The Governor has proposed a serious change to the laws regarding NY state pistol permits. This is a real threat.

In addition to some obnoxious new fees, this bill would cause your permit to expire every five years, and would allow local governments to impose any fee they desire on permit renewals and amendments.

This means that any county judge can simply decline to renew your permit, and it's gone. It also means that the local town government can decide to impose, say, a $1000 fee every time you want to add a new gun to your permit, or when your renewal comes up. Think I'm kidding? This is what they did to the Federal Firearms Licenses (the FFLs), and they did it expressly with the purpose of reducing the number of people who could afford to hold them.

This is a serious back-door gun ban. Get off your ass, right now, and call your representitive in the state senate. If we don't stop it in the senate, it won't be stopped. Remember, the Governor proposed it himself.

Click here, and enter your address down near the bottom of the page; it will tell you who your representive in the state senate is, and what phone number to use to reach them. Call - do not use email! They have the same spam problems we do, and email messages are often discarded unread. Tell them that you are opposed to the part of the Governor's budget that amends Section 400.00 of the Penal Law to impose fees on pistol permits.

Local reps often do listen, and a few dozen phone calls really can change their behavior. Do this now.

Note: Remember, you want to talk to your representive to the state senate, not the federal senate. Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer are not going to help us here!

comment

...but I think Howard Dean came out way ahead last night. The Iowa Caucus was the best thing that ever happened to him.

Coming in third in Iowa was no big deal. We all know that the Iowa Caucus is not a good predictor of eventual victory, it does not closely reflect the opinions of voters in other states, and it does not award a significant number of delegates. If it didn't present such a grand opportunity for the press to hyperventilate, it would remain forever unknown and ignored, and rightly so.

Dean lost only his overconfidence and his sense of privilege; he still retains his strengths. Don't forget that Dean still enjoys considerable popular support nationwide, he still has a skilled and powerful campaign organization, and he is still sitting on a ton of money. The one thing of real value that changed hands last night was the full endorsement of organized labor. With Gephardt gone, Dean is almost certain to pick up what little union support he did not already command.

In my opinion, the big loser last night was Clark, because Clark is going to be in very serious trouble if he is not among the top two in New Hampshire. Last week that was a pretty good bet, but now? Clark faces three serious challengers, not just one, and all the momentum belongs to the other guys. If it turns out that the Iowa voters actually succeed in killing off Clark, Dean will be thanking them in his memoirs.

What about Kerry and Edwards? Kerry was a dead man walking last week, and he's still a dead man now. Today probably marks the high water mark of his campaign. After he finishes out of the top two in New Hampshire, he's gone for good.

Edwards? He's pleasant, photogenic, and hopelessly out of his league. He has his merits, but he's still a political novice who has no business running for a wartime presidency. Neither Kerry or Edwards has any real money, a national organization, or meaningful support from unions, minorities, Hollywood, or the political establishment. They will hit the remaining primaries the way a bug hits the windshield of a speeding car. One or the other of them might squeak out a close second in New Hampshire, displacing Clark and paving the way for a Dean victory. That's about the best either of them can really hope for.

Dean got slapped, not hard enough to really hurt him but plenty hard enough to wake him up. He can't be careless anymore. No more foaming rants, not more conspiracy theories, no more being rude to the press. In about 24 hours a new Dean will emerge - confident, friendly, approachable, serious. That's part of what you can buy with all that money and all those expensive consultants. Dean has the power to remake himself, and he is fortunate that the motivation for this makeover has been so timely. If he had taken the lead in Iowa he'd have remained a prick right into the middle of the race, and by then it might have been too late.

The race belongs to Dean. If he can keep his anger in check, keep his mouth shut, and still appeal to his supporters, he's got it in the bag. If he can't, he'll lose. It's up to him.

comment

The room falls silent as the Master Craftsman takes the stage. He's among the best of his kind in the world. Today he is about to perform another of his miracles, and we all get to watch.

I don't know this guys name, but I know what he does - he's a top-level political strategist, currently serving the Clark campaign, and today is when he earns his paycheck. I expect a remarkable performance.

You think his job is easy? How would you get your boss out of this one?

Two months ago Democratic hopeful Wesley Clark declared in a debate that he has always been firmly against the current Iraq War. "I've been very consistent... I've been against this war from the beginning," the former general said in Detroit on October 26. "I was against it last summer, I was against it in the fall, I was against it in the winter, I was against it in the spring. And I'm against it now."

Now we learn that just two weeks before congress passed the Iraq Congressional Resolution, Clark testified before the Committee On Armed Services, making a strong case in support of the Iraq war:

"Every president has deployed forces as necessary to take action. He's done so without multilateral support if necessary. He's done so in advance of conflict if necessary. In my experience, I was the commander of the European forces in NATO. When we took action in Kosovo, we did not have United Nations approval to do this and we did so in a way that was designed to preempt Serb ethnic cleansing and regional destabilization there. "

[...] "There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat... Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons... It's been a decade in the making. It needs to be dealt with and the clock is ticking on this."

