Checksum Arcanius

Today, I caught on the tube a debate between Dave Reichert, the Republican running for Washington’s 8th District seat in the United States House of Representitives, and his Democrat opponent, Dave Ross. The seat was formerly held by Republican Jennifer Dunn, a fiscally conservative, socially laisez-faire congresswoman who suited this district and myself fairly well.

Neither candidate had particularly distinguished himself until I actually talked to Dave Ross about a week ago. About the same time, I had heard (albeit briefly) Ross dominating John Carlson of KVI 570 (a conservative talk radio station) on John’s own show. So Ross had gained some points in my book, which he needed because in an information vacuum (which I would have alieviated by election day, regardless) I would have voted for the Republican in this race. But Reichert hadn’t earned any points with me, and so really it was a toss up with the information I had.

Until tonight.

In the debate, Reichert came across as by far the superior candidate. He responded sensibly and instilled confidence in me that he would be a better representitive me and my views than the other Dave. Ross seemed to want to pick a fight while Reichert wanted to have a civil discourse. Reichert won that face off. And while Ross’ comments got the only chuckles during the debate, that may have ended up hurting him in the end.

The main points that I got out of the debate were the following:

• The Republican attack ads against Dave Ross were basically true: he supports federalized universal healthcare, which is perhaps the worst idea in contemporaryAmerican politics
• Reichert is pretty much party line on the half-arse solutions that seem mostly designed to throw wrenches in the efforts to impose universal health care: HSAs, MSAs, etc, and the constant “we must lower the cost of healthcare” line which gets old pretty quickly, considering that it comes from both sides of the aisle
• Dave Ross really does seem to be more about talk, and Reichert more about actually doing things, as the latter asserted in his closing statement
• Ross is pretty much Party-line semi-anti-Iraq-war: It was the right war for the wrong reasons, we shouldn’t have done it but now that we did oh boy they need armor…

So they are both pretty straightforward representitives of their parties tweaked for the district slightly. And for a district where all we want is another Jennifer Dunn, Reichert is the closer match, and seems to be better suited for the job too.

The phone rang. The caller ID said “Friends of Dave.” I figured it meant Dave Reichart or Dave Ross, but I didn’t know which, and I don’t care much for either, so I was just a bit combative when I picked up the phone.

“Which Dave are you a friend of?” I implored.
“Excuse me?” came the slow response.
“The caller ID said ‘Friends of Dave’ – I’m wondering which Dave you’re a friend of.”
“Oh… I’m calling on behalf of Friends of Dave Ross.”
I pressed on – “Are you really his friend, or are you just calling on behalf of his friends?”
But then the caller had his own surprise for me: “Actually he’s sitting just two cahirs to my right.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t expecting that, “Cool.”
The caller (I’ll call him Pete, although I don’t remember for sure) continued with his script. We talked about a few issues and ended up on Transportation before I started pressing again. Then Pete had another surprise:
Pete: “In fact, here’s Dave.” He handed over the Phone.
Dave Ross: “I heard Pete here trying to explain some things to you. I thought I could help out.”
Well, I’ll admit I wasn’t prepared for this. So we ended up only talking about transportation, and Dave had reasonable responses (bass the $318 billion bill stuck in the congress, mainly). I wish I had more foresight and talked about more general (ie, is government primarily a solution provider or a problem causer?)

Oh well, I guess I have to do my own research on this one. It does make me think that I need more objective measure for candidates. Like a web-based application that quantifies distance between my views (or anyone’s for that matter) and the views of candidates.
Kind of goes along with Theo’s local politics Groklaw idea. Its a good worthwhile project at least.

Thats all for today, folks.

The most recent post on a blog I only occasionally get around to reading is one of the best commentaries on America, Americans and the modern world that I have ever read. And its not that long either.

The site is slow, but its well worth the wait for this one.

John Stossel is an anchor of ABC’s 20/20. His book Give Me A Break is the best introduction that I know of to the Libertarian perspective. If you’ve ever heard Stossel report, you should immediately hear his voice come through as you start reading this book. He gets down to business pretty quickly, but he doesn’t get bogged down in it, so you will always be wanting to read more.

While it is not as securely grounded in in-depth and tested research like the Friedmans’ Free To Choose, it is much more engaging reading, and comes highly recommended from yours truly. I have even been known to call it “The Best Book Ever,” although I admit that may be a bit of hyberbole. But only a bit.

At FactCheck.org

Also, check out who’s behind it.

The short version is: Bush and Kerry both lie all the time, and Badnarik (who got arrested) isn’t worth mentioning (I guess because he only tells the truth?).

Remember, unlike in real food, lots of grains of salt are healthy in your political diet.

I was for the Iraq war back when it started – a fact that I don’t go around blatantly advertising, but also one that I wouldn’t deny if asked (a la Kerry). Certainly things haven’t gone as smoothly as I would have hoped, but whenever someone starts to make me think that maybe it was a mistake, I reflect back on why I thought it was a good idea in the first place. Every time, I’ve arrived at the same decision I did the first time.

And here we go again. This whole death toll thing that Erik brought up got me to thinking, because I had been assuming that despite all their complaining, Iraqis were doing better than under Saddam. But this assumption, I realized, had more to do with the way I lean politically than any factual evidence. So I thought I had better figure this one out.

Well, it turns out that, even if we took Erik’s arguments at face value, fewer Iraqi civilians are dying in Iraq now than under Saddam. But Erik’s numbers are ridiculously skewed (“Iraqi’s deemed enemies”?!?) to try to make his argument make sense.

More realistic numbers put the death tolls somewhere between 25,000 and 45,000 people a year. An excerpt for those who don’t wish to read the whole thing:

Coldly taken as a daily average for the 24 years of Saddam’s reign, these numbers give us a horrifying picture of between 70 and 125 civilian deaths per day for every one of Saddam’s 8,000-odd days in power.

But thats just the beginning. The thing that is really nasty about what Erik is doing here is that he is blaming the United States for the deaths caused by Terrorists that Saddam harbored and criminals that Saddam ordered released before he was removed from power. In the words of Erik’s favorite website, IraqBodyCount.net, the reported death toll “includes civilian deaths resulting from the breakdown in law and order, and deaths due to inadequate health care or sanitation.”

Add on to this that Erik takes this website’s highest estimate to do his calculations, and goes out of his way to find a ridiculously low death toll under Saddam – all to try to prove what? That “Finding the difference between Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush” can’t be done?

Well, for most of us, Erik, the differences – and there are many – ain’t that hard to see.

For starters, even your darling John Kerry had the chance to vote in favor of invading Iraq before Bush could do anything. This is as opposed to Clinton, who never even mentioned operation Desert Fox until it had happened. Oh, and there’s that little thing that comes up in about a month, where a few people do that voting thing to decide wether to keep him or ditch him. If it were that easy with Saddam (and if he’s really not such a bad guy, as you claim), then we wouldn’t be in this whole mess to begin with.

Saddam was put into power by the United States, and perhaps for that reason also, this war is a burden the United States had to carry moslty by itself. And that brings me to the final point: No matter how for or against this war you may be, you have to realize that the enitre situation was unneccesary. If the United States hadn’t been meddling with foreign governments in the first place, supporting dictators like Saddam that were somehow “less bad” than some other threat, or at least “stabilizing forces” in their region, then we wouldn’t have to be cleaning up after ourselves now and for years to come. The best long-term policy is the one that the Libertarian Party endorses – and that policy was best summed up by Thomas Jefferson: “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”