Net Neutrality

More than anything else, I voted for Barack Obama because of his support for Net Neutrality. I wanted Healthcare reform too, but Net Neutrality was the big issue for me, and I’d have simply stayed home on election day, had he not openly supported that issue. The FCC, as a result of Obama’s new appointments, is now trying to implement Net Neutrality regulations. It’s no surprise that there are many on the political right now getting up on their soap box to bash Net Neutrality.

During his campaign for president, I criticized John McCain for his computer illiteracy. It’s really too bad that the anti-Net Neutrality advocates (they would call themselves “free market” advocates, but that would be ignoring markets that exist almost exclusively within the Internet, like Google and Facebook) are being represented by someone like John McCain. Even though I think the anti-reform advocates are wrong, I also think some have worthwhile points to make, and deserve to be heard. Unfortunately, it seems the people standing on the tallest soap box in opposition, are the people who clearly don’t have the slightest clue what they’re talking about.

There’s an argument to be made that the FCC shouldn’t be allowed to make up regulations on their own, and then implement them without congressional approval. Even members of the EFF are making that argument. I think it’s a valid point, and I would prefer to see binding legislation on this issue, rather than just FCC regulations that could easily be repealed at any time when the next administration comes in. However, this isn’t an argument against Net Neutrality; just against the FCC doing things unilaterally.

The few worthwhile arguments against Net Neutrality itself almost all revolve around the idea that the infrastructure was built by private companies, and thus those companies should be able to do what they like with that infrastructure. It’s a good ideological argument, but it ignores the issue of private monopoly, and the government subsidies taxpayers gave to those private companies to help them build that infrastructure. But even though that argument is flawed, it’s still immeasurably better than the “new fairness doctrine” malarkey coming out of some people. Net Neutrality is about forbidding the regulation of speech on the Internet (particularly by ISPs), which is the exact opposite of what the fairness doctrine was all about.

I believe the United States has been the most innovative country in terms of Internet start ups. Without Net Neutrality, companies like DIGG.com, mint.com, and people just looking to make a little money with their blog through advertising, simply wouldn’t have anything like the opportunities they have had in the past. Most of the websites we go to regularly wouldn’t have been viable businesses if we allowed the ISPs to run the Internet the way many of those same companies run cable television.  We need to ensure America’s continued dominance in this space, and I don’t think we’ll be able to do that without Net Neutrality.

Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize

I’ve come to the conclusion that the most interesting thing about Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize is how much people have lost their heads over it. I was confused by Obama’s win at first, but then I actually thought about it. The Nobel Committee votes for who they want to win. It’s not a math equation, it’s a gut-check/wishful-thinking/popularity-contest type of decision, and it always has been. That’s why I don’t think it aught to be taken as seriously as people seem to be taking it now.

Was Obama most deserving of the prize this year? Probably not, but if we were to go by the standards of history, I think it’s pretty clear that he is more deserving than Al Gore was back in 2007 (if Global Warming has anything more than an extremely tangential relationship to peace, I’ve yet to be convinced of it). I think people tend to forget how bad international relations were under George W Bush. It’s not in the media much, but our relationship with Russia was in very bad shape under Bush. So bad, that if things continued the way they were going, it might have actually come to military action. Obama comes in, nixes the military instillation (the “missile defence shield” which couldn’t do anything like defend against missiles) we were building on Russia’s door step under Bush, and suddenly Obama gets Russia to decrease it’s nuclear arsenal. Obama hasn’t done much to change our relationship with the nations in the “axis of evil”, but there’s a lot more to international relations than Iran and North Korea.

People rightly question the validity of the Nobel Peace Prize every year. The only real difference this year is that it comes on the heel of a popular Saturday Night Live skit claiming the person hasn’t done anything. Given how much people in this country take comedy as gospel truth, we’ve ended up with a lot of people being confused and angry that the rest of the world doesn’t do the same.

All I Am Saying, Is Give Healthcare Reform A Chance

It’s time I addressed the US Healthcare issue.

Improving the healthcare system in the United States aught to be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. We pay more per person than any other country in the world, despite the fact that we’re the only western nation in the world that doesn’t treat healthcare as a right. Put simply: We cover less people, yet pay twice as much. It is literally less expensive for me to import three bottles of Flonase from New Zealand than to go down the street and buy one bottle from Walgreens.

