spelled out very clearly: agriculture (remember, the AG is head of serves on the Land Board), child safety, elder abuse, meth, law enforcement, health care et al. A very useful list, to be sure. I can say that I agree with him on almost every issue, no one support elder abuse. However, the entire section on healthcare was about protecting industry from lawsuits and keeping the awards cap in place. While this is the largest section of his ‘Issues’ page and he takes the time to say “Lee is the only candidate for Attorney General whose practice has been dedicated to defense of healthcare providers”, he never once mentions protecting consumers from fraud and abuse by the healthcare system. Sorry, I am a populist and I think that the healthcare providers have plenty of high paid lawyer to protect them, we need an AG to look after the interest of the people of Montana. However, to his credit, it was very easy to get this information, and in that sense it was the best of all the candidate’s sites.

Steve Bullock (D): The red in the sites logo is WAY too red. The preamble on the front page is actually very good. It introduces Steve as a father of young children, giving him a vested interest in making Montana a better place. Fair enough. He mentions the environment, good business environment and worker protections as important issues. Steve is also missing an ‘Issues’ page. However, there are a few gems to be gleaned from his ‘About’ page. Apparently Steve was involved in Raise Montana and served for 4 years in the state AG office. His press releases show that he has purchased carbon offsets and a rather good editorial on workers rights. This is all good stuff, but again, I really shouldn’t have to look so hard to find details bout what the candidates think are the important issues.

Tim Fox (R): One of the more appealing sites visually, Fox’s site is also missing an issues page. The front page talks of consensus, which is positive, as well as leadership, experience and other less concrete issues. One has to dig into the ‘News’ page to begin getting many details, which links to a article titled Fox promises multiple changes if elected which talks about his opposition to the Clinton roadless rule and crimes committed by UM football players. There is also a press release titled “Republican AG Candidate Fox Backs Local Control of Public Land Management”, again about the Clinton roadless rule. I really looked here, and other than a few statements like support of law enforcement, I couldn’t find a lot of talk on specific issues. The endorsement link goes nowhere. All in all, this was the least informative website. Maybe I am missing something here. I apologize if that is the case.

Mike Wheat (D) I wont spend a lot of time on this one since I have already talked about Mike. He has the most appealing site visually. While he does not have an ‘Issues’ page, his top priorities are spelled out in bullet points right on the front page.

Craig pointed to an article on superdelegates in the Democratic convention process.

The 1972 Democratic National Convention produced George McGovern as the Democratic presidential nominee. Although he won the nomination by a wide margin, he lost the presidency in a landslide to Richard Nixon, winning only one state and 37.5 percent of the popular vote. Because of this, the Democratic Party instituted super delegates as a safeguard to guarantee party control over the nomination process. Political experts say this system was put in place so the party could avoid a mistake by voters in nominating a candidate.

I like this idea about as much as I like the electoral college. Once again, another system made to keep the common man from harming himself and being sure that we don’t become ‘too democratic’. In 1972 the common folk of the Democratic party chose a fine candidate for office and the public at large voted to re-elect the incumbent by a 60% majority:

Even news reports that members of Nixon’s campaign staff were involved in the break-in at Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel failed to affect the election.

We see how that worked out for us. The major problem here, again, was the electoral college, where Nixon took 520 to McGovern’s 17. Not exactly a reflection of popular sentiment, but OK. In response, the Democratic party put more mechanisms in place to protect voters from themselves. double plus ungood.

On the issue of Bill Clinton being a superdelegate? No worse than the rest of the system. So is Al Gore and he will offset Bill’s vote.

A while ago I asked you to predict who the first Republican casuality (first after primary season began, anyhow) would be.  It appears that most of you, those who said Duncan Hunter, were right.

The Right wing field has finally narrowed, even if only a little bit.

Now when is that Fred Thompson concession speech scheduled for…

I have moved Wrong Dog’s Life Chest to Wrongdog.net. Please update your bookmarks and blogrolls accordingly. You can get the RSS feed at http://wrongdog.net/blog/feed.xml.

I wrote the software that powers the blog and this is its first deployment, so be aware that it will likely still be a bit buggy for a while. Please come and visit me over there.

