Last year there was a long debate in the comments about smoking in public. While that conversation has been lost in the migration from Blogger to Movable Type, this article is a good example of the dangers that I was talking about :

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that an airline can be held liable for the death of a passenger from a severe asthma attack caused by exposure to secondhand smoke.

The 6-2 ruling was a defeat for Olympic Airways, the Greece-based airline that challenged a $1.4 million award against it in the case of a 52-year-old doctor from California who died on a 1998 flight from Athens to New York.

The airline had argued that it cannot be held liable under the Warsaw Convention, an international treaty on airline liability, when a passenger’s pre-existing medical condition has been aggravated in the aircraft cabin.

The U.S. Justice Department disagreed. It said an airline’s unreasonable refusal to assist a passenger who becomes ill during an international flight, in violation of its own policies and industry standards, can lead to liability.

The case involved Dr. Abid Hanson. After boarding the flight in Athens, Hanson and his family discovered they were in nonsmoking seats near the smoking section, which was not separated by a partition.

A flight attendant repeatedly rejected requests from Hanson’s daughter to move him to a different seat. The attendant said the flight was full, even though there were 11 empty seats.

After Hanson died on the plane, his family sued and claimed his death stemmed from a severe asthma attack caused by inhaling secondhand smoke.

The problem here is that most people see cigarette smoke as something that’s mildly annoying, but not dangerous. As far as they’re concerned, those of us who complain about smoke in public are just whiners. Well, I hope this puts things in better prospective. Second hand smoke can kill people, so the idea that smoker’s civil rights are violated by public smoking bans is nothing compared to the rights of non-smokers to not die because of someone else’s addiction.

Listen up liberals, this shit has to stop :

You hear Howard Dean supporters snidely remark that John Kerry co-opted their candidate’s anti-Bush tone once Kerry saw how popular it was with senate voters. At the candidates debate in Los Angeles Thursday night, according to one newspaper account, a Dean fan ripped a Kerry sign off a rail, saying: “You stole our message. We can steal your sign.” Now, the New York Times says, Kerry’s channeling that son-of-a-mill-worker John Edwards, too, borrowing heavily from his populist message and engaging manner.

“Mr. Kerry is talking nonstop about job losses, about the ‘haves and have-nots,’ about hardship and heartache in the industrial heartland. He is even surrounding himself with mill workers to prove his point — and retelling their stories about as often as Mr. Edwards mentions that he grew up in a textile town and saw the broken spirits of those whom global trade left behind.

“Mr. Kerry’s transformation into an empathetic candidate with a decidedly blue collar on his navy pinstriped suit began months ago as he struggled to connect with audiences put off by his patrician manner and emotional distance. It has taken on new significance, however, since the senate race narrowed to Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards, whose affability, speaking style and up-from-the-bootstraps biography stand in contrast to Mr. Kerry’s Boston Brahmin image and background. And it will be even more vital, senate strategists say, should Mr. Kerry win the nomination and take on a president whose popularity is based largely on his regular-guy, emotionally direct appeal.”

If Kerry is “stealing” good ideas, isn’t that a good thing? Whoever ends up winning this thing should take all the good ideas he can get. And it’s not as if John Kerry is indifferent or opposed to the ideas he’s lifted (unlike Bush’s co-opting liberal ideas without actually doing any work to implement them).

What’s so infuriating though is how juvenile this all seems. Nobody “owns” their position on healthcare, Iraq, or taxes. John Edwards isn’t the only one who should be allowed to appeal to the working class just because he did it first and Howard Dean shouldn’t be the only one who gets to bash George Bush. The very fact that your ideas are appealing enough that they’re being co-opted should please you during the primaries.

Quit being crybabies, people. We’re all in this together.

Yeah, I’m sure he only uses his guns for hunting :

The newly elected chairman of Smith & Wesson’s parent company has resigned in the wake of reports about his criminal past.

“I felt it was the best thing for the company, given the circumstances,” James Joseph Minder, 74, of Scottsdale, Ariz., told The Republican newspaper in Springfield.