The problem is that, since we do spend so much more on healthcare than anyone else, it’s a massive part of our economy. Scraping what we have and starting over isn’t an option, when what we’d be scraping equates to a full sixth of the US economy. As a result, Barack Obama and congress have decided to come up with a lot of little proposals, roll them all into one big bill, and hope that solves the majority of our healthcare problems. The Insurance Exchange program, the various tax credits/subsidies/handouts, the various regulations being imposed on insurance companies, private employers, individuals…etc… The list is almost unending. But I think it’s worth a shot.

Libertarians insist that the reason healthcare is so bad is due to all the government intervention we already have. Republicans think it’s because of people exercising their legal right to seek retribution for perceived wrongs/damages. On any sort of macro level, neither of these assertions are backed up by either the states that have implemented tort reform already, or by the countries that have less government involvement in healthcare. The few specific benefits we have in our system over other countries (mostly involving drug research, and coverage for the wealthy) are outweighed by our inferior results on the macro level.

Many opponents of the various bills being proposed argue that these plans will eventually lead to a socialized single payer healthcare system. Lord, I wish it were true. Unfortunately, as proposed, even the “public option” would only be available through the Insurance Exchange (which most people wouldn’t have access to at all), and it wouldn’t be paid for with tax dollars. It would be far more akin to the US Postal Service than to Medicare, if the US Postal Service were only available to people physically incapable of delivering their own mail. I see no compelling evidence that the public options being proposed would come anywhere close to putting every other insurer out of business. Lord knows, I think that would be a good way of going about it: gradually expand a program like Medicare to eventually cover everyone, while slowly phasing out the necessity of private insurance companies.

There are a lot of things about the current plans that I don’t like. I don’t like the individual mandate. I don’t like the limitations placed on the public option (which may not even end up in the final bill at all). I don’t like how the Senate Finance committee has limited the Insurance Exchanges to be set up separately for each state (I think we aught to be able to choose from a national list of insurers, not just a state list)… I could go on.

But at the end of the day, I’m willing to give this a shot. The plan isn’t my ideal, and they’re mucking up the good ideas they originally had, but as things stand now, I have to import my Flonase from New Zealand, and that’s just retarded beyond anything congress has yet put forth on this issue.

Americans Don’t Understand The Facts, and Polls Aren’t Helping

A Pew Research poll from February of 2008 showed that 21% of American Atheists believe in God. I want you to take half a second to absorb the absurdity of that fact…

I’ve been watching the heath care reform debate with as much interest as I had during the last presidential election, and I’ve come to this conclusion: our government needs to completely ignore the opinion polls on this issue.

21% of Atheists believe in God. No matter what the issue, and no matter how seemingly simple the question, there is going to be a significant portion of the people polled that simply don’t understand the question well enough to provide a valid answer. Add to that the websites, TV ads, chain e-mails, and even congress people spreading complete falsehoods about what is and is not being proposed that it’s no wonder the American people are confused, scared, angry, and ignorant. Most of this stuff is easily debunked (FactCheck.org), but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s toxic to any opinion sampling.

You’ll probably have noticed that both sides of this issue like to quote various polls that support their position. The problem is that people don’t understand the issues to begin with, which means any poll about that issue will be complete crap. Add on top of that the fact that even the pollsters themselves can’t always be trusted to understand the issue, and that even the slightest word choices could skew poll results wildly, and we’re left with the conclusion that there’s no way to validly sample public opinion about the current reform bill.

Thus, the government should ignore opinion polls on the health care issue.

Is Biden Bad for Internet Freedom?

Gizmodo posted some of Joe Biden’s history as it relates to internet freedom issues. It got a lot of attention on Digg, so I think it’s worth addressing.

First, let me say up front that I like Joe Biden as a person and politician. In hindsight, I don’t think I’d have voted for him if he ran for president (as opposed to VP), but I’d have cheered him on from the side lines, because whenever I’ve seen him on c-span, he’s come off as more genuine than most others.

