WhatsAPundit

"There is nothing in Internet gambling that adds to the G.D.P. or makes America more competitive in the world," Mr. Leach said. "Everyone loses if this industry continues its remarkable growth trends."New York Times, Oct. 3, 2006.

So sayeth Representative Jim Leach, Republican of Iowa.

Of course, nothing about my willingness to shell out too much money for years on booze has made me more competitive, and now I'm really sorry my preference has always been for domestic products. By all means, in honor of Mr. Leach and Senator Frist, (Republican from Tennessee), I will endeavor at all times to buy foreign goods, just because.

More Scotch! More Tequilla!

Note to you jerks in Congress; you work for the American people. We do not work, or play, or do anything at all, for you. You are our bitches, do you understand? Just because you've rigged the system so that getting you unelected is harder than do-it-yourself wisdom tooth extraction, don't think that it can't be done.

I like playing on-line poker. God help me, I like doing it with fake money. Meaning, it costs me squat. Meaning the Almighty U.S. Government isn't losing any tax revenue. (And don't get me started on how reamed I feel by my current tax burden....)

It is not my duty as a citizen to maximize the GDP or make the United States "more competitive", whatever the hell that means.

What's next, you outlaw masturbation because it decreases the incentives to date, resulting is less tax revenues generated through retail and service industries? (Oh, that's right, the government heavily persecutes the Adult Entertainment industry already, I forgot. Not being a customer of said industry, of course. Never mind.)

And Frist, you sorry excuse for a man, sneaking the legislation through as a last-minute rider on a must-sign bill, why don't you try the same trick next time with a measure to outlaw College Football? After all, every year far more people are killed or seriously injured on college football fields than are injured playing online poker. (Damn that carpal tunnel syndrome....) And god knows millions, nay billions, of dollars change hands every year through gambling on college football. That's obviously money that isn't going through the taxable "engines of competitiveness", so....

Ban College Football! Make America Great Again!

See how THAT affects your hoped-for Presidential run. (Speaking of masturbation....)

I have always identified Libertarian, but the vast majority of my votes have gone to Republicans. No more. The Democrats are (as a group) blithering idiots when it comes to national security issues, but the Republicans have proven themselves to be blithering idiots everywhere else.

Hey, if the Republicans have decided the citizens of this country are supposed to be beasts of burden in the service of the Greater Economic -- and Moral -- Good, I might as well switch sides.

Better to be a Donkey than a mule.

Cross-posted at PhantomMut

US Congress steps into cyberspace

The Joint Economic Committee (JEC) of the US Congress has announced it is investigating the amount of commerce taking place in virtual game worlds.

Although an economic value can be put on this trade because in-game currencies do have an equivalent real world value, committee chairman Jim Saxton said its investigation was not being carried out with a view to slapping taxes on this trade.

"There is a concern that the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) might step forward with regulations that start taxing transactions that occur within virtual economies," said Mr Saxton. "This, I believe, would be a mistake."

Instead, he said, the investigation wanted to get a better understanding of where the line falls between taxable and non-taxable trade. Studies of game activity suggest the time and effort put into these online worlds has an economic impact equivalent to the GDP of Namibia.

First, the joy:

Liz (my wife) is carrying triplets. (Her takes on the journey to date are indexed here.)

Here's the most recent picture of the tykes:

The Corner at National Review is the best conversational blog I've seen, and I greatly respect some of the writers there (Goldberg and Steyn in particular), but sometimes I just want to shake Katherine Jean Lopez (who happens to be the Editor of National Review Online).

She posts exerpts from two supposedly differing views on Guiliani here. One boils down to "yeah, he's a Godless baby-killer, but he's a Republican and good on National Security" while the other boils down to "I don't care if he calls himself a Republican, he's a Godless baby-killer."

At times John Podhoretz is simply brilliant:

So. Can the Republican party bring itself to nominate a candidate who doesn't really care much about abortion one way or the other? It appears that will happen. Now the question is, will Republican opinion leaders spend the year 2007 making abortion a major battleground in the nominating process? With the mainstream media following along lapping it up and stressing the most extreme elements of the discussion to send the message to independent voters that right-wingers are all a bunch of lunatics who are obsessed with ideological purity and not with getting things done?

I think if they do, the GOP is sunk.

That's it in a nutshell. I don't think a sane person can actually like the thought of abortion. (I'm looking at you, Amanda, and your creepy hallelujah choir.) But a sane person can think it isn't the most important thing in the world. A sane person can think that of all the evils that are available to man, abortion in all its myriad manifestations falls in a range on the scale, and that some part of that scale has to remain outside the scope of what government should be concerned with.

Look, all I want is a competent, grounded, and focused person in the Oval Office. That's it. Unfortunately, the "process" seems geared to weed those folks out early. (The anti-"War on Terror" crowd pretty much makes a responsible Democratic candidate a mere fantasy for '08, but that's another post...) For what it's worth, I think it very likely right now that either Rudy or Fred Thompson will be the nominee on the Republican side, and I'm okay with either of them. (I prefer Rudy because he's got a frickin' track record of successfully managing the herd-of-cats that is a major government -- and I defy anyone to classify the government of New York City as anything else -- but that is yet another post.) But this "abortion kabuki" isn't doing the country any good, because it shifts the focus away from clear and present dangers, and towards something that is frankly not an existential problem for the United States, Mark Stein notwithstanding.

I love me some single-issue voters. Not!

Okay, this should have been continued over at Alarming News, but the comment section broke down at a response to a point I raised, and since I think it's an important point, I am re-publishing the last two comments followed by my rebuttal over here.

myrna, Rudy has said he would appoint strict constructionists to the Court. Do you think he's lying? (Yeah, I know the rap that the judges he appointed in NYC "leaned left", but consider the talent pool he had available, please.)

And as an aside, the fetishization of abortion is one of the reasons I refuse to call myself a Republican. (The flip side is the fetishization of abortion is one of the reasons I refuse to call myself a Democrat, too...)

Everyone keeps trying to resurrect Reagan. Well someone tell me exactly what the Gipper did to fight the wave of abortions sweeping the land in the 1980s.

Anyone?

It's a wonder there's been any children born at all in this country since Roe v. Wade.
Posted by: Mark Poling at April 9, 2007 02:03 PM

Well Mark, you can worry about the 'fetishization' of the abortion issue, and I'll worry about its 'trivialization'.

I wonder how a person who supports Roe v. Wade can be taken seriously when he says he will appoint strict constuctionist justices. Aside from overturning Roe, there are a number of ways a President's politics can affect abortion policy - parental notification, partial birth, etc.
Posted by: myra langerhas at April 9, 2007 03:02 PM