korea et al

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/10/04/koreas.summit/index.html

Reminds me of the peace treaties that were never signed after WW2 for Germany. I suppose it's about time these two figured out how to get along and have a single country. Aside from economics and totalitarianism, there really isn't anything standing in the way. I can't imagine it would be fun to have what amounts to family sitting around with loaded weapons directly across the street and willing to use them on you.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/03/legislator.nudity.ap/index.html

That's a nice way to get kids to pay attention. Worked during Shakespeare's time anyway.

In other news, Ron Paul hauled in a decent amount for the campaign that will surely flag out at some point. It'd be nice if he can carry it over into an independent campaign, but I'm not holding my breath. The best part of it right now is that his candidacy has to have some better shock value on the supposed front runners in his party. Since they're largely all idiots with no new ideas, while he's a bit extreme but with some great ideas.. maybe they'll get the point. Or maybe someone else will. I don't care. Just give me some politicians with some ideas that might actually work.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/03/bush.veto/index.html

I'm indifferent on this. It sounds like most people want this anyway, and I have little objection to 1) the proposed tax hike on smoking and 2) the money being used for subsidizing the cost of low-income health care. Mostly because my research has shown that poor people are precisely the group who are more apt to be smokers anyway. I've heard commentary that this will be a rising cost with a diminishing tax base to cover it, but in point of fact, having fewer smokers would over time diminish costs (at least relating to health care, SocSec is another matter) owing to the rather expensive ailments smokers are commonly afflicted with. Perhaps not as rapidly as costs rise, and certainly not as fast as they would rise based on the expanded program that Congress tried to pass, but they would move in a desired direction.

92 — The percentage of people who approved of Bush's job performance in October 2001
I have to refer to Voltaire here. Or Madison or any political thinker of that time... a tyranny of the majority can be a dangerous thing. There are two problems with that number. One, it assumes that the population must agree with what a leader does most of the time (in other words it assumes that a leader should care what the population thinks of his job performance, which isn't quite an accurate assessment of proper leadership). This is a stupid assumption. A population could support what a leader does, most of the time, with the assumption that that leader was appointed at the behest of the population. That assumption makes the clever compromise of republicanism (no, not that kind) which used to function rather well in this country. It should not however agree with, approve of, etc at a 92% clip. That's a dangerous license to grant people in power with, thus the second problem. A leader with such a wide base to sweep with is going to sweep up things we don't want affected at all. And that's what happened. Fortunately in a democracy/republic people eventually notice and get pissed about what happened. But they often only have themselves to blame for letting it get that bad in the first place.

People complain about things like the Patriot Act, but the representatives they sent were so busy trying to look like they were strong on terrorism that they forgot to do their jobs. Perhaps reading the bills and seeing what they actually did to the freedoms and respect for those freedoms we have in this country might have been more important than appealing to voters with opiate prescription rather than a real cure. Sadly though, the vast majority of people are quite willing to sacrifice a little liberty for the illusion of safety.