Religion and welfare

Shorter Bradford Wilcox:

If the government starts taking care of its citizens, people won't need religion as much. Therefore, the government shouldn't take care of its citizens.

Bad ad

I saw one of these posters at 6th and Josephine the other day. They're put up by a group called denverkillsdogs.com, which opposes Denver's ban on pit bulls. I found the ad pretty confusing when I first saw it. (Actually, the one I saw showed a picture of a woman hugging a dog, and I wasn't sure if the ad was insulting the woman or suggesting that she was going to be killed by the city or something.)

Then there's the ill-considered tag line, "Repeal your breed ban!" It's the "your" that really sucks, making it quite transparent that there are some people outside of Denver who disapprove of its laws. Anyone who understands the ad and might be vaguely sympathetic to its message will probably be put off by the outsiders telling us how to live. "Repeal the breed ban" might have been more effective and less off-putting.

Finally, I recognize that I'm not a dog owner and thus am not likely to be persuaded by this ad in the first place. But I also recognize that there are some concerns out there -- overhyped, perhaps, thought probably not completely fabricated -- that pit bulls are dangerous. The photo above of a pit bull with a cute little kid doesn't make me feel sympathetic to the dog; it makes me worry about the kid.

Who runs the GOP?

Let's see, RNC Chair Michael Steele referred to Rush Limbaugh's show as "ugly" and "incendiary." Limbaugh shot back that the RNC sucks right now and that if he were the chair, he'd quit.

Which one of them has to apologize? That seems like a pretty good test.

Ah, that was quick.

"I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren't what I was thinking," Steele said. "It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I was trying to say was a lot of people ... want to make Rush the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he's not."

Voters get the message

This sort of thing (via Atrios) makes me feel good about democracy.

HARRISBURG -- A new statewide poll shows 53 percent of Pennsylvanians -- and 66 percent of Republicans -- want someone to replace Sen. Arlen Specter.

It's not that an unpopular Republican makes me feel good. It's that the behavior of politicians in DC ultimately gets communicated to the voters back home. That a Republican politician would be relatively unpopular in a state that went for Obama by double digits last year is not particularly striking. But Republican voters have noticed that he's a bad Republican, and they're much more sour on him than Pennsylvania Democrats are.

I saw a similar poll a few years back on Joe Lieberman, who was reasonably popular in Connecticut except among Democrats, who noticed that he wasn't being a very good Democrat. Voters do figure stuff out.

Shovel-ready project outside my window

Am I nuts, or does this new concrete look crooked?

Pluralism on campus

I am told that there will be a demonstration by DU students opposed to the possible tobacco ban tomorrow at 11:50 in front of my building. I have to say that I'm excited, and I plan to show up with a camera. Unlike my undergraduate institution, this school does not have a particularly storied history of campus activism (an older colleague told me he knew the Vietnam War was ending when he finally saw DU students protesting it). So I'm always interested to see what it takes for students to actually organize and participate.

The student senate has already voted in favor of the tobacco ban, so I assume the purpose of this demonstration is to suggest to the chancellor, who will ultimately decide the issue, that students are far from monolithic in their support of the senate's actions.

If any of the demonstrator's organizers are reading this blog, please accept one bit of advice: no giant papier mâché figures. I have never yet seen a successful political movement that used them. Also, they're really annoying.

Traffic is weird

My son and I left at 6:30 AM yesterday to get up to Winter Park for a day of skiing. I figured we'd get there by 8 or 8:30. More like 9:30. I-70 was a parking lot. We were reduced to about 10 mph for about 45 minutes. I assumed it was just ski traffic.

Nope. Right near Georgetown, we passed by three big-horned sheep grazing by the side of the road. Traffic picked up to 70 mph right after that. Yes, traffic was at a stand-still because people wanted to see the sheep.

Now, I grant you that these are cool animals, and they're usually pretty difficult to see. But I was still kinda pissed.

But this got me thinking... I didn't particularly care to slow down to see the sheep. But I had to because others did. Probably the vast majority of the drivers were in my boat, forced to slow down because of the interests of a pivotal minority. How many drivers does it actually take to make an entire freeway slow down to a crawl? Probably not too many. And yes, I know this is the stuff that kept Campbell Scott's character up at nights in "Singles."

All the more reason to take the Supertrain.