Ron Paul, on the other hand, has no shot. No natural constituency capable of carrying him through the Republican primaries. No unexpected polling strength in an early primary state. And wait till his views on such weighty matters as abolishing [...]]]> To my liberal friend who won’t let the thought experiment of a Ron Paul presidency go:

Ron Paul, on the other hand, has no shot. No natural constituency capable of carrying him through the Republican primaries. No unexpected polling strength in an early primary state. And wait till his views on such weighty matters as abolishing the federal Medicare entitlement come into play. If he even inched towards a threat, he’d get crushed by the other candidates. As President, he probably wouldn’t do much damage as he’d be unable, both ideologically and operationally, to do anything at all, but speaking of Paul as president is like speaking of my parakeet as emperor. And though Mr. Tweets would be a fine emperor, it’s not a terribly useful thought experiment.

From Ezra Klein at Tapped.

Extensive climate changes…may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s [...]]]> Lorenloo builds up a solid rant around Gore’s award, and while I’m all for that, I want to point her to the Nobel PR on why climate change work justifies a peace prize.

Extensive climate changes…may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.

So there is a link, even if it requires a “may” disclaimer.  In fact, it’s hard to imagine the world experiences massive climate upheaval without violent conflict; if we were evolved enough to deal with disasters rationally, then we’d be able to curtail our problematic behavior in advance of said disasters.

As far as the effectiveness of Gore’s global warming education: though the impacts are difficult to measure, the politics of GW has definitely changed.  Denial has decreased.  All the Democratic presidential candidates have global warming plans, including some good carbon tax schemes that would make a real difference.  Public opinion, as frivolous a thing as it may seem, creates the reality in which policy change is discussed.  Gore has been good for this reality.

I still don’t want the man to run for president.  I still feel just fine about protesting him in his last race.  But give him his due; he’s been doing important work.  And I like that he continues the trend where Democrats earn Nobel Prizes after they get elected president, while Republicans…do what exactly?  Disappear into the womb of their own wealth?  Does anyone know?

The Clark and Thompson campaigns have eerily similar pre-histories. Because the party elites and rank-and-file weren’t very happy with the slate of candidates, Clark and Thompson’s names got floated for months. Party members didn’t know much about them, so [...]]]> Intelligent piece comparing the Clark ’04 and Thompson ’08 candidacies by Publius at ObWi. An excerpt:

The Clark and Thompson campaigns have eerily similar pre-histories. Because the party elites and rank-and-file weren’t very happy with the slate of candidates, Clark and Thompson’s names got floated for months. Party members didn’t know much about them, so they projected their desires on to the idea of them — and expectations ran high. Rather than seizing this opportunity early on, both candidates played footsie for months and months but hesitated to jump in. And then, finally, they did.

By pointing out the deficiencies of the Clark and Thompson campaigns which doomed/doom both, Publius also provides a good justification for the expanded length of the primary season: it makes our candidates better, both personally and in terms of their organization.  Those are much more tangible advantages than being the newest flavor at primary time after a late launch.

I’m going to go ahead and predict that the honeymoon ends quickly, another ‘messiah’ is recruited (Newt’s available…), and Thompson drops out before the primaries.  Then, Law + Order decided to have him lose his DA election, and replaces him with a liberal, just to twist the knife a bit more.

I wasn’t going to blog [...]]]> I put my cat to sleep yesterday. She was old and had multiple health problems and had been sick to varying degrees as long as I’ve known her, but…it still hurt a lot. A lot more than I thought it would, given that I knew this would happen eventually.

I wasn’t going to blog about this, but I did find a legitimate policy issue (not that a lack of one has ever stopped me before): what degree of health care is owed to animals? It’s something I’ve thought about a lot over the last year while I played the role of asshole in arguments with my wife over how far to go in treating our cat.

Pets, and to a lesser extent other animals, are already granted protections against abuse, and the Vick saga was a good illustration of the social penalties to violating those protections. “Abuse” has also expanded to include certain positive rights — food, shelter in harsh environments — but certainly health care isn’t one of those. And even shelter is pretty iffy. I mean is a carrier on the roof of Mitt Romney’s car at 70 mph too harsh? (Liberaltotalitarianssaywhat. What?)

In the US, obsessed as we are with physicalizing class as quickly as possible, we don’t even recognize people as having a right to health care. But ignoring that silliness, I can think of 3 possible justifications for animals not deserving health care and they all are poor.

(Note that I’m largely making this case to provide fodder to right-wing slippery slope arguments about how socialized medicine is only the first step towards a PETA presidency. Since gay sex obviously leads to bestiality, it was only a matter of time before doctors become veterinarians, and you have to “press 2 for human care.” The people have a right to know.)

Scarcity — given finite medical resources, animals are not a spending priority. This makes sense if our economic choices are regarded as fixed, but as long as the highest marginal tax rate is less than one hundred percent there are untapped resources. Sure political realities prevent massive increases in social spending through steeply progressive taxation, and if and when these realities change many other programs are on the lefty wishlist before animal health care. But it should be on the list, somewhere after guaranteed housing and before making all enterprises worker collectives.

