Mrs. Du Toit has more on minimum wage (which I talked about a few days ago):

In spending power then, the minimum wage earner is the one who experiences the greatest loss.

But they got a raise! We forced those greedy business owners to give them more money, and they’ll remember that come election day!

And the Evil Party retains power.

My sentiments exactly.

I picked up the World of Warcraft expansion, The Burning Crusade, yesterday, and tried it out for a few hours last night. While that’s obviously not enough time to have a solid handle on everything the expansion adds, here are my initial thoughts.

Most of the content, honestly, isn’t really aimed at me. I have a tendency to start over on a regular basis — I like the fact that I actually feel like I’m making progress on early levels, as opposed to the levels after 35 or so, where it feels like I play for weeks on end without getting a level up. I’ve never gotten a character to level 60; my highest level character is maybe 50, and he’s on a high-population server that I don’t see myself going back to anytime soon (If it is a PVP server, and I think it is, I may eventually see if he’s eligible for transfer to my new server, but otherwise, I’ll probably never play him again). So, all of the nice new content for level 60 and above, I don’t care about.

Similarly, I’m not really interested in either of the two new races. The Draenai (or whatever) are interesting enough, but they’re Alliance, so I’m not going to invest any significant time playing with one of them. The Blood Elves are, well, elves, and so, despite their magic-centered abilities, I don’t see myself doing much with them for a while either. I’ll probably stick with my Trolls and Orcs. Honestly, I would have much rather have had new classes instead of races, but you take what you get, I guess.

Still, I did try the two new races, briefly. Both of them have some pretty interesting racial stuff, and the Draenai look pretty cool, but it’s not worth the drawbacks to play either race right now. Despite the fact that they’re elves, I might consider playing a Blood Elf later on, but right now, the Blood Elf starting area looks like Orgrimmar on a bad day, and when that many people are working on the same quests, it’s a bit frustrating. Also, if you don’t leave the chat as soon as you get in there, you’ll be exposed to enough concentrated stupidity to make you lose all will to live within minutes.

The only things I am really interested in from this expansion are things that (as I understand it) I could have gotten without buying the expansion. New, socketed items appeal to me, and the jewelcrafting profession does as well (though I’m not sure whether you need the expansion for that; the only jewelcrafting trainers are, I think, in the new starting areas).

Anyway, I’ve fallen back into old habits and found myself giving into the siren’s call of World of Warcraft. I’m on Lightning’s Blade server, and my main characters are Abenatak (Level 18 hunter, as of 1/17/2006) and Xenophanes (Level 31 mage). If you’re interesting in playing on that server, send me a message, though I’ll warn you that while I’m more than willing to lose a ton of time doing it, I’m a pretty casual gamer, and if you spend a lot of time obsessing over things like maximizing your DPS instead of just having fun, you probably won’t enjoy playing with me.

Mark at Tempus Fugit writes about the minimum wage hike that was passed by the House of Representatives:

The main result of the minimum wage hike will be an increase in the unemployment of unskilled workers (i.e. the people who used to be making $5.15-$7.25). These jumps in unemployment have always followed an increase in the Federal minimum wage. The people the minimum wage is supposed to help are the ones who get disproportionately screwed by it. That’s some [expletive deleted] up idea of social justice.

Try this on for size: $5.15 is better than $0. With me so far? Now this: $3 is better than zero. Any amount greater than zero is better than zero. Here’s my idea of social justice: pay people what they are worth. No more, no less.

Other than the fact that I’d clarify that the amount of money that a job is worth is not by any means a measure of how much the person doing the job is worth, I agree completely.

Minimum wage is a funny political issue, and it’s the sort of thing that causes people around here to claim that Democrats are the party that looks out for the “little guy”. Politics is mostly about sound bites, and “Pay workers more money” makes for a great sound bite, especially if you don’t consider too carefully that someone has to pay for the increased wages, whether it’s the end consumer or the former co-workers of the minimum wage employee who is now making more money. This works out especially well for the Democrats, because when the new numbers showing increased unemployment come out, they can point at President Bush and the Republicans and claim that they caused this mess. Who will question them? After half a decade of hearing President Bush blamed for the unemployment rate, why would anyone believe that it’s not his fault?

If anyone has a Wii and would like to add me as a friend, my Wii number is 7538 1976 4391 4885.

(Thanks for the idea go to Kevin D., at Dean’s World.)

I have reached the point, recently, where most political discussions simultaneously bore and frustrate me, with none of the enjoyment that I used to find (those that involve politicians, anyway — I still enjoy thinking and talking about the individual issues). As a result of this, I’ve cut back on reading many of my favorite blogs (even those I tend to agree with), but I haven’t quit entirely.

Peter David had a post yesterday, titled The Defintion [sic] of Insanity, that criticized Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq. I would argue with Peter’s point, but I think that the issue of the Iraqi Theater of the Global War on Terror is one that is so thickly polluted with the “personality politics” that annoys me so badly that I think it’s mostly better to ignore it.

Indeed, I wouldn’t have written about the post at all except that one commenter made a comment that I felt I needed to address (which is not to say that the rest of the thread is junk. Specifically, there are a pair of comments from January 11th, 2007, at 11:46 and 11:53, by Matt Adler and Michael D., that are worth reading).

The comment in question was posted by “Glass”:

Posted by: Glass at January 11, 2007 01:39 PM

Last night’s speech and this increase in troops is political and historical posturing. It really is. The problem in Iraq is so much more than if we can sweep an area and keep it free of insurgents, so much larger than training Iraqi troops. The US could train every single Iraqi to become part of the Iraqi army and police force, and still it would not matter. This is what our Adiministration fails to see. The hate these people have is so deep-seeded only an across the board ceasefire would work and that logically will never happen.

What Bush is doing is giving the appearance of the US doing everything it possibly can, the appearance he is doing everything he can. Last night was Bush placing the onus on the Iraqi government, and when the violence does not lessen and things get worse due to our escalation, Bush in November can say, “Well, we tried and the fault lies with the Iraqi government.” Then we’ll withdraw, with the appearance of doing all the US could to make it right. Or worse, he’ll propose another plan, the third of fourth of its kind in recent years. And yet, more deaths will occur this year for that posturing.

Liberals are fond of saying, “We never should have been in this mess to begin with.” But the fact is we are in it, and in it deep. But what Conservatives need to realize is nothing is going to help shy of moving our entire country there and taking up residence for decades. And that is not our role. In short, we reap what we sow, and Bush keeps sowing, sowing, sowing…

I think I have made clear here that I believe that Affirmative Action is an extremely racist and vile policy. I believe that it, in effect, says to the people it claims to help, “You are not good enough to get a job on your own, no matter how hard you work.” I do not believe that anyone who supports Affirmative Action is so stupid as to actually claim that’s actually what they believe, however.

Similarly, I think it is extremely offensive to say that the Iraqi people are incapable of having a stable democratic system of government. I think it’s a subtle, racist way of saying that the speaker believes that the Arabs in Iraq are somehow less evolved than us, that they’re not capable of having a civilized country. I would never have believed that anyone would actually say that outright, but that’s exactly what Glass has done.

At the end of the day, I worry that we may not be capable of helping the Iraqi people to build a functional democracy. I think that there are a lot of obstacles to overcome that will make the situation seem to get worse before it gets better, and I worry that, as a nation, we do not have the heart for that.