I asked you for a good answer on how do you determine when it’s appropriate to use the government to solve a problem, and the best came from Bantha_Fodder:

First, I flip a coin
then I punch my self real hard in the nads – if it doesnt hurt when I do that, then I use the Government

He wins… HIGH PRAISE!

Most days are dark and dreary and full of misery, but it always cheers me up when I see a comment from Bantha_Fodder.

You rest of you can eventually win HIGH PRAISE too, but you’ll need to step up your game. You know how people are always talking about how clever the commenters are at Ace of Spades? You know what they say about my commenters, though? “Wow, you sure get some interesting spam.”

* So Obama had a press conference and told Republicans to take on sacred cows… this coming from the guy who won’t even cut NPR — for which no one can come up with coherent argument of why Car Talk is such special speech that it needs government funding — or Planned Parenthood — which he needs to appease his sick base who isn’t just happy with abortion being legal but also needs to rub everyone’s faces in it by making them pay for it. Of course Obama’s biggest sacred cow is coming up with an actual balanced budget himself instead of going golfing. It does get rather difficult in America when the president is an obstacle to everything that needs to get done.

* Obama still won’t come out in favor of gay marriage. Everyone knows he’s a mindless, by the numbers liberal, so we know his real position on the issue, but he still acts like he’s against it. The gay marriage proponents act like it’s the biggest civil rights issue ever ever, but the left-wing messiah still doesn’t want to be seen associating with it.

* There’s a new poll showing Obama losing to a generic Republican, and that’s great, but there’s one part that’s disturbing. While most races are pretty split on Obama, he still has 95% support from blacks. When are we going to address this huge racism problem? You don’t get a number like that from people intelligently weighing the issues, that’s just pure “rally around the guy with the same race as me”. Martin Luther King’s dream of people not being judged by the color of their skin and instead the content of their character means in this case telling Obama, “Get out of the White House, you dummy!”

BTW, you 5% — you guys are awesome.

* John Kerry told Don Imus that he could “have been a good President. Maybe even a great one.” But isn’t everyone looking at the job Obama is doing and thinking in comparison they would be an awesome president? The guy ripping your ticket before you enter the movie theater is probably thinking to himself, “Wow, I’m almost overqualified compared to Obama.”

* By trying to get more taxes, California has chased off more revenue. They wanted to tax Amazon, and now Amazon has shut down its affiliate program in California. Here’s a tip for people who want more tax revenue: You get most of it from middle class people with jobs. When people have jobs, they pay income tax. When you raise taxes — especially on rich people who make jobs — you lose those middle class jobs and the tax revenue you get from them. Don’t focus on taxing; focus on letting industry grow and then you’ll get more tax revenue.

And move out of California. Just let the place die.

* Chris Hansen was caught cheating on hidden camera. Maybe it’s because I never saw the show, but I don’t get why so many people are acting like he got the comeuppance he had coming. “That’s what you get for picking on all those child predators!”

* Wisdom of the Day: “America: where if you work hard, take risks, and create jobs, someday you too can pay for other people’s mistakes.” – Jim Treacher

* BTW, I’m thinking of making this like a daily thing, but I need a better title. Preferably using the fact that my name is also an adjective… like “Frank New Analysis.” But it needs to be punchier; see, Jim Geraghty has his Morning Jolt. I want something dynamic like that… like “Frank Looks at New Items and Tries to Say Something Witty.” Anyway, if someone comes up with a good title, you’ll win… HIGH PRAISE. Think about having that; you’ll finally be able to go home and tell your kids, or your cats, or — most likely — your collectible action figures that you did something significant today.

Obama said:

“Keep in mind that the business community is always complaining about regulation. When unemployment is at three percent and they’re making record profits, they’re still going to complain about regulations because frankly they want to do whatever they think is going to maximize their profits.”

Ok, let’s try this version:

“Keep in mind that blacks are always complaining about racism. When they have a black president, they’re still going to complain about racism because frankly they want to do whatever they think is going to get them their way from white people.”

Would Obama consider that a legitimate argument in favor of Jim Crow laws?

