Great post. I think that a balance always needs to be struck between local and national power/politics/etc. I've said many times that the worst tyrannies are often the local ones. I think this is very apparent when discussing education and police issues given how local these things are. I fall back on some sort of Subsidiarity 2.0: good local governance relies on stable federal governance; if a local government cannot handle something it should be handled by the state, and then by the feds - and the opposite is true. The feds shouldn't be in the business of handling things that local governments can do better, but they are very useful in providing standards and so forth.

That story about Ender's Game is nuts. I suppose whoever it is doesn't realize how bloody conservative Orson Scott Card is...

Fun!

Sitting at the cafe this morning, it is now a white-out outside. Driving home will be super fun.

Write a post and before you publish it email me. Do everything you are doing now. I will send you back screenshots and an explanation.

For videos, you need to copy the "old" YouTube code and insert in the HTML not the Visual editor.

Indeed. We are a pond of blue in a sea of red.

Well you live in Alaska you're sort of asking for it...

That's another thing. Nobody has grass here.

Yeah, no kidding.

Hey now, as far as I'm concerned having Brewer and Arpaio is bad Karma enough!

California and Hawaii are both too expensive.

I've always liked San Diego.

To be honest, other than the snow and the wind, Flag is bloody awesome. Really a fun town.

It just might. But renters are a pain.

You know, hence my bitching about the snow...

I live in Flagstaff.

It's not even that big of a deal, honestly. It's just this thought that keeps swirling about my brain that I've never lived anywhere warm, damnit!

Sun on snow is hard for my eyes, too. Here at least it melts quickly. In many ways, this climate is so, so much better than a place like Montana (where I lived for quite some time.) But it gets old. We spent last week in Scottsdale in the palm trees, in a pool. It was great. But Scottsdale in July? I shudder at the thought.

Which is to say, I guess I need two houses in two places!

Yep.

You can thank Mr. Truman for that.

Remember, no hot-linking pictures. I fixed it.

My first post is pagified. It's under the About page.

This is going to be changing anyways, just FYI.

Still no luck fixing these damn comments.

Still trying to fix comments.

Nice post, Tod. I moved the "More" divider up a couple graphs though. As your local formatting Nazi, it's important to remind everyone to place that divider up high in the post.

Let me draw this for you, in very simple terms: it's called backlash. There will be no end to the backlash that ensues. Close on the heels of the Quran burnings; various other incidents over the past few years; the drone strikes that kill civilians every day; and now this.

We can't win now. We probably never could have, but it's over now. Want to go ask the Afghani people to just realize it was one loose canon? You think they'll swallow that whole? Try thinking about this without all the politics for a minute, in pure pragmatic terms.