Blogger bugs killed the anti-McCain screed
What do John McCain and Jane Galt have in common? Both want to see reform of how stock options are accounted for.

I was deeply offended this morning, not by McCain himself so much as by the choice of nouns and verbs in the Chronicle story about his speech. They call McCain a "maverick Republican" when I'm pretty sure he's not the first and sometimes I don't even think he's the second. When's the last time you saw him do anything useful for his party? I'll wait for it, I guess, but if he's going to switch parties (as is the rumor) then conscience suggests he should get it over with.

Now, my opinion of the bill itself (disclosure: I have stock options for a company that wouldn't have much of a balance sheet either way) was pretty close to that of the first commenter.

(Do you really believe that the markets are confused because options are not included on the income statement? Do you think this would change market valuations at all? If so, when did you stop believing in efficient markets? --David Cohen)

In my head I had a bit of a rant, starting on stock options and moving in on McCain's recent political life itself. (Cliff Notes: Johnny-come-lately.) But the position Galt took made me think a little. It's a far more productive discussion over there than would have resulted from my being catty about a certain War Hero.

Testing...
qwertyuiop

UC-Berkeley Sucks
Here's why.

Forgive me for being so crass but I find that my opinion of Berkeley students and grads actually is affected by their ethnicity now. That is, specifically to that campus I'm becoming a good old-fashioned cracker, and yet statistically justifiably so.

If you're Asian and got into Berkeley, I'm in awe of you.

A Screed Against Liars, Cheats, and Thieves
I trust people, instinctively. Someday that might lead to a lot of pain but I just do. For the most part it works out. If you have a good enough feel for situations where this trust is(n't) wise, you can either steer clear of trouble or just raise your guard. But going through your whole life paranoid just takes too much of a toll.

People trust each other because they need to, not to survive so much as to thrive. If the people around you are reliable, you can get ahead by choosing to work together. This depends on your word being your bond.

The flip side is that I reserve a special ire for people who show themselves not to be trustworthy. I'm not saying you can't ever tell a lie -- there are those "does this dress make me look fat?" situations where you do what's reasonable. But there's far cry between that and the people who show flagrant disgregard for the truth.

These days a lot of people wonder when and why politics got so personal. It really shouldn't be, but it is, and it's a very recent phenomenon. It probably goes back to Clinton. (N.B. Knowing that this post has yet to see the light of day and that I've now gotten an actual comment on a post here, I removed two paragraphs here that were unnecessarily divisive. Suffice to say my dislike for Clinton, and many people's dislike for him, has far less to do with his politics than with a track record for dishonesty.)

You could also argue something about the CEO's in the most recent scandals, but the very point of it is that the people who committed fraud, belong in jail. We don't need new laws -- actually, for the sake of keeping reports short, sweet, and transparent, we could actually use a little less. What we especially don't need is for the SEC to become like the NCAA, where the people who know how to manipulate the system get away with all sorts of slime while the good actors get ensnared in byzantine rulemaking.

That's quite a ramble there. Getting back to first principles... don't lie. Or if you do lie, don't be surprised when I despise what it is that you're trying to do.

So what inspired all this? Well, if this news story is right then the father of the girl in the Pledge of Allegiance case trumped up the whole case by deceiving the court about how his daughter felt. Suddenly I have no sympathy whatsoever for him or his cause of action. If you can't fight for what you believe in without telling that kind of lie then you should really reexamine what it is you're fighting for.

(Test case for this: When Roe v. Wade was working its way through the courts 30 years ago, one of the salient facts of the case was that Norma McCorvey's most recent pregnancy had resulted from rape. It hadn't. It's unclear how much this does (or should) affect your opinion of this decision.)

To: Aaron McGruder
From: me
Re: History Lesson

You may or may not realize that some of the first anti-gun laws in the U.S. were enacted in the South, post-Civil War, expressly to keep the victims of Jim Crow unarmed. See, the best way for blacks and other oppressed people to defend themselves from the tyrants and the crackers, was to pack some heat.

Not to mention my deep offense at the idea that black people in general (or any members of "group X") should automatically be opposed to guns, or that all gay people should have to be socialist nutballs.

If the terrorists do win...
Blame the unions of government employees. At least if Mickey Kaus is a reliable source.

I'm deeply skeptical of governments and government employees, and also really not that sanguine to labor unions. So here we have a double-whammy involving everything (well not everything but surprisingly much) that's wrong with this country.

Let's see how this affects the ol' comments widget...
So there's this thing called "choice." It's a pretty tricky concept. I'm currently choosing to post to a weblog when a wiser choice would be to focus 100% on work.

There are other, much closer decisions, with far more-reaching consequences. Some of them happen in battle. Others of them are the kind that people who love the words "choice" or "choose" are often very squeamish about actually stating the object of the verb.

(I'd love to choose what school my hypothetical children go to, although if I were dirt poor I'd lack that option -- unless school vouchers become more popular in the next few years. I'd love to choose to smoke dope, and have that choice be recognized as lawful.)

Setting aside what the law is or should (assume for the moment that the status quo is best precisely because it's the status quo), we have a situation where many many people are facing the same decision. One of the two choices results in a loss of life (is this begging the question? perhaps), while the other results in a huge burden -- you can tell how huge by the fact that a decision involving loss of life isn't a no-brainer.

I would love -- I would go to great lengths -- simply to have, of the hundreds of thousands of women who faces those two alternatives, for some five-digit number of them (or even for one of them) to happen to make the choice that I think is best rather than the choice that I think is worse. (Again possibly begging the question, there's also a five-digit number of other people who would be thankful for the "best" choice.)

Long story short:
1. As a practical matter, what's the best way to convince more of those women to make the "correct" choice?

(I assume you agree that this is desirable. If you don't, we probably don't have all that much to talk about here.)

2. What things can I (or you) do to make that choice less of a hardship?

Okay, comment away...

Did Charles Barkley give up on running for governor of Alabama?
You do know that he was going to, don't you? And you do know what his party affiliation is? I probably mentioned this before.

Anyway, if Sir Charles won't bear the torch, I know who ought to.

"I don't begrudge you your salary, so don't begrudge me the right to make mine."
--Barry Bonds

Genocidal Tyrant or Conceptual Artist?
Great classic Slate piece, linked to today by Instapundit.

Two gratuitous pro-life observations
The second one is what inspired this post.

"Right-to-lifers need not apply." --seen in a personal ad probably posted by a Salon reader. Believe it or not, despite my claiming to be a single-issue voter, it never occurred to me to include that one in my dating criteria. Go figure. At least she kept me from wasting her (or my) time.

"I wonder if our baby is thinking anything right now!" --Michael Patterson, For Better Or For Worse