Friday open thread

Be sure to do something bad for yourself.

Have a great one, Simon!

Our regular visitors have missed, thanks to the diligent work of our army of editors... um, I mean our nice little spambot trap queue for unregistered users... a consistent line of spam comments we've been receiving for a month or two now, all offering the opportunity to buy a term paper on any topic you need. They're nice little comments, with good grammar (for a spammer, at least). Simon tells me they seem to come from a site in the Ukraine. Anyway, something clicked and I thought of a great idea for a new show.

You take The Office, right, but instead of setting it in a paper company, you set it in a paper company. Instead of making physical paper, all the guys and gals in the office work for a scam company that sells term papers. The head honchoes of Dunder Mifflin are transformed into Russian mob goons or something. They all have quotas, both of spam comments they have to make on internet sites like ours and of orders they need to fulfill. So while one of the workers is typing in the word verification for a bunch of pages and pasting the spam selling points, another is actually writing a paper about Dostoevsky or something. Dwight screws up all the papers he writes by including a conspiracy-theory version of history instead of actual history in the paper.

I got a 102 on this CAP test; it apparently makes me "very conservative." Catholics average 210, and even "conservative Republicans" average 160 (although how they know that is a mystery: no demographic questions are asked)! I suspect that the result says more about the framing of the questions (CAP is a progressive think tank) and the assumptions of the scoring than it does about me. What do you all score?

Krugman admits that "private health insurance only works if insurers can sell policies to both sick and healthy customers." One might question the limiting modifier "private," but notice what Krugman just did? He supports a bill that rules out coverage denial because of preexisting conditions while admitting that private insurance won't work without such gatekeeping restrictions. The mask slips: This effort is a trojan horse. Its purpose is to eliminate private insurance by creating an impossible market environment, supplying the pretext for a government takeover of healthcare. Like I said.

Is it really correct to say that the Tridentine Mass was "abolished by the Second Vatican Council"? At best, that seems imprecise. The Council mandated, but did not itself promulgate, changes in the Mass. It was left to the Holy See and the Consilium to hammer out the details—and significantly, in the intervening time, the Mass remained as it had been, which would not have happened had the council abolished it. Even if one does not buy Benedict XVI's Summorum Pontificum teaching that the Tridentine form was never abrogated, it seems to me that one must situate any abrogation that happened in Paul VI's Missale Romanum, not Vatican II.

Party hard, but drink responsibly. :-)

Continuing my tirades on the nationalization of state elections:

Why on earth is one, maybe two according to some reports, debates for a Florida Senate primary race occurring on and under the auspices of national news companies in Washington, D.C? I refer to the confirmed debate between Marco Rubio and Gov Charlie Crist on Fox New Sunday at the end of March and possible debate on Meet the Press at the beginning of March. This is what bothers me about the politics. This is a race for members of the Republican Party of Florida. These events should occur in Florida and be moderated by a Floridian. This is exactly the kind of actions of nationalizing state races that I vehemently oppose.

It should also be noted that Rubio has not agreed to the Meet the Press one. Now I am not currently registered Republican. I still have plenty of time to change my mind. The primary is not until September. However, this debate is a joke because it will be conducted in the context of the Washington, D.C. beltway and not what should matter, the people of the state of Florida. To heck with just trying to ban foreign influence in elections, ban the out of state influence too. I want to know what they are going to do to address the issues of Florida's unbalanced job base? What are they going to do to address issues of off shore drilling for Florida? What are they going to do about the three state water war between Florida, Georgia and Alabama? What are they propose to do about NASA? Are they going to push for more money for the partially funded high-speed rail or do they want to shut the project down? Do they support a nuclear carrier in Mayport, Fl?

Other than maybe the off shore oil one, I suspect that none of the questions that are important issues to the people in various parts of Florida, but have no bearing nationally, will be asked. Yes, there are valid questions on national issues. However, they should be asked in the context of Florida. I doubt that happens. Just another thing about our political campaign system that disgusts me. I find this much worse than national polls for state races. Plus, it would not surprise if Rubio comes out of this with a larger lead (something I expect), he will not do anymore debates, even though the people of Florida have not really been offered one.

PS Happy birthday, Simon. Hope you get to enjoy an appropriate beverage or activity you enjoy today.