I strongly prefer Mr. Obama to Ms. Clinton. Many people who do not support Mr. Obama seem confused as to why he has garnered such fervent support. Since they cannot understand the basis of this support, they assume that it must be some form of madness, and call it "Obamania". But projecting one's own confusion onto others is no way to understand the universe; if you don't understand it, you should either shrug your shoulders and let it be or take the time to investigate more closely.

I know why I prefer Mr. Obama to Ms. Clinton, and I suspect that others share my thinking, if perhaps subconsciously. It lies in one's approach to the nature of our Republic. Let me sketch the two opposing schools of thought:

I am often uncomfortable with the invective directed at Mr. Bush. I heartily agree with the underlying thinking, but it disturbs me to see it expressed in such a juvenile fashion. Must we expose our immaturity and emotionalism with such frequent recourse to obscenity and vulgarity? Obscenity is to writing as hot peppers are to gustation: used sparingly, they add contrast and color to a meal. But the writer who relies on obscenity for self-expression is no better than the chef who slathers pepper over every dish -- his meal becomes boring and heavy-handed.

I realize that it is incumbent upon me to provide an illustrative example of a more elegant approach to the expression of disapproval of Mr. Bush, and I therefore offer that example below the fold.

I stumbled onto a story on a right-wing blog about a "anti-war moonbat who shot a soldier"; the story complained that the MSM was burying the story, but that if the victim had been gay, it would have been national news. So I followed up on the story and searched the web for more information.

What I found surprised me:

"It's the community, stupid!" That's the central point made over and over by Internet pundits about what works on the Internet and what fails. Any site that sucks people in, lets them become part of a community, allows them to participate, is successful: Daily Kos, YouTube, Amazon -- the list is impressive.

So let's apply the left-right divide to this thinking. Which side is nurturing? Which side is tolerant? Which side respects diversity? In short, which side has stronger community values?

Conservapedia is a conservative's response to what he perceives to be liberal bias on the part of Wikipedia. It offers an alternative version of the truth and promises to be unbiased. The results are, unsurprisingly, heavily biased in favor of conservative points of view.

A stark realization struck me the other day while driving. I had been mulling over the fact that military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan will soon exceed the body count of 9/11. I happened to notice one of those bumper stickers declaring "The Power of Pride", set against an American flag. And suddenly it hit me: this war is not an attempt to save American lives -- it's all about pride, not prudent policy.

I have always been uncomfortable with the phrase "social justice" in its sense of economic redistribution, because it seems so arbitrary, so subjective. Why should anybody have a right to some level of material comfort? I am hard put to fund a fundamental rebuttal to the claim "If Tom works hard and gets filthy rich, and Bob wastes his time in idleness, why should Tom pay one penny to support Bob?" Until now. Here's the idea:

One day in his later years, Ghengis Khan was riding with Ye Liu Chu'tsai, his closest lieutenant. He trusted Ye Liu Chu'tsai to govern his empire for him, because while he was a warrior, he knew Ye Liu Chu'tsai to be a wise man, and he often discussed ideas with him. He turned to Ye Liu Chu'tsai and asked him, "What is the greatest happiness?"

Ye Liu Chu'Tsai answered thusly: "To ride across the open steppe on a good horse, with a falcon on your wrist and the troubles of war far away."

"No", Ghengis Khan said, "The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see their loved ones bathed in tears, to ride their horses and sleep on the bellies of their wives and daughters."

And that is the difference between liberals and conservatives.

I'd like to offer a new meme for Democrats to consider: that Democrats offer the voters a grand national project to eliminate terrorism. The basic concept is that we have been taking half-measures for 30 years now, and the threat of terrorism has only gotten worse. It's time to stop swatting at flies with symptomatic approaches and eliminate terrorism once and for all with a strategic approach. It will cost a great deal -- but in the long run, we'll save money and lives taking a proactive strategy rather than merely reacting to a series of incidents.

I am surprised to discover that either a) my search skills are weak or b) nobody has diaried the indictments of the three top vote officials in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, for violation of election law in the 2004 recounts. Readers may recall that Cuyahoga County quickly became the focus of suspicion based on statistical analyses of its vote counts. It now appears that the much-maligned statistical analyses suggesting vote fraud have been at least partially vindicated by these indictments.

It's sad just how gullible the media can be -- both blogosphere and MSM. There's a story running around that the Iranian negotiator, Mr. Rowhani, boasted in a recent speech that he deceived the Europeans about Iran's nuclear activities. But ten minutes of web research shows that the source for this story is a single website from an Iranian expatriate group in Germany -- none too reliable a source. Details below the fold.

For too long the right has successfully painted progressives as opponents of sound economic policy, socialists opposed to free enterprise and the American Way. For too long progressives have accepted that label. I suddenly realized that it's all backwards. In fact, progressives are the ones supporting free enterprise, and conservatives have been working against free enterprise. Here's the realization:

In the 1960s, the Gang of Four unleashed the Red Guards upon Chinese society in the Cultural Revolution, an upheaval accompanied by thousands of murders, millions of destroyed lives, and the evisceration of Chinese society. The Red Guards were angry young men, idealogues determined to impose their simplistic views upon society. Their victims were older men, cooler heads who had learned the value of pragmatism and compromise.
The same basic process is underway right here on Daily Kos -- on a vastly reduced scale. Right here we are seeing the same basic struggle. It has not yet resolved.

Here's a new way to turn the tables on supporters of the war in Iraq. Instead of us proposing a pullout and them calling us cowards, or arguing about timetables or milestones, why not ask them the price they're willing to pay for a stable democracy in Iraq, in terms of KIA and dollars. What's it worth to them? And if things in Iraq don't improve substantially, at what price point would they give up and bring the troops home?

Over the last twelve months, I have explored a number of blogs, trying to develop an appreciation for the overall quality of political discourse in the blogosphere. While my exploration was far from extensive, some depressing conclusions seem warranted.

After following the ferocious commentary on the question of whether vote fraud in the 2004 election has or has not been proven, it occurred to me that perhaps there is something that we can agree on: that the subject deserves an investigation. We are reduced to to arguing over scraps of information and incomplete data. So why not have a proper investigation?

Our model for personal taxation is based on income, the basic concept being a form of "from each according to his means". It's easy to justify higher taxation rates for wealthier people, because the marginal benefit of their wealth is lower than that of poor people. In other words, yanking the caviar out of the fat magnate's mouth hurts him far less than yanking the oatmeal out of the malnourished baby's mouth.

But there's another way to approach taxation, something that's never been tried, that I think deserves consideration. And I'll present it below the fold.

I have decided that, rather than whining about the lack of civility that occasionally crops up here on dKos, I'm going to implement a general policy of handing out bad ratings -- LOTS of bad ratings -- to comments that violate my standards of civility. I invite others to implement the same policy, which I detail below the fold.