17 January 2008

It's an Historic Occasion, I Agree with TWO NYT Eds Today . . .

First, they're right, race/gender issues have no place in the discussion about Sen. Obama versus Sen. Clinton. Of course, both have used their uniqueness amongst previous serious candidates for the presidency as a major selling point. Identity politics and the Democratic party go together, whether they like it or not.

Chickens. Home. Roosting

(go ahead, make that some sort of veiled racial reference, I dare you!)

Second, they're right, yet more expansion of Indian Gaming on non-Indian land would be a bad thing. Not for the reasons they state, though. I think this picking one tribe over another as to winners and losers is ridiculous, all these compacts, and deals, and treaties are a sham. Americans want gambling, they want it close by, but generally they don't want it down the street.

The whole reservation system and the fiction that these "Nations" are sovereign within the United States is a comfortable fiction that serves a few interests well, but fails the majority of the descendants of our continent's first residents. End the whole sham now, in the long run that would be the best solution for this mess of convoluted laws, compacts and 'treaties'.

I think I've made it pretty obvious that I'm pro-gambling, but anti-monopoly. People want to be able to gamble, state governments are addicted to gaming revenue, let's quit all the hypocrisy and open up the business of gambling to business interests and communities willing to come to an accomodation without some 'poor disposessed native group' fronting for professional gaming concerns.

Maybe this wasn't so historic, I agree with their conclusions, not how they got there, their reasonings are as fuzzy and wrong-headed as always. But besides being a conservative/libertarian, I'm also a pragmatist, if a liberal newspaper is willing to agree to the results I'm also looking for, who am I to argue?

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