My last tank of gas set me back $60.99.

Yours?

Ron Paul supporters have savaged me as a “disservice to this country” a “biased,” “completely ignorant” “propaganda agent” “media moron” “douche” “Dick-in-son” “dork” guilty of “spin and pure disrespect.”

But there are no hard feelings here. In fact, here’s an olive branch.

Or at least a soap box:

Come one, come all. Preach the virtues of Ron Paul.

Running for president… of South Carolina?!

Discuss.

Are we safer?

Stronger?

Scaredier?
Talk amongst yourselves.

Dr. Ralph asks: The whole political spectrum is a mess… If you alone were able to decide who would lead our country for the next four to eight years who would you choose and why?

Doc, I’m stumped. I’m going to open this one up to the peanut gallery. Make your case in the comments for whom you would hand-select as the next president.

Politico.com gets a little TMZ about Fred Thompson’s celebrity backers:

He attracted support from such top-shelf party figures as Mary Matalin, Liz Cheney, George P. Bush and other GOP stalwarts who saw him as a potential Hillary Clinton slayer.

Top-Shelf? Since when are second-rate scion like Liz Cheney and George P. “top shelf”? All I know is I don’t want any part of a bar whose top shelf goes no higher than this:

and…

If you missed the YouTube debate you missed out. I was worried this was going to be dumb or cheesy or dumb and cheesy. Instead it was quirky, heartfelt, entertaining, tough and substantive. By far the best debate of the season.

UPDATE: Check out the complete highlight reel at Veracifier.

Hillary Clinton kicked a whole lot of ass. She was polished. Poised. Presidential. She really does have a presence and a power on stage. She looks every bit the frontrunner. I only wish Gravel had put her on the spot about her bundlers and her Wall Street money. Obama took most of the real heat in this debate, and I think did a nice bit of political judo to keep from absorbing a direct blow. It’d be nice to see someone challenge Clinton directly, rather than nibble around the edges about her triangulation (Edwards) or her lack of a specific health care plan (Obama). My guess is she’d acquit herself ably — but that’s only a guess.

Clinton certainly inflicted some damage, pouncing on Obama’s over-eager agreement to a YouTuber’s challenge to meet face to face with Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez etc., offering a more serious answer about using high level envoys to ensure that she were not participating in a “propaganda” effort by our enemies. It made Obama look callow, and reinforced her talking point of the evening about being the best candidate to “hit the ground running” in November January 2009.

Clinton must be loving the huge group. Her top competitors had some nice moments last night. Edwards talking about the Virginian who lived with a cleft palate for 50 years. Obama alfa dogging Gravel. Biden and Richardson showed they had game too. But there’s so much competition for airtime that it’s impossible to get any momentum and have a truly breakout night.

The gay marriage questions were outrageously disappointing. Folks: separate but equal institutions are against every moral fiber your party is supposed to stand for. If he weren’t so smug about his stance, I’d be giving Dennis Kucinich some mad props right now.

The candidate videos were a fun addition. John Edwards’ campaign’s Hair video hit it out of the park. One question: Where was this six weeks ago?

One last thought. Clinton/Obama/Edwards/Biden/Richardson. The Democrats have five candidates on that stage who would be a stronger nominee than John Kerry was. Even the inhumanly senatorial Chris Dodd would have given Kerry a run for the money.

What did you think of the format and the substance?

I like a good debate so here goes day two of NA Daily vs. The Paul Patrol:

[Day one started here]

Reader Walker Pfost writes:

Mr. Dickinson…. The question to which we are all dying to hear an answer (and I hope I am not speaking out of turn when I refer to the Patrol as “we”) is: what evidence or sources can you cite that indicate that the failure of FEMA in New Orleans had anything to do with private organizations and individuals?

I could cite the many examples already given (on the popular post) of how these private organizations were on hand WAY before the federally-sponsored FEMA…

As for me, I believe in people. Ordinary people. I believe that ordinary people help other ordinary people. I believe that charities and philanthropies and churches and people are good, and will do good, and will not let the children starve, or the drowning anguish, or the homeless go naked. I believe this about ordinary, regular Joes who work long hours and drink beer and are worried about their teenage daughters. They do good things. For all of its virtues [and it does have some], the government is no replacement for the goodness of these people.

I’m right there with you in believing in the greatness and magnanimity of the American people. When I’ve run in to trouble on cross-country travels, it’s been average joes — not the highway patrol or any one else from the government — who’ve helped me out of a jam. America rocks.

But believing in people isn’t inconsistent with believing in government, and in particular in government’s role as a protector of last resort. There are things ordinary people aren’t equipped to do. Like model Class 5 hurricane damage. And pluck people off of their rooftops with helicopters. And reinforce levees. And implement evacuation plans. And rebuild a city flattened by weather of mass destruction.

It’s true that many individuals and some companies were better prepared to offer relief than our socalled first responders at FEMA. But why was that the case?

That’s where the dark metastasis of anti-government ideology that I’ve been talking about came into play. Under Republican leadership, FEMA was downgraded in the federal pecking order, staffed with cronies, and had its budget slashed.

In short: A formerly robust arm of the government with real power to save lives was degraded and gangrene-ized by small government ideologues. The government’s failures during Katrina, to my mind, are not an argument for smaller, more limited government, they’re the horrific side effect of such arguments implemented as policy.

Here’s the argument marshaled very succinctly at the time of the disaster by recently retired Massachusetts congressman Marty Meehan: (more…)