Minder said he submitted his resignation voluntarily at a meeting of directors of the Smith and Wesson Holding Corp. earlier this week, the newspaper reported Thursday.

Company officials did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment. However, the newspaper said the gun maker was expected to name a replacement for Minder on Friday.

Minder’s resignation came three weeks after The Arizona Republic reported that he spent more than 10 years in Michigan prisons in the 1950s and 1960s for a string of armed robberies and an attempted prison escape.

When asked for a comment, Minder replied “I’m proud of the products that Smith & Wesson provides so that families can protect themselves from people like me.”

This should surprise nobody and outrage everybody :

The panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States will get one hour to ask President Bush what he knew about events leading up to the suicide airline hijackings, the White House said on Friday.

“They are looking at an hour as you pointed out,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said when asked by a reporter whether he could confirm reports that Bush was limiting the meeting to an hour.

Rather than sitting down with all 10 members of the so-called 9/11 commission, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have only agreed to meet privately with its chairman, Thomas Kean, and the vice chairman, Lee Hamilton.

The panel would prefer that Bush meet with all of the members.

Created by the U.S. Congress, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States is charged with examining lapses in intelligence and national security in the months before the attacks. Strikes by hijacked airplanes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon killed about 3,000 people.

The panel has expressed concern that it will not have enough.

An hour is all they get? They’ll barely be able to go through the timeline of what he did on 9/11 in an hour. How can anybody truly think that Bush is committed to keeping us safe if he’s willing to spend more time at the Daytona 500 then with the 9/11 Commission? He probably spends more time doing the “Find the Pictures” from his latest issue of Highlights than he will discussing the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history. Yeah, this is pretty much standard fare for Bush, but it still pisses me off every time I read about it.

No, not for that job. For this job (link via Atrios):

Terry McAuliffe, who rose from Syracuse politics to lead the senate National Committee, will quit the chairmanship when his term expires next year.

“I’m going to leave here in February of ‘05, finish my term, and the legacy that I will get to leave this party is this is a party that is in the best technological and financial shape in the history of our party,” McAuliffe said Wednesday.
. . .
Observers credit McAuliffe with rebuilding the national party by paying off its debts, building new headquarters, introducing high-tech campaigning and rearranging the primary schedule.

McAuliffe, 47, learned politics at the side of his father, Jack, a former treasurer of the Onondaga County Democratic party. By 2000, Terry McAuliffe had raised an estimated $300 million for the Democrats and become Bill Clinton’s best friend and fund-raiser.

Dean’s looking for a new direction right now and I can’t think of a better one than this. Dean’s already proven himself capable of raking in money and firing people up. This is the perfect job for him.

I would love to see him step in now to be a co-chair with McAuliffe during this election. Let McAuliffe stroke the egos of all the big money guys and let Dean work towards more a grassroots-style organization within the DNC. Maybe Dean could dust off his attempt to get 2 million people to donate $100 each?

I know you’re probably getting sick of reading about The Passion, but I just saw two items on the Drudge Report that I want to post.

First, was that the movie killed an old lady :

A woman collapsed in an East Wichita theatre this morning, during a showing of “The Passion Of The Christ”. Peggy Law apparently suffered a heart attack. She was pronounced dead a short time later at a Wichita medical center.
. . .
People viewing the movie at the Warren Theatre East say Law collapsed during the portion of the movie where the crucifixion of Christ was shown.

A few off-duty doctors and nurses who were in the audience tried to revive her. But when she was taken away in the ambulance, authorities say Law still had no pulse.

The movie has been criticized for it’s graphic portrayal of Jesus’ death. Religious leaders around the country and here in Wichita say people need to be prepared for the graphic brutality.

Whether Law’s death and the timing in the film are related, we will never know, but religious and medical officials stress this film is not for the faint-hearted.

I can’t think of any tasteless jokes to make about this, but have fun in comments.

Also, it looks like Mel might be looking for more religious material :

As for what he’ll do after resting a while in his hammock, Gibson hinted there were myriad other stories in the Bible that deserve celluloid treatment.

“There are good stories in that book — it’s worth looking into them.”

