He Really Is Bringing Us Together

I know people from all across the political spectrum. And, I must confess, when my progressive friends touted Pres. Obama as being the one who would bring this country together, I was skeptical. I remained skeptical for what I thought were good reasons until very recently. But a spirit of unity is sweeping through the land and I would be foolish not to acknowledge it.

Absolutely no one I know is in favour of intervening in Syria. And I know some genuine troglodytes on the right and rabid progressives on the left. Not one of them is for it.

God bless you President Obama. It took you seven years but you have pulled us all together.

Pushing the Analogy

John McCain has doubled down. And he shouldn't have.

He really shouldn't have fired back. Because if we are hobbits, I think that means he thinks he is an Istari (wizard). I agree with him in that. In terms of American contemporary politics he is in fact a wizard.

He is Saruman.

You're welcome, by the way.

Whistling Past The Graveyard

I don't think David Plouffe is fooling anyone. He's throwing it out there because he is a deniable source and on the off chance a useful idiot will bite.

And for the record, one of the things that keeps biting the President in the behind is a little trick they've been playing with the unemployment statistics. Every month they announce the statistics, which typically show some slight improvement in unemployment. They also announce that they are revising the prior two months statistics downwards. That helps the current figures until the next month.

What makes me curious is whether they are relying on Mr Obama's acknowledged strengths as a campaigner to pull them through. I'm not seeing any good economic news on the horizon (jobs are stagnant, inflation recognized or not, is up, up up). My inner conspiracy theorist wonders if they will suddenly gin up some sort of political crisis near the election. The problem with that scenario is that the Iran hostage crisis really didn't help Mr Carter. By now no one thinks President Obama shines with foreign affairs.

Hometown Thuggery

The State Capitol is the first building you see. Apparently the police officer you barely see at the end didn't see the attack.

Nice to see a return to civility.

Thought Exercise

Let's suppose that you think there needs to be a new law. You want to stop bad people, help the unfortunate, whatever you want. You think a new law will help in that regard.

Try phrasing your new rule. "People should stop being mean" will fail as a law as there are no criteria for defining who mean people are. "No one should dump sulphur into rivers" will likely work. We know what sulphur is and we know what rivers are. The only vague term is 'dumping' and that is defined in several places under existing law.

Which raises another issue. Is your rule already adequately covered by an existing law? If so, then there really isn't any need for a new one.

You then need to attach a penalty to your law. If there are no consequences for breaking your law, then it will be broken. Generally pollution statutes have multiple levels of offense, depending upon the quantity of substance used. A teaspoon of sulphur is quite a different matter from a ton. Usually minor breaches are punished by a fine, while major breaches may be punishable by prison.

The next issue is who enforces the law. The EPA is the obvious enforcement agency, but since you want to protect rivers, the Coast Guard might also be a good candidate.

Finally, what unintended consequences could there be? With sulphur dumping, probably little to none. The law already covers similar issues without any real difficulty. However, imagine that the law is to be enforced by the person you trust the least in American politics. If you think of yourself as a progressive, how might Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee enforce your rule? If you are a conservative, Dennis Kucinich might be your bete noir.

Anyone can always enforce a law arbitrarily, so think of ways that your villain might enforce the law fairly, as written, but not within its spirit.

How might Pat Robertson see hate crime legislation, for example?

Next time you push for a law, ask yourself if you are potentially creating a new weapon to be used against you. Because if there is one certainty in politics, it's that the wheel turns and the outsiders eventually become insiders.

Hide and Seek

There are fourteen Wisconsin state senators in hiding in Illinois right now. They are living life on the lam, roughing it in a variety of cheap motels, changing hideouts when they are discovered.

My question is why are they changing motels? I seriously doubt Illinois will extradite the fugitives, if it that were even possible. The tea party has never struck me as the kidnapping sort. The Governor of Wisconsin likewise is no Jimmy Cagney.

Why then do they flee?

All Things Being Equal

Would it be better to have a bad liar as governor or a good liar as governor?

As far as I know, Rick Scott is not a liar, so all things are likely not equal in Florida. But the question is worth considering.

I think it boils down to credibility. If the candidate just can not tell lies without giving away that she's lying (i.e. facial expressions), then I would vote for her. If she can not get away with lying due to incompetence (which would be the case here), then I would not vote for her.

The difference is that incompetence is rarely confined only to one area. If she habitually shoots herself in the foot, then she shouldn't be allowed near any dangerous objects, not just firearms.

See You in November

City of the Future

Public Opinion Polls

Wannabe has a great post about a recent poll.

I think this short clip summarizes my opinion on them:

Interesting

Michele Bachmann is the incumbent congresswoman for the sixth district in Minnesota. Her opponent is Tarryl Clark. The only hint as to what political party Ms. Clark belongs to is a note in her biography that she was the associate chair of the Minnesota DFL.