That being said, let’s go over the issues raised by Gizmodo one by one:

He asked Congress to spend $1 billion to monitor peer-to-peer activity. (In fairness, much of this is to prevent child pornography, but the tactic is apparently a little blunt.)

Gizmodo is a little biased in it’s presentation here, given that it wasn’t “much” of the money going to fight child porn, it was ALL of it. What’s more, peer-to-peer file sharing isn’t exactly a private activity. With most forms of P2P, anyone with an internet connection can scan what’s available, and collect IP addresses of those providing content. Frankly, if you think you’ve got a “reasonable expectation of privacy” while using Bittorrent or Limewire, then you don’t understand P2P.

What’s more, the government already monitors p2p for kiddy porn. This isn’t a slippery slope legal issue, because the government already does it, and thus the legal issues are already there to be dealt with one way or another.

Two Biden bills have been explicitly anti-encryption, because you know, encryption makes it hard for the FBI to read people’s e-mails.

This one is bad. I don’t know the history of the bills they are referring to, so I can’t verify the language of them. However, this position stinks of Big Brother trying to do an end-run around the courts. “If we can’t spy on those with a reasonable expectation of privacy, then we’ll make having that expectation illegal.” I hope such legislation wouldn’t stand up in the courts.

This one would scare me a lot more, though, if Gizmodo hadn’t demonstrated a clear bias with the presentation of the first issue. I should probably do more research for myself.

He has expressed support for internet taxes and internet filtering in schools and libraries.

This is actually three different issues. I’m opposed to internet taxes on principle, but I don’t do enough spending online to care all that much. I paid over $100 on sales tax when I got my Macbook. I won’t pretend that’s a good thing, but it stung enough for me to feel a little bitter toward those who circumvent state sales tax by purchasing goods online. I’m still opposed to the idea of an online sales tax; just not as much as I might be otherwise. (Side note: It sort of annoys me that the internet is biased against those who choose not to use credit or debit cards.)

As far as internet filtering in Schools: That’s a state issue. All the grade schools I went to filtered the internet, and it was never more than an annoyance. I don’t see it as a problem.

Filtering the internet in libraries: I’m oppose to it. Libraries were designed as free resources for information. However, with that in mind, they also tend to be very public places, so there’s a question about the legality of the government monitoring internet access in libraries.

The RIAA seems to be one of his best buddies: Biden sponsored a bill that would restrict recording of songs from satellite and net radio, and another one that would make it a felony to “trick” a computer into playing back unauthorized songs or running bootlegged videogames. That latter one died when Verizon, Microsoft, Apple, eBay and Yahoo all argued against it.

He took a bad position, and got shot down. The system worked. Let us celebrate that, and hope Biden learned his lesson.

Biden was one of just four senators invited to attend a celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hosted by the MPAA’s Jack Valenti and the RIAA’s Hillary Rosen, two of American file-sharer’s most wanted.

He has connections to companies that are working hard to protect their investments. Again, this would worry me a little if he was actually running for president. But, he’s not. What’s more, being opposed to piracy isn’t a bad thing. He’s just ill informed about how best to deal with it.

When he was asked in 2006 about proposing net-neutrality laws, he said there was no need, since any bit-filtering violations would provoke such a huge public ruckus they’d have to hold congressional hearings anyway—and they’d be standing-room only. (Wonder if Biden reads Gizmodo.) [Cnet]

A lot of people are misinterpreting this statement. He’s not opposed to Net Neutrality legislation. He simply thinks it’s redundant, because there are already FCC regulations in place. Admittedly, I don’t agree with him. I think we do need stronger Net Neutrality legislation. However, this isn’t half as bad as McCain’s outright vocal opposition to Net Neutrality.

Overall, I don’t like Biden’s tech record. But, I’m not voting for him. It’s widely stated that no one votes for the vice president. I think that’s a good thing. No doubt there are a lot of republicans who are likely to do so this year (Sarah Palin is getting a lot of positive attention), but anyone who votes for the vice president is likely to be very disappointed when the person actually running for president gets the job.  The Vice President isn’t the one with sign/veto power.

Obama’s and McCain’s positions on tech issues are the ones that matter, and Obama’s position is the one I like.