Since Mel’s such a big fan of explicit realistic depictions of the Bible, what should he do next? Sodom and Gomorrah complete with graphic anal sex scenes? An Old Testament movie about God commanding the murder of all the “firstborn” babies in Egypt? (I guess he wasn’t pro-life yet) Moses killing a bull and playing around with its blood and guts?

Here’s a few cartoons about the gay marriage amendment that caught my eye. The first four are from Daryl Cagle’s Professional Cartoonists Index and the last one is from Calpundit.

Well, the reviews for “The Passion of The Christ” (not just any Christ, it’s the Christ) are in, and they’re surprisingly split down the middle. Since positive reviews of this film are about as exciting to read as going to midnight mass sober, here’s some quotes from some of the more interesting negative reviews :

Planet Sick-Boy

To me, there’s absolutely no difference between the religious zealots in the film who scream for Jesus’s death and the real-life people four-walling entire theatres to see The Passion with their flock. There is, however, great irony in the fact that these same people who were gesticulating until their arms fell off when their kids saw Janet Jackson’s boob pop out are going to drag those same kids to one of the most graphically violent films ever made.

Los Angeles Daily News

Lost in the film’s beautifully lit orgy of abuse is the sense of who Jesus was and why the Jewish priests – Gibson’s villains in this old-fashioned melodrama – wanted him crucified. Gibson, who directed the film and co-wrote it with Benedict Fitzgerald, teases us with brief flashbacks of Jesus’ life – the Sermon on the Mount, the Last Supper, some tender moments with mother Mary. But these are just blips between the relentless brutality. Jesus’ suffering is all that matters in this movie.

New York Daily News

Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” is the most virulently anti-Semitic movie made since the German propaganda films of World War II.
. . .
The movie is a compendium of tortures that would horrify the regulars at an S&M club. Gibson spares not one cringing closeup to showcase what he imagines Jesus must have endured.

The lashings are so brutal that chunks of flesh go flying and blood rains like outtakes of “Kill Bill.”

The Romans capture their prey with the help of a terminally regretful Judas, then haul Him around to be whipped, beaten, spat upon, mutilated and finally crucified – all with the cheering encouragement of a ghoulish mob of Jews. No one in the crowd speaks up for Jesus, not even, strangely, his mother (Maia Morgenstern).

Religious intolerance has been used as an excuse for some of history’s worst atrocities. “The Passion of the Christ” is a brutal, nasty film that demonizes Jews at an unfortunate time in history.

The Star Ledger

It’s perhaps the height of irony that a self-professed true believer like Gibson could get it so wrong, and that an admitted sinner like Martin Scorsese could get it right. If so, it is an irony that the Jesus of the Gospels — who ate with sinners — could appreciate.

Because, while Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” showed us how Jesus died, Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” showed us how he lived. And reminded us that, it was not Jesus’ immunity from human frailties that made him a shining light. It was his ability to rise above them.

Newsday

Where, one wonders throughout, is the “tolerance, love and forgiveness” that Gibson has promised his audience? Where, beyond some furtive snatches of backstory, is the buoyant embrace of life and hope that Christ’s message represents to millions? This movie is little else besides a depiction of punishment so ruthless and unyielding that watching it unfold feels like punishment.

Cranky Critic

Two hours of gruesome, sadistic, stomach-turning and hard core graphically violent torture detached from any background information is not something to expose kids to, regardless of religion. Kids of a slightly older age may ask “Mommy? Why is Jesus a punching bag?” and then you can explain all the stuff about “dying for your sins,” and inflict enough psychological terror on the kid to require a good twenty years of therapy. Or you can blame the Jews which, intended or not, is the message the film delivers as Gibson caps the piece with all the high priests standing at the foot of the cross, looking, ah, regretful.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Emphasizing Jesus’ agony over His ecstasy, Gibson has delivered a blood-drenched epic more stunning for its brutal violence than for its depiction of the calvary. This work of obvious devotion may well be the first spiritual splatter film. It makes Gladiator and Braveheart – even Friday the 13th – seem mild by comparison.

