The General Misfires

General Wesley Clark announced a bad policy choice yesterday:

Breaking with most of his Democratic rivals, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark said Tuesday he favors amending the Constitution to ban flag burning.
. . .
Speaking at an American Legion hall on Veterans Day, Clark said he agrees with the amendment, although he cautioned that true patriotism involves more than respecting symbols.

Exactly. Like respecting First Amendment protection of speech. That would be a good place to start when constructing patriotism. Clark doesn’t need to start trying to emulate this guy:

“There ought to be limits to freedom.” George W. Bush

Fighting through the Noise

South Knox Bubba has a good post on how the crowded Democratic presidential field is producing too much noise for any individual candidate to be heard. This problem has been particularly acute at the debates, where because of time limitations the candidates don’t have sufficient time to talk about anything. A typical debate highlight goes as follows:
Moderator: Candidate B, what would you do to address the loss of American jobs overseas?
Candidate B: Well, the first thing I’d do would be to [Ding] examine our trade agreements with other nations.
Moderator: Thank you Candidate B and I’d like to remind all the candidates to limit their remarks to the allowed time.
What can be done about this? Unfortunately, I don’t see a very practical method of following SKB’s “get serious” advice and pushing people off the stage. I think we’re stuck waiting for attrition to run its natural course. But one feasible alternative is to break the field into two parts for the upcoming debates. Have a lottery to separate the candidates into two pools. One group will debate one night, the other the next.
I know this isn’t an ideal situation and it will limit some of the on-on-one scuffles. But it will be better than what we have now; the candidates will at least get to express complete thoughts rather than fragments.

Overpaid Jobs

CBS Marketwatch’s Chris Pummer ranks the 10 most overpaid jobs in the U.S.:

10) Wedding photographers
9) Pilots for major airlines
8) West Coast longshoremen
7) Airport skycaps
6) Real estate agents selling high-end homes
5) Motivational speakers and ex-politicians on the lecture circuit
4) Orthodontists
3) CEOs of poorly performing companies
2) Washed-up pro athletes in long-term contracts
1) Mutual-fund managers

Via Slashdot.