McCain’s Experience is Insufficient

The issue of John McCain’s lack of computer experience has failed to get the attention in the mass media I feel it deserves.  Some have acknowledged that McCain’s lack of experience effectively looses him the vote of almost everyone under 30.  However, the problem is that the mass media seems to be treating this issue as just par for the course for a man of McCain’s age.  They’ve been treating it as just a cultural issue of little importance.

That’s just unacceptable.  My grandfather (who’s 10 years older than McCain) has been tooling around on the internet for a decade.  But, more importantly, this is a far bigger issue than the mere “behind the times” one that people seem to think it is.

American innovation isn’t with nuts and bolts anymore; it’s on the internet.  Yahoo, Google, Ebay, Amazon, YouTube…  All of these are American companies (YouTube got bought by Google, but it’s still American).  Internet innovation is one of the very few areas where America is still ahead of the rest of the world.  It’s imperative that we ensure Americans are afforded every opportunity to remain ahead.  That means we need leaders who understand how and why we’ve succeeded thus far, and have valid ideas about how to continue that success.

It genuinely scares me that some people actually think John McCain is a better candidate than Barack Obama because of his experience.  I’m sorry, but the sort of experience McCain has is not the sort I want running this country.  But more importantly, the areas where he lacks experience makes him completely unacceptable to me.

Obama’s Failure to Take Public Financing, or How Obama is a Libertarian Democrat

I failed to address the topic of public financing in my last post, and I apologize for that.  It was at least important enough to acknowledge.  So, I’ll deal with it now.

Put simply: I don’t like public financing because I fear it’ll just be used as another way for politicians to game the system, but I don’t like corporate financing either.  Obama’s solution (to take donations from private individuals) actually manages to address both those issues, so I don’t have a problem with his decision.  I thought it was a bad political move, simply because it laid the foundation for the “flip flopper” label people are trying to saddle him with, but I think it will be a net boon in the long run.

I feel it would be inaccurate to say that Obama’s change of position here is part of a trend toward the political center.  One could make that argument, but I feel it would be more accurate to say that he moved more libertarian on this issue.  He’s still standing in opposition to corporate financing, but instead of getting behind a flawed government institution, he decided to do it himself, and do it better.  This isn’t something that one would see a typical Republican do (arguably, they’d be fine with corporate financing), nor is this something one would see from a typical liberal (who would get behind the institution for ideological reasons, if nothing else).  This is, however, something I’d expect from a successful Libertarian Democrat.  This is what I’d expect from a candidate who isn’t afraid to renounce a broken system, even though the ideals behind that system mirror his own.

I would argue that Barack Obama is as close to a Libertarian Democrat as we’re likely to see in a race like this for a good while.  The typical Democrat tends to overlook personal responsibility too often, and the typical Republican tries to legislate morality too often.  In contrast, Obama has consistently taken the libertarian position on those subjects, by arguing in favor of personal responsibility, and against legislating morality for others.

His Father’s Day speech about responsibility…  His support for gun rights…  His opposition to banning gay marriage…  His support of states rights regarding capital punishment…  If there is a greater narrative to be seen here, I don’t think it’s that Obama is making a strategic more to the political center.  I think the narrative is actually about Obama turning out to be more of a Libertarian Democrat (ideologically) than we originally might have thought.

Obama Is Not A Liberal Straw Man

There have been a lot of attacks against Barack Obama on the media of late. A lot of those attacks have come from the right, but a lot of them have even come from the left. The problem is that he’s being attacked for moving “away” from positions he never held in the first place.

Lets list them:

1. Death Penalty: The Supreme Court recently laid down a blanket ban on the use of capital punishment for rape cases that don’t end in the death of the victim. Obama came out against that sort of blanket ruling.

This isn’t a change of position. It can’t be, if only because he never before stated a position for this specific situation the court ruled on (as far as I know).

2. Gun Control: The Supreme Court even more recently ruled that the second amendment gives an individual the right to purchase and own a handgun. Obama came out in favor of this ruling

This isn’t a change of position. He even stated this exact thing during his primary fight with Hillary. The SCOTUS ruling essentially just restated the position Obama has preached from the very beginning.

3. Iraq: Obama stated that, after speaking with commanders on the ground in Iraq, he would “continue to refine his policies”. He is currently being attacked for changing his position away from the “rigid withdrawal date” he supposedly has.