Toronto Star

Even from my position of relative spiritual impoverishment, I have no doubt that Gibson believes completely and utterly in the divinity of his mission. From precisely the same position however, I also believe, just as completely and utterly, The Passion Of The Christ to be a work of fundamentalist pornography. What graphic sex is to the use of the body in hardcore porno, graphic violence is to destruction of the body of Christ in this Passion.

The Fresno Bee

If this were any other film and any other subject, “The Passion” would have been slapped with an NC-17 rating faster than you can say “Council of Nicaea.” And if it had been any story but the Passion, the care and extreme to which Gibson goes to depict each nuance of Jesus Christ’s suffering — down to the tidy little table on which the Roman soldiers keep their arsenal of whips, chains and blunt instruments — would have been roundly mocked for its fetishistic qualities.

Slate

You’re thinking there must be something to The Passion of the Christ besides watching a man tortured to death, right? Actually, no: This is a two-hour-and-six-minute snuff movie?The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre?that thinks it’s an act of faith. For Gibson, Jesus is defined not by his teachings in life?by his message of mercy, social justice, and self-abnegation, some of it rooted in the Jewish Torah, much of it defiantly personal?but by the manner of his execution.

And just for fun, here’s a hilarious quote from one of the positive reviews :

CAP Alert

Regarding Jim Caviezel, he spent so much time in full-body make-up that his skin blistered. Jim also spent much of his time in a loin cloth in the Italian winter, sometimes unable to speak due to the cold. Jim was obviously so absorbed into the part that he was able to overcome a lung infection, numerous cuts and bruises and a shoulder dislocation to finish the picture. Interesting to say the least, while working on Golgotha, Jim was struck by lightning — then got up and walked away. Obviously his part in the film was a labor of love for Jim. And it may be obvious to some that God intended for this film to be finished, the leading actor’s miseries notwithstanding.

Yeah, sure. God strikes people with lightning as a way of encouraging them. It’s sort of a religious high five.

In a few hundred years, when historians of the future are putting the pieces together and trying to figure out why the Holy American Empire crumbled, I hope they come across this article.

Large voter turnouts are expected for Tuesday’s presidential primary in Utah and caucuses in Idaho.

Hawaii is also holding caucuses, but the state Democratic party chairman says because a well-known Hawaiian contestant will be on American Idol tonight, many voters may stay home to watch the show instead.

If you’re not too busy watching American Idol tonight, you check out the election returns here.

Full Disclosure : I’ve become hooked on American Idol this season. Like everyone else, I’m addicted to the reality show formula of watching people become emotionally devestated as entertainment. That doesn’t mean I won’t be switching back and forth between Fox and CNN, but it does mean that I’m as vulnerable to the tone deaf interpretations of “Caribbean Queen” as anyone.

These are the rights that the president is trying to prevent same-sex couples from having (link via Atrios) :

Tax Benefits

Filing joint income tax returns with the IRS and state taxing authorities.

Creating a “family partnership” under federal tax laws, which allows you to divide business income among family members.

Estate Planning Benefits

Inheriting a share of your spouse’s estate.

Receiving an exemption from both estate taxes and gift taxes for all property you give or leave to your spouse.

Creating life estate trusts that are restricted to married couples, including QTIP trusts, QDOT trusts, and marital deduction trusts.

Obtaining priority if a conservator needs to be appointed for your spouse — that is, someone to make financial and/or medical decisions on your spouse?s behalf.

Government Benefits

Receiving Social Security, Medicare, and disability benefits for spouses.

Receiving veterans’ and military benefits for spouses, such as those for education, medical care, or special loans.

Receiving public assistance benefits.

Employment Benefits

Obtaining insurance benefits through a spouse’s employer.

Taking family leave to care for your spouse during an illness.

Receiving wages, workers’ compensation, and retirement plan benefits for a deceased spouse.

Taking bereavement leave if your spouse or one of your spouse?s close relatives dies.

Medical Benefits

Visiting your spouse in a hospital intensive care unit or during restricted visiting hours in other parts of a medical facility.

