TheAgitator.com: Debate Prologue

The Agitator, Radley Balko, does a subperb job of breaking down the election and why the Bushman will win. Though I don't view this as a positive event or a negative event, they both suck, it does appear that Radley's who you'd rather have a beer with matters most conculision makes perfect sense. Yeah Kerry does come off as a dick and Bush a blunder, but the blunder beats a dick.

And let's face it. Kerry's a schmuck. Or at least he comes off as one. If Gore was the kid who reminded the teacher to collect the homework, Kerry's the prep school trust-funder who drives Beamer and ties a pastel Izod across his shoulders. If swing state demographics resembled Greenwich, Connecticut, he'd be golden.

I can see only one scenario where Kerry betters himself tomorrow night, and that's if he somehow goads Bush into saying something the Kerry camp can conslusively prove is false, and for which they have a post-game assault alread prepared. If Kerry's staff's post-debate message can convincingly be "Bush Lied!" instead of "No! Seriously! Our Guy Isn't a Dick!" well, then maybe he can climb a few points in the polls. But that would require a significant Bush gaffe (certainly possible), and some competence from the Kerry campaign (no signs so far that that's possible).

This fits in well with a piece that was posted at the mises.org today about the basis of freedom. The author of this piece sites a work by Converse in 1964, "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics." Converse finds that less than 4 percent of American voters can give a coherent account of what liberals and conservatives believe. These people he calls "ideologues." They understand the political division in society well, and their voting reflects it. A slightly larger group of voters partly understands and partly votes that way. A large group in the middle votes mainly by race, class, or other group affiliation. Below them is a fourth group, quite large, that votes on a politician’s looks, or whether he "cares about people like me."

Is this why democracy will one day fail? Perhaps we should have gone with the whole republic thing that the founders wanted after all.

The Cult of Che - Don't applaud The Motorcycle Diaries. By Paul Berman

Another writer steps up to the plate to question the glorification of the moron Che Guevera and the new film that inaccurate shows Che's life. Paul breaks down the false legend and wonders if the lavish praise this film received at Sundance along with Che's false legacy continues to haunt the Cuban citizens still today.

Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination.

The modern-day cult of Che blinds us not just to the past but also to the present. Right now a tremendous social struggle is taking place in Cuba. Dissident liberals have demanded fundamental human rights, and the dictatorship has rounded up all but one or two of the dissident leaders and sentenced them to many years in prison. Among those imprisoned leaders is an important Cuban poet and journalist, Raúl Rivero, who is serving a 20-year sentence. In the last couple of years the dissident movement has sprung up in yet another form in Cuba, as a campaign to establish independent libraries, free of state control; and state repression has fallen on this campaign, too.

How to Keep Your Veggies Vitamin-Packed

Bill sends along this helpful link from webmd that explains the best way to cook and eat veggies. I personally use the frozen veggie option b/c it is easy, I am lazy and I eat 4-5 servings daily so this method works best for me. Some tips indcluded...

Go for frozen. Frozen vegetables are often just as healthy as fresh veggies, especially if the fresh ones have been collecting dust for a few days in your fridge. Filardo says frozen vegetables are still nutritious, because they often come right out of the field, and are blanched and frozen immediately.
Dress it up. Use a little fat or salad dressing on your vegetables. Filardo says a little fat will improve the uptake of lycopene. "But that doesn't give people the license to put huge amounts of salad dressings on their foods."
Try precooking. Blanch veggies before you pop them in the fridge, and you will save time. "It will also help kill some of the enzymes that can cause deterioration," says Filardo. Just don't overdue the reheating.
Slow down. Take more time to chew and enjoy your vegetables. Filardo says the more you chew, the more you will break down vegetables, and that will result in better absorption of nutrients from the gut. "Sometimes people stuff things into their mouths without paying attention, and you can eat a lot that way," she says. "If you slow down, and savor the taste of foods, you are likely to eat less." You are also allowing more time for the message to get from your stomach to your brain that you're full.
Spice things up. "People tend to eat the same fruits and vegetables over and over again. Every fruit and vegetable has a unique footprint -- a unique assortment of nutrients and phytochemicals," says Filardo. Variety will increase your enjoyment of fruits and vegetables, while also giving you more nutrients. She suggests that you use color as a guide when planning your meals. Instead of worrying about getting specific vitamins, for example, worry about getting your oranges, greens, and reds. It will also make for a more appetizing plate.

Texas Music

The Z-man sent me this link. Pretty good read from a narcotics officer and army reservist. He attacks the ridiculous discusions about the assualt weapons ban and explains why it was a worthless piece of feal good legislation to begin with.

Earlier this month, Title XI of the Federal Violent Crime Control Act, better known as the Assault Weapon Ban, enacted a decade ago, expired. There was a massive outcry in the media about how, now that the ban has expired, anyone can run down to the local sporting good store and buy a machine gun. Well, they're right. Sort of.

The Assault Weapon Ban had no impact on a person's ability to legally own a Class III weapon. Anyone, provided they have a clean criminal background, who sends a couple of hundred bucks and the correct forms in to the ATF, can legally own a fully automatic weapon. Same as before the ban. Same as during the ban. Shocking, isn't it?

See, the ban was a feel-good piece of legislation tacked onto the Crime Bill. It was touted to the public as the answer to gun violence. All of those killer machine guns in the hands of children were going to be taken off the streets. School shootings and disgruntled postal worker massacres, a thing of the past. Thank you, Handgun Control Inc.

The problem with the Assault Weapon Ban was...well, everything, actually. Let's start with the name. Do you know what an assault weapon is? It's a military weapon that is capable of, by means of a selector switch, either semiautomatic or fully automatic fire. Semiautomatic fire means that each time the trigger of the weapon is pulled, a round is fired and another round is chambered. Pull the trigger again, and another round is fired. Fully automatic fire means that when the trigger is pulled multiple rounds are fired for as long as the trigger is depressed. The ban never dealt with true assault weapons. It had nothing to do with "machine guns", or fully automatic weapons. Shocking, isn't it?

The ban, misnamed though it was, was designed to eliminate a certain class of weapons deemed too deadly to be in the hands of the American public. Deemed too dangerous by certain legislators and Handgun Control Inc. In the wake of pressure by special interest groups, weapons that looked scary because they were black and had some features found on military weapons were banned.

Well, not exactly.

The Assault Weapon Ban didn't actually ban any weapons. That's right. Not a single one. Shocking, isn't it?