Harry Reid and Mixed Messages

I probably should not accuse Senator Reid of "mixed messages". His "I will do anything to get re-elected" message is pretty clear and undiluted - though, somehow, that is not the message he wants us to notice - but his actions create mixed messages in ways that are detrimental to our country, to freedom, and to good sense. They also create mixed messages in a way I have always opposed, so my opposition to this one is not necessarily specific to the bills in question.
The specific action this time is Reid's declared decision to tack the DREAM (Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors) Act as an amendment onto the upcoming defense appropriations bill. A defense bill that almost always passes easily with bilateral support. A defense bill that pays for our military. A defense bill that should never be twisted for the purpose of supporting the campaigns of our professional criminal class in Congress.
The short description of the DREAM Act is that it is an illegal immigration amnesty act. Period. The longer description is that it gives a path to amnesty to "undocumented aliens" who entered this country before the age of 16, have been here at least 5 years, and have received a High School Diploma or GED or are attending college. It also gives a route to extra scholarships and grants for said "undocumented alien" to continue his or her education. The DREAM act has been floating around since 2001 and has had so little support that it has rarely even come up for vote, and has never seen even the possibility of success on those rare occasions when it has made it out of committee.
To say that the DREAM Act is controversial is to say that stepping on a land mine hurts.
This story gets worse when you add in the fact that this simple defense appropriations bill has already been weighed down by the addition of an amendment to repeal the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, hardly a noncontroversial amendment itself.
Of all the low down, dirty, rotten tricks! In essence, the Democrats (and Reid specifically) are attempting to hold the defense bill hostage by loading it up with Easter Eggs which are great for their party but unpalatable to the other side. They are taking a bill that would normally have bilateral support and turning it into just another ideological battleground. In this manner, the Republicans either have to vote for something they strongly oppose or vote against something they strongly support. Then, of course, the Democrats get to lie about the results either way. If the law passes it's, "See, even the Republicans are for this," when everyone knows the Republicans were only voting for the military, and if the law fails it's, "See, the Republicans really hate the military," when everyone knows the Republicans were really voting against the DREAM. It is a lose-lose for everyone except far left career criminals.
This should be impossible. This should be illegal! A single bill should not require people to vote in two different directions. A bill that has no chance on its own should not be forced down people's throats by tacking it onto an easy win. The entire bill amendment/rider process is flush with corruption and abuse and needs to go away yesterday!
Some states include in their constitution a prohibition against just this behavior. By their state constitutions, a state bill must be about one subject and only one subject and cannot be used to sneak additional laws into play. I have said for decades that we need an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that does the same. Everyone talks about corruption in Congress, but no one does anything about it. This would do something about it. This would remove one of their most blatant tools of corruption. Of course, if we trimmed them back to Constitutional authority and took away their assumed power to pass laws on anything and everything that enters their crooked little minds, that would go a long way toward stamping out their corruption. It is a bit more difficult to be corrupt when you have nothing to sell.
This is not about Right or Left, Democrat or Republican. This same practice occurred under Republicans and will occur again regardless of which party holds office. This is not even about whether or not you like the laws in question. If you like them so much, get up off your lazy butts and campaign for them to have a chance on their own! This is about the inherently corrupt process of making a Frankenstein's monster out of disparate, unrelated bills and forcing people to vote against their conscience or true desires.
Everyone wants a better America, but you cannot have a better anything through corruption. The corruption will always eat through and destroy what you were trying to build. If you truly want a better country then fight against corruption, even when that corruption appears to be on your side.

Magic Math

I am so sick of magic math. "What's magic math?" you ask. The administration's account of "jobs created or saved", officially released today is a prime example of magic math.
Government officials claim that the $787 Billion stimulus package released earlier this year has saved or created approximately 640,000 jobs across the country, with the vast majority of those jobs being in construction and education. This claim is based on reports filed by recipients of the $160 Billion or so that has actually been spent so far. Though the administration only gets angry if you mention it, though, these numbers are highly contested by analytical experts.
It has been well-documented that there were numerous errors in initial reporting, but the administration claims that they caught and corrected for all of them. If you believe that, I have a bridge I'm looking to sell. We're talking about the same people who have admitted that our healthcare system wastes about $800 Billion a year, with nearly half of that waste being directly attributed to Medicaid and Medicare. If this is the way those people count, you try believing that they caught every error in reports from more than 100,000 recipients. I'm not buying it.
The reality is, this kind of counting can never use anything but magic numbers. Sure, you can count jobs that were created by the stimulus, assuming you're not looking in areas where the creation of new jobs was already being considered, but how do you verify jobs saved by the stimulus? How many of those recipients actually reported, "I was going to fire this many people but, thanks to the stimulus package, I didn't"? It's guessing, plain and simple. Some of it is scientific guessing, guesswork that actually has some verifiable relationship to reality, but much of it is just wishful thinking. History states clearly that there is no rational reason to assume that politicians didn't wish up some higher numbers than reality supports in order to make themselves look and feel better. Remember, the same people who claim confidence in these numbers were the people who claimed confidence in the fact that their stimulus package would prevent the unemployment rate from hitting double digits. How's that confidence working out for you?
If these fictional numbers were all there was to the story, it would be disgraceful, but it would be the same disgraceful story we see every time some politician starts spouting numbers. That isn't all, though. Fairy dust didn't make their number big enough, so they blew on it and made it even bigger.
White House officials are actually claiming that they get to count 1 million jobs, when you add in things that can't actually be measured. Things like the unmeasurable guy who didn't lose his job went to eat at Burger King and that unmeasurably saved the job of some kid serving fries. I'm not kidding. They actually used a stimulus-saved worker spending money at a restaurant as an example of how they came up with that 1 million magic number. They took numbers that can't be verified and added them to numbers that can't be verified and threw out a bigger number that can't be verified that they get to pat themselves on the back for. Magic math.
It's enough to make your head spin, but it's business as usual for the clowns we have in Washington. When they got called out a few weeks ago for pork and bloat-spending in a defense bill - wasting money that's supposed to help our soldiers and using it to make them look good in the home district instead - a spokesman for Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, had the gall to say, "Anyone who suggests this clearly doesn't understand the appropriations process." Mind you, the pork is there and documented, so the only English translation for this statement is, "We do this all the time. Nothing unusual here."
I wish I could say vote them all out and install some people who know how to count, but the odds don't look good for that either. Take a look at this comment I found on the New York Times website the other day, introducing some organizations brainstorm for how to solve the economic crisis:

"First and foremost it calls for the Fed to print a lot more money and pay off the federal debt. It then calls for taking the $400 billion saved on interest payments and using that money to give everyone on Social Security a 20% raise and lowering the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare to age 60. This would create an army of young retirees looking to volunteer at the charity of their choice. At the same time it would open up jobs for younger workers."

Print all the money you want to pay off the debt and triple (at least) the number of people collecting Social Security benefits instantly. Do I really need to explain the real world consequences to such an idea? How are you going to pay all those benefits when the value of our dollar crashes to the point where it's only worth will be as an historical exhibit?
Wasn't there a time when we taught math as part of our basic educational system? I seem to recall such a time, though I am beginning to think it was just a hallucination. Lying about your numbers doesn't make you right. It just lets you steal more before the average person catches on. Keep that in mind the next time you see a highly-educated politician spouting figures that are obviously fabricated.

