"Maverick" McCain shows his inner partisan Republican

McCain jokes about suicide if Democrats win Senate

McCain has claimed in the past that he considered suicide while he was a POW in Hanoi. But it's plain to see that he found the will to live then.

So, we must assume from McCain's statements that he would find Democratic control of the Senate more unbearable than 5 1/2 years of torture at the hands of the Viet Cong. OK, he was "joking", so the report says. But anyone who has known a troubled teen knows that suicide isn't something you joke about. Neither is torture.

I think this statement indicates that McCain has finally let the Republican Kool-Aid get to his head. He's off the deep end, and no longer living in the reality-based world. But more importantly, he probably just blew his chance to use his bi-partisan credentials in a potential 2008 Presidential bid. What self-respecting Democrat would support him after this?

Progressive Values and Investing Success

There's a myth in America that conservatives are superior business leaders to progressives. Supposedly conservative fiscal policies are better for the US economy, but this is not borne out by the evidence. In fact, our nation's best economic performance in history occurred under President Clinton and during a time of historically high income tax rates. When a Republican acts shocked that I would support the Democrats, who will "raise my taxes", I tell them I'd be happy to have Clinton-era tax rates if I could have my Clinton-era salary back!

Now moving away from the big picture of the entire US economy and into the world of investing... recent research indicates that companies with progressive values outperform the general market. Yep, the conservatives - who love to tout their fiscal responsibility and their business acumen - get trounced in the real world by the bleeding-heart Democrats.

How can you use this information to your advantage? Well, hopefully you're already limiting your patronage of "red" companies like Wal-Mart, who give massive amounts of money to the Republican party and enable the abuses we've seen in the Republican controlled federal government. If not, I'd like to point you to BuyBlue, a website that tracks corporate political contributions and social responsibility, so that the informed consumer can vote with their wallet, and support companies that share their values.

But now you can also "invest blue" with the Blue Fund, a pair of mutual funds that invest in "blue" companies. And thanks to the above research, you can invest knowing that you're not sacrificing returns to make a political statement. In fact, it's likely that the Blue Large Cap Fund will outperform the S&P 500 - its investment mix has done so for at least the last five years.

Of course, all the standard disclaimers apply - past performance does not guarantee future results, I am not a financial advisor, and so forth.

Religious fanatics with nuclear weapons?

I just happened to see a reprint of an Washington Post editorial piece called The Tehran Calculus by Charles Krauthammer in Birmingham's Black & White paper. For the most part, it seems a fairly rational examination of the alternatives of war or no war against Iran. Until we get to this:

Then there is the larger danger of permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days.

Well, I agree that is a danger. Unfortunately, it's already happened. The fanatic of whom I speak is known as George W. Bush.

Then there's this:

The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age.

Krauthammer must have skipped his high school Probability and Statistics class. It's impossible to be "infinitely more likely" to use nuclear weapons than someone who already has. Either that, or he skipped the U.S. History class where he would have learned why it was that the Japanese surrendered in World War II.