She is also a member of St John's Church in St. Cloud. That would be St John's Episcopal Church. She is shy about her church affiliation as well.

The race is getting vicious, but Ms. Clark is staying mum about her party affiliation.

FYI, Michele Bachmann is a Republican. She isn't shy about admitting it. I don't know what church she belongs to, if any.

I think it's interesting that a candidate feels she has to try to conceal who and what she is to run for office. I have voted for Democrats in the past. I will likely vote for them in the future. I would never vote for a candidate like Tarryl Clark. If you can not tell me up front who you are and who you are affiliated with, then how could I ever rely on you to tell me where you stand?

Why The US Is In Dire Shape

We are being run by idiots who think ideas like this are good ones.

What Repentance Looks Like

Some Hillary supporters have seen the light. And the country is better for it.

My problem with an awful lot of those who backed Obama is the need for them to deify the man. It's one thing to say "I support X because he is for more of the policies I support than the other guy is". It's another to speak of X as embodying hope and change.

Obama did bring change on some levels. But the stuff I hoped he would change (the selling of American government, throwing money at problems, deficit spending, general wastefulness and extravangance) he did not. And what he did change is what I hoped he would not (appeasement as the basis for foreign policy, resurrection of health care as a federal issue, higher taxes, stupid (ie corrupt) stimulus, Keynesian economics).

For the sake of our country, I hope he learns fast. But his instinctual coddling of dictators (Castro, Kim, Chavez) tells me that such behaviour is not easily unlearned.

{H/T Clifford}

Rage Against the Machine

At this point the only reason I would ever vote Democrat is if the Republicans do something catastrophically stupid. Which is well within the bounds of likelihood.

I have two hot button issues: The Bill of Rights together with the 13th and 14th Amendments and space exploration. The jackasses have pressed both buttons. They have been jabbing at the first since January and now they've gone for the second.

I'll give them this much, this is the worst federal government we've had since Carter. Sky-rocketing debt, a desire to expand the ever so well managed Medicare and Medicaid programs to cover all Americans (and just how exactly will that control costs?), endless bailouts for the politically well connected, active suppression of free speech, an amoral commitment to the retention of power, a desire to destroy our national economy in the name of pseudo science and a total lack of an optimistic vision for the future.

We have a hollow man for President, a gang of thieves and thugs in Congress, and a love of failed ideologies on the part of our intellectual classes.

And don't try any 'moral equivalency' on this. The Republicans were stupid. The current crop of Democrats are flat out evil.

We're going to be paying for this fat headed exercise in 'Hope and Change' for a very long time. And unfortunately the burden of this folly will fall mostly on those who are silly enough to try to be adults. The overaged children, spawns of the 60's 'me generation' will likely skate as usual.

To put my money where my mouth is, I'll bet anyone who wishes that, if the Democrats retain control of Congress through the next election, that the inflation rate plus the unemployment rate (expressed as percentages) will be as high or higher than they are today in 2012. The stakes are, fittingly enough, two pounds of Nueske's applewood bacon.

My good friend who blogs over at S S Pequod has accepted the challenge. Inflation (2%) plus unemployment (9.4%) = 11.4 as of today.

I like bacon....

Defending Freedom

I've been to nice recently. Too calm, too collected, too darn perky. I was going to post a standard Veteran's Day post yesterday. Then I saw with our pal Liz Kaeton (not linking to her blog under any circumstances) wrote. And it's taken this long for me to cool down enough to write. Her one virtue is an easy, conversational writing style.

For everyone's convenience, I've reproduced her post in full, below. Let the fisking begin. Her blatherings are in Times font, my responses are in Georgia.

I support our troops, but not the War in Iraq or the War in Afghanistan.
The second part is accurate. But your support of the troops consists of saying you support the troops and pressing for their immediate withdrawal which renders everything that they have accomplished to date futile. No one is ever more idiotic or deceptive than a hippy who won't grow up. No one.

That's not an oxymoron. Neither is it unpatriotic.
See above statement in re: stupid and self-deceptive. And you don't love America. You love the bits that you like. You hate the rest of it. Your prior writings exemplify the level of your hate. You also continue to practise the Big Lie. Helpful tip: Saying your not unpatriotic doesn't make it so.

I love this country. I am as patriotic as the most patriotic person, but I love this country enough that I am against war - especially these two.

I love this county, I support our troops and I do not support the War, but I am not a pacifist. That takes real courage - courage I confess I have searched for but have not yet found.
You are a pacifist, unless the war is against the people you despise. The right, the whites, the middle class, the religious, the Christians and any one else who actually believes in a higher standard or who tries to be ethical or moral. You're a lefty revolutionary type and you very much believe the ends justify the means. You have used the old cliche about omelets and eggs.