Making medical decisions for your spouse if he or she becomes incapacitated and unable to express wishes for treatment.

Death Benefits

Consenting to after-death examinations and procedures.

Making burial or other final arrangements.

Family Benefits

Filing for stepparent or joint adoption.

Applying for joint foster care rights.

Receiving equitable division of property if you divorce.

Receiving spousal or child support, child custody, and visitation if you divorce.

Housing Benefits

Living in neighborhoods zoned for “families only.”

Automatically renewing leases signed by your spouse.

Consumer Benefits

Receiving family rates for health, homeowners’, auto, and other types of insurance.

Receiving tuition discounts and permission to use school facilities.

Other consumer discounts and incentives offered only to married couples or families.

Other Legal Benefits and Protections

Suing a third person for wrongful death of your spouse and loss of consortium (loss of intimacy).

Suing a third person for offenses that interfere with the success of your marriage, such as alienation of affection and criminal conversation (these laws are available in only a few states).

Claiming the marital communications privilege, which means a court can?t force you to disclose the contents of confidential communications between you and your spouse during your marriage.

Receiving crime victims’ recovery benefits if your spouse is the victim of a crime.

Obtaining domestic violence protection orders.

Obtaining immigration and residency benefits for noncitizen spouse.

Visiting rights in jails and other places where visitors are restricted to immediate family.

I dunno about you, but most of these don’t scream “the most enduring human institution” or ” the most fundamental institution of civilization” to me. Why should we amend the constitution to block people from sharing these rights?

Man, this term just makes my skin crawl. Every time I hear Bush say “judicial activism” (or “activist courts” or any other variation) I just want to punch the TV. Does Bush even understand how the legal system works?

Y’see, cases are brought before courts by plaintiffs, which are then argued by lawyers. Based on the arguments of the lawyers, the judge (and often juries) make decisions based on the laws and/or constitution (both state and federal). And that’s the only way they’re allowed to make a decision. Any other way, say based on personal opinion or whim, is against the rules.

Are these “activist judges” issuing rulings in violation of the law? If so, then Bush needs to explain the legal flaws in those rulings. If not, then the problem isn’t judges being activists, it’s that the current laws aren’t homophobic enough for Bush.

Lots of good stuff in the comments for this post. First up is boloboffin’s great series of posts that covers a lot more aspects of the movie that I did. Here’s an index :

1. The resurrection of Jesus is not historical.
2. Pilate was the instigator of the death of Jesus, not Caiaphas.
3. Pilate was not the sensitive, thoughtful ruler portrayed in the film.
4. It wasn’t blasphemy to identify yourself as the Messiah or the Son of Man.
5. The Jews who spoke with Jesus were trying to intercede on Jesus’ behalf, not railroad him.
Interlude – Crucifixion Porn
6. The cross is wrong.
7. Roman soldiers were present when Jesus was arrested.
8. Koine Greek, the most common language of the day, isn’t used in the film.
9. Mary the mother of Jesus had other sons.
10. Nails in the wrist, not in the hands.

Also in the comments, Rowdy pointed out this Reuters article that I missed. The history geek quotes alone make this an articlke that you should check out :

Mel Gibson’s portrayal of the final 12 hours of Jesus in his film “The Passion of the Christ” has been hailed as the gospel truth by some believers, but many scholars complain that it is riddled with historical errors.

Their complaints range from inaccuracies about hairstyles and clothes to a lack of gospel context in the film which has raised a furor among Jewish groups who fear its graphic depiction of the crucifixion will fan anti-Jewish violence.
. . .
Experts say this was his first mistake as Greek was the language spoken in Jerusalem during Jesus’s time, along with Aramaic and some Hebrew spoken by Jews.

“Jesus talking to (Pontius) Pilate and Pilate to Jesus in Latin!” exclaimed John Dominic Crossan, a professor of religious studies at the Chicago-based Roman Catholic De Paul University. “I mean in your dreams. It would have been Greek.”

Latin was reserved for official decrees or used by the elite. Most Roman centurions in the Holy Land spoke Greek rather than Latin, historians and archaeologists told Reuters.