PJFinn has started a new blog called The Evening Pest. Humor and snark are the order of the day, so go and check it out.

Obama Wins Nevada!!

Hey, that almost rhymes! The best part is that it is true.

Perhaps it should more accurately be said that Obama won more districts in Nevada than Clinton. Mainly, the Democratic primaries and caucuses are divided by congressional districts, not states. So, the issue isn’t really whether Obama won Nevada or not, since the DNC isn’t about winning states. It is, instead, about winning congressional districts. And in that campaign, Obama won today.

True, Hillary won the popular vote. Doesn’t really matter here, since Obama will be taking more delegates to the national convention. This is good news to me, since Obama is my second choice and Hillary is not my third.

McCain Takes SC!!

Well, this is good news to me in a back handed sort of way. You see, after Romney took Michigan and Nevada, McCain needed to take another win to keep the Republican race going. An even better scenario might have been a Huckabee victory, but it was not to be. The take home point from South Carolina is that Romney fell flat on his face in the first primary of the south. He even finished behind Fred Thompson. Fred Thompson? I though that guy died year ago. This doesn’t bode well for a swift end to the primary season for Republicans.

In yet another glaring example of heartless indifference to consumers and slavish loyalty to the bottom line, we learn now that Kellogg Corporation has stopped making the Hydrox Cookie.

We don’t keep sweets around the house (other than these Necco candy hearts I am currently eating) (bear hug, only you, cool cat), so I didn’t know that Hydrox had gone missing. And I didn’t know until listening to a comedian last year that Hydrox was kosher, Oreo not.

Never mind that. What I do know is this - we need choices - as Americans, it’s one of our first lines of freedom - to choose Crest over Gleem, Chevy over Ford, Coke over Pepsi, and Hydrox over Oreo. Now, thanks to Bush, we have one less choice in our arsenal of freedom.

May 2008 be the year we are again offered the Oreo alternative. Vive la Hydroxo!

This one is too easy but I have to add to my reasons why Mike Huckabee will never be president. If he is going to go out of his way to make my job as a blogger easy, I owe him the common courtesy of taking him up on the offer.

From a recent

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.”

If I were the curious type, I would ask what he wants to codify from the Bible into our constitution. May I make some suggestions?

If a man lies with a woman during her monthly period and has sexual relations with her, he has exposed the source of her flow, and she has also uncovered it. Both of them must be cut off from their people. -Leviticus 20:18 (New International Version)

If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire. -Leviticus 21:9 (New International Version)

That prophet or dreamer must be put to death, because he preached rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery; he has tried to turn you from the way the LORD your God commanded you to follow. You must purge the evil from among you. -Deuteronomy 13:5 (New International Version)

anyone who blasphemes the name of the LORD must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him. Whether an alien or native-born, when he blasphemes the Name, he must be put to death. -Leviticus 24:16

Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard. -Leviticus 19:27 (New International Version)

If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother, and his blood will be on his own head. -Leviticus 20:9 (New International Version)

So. Hmm. Which one first? I say the one about killing preacher’s daughters, not sure why but that it would give me time to grow my beard and hair out. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, as dreamer I am doomed anyway. Hell, let’s just get it out in the open: I am sure that this post can be construed as a blaspheme against the LORD and the entire assembly of you must join together and put me to death. I fact, under Mike Huckabee’s America, it is codified into the constitution that you have to stone me.

Sweet.

So, I used to be a member of the ACLU; I was even the President of the Kern County Chapter for a while. However, I left the organization years ago; mostly due to the tight grip they keep on their local chapters. Since I left the group, I have kept tabs on what they are doing, and I have noticed that the ACLU increasingly gets involved in the most outlandish cases. While I still respect the ideological goal to defend the Constitution, I am at a loss to justify most of their recent actions, especially this one: The ACLU is coming to the defense of Senator Larry Craig.

ST. PAUL, Minnesota - In a legal effort to help a U.S. senator, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that people who have sex in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy.

The government cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Senator Craig was inviting the undercover officer to engage in anything other than sexual intimacy that would not have called attention to itself in a closed stall in the public restroom, the ACLU wrote in its brief.