Read the whole thing. By any rational measure, Clark's political career has just ended, right here. How can you possibly run this guy as an anti-war candidate who opposed unilateral action in Iraq?

I don't know how our Master Craftsman will do it, but I know he will. That's why he's getting paid more this year than most of us will make in our lifetimes.

Watch closely, and you can learn an awful lot.

comment

Alex at Marginal Revolution wants your opinion:

President Bush reputedly asked his big-think guys to come up with a new vision to unify and motivate the nation and they came up with ... a moon base? It's so been there, done that. Going to the moon was one of the greatest accomplishments of mankind but I am not inspired by imitation. Are you?

Hence, I issue this challenge to the blogosphere. What's your big-think idea to unify, motivate and inspire the nation?

Now, look... I was seven years old when we took that first giant step. I watched it on TV. I remember stepping outside and looking up at the sky, searching for the astronauts there on the moons surface. (I really could see them, too, but just barely. My eyes were much better then).

I still consider it one of the most beautiful, heroic moments in human history. Put me alone in a room and show me that footage again and there will be tears running down my face. Even now, when I watch that one camera angle - you space freaks know which one - of that huge fucking rocket lifting off, and the big letters painted on the side becoming visible one by one as it rises up...

U
.
.
.
S
.
.
.
A
.
.
.

...I swear I can feel my heart stop cold in my chest. Fellow space enthusiasts, I've been bit by our bug. I understand.

That's why it's so hard for me to say this: that moon base thing is a stupid idea.

I'm no space expert, and Gregg Easterbrook certainly isn't, either, but he sure as shit got right to the point in this post. It ain't gonna happen, guys. Go ahead and give it a read. I'll wait.

So what of Alex's question? What's the right thing to do?

I've got three words for you: Practical Nuclear Fusion.

The technical challenge is certainly there. With a trillion bucks, and fifteen years with a few hundred of our nation's finest minds, we might, just maybe, pull it off. And what do we get for our trouble?

That depends. What's the value of a limitless supply of cheap energy?

Yeah, sure, we'd be free of the Saudis. Big fucking deal. You're still thinking small, kid. With enough energy, you could manufacture just about anything you want, in whatever quantities you'd like. Food? No problem. Houses? Of course. Plenty enough for everyone, everywhere. Heat and light and medicine and books and cars and trains and washing machines and those cool-ass jetpacks you can use to zoom around in the domed city? Sure. Why the hell not?

OK, so I'm overstating the case here, but not by much. Seriously, could you even imagine something that would produce more wealth? Can you imagine anything that would bring more comfort and safety and progress to people everywhere?

The best part is, there would be nobody to say, "Why are you putting another man on the moon when we have hungry children to feed?", because we'd be feeding more children with this project than have ever been fed in the history of the earth. Even the "Don't you know there's a war on?" folks would have to agree - shafting the Saudis would be mega-sweet, wouldn't it? No more petrodollars for you!

Our biggest problem would be coping with the change. Coping with the change of lifting billions of people to a far greater standard of living. Coping with all the new things we could discover and build.

Now that, goddamn it, would be a worthy successor to Apollo. It's not really about standing on the moon. It's about lifting the whole goddamn human race to a whole new level. It's about doing something that people will never forget.

I'd bet we could do it, too.

comment

Who do you think Bush will choose to be his running-mate this year?

Dick Cheney, right? Everybody seems to assume he just gets it by default, but I disagree. The more I think about it, the more confident I am that somebody else is going to take his place.

Cheney, no matter what you may think of him, has a single, critical liability - he's simply not going to be a viable candidate in 2008. His health is shot. This is not a man who can be counted on to remain vibrant and active for another 16 years.

As much as we poke fun at vice presidents, there is no better job in the world for the man or woman who seeks the presidency for themselves. Unless Bush fails spectacularly during his next term, his vice president is going to be the leader of the Republican party in 2008, and that person is going to be the presidential nominee.

Right now, that VP slot is the most valuable job in American politics, and, arguably, the most powerful, appointed position in the entire world. Think about that for a minute.

It would be insane to waste that opportunity on a man who can not follow through with it.

I expect a dramatic announcement shortly after the end of the Democratic nomination on July 30th. Just as the Democrats announce their candidate and start to enjoy their post-convention bounce, we'll learn that Dick Cheney has been forced to step aside for health reasons, and that the President must reluctantly choose a new running-mate. The last half of August will be filled with media speculation, and at the convention - scheduled to begin August 30th - we'll finally get to see who it is.

The crowd would go wild, of course, if it turned out to be Condi Rice. Nothing would cripple Hillary's '08 prospects more than running against a competent, black, female, and possibly gay Vice President who'd been in charge of US foreign policy for the last eight years, but I don't think that'll happen. (Why not? I don't Rice wants the job. If she does, she's been playing those cards very close indeed).

I honestly have no idea who else it might be. I'm also really surprised that this hasn't received more attention than it already has.

So, what do you think, folks? Who's going to run with Bush in '04?

comment

Fucking Mars! Check it out:

Maybe I'm weird, but this just impresses the hell out of me. I've already spent an hour just letting my eyes wander all over these photos.

