New URL for blog: William Burton
Fewer links to other articles, more original analysis by yours truly.

John McCain lays out ways to make business more honest in America.

Salon.com Politics | The McCain solution

Patriotism in this country is not nor should it ever be merely a sentimental attachment to blood and soil. Our love of country is a love of ideals. The values of freedom inspire our patriotism: government derived from the consent of the governed; an economic system that is an open market for creativity, innovation, competition, and self-improvement.

Americans have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that a nation conceived in liberty will always be stronger, wealthier, more just, and happier than any nation that rations liberty to exalt the few at the expense of the many. We are the greatest nation in history because we trust in freedom. We trust that a people who are free to act in their self-interest will perceive their interest in an enlightened way, and use their wealth and power to create a civilization in which all people can share in the opportunities and responsibilities of freedom.

Read thi for a perfect example of why Larry King is the most incompetent man in show business:

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall

Good article by one of McCain's key people on the corporate-owned and coroporate-controlled Bush administration:

NDOL: Under the Corporate Influence by Marshall Wittman

Republicans had a big problem going into the 2000 election. The anti-government and anti-communist glue that had bound the conservative movement was dissolving. Whatever his weaknesses, Clinton had taken away the easy targets for conservative attacks on Democrats. After years of denying there were any New Democrats or that there was any Third Way, most Republicans knew they had to change.

They were offered two paths. The first, provided by Sen. John McCain, was to recapture the legacy of President Theodore Roosevelt, by advocating government as an agent of "national greatness" and insisting on reform of government and of corporate influence on government. The second, provided by Bush (and backed by conservative ideologues, K Street, and the Christian right), was to change the face of the Republican Party rather than its ideology. The Republican faithful -- or more accurately, a few thousand primary voters in South Carolina -- chose the path of least resistance.

Excellent rant about what's wrong with the major American political viewpoints: Conservatives couldn't care less about anyone but themselves. Libertarians are unrealistic fantasists. Liberals are incompetents without the courage of their convictions.

Willamette Week Online | Cover Story | Candidates for Metro president.

I hate your politics.

Each of you carries baggage from your political affiliation, and all of that baggage has a punky smell to it, like one of your larger species of rodent crawled in and expired in your folded underwear. Listening to any of you yammer on about the geopolitical situation is enough to make one want to melt down one's dental fillings with a beeswax candle and then jam an ice pick into the freshly exposed nerve, just to have something else to think about.

The editors of The New Republic on Bush abandoning his free market "principles" for political gain and to help big business fatcats.

The New Republic Online: Making Hay

These recent deviations from free-market orthodoxy have been dramatic enough that it's tempting to conclude the president has no coherent economic philosophy at all. But that isn't quite true. A clear pattern has lately emerged: When intervention in the market would benefit a wide range of Americans--say, a substantive patients' bill of rights or a prescription-drug plan--Bush opposes it. Ditto for an intervention that would actually make the economy run more smoothly--as in the case of reforms to the accounting industry. Indeed, it seems only when a market intervention lacks a compelling economic rationale and helps the few at the expense of the many--as in the steel, energy, and agriculture decisions--that the president sets aside his free-market principles. Call it "uncompassionate unconservatism."

The reason is that while only intermittently pro-market, Bush is steadfastly pro-business. Just how far the president is willing to bend the former principle in service of the latter can be seen in the farm bill he is preparing to sign into law.

Jonathan Chait responds to David Broder's slamming of the idea of John McCain switching parties to run for the Presidency as a Democrat, and his apparently willful misreading of people who advocate a switch:

The New Republic Online: No More Mr. Nice Columnist .

I find McCain admirable because he has embraced a worldview that, on issue after issue, elevates the broader good above narrow self-interest: on tax cuts, pork, environmental and gun regulations, foreign policy, and so on. It's all lost on Broder.

EJ Dionne on why we should all want the government to set aside money for social insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security:

Why the Lockbox Won't Die (washingtonpost.com)

All of us hope we'll save so much that we won't need to rely on Social Security checks. But we can never be absolutely sure we won't need them -- what if your portfolio is bulging with Enron stock? -- so we're glad Social Security is there for everyone.

We'd like to think we won't get sick. But even the fittest in our ranks will need more medical care as they age. We subsidize and socialize health care for the elderly through Medicare because we know the dangers, as Franklin Roosevelt once put it, of having "a rich man's security and a poor man's security."

These programs, in other words, insure all of us, and insure society against having a large class of destitute elderly people.

Text of Al Gore's speech to the Florida Democratic Party:

algore04.com - The Grassroots Site Dedicated to Re-electing Al Gore

Now, here in America patriotism does not mean keeping quiet. It means speaking up. It means speaking out. It means exercising our freedom of speech. It means drawing the line where we have strong differences with the administration. It means debating what we believe is right, and what we believe is wrong. It is in this sprit of patriotism that I appear before you here today to engage in the debate that we so vitally need to build a brighter future for our country.

The time has come to speak out boldly, not only when we believe the administration is right, but to offer constructive alternatives when we believe what they're doing is wrong for America. And a lot of what they're doing, I believe, is wrong for America........

........In each of these areas, the Administration is following the same pattern: selling out America's future in return for short term political gains. They've returned us to the days of deficits and debt, the days of irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthy; the days of loosening environmental safeguards to satisfy the polluters. And they've turned their back on America's covenant with our greatest generation, raiding the Social Security and Medicare trust funds without pause, without remorse, and seemingly without even a thought to the long-term consequences of what they're doing.