Inasmuch as I get the ACLU’s point, that Craig’s alleged end-goal (sex) is not illegal, I disagree entirely with the premise that people looking to have sex in public have a reasonable expectation to privacy.

First off, public bathrooms are notoriously lacking in privacy. Anyone who thought about doing anything in there, legal or not, should think twice about how noticeable their actions are, what with the foot traffic and waiting lines.

Second, if the ACLU is going to argue the position of privacy, then there has to be a respect for the privacy of others engaged in the same activity. Craig is alleged to have solicited sex from a person in an adjoining stall, meaning that he was infringing on the expectation of privacy of that bathroom-goer. It is the same logic used to justify when ‘rights’ have gone too far: you’re rights cannot infringe upon the rights of another; that would create a problematic logic loop.

All of this isn’t to say that I think Craig should hit the slammer for this incident, I just think the ACLU is grossly out of lines in justifying this as a Constitutional case about privacy.

As primary season approaches, it is worthwhile to look at a breakdown of Montana primary voters. I have used the 2004 gubernatorial primary results as a source, as it is the most recent statewide election where neither party fielded an incumbent. I looked at the 11 most populace counties, and put the rest into the 12th slot.

Democratic Primary Voters By County:

The first interesting tidbit about these numbers is that neither Missoula nor Yellowstone held the largest block of potential Democratic votes in the state. I was impressed to see that Cascade held 12,800 to Yellowstone’s 12,500, while Missoula ran a distant third with just over 10,000.

Republican Primary Voters By County:

The most interesting thing here was the sheer power of Yellowstone county as a large chunk of the Republican vote. With 18,000 votes in the 2004 primary, it is the largest block of votes in the state. Flathead county comes in second, with nearly 12,000 Republican votes it breaks for Republicans at a rate of 3 to 1. Surprisingly, Galatin and Missoula are virtually tied for third at 7300 votes.

Statewide

Now, it should come as not surprise that 62% of all rural voters went on the Republican ticket, accounting for about 35% of Republican primary voters. Democrats, on the other hand attracted only 38% of these votes, accounting for 25% of all Democratic votes. This vote remains an extremely important one in Montana politics. Right now though, it is the Democrat’s to gain and the Republican’s to lose.

Flathead and Silverbow counties represented the most homogeneous votes in the state, with 75% voting in the Republican and Democratic primaries, respectively. While Missoula is oft lauded as the Democratic stronghold of the state, it is worth noting that Flathead county counts more Republican primary voters than Missoula does Democratic. Cascade and Hill counties are also very homogeneous, each with about 70% voting the Democratic primary ticket.

The most evenly split county evaluated is Lewis and Clarke, followed by Gallatin and Missoula. Lewis & Clarke voted 54% on the Democratic ticket and 46% on the Republican ticket. 58% of Missoula County voters went Democratic while 57% of Gallatin votes were cast on the Republican ticket.

I should note that this sort of data only provides a minimal amount of insight into the breakdown of voters in Montana. It is obvious that we don’t mind crossing party lines, since Schweitzer one the race despite his party only receiving 46% of the primary votes.

NOTE: This post was inspired by a conversation I was involved in over at 4&20 Blackbirds about Republican primary politics in Montana. I ended up looking up some numbers during the course of the debate, and thought it would be interesting to take a deeper look.

To all the naysayers who complained that only liberal pussys and retired generals were demanding that Gitmo be closed:  the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff (read: the head of the military other than Bush) is requesting the same thing:

The chief of the U.S. military said Sunday he favors closing the prison here as soon as possible because he believes negative publicity worldwide about treatment of terrorist suspects has been “pretty damaging” to the image of the United States.

“I’d like to see it shut down,” Adm. Mike Mullen said in an interview with three reporters who toured the detention center with him on his first visit since becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last October.

Negative publicity, international reputation, treatment of terrorists?  These are the same things that Liberals have been saying about Gitmo for years now.  I wonder if now, that a reputable military man is saying the same things, if we will see any change of tune from our friends on the right?