Yes he's crazy. Kill him anyway.

Need to catch up on a few day's worth of topics...

Read an article with an interesting logical argument: If you think Gabrielle Gifford's shooter committed murder because he was insane, and not because he was pushed to violence by overheated political rhetoric...then surely you'd support an innocent verdict by reason of insanity? I enjoyed the attempt, because I relish a good syllogism as much as the next guy, but there's a rather large flawed assumption at the base of this reasoning. Just because I call someone crazy, nuts, fucked-in-the-head, and/or insane, I'm not restricting myself to the legal definition of insanity, ie: Cannot tell the difference between right and wrong. Someone who can tell the difference clearly, but acts evil anyway (especially when there is no self-benefit involved), is a clear wacko. Yet they wouldn't qualify for an insanity defense. Committing murder for pleasure or fame is crazy, but the killer still needs to die. Case closed.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin's response to this incident would be funny if it wasn't sad. Sad because someone so hypocritical, illogical, and ignorant as Palin is going to have immense support to be our next president. From a country that elected W twice, I would expect nothing more. In one breath she absolves herself of any responsibility for the violence, saying that "Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them". But in the next breath, she condemns the media for inciting violence. She also ignores her own recent stance against the Ground Zero Mosque (more accurately known as the Two Blocks From Ground Zero Muslim Community Center), where she insists that all Muslims bear the burden of crimes committed by a few. Anyone with even an inkling to vote for Palin should be placed under psychiatric care immediately.

Obama, on the other hand, struck the perfect tone in his speech at the memorial service in Tuscon. While he has done everything in his power to expand government and bankrupt the country, exactly as I warned he would, it is a welcome change to have a presidential leader that doesn't embarrass himself and his country every time he opens his mouth. Of course I'd rather have a fiscally responsible president than a good orator, but Bush was neither. At least Obama has one thing going for him.

Finally, I read about the ongoing ecological disaster that is China, and I was sickly pleased by it. Not because I enjoy environmental destruction (I don't, honest!), but because I feel bombarded by media stories which accentuate American decline and offer China's economic rise as a counterpoint. China's even more fucked up than we are, they're just starting from such a poverty-stricken low point that their growth rate looks impressive. And it emphasizes - again - that environmental legislation in America will do very little, if anything, to solve worldwide ecological problems. We'll either find technological solutions to generate clean power, or we'll be forced into behavioral change by a crisis. Anyone who tells you we can cap-and-trade our way to a clean environment is either outrageously ignorant or a money-grabbing charlatan.