My point being – maybe businesses are complaining about regulations because THEY REALLY ARE THAT FREAKING ONEROUS RIGHT NOW.

Tell ya what – dial back the regs, and when we get to 3% unemployment and record profits, and the business community is still complaining, you can say “I told you so”.

But I won’t care, because we’ll have 3% unemployment and record profits.

The Navy SEALs who took out Osama bin Laden may have used night vision contact lenses powered by blinking. This is the sort of scifi technology I want to hear about our military using.

You ever play the game Civilization? I always like when you’ve been advancing your nation and then run into some isolated civilization that wasn’t able to advance and then you attack them and it’s tanks and F-15s against chariots. That should be every American conflict. Our technology should be so advanced, that beating us should be unthinkable.

That’s why we need space laser. I want every enemy of America to be scared of ever having a clear view of the sky because that is all we need to laser someone. And we need robot warriors whose metal exteriors are immune to surplus Russian armaments. Robots on the ground, lasers in the sky — that’s what you expect if you anger America. That, and a T-Rex launching rockets while charging you. So, you might think the Taliban is great, but you have to ask yourself: Is it get roasted by space lasers and eaten by dinosaurs great?

“Government should not tell you what to do unless there’s a compelling public purpose,” Mayor Bloomberg said, as he’s too short for irony to find him. And he said this in support of gay marriage, in which you’re asking the government to do something so it doesn’t even really make sense. Obviously, the lead nanny-state proponent is probably one of the worst authorities on when to apply the government, but it’s a question worth asking that I don’t think enough people have contemplated an answer to.

To make things easier, I have come up with my own method for determining when to use the government. First, when contemplating whether to use the government, one must ask himself these three questions about the problem he’s trying to solve:

Will lots of people die?

And they will die not because of their own decisions?

Have you exhausted all non-government options?

If the answer is “No” to any of these questions, then we don’t even contemplate using the government. If the answer is “Yes” to all three, then we think about using the government. First, we have to check if it’s Constitutional and in the budget. And if I were president, I still probably wouldn’t use the government because I’m lazy and don’t want to have to write up a bill, plus I’m all like, “Come on, dudes; solve your own problems. I’m playing Zelda.” Man, we need more lazy presidents.

So how do you determine when it’s appropriate to use the government to solve a problem? Best answer wins… HIGH PRAISE!

Ross Douthat has a powerful column (in the NYTimes of all places) of how the feminist cause of abortion has ultimately harmed women to quite a great degree. Because of sex-selection abortions, there are now a total of 160 million missing women when you look at the gender imbalance in places like China and India (Lori Ziganto has more details here). And the imbalance, of course, does not lead to happy lives for the women who did survive. So by championing being able to dispose children as the ultimate expression of feminism, feminist have caused huge harm to women worldwide that will take decades to repair… if “feminists” were interested in repairing it. This is one of those things where we’re told this is just “progress” and we’re foolish to try and halt it and move things the other direction, but it’s our duty to at least try.

* Obama filmed a campaign ad in the White House. If they wanted shots of Obama in action, shouldn’t the video have been done on a golf course?

* Chris Wallace apologized for asking Michelle Bachman “Are you a flake?” I’d rather he’d just ask more questions of everyone that gets to the heart of the matter. Like if he gets a sit down with President Obama, ask, “Are you a useless idiot?” If Obama answers no, make sure to have the follow up question ready, “Then why do you fail at everything?”

* Democrats are pushing amnesty as something that will help the economy, because if you have two few jobs and add more people… I have no idea how to end that sentence in any logical manner. The Democrats are claiming that if it passes, the illegals will be able to get better jobs and pay more taxes, but if these better jobs are out there, shouldn’t we be telling the millions of unemployed American citizens about them first? With things like this and Obamacare, at what point do we conclude the Democrats don’t even care about the economy… at least not as much as left-wing pet issues.

* In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court decided that violent videogames are a protected form of speech. I guess that makes sense; when I rip someone’s head off in Mortal Kombat, is done seem like I’m expressing an opinion of some sort.

