... I'm glad this bill was vetoed, although I doubt I'd agree with Bush's reasons for vetoing it. Bush no doubt vetoed it because he doesn't give a good goddamn about health care, and because he's opposed to any tax, basically, of any kind, and he seems to believe that we can spend countless billions on his pet little war, "faith-based" charity, etc. and not actually pay for it, and that somehow everything will magically work out fine.

So why do I support the veto? First, because yes, I'm a smoker, and because cigarette taxes are already absurdly high. The idea that smokers should pay for their and everyone else's health care while people who eat crappy food, don't exercise, and drive SUV's that belch more pollution into the air in an hour than my habit does in a year is just ridiculous. I smoke, but I also eat healthily, exercise, walk or take the bus whenever possible, and drive a high-mileage car -- I can pretty much guarantee you that I'm less of a burden on the health care system than most of these self-righteous morality police, who in person always seem to be models of conspicuous consumption.

Second, while I do believe in a "pay as you go" model of government, which under current circumstances means taxes need to be raised, I'm opposed to special taxes in general. The tax code is already absurdly complex. People and businesses that can afford to pay accountants to look for every possible loophole get away with paying damn near nothing; middle-class and working people and small businesses get screwed. Sales taxes, income taxes, property taxes, government service "fees" that are really taxes by another name, whatever; there are too many of them, they're too confusing and contradictory, and the amount of time spent on figuring them out plus the amount of money that gets through the loopholes probably costs us a hundred times as much as Philip Morris ever could.

This applies to tax breaks, as well -- there are thousands of special little ways to get out of paying taxes on this or that, ways that only a few people (and their accountants) ever manage to benefit from. We need to get rid of all the special taxes and all the special exemptions and have a simple, rational income tax system at the national and state levels that everyone can understand. No individual tax return should take up more than one sheet of paper, and no business tax form should ever take more than a couple of sheets. On the local level, sales and property taxes are the way most municipalities raise money, and that's fine, but those too should be simple and consistent. The last thing we need to do is add one more special case to the current convoluted mess.

Wow. Now Bush has done one (1) thing in his entire Presidency that I agree with. Too bad everything ele he's done is driving the country down into ruin.

Do you actually disagree with what Durbin said? In other words, if you heard a description of the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, without knowing the nationalities of the people involved, would you think, "Yeah, I'll bet the guys running the prison were Americans?" Or would you think, "That sounds like something the Nazis / Soviets / Khmer Rouge would do?" If the latter, then you're agreeing with Durbin. If the former, then you're a scumbag who doesn't deserve the name "American."

... we're not paying al-Qaeda's bills.

Hopefully.

... that in the three decades since he was studying climate change, we might have learned a few things we didn't know then?

... the reason the Birkenau pegs bother him more than the Chauchilla jawbone is because Chauchilla is apparently just a graveyard (albeit a really bizarre one) while Birkenau was the site of a mass murder. Duh.

Napoleon was a bloody-minded conqueror with delusions of grandeur, but he had plenty of real grandeur to fall back on; Bush has none. Napoleon was a scrappy middle-class kid who fought his way to the top; Bush has squandered the privelege into which he was born. Napoleon was a military genius, and was ultimately defeated only by an alliance of the largest empire the world has ever seen with several other great powers; Bush's Waterloo comes not at the hands of Wellington's superbly drilled soldiers, but a mob of ill-disciplined fanatics. The two men may have made one similar mistake, but Napoleon is deservedly remembered for his accomplishments, while Bush will be remembered little, and only for his failures.

... is someone who doesn't know very much about nature.

That goes for any other economic system too, of course. Marxists think communism is natural and inevitable. Medieval noblemen thought feudalism was ordanined by God. Communal anarchists think we can all get back to some imagined natural, prehistoric system that will magically sort itself out without any rules.

It's all bullshit. We decide on the "laws" of economics. Capitalism is a choice -- better than most to be sure; that doesn't make it perfect -- and we make decisions, including moral decisions, that subtly alter the way it works every single day. What modern capitalists call capitalism would be utterly foreign to Adam Smith.

For those who think it's natural ... spend a week backpacking through the high Rockies and get back to me on that. If, that is, you survive the experience of trying to convince an angry bear to buy some derivatives.