This isn’t a change of position. He has always said that conditions on the ground would be determinative of exactly how he would go about the withdrawal. The overarching timeline has remained relatively consistent, but he has never stated that his plan wouldn’t be influenced by the facts on the ground. He was talking about tactics here, not the mission overall.

There’s really only one issue that he’s genuinely changed position on: FISA.

He’s come out in favor of the recent FISA legislation, which provides retroactive immunity to the telecommunication companies. He has stated that he doesn’t like the immunity part of the bill (and will work to remove it), but he’s willing to vote for the bill, because of the judicial overview provisions for spying in the United States.

I won’t even pretend to like the bill. I don’t. I won’t pretend Obama hasn’t changed positions on it. He has (though not as much as some claim). There’s only one thing about the bill that I’m cool with: If I’m not mistaken, this bill does not allow for domestic spying via data mining, simply because it requires a warrant for every instance of domestic spying (international communications are a different story). That’s the only reason I’m willing to let this issue slide, and I suspect that’s why Obama is given qualified marginal support of the bill (that doesn’t exactly qualify as a polar shift, but it is movement).

People on both sides of the political spectrum are accusing Obama of “moving” to the center because of all these issues. The problem is that there’s only been one move (and a relatively small one at that). Has McCain been attacked for moving to the middle during the general, because of his newfound enthusiasm for car batteries? No, because that’s just one issue and it’s not a huge move anyway.

The reason people are accusing Obama of moving to the middle is because he’s not proving to be the leftwing liberal people thought he was. Too often, people imposed their own opinions upon him, rather than listened to what he actually had to say. He became the liberal straw man for the republicans to rail against, and the liberals to deify.

After the recent Supreme Court rulings, McCain attacked Obama for wanting to put judges on the court that would take away our gun rights, and continue to vote the wrong way on capital punishment. Wait…What? That’s right. McCain accused Obama of wanting judges that actually disagree with his clearly stated positions. Why does that criticism work? Because Obama is a “liberal”, of course, and clearly doesn’t mean a word he’s saying on these issues.

This is the problem with the media, and even a lot of the American people. They don’t pay attention to what people actually say. They just listen to their own echo chamber, and base their opinions about all those outside that echo chamber on political stereotypes. Obama is not a Liberal Straw Man, and when the media treats him that way, they end up looking stupid.

The next time you hear someone say Obama has trended toward the middle since the primary, ask yourself what you feel that opinion is based on. Because, in my opinion, moving positions on one issue doesn’t make a trend.

Example of the echo chamber:

One of my best friends is a very liberal student of fine arts (she currently teaches collage English classes). She is simply one of the smartest people I know, and plans to start working on her doctorate in English some time soon. However, during the 2004 election, she and another friend got completely drunk, because they agreed to take a drink for every state that turned red that night. Being liberal arts majors, almost everyone they knew hated Bush, and assumed that no one would really elect him again. They thought Kerry would win by a landslide.

Meanwhile, anyone who paid attention to things outside the liberal echo chamber knew that there was going to be a lot of red on that political map, even if Kerry managed to win. 20 shots of anything are likely to cause serious problems, to say nothing about 31 (the actual number of states Bush won that night).

That sort of thing is happening all the time. It happened in the 2006 elections too. Those inside the liberal echo chamber thought the democrats would end the war in Iraq by pulling funding for it. However, the Democratic leadership—specifically Nancy Peloci—stated flat out that that option was off the table. Somehow, this information didn’t manage to penetrate the liberal echo chamber, and now they’re being accused of backing down…on a position they never held in the first place.

People like their stereotypes and straw men, because they’re simple. They also tend not to be representative of normal human beings.

Obama has always been a lot more moderate than either the liberal or conservative echo chambers have painted him (advocating personal responsibility among minorities, supporting gun rights, opposing mandates on healthcare, etc…). But any time he proves himself to be anything other than a Liberal Straw Man, he’s somehow “changing positions”. Frankly, I think people need to pay more attention.

Hillary Endorsed Obama, But Will Her Supporters Follow?

