SOUTHWORTH, Wash. - A man trying to loosen a stubborn lug nut blasted the wheel with a 12-gauge shotgun, injuring himself badly in both legs, sheriff's deputies said.

The 66-year-old man had been repairing a Lincoln Continental for two weeks at his home northwest of Southworth, about 10 miles southwest of Seattle, and had gotten all but one of the lug nuts off the right rear wheel by Saturday afternoon, Kitsap County Deputy Scott Wilson said.

"He's bound and determined to get that lug nut off," Wilson said.

From about arm's length, the man fired the shotgun at the wheel and was "peppered" in both legs with buckshot and debris, with some injuries as high as his chin, according to a sheriff's office report.

"Nobody else was there and he wasn't intoxicated," Wilson said.

The man was taken to Tacoma General Hospital with injuries Wilson described as severe but not life-threatening.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071112/ap_on_fe_st/odd_shotgun_lug_nut_1

This is illustrative on many levels, the most obvious being the direct embodiment of "blowback". I'm sure he was deeply conflicted about shooting his dear Lincoln Continental, but that darn lug nut just wouldn't do what he told it, so it had it coming...

VC is nothing more than institutionalized pillaging. Look for K-P to lead a charge that will have other VC firms following in lemming-like fashion to quickly over-fund 10 or so green companies while the remaining thousands of ideas languish and die. After a "shake-up" or two in the new "greentech" industry, one VC group will own all of the intellectual property, which it will then sell to the highest bidder for burial.

Today's NYTimes [http://tinyurl.com/2kno4g] has new poll results from Iowa and New Hampshire. The article describing the results fit well with the issues Glenn brought up in his post and update.

Clearly, the Times, and the media in general, are still relying on only the two hot-button issues of abortion and gay rights for describing candidates along the liberal-conservative axis. Hence:

Large majorities of Republicans in New Hampshire and Iowa said they wanted the next president to be as conservative or more conservative than President Bush. But New Hampshire voters who said they intended to vote in the Republican primary are prepared to vote for a candidate who is not as conservative as they are, if they judge the candidate to have a good chance of winning the presidency (independents can vote in either party primary in New Hampshire). Two-thirds of New Hampshire Republicans and one-half of Iowa Republicans said they were open to voting for candidates who did not share their view on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, which augurs well for Mr. Giuliani, who supports abortion rights and gay rights.

The Times does go a bit further, though, and explores military issues:

Just 4 percent of Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire would favor a candidate who advocates using military action soon to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons; 38 percent of New Hampshire Republicans and 31 percent of Iowa Republicans would support such a candidate.

/snip/

By contrast, 50 percent of New Hampshire Democrats said they would not be prepared to vote for a candidate who wanted to keep troops in Iraq “longer than you would like,” even if they thought the Democrat had a good chance of victory in November.

Of course, no comment appears in the article to point out that with the exception of Ron Paul, all of the Republican candidates take positions on Iran and Iraq that are in direct opposition to approximately two thirds of Republican voters.

Further, no questions address the vital questions of restoration of the Constitution and the rule of law. If lonely people can go to EHarmony.com and find their perfect mates by matching in 29 dimensions, why is political discourse limited almost exclusively to a liberal-conservative axis defined by positions on gay rights and abortion? When issues such as wars (current and future), abuse of power by the executive branch, elimination of competition in the corporate world, concentration of wealth into an ever shrinking segment of the population and other vital issues receive little to no attention, candidates with radical views on these are given a free pass if they come back within the Overton window on the poorly defined liberal-conservative axis.

The press simply is not doing its job if it continues to ignore the issues of habeas corpus, rendition, torture, warrantless wiretapping, pre-emptive bombing of Iran, Iraq withdrawal and depoliticization of the Justice Department in its coverage of the election. Positions on these questions simply do not fall on the liberal-conservative axis as they have defined it. To make informed decisions on these candidates, we need to look at where they are on the other axes of interest, such as:

• balanced branches--executive branch dominance

• just war--preemptive war

• government responsibility--individual responsibility

• peoples' rights--corporate rights

• privacy--wiretapping

I am sure that others could come up with a better set of axes, but the point remains that other than the blogosphere, there simply is not a public debate on a vital range of issues that will have a tremendous impact on what course our country will chart after the election.

Glenn's link to the HTML Mencken article yesterday finally helped me to see how these arguments apply to Ron Paul. Paul's positions on preemptive war and on the powers of the executive branch are in line with those of many of us who have despaired over the excesses of the Bush regime. These positions, and the axes on which they reside, are independent of his positions on government responsibility, peoples' rights and others. That he is an improvement over the rest of the Republican pack on these two axes is indisputable. That he is as repugnant as the rest of the pack on virtually all other issues is also indisputable.