Neil Stevens's blog

This is my first attempt at a political video. I was rummaging around my Applications folder and found I had iMovie HD, so I figured I'd give it a whirl.

Don't be gentle. If it stinks, just say so. If you don't get the joke of the video, see here.

The California Republican Party has again adopted "a strong, conservative pro-life, pro-family platform", says Flash Report, but I think what really happened in San Francisco is that conservatives and moderates fought off an extreme pro-abortion fringe and joined to put in a moderate platform that reaches out in a reasonable way to a left-leaning state.

Rudy Giuliani launched an unprovoked attack on fellow Republicans yesterday, specifically the Congressional Republicans who to my knowledge have never come after him.

Says the Washington Times:

"We lost Congress because, ultimately, our party in Congress became just like the Democrats as far as spending money is concerned. Shame on us! Shame on us!" the former New York City mayor said. "What we should stand for is fiscal discipline."

My challenge to Giuliani is to prove this charge; prove that our Congressional Republicans are a) just like the Democrats on spending and b) weren't fiscally discliplined in their policy development.

I will not work actively to defeat the Republican nominee, no matter who he is. Even if he is Ron Paul or Rudy Giuliani.

I will not promise my vote, and I will not promise any effort in support of the nominee, but nor will I attempt to tear him down.

That's as far as I go, but it is what I will do.

It's been brought to my attention that I made another error: I slipped up and shifted by one the years to which I credited each President. Ronald Reagan, to use the example given by the person who corrected me, took office in 1981, of course, so his first budget applied to the year 1982.

Combine this with other criticisms, and I'm just going to try it again soon with a new approach to the problem.

I tell you: never have I gotten a true appreciation for how easy it is to lie with statistics, than in making honest attempts to see where the Bush administration stands historically with respect to spending. There are just so many ways to chop and analyze the numbers, with every way telling a different story.

We all know the of story of the federal budget. While 'mandatory' entitlement spending is a runaway wreck, Presidents and Congresses have had differing success in controlling so-called discretionary spending. And the most 'fiscally conservative' President in that regard was President Clinton, thanks to 'divided government' forcing restraint. And of course the worst two were Presidents Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush, who ran amok creating and growing programs thanks to one-party rule creating no opposition to waste.

I'm sorry to tell you this, but that story's not quite right. Here's why:

[Updated below the fold to correct an error]

Here's where we separate the True Conservatives from the Libertarians, and the Libertarians from the Anarchists: The Libertarian Purity Test.

Remedial Civics Lesson One: How the Constitution is Amended

It has come to my attention that James Dobson is using the strong variant* of the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment as a litmus test of Republican Presidential nominees, rejecting those who reject it.

However this makes no sense. Mr. Dobson appears to have forgotten that while a bill becomes a law only if it receives the President's approval (barring a veto override), a Constituional Amendment requires no such support.

Scenario: Democrat in a rock-ribbed Republican state. He politics the snot out of his state to get himself elected statewide, then runs for national office.

Result: He goes off to Washington and votes the party line a maddening amount of the time. Democrats quietly snicker in triumph, Republicans tear our hair out while failing to get any attacks to stick.

Scenario: Republican in a decidedly Democratic state. He politics the snot out of his state to get himself elected statewide, then runs for national office.

Result: He never gets anywhere because Republicans are so scared of people who 'grow' in office that we get scared that any flipping will lead to flip-flopping. Attacks. Finger-pointing. Democrats quietly snicker in triumph.

Is this the way things ought to be? I'm not sure, to be honest. Clearly there is possible political improvement to be had, but I don't know if we want to play this game.

We have a great Republican field this Presidential campaign cycle. This is probably top to bottom the strongest Presidential field we've had in my lifetime. Well, I may be overstating the case a tad, since we were a mess in 1996 and I was thoroughly turned off by our two leading candidates in 2000. But, we go to the election with the party we have.

And the party we have right now is pretty good. Everpresent mainstream press negativity notwithstanding (Come on, has there ever been a year when there wasn't some minor Republican scandal being blown up by the Democrats in the press?), I think we have every reason to be excited going into the 2008 election, because if we're going to lose this one, it's probably not going to be at the top of the ticket.

New York City has banned the use of Aluminum bats in youth baseball leagues, saying that the metal bats, and the allegedly greater velocity they can put on the ball, create a greater danger for the pitcher and others at the games. Naturally someone sued, having lost in the legislature, apparently disagreeing with the legislature's beliefs, and trying just to get it thrown out because it's unfair. Or something. We all know how people get when they go the the courts to win political fights.