A Rose By Any Other Name

The White House has declared war on Fox News. It would be funny if it weren't disgusting. The arrogance of this administration is without parallel. For the President of the United States to not just believe, but to publicly state that he gets to unilaterally declare a major news source to be "not news" is sickening, but for the cheering section on the left to go along with this outrage is terrifying.
The excuse, according to administration officials, is that news should not have a "perspective" and Fox News has a perspective, therefore Fox News isn't news. Seriously? Let me get this straight. A major news program giving up an hour of its programing to promote the administration's policies is news without perspective? A prominent reporter openly insulting conservative protesters during his report is news without perspective? A major news program "fact checking" a comedy skit (a skit performed by liberals, no less - there should be a joke in that, shouldn't there?) is news without perspective? Multiple major news sources running with a fabricated story that smears a conservative pundit for days before they bother to fact check and find out it's false (and even then almost none of them offer an apology or a retraction) is news without perspective? Is anyone seriously claiming to buy this twisted logic?
This isn't about perspective. It's about the perspective people like and don't like. If you have a perspective that approves of the administration, you get a free pass. If you have a perspective that disapproves of the administration then you're "not really news". Don't you love how that works?
Does Fox News have a perspective? Of course they do! Here's a news flash for you: every major news source since Ben Franklin rolled off his first newspaper has had a perspective and an editorial policy of pushing that perspective. They all do it. Fox News is nowhere near unique in this regard. The only thing that makes Fox News unique is that their perspective leans conservative.
If you can't tell the difference between the commentary section and the news section, you should probably turn the TV off. If you don't know that every network has an agenda and that they all filter things through that agenda, you should probably turn the TV off. If you don't know that the White House doesn't get to declare who is and who isn't a news source ... Of course they know that. They were just counting on you not knowing that.
It is at least gratifying to see that, maybe this time, the administration has overreached itself in its arrogance. Kudos to the other major networks for refusing to play along. They knew that this behavior was wrong and they stopped it, even though it could have helped them in the short term. Now if only we could get more Americans to realize that short term benefits do not trump long term damage.

Speaking Out Of Both Sides

The public Option. According to some, it is a cost-cutting measure where the strength of the plan and the power of government work to lower healthcare costs thus, through market competition, forcing other insurance providers to also lower their prices. According to others, it is a back door attempt to push through a government takeover of healthcare where government subsidies keep prices and costs below the market thus preventing other insurance providers from being able to compete and forcing them out of business. In a partial attempt to combat the latter idea, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has stated that they estimate such a public option would only receive about 12 million enrollees, far below any amount that could possibly lead to a government takeover, but doesn't that present another question?
If the public option will only attract about 12 million people and one of the stated goals of healthcare reform is universal coverage (we'll ignore for the moment the fact that not one of the plans on the table even claims to be coming close to this original goal) and the US population is roughly 300 million people ... Can anyone else do the math here? 12 million people isn't even a blip on the radar. The same figure used to defuse fears of a government takeover also clearly demonstrates that the public option wouldn't do a thing to cut costs. At that size it would be virtually invisible in the larger healthcare market. The only way a single provider could have a significant impact on overall pricing is if it were large enough to potentially take over the market. You can't have it both ways and government officials are talking out of both sides of their mouths hoping that people won't notice they are blatantly contradicting themselves. If there is no risk of government takeover through this plan then there is also no possibility of government price controls through this plan. The two are inextricably tied together.
What's most amusing about this, though, (aside from the lies and hypocrisy that are just par for the course) is that pro public option people keep talking about interjecting competition into the insurance market place? Inserting one provider is supposed to increase competition? Do you people know anything about business?
First of all, there is competition in the insurance marketplace. It's stifled, corrupt, and lame, but it's there. Adding a single provider to the mix will do absolutely nothing to increase that competition, even if that provider is the government. "But there are some states that only have one major insurance provider!" You're right. There are. And why is that? Because the law, as it currently exists blocks other providers from other states from entering those markets. If you are serious about increasing competition then strike down stupid laws that interfere with competition. No one on the left will talk about that possibility, though, because "increasing competition" is not really what they want. They're just using a catchphrase to try to lure people to their side. What they really care about is government force - they want the government to use its might to force prices down - but they can't say that because that would be a takeover and saying it would be admitting that the accusations from the other side are correct. The use of such concealing language, however, is an admission that they know they do not have the mandate they claim and they know that a significant percentage of the American population is opposed to the idea of a government takeover. Everything you say, even when you're lying, says something about you. Pay attention and you'll know what they think and why they're doing what they do.
We need reform, but nothing in that nonsense those idiots in DC are writing is about reform. Maybe it started out that way, but it's just political tug-of-war now. They're just trying to score points by looking like they're doing something without paying any attention to whether or not what they're doing is right. Business as usual. And you, the voting public, are eating it up like you always do. That's why it works. If a Democrat promises to spend money to fix a problem then democrats will cheer and vote for him without paying any attention to whether or not the fix was needed or whether or not the expense actually addressed the problem. If a Republican promises to block such an expenditure then republicans will cheer and vote for him without paying any attention to whether or not the fix was needed or whether or not the expense actually addresses the problem. Can you honestly not see what's wrong with this system? No, most of you can't, and that's exactly why we're in the mess we're in.

Dishonest Criticism

I have already commented on the Nobel Peace Prize and I'm not really going to do so again. If you are rabidly opposed to Obama then you are probably opposed to this award. If you are thrilled with Obama then you are probably thrilled with this award. If you fall somewhere in the middle then your opinion on this award probably falls somewhere in the middle as well. See how that works? It is somewhat amusing to note that more of those middle voices seem to be having a Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot moment with this award than not, but that's a different matter than I want to discuss today.
Today I want to comment on some of the comments, more specifically the loud, screeching chorus on the Left who are insisting that those opposed to this award are just Republicans being obstructionist or the radical Right being opposed to everything Obama-related. There are a number of liberal pundits who are all about, "Why can't the Right keep from screaming about such a relatively small issue?" Fair enough. I have a question for you: Why can't the Left keep from lying about such a relatively small issue?
Those pundits who are trying to dismiss the complaints as nothing more than more screeching from the right-wing hate chorus are either lying or they are ridiculously oblivious to their own industry. How do I know this? Because it takes nothing more than ten minutes on google to find more than a dozen prominent left-leaning or openly Leftist pundits who are also saying that the award was either premature at best or flat out wrong at worst.
Richard Reich (Huffington Post), Maureen Dowd (New York Times), Thomas Friedman (New York Times), Michael Russnow (Huffington Post), Richard Kim (The Nation), David Sirota (Huffington Post and Salon), Mickey Kaus (Slate), Peter Beinart (New Republic), Nicholas Kristof (New York Times), Ruth Marcus (Washington Post), Ezra Klein (Washington Post), Richard Cohen (Washington Post), Gabriel Rachman (Financial Times).
Everyone of these people is either a prominent liberal pundit or a writer who has been known to take the Left side of issues more often than not and everyone of them has publicly denounced this Nobel Peace Prize as wrong, premature, or a bad joke. You cannot convince me that those other paid pundits are so oblivious to their own profession that they don't know what these people have said. That leads to one inevitable conclusion: Those trying to dismiss the criticism of this award as just right-wing smear tactics are blatantly lying. They know there is nothing right-wing about these complaints. Almost every news story on this subject has gone out of its way to mention the fact that liberals are just as confused as conservatives about this award. These people know this and are lying about it, plain and simple.
Why would they lie about Republicans and conservatives in such a public manner and over such a laughable issue? Well, we are talking about the same people who have spent the last eight months flat out lying to the public by claiming that Republicans have done nothing but obstruction on healthcare, all the while ignoring or hiding the multiple bills and amendments the Republicans have put forward. Is this really such a stretch?
The internet age makes it almost impossible for those in the public eye to get away with these lies, yet the lies are parroted all across the internet. Nothing will improve as long as this is the way things are done, but it is up to you to stand up and demand that they tell the truth.

