Glenn Beck asks him about why socialism is bad. Predictably, McCain’s against it, but for all the wrong reasons. The reasons he gives are incidental and all too common among so-called conservatives and libertarians, among others opposed to socialism, in America.

Getting ASP.Net to handle Enter keypresses on a page that has more than one logical “form” has a generally easy solution in .Net 2.0+: just wrap each group of controls in an ASP Panel, set its DefaultButton property to the ID of the proper submit button.

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The following post is going to be a bit of a watershed for me on this blog, as it’s the first that isn’t about politics/philosophy/economics. But given that the loose formative theme behind this site is to outline a personal philosophy for evolving into the future (hence the blog’s name, FoundryForward), technology is a natural fit. (This is a more specific tech topic than I first imagined, but it’s in support of the broader topics of the .Net framework and, in turn, managed code and OOP.)

So for the very, very few readers who will come across this, be warned that the waters will soon be muddied with filthy bits of programming and that kind of thing, from time to time, which I’ll prefix with “Code:”  in the subject.

Below its mirth-killing pun of a title, this AFP article announces that Arctic Monkeys — an irrationally popular British rock band — think that the Live Earth series of environmentally-themed concerts is stratospherically stupid. If they had delivered that opinion to me in the form of one of their songs, I probably would have missed the remainder; but as it happens, I agree with them.

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On a typical day, a perusal through the front-page dregs of Digg.com will yield an abundance of posts on highly predictable topics. I refer, of course, not to technology issues (you must be thinking of Slashdot the 2005 version of Digg), but the mandatory anti-Bush posts; a daily prescription of environmentalist bromides; a fair measure of paranoid anti-corporatism; and, inevitably, the minefield of anti-theistic sophistry and exercises in intellectual self-congratulation. Each of these deserves its own post, but the volley of arrogant comments from atheists gets the hat-tip today.

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ExxonMobil’s announcement of quarterly earnings totaling $10.7B — and annual earnings of $36.1B — has this week provoked a predictable resurgence of the anti-”Big Oil” rhetoric that last spiked in early November of last year.

On November 10, executives from the major oil companies in the United States were questioned by US senators regarding the nature of their unusually high profits for the third quarter. Discussion hasn’t much dwindled on the topic since then, and I’ve consequently seen, read, and heard a good many people of all walks of life echoing the complaints of Congress that the profits in question are unfair, unpatriotic, and greedy — in short, that the consumer is being gouged by the oil companies.

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Awhile ago, when I used to blog, I referred to some statements of Senator Barbara Boxer, in my brilliantly-named Kos She Said So, That’s Why. Specifically, I quoted Boxer’s vilification of the Republican Party wherein she states “they want 100 percent.”

I held that quote up to ridicule not because I think it’s untrue, but because Barbara Boxer: a) obviously considers the Democratic Party to be cut of superior cloth; and b) thinks that a party shouldn’t want 100 percent. It may be that notions such as the latter are frequently rattled off in the laundry list of principles held by the American left — a list that would be remiss to omit fairness, bipartisanship, inclusion, and diversity — but it’s in fact quite contrary to the spirit in which I (and, I believe, everyone else) elect officials to represent me in the government.

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“Disagree with someone on the right and he is likely to think you obtuse, wrong, foolish, a dope. Disagree with someone on the left and he is more likely to think you selfish, a sell-out, insensitive, possibly evil.”

- Joseph Epstein

The latest melodrama that politicians and bloggers alike are throwing themselves into is “Rovegate,” the stupid, inconsequential, and highly boring scandal wherein covert CIA agent Valerie Plame has her identity revealed to the media. It’s called Rovegate because, well, it’s a scandal, and because Bush advisor Karl Rove seems to have had some role in the affair. Karl Rove is, of course, a favorite object of liberal hatred, since he’s so close to Bush, and since he’s an apparent egghead genius who controls Bush like a sock puppet from behind the scenes.

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The Daily Kos excerpted an interview yesterday that highlights a few thrilling and insightful comments from Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). (Does the designation “D-CA” make your eyes want to bleed, or what?)

Do you think the cracks are beginning to show in the Republican Party?
Senator Boxer: The American people are beginning to see the Republicans’ willingness to trample over 200 years of history, to step on the minority, to push everybody out of the way because they want 100 percent. It’s rubbing the American people the wrong way. One-party rule is not good. The American people as a whole are really pretty moderate. They’re not, as a whole, conservative or liberal. The right wing is marching the Republican Party off a cliff.

Things are definitely not going well for this Administration because this lust for power has overtaken their common sense. Take the President’s Social Security plan. It is so obvious that the people don’t want to privatize this program that has worked so well and lifted 50 percent of seniors out of poverty. He has gone so far as to hint that the United States might default on its debts. This is the President of the United States. What a message! For sixty years they’ve been waiting for the moment when they could frighten people into thinking Social Security is going broke. When, by the way, it isn’t at all.

Is it just me, or is anyone else sick of the endless partisan hackery that emanates from “both sides of the aisle”? (Anyone else hate that phrase?) Truly, though, we clearly do need someone to show us the path to moderation. And I think it should be someone who accuses an entire party of being willing to trample on 200 years of history, says that party wants 100%, accuses the administration (which coincidentally belongs to the party competing with hers) of possessing power lust, states that it’s obvious that the country (split nearly 50/50 between Dems and Reps) is deeply in love with Social Security, and implies that Republicans, as a solid bloc transcending generations and massive shifts in the body politic, have plotted tirelessly in back rooms to instill panic in all Americans. Left unsaid is the fact that the Republicans were all the while chomping smoldering, blown-out looking cigars, chortling evilly, and gazing with satisfaction on their smokestacks belching black pollutants into a pristine sky once populated only by children’s kites.

And she does THAT in the space of the first two paragraphs! Read the whole thing — it’s worth it. It almost makes you wonder if Kos stumbled upon a pre-release copy of a new Onion story parodying Democrat politicos.

Another day, another politician toeing the party line. If you read what these people say each day, I think you’ll find it positively astounding just how often all of us Americans “start to realize” that “the bad party” is out to kill us in our sleep. We always seem on the cusp of a revolution, and — what do you know — our faithful messenger is on the right side of history. Boxer characteristically provides no support for anything, shows none of her coveted moderation or reason in her comments (Republicans are 100% to blame, they act as a single bloc in all ways, and without them we could all complete our evolution to beings of pure energy, confident in the soundness of our Social Security system).

That’s how politicians are, left and right, and quite frankly, it’s sickening and irritating to read the same stuff day after day. Irritating that they continue to go through the motions, irritating that they live for the isolated soundbite instead of trying to make coherent sense in the larger picture, let alone actually improve the country. Irritating because they treat us all like addled morons salivating before the TV as we await their latest vitriolic prognosis of life in America.

Sickening because some, such as the denizens of the Daily Kos, eagerly step up to fulfill that role, and feed the cycle once more.