The mistakes, experts say, didn’t stop with the wrong language, which Crossan — who speaks Latin — said was so badly pronounced in the film that it was almost incomprehensible.

“He has a long-haired Jesus…Jesus didn’t have long hair,” said physical anthropologist Joe Zias, who has studied hundreds of skeletons found in archaeological digs in Jerusalem. “Jewish men back in antiquity did not have long hair.”
. . .
Crucifixion was a common punishment meted out by the Romans to rebellious Jews during Jesus’s time. The Romans crucified so many Jews, said Zias, that “eventually they ran out of crosses and they ran out of space.”

The depiction of the crucifixion was the part of the film most riddled with errors for Zias, who studied the skeleton of a crucified Jewish man from Jesus’s time — the only remains ever found of a crucified victim from antiquity.

Zias said Jesus would not have carried the entire cross to the crucifixion as vertical beams were kept permanently in place by the ever efficient Romans.

“Nobody was physically able to carry the thing (the entire cross).It weighed about 350 pounds,” Zias said. “He (Jesus) carried the cross-beam, maximum.”

And finally, on the subject of the reported anti-semitism of the film, Ezra and Jesse over and Pandagon have said most of what I wanted to say on the subject, but I’d like to add that in one sense, Gibson does seem to be correctly quoting the Bible :

Matthew 27:22-25

“What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?” Pilate asked.

They all answered, “Crucify him!”

“Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.

But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”

When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”

All the people answered, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!”

Leaving aside the Bible’s sketchy accounts of history, this is just one of four accounts of the crucifixion. Why did Gibson reportedly choose this one? Well, as the title suggests, “The Passion of the Christ” is made in the passion play tradition. Here’s what the Anti-Defemation League has to say about that :

The central narrative of Christian theology is the passion, i.e. the trials and crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus. There are four different accounts of the passion in the gospels of Christian Scriptures, in which Jews play different roles. All these accounts culminate in the death and resurrection of Jesus as revealing God’s saving power available to humanity. Good Friday and Easter celebrate respectively the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as the high points of Christian creed and experience. Christians frequently present dramatic representations of this narrative known as “passion plays.”

Because much of Christian Scriptures were written in polemical style that often portrayed Jews and Jesus–and therefore Judaism and Christianity–as adversaries, a common interpretation of the crucifixion was that the Jewish people were responsible for killing Jesus. According to this interpretation, both the Jews at the time of Jesus and the Jewish people for all time bear a divine curse for the sin of deicide. Throughout nearly 1900 years of Christian-Jewish history, the charge of deicide has led to hatred and violence against Jews of Europe and America, and various forms of anti-Semitic expression. Historically, Holy Week (the week leading up to Easter Sunday) was a period when Jews were most vulnerable and when Christians perpetrated some of the worst violence against their Jewish neighbors.

In 1965 at the Second Vatican Council in Rome, the Roman Catholic Church took formal steps to correct this interpretation of the passion. In its document, Nostra Aetate, the Church officially repudiated both the deicide charge and all forms of anti-Semitism. Most Protestant churches followed suit, and since 1965 many Christians have worked cooperatively with Jews to correct anti-Semitic interpretations of within Christian theology. Understanding the influential role that passion plays have exercised in the spread of anti-Semitism, the Catholic Church today urges great caution in all dramatic presentations of the passion to ensure that they not furnish any impetus for anti-Semitic attitude or behavior.

As you’ve probably heard, Gibson is a member of a Catholic splinter group that’s rejected Vatican 2. Does this make him an anti-semite? I’ll leave that up to others to decide since I haven’t seen the movie, but the evidence does seem to lean in that direction.

Okay, read the headline and first few paragraphs with me and tell me whether or not you think this is good or bad :

Kerry’s senate Record Mixed on Defense

John Kerry talks at length about his military service and his strong commitment to the nation’s defense, but his senate voting record on Pentagon spending is a combination of billion-dollar budgets approved and multimillion-dollar weapons opposed.