Disingenuous Questions And False Statements

Part of my relative silence lately has been due to simple overload. There is so much I want to say that picking and choosing becomes difficult. Also, I have been reluctant to allow this blog to be dominated by health care or climate change debates, yet those seem to be the two subjects dominating the portions of the news that I would normally comment on. Oh well, you play the hand you're dealt, right?
I'm pulling from comment sections again today, but I'm not going to use direct quotes. As you should easily see, there won't be any need. Instead, I am distilling questions and comments that are seen constantly among the various blogs and news comments but which are, themselves, a considerable distance away from being honest. I'll distill the question into its most common form and then try to give it an answer.
For example:
"If you are opposed to socialized medicine, why don't you refuse to accept Medicare?"
You mean these people should refuse to accept services for which they have already paid in full? You do realize, of course, that Medicare is essentially an insurance program that uses the strength of government to force you to pay premiums for decades before you are even allowed to use it. Of course you do. If you have ever received a paycheck, you have seen these forced premium payments for yourself. The people who are using Medicare have spent all or most of their lives expecting that this is how it would be because this was the only choice they were allowed. They planned accordingly and now your brilliant suggestion is that they fix someone else's problem by ditching their lives' plans at the last minute and just accepting that the money which was taken from them for years has disappeared into a black hole instead of coming back to them in any useful manner. I have a hard time believing that anyone uttering this particular question doesn't fully understand what they are suggesting.

"If you oppose health care reform for fiscal reasons, why didn't you oppose the unnecessary Iraq war for those same reasons?"
This one is wrong on so many levels. First of all, it assumes that everyone who is fiscally opposed to the current health care reform ideas was for the Iraq war, which is demonstrably false. There is a large number of fiscally conservative Libertarians who screamed bloody murder about the waste and uselessness of the Iraq war and who are also less than pleased with the current round of waste. I have no doubt that there are many Republicans and Independents who fall into the same camp. More importantly, though, this question assumes that everyone shares the belief that the Iraq war was unnecessary - a belief that even a semi-bright child can easily see is not shared - and, even more importantly, it assumes that everyone shared that belief from the beginning. Shall we do a reminder list of the people on the Left who supported the Iraq war at the beginning? Those people who supported the Iraq war did so precisely because they believed it was necessary, negating the entire "logic" of this question.

"Where were you for the last eight years when Bush was spending so much?"
Where were you, living under a rock? There were fiscally conservative Republicans howling against Bush's spending policies every single day! Just because they weren't the majority or the loudest voices doesn't mean you get to claim they weren't there. Are there more of them now? Of course there are! In case you hadn't noticed, spending has gone up exponentially. Those who were uneasy about Bush's spending - but not enough so to make a big stink - could easily be pushed over the line by doubling and trippling the spending. There is nothing sinister or inherently partisan about this. It's pretty normal. Most of us behave in the exact same way in our every day lives. We might wince at certain household expenses but decide not to make an issue just yet, and then hit the roof when the household budget goes through the roof. Can you honestly try to claim that this is unusual behavior?

"If you're so anti-socialism then we should make sure the police and fire departments never come to your aid since they are government funded."
Pure hyperbole, and stupid hyperbole at that. Can you even imagine a Republican anarchist? Because I can't and, for the record, there is nothing in Libertarian principles that would support this idea either. Socialism is the economic theory of public ownership of the means of production and allocation of resources. Defense - including domestic defense, ie. law enforcement and fire brigades - is not a part of the socialism theory. It isn't even covered. One has nothing to do with the other. Defense and how it is handled would be covered under political theory, not economic theory - yes, for those of you who don't know any better, you actually do have to be able to juggle multiple theories at the same time in order to successfully have this conversation - and most fiscal conservatives subscribe to political theories that do include defense as a natural and proper function of government.

I could go on like this all day, but I think you get the idea. I'll let you chew on these for a while and maybe we'll come back to this idea another time. If you see similar questions or statements that don't quite seem to make sense, feel free to send them along and maybe we'll include them next time.

On Restoring A Political Party

I'm not a big fan of our two party system since I believe that giving major airplay to only two points of view doesn't even resemble true representation. I, for example, being decidedly neither Republican nor Democrat, am not represented by any of those clowns in Washington. I don't think there is more than a half-dozen of them whose agree-disagree ration is much further apart than 50-50. People always talk about the power of the "independents" and the "third parties", but what power is that really? The power to swing the vote to one or the other of the two big parties is hardly true self determination. It's just picking the lesser of two evils, writ large. Sometimes, like in our most recent election, even picking the lesser of two evils is more like rolling the dice than actually making a decision. Do we want the incompetent smooth-talker or the incoherent mental case? Anyone have a dart and a dartboard?
However, even a two party system certainly beats the stuffings out of a one party system. I want the Republican party to be viable simply because I do not want the Democratic party to be the only choice, and vise versa. I would whole-heartedly support the crumbling of one or both of these parties if it meant opening our system up to something better but, at present at least, it wouldn't. If one party gets marginalized, that only means that the other party would get the full run of things, and that is truly terrifying, no matter which way it goes. So, for the present, I must support keeping both parties viable. It's that lesser of two evils thing again.
Whether the Truly Faithful want to admit it or not, the Republican party currently is at risk of becoming marginalized. This is not a fait accompli like many on the left would like to believe, but it is a real possibility. The demagogues have claimed control of the Republican grass roots but they do not represent the Republican party as a whole. They are also easy to beat. They stir up the evangelicals and the hardcore conservatives (which blocks make up only an estimated 20%-30% of the Republican party and an even smaller - much smaller - percent of conservative-leaning independents) but they leave the rest of the party cold. You'll get a lot of noise, but not much of any usefulness. Meanwhile, the Democrats galvanize a much larger percentage of their voting block (largely because they do not always insist on treating the loudest block as the only block that matters) and sheer attrition spells a bad day looking for Republicans.
I would like to believe that the ongoing spending orgy being pushed by the Democrats might galvanize a broader Republican base in the next election, but non-evangelical Republicans are rather squeamish in that department right now. The last Republican administration was not exactly conservative on spending. I have also been cruelly disillusioned on what will galvanize the Republican party. I had truly believed that an outright election theft (called such by outside news agencies across the country) and profligate spending would galvanize Republicans in the last election here in Washington state, but it didn't. It wasn't even what one could truly call close.
Republicans, if you want to stir your party as a whole next time around, and not just the loudmouths, you're going to have to work for it and not expect the Democrats to do the work for you. Almost regardless of how much the Democrats do that you dislike, the party as a whole will not move unless you give them a reason to do so. Most people are not going to stir themselves for what they believe to be a losing proposition.
So what will move the Republican party as a whole? How about focusing on more broad spectrum Republican and conservative beliefs? I realize that the evangelicals make quite a racket, but religious issues are not broad spectrum Republican issues. In fact, the continuous attempt to make religious issues defining center pieces of the Republican party platform is a large reason why you are losing! These ideas just do not have broad enough support. Running Republicans who are as checkbook happy as the average Democrat doesn't help either. Fiscal responsibility. Law and order. National defense. States rights. The sovereignty of the individual. Do any of these ideas sound familiar? These are core, broad spectrum Republican ideals and they do not require religious or far right demagoguery. The last great conservative movement (Anyone remember Reagan? The hero of the Republicans?) was ushered in on these very principles. If, as the talking heads of been stating ad nauseum since the last election, the nation as a whole is more center-right then center-right is exactly where the Republican party needs to position themselves. How does pushing further and further to the far right help?
And while I'm handing out free advice that no one is going to listen to, get off the Sarah Palin kick. I realize she's the darling of the far right, but the key word there is "far". She is not a viable candidate and naming her as his running mate crippled a McCain campaign that wasn't exactly doing hot without her "help". Most moderate Republicans and conservative-leaning independents view her with the same stunned disbelief (and sometimes even horror) held by the Democrats. She's the Joe Biden of the Republican party. That woman cannot open her mouth without swallowing her foot up to the knee. If you want to keep losing then keep talking about Palin in 2012. There isn't much you could do that would be more helpful to the Democrats.
If you want to try winning, though, and maybe restoring a true two party system in the process, you might consider getting back to the Republican party ideals and remember that there is much more to the party than just who makes the most noise or the splashiest headlines.

