Coyote Blog

I got a good laugh today at all the folks, mostly on the left, who were saying that they will leave the country now that Bush is re-elected.

I was a reluctant Bush supporter. As a Libertarian, voting for major-party candidates is seldom a satisfying experience. I am well aware of the baggage Bush carries - he is not a small government libertarian. He is, however, also not a trial lawyer, not promising to balance the budget on my back, and not assuming that terrorists are wronged freedom fighters we should negotiate with.

Anyway, for all the flaws of either candidate, a Bush or Kerry America is still the best place on earth. Period. Those of you who want to leave will quickly find that, for one, America has some of the freest immigration policies in the world - just try to get a green card or a work permit for Canada or France. Good luck finding a job in Germany or France, as the semi-socialist policies that you likely admire there keep unemployment rates in the double digits. And by the way, don't expect any welfare benefits if you perhaps are imagining a slacker paradise, for though we in the US may be generous and argue how many benefits to give immigrants, you aren't getting anything as a new immigrant over there. Oh, and if you find a job, have fun with that first tax bill. And for those who want to go the extra mile and be human shields in the Gaza strip or Fallujah, you will certainly have an interesting time as you discover that that "religious fundamentalist" Bush looks like Madeline Murray O'Hare compared to your new islamo-fascist buddies.

UPDATE #1

I know the above seems exaggerated. It is not. Go read the comments section at Kos or Wonkette or Atrios. However, for just one example, try No Right Turn which has this:

There's not a fuck of a lot separating Osama bin Laden's Islamo-fascists and Dubya's Christian fundamentalists - they even follow the same god. The only real difference lies in who they want to kill. There's nothing there worth believing in, and nothing to hope for, except maybe that they'll all kill each other so that we members of the reality-based community can get on with our lives in peace

Hard to know where to start. OK, for fun, lets compare Bush to the Islamo-fascists on the three areas that most tick off Bush's detractors. Remember that I am a libertarian, so "Bush detractors" on many of these issues includes me:

Gay Rights: In the US, gays can live many places openly with some but decreasing harassment. Bush does not want them to marry. In some Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, pre-invasion Afghanistan, and Iran, homosexuality is punishable by death. Lets see, can't get married vs. death penalty. Equivalent?

Women's Rights: For some reason, this is defined in our country as being able to have an abortion. I would have thought free speech, ability to vote, right to bear arms, etc. would be women's rights too, but that is not what people seem to be talking about when they say it. So, on abortion. Abortion today in the US is legal, safe, and readily available. Bush has attempted to put some restrictions on it, such as parental consent for teenagers and elimination of certain types of procedures, but has never publicly advocated making it entirely illegal. In most of the Arab world, abortion is illegal. And, if the pregnancy is the result of sex out of wedlock, the woman risks being stoned to death. In addition, women have virtually none of those "other" women's rights we have in the US, like being able to vote, drive, show some skin, have a job outside the home, speak freely, etc. A black man in apartheid South Africa had far more rights and freedoms than a woman in the Arab world. Lets see - restrictions on certain abortion procedures vs. the status of a slave and the likelihood of getting beaten or stoned to death. Equivalent?

"Obscene" or profane speech
In the US, people have an incredible amount of freedom to say about any jackass thing they want to say. People such as Michael Moore who skewer our leaders or like Larry Flint who produce pornography are not only tolerated, but feted and made wealthy. The one exception is that the Bush administration has been more aggressive in enforcing decency standards against broadcast TV and radio, in part because of the anachronistic way these were originally licensed. This has resulted in fines related to Janet Jacksons breast and Howard Stern' language. In the Islamo-fascist world, no dissent is tolerated, nor is pornography, bad language, or anything else unacceptable to the priests. In the US, priests can complain about your low standards, but can't generally make you shut up. In Iran, for example, the priests can have you killed for your speech or form of expression, and they do. Routinely. The Janet Jacksons and Howard Sterns of Iran are probably dead. Let's see - some restrictions on TV and radio stations using the 7 banned words and showing nudity or death. Equivalent?

I am sick of these moral equivalencies. As it turns out, I actually disagree with the Bush position on many of the issues above, but I think it is absurd to say that Bush is as bad as the Islamo-fascists. The tone of the piece is to somehow pitch this as a religious war, that it is just about Christians trying to kill Muslims. But go back to September 10, 2001. Not many people in this country spared many thoughts to the Muslim world. It was only after about 3000 non-denominational deaths that people got worked up. By the way, WTC attack 1 occurred long before anyone in the Arab world ever heard of W, and the September 11 attack was planned long before he was in office. I swear that people increasingly are trying to reverse the causality here - it won't be long before I read somewhere that the 9/11 attacks were in revenge for W's invasion of Iraq.