I’m very glad that Hillary endorsed Obama today, and after watching about half of the speech (honestly, I got board; I’m too accustom to Obama’s speeches), I felt a little guilty for railing against Hillary and her supporters yesterday. I don’t regret a word of it, but I do want to emphasize that I’m satisfied with Hillary’s endorsement speech.

All the same, there’s still the nagging question of whether all her supporters who said they would never vote for Obama really mean it. I suspect a lot of them do, and I’m cool with that. As I said before, I believe quite strongly than no one should ever vote for a person he or she isn’t confident supports issues important to that voter. What rubs me the wrong way, however, is the idea that they should go the other way and vote for McCain. Again, it’s they’re vote, and they can do whatever they want with it, but I don’t see how McCain is better than Obama, if you started off supporting Hillary.

After viewing some of the comments on one of the first “Hillary voters for McCain” websites, I’ve come to a rather sad conclusion: there’s isn’t just one reason for this. We can’t pigeonhole these people into one little group. Each one has his or her reason, and they don’t always agree with one another. However, there are a few arguments that I’d like to address.

1) The DNC, the Superdelegates, and/or the Rules Committee stole the election from Hillary

This is the most prominent argument, and I feel it’s a little naïve, to be honest. The election wasn’t Hillary’s to start with, and thus it couldn’t be stolen from her. She needed to earn it by winning the nomination. She agreed to the terms of that nominating process, and she lost, based on the terms she agreed to.

I want to emphasize at this point that the Democratic Party’s nominating process is not a governmental election. It has absolutely no standing in the US constitution, and is not rigidly defined by law. The rules of that nomination are set down by the states/territories involved, and the DNC. If you don’t like those rules, that’s fine, but to suggest that the nomination was “rigged” when the party is under no obligation to hold primaries or caucuses in the first place, is a little naïve.

I could get into the specifics about Michigan and Florida, but I fear that issue has been done to death. All the same, I’ll get into it anyway… They broke the rules, and got punished for it, just like any respectable club would punish one of its rule breaking members. Also, many voters in Michigan were told to vote “Uncommitted” if they supported Edwards or Obama, and thus “Uncommitted” got 40% of the vote, while Hillary only won with 55% (a smaller margin than in some states where Obama was actually on the ballot). There are counties in Michigan where “Uncommitted” actually won. But, more importantly, the Rules Committee only did what the states asked them to do. The solution the committee came to was derived from party leaders in Michigan and Florida.

Also, the superdelegates that went for Obama at the end were only backing the candidate who had won the majority of the pledged delegates. If they had done otherwise, then I would agree that they took the nomination away from the person who clearly should have won it. I’m not a fan of the “superdelegate” concept to begin with, so I support Nancy Pelosi’s position that they should only endorse the person who won the majority of the pledged delegates, because if the superdelegates didn’t exist, the person with the majority would be the winner anyway.

The “popular vote” argument that Hillary was pushing was, frankly, unsupportable. The Democratic Party doesn’t nominate its candidates by popular vote, which is why at least 4 states didn’t even bother to count a popular vote. They held caucuses, then declared a winner, without bothering with a formal tally (again, I emphasize that the Democratic nomination is not an election). Hillary’s “popular vote” argument flew in the face of the DNC nominating rules from the start, and hinged solely on how you chose to cherry pick the states.

I can understand how one would come to the conclusion that the Democratic nominating process wasn’t handled very well this time around, but I have no doubt that the winner of the nomination won it fairly.

2) Barak Obama can not keep us as safe from terrorism as either Hillary or McCain would

Frankly, I have trouble seeing how one can come to this conclusion, given the differences between McCain and Hillary on military policy. I can understand if one supported McCain’s ideas from the start, but Hillary’s military policy is much closer to Obama’s than McCain’s. McCain still thinks the war in Iraq is making us safer. How can one really think someone so deluded would make the rest of us safer than Obama would? Maybe because they look more at McCain’s military service, and trust him for that reason…even if their first choice (Hillary) never served in the military. Given that McCain hasn’t been in the military for 27 years (half his adult life), I’m not nearly as inclined to trust his current opinions about the military and modern international threats (but if you want a history lesson, he’s your man).

