Dems win; Dems lose

The good news is that the Democratic Party picked up some wins in Kentucky and Virginia (the governorship and senate, respectively). The bad news is that the Dems caved yet again when facing Bush's threats in approving the nomination of Mukasey for Attorney General.

Schumer put us through tortuous logic in his attempts to rationalize his support of Mukasey despite Mukasey's refusal to accept waterboarding as torture. Schumer tells us that Mukasey tells him that if Congress passes a law clearly defining waterboarding as torture then he will accept it as such. Is Schumer naive (imagine making a backroom deal and then blaring it out loud in public), is he passing the buck, is he trying to save face for having put Mukasey forth as a candidate in the first place? Yes. Yes. Yes.

the so-called death tax

No sooner do I write something complimentary about Ron Paul than he says something with which I disagree. He is in favor of repealing the so-called Death Tax (to be fair to Paul, he's in favor or repealing all taxes). The Estate Tax allows up to $2,000,000 tax-free to go to beneficiaries before the rest is taxed (usually at around 20%), so what's the problem?

While all the Republican candidates (and one, at least publicly, Democratic candidate) beat the war drums for Iran, the sole dissenter, Ron Paul, is called marginal. Every poll shows the American public now views the Iraq war as a mistake and wants troops out now, yet the politicians either drag their feet on getting out or move to getting this country involved in yet another war. Since politicians always have an eye on the polls and rarely do anything damaging to their electability, this current bunch must either have great convictions or are deeply conditioned to employ fear on the campaign trail. I'm going for pavlovian conditioning rather than conviction.