By the way, I can't resist one last quote from this same post:

A recent New Statesman editorial commented that having watched one great beacon of hope - the Soviet Union - collapse into a nightmare, the world could hardly bear it if the other one - the United States - fell as well.

Stalin? Soviet Union? Beacons of hope. Unbelievable. The far left increasingly calls itself the "reality-based" community. Does any of this match your reality? For more, see here. Hat tip to Kiwi Blog for the link

UPDATE #2

In my original post, I jokingly said that I was taking up a collection to help people by buying them airplane tickets out of the country if they so choose. Though it was a joke, I still took it off. It sounds too much like the old conservative "America, love it or leave it" junk. America is a better place for having the broadest possible range of opinion, and I would be sad to see this end.

UPDATE #3

This post turns out to be a warm-up for this more complete post on trying to keep some sense of perspective post-election

Overlawyered.com has a roundup of how litigation-related propositions faired, the results are mostly good news for those of us shocked at the growing power of trial lawyers.

Yesterday, Florida apparently passed a new minimum wage $1.00 higher than the Federal minimum wage of $5.15 per hour.

This is actually an oddity - a red state with a higher minimum wage. Before the election, this Department of Labor map, showing the states with minimum wages higher than the Federal rate (shown in green) looked a lot like the presidential election map. With the exception of Alaska (which has price and wage levels so different from the lower 48 that it should have its own currency) all the states with higher than federal minimum wages are also strong Kerry states (e.g. Left Coast, New England and Illinois).

This is going to have huge implications for us. Camping is a low margin business, and most hosts are paid minimum wage. In fact, many of our hosts, who are retired, don't want to get paid at all, so they don't mess with their social security, but that of course is not possible. The total increase in wages will be higher than what we make in Florida, so we are going to be spending a lot of time evaluating price increases vs. cutting back on labor somehow.

UPDATE

I see from our logs we are getting a lot of hits on this post from search engines.  For those of you looking for more information on the implementation of this increase, we still have not seen any enabling regulation to go along with it.  Will it have the same exemptions as the Federal law?  Anyway, the go-live date is apparently 6 months from approval, which I presume equates to early April, 2005.

Previously, I explained why I like Football Outsiders here. Their week 8 statistical rankings of teams is here.

Miami assumes its rightful position back at the bottom of the list. The surprise, at least based on pre-season expectations, is to see the Titans in the bottom 5. My Cardinals continue to regress back to mediocrity, though their defense remains among the 10 best -- last week against Buffalo was more of an Offense and Special Teams failure than a defensive lapse.

I don't think anyone can disagree with the Outsiders' top 3. KC at number four doesn't seem right to me; however, for some reason, both this season and last, their statistical system seems to over-rank KC.

Hosted this week at Quibbles and Bits, check it out. There are even some posts that have nothing to do with the election (gasp).

Coyote Blog is included this week with a two parter on libertarianism and the environment, followed by an analysis of what we know about Kyoto.

Also, if you are looking around, check out our analysis of the relative fate (in terms of economic well being and political freedom) of the colonies of France, Britain and the US.

Assuming Cheney does not want to run for president, which I think is a given, something will happen in 2008 that has not happened in 56 years since 1952: Neither of the two major-party presidential candidates will be incumbents of the President or Vice-President jobs. In 1952 we had Eisenhower vs. Stevenson. Since then we have always had incumbents running, though not necessarily successfully -
1956: Eisenhower
1960: Nixon
1964: Johnson
1968: Humphrey
1972: Nixon
1976: Ford
1980: Carter
1984: Mondale and Reagan
1988: Bush
1992: Bush
1996: Clinton
2000: Gore
2004: Bush v 1.1

I guess the only exception you could make to this is if you called Hillary an incumbent. Full list of presidents and VP's here

UPDATE

I didn't just bury the conclusion, but left it out entirely. The point is that 2008 is likely to be a zoo. Not one but two wide open nominating battles, plus of course the general election. Can we please, please before then try to figure out a way to choose our candidates other than just letting Iowa do it?

UPDATE #2

Welcome Instapundit (guess I need to send a check to my host for more bandwidth). While you are here, you might check out my latest roundup on Kyoto and Global Warming, as well as an interesting analysis on the economic and political success of ex-French vs. ex-Anglo/American colonies. Short answer is that you didn't want the French as masters.

UPDATE #3

Check out the comments section, which has several good posts handicapping the Republican candidates in 2008. Several people suggest a Republican strategy to replace Cheney mid-term with their next candidate. I know that the leadership of both political parties lament their loss of control, due to the primary system, in selecting their nominee, and this certainly would be an intriguing way of getting around that and the Iowa/NH problem. However, the move is so transparently Machiavellian, and I think unprecedented, that the first party to try it will probably get punished in the court of public opinion.

Its crazy that no one asked me for any sort of ID to vote today. They did not even hear my name right and I just pointed to my name on the list. Since I was voting just before the polls close, I could have been anyone and just looked at their list on the table to quickly spot some one who has not voted and used that name.

I understand the desire to get more people to vote, but we have really gone overboard the other way on election security. I do not think it is too much to ask for some sort of ID when you vote.

UPDATE:

I got a nice paper ballet - it's the kind where you use a black pen to fill in a blank next to your preference. It was easy to use, and the ballot boxes had a built in scanner so they were tallied as soon as I put it in the box. If it could not read what I filled in, it spits it back out and I fix it. As a result, a paper trail exists for each vote, but there is no hand tallying. What is wrong with this system? Why does everyone want an electronic machine with no paper trail?

Also, with a paper ballot, each polling location has near infinite capacity. All you need is tables and pens and some of those little privacy dividers. It costs like $5 to add another voting station. Never was any kind of long line at my voting location. I have not seen the stats, but I would be willing to bet that most of those locations they showed on TV with 5 hour long lines were using some type of machine. Since the machines cost a lot, you end up with too little capacity and long lines.

I was stuck out in California today, one day longer than I expected. I got up early, got my business done, and drove about 7 hours to get back to Phoenix in time to vote.

I have absolutely no patience for people who can't find the time to vote. Its ridiculously easy, except for some of those idiot counties in Ohio I am looking at right now that have such long lines - how can you manage things so poorly?

You might ask why I do not absentee vote. I like voting on election day, I like the ritual, sortof like the secular version of taking communion. Voting by mail feels more like paying bills. It loses a lot for me.

Since most knowledgeable people who always try to predict the election are refusing to predict this one because it is too close to call, I will take a shot at it (since I never have predicted elections before):

I predict a situation the reverse of 2000. Bush wins popular vote by a percent or two but loses electoral college. States mostly break the same as in 2000 but Ohio goes to Kerry.

I heard Dick Morris recommending that you can watch Pennsylvania tomorrow night for an early clue. In 2000, Pennsylvania broke 51-46 Gore. He suggested that Bush will win if doing getter in Penn, and will lose if doing worse. You can find how all the states went in 2000 here

The absolute best part of this election is that my kids are really pumped up to sit up and watch it. Part of that is that they are really clever about finding ways to evade bed time. But part is that they are generally interested. My 10-year-old son spent over an hour with my wife going over and trying to understand her absentee ballot.

UPDATE

Well, I was wrong but not way wrong. Bush did win the popular vote and Ohio was indeed close but broke for Bush. Well, I won't quit my day job but I will say that I was as close as any of those folks paid the big money to make predictions.

OK, Uncle Walter no longer does much for CBS other than act as their sort of hood ornament, but his statement on Larry King, via Drudge, is even wackier than Dan Rather:

Former CBSNEWS anchorman Walter Cronkite believes Bush adviser Karl Rove is possibly behind the new Bin Laden tape.

Cronkite made the startling comments late Friday during an interview on CNN.

Somewhat smiling, Cronkite said he is "inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing."

Um, right. I am sure Bin Laden is sitting in his spider hole waiting to do everything the Bush Administration asks him to do. And, if Bin Laden is in custody, why would Bush use that fact only to generate this tape, and not just trumpet to the world that the US has, in fact, captured Bin Laden, which would have far more impact. It is incredible to see Cronkite saying things that Michael Moore might even think twice about. And, to have Larry King just let it slide - no followup question or anything, as if Cronkite's statement was the most natural and obvious thing in the world.

UPDATE:

It was pretty funny to watch Dan Rather last night during the election coverage. Brokaw at the end of the evening looked like he was going to cry, but Dan really lost it a couple of times. He really lost all pretense to objectivity. I wish I had a transcript. It would be hilarious to put up a montage of video clips from network anchors from 7PM EST (when exit polls were signaling a big Kerry win) and midnight when it was pretty clear Bush would win. I know the differences in body language and demeanor would be startling, and would go well beyond what is explainable just from being tired.

This week's Carnival of the Capitalists is up here.