All the same, I would recommend that the people basing their support of McCain on this argument actually look deeper into Obama’s policies than the talking points pushed out by Obama’s opponents. You’ll find he’s a lot more rationally aggressive than McCain or Hillary have painted him.

3) If we elect McCain, Hillary will be able to win in 2012

This might actually be completely true. Except that I don’t buy the premise that Hillary would have won the election this time around, and I find it even less likely when she’s running against an incumbent McCain. The Republican base isn’t extremely fond of McCain as it is, and we don’t want them flocking to the polls just to vote against the Democrat. And, no matter how much Democrats might disagree, the Clintons have always been a good thing for the Republicans to unify against.

But, more importantly, I find this argument morally distasteful. I don’t like the idea of people voting for a candidate they don’t genuinely support. It seems to me that this option is akin to cutting off your nose to spite your face…and hoping that someone will give you a free nose job sometime in the future to fix it.

I understand if Hillary supporters don’t want to follow Hillary’s example, and support Obama. However, I don’t see how McCain is the second best choice.

The Minority of Hillary Supporters that are Jumping the Shark

I hate to admit this, but I must: I listen to liberal radio while I’m at work. I used to listen to audio books, but I ran out, and now I’m listening to left wing propaganda. At least I know it’s propaganda. That’s the first step to recovery, right?

But there’s something that’s been cropping up recently that gets me even more riled up than the typical anti-gun-government-should-be-trusted-with-your-life socialist stupidity that shows up there on occasion (not a lot on the specific programs I listen to, but it does happen occasionally). That something is, to put it bluntly, the irrational Hillary Clinton supporters who insist they are being treated badly.

1) Hillary acted badly on the day of the last primary, and it should have been obvious that people were going to call her on it.

2) Obama won the nomination fairly, no matter how you want to count Michigan.

3) The party needs to be unified if it’s going to win against McCain, and Hillary’s refusal to even acknowledge Obama’s win until days later is harming the party by continuing the division.

These are simple and unimpeachable facts, in my view. But, I hear Hillary supporters on these liberal talk shows call in and complain about how they are being attacked and disrespected. Disrespected? Obama wins the nomination, Hillary ignores it completely during her speech, and actually continues to push forward with her campaign, and the Hillary people are being disrespected? Forgive me if I missed a class in school about sportsmanship, but I was under the impression that after a game, you congratulate the victor, then either go party with him/her, or take your dignity, and go home. You don’t just ignore it, and just keep playing by yourself as if nothing happened. Not only is it disrespectful, it’s a demonstration of an inability to recognize reality. The idea that no one was going to call Hillary on that is frankly ludicrous.

But some of these Hillary supporters are even supporting her delusional speech that day. It just doesn’t make rational sense. Yes, the nomination isn’t officially over until the convention, but the DNC and the American people have had their say already. There are no more voters, caucus goers, or super delegates that can sway this anymore. The sufficient votes have been cast, and the game is effectively over.

Maybe I actually am being disrespectful to the avid Hillary supporters by pointing out that their candidate can’t win. Maybe it’s me, and not Hillary, who is being disrespectful by seeing them as individuals capable of making their own rational independent decisions (as opposed to Hillary, who tried to use them as a sheep-like block bargaining chip to force her way onto the ticket as VP). But, I don’t think it’s disrespectful to expect people to be rational.

If the Hillary supporters don’t want to vote for Obama because they aren’t sure of him for what ever reason, I understand and respect that. In fact, I avidly support the notion that a person should never vote for a candidate he or she isn’t confident supports issues important to that voter. Frankly, I’ve never voted in a presidential election for that very reason. I simply can’t support the “lesser of two evils”.

There’s the idea that women deserve presidential representation, and I agree. But the only way to get that is by winning it fairly. I don’t agree with the nothing that Hillary was the only chance women will have to get a member of their gender in the top office. If not Hillary, then who? Well, let’s start with Nancy Pelosi and Claire McCaskill for the name recognition, then move on from there. Hillary isn’t the only hope (“No, there is another…” …sorry, had to say it). Hillary wasn’t the best candidate from the start, in my opinion, and I think far too grand expectations were hanging on her run for office.

Hillary didn’t win, but as a result, we’re getting a better candidate now, and we’re even more likely to get better female candidate in the future. I’m very happy about that.