Fairness — Why should we all pay for the recreation of the crazy cat lady minority? We shouldn’t, which is why there are numerous fees associated with pet ownership/stewardship such as licensing, food, grooming, toys, bedding, transportation, etc. that provide motivation for people to limit their pet accumulation. However, health care is a different kind of good. I doubt many pet-inclined people decline ownership specifically because they’re worried about possible health care costs. Since no one forces you to treat your animal, one doesn’t have to worry about being forced by an injury/illness into a financial untenable situation — if the treatment is too expensive, the animal gets let go. Similarly, one doesn’t decide to have an outdoor cat, damn the increased risk of injury, once the government is on the hook for the medical bill. Unpredictable and non-binding health costs do not significantly impact decisions about pets.

Population — there are too many animals since they breed uncontrollably, and taking care of them all would be a huge, open-ended burden. This could be addressed if people were required rather than encouraged to fix their pets. The feral animals that this misses wouldn’t be heavy health care users anyway, so this should pretty effectively limit the population.

And the positive case for animal care? The instrumentalist argument is pretty weak, since, though animals are unique, the replacement cost in minimal compared to the “repair” costs of health care in serious cases. There’s an animal fairness argument — should the animals care really depend on the resources of the owner and how much the pet is loved (to put it crudely)? But this requires a view of animals as distinct from “property,” since I don’t worry about the relative fates of Poang Chairs (which are ridiculously comfortable). This leads me to the deep ecology, animal agency school of thought, but I’m not quite crunchy enough to argue for that.

What I need is some sort of middle ground between agency and property — pseudo-agency? I imagine this is the status that the “stewardship” term is trying to describe, though what the term and status mean in terms of rights and responsibilities is unclear.

The best real case I have for animal health care does come back to agency. The human/animal divide is not static. Invariably, exploited people are likened to animals in attempts to rationalize their treatment. One positive narrative of human history is the regular (if not continuous) expansion of personhood to new groups. Post-expansion, it seems ludicrous that newly admitted’s agency was ever in dispute. For example, read Mill’s writings on patriarchy from the 1800s. He’s writing for suffrage, and yet still annoyingly argues for female primacy in the domestic realm, and other essentialisms. Even the most progressive set of people from a time come off as bigots 100 years later.

I suspect that our descendants will view many of our practices as obscene, particularly with regards to animals. There are already movements to grant certain animals personhood, and one would be placing themselves on the wrong side of history to be against this expansion. In the absence of a compelling case for the withholding of treatment, I’m willing to pursue it based on the possibility that animals should have human rights. The possibility really should be enough.

But then, I am just another big government shill, looking for any opportunity to foist my union of soviets on unsuspecting middle America.

Anyway, assorted thoughts:

Huckabee comes in second at the Ames Shakedown Straw Poll! Which (I think) means he “won” since Romney outspent everyone and his victory was a forgone conclusion.

Now I know it’s blasphemy…but if Huckabee were to make I <3 Huckabees his campaign slogan, I’d have to consider voting for him, despite the whole, you know, [...]]]>

Huckabee comes in second at the Ames Shakedown Straw Poll! Which (I think) means he “won” since Romney outspent everyone and his victory was a forgone conclusion.

Now I know it’s blasphemy…but if Huckabee were to make I <3 Huckabees his campaign slogan, I’d have to consider voting for him, despite the whole, you know, being a Republican thing. That’s how much I love pretentious movie references.

But really: Lily Tomlin, Dustin Hoffman, Marky Mark, Jason Schwartzman, Naomi Watts, & Jude Law could all go on the campaign trail with Huck. That would be more than a match for the 96,000 Romney clones marching around “serving their country.”

I’m getting excited just typing about this.

Kucinich in a landslide!!! (Groans)

I shouldn’t be [...]]]> I heard about the website My Election Choices over at Ezra Klein’s blog. You select random candidate statements (and some are very random) that you agree with in various topic areas, and the site informs you who you are in most agreement with. My results were interesting:

Kucinich in a landslide!!! (Groans)

I shouldn’t be surprised, since he is the furthest left. Unfortunately for him, I find his New Agey-schtick annoying and his pro-choice conversion unbelievable. And there’s a reason I vote Democrat instead of Green or Peace & Freedom: I care about electability. Sorry Dennis.

Clinton, Edwards, Obama, and Richardson all tie for second, and there’s not really that much separation between them and Dodd, Biden, and Gravel. Surprise: all the Democratic candidates have fairly similar policy positions, and I like what they’re selling. Meanwhile, the Republicans hardly appear on my list, though Tancredo did break through (I was shocked to see his name) with this statement:

“Energy production and environmental conservation are not mutually exclusive goals.”

Very Enlightening Tom. Now be quiet.

The partisan clumping points to the problem with this sort of candidate analysis. Within each party, the speech paragraphs all sound the same, as the candidates are pursuing the same voters, engaging in the same kind of dog-whistle politics. Teasing out the substantive differences requires a look at their policy proposals. Which are inaccessible for most people.

Which is to say, I’m not sure how one is supposed to choose a candidate, except to…read political blogs obsessively. Which I strongly suggest.

An appetizer: