Kamala Harris for President

This site started as a conservative blog just prior to the 9/11 attacks. It is a testament to how much the GOP has changed over the past few years that I am not wholeheartedly endorsing a Democrat from President of the United States. Not only that, I am endorsing Democrats up and down the ballot. Because what the GOP has become is not anything that a patriotic American should ever support.

VP Harris is a person of strong moral convictions. As a prosecutor she enforced the law against drug dealers, gangsters, human smugglers, and fraudsters. Contrary to the ridiculous statements of the MAGA-addled GOP, the Biden Administration (despite some early missteps) has lead America out of the post-COVID era and into a period where job and economic growth is strong, America’s standing on the world stage is better than it ever was under the the former administration, and America’s military has a President that truly supports them. As a conservative, I do not like how willing the Democratic Party sometimes is to use the levers of the federal government to achieve their ends, but the fact is that now is a time where we need dramatic action.

In a time when Vladimir Putin is actively trying to reform the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union, VP Harris and President Biden stood firm on behalf of the Ukrainian people. Donald Trump will bend over backwards to please and placate tyrants like Putin, Kim Jung Un, and tinpot despots like Viktor Orban. When it comes to critical international bodies like NATO, VP Harris and President Biden have stood strong in defense of the free world. The MAGA GOP would leave NATO. This kind of weakness and coddling of tyrants is categorically unacceptable. As Commander-in-Chief, VP Harris would preserve America’s standing in the world, stand strong against Putin’s wars of aggression, and ensure that we are better prepared for the conflicts of the future.

America’s system of capitalism is unsustainable. We have a concentration of economic, political, and social power among an amoral billionaire class that has put the American Dream out of reach of far too many. The costs of housing, child care, health care, and other necessities is putting an economic strain on people that limits their life choices, including whether and when to have children. When even the upper middle class is hurting, we have to change the system to keep it alive.

VP Harris has plans to do something about these problems. Yes, a $25,000 subsidy for first-time homebuyers is perhaps a band-aid solution—but VP Harris intends to couple that with YIMBY policies to build more housing stock. This is exactly what we need. Allowing Medicare funding to be used for in-home care for the elderly is a necessity for an aging population. These are just a couple of examples of where VP Harris and Gov. Walz have actual, concrete, and sensible plans to fix what ails America.

On the other hand, the GOP’s plans are reckless tax cuts to entrench the billionaire class, hatred of immigrants, and a plan to use the power of the federal government to stifle criticism. If one does not want to be called a fascist, it would probably be a good idea not to push for an agenda that is right out of the fascist playbook. But Trump and the MAGA GOP do not care about leadership. They have zero actual policy prescriptions beyond the radical anti-Americanism of Project 2025. The MAGA GOP is a collection of religious zealots whose Pharisee funhouse-mirror version of Christianity is an affront to Christ, natalist radicals, blood-and-soil neo-Nazi racists, and weak-minded and weak-willed hangers-on that are perfectly happy to sell out every value they have if it gives them power. Under the MAGA era, the GOP is a hollowed-out corpse, a skin-suit worn by the same crazy John Birch radicals that the GOP kicked out prior to the Reagan era. There is no more GOP anymore, it is the MAGA party now.

The MAGA GOP cares deeply about controlling a woman’s body under the guise of caring for children. But once that child is born the MAGA GOP is perfectly fine with that child starving or being shot to death in school. The life of that child does not actually matter—control over the mother does. The MAGA GOP says it wants less government and more freedom, but is actively saying that it will use the power of the government, including the military, to suppress criticism. This is simply un-American. The MAGA GOP says that it is the party of Christian values but embraces a man who embodies lies, hatred, fear, and retribution. These are not the values of Christ, and in fact are fundamentally anti-Christian.

One can be a patriot or one can vote Trump. One cannot do both. One can be a sincere and committed Christian or one can vote Trump. One cannot do both. That is the fundamental truth of this election.

VP Harris is not perfect, but she believes in the bedrock American values that before 2015 used to be shared by both political parties. Because the GOP has abandoned its values and its senses, the only way forward is to abandon it.

I was a Republican for most of my life. I cannot, it good conscience remain so. I cannot in good conscience advocate on behalf of the MAGA GOP. I can, in good conscience, advocate for a Democratic Party that is at least trying to govern, even though we may disagree.

There is but one choice in this election: either Harris/Walz or an openly fascist Trump. The choice is clear, and because VP Harris is trying to lead and trying to unite the country she is the only viable choice for anyone who cares about our values, our democracy, and our future.

Does Putin Have Georgia On His Mind?

Ilya Somin takes a look at the deal ending the conflict between Russia and Georgia. He finds that it isn’t as bad as it could have been:

If this agreement holds (a big if), it’s a better outcome than I would have expected. Georgia’s democratic government will remain in place, despite Russia’s previous determination to overthrow it. The Russians will not have destroyed Georgia’s oil pipeline to Europe (the most important pipeline in the region that doesn’t pass through Russian or Iranian territory). And Russia will renounce future use of force against Georgia and reduce its forces in the secessionist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to their prewar levels. I am skeptical that the Russians will fully respect the last two commitments. Nonetheless, the outcome could have been far worse.

The problem is that Russia clearly is sending a message, not only to Georgia, but to the rest of its former satellites: we can break you. Vladimir Putin and his crony Dmitri Medvedev will use whatever they can to ensure that Russia’s hegemony over the former Soviet Union is not challenged. Ukraine, another democratic, pro-Western state, is likely to be next in Russia’s crosshairs.

Putin wants to ensure that Russia, and not those upstart republics to its southwest, gets the benefit of supplying most of Europe’s natural gas. The Georgian crisis was draped with the idea that Russia had to protect South Ossetia, but the truth of the matter is that these last few days have been about nothing but realpolitik. Putin and Medvedev are trying to get money and power—and that is all too easy when the Russian Army can act as private enforcers.

President Saakashvili made a crucial mistake in provoking the Russians over Ossetia, although it’s not clear how much the Georgians were themselves provoked by Ossetian agents working at the behest of the Kremlin. The Georgian Army can’t match the strength of the Russian Army, and the United States was not about to get themselves involved in any conflict between the two. The Georgians unleashed something they could not control, which in war can be fatal.

Some are saying that the Georgians were warned of the danger. Whenever “unnamed sources” in government speak, it’s bound to be self-serving CYA. The US intelligence community seems to have been caught off guard once again—although appearances can be deceiving. Making sure that we’re not caught flat-footed in a situation like this is critical in the age of information-centric warfare. If the intelligence community can’t seem to notice the significance of major Russian troop movements, how can they be expected to track al-Qaeda?

The final question is what lies ahead. The Russians’ hegemonic ambitions in the region are not going to go away any time soon. Georgia and Ukraine are American allies—democratic states that are worthy of our protection. At the same time, Russia can be a powerful ally or a fearsome enemy, and we are better off with them being the former. We are caught in the kind of power politics that were supposed to have been a relic of the Cold War. Our brief holiday from history is over.

Vladimir Putin, Man Of The Year

Time‘s Man of the Year for 2007 is Russian President Vladimir Putin. It isn’t a bad pick (although I would have picked Gen. David Petraeus)—Vladimir Putin’s actions are most certainly of great import in shaping our world. The problem is that they’re not shaping our world for the better. Putin has been slowly but surely turning Russia into just another banana republic petro-state, and ultimately that course is not sustainable. Ss democracy in Russia dies, the potential for another wave of destructive totalitarianism grows.

The Time article plays into the idea that Putin just happened to amble into history and become President of Russia. This seems unlikely—more likely is that Russia is still being ruled by the same forces that ruled the country during the Communist age. Putin’s status as a former KGB agent and head of the FSB (the agency that took over from the KGB after the fall of the Soviet Union) serves him well when it comes down to doing the two things he does best: keeping Russia in line and ensuring that his political opponents cause him no trouble.

Putin is certainly a man with a mission:

Putin’s mission is not to win over the West. It is to restore to Russians a sense of their nation’s greatness, something they have not known for years. This is not idle dreaming. When historians talk about Putin’s place in Russian history, they draw parallels with Stalin or the Tsars. Putin, one can’t stress enough, is not a Stalin. There are no mass purges in Russia today, no broad climate of terror. But Putin is reconstituting a strong state, and anyone who stands in his way will pay for it. “Putin has returned to the mechanism of one-man rule,” says Talbott of the Brookings Institution. “Yet it’s a new kind of state, with elements that are contemporary and elements from the past.”

And there’s plenty that could go wrong. The depth of corruption, the pockets of militant unrest, the ever present vulnerability of the economy to swings in commodity prices—all this threatens to unravel the gains that have been made. But Putin has played his own hand well. As Prime Minister, he is set to see out the rest of the drama of Russia’s re-emergence. And almost no one in Russia is in a position to stop him. If he succeeds, Russia will become a political competitor to the U.S. and to rising nations like China and India. It will be one of the great powers of the new world.

Unfortunately, it won’t stay there for long. Totalitarian regimes—and Russia is already authoritarian and sliding more and more towards totalitarianism every single day—tend not to last very long. There are no purges, no mass executions now, but Putin’s authoritarian state makes it far easier for either him or the next dictator to make it happen. Putin can steer Russia towards the right course, but it would mean more openness rather than less, and a willingness to sacrifice his rule for the benefit of Russia’s future.

Putin’s Russia is slowly sliding away from democracy and towards tyranny, and Vladimir Putin is responsible for that. He is a man whose vision of Russia as a strong state is compelling, but ultimately he is sacrificing the future of his nation for his own ends. The line between autocrat and tyrant is a thin one, and Putin is already skating the edge—and once Russia crosses that line once more, it may be even harder for it to recover than it already has been.