No, I won't be voting today

I decided to explain my long-standing decision not to participate in elections at some length on the Register's Orange Punch blog today. Briefly, I don't want to get invested one way or another in candidates, which might affect how I cover them once they're elected. And I prefer not to give even my implied consent to the system of way-beyond-the-Constitution misrule we have in place in the USA today. So I withhold my consent by withholding my participation in the system whereby the rulers justify themselves. Comments welcome.

Not voting doesn't mean I won't be commenting on the voting. There should be continual election updates tonight on the Register's Orange Punch blog if you're interested

Republicans defending socialism

I understand (I think) most of the series of political calculations that got them there, but this is just too rich anyway. The only way the Obama/Reid/Pelosi/Baucus approach to health care doesn't bust the budget dramatically is by including some $4-5 hundred billion in cutbacks in Medicare over the next 10 years (they won't make those cuts anyway, but that's a tale for another day). So the Republicans are now defending every penny spent on Medicare as if it were sacred. Medicare is as close as anything in our current system to a pure socialist approach to medicine. So that's what Republicans defend if they think it leads to blowing up plans for the next phase ogf government takeover. I sympathiz3, and it just might work. But the irony/hypocrisy deserves a mention.

Obama's sorry speech

I'll know it's almost time to retire when a situation like last night doesn't get the adrenaline flowing and stir the creative juices. Obama gave his speech at 5:00 PST, and the last train leaves at 6:50, so I had to listen to the speech, check my notes, and write this editorial by about 6:20 to have time for Cathy to read it, ask a few questions, change a few things and get it ready for the next day's paper. It went on the Web site right away, and also onto the FreedomPolitics.com site.

It wasn't that hard to write. We have been urging military disengagement in Afghanistan for at least a year, for reasons we think are sound and that haven't changed much. There is no significant al-Qaida presence in Afghanistan, so the main thing we're accomplishing by keeping troops there is fueling the Taliban insurgency and acting as a crutch for the corrupt and ineffectual Karzai regime. Obama's "surge" (greater in percentage terms than Bush's 2007 Iraq surge) is unlikely to achieve much of anything for reasons the editorial explains.

In a later posting on the Register's Orange Punch blog, I played with the idea that this might have been as shrewd a course as Obama could have charted given the bad options facing him and assuming he wasn't going to begin an Afghan pull-out or even a military de-emphasis. He's letting the military throw a Hail Mary, giving it 18 months (ior 12 after the build-up is completed) to do serious damage to the Taliban. Then he'lkl be able to say he gave it his best shot (and maybve even cite some signs of progress) and it's time to begin the pull-out. Don't know if that's his game, but if it is it just might be the least-worst of what was feasible.

Of course there's some gross cynicism involved; he's sending X number of Americans to their deaths -- surely the death toll will rise with more troops and m,ore active engagement, unless the Taliban just plays possum, and those people will have died for nothing.

Preoccupied by Iran

Like a lot of people I've been rather preoccupied by events in Iran, perhaps more than many people in that I've had to write about it as well as observe and think about it. Here is today's Register editorial, which confesses to being inspired by the massive expressions of readiness for change yet cautious about how things might turn out, even with regime change. I also blogged about Iran several times on the Register's Orange Punch blog, here, here, and here.

There are links to helpful sites with constant updates, reflections on Twitter, and an acknowledgment that we know less about the situation than we probably think we do, with links to various interpretations.

I also worked on my Sunday Commentary cover piece, which laments the plight of seven Iranian-Americans facing prison terms for donating to the Mujahedin-e Khalq Iranian resistance movement, which has absurdly been designated a terroriast organization by the U.S. State Dept.

I would like to hope that this is a pre-revolutionary moment, but it's worth remembering that more often than not revolutions bring in regimes that are in some ways worse than those they replaced.

Covering the inauguration

My main responsibility -- and it is the new age of responsibility, after all -- was to the people who cut my paycheck today, so I will direct you to the Register's Orange Punch blog for ruminations on what was, especially following the build-up, a rather flat inauguration ceremony. Here's today's Register editorial anticipating the inauguration. I also found a blog by Will Wilkinson, who edits Cato's at-liberty blog, who live-blogged the ceremony with a nice sardonic edge. Also David Boaz's dissenting prelude.

Blogging the debate tonight

My Register colleague Steve Greenhut (Mark Landsbaum will be teaching a class) and I will be live-blogging the final (thank goodness!) desultory debate tonight over at the Register's Orange Punch blog. Tune in if you want to revel in our ineffable insights and instant analysis.

Finally, only 20 days. I will be so happy when this endless election is finally over and the next president has to confront the mess Dubya (and his predecessors, to be fair) have left him. Maybe the partisan hormones will recede for at least a little while.

Blogging McCain et. al.

As mentioned before, the Register's Steve Greenhut is at the convention in St. Paul and has sent back interesting observations, as well as a lot of pictures today, to the Register's Orange Punch blog. I've been contributing observations based on watching the speeches and the coverage from home, and Mark Landsbaum, who was in Denver, has recovered enough to offer pithy contributions. Check it out.

Blogging the convention

If you have any interest in a modestly libertarian take on the Democratic convention, the Register staff is blogging it fairly extensively on our Orange Punch blog. My colleague Mark Landsbaum is doing most of the heavy lifting/writing since he's on the scene in Denver, but I'm interjecting comments from time to time, as is Steve Greenhut, who will be in St. Paul next week for the Republican convention. We had some fun in the comments section with some of our readers who think I'm more than a bit off-the-wall on this post. Check it out.