People argue that violent videogames influence violent behavior, but it’s not like playing Angry Birds has made we want to slingshot birds at real pigs. I did beat someone half to death when he nudged me and messed up my shot, but that almost seems like a separate issue.

* The TSA gave extra scrutiny to a cancer-stricken 95-year-old woman and alleged even had her remove her adult diaper. At what point do we become more scared of the TSA than we are of terrorists? The terrorists harm us to a much greater degree than the TSA, but it’s also extremely unlikely we’ll get attacked on a plane flight by them. Being humiliated by the TSA is much much more likely, though.

That’s not to say TSA agents are bad people. Of course, if they do enjoy humiliating grandma, that just means they have enthusiasm for their job.

* Rod Blagojevich was convicted of trying to sell Obama’s senate seat, and the jury said he was “likable” but clearly guilty — which sounds like a general description of some of the better politicians.

Really, though, it seems like to save time, every Chicago politician should end his term by going straight to jail and can later try to prove if he did nothing wrong. Few will.

Bachmann is to join the presidential race today… which I find really confusing because I thought she had already announced that at the last presidential debate… which I found really confusing at the time as I thought, “If you weren’t running for president until this moment, what are you doing at the debate?” Which made me wonder how many of the other candidates at the debate weren’t actually running for president yet.

Why is who is officially running for president such an inscrutable thing where only the most inside baseball pundits seem to be able to understand. Me — like all the other rubes — assumed that if you’re at a presidential debate, you’re running for president, but no, it’s much more complicated than that… for no purposeful reason.

There is no reason to have all this pointless ceremony around running for president. It should be a simple binary thing: You’re either running for president or you’re not. There is no need for an “exploratory committee”, just say you’re running for president and if you later think it’s a bad idea then you announce you’re no longer running for president. And there should be no pre-announcements and official announcements; whenever someone makes it clear he is running for president, that’s his announcement. If he tries to have an official announcement later, the media should get together and ignore that, because no, you already announced; you don’t get to announce twice.

Really, this should be a simple thing; let’s stop pretending it isn’t.

The main argument for gay marriage is holding these two conflicting statements true at the same time:

1. Marriage is a very special thing, so more people should be allowed to join in it.

2. Marriage is not a special thing, so changing its meaning isn’t a problem.

You see, this argument is how people keep arguing that gays are being harmed by not being allowed marriage, while at the same time trashing the institution as already demeaned (by pointing out all the divorce, affairs, and quick Vegas weddings) to argue that changing its definition won’t harm it further. It’s a rather incoherent argument, which is why much of gay marriage proponents mainly rely on an emotional appeal (“What’s wrong with two people loving each other?” as if government recognition has anything to do with people loving each other).

You really just have a lot of people trying to get something without examining what it is they want and why it’s worth something (which you can certainly say of many heterosexual couples getting married, too). Is marriage just a legal contract binding two people? Well, can’t two (or more) adults draw up whatever legal agreements they want between each other and campaign for businesses and whatnot to recognize them? Or is it something more than just a legal contact?

Why is marriage in America between one man and one woman when there are other types of marriage in history (such as plural marriages)? It’s because of Christianity, and Jesus’s teaching (mainly Matthew 19) that Adam and Eve is God’s example of a marriage and that it involves just one man and one woman joined together. So really, marriage is a religious institution — specifically Christian — inscribed in law. It’s just such a fundamental one to society that for hundreds of years people never took much notice that there was no separation of church and state when it comes to the recognition of marriage.

Given that marriage is a religious institution that the government participates in, there are two — and only two — logical responses.

1. Recognize its special place as religious institution fundamental to society and thus preserve it — perhaps even adding an amendment to the Constitution.

2. Have it removed from government entirely because of the separation of church and state and simply allow the government to recognize legal contracts between two or more adults, allowing them to put whatever ceremony on it they want.

Any other response, such as trying to redefine marriage — have the government redefine a religious institution — is intellectually incoherent. A lot of the proponents for gay marriage like to think the acceptance of their position is inevitable, but it doesn’t matter how much acceptance they get, as at the end of the day they are still trying to add two plus two and get five. No good will come of that.