I fear I am too much of a coward to be a true pacifist.

That's one way to put it. I wouldn't have said it quite that way. I agree you are a coward. And I also agree that you aren't a pacifist. But here you are trying a bit of deflection. By pleading guilty to what you believe to be a lesser offense and admitting what you hope will be seen as a flaw, you hope to gain the reader's sympathy and gain acceptance of the farrago of rubbish that follows.

So, I have settled for this peace: I think the most patriotic thing we can do is to do everything we can to end these wars that are not ours and bring our young men and women home.
Of course, you can provide no justification for that remark. Instead of 'think' the better word is 'feel'. Thinking has nothing to do with what you have written.

In many ways, these two wars feel like Viet Nam all over again. Even my father - who fought on the Pacific Front in WWII, and was very proud to have been decorated with the Purple Heart - was very much against the Viet Nam War.
It feels that way because the only experience you have or will ever admit to having of war is Vietnam. The two current wars are not even remotely like Vietnam. If you bothered to become informed about them, then you would know that. But, because you are ignorant about Vietnam, not to mention every conflict the US has engaged in since that time, you come up with nonsense. Helpful hint to anyone who wishes to be informed about the current conflicts. Here are some useful websites, chock full of accurate and current information. And your Dad being a vet and all, that means his opinion informs the current day's issues. Nice.

One year, when I was about 9 or 10 years old, Veteran's Day fell on a week end. We left shortly after he had marched in the local Annual Veteran's Day Parade and traveled to a Military Cemetery outside of Boston to visit the grave of one of his buddies who had died.

After we had laid a small bouquet of poppies near the headstone, my father said to me, "Look around. Look at the gravestones. What do you see that's the same?"

I dutifully did as my father said, walking slowly among the markers on the graves, fingering the cool marble stone and listening to the dry leaves crackle as they were blown across barren field by the brisk November wind.

"Dad," I said, finally, "Everyone of these stones has PFC before the name. What does PFC stand for?"

Cue the class warfare.

My father smiled briefly, proud of his daughter's correct observation. His smile was suddenly clouded - the way the sun goes in and out in the November sky.

"Private first class," he said sadly.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"They are the youngest soldiers - the newest soldiers - the ones with the least experience in war."

"Look around," my father continued after I considered his words. "You won't see too many graves marked 'Captain' or 'Lieutenant' or 'Colonel'. Oh, there are some, but most of the graves here are the PFC's."

Not to interject reality or anything into this affecting story, but the single most casualty prone rank in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and modern times is Lieutenant. There are less of them overall than PFC's. You have to ascend to field grade officer ranks to see any dramatic reduction in casualty rates.

"Like your friend?" I asked.

"Like me, too," he said.

He grew very quiet and said, "We were very young. Too young. We were young warriors, fearless young turks, ready, we thought, to die for our country. But, when death came to our friends, we were never ready. But, we had to keep going. We had to keep going . . ."

He took a few drags from his Lucky Strike and his eyes trailed off over the tops of the gravestones to a long ago battle in a country far, far away.

"War is a terrible thing," he said almost whispering his words over the rows of graves that held the bodies of young PFCs.

I looked at my father's face, lined with sorrow and pain and suddenly, it all came clear. In that moment, I understood the terrible nightmares that woke us up in the middle of the night - a sound so horrible and so loud as to wake the dead.

I realized, then, that it must have been the dead that had awakened him.

Suddenly, I understood his frustration and anger when he would 'get an attack of The Malaria', as he called it - which brought him right back to a place and time he'd much sooner forget and never have to relive ever again.

I couldn't possibly have understood - still can't possibly understand - the full cost of war, but I knew he had paid - and was continuing to pay - a heavy price for playing his part in The War that was supposed to have ended all wars. But didn't.

"War," he said again, "is a terrible thing."

He said it as fact and he said it as prayer.

I understood then, that some may have fought for freedom for all, but all may not ever again be fully free.

Pray for our Veterans on their Day.

Pray for peace in our time - and their's.

And bring them home ASAP, so they will never have closure. So that everything they have fought for will be forever in vain. So that evil will triumph, so that no other country will ever take the US seriously again. So that Elizabeth Kaeton can live the rest of her life in peace, knowing that the country where she lives has been doomed by her actions. that the grandchildren she purports to love will be the slaves of one faction or another. Pray for the people of Chatham, New Jersey and especially for the congregation of St Paul who have to endure the rantings of a narcissistic sociopath. And pray that nothing she desires ever comes to pass.

As for me, I'm praying for a miracle. I'm praying for the Reverend Doctor Elizabth Kaeton to repent and come to the fullness of faith in Christ Jesus her Lord. But then again, I've always liked long shots.