An interesting article
Donald Sensing has an interesting article concerning alternative energy. He brings up a very good point: the real issue regarding global warming isn’t whether its real or not (or even whether people cause it or not), it’s what to do about it. Short of extreme hand waving, its a hard problem to fix.
7/7/2006 2:03:07 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general | politics | world affairs

I'm on the fence about the Akaka Bill

Dan Akaka, junior senator from Hawaii, submitted a bill to essentially award the Native Hawaiian federal status similar to that given to Native Americans, including Eskimos.

The bill was narrowly defeated via a Cloture vote today (Cloture votes prevent filibustering).

I’m on the fence about this bill. Originally, I was against it. It sounded like rewriting history. What happened in Hawaii was nothing like what happened to the Native Americans; that was more like one nation (the various Native American tribes) being overrun by another nation (the good ole US of A). Most people are probably unaware, that the Constitution specifically talks about Native American issues and specifically treats them as “foreign nations”. Native Americans weren’t considered “citizens” of the United States until the 20th century.

The case of Hawaii was more like that of Texas: Citizens of the country (Mexico in the case of Texas, the Kingdom of Hawaii in the case of Hawaii) broke away or overthrew the existing government and set up their own “Republic” in place of it. In both the Hawaiian an Texan cases, there was some degree of unofficial U.S. involvement in the governmental change.

In the case of Hawaii, certain lands were passed over to the Federal Government for their administration (these were lands originally held by the rulers of Hawaii, that the subsequent Republic of Hawaii also held in trust). The US government has been managing these lands since then, but not as reservations; Native Hawaiians have always had the same citizenship rights as all other residents / citizens of Hawaii.

According to Senator Akaka’s web page, his bill would just add more formality to the relationship between the Federal Government and the Native Hawaiian people, placing the management of the lands in the Department of the Interior (where Native American lands are administered) and establishing some sort of working relationship between the Federal Government and the Native Hawaiian. It specifically disallows any question of land seizure or even creation of Casinos on Native Hawaiian land. These were amendments added because of concerns expressed by various other Senators.

This sounded pretty benign to me: the Feds already had some sort of acknowledged special relationship with Native Hawaiian, this just added more structure to that relationship.

But, Senator Akaka talked about issues like the Native Hawaiian “deciding” whether to have a monarchy or not. So, this sounds more like the creation of a special, ethnic shadow government for Native Hawaiian. The State of Hawaii tried this before, creating the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which was ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.

So, I’m on the fence here. Frankly, I think the Hawaiian politicians are just pandering to the liberal constituency of their state, rewriting history by accepting that the United States government overthrew the Kingdom of Hawaii. This seems to be slowly becoming the “conventional wisdom” in the state, and its just wrong.

Native Hawaiian activists like to talk about how :“their land” was “stolen” from them, but to this date, the largest private land owner in the state is a Native Hawaiian trust, the Bishop Estate. And there are many other wealthy Native Hawaiian families as well. Also, before those “thieving” white people had their way, it was impossible for common people to own land in Hawaii; Hawaii used a feudal system where land was controlled solely by their nobility, not by the common folk.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I feel better.

6/8/2006 5:17:31 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [1]  general | politics

The national language

Once again, the folks in Congress are trying to create a “national language” out of English. On the face of it, this seems pretty benign. Who can argue that citizens in the United States should be able to participate in the larger community, to hear and respond to positions and arguments made by various parties. Boy, that sounds good.

Then, the practicality of application rears its ugly head. Just what does it mean that English is the United States’ national language? If we treat ability to speak/understand English as a condition of naturalization; does this mean that we have to give English proficiency exams to prospective citizens? And, how do we measure that proficiency? What does “proficient in English” mean? Is reading/writing good enough? what about deaf people that “speak” using sign language? Or, is it a writing proficiency? Those who have studied foreign languages know that proficiencies in reading/writing are different than proficiencies in listening/speaking. Just what is enough?

And, what about other issues? Does this affect how government signs are done? Would it be legal for a sign to be printing in a language other than English?

Other than nationalist rah-rah, I can’t help wondering what Congress is trying to achieve with this type of legislation.

5/19/2006 10:55:57 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Star Spangled Banner Nonsense

I can’t believe that I’m writing about this. Up until now, I’ve ignored the whole “Star Spangled Banner sung in Spanish” pseudo-controversy, because its extremely dumb (knowing the history of the Star Spangled Banner itself).

But, since I’m reading other lame comments on the topic, I feel compelled to add my own.

The lyrics of Hawaii’s state song (state anthem, if you will) is in the Hawaiian language. This makes sense, especially since it was written by King Kalakaua (the Merry Monarch  ) in 1874 and was the kingdom's anthem from 1874 to 1893. There’s also (several) English translations of the song, but (as far as I’m aware of) its always sung in the native Hawaiian. Is this “unamerican”? I don’t think so, and I doubt that any (rational) “natives” (that is “locals”) of Hawaii would think it was. It just makes sense that a place with a non-English tradition as long as Hawaii’s (a tradition that predates the United States of America) would have a non-English anthem.

I say if folks want to sing the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish, French, or Serbo-Croatian, let ‘em. After all, they’re singing our song (all of ours).

5/3/2006 5:46:31 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Now, here's a switch

I spent the weekend hearing various folks talk about the latest (illegal) immigration flap. It was a little disconcerting to hear the left against helping poor people (e.g. “these people are stealing jobs from honest americans”) and the right for helping poor people (e.g. temporary work visas and some program to “legalize” those already here).

Frankly, I think there’s an ugly racist subtext to the whole debate. Almost everyone is talking about aliens crossing the Mexican border and almost no one is talking about: 1. The fact that potential terrorists have crossed the Canadian border and