While the four-term Massachusetts senator has voted for nearly all of the Defense Department’s spending and authorization bills since 1990 ? as the overall total has crept closer to $400 billion ? he has a long record of backing cuts to a number of military aircraft and missile-defense programs, an Associated Press analysis shows.

Leading Republicans, including party chairman Ed Gillespie, have seized on those votes to challenge Kerry, questioning the senate front-runner’s record on national security.

Without even getting into Kerry’s defense, I gotta say that this article makes me like him more. Raising defense spending while cutting funding for all bullshit pet projects like “Star Wars” would do a lot more to strengthen our military than Bush’s plans to make wounded soldiers pay for their own hospital meals. This article makes me think that a president Kerry would be more concerned with spending money on personnel than mini-nukes. That doesn’t sound “mixed” to me.

I know I said that we should just ignore Ralph (which I fully intend to do once I finish writing this post), but Matthew Yglesias at The American Prospect has some pretty harsh things to say that you’ve gotta read :

In reality, though, while John Kerry (or John Edwards, for that matter) might not be an ideal leader, Nader would be a simply awful president. He is, for one thing, grossly unqualified. He has no experience in foreign or military affairs, macroeconomic management, or with tax policy. Even on the topic of consumer regulation, neither he nor Nader-affiliated groups seem to have been involved in a substantive way in key fights for several years.

On TV this Sunday, Nader was angry about the extent of corporate influence on American public policy. There is, he said, “too much power and wealth in too few hands,” and “money is still pouring in from corporate interests.” So does Nader have a plan to reform campaign financing? Apparently not. The issues section of his Web site likewise has nothing to say about it.

On the economic front, Nader criticized the Bush tax cuts for causing huge deficits and proposed repealing them. He also proposed spending the money gained by this repeal on “massive public works” to provide employment. A candidate who understood economics would know how to distinguish between the issue of long-term deficits (bad) and short-term ones (fine, if targeted appropriately). Nader seems to grasp neither.

On foreign policy, if he really thinks Al Gore “would have” invaded Iraq, he might want to read some of Gore’s speeches on the subject. Nader says “it was oil” that motivated the Bush administration to go to war, a view that demonstrates no understanding of the neoconservative ideology that dominates American foreign policy.

Nader also spoke of the need to secure health care for more Americans. Good for him. Only Edwards has a plan that will accomplish this. Kerry has a somewhat different plan that would bring care to even more people. Even Bush has a plan that would help a few of the wealthiest uninsured. Nader has nothing to offer but vague platitudes.

Also, while I’m on the subject, I gotta point out Nader’s hilarious vow that he’ll attract more “liberal Republicans” than the Democrats. Ralph, they’re called “Libertarians” and they’ve proven over and over again that the only criteria they use to pick a candidate is the one who promises them the largest tax cut.

It looks like Smirky has officially chosen sides :

Jumping into a volatile election-year debate on same-sex weddings, President Bush on Tuesday backed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage ? a move he said was needed to stop judges from changing the definition of the “most enduring human institution.”

“After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization,” the president said in urging Congress to approve such an amendment. “Their action has created confusion on an issue that requires clarity.”

Marriage cannot be severed from its “cultural, religious and natural” roots, Bush said in the White House’s Roosevelt Room. It was a statement that was sure to please his conservative backers.

Also, it looks like yesterday’s Pentagon global warming report story is getting more attention :

A secret report prepared by the Pentagon warns that climate change may lead to global catastrophe costing millions of lives and is a far greater threat than terrorism.

The report was ordered by an influential US Pentagon advisor but was covered up by “US defense chiefs” for four months, until it was “obtained” by the British weekly The Observer.

The leak promises to draw angry attention to US environmental and military policies, following Washington’s rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and President George W. Bush’s skepticism about global warning — a stance that has stunned scientists worldwide.
. . .
Coming from the Pentagon, normally a bastion of conservative politics, the report is expected to bring environmental issues to the fore in the US presidential race.

So he wants to change the constitution to include homophobia and he doesn’t believe in global warming? Keep taking those extreme positions, Dubya. You’re doing all the hard work for us.