@Randem

John McCain’s tax return statement became public last Friday, and the details raise some interesting questions in my mind. Actually, it’s one detail in particular: McCain receives a 100-percent disability pension, amounting to almost $60,000 tax-free.

The first, most obvious question is this: Is a man who is 100% disabled fit to lead our country? If elected, McCain would be the oldest man ever to enter the Presidency. Shouldn’t that fact alone require an exceptional bill of health?

I would never belittle the heroism of a man who suffered the way he did in the service of our country. There should never be any question of my respect for who he has been, but while the way in which he acquired his disability is admirable, that shouldn’t make for exceptions for his physical ability to lead this nation.

Sure, it’s not as if you need to bench-press your body weight or run a six-minute mile in order to pick up red phones or shake the hands of diplomats. But with major disabilities come increased risks for other health problems. One has to assume that McCain’s choice of running-mate would have increased likeliness of being called to fill the role of President.

The next question this brings to mind is: What does this say about his financial policy? At the rate at which he was taxed, McCain would have had to pay an extra $18,000 on this income if this income were taxed.

This is the same guy whose campaign platform includes reforming the tax code; the same guy who said, “Americans do not resent paying their rightful share of taxes - what they do resent is being subjected to thousands of pages of needless and often irrational rules and demands from the IRS.”

Considering how anxious he is to cut everybody’s tax rates — even as our national debt reaches new, unimaginable heights — McCain openly exploits a “100% disability” loophole to save money and not pay taxes. What does that say about him? Apparently, Americans do not resent paying taxes, but he does.

With elections coming, there’s a lot of discussion about The War Against Terror (TWAT). TWAT is going to be a big issue when you go to the poll, so I think it’s important to understand all the ins and outs.

First, it comes as no surprised that TWAT was first proposed during the Clinton administration. It was well known that Bin Laden wanted to blow our towers. (He had already tried to do it once in the garage.) The proposal, however, came at the end of Clinton’s term, so it was decided that the next administration should be given the reigns in deciding how to proceed, so TWAT was handed to Bush, whose was debriefed early in his term.

Bush dropped the ball. Bush and Dick didn’t take TWAT seriously, so they didn’t use protection. The end result: a 19-man mile-high club blew our towers. That got Bush hot and bothered, and he responded by shooting his load in Afghanistan.

The real problems started, though, when Bush and Dick got bent, and decide to go after Iraq in search of lubrication. The oval office thought the Iraqis would welcome us openly, so they just charged right in to the dry climate, without any foreplay.

As it turns out, the Iraqis didn’t really want it, they were just caught up in the moment. And then it got out that Bush and Dick were lying, saying whatever they had to just to get some action. At one point, they changed positions and Colin got irritated.

Nobody was prepared. Our guys were inserted without adequate protection and they’ve been pounding away at TWAT for quite some time. The friction has been intense, and lately they’re even experiencing surges. The whole thing seems ready to blow, and now the question is whether we should pull out, or stay in and make a long-term commitment.

If our guys pull out, they can come home and get some rest, and be ready to party next weekend. But Bush wants to stay in, because he wants to give birth to a new democracy. But the problem is, we were never committed to Iraq, we just wanted to get in their plants, and if you give birth without commitment you end up paying for it for the next 20 years.

As far as I can tell, the real issue is that Bush thinks he’s already sown the seeds of democracy, and he’s against aborting, so he thinks there’s only one thing left to do. But other people disagree; they think that we haven’t climaxed yet, and that we can avoid a big mistake before it’s too late.

It comes down to this: Bush tried to date-rape the middle east, knock them up, and then leave us paying child support… but our country can’t even afford our own children. Sometimes, it’s better to pull out.

Hillary Clinton may have won three of the big states last Tuesday, but it’s not states that count, it’s delgates. She continues to lag in delegates, and now it’s mathematically impossible for her to win the nomination by the agreed rules. Nevertheless she continues to keep the drama rolling.

So now we have Clinton and Obama clawing and scratching at each other while McCain sits pat. McCain now has the luxury of proactively winning more support while the Democratic contenders do all his dirty work for him. For the Democratic Party, this is a horrible strategic mistake.

This draws a nice parallel to another of history’s big rivalries: that between the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers. Let me elaborate…

Just like two parties, both the Packers and the Bears are hoping to find the new leader. On one side you have the Packers who, like the Republicans, have picked out the person who they want to be the leader, and have begun to prepare him for the task. On the other hand you have the Bears who, like the Democrats, can’t commit to a leader, and the candidates for the role have to fight each other to win it.

The Packers will go into training camp committed to one guy — Aaron Rogers — and no matter what else has to be worked out for the team, the quarterback will spend his time preparing to lead his team and win games. Meanwhile, the Bears will spend the majority of their off-season distracted by multiple quarterbacks competing; whoever wins out will be underprepared, and he will be second-guessed all season.

So what’s my point? If the Democrats or the Bears want to have a chance of winning, they need to make a commitment to one person, stop the in-fighting, and start preparing to win because their opponents — the Republicans and the Packers — are already formulating their strategies to win.

I happened to come upon this illustration of President Bush’s entourage. I think the reality of this information speaks for itself.

I saw a clip on CNN while I was at lunch yesterday saying that President Dubya had vetoed a bill that would have given healthcare to 10 million poor children in America.

I really want to believe that there’s more to it. I want to believe that there was some pork in the bill that Bush was trying to prevent. I always doubt that anything is as cut-and-dried hateful as the media makes it out to be, so I can’t really imagine that he’s just some evil tryant who want to prevent poor kids from going to the hospital.

But then I read this:

Bush stated that “this legislation would move health care in this country in the wrong direction. Under this bill government coverage would displace private health insurance for many children.”

And it really was that clear to me. This douche-bag has spent his entire presidency looking out for the best interest of the healthcare industry (in his free time, when he wasn’t busy making new terrorist enemies) at the cost of actual health care for real people. He’s been fighting to protect the bottom line for a big industry rather than looking out for the good of the American people. And this is no different.

This bill was not vetoed because it was bad for Americans… it was vetoed because it might encourage some of the affected families to take the free government healthcare instead of paying for the overpriced insurance plans they have now. In other words, it would have actually been good for Americans, but at a cost to the evil corporate empire.

Not on his watch. No way.

Federal Judge Ann Aiken thinks so.

In a ruling released yesterday, Judge Aiken found sections 1804 and 1823 in violation of our constitutional guarantees against unreasonable searches and seizures.

“Now, for the first time in our Nation’s history, the government can conduct surveillance to gather evidence for use in a criminal case without a traditional warrant, as long as it presents a non-reviewable assertion that it also has a significant interest in the targeted person for foreign intelligence purposes,” wrote Judge Aiken in her opinion.

In addition to finding the relevant sections of the Patriot Act unconstitutional, the judge also ordered the government to destroy all the illegally-obtained evidence.

You can read more about it at Ars Technica.

Oh, how boring would my life be if I didn’t have the TSA to keep me entertained? Just like last time, these ever-vigilant defenders of justice have thwarted a deviously masterminded plan to sneak a cup of coffee on board an airplane, clearly violating that most important of safety regulations: no liquids.

Well thank God our heroes of the airways stopped that passenger from drinking all that coffee, because he had a box-cutter. If he’d been allowed to get all wired and jittery on caffeine, while cramped into that tiny space on board the plane, he might have gone crazy!

I’m starting to see the logic. I mean what other possible catastrophes may have been thwarted thanks to the liquid ban?

• Too-much-aftershave-guy can’t bring his Aqua Velva in his carry on, preventing the people next to him from getting fed up with the scent and going ape shit at 30,000 feet.
• Kids can’t bring their 400-oz aluminum can of energy drink with them, so they get tired of kicking the seat in front of them after an hour or so, instead of three or four hours, causing the person seated in front of them to go ape shit at 30,000 feet.
• Pet lovers won’t be able to put their goldfish in a bag of water and fly it with them on vacation. Sure, maybe the fish will die from not being fed, but at least it won’t cause the cat in the lap of the person next to you to go ape shit at 30,000 feet and scratch up everyone in the cabin.
• Vegetable oil, which kills you from the inside, will definitely not be clogging any arteries, making your heart go ape shit at 30,000 feet.
• No shampoo, so there won’t be any women getting naked and shampooing their hair with Herbal Essesnces, causing some sex-starved maniac to go ape shit at 30,000 feet.
• There will be no sun-tan lotion, relieving you of the temptation to climb out onto the wing and work on your tan at 30,000 feet.

I brought it up here and here, and then overtly raised the question here: why does it seem that the terror threats always seem to increase right before an election?

It appears that I now have my answer. The New Republic has an article up detailing the research of three psychologists who’ve discovered that behavior can be altered to favor one candidate over another when the voters’ are encouraged (subconsciously, of course) of their mortality.

In their experiments, Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski make a good case that mortality reminders from September 11 enhanced Bush’s popularity through November 2004. But, on the basis of their research, it is possible to draw even broader conclusions about U.S. politics after September 11. Mortality reminders not only enhanced the appeal of Bush’s political style but also deepened and broadened the appeal of the conservative social positions that Republicans had been running on.

Scary stuff, man. Go read it. Understand what they’re doing. Subconscious manipulation stops working once you’re conscious of it.

The last bastions of hope in our defense against hijacking hijinks, the TSA, have proven once again that safety and security are not possible with bureaucracy.

In their latest caper, those wild-and-zany protectors of our freedom ran a passenger’s bag through the security scanner and saw something that looked suspicious. The scanner operator waved over another TSA employee, who confirmed the suspiciousness of the item on the scanner. Lucy! You got some ’splainin to do! The passenger had brazenly tried to carry a container of pudding on board the airplane, and it would have worked, too, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids.

The crusaders of justice had prevailed, thwarting another evil attempt to carry a liquid onto an airplane. Freedom has been protected. Americans can sleep safely at night, confident that Bin Laden and his brood won’t get past our defenses.

Later in the day, after his first flight and before his connecting flight, our passenger was rummaging through his bag in search of a pen, when he discovered he had inadvertently left a knife with a four-inch blade in his bag. One can only presume that possession of a stabby-stab knife of stabbing is not nearly as big a threat to our national security as a pudding. Maybe it’s the calories.