You know what it's like, when you're swimming in the ocean and you suddenly realise how deep the water is below you? You know how that can kind of freak you out?

I don't know what's spookier - the idea that we might find traces of living things there, or the idea that we won't. What if it's really just a huge, sterile place, utterly empty of life?

That kind of loneliness could almost kill you, if you could really wrap your mind around it.

comment

Well, we made it through another high-profile holiday without anybody blowing anything up around here. The bad guys wanted desperately to fly a 747 right into those crowds. They would have, too, if they could have.

All our guys working so hard in the shadows have done a damn good job, again. Another good year for all of us. Thanks, dudes.

Playing defense is a sucker's game and it will, eventually, catch up to us. Happily, we won't have to play that game forever.

That whole Mad Cow thing was actually pretty good news. Seriously.

After our friends in Britain got nailed by this disease, it became, unavoidably, something that we simply had to deal with. It's not a question of should we have, or not have, this disease in our midst. It's a question of what we were going to do about it.

One of the things we did was to take steps to prevent it; another thing we did was to monitor how well or preventive measures actually worked; a third thing was to make sure we could respond swiftly to any surprises that came down the road.

Our preventive measures worked pretty fucking well. The cow in question was imported from Canada, and was born well before the preventive steps were taken. None of our cows, born since the preventive measures have been in place, have ever turned up sour. Not one.

Our screening worked pretty well, too. We've been running down all the littermates of this sick cow and we have not found any more evidence of disease. It's not like we've had sick cows all over the place and only belatedly discovered the problem. It looks as if we nailed it, first time, right off the bat.

Our response, in my opinion, was admirable. We were open about what we found and we did not hesitate to take several extraordinary steps to instantly contain the problem. Our openness cost us billions of dollars in sales. We did it anyway.

The bottom line? We don't have a Mad Cow problem anymore. Our beef is good, and we've proved it. That's what a properly-functioning food safety system looks like.

There are some who would say that the actual health threat from Mad Cow has been vastly overblown, and that the billions in lost sales were the result of a foolish overreaction. These folks are undoubtedly correct. However, we don't get to decide how reasonably other people are going to respond to this news. Whether the threat of illness is real or not is irrelevant. The reaction of the world market is real, and that money is going to be lost for years if this problem is not contained. Perhaps this was just an exercise in managing hysteria, but if hysteria is going to be a real problem, then managing it is serious business.

We did a really good job here. I think it's a damn shame that these folks aren't getting the credit they deserve.

Here's a thought for the political junkies in the room. Imagine that you were hired by the Republicans, and asked to come up with a credible scenario for a Bush loss in '04. What's the highest-risk outcome you can imagine?

Something involving Dean? Gephardt? Clark or Kerry? Hard to put that one together, isn't it? Sure, any of these guys can run a decent race, but none of them is really a major threat.

In my opinion, there is one scenario, however unlikely, that could really do it. If Dean falters and none of the candidates gets the required number of delegates, a Clinton draft is not only likely, it's almost a sure thing. I can easily imagine how it would gather incredible momentum once it started to happen. It's be exciting as hell, and Hillary might well step up to the plate if she thought the votes were really there.

Sure, her best shot would be in 08, everybody knows that. Everybody also knows that four years is a long time, too, and nobody walks away from a good shot at the White House when it falls into their lap.

Imagine that race. First woman president. Democrats screaming themselves hoarse, money pouring in. Hillary the Hawk, with her wise and resolute game face on, offers herself as a sane alternative for protecting America's future, with the promise of eight more years of Clintonian prosperity and renewed multilateral fellowship. Blacks loved her husband and would turn out in record numbers. New York and California would instantly be in the bag, allowing her to focus all her resources on a handful of swing states. Florida would become a national battle ground.

That'd a be a real fight, wouldn't it?

Look again at the alternatives: Dean. Gephardt. Clark. Kerry. If you wanted Bush out, which option would you be praying for now?

The only thing necessary to make this all happen is for Dean to fall on his ass, and that seems a little more likely every day.

You probably heard about that punk congressman who advised people to stay home on New Year's Eve. It's too dangerous, he said, because of all the terrorists.

He's half right. It is dangerous.

I wish I could have been present when he'd said it. In a loud, polite, and reasoned voice, I'd have asked, "For how long, sir?"

For how long should we cower? How long should we be afraid?

The danger really is there. We certainly need to look out for ourselves, and we need to support the people we've hired to look out for us. We'll undoubtedly need to live our lives under this threat, this year and the next, and the year after that, perhaps for many years and through many setbacks. Even if a setback means a huge explosion in Times Square.

We'll manage, of course, the way good people always have; by doing whatever the hell we want, whenever we want to do it. Cowering is for cowards and failed congressmen. It's for those who are about to lose the fight.

There are only two responses to intimidation - surrender, or defiance. These are not momentary decisions anymore. They are lifestyle choices, and we are going to be living with them for a long time.

Happily, the people on my side get laid a lot more often. If there is any justice in the world, our little congressman will be learning that lesson himself.

comment