Why There Can Be No Honest Debate

A couple days ago, I touched on how you could tell when a person was spouting pure ideology and was not to be trusted. I would like to dig a little deeper into that subject because I came across a comment today that is a perfect illustration. The article itself concerned universal healthcare, but that is not of particular interest to this discussion. It could have been about almost anything and this same comment might have occurred.
A commentor who described himself as a dissatisfied Democrat (he in fact described modern Democrats as "a bunch of venal money-grubbers") went on to explain that he voted for Democrats because of what they used to stand for: "Be nice to one's mom and your friends, help the poor, educate the children ..." In the very next paragraph, however, he calls up "memories" of the Republicans: "instigate wars for profit, shut out the middle class and below with proven-to-have failed fallacies ... Vilify non-Christians ..." Does anyone else see a discrepancy here?
Please don't think that I am singling out a Democrat here. If I went hunting, I have no doubt that I could find identical themed comments from Republicans and I will gladly stipulate that the problem is rampant on both sides. I am quoting this one because I was not hunting and yet there it was, in plain sight.
Keep in mind that the person who made this comment was presenting himself as the voice of reason and claimed to be trying to engage a Republican in an honest and open discussion. If this was reasonable, honest, or open I would hate to see how this person conceived of the opposite.
What bothers me even more, though, is that, in eight pages of additional comments, not one person (including, unfortunately, the Republican to whom the comment was addressed) challenged this commenter on this blatant mischaracterization. Such hyperbolic distortions are taken as a matter of course these days and that is why it is so difficult (if not impossible) to have an honest debate or discussion.
So long as both sides continue to insist on maintaining such slander about the other, there can be no improvement in the ways our country operates. The status quo will remain the same and We The People will continue to be the losers. It doesn't hurt the politicians in the least. The status quo maintains their pay checks and their control. So long as there is no honest discussion there can be no honest solutions and politicians will continue to push dishonest solutions while blaming the other side for not being able to do better. Both sides are guilty and neither side is more guilty than the other. If you are not aware of that, you are not paying attention. Or you are buying into the dishonesty and are directly a part of the problem.

The Hysteria Continues

In 2002, I created a fictional character for the purpose of commenting on governmental excess and hysteria in regards to national security during a time when any such comments made overtly were almost a lynching offense. It was my fear then that legitimate concerns about security and terrorism could translate to illegitimate attempts to deprive American citizens of their rights, using exaggerated security statements to prevent anyone from mounting serious opposition. Seven years later, it seems that not much has changed.
Representative Peter King, R-NY, has introduced a bill, dubbed The Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2009, that would authorize the Attorney General to deny gun sales to known or suspected terrorists. Note the italics in the previous sentence and then tell me if you don't think the representative in question has an amazingly appropriate name.
The Supreme Court gave a ruling last year which confirmed what many of us already knew, that gun ownership is an individual right not bound exclusively to any military or militia service. That being the case, how do we justify the removal of a right based on nothing more than a suspicion? We don't! It is in violation of everything America stands for. This is not Philip K. Dick's The Minority Report. We do not enforce legal sanctions based on suspicions. At least in Dick's story the Powers That Be claimed to have some infallible method of equating suspicion with act. We don't even have that. We have Janet Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security releasing watch lists that equate anyone they don't like with suspicion of terrorism.
It is worth pointing out that, in The Minority Report, the Powers That Be were wrong. That was, in fact, the whole point of the story and the reason for the title. [You'll have to read the story for yourself, or at least watch the movie, which does give a decent version.] Despite their supposedly infallible method, they were making mistakes and punishing people without cause. How much worse would it be when we don't even claim to have such a method?
I'm not even going to jump off the paranoid springboard here and claim that this is a backdoor attempt to remove firearms from American citizens. It is unarguably the case that such a law could be used for that purpose and should be argued for that reason even if no other, but I don't think that is the actual intent here. The intent seems to me to be nothing more than is stated, preventing terrorists from acquiring guns. Good intent, however, does not excuse lousy implementation. This bill would do no more to keep guns out of the hands of bad guys than any other law has done and it would go a long way toward making things difficult to impossible for people who have not earned any such restrictions.
I understand the ideas and I understand the fears, but laws should not be about ideas or fears. They should be about results, and the only results a law like this can produce are such that everything in the American spirit should be rebelling against. There is no A for Effort in government. You either succeed or you fail and this bill has abysmal failure stamped all over it. If Representative King truly wants to keep Americans safe, he needs to go back to the drawing board and try again.

Some Important Gun Control Myths

I was reading yet another gun control article in the online edition of the New York Times this morning and, of course, I read through the comments section as well. It was rather disturbing. The amount of false information and just plain dumb ideas out there is staggering.
Full disclosure: I do not personally own a gun and never have. I have often considered getting one but I have a finite amount of money and there was always something else I would rather buy. However, I grew up around lots of guns, learned the shoot at a young age, and was taught a healthy respect for guns at around the same time I learned to walk. I have also worked in both the U.S. Army and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and I was armed (and trained) in both jobs. I have a large amount of gun experience from hunting, military, and law enforcement angles.
I am an avid supporter of the right to bear arms and there are a number of critical myths that must be discussed and dismissed if there is ever to be a rational answer to this constant argument.
MYTH: Probably the most pervasive myth on this subject is the idea that the 2nd amendment only pertains to people in the militia (which is currently translated as military and police, a translation that, itself, does not hold up to scrutinization). Even if we ignore proper grammar (please note the comma placement) or definitions of the time (look up the 17th century meaning of "regulated"), this myth does not hold for a simple reason: The same Congress that put the 2nd amendment before the states also passed a law that defined the word militia for legal purposes. That law stated that the militia was all citizens who were otherwise of a legal age and allowed to vote. Restricting gun ownership to members of the militia would not then be much of a restriction, would it?
MYTH: The second most pervasive myth in the gun control story is that gun control laws are even worth writing. The majority of gun-related crimes committed in America are already committed with illegal guns or by people who illegally possess guns. Existing laws do nothing to slow down criminals. New ones will not do any better.
MYTH: It is commonly believed that we have a high rate of gun-related crimes because we have a high number of guns. Allow me to direct your attention to Switzerland where there is a gun in almost every home and no corresponding high rate of gun crimes. Do the math.
MYTH: Countries with strict gun laws have lower violent crime rates. This is a simply ridiculous claim. Mexico and most of South America have extremely restrictive gun laws but they are riddled with violent gun issues. And no, most of those guns do not come from America. The ATF's own report on the subject states that only about 17%-19% of those guns are from here and most of those were stolen from legitimate shipments to military forces. If we look at places like Great Britain and Canada, they actually do have a lower gun crime rate, but they have equal or higher rates in other violent crimes and those rates have gone up since their gun laws became more restrictive. I fail to see how trading one set of violent crimes for another is really helping anyone.
MYTH: Hand guns have no purpose other than killing people. This one just makes me laugh. It only gets stated by people who know nothing about guns. Even if we discount such things as competitive target shooting and plain collecting (two points that, arguably at least, don't actually address the myth), you have obviously never been out in the country if you believe this statement. I'll give you a simple example. When I was growing up, we had a small ranch in the south Texas brush country. My dad was out walking the brush one day [I believe he had been hunting - at any rate, he had both his rifle (which was properly slung for walking) and his pistol (which was holstered on his hip)] when he came within a dangerous distance of stepping on a rattlesnake. There was no way, in the close reach and time allowed, that he could unsling his rifle and bring it to bear fast enough to keep from being bit. He could, however, draw and use his pistol in the time and space allowed. I am personally grateful to report that this is exactly what he did and, because of that pistol, the snake died and my dad did not. In response to one of the commenters on that article, this is exactly why you often see cowboys wearing sidearms when they are in the field. It has nothing to do with romanticized dreams of the Old West.
MYTH: One of my favorite myths from the gun control lobby comes from those who actually acknowledge the true intent of the 2nd amendment. The admit that the point was to have an armed citizenry to defend against government abuses but claim that the point is moot now that the government has such things as tanks, bombs, and fighter jets. I have a one-word answer to this claim: Afghanistan. Using almost nothing but infantry-style and homemade weapons of the type that virtually any fool could make with spare parts, this country has fended off not one but two superpowers armed with the most advanced modern military hardware. Modern technology means nothing if you cannot fit it where you are using it or if you are not willing to use it in a given location. Take a look at Ireland during the height of the NRA conflict. How many tanks or fighter jets did you see England deploying?
MYTH: The final myth I want to cover here is the most ironic and the most disgusting - the myth that you do not need to defend yourself because that is why we have police. My instinctive response to this myth is laughter. It's quickly followed, however, by the urge to cry and then by anger. This myth is ironic because it is usually being spewed by people who are, in every other case, anti-police. It is disgusting because it is antithetical to everything a free society is supposed to mean. Dependence does not promote freedom. You are, in fact, not free in the exact degree to which you are dependent. Furthermore, the courts have upheld numerous times that the police are not obligated to protect you. Not only are they not obligated to protect you, more often than not they can't. The most common job of the police is to investigate and apprehend after the fact. Brings to mind the old adage, I'd rather be judged by twelve than carried by eight. The only person directly responsible for your safety is you. Abdicate that responsibility at your peril.
I'll illustrate my disgust with this last myth (and a common flaw with the gun control mentality) with a quote from one of the commenters: "Liberty is the freedom to make the choice to let someone else (like the police) carry the guns to protect you." We'll ignore, for the moment, the Orwellian implications in this sentence and pretend it is a serious statement that deserves a serious answer. Freedom is indeed a choice, but the freedom to choose one thing must also include the freedom to not choose that thing. Without both sides of the choice, you don't actually have a choice, let alone freedom. The commenter defeats his own position by making it a choice.
This is, at its root, the biggest problem with the gun control lobby. They want everything to be one sided and they want to call that one side a choice and freedom. Gun control advocates maintain that, if gun control can save one, it's worth it. By that same token, however, if responsibly armed citizens can save one life, isn't that worth it? Since these two statements must be equally valid yet cancel each other out, there is obviously a problem here. Emotional hand-wringing is not going to help anyone. Many claim to want "reasonable" restrictions. If you want to be reasonable, throw out the myths. Then we can talk.

An Omnibus Of Absurdity

Sorry I haven't been around much - the paying job has been rather consuming lately - but, in honor of the Omnibus Pork Bill currently squabbling its way through Congress, here is an omnibus post on the absurd headlines and talking points in the news lately.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against a sitting head of state for the first time. They have accused Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur and officials from Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah have stepped up to defend and endorse al-Bashir. A gaggle of known criminals is endorsing another criminal and they're not even smart enough to realize what this means.
The U.S. Postal Service is losing revenue yet again and is now threatening to remove Saturday deliveries in order to save money. Face it folks. If any real business were run the way this agency is run it would have gone bankrupt and disappeared long ago. The USPS is the only "business" in the world that gets away with raising rates because no one wants there service.
A middle school in Southern California is spending $10000 a year to teach Advanced Placement Spanish classes to native Spanish speakers and they don't understand why everyone else is giving them funny looks. School officials claim to be just taking advantage of a natural resource but I'd say artificially inflating your "success" numbers by giving classes to students who are known to have no need of the class is more accurately described as cheating. It's kind of like putting the math nerds in the Checkbooks for Dummies classes and then claiming to have done something wonderful when they all achieve perfect scores.
Southwest has a new plane on the runway that has some passengers seeing red. It has other passengers seeing a beautiful woman in a bikini but it's all in the eye of the beholder, right? The new plane is a flying advertisement for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition and features Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli lounging in a bikini. Uptight passengers are complaining that it is "pornography". Ordinarily I scoff at European opinions of America, but this one makes sense. One of the reasons they often look down on us is because we have so many loud people who do not know how to use a dictionary. Look up "pornography", people. You will not find "woman lounging in a bikini" anywhere in the definition.
And, of course, the hoorah about comments from Rush Limbaugh continues to defy imagination. Everywhere you look you'll find Lefties crying "treason!" because a man who is known to oppose liberal policies has stated that he hopes those policies fail. When did criticising a sitting president become treasonous? It certainly wasn't treasonous for the last eight years when the Left was non-stop slamming and ridiculing Bush. Of course, we're talking about the same people who dismiss Limbaugh as a "drug addict" because he became hooked on pain medication after surgery but apparently have no problem with Obama's admitted recreational drug use. Amazing how that works, isn't it?
Speaking of that particular controversy, Federal Union Thug ... I mean Boss Colleen M. Kelley recently weighed in on the controversy by lambasting Limbaugh and claiming that "If he [Obamna] fails, our country fails." Really? In a country of more than 300 Million people our only possibility of solving this economic crisis resides with one man of middling political experience? And Kelley wonders why she didn't get invited to the White House for the last eight years.
I could keep going but I think I've skewered enough absurdities for one day. Maybe I'll do another omnibus tomorrow. There will certainly be the headlines for it. It seems certain now that one thing I can count on from the current political circus is plenty of absurdities. It would be entertaining if it wasn't so frightening.

Rights Hidden In Smoke

I read yesterday that legislators across the country are slowing down on or, in some cases, even considering backing off of anti-smoking legislation in so-called "public places" because they fear that, in this time of recession, such bans could put additional stress on the economy. That idea, alone, is telling coming, as it does, from people who have sworn all along that forcing business owners to go non-smoking would not have a negative impact on business, but that isn't, in my opinion, the point. The blatant hypocrisy of politicans playing god with business when "times are good" but backing off and catering to business when "times are bad" is just ... well, business as usual for politicians. It is hardly worth noting.
What is worth noting is that, once again, the average person doesn't have a clue what is actually going on or what is actually at state. I read through the comments section, as I always do when one is available, and the silliness was almost unbearable. A few people understood the real point but, for most of them, it was the usual "my right to smoke anywhere I please" versus "my right to not breathe your smoke". I'm a smoker and I'll be the first to admit that I do not have a right to smoke anywhere I please. For you non-smokers, you do not have an inherant right to not breathe my smoke.
It is really quite simple. I smoke. If you come over to my house, you will put up with my smoke. Don't like it? Don't come over. That is your only option. You have no right to dictate terms in my house because it is my house. By the same token, if I come over to your house and you do not allow smoking then I cannot smoke at your house. If that is unbearable to me then I will not come over to your house. I do not get to dictate terms in your house because it is your house. Neither of us has an absolute right in regards to smoking but we both have an absolute right in regards to our property. There can be no conflict because my right over my property has nothing to do with your right over your property or vice versa. There can also be no compromise. I do not surrender my rights to you just because you enter my property. If you enter my home and start demanding your rights, I will point you to the sidewalk and tell you where you can find your rights. Over the years, many people have learned the hard way that I am not kidding about this in the least.
If what I am doing is not otherwise criminal, you get no say in the matter so long as I am doing it on my property. I cannot murder you just because you entered my property but I cannot legally do that anywhere. Smoking is not illegal so the only person who gets to rule on that on my property is me.
Why have we forgotten this simple fact as it relates to business? The fact that I allow multiple people to enter my property for a fee does not stop it from being my property. You don't get to determine what I sell, who I hire, or what uniform my employees wear. Why should you get to be in charge of anything else?
Non-smokers claim that they have a right to go out to eat without putting up with people smoking but that is an absolutely false claim. There is no such right! You don't even have a right to go out to eat, let alone a right to go out to eat in an environment of your demanding. A right to go out to eat implies that someone is obligated to provide you with a location where you can go out to eat. Ask a person who does not live within traveling distance of any kind of eating establishment whether or not they have a right to go out to eat. They'll laugh in your face and probably tell you to get your whiney self off of their property.
If you want a right to go out to eat then you need to get to work building your restaurant because that is the only way you will have such a right. If you want a right to go out to eat without putting up with people smoking then you need to hang a "NO SMOKING" sign on the front door after you build that restaurant. If you own it then you have the right to make it smoke-free. You also have the right to allow smoking. Just because this country has forgotten what property rights mean does not mean that property rights themselves have changed. They cannot change because they are immutable. If you own it, it is yours to do with as you please, such right stopping only when it conflicts with someone else's right. Any law that says otherwise is a violation of natural rights and should be treated as such.
There is no conflict between the rights of the smokers versus the rights of the non-smokers because such rights, as they have been expressed, do not exist. You do not have a right to either smoke or to not be around smoke. What you do have is a right to own what is your and to act as though you own it. That includes your body, your house, and your business. The sooner we realize this fact the sooner we can reduce the number of useless nonsense arguments and maybe - just maybe - we can get on to arguing about stuff that actually matters.

State Of The Union

I have mentioned numerous times that I spend at least as much time reading comments sections as I do reading news and editorials. You can learn more this way; learn more about what people think. The comments sections are not usually full of the professional thinkers and writers. They are, instead, full of the average reader for whatever publication is hosting the comments. As such, a comments section can be a better barometer for the social, mental, and emotional state of a population than an entire newspaper.
Imagine my disgust, then, at the comments I read so often.
I read one today on the Washington Post's website. The story isn't particularly important to this discussion but, for background, it was about the continuing controversy over President Obama telling a collection of politicians that they "can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done."
Full disclosure: I did not vote for Obama and I have never listened to Rush. If that double negative throws off some preconceived notions on where I stand, too bad.
At any rate, a person posting under the name "Changeontheway" had some things to say that I find very disturbing. This person states that Rush Limbaugh has repeatedly said that he wants President Obama to fail (a point that may or may not be true - I have no way to judge) and, in this same paragraph - so, I must assume, for this reason - claims that Limbaugh is "a terrorist with a mic".
Had that been all that Changeontheway said, that would have been bad enough. To compare an editorialist with a suicide bomber is the ultimate in false identification. If people like this honestly cannot tell the difference between vehement disagreement and intentional mass homicide then our democracy is doomed already. Just imagine what happens when you get too many people this stupid voting.
That was, however, not all this genius had to say on the matter.
The next paragraph is two simple sentences: "First, Limbaugh has committed treason against the United States. His comments warrant criminal charges."
I just love how much this word "treason" gets thrown around these days. You would think that we were living in a totalitarian society where speaking out against the ruler warrants a death sentence or where "treason" is a wide word with a vague definition. In America, however, such is not the case. In America, the word "treason" has been carefully defined by nothing less than the Constitution itself. Article III Section 3 states: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." [Stress added by me.] I am fairly certain that even Limbaugh's most ardent opponents would not attempt to claim that he adheres to the enemies of the United States or that he has attempted to levy war. The fact that Obama has already been quite vocal in expressing many ideas that would be antithetical to the conservative position combined with the fact that Limbaugh is a very vocal conservative would make it self-evident that Limbaugh would hope Obama fails in these policies. Most conservatives probably hope for the same thing. I am not, strictly speaking, a conservative and I'm hoping for quite a few failures myself. That is not treason, under our laws, and it is protected political speech. The very type of protected speech, in fact, that liberals usually spend so much time screaming about. It's so nice to see that the double standard is alive and well.
Changeontheway goes on to say that "the FCC should shut his program down. This man has been convicted of doctor shopping, due to his addiction of medications, he has made threats to our new administration and is overall offensive." We'll take those in order, if you don't mind. They won't take long.
There is no FCC regulation barring someone with a conviction from having a broadcasting career and such a regulation would be ludicrous in the extreme. What does one even have to do with the other?
What threats has Limbaugh made toward any administration? While I've already stated that I don't listen to the show, I am fairly certain that any such threats, coming from one of the highest-rated voices in talk radio, would have made the national news. I don't recall seeing any headlines to that effect and, as you might imagine, I am something of a news junkie. Hoping that someone fails, if that is what is supposed to be the threat here, is hardly the same thing as threatening someone. Even if Limbaugh has threatened to help Obama fail, that is not the type of threat that is punishable. Obama has threatened to veto certain legislation if it does not meet his approval. That is his job. Convincing his listeners to help stop the policies of which he does not approve is Limbaugh's job, and it is a legal job. Threatening to do your legal job is not the kind of threatening that is illegal.
As for "overall offensive", that is nothing more than a matter of opinion. The fact that Limbaugh is one of the highest-rated voices in talk radio clearly states that many people disagree with Changeontheway in this matter. What the FCC views as actionably offensive is as clearly defined as is the word "treason" and somehow Limbaugh doesn't strike me as someone to use foul language or do such things as perform sexual acts on his radio show.
In short, Changeontheway has not demonstrated any reason for the FCC to interfere with Limbaugh's show. He goes on to compare Limbaugh with the Don Imus controversy but it is worth noting that the FCC did not shut down Imus. His advertisers did. Limbaugh's advertisers quite obviously love him.
As I said at the beginning, these comments can be a useful barometer to what the average people of a certain group are thinking and, while I have only dissected one comment here, I see such comments on a daily basis. There are far too many people in this country who want to outlaw anything with which they disagree. Worse, there are far too many people who act as though they truly believe that anything they oppose is already illegal. These people, the voting public, have no idea what freedom means or what America stands for. That thought, alone, should chill your blood. I know it does mine.

Roping The Wind

You have to love the naievity of politicians. Sometimes they are just so cute that all you can do is laugh at them. Of course, this same "endearing cuddliness" is also exactly the reason why they should not have anywhere close to the levels of power they believe they have, but that is a different matter entirely. Actually, it's this matter, that we are going to laugh at - I mean discuss today.
Andy Burnham, who is identified as something called a "culture secretary" in the United Kingdom, has stated a desire for the UK government to tighten controls over the internet, reining in a chaos that was actively designed to be outside of government control. To make matters even more amusing, Mr. Burnham intends to get together with President-elect Obama and work toward making it a transatlantic operation. Apparently Mr. Burnham does not believe that Mr. Obama - America's first black President taking over during a financial crisis that is scaring the hell out of the rest of the world - has enough on his plate.
You might be wondering why I find this so amusing. Doesn't every new administration claim that they are going to make the internet a safer place? Of course they do and it is always in the name of "making it safer for children", that favorite magic phrase that is supposed to automatically confer propriety and unassailability to any proposed plan. The problem is that the plan itself is utterly impossible. The internet cannot be made safer except by the act of actively hunting down those who use it for illegal purposes, a process that both America and the UK already follow. The fact that much of the illegal activity takes place in countries where neither America nor the UK has any say in the matter does not make the task any easier.
The reason I am laughing is because the proposal being discussed is to use a movie-style ratings system on all English language websites and to have that ratings system administered by individual service providers. Apparently Mr. Burnham is unaware that there is somewhere in the neighborhood of three times as many websites on the internet as there are people on the planet. Would anyone like to even consider retroactively rating all of those websites? Add in the simple matter that it takes less than five minutes to establish a basic website and it is pretty easy to see that the logistics alone make this a task that would send Hercules fleeing in tears.
Not only are their billions of websites, there is not exactly any shortage of service providers. I would actually consider paying good money to watch the attempt to get even a representative sampling of them into one room to hash out how they are going to administer this ratings system. That would be the comedic event of the year, at the very least.
Let's make matters even more complicated, shall we? What qualifies as an individual website? Is it everything under a single domain name? Everything under a particular subdomain? Is this blog one website or are the individual articles each their own website? With the possibilities that exist to this question, who would have the authority to decide? Who would even want the headache of deciding?
There is, however, ample reason for not laughing. The fact that this task is impossible does not guarantee that the politicians won't try it. The fact that even suggesting the idea is proof that Andy Burnham shouldn't have anything to do with internet regulation does not mean that he won't. Those of you in the UK who might read this would do well to take note. We, in America, got the unmitigated disaster that is the Digital Millenium Copyright Act precicely because people who knew nothing about digital technology or copyrights still thought it was a good idea to write sweeping new regulation covering those fields.
Attempting to rate the internet makes about as much sense as attempting to rope the wind but absurdity has never stopped politicians. Unfortunately, it is we who end up having to live with the messes these idiots create. Imagine what would happen to today's global economy if there were suddenly major internet disruption because of monkeeing politicians. Keep that nightmare in mind if you hear any of your politicians discussing this idea.

A Fantasy Budget

Imagine that you were sitting around the dining room table working on the family budget and discovered a $42 billion shortfall. Okay, so you're not likely to see that particular number while doing the family budget, but imagine finding that you're going to be flat broke, completely out of money in just two months. What would you do? What steps would you take to try to keep your family solvent?
Well, if you were part of the California state government what you would apparently do is point the finger at everyone else and then decide to do nothing at all for another month and just rely on IOUs to pay your bills. Of course, if you tried to use IOUs to pay your bills, you would get notices from those bill collectors saying, in essence, "yes, you do and we're shutting off service until you pay them."
I'm trying hard to comprehend this. California is usually looked at as the leader among progressive governments in the west. They're the role model. And they're rich! One of the wealthiest states in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. There are more mansions packed into twenty square miles of California than most states have from border to border. They are one of the global capitols of entertainment.
And they can't pay their bills. Maybe we should send a few housewives to Sacramento to give classes on budget balancing.
If you or I were faced with this situation, we would probably try to find a second job. Of course, there are only so many jobs and so many hours in the day so the feasibility of this plan is limited. Failing an extra income, it would be time to sit down with the red pen and start slashing out unnecessary items from the budget. Yes, cable television would be nice but eating is so much more important, so see you later TV. The mortgage takes priority over steak and caviar, so we'll be eating sandwiches and ground beef. The children have to have shoes and coats so we'll forego the designer labels and expensive haircuts.
That's how those of us who live in the real world deal with budgets every day. We would somehow have to get politicians to understand the difference between need and really really want, but most of them used to have real world lives. Didn't they?

Manners Should Be Taught Before Speech

I sometimes believe that an appalling lack of manners is my biggest complaint against the modern Left. Don't get me wrong, they have policies and beliefs I abhor. They, in fact, have policies and beliefs I would fight to the death (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) to oppose. They don't have a monopoly on that, though. The Right has just as many terrifying and tyranical beliefs. Neither side has a corner on the market of stupid ideas. The biggest difference seems to be that the Right will at least usually be polite while stabbing you in the back.
While it is true that you can wind up dead either way, the difference matters for those times when you survive.
I commented yesterday on the affair of the President and the Shoe and, despite my obvious irritation with the event, my ability to describe it in a humorous fashion should demonstrate that I can see the potential humor. Such an incident would pay a comedian for a week and I have no problem with that. The best humor comes from the absurdities in life and I definitely appreciate that.
There is a difference, however, between seeing the humor in a situation and cheering or supporting bad behavior. Bad behavior should never be tolerated. That only encourages more bad behavior. The modern Left have completely lost any concept of this rule.
Why do I say this? Take a stroll through the comments section of any site that is discussing this incident. In fact, in some cases, take a look at the sites doing the discussing. If you have any sense of decorum, what you find should disgust you.
I understand that many people dislike Bush. I would never be mistaken for Left-leaning and I dislike Bush. I completely understand that, for those on the Left, my dislike almost seems like puppy love. Disliking a person does not excuse cheering when a member of a respected profession behaves in a childish manner toward a political leader. The identities of neither the reporter nor the leader make the least difference. Childish behavior in a professional setting is inexcusable! Supporting such behavior to the detriment of your own home is a negative for which I do not even have a term.
This is your home. I have never supported the "love it or leave it" mentality and I never will. If you are unhappy with your home, work to make it better. Do not go out of your way to make it worse. If that is your mentality then it is time to apply the "leave it" idea.
The only thing worse than the ungrateful people abroad who abuse us as reward for our generosity is the ungrateful brats living right here who are too lazy and spoiled to do anything positive with their dissatisfaction. A nation of children cannot be a great nation. If you want us to be great again then grow up. You might start by applying some of the manners you should have been taught while you were still in diapers.

Lost In Translation

Apparently there is no requirement for journalists in Iraq covering a Presidential press conference to speak or understand the English language. That seems to be the only rational conclusion to draw after Al-Baghdadiya television demanded the release of Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zeidi who was arrested for throwing shoes at President Bush. According to the station, al-Zeidi was only acting "in accordance with the new era of freedom of speech and democracy that the U.S has promised the Iraqi people." As an education moment for both al-Zeidi and his employers, the word "speech" in English does not translate as "throw shoe at".
The fact of the matter is that this is nothing more than a case of angry people claiming that their anger gives them license to act without consequences. I neither affirm nor deny that they have a right to be angry - that is for them to decide - but anger does not remove consequences.
There is not a culture in the world in which it is legal to assault a political leader because you are angry at that leader's policies. Many people from cultures outside the United States love to point out the boorish behavior of Americans but there is one thing I can tell you for certain: Had a foreign political leader been attacked while giving a press conference in America, not only would the culprit have been immediately arrested but the American government would be issuing an apology to the offended government that such an incident could ever have happened. In fact, you can feel fairly confident that the apology would come almost as quickly as the arrest. I'll even go you one step further. Had it been an American journalist who had committed the assault, the American employers would be issuing an apology almost as fast as the government. They would also probably be firing the journalist.
I am sick and tired of the arrogance of foreign cultures that says it is acceptable to treat Americans in a different (and always more negative) fashion than anyone else. I do not deny that America and Americans have made mistakes, but so has everyone else. We are not alone in political errors. We are only the most popular scapegoat.
We are also the country who is almost always the first to help almost anyone in need. The vast majority of those countries who feel it is permissible to abuse America and Americans on a regular basis have themselves been the recipients of our generosity on numerous occasions.
Perhaps it is time that we stop accepting cruelty and abuse as proper payment for our generosity. I have never been a proponent of actual isolationism (though I do strongly favor a more limited involvement in global affairs) but, if this is how our help is appreciated, I am sure that we could find more beneficial uses for our time and money at home.

Time To Flush The UN

If you are part of the shrinking minority who still believe that the United Nations has any relevance (or sanity) in the modern world, perhaps today's headlines will finally disabuse you of this notion. U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto announced today that he had chosen Canadian activist Maude Barlow to be his advisor on global water-use policies, a position the media has dubbed "Water Czar". Even if we stipulate that the UN has the authority to even bother with such policies - a position that is far from universally stipulated - this appointment makes about as much sense as naming Osama bin Laden to head a committee on comparative religion.
Where to begin? Well, the first thing you might be wondering is just who in the world is Maude Barlow? I know that was my first question. I'm a political junkie and I had never heard of the woman. So I did a quick Google search and it turns out there is a good reason I had never heard of her. Apparently the only person who has spent any significant amount of time talking about Maude Barlow in the past is Maude Barlow. I'm not kidding. Go look for yourself. There's not much out there except what she has said, herself.
And it turns out there is good reason for that too. Maude Barlow is a hardcore activist, the kind that, ordinarily, no one listens to. We're talking far fringe activism here. Barlow believes that all fresh water sources on the planet should be nationalized, that private enterprise should not be a part of the equation, and that access to fresh water is a basic human right. This begs an obvious question: Of what use is an advisor who is obviously biased toward only one side of an issue? I'm not exaggerating here. One of Barlow's supporters, Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch (of which, Barlow is a board member), describes her as "probably the most outspoken and well-known advocate in making water a human right and making sure that water is in public control ..." Talk about a ringing endorsement for open-minded policy advice.
Barlow has no scientific background and, aside from an assortment of activist committees, no political background. Yet she is somehow qualified to offer advice on global water policy. Barlow maintains that sources of fresh water are shrinking yet would remove from the field the very people who have the greatest ability to improve access and distribution. Barlow claims that access to fresh water is a basic human right and yet ignores the fact that this "right" would require someone else to provide it. Does this make sense to anyone else?
I have said for years that the United Nations is a bloated bureaucracy, incapable of fulfilling its basic function and yet greedy for power beyond its charter, and I couldn't ask for a better example of this fact than has been provided today. This should be a laughing stock moment, but just wait. No one will be laughing, at least not for long.

Fact Vs. Fiction

Like most people, I receive quite a few email forwards from family and friends, with politically flavored forwards being far from uncommon. In fact, since most of my friends and family are quite aware of my interests and activities, forwards of a political type may actually be more common for me than is average. Such is the life of a politically oriented blogger.
I was discussing the nature of some of those forwards earlier today and decided that I should expand on a concept here. That concept is simple: Dishonesty has no place in a political discussion no matter whose side you take nor whose side is made to look bad by the false claims. While the concept is simple, the practice is, apparently, something else entirely.
Setting aside the moral aspects (Most of us have been told repeatedly that telling a lie is bad but how many people actually listen to this lesson on a consistant basis?) there are really very practical reasons for taking this concept to heart. Perhaps more important, there is a very practical loss for all of us when this concept is forgotten.
We who wish to live in a free society must make decisions on a regular basis in order to keep our society free. Those decisions must be grounded in reality if they are to have any practical value and, in order to ground decisions in reality, we must have information untainted by falsehood. Faulty information, whether the fault arises from honest mistakes or intentional deception, results in faulty decisions. Faulty decisions, in a society such as ours, can be fatal.
Of course, those who have an axe to grind won't always have the same idea of what "free society" means as I have. In fact, it is safe to assume that they will often have different ideas. They may honestly believe that, so long as the faulty information shifts things toward their desired outcome, things will work out well in the end regardless of the bumpy road used to reach the goal. To those people I offer a small reminder: The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
In this age of easy information, the possibility of keeping a lie unchecked gets smaller and smaller. Sooner or later, the odds are definitely in favor of people discovering the truth and, once that happens, the credibility of the liar takes a nosedive. For those with political goals, this can result in even greater consequences than one discredited person. For right or wrong, people often associate a movement with those who speak for that movement. When a person is discovered to be falsifying information to push a political agenda, the entire agenda can be painted with the same brush of dishonesty. That thought, alone, should be enough to keep true believers in check. If only this were so.
True believers tend to leap first and think about the consequences later, if at all. If only they knew how much harm they were doing to their own movements, maybe this would be different. If you are a true believer - of any cause - if this applies to you, you would do well to slow down and look at that forward before sending it along.
At the beginning of this post we set aside the moral aspects of the argument, but there is one more point that should be addressed and it does hinge on the moral aspect. If you are using dishonesty to support your agenda - or if you are supporting those who do so - you completely lose any possibility of moral high ground in condemning your opponents for doing the same. If you do not stand opposed to dishonesty in political discussion, even when that dishonesty favors your cause, there is no reason for anyone to believe anything else you say. I would even take that a step further. If you really want credibility, be the first to step foward condemning a lie that favors your cause. Let your opponents try to discredit you then.
Sometimes the simplest lessons, the ones we were supposed to learn in our childhood playgrounds, are the most important. A lie makes you look bad. Honesty makes you look good. Lies will be found out more often than not. Personally, I would like to see honesty in political discussion because we all truly want the best outcome we can achieve and we all know we need honest information to achieve that. However, I'm a realist. If I cannot appeal to the best in people, at least I can point out that honesty really is in your own best interest.

Already Getting Nervous

It seems that President-Elect Barack Obama has not even been sworn in yet and is already generating controversy. In fact, we still have more than a month before he takes over the top job and some people are already getting nervous. I'm not talking about those who were nervous the moment his election was announced. I'm talking about people who actually wait to see results before making judgments.
Full Disclosure: I did not vote for Obama. I didn't care for McCain either, but anyone who is as popular just because as Obama is, makes me nervous. History has far too many examples of people riding this kind of popularity straight into disaster.
Speaking of which, today's subject: Obama's "America Serves" initiative.
It would appear that there has been some hanky-panky over at Obama's Change.gov website, changing up some wording to make things sound less offensive, but I have doubts that changes in words actually means changes in intentions or goals. At issue is the plan, under the America Serves tab, to require all middle school and high school students to perform 50 hours of community service and all college students to perform 100 hours of community service. For those of you running over to look this up, the word "require" is no longer present - it was stricken from the page a couple days ago - but it was and the fact that it was says more about Obama's intentions and goals than anything that page currently says.
Think about that for a moment. Your child goes to school in order to learn to read and write, learn some math and science and (hopefully) acquire some knowledge of history and government. Exactly what does community service have to do with school? "Yes, I know you have straight A's in all educational courses but you cannot graduate because you have not completed your required community service." Is that really something we want to see?
Under such a program, who gets to define what is a community service? You should already know the answer to that question. He who controls the purse strings controls the definitions. I can easily assume that it will not be you, the parent, controling that definition.
Let me make sure this is clear. I have nothing against community service. I don't even have anything against students performing community service. It would probably be good for them and there is absolutely no reason it cannot be organized through the schools. There are many extracurricular activities organized through the schools that encourage student participation but are in no way required. The moment you transform it into a requirement, however, it becomes something else entirely. And, for the record, it makes no difference whether the government makes a law requiring it or they sneak into it by withholding funds from schools that don't require it. Either way amounts to a requirement and either way amounts to a government mandated requirement. Requiring a person to work where you want them to work is, by definition, slavery and slavery is, by the Constitution, outlawed. Whether the requirement is direct and straight forward or sneaky and underhanded, it is still a requirement and still slavery.
You cannot force volunteerism. The very idea is ludicrous and the fact that someone would even consider it says a lot about that person. I would highly recommend that everyone pay close attention to this subject as we move forward and be prepared to scream bloody murder if the scoundrels at the top actually look like they are preparing for implementation.