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Because of a welcome link from Glenn Reynold’s Instapundit site — followed by links in 826 additional places — traffic to this site has been rather heavy today. That’s a mild way of saying that we’ve seen unprecedented interest and it’s caused a few problems for our overtaxed server.

I apologize for the trouble this has caused for some of you attempting to reach the site. The traffic we’ve seen in the first five hours is already 24 times what we’ve ever seen in a full day before, so it’s just something we weren’t ready for. If even a fraction of you come back, we’ll have to move to a more capable server, but that would be a nice “problem” to have.

So far today, we’ve seen visitors from 73 countries around the world and all 50 U.S. states. Welcome to everybody. Please come back. You have a lot of choices about where to spend your online time. I appreciate your spending a few of your minutes with me.

If you’ve read much of what I’ve written, you’ll know that I have no use for either of the mainstream parties. I don’t closely follow the debate of the moment in D.C. anymore, because I honestly don’t think it matters.

Sometimes the hypocrisy on both sides gets too thick not to notice, though. The two parties frequently switch sides on positions — based on which party holds the White House at the moment, it seems.

Right now, Democrats are screaming that the debt ceiling must be raised and that anyone who doesn’t vote to raise it is irresponsible. Republicans are piously intoning that there can’t be more borrowing without some serious budget cuts. (Of course, their idea of “serious cuts” amounts to trimming toenails in my book, but we’ll leave that alone.

Take a look at the positions the two parties took on the issue of raising the debt ceiling in 2006. With a Republican in the White House, the Republicans voted to raise it. Democrats voted against it. Check the link below for details of how the Senate voted. They’re almost all a bunch of partisan hypocrites.

GovTrack: Senate Vote On Passage: H. J. Res. 47 [109th]: Debt Limit Increase resolution

Do people on the political left really want to help folks? Or do they just want to make sure everyone suffers equally?

A friend of mine is applying for admission to some elite northeastern U.S. colleges, and he found himself on a tour of one of them last weekend. Something he heard from the tour guide says a lot about the way the modern liberal mind works. (I’m using the word “liberal” not in its classical sense — which would have meant what we call libertarian today — but in the mainstream “progressive” sense.)

While explaining information about the campus dorms at this very liberal school, the tour guide said:

“The two new dormitories have air conditioning, but it’s not used in any of them, because the administration doesn’t think it’s fair for some dormitories to have air conditioning while the rest don’t.”

You just can’t make things like this up.

Those on the left don’t seem to care that medical progress will be slowed dramatically by turning more of it over to state price controls and rationing — as long as everybody is forced to suffer the same kind of care. They don’t exactly say that, but it’s clear what their priorities are. This is true across the board with them, it seems.

My friend pointed out one exception to the egalitarian rule. The administration building from which the college president issues his pronouncements on shared student suffering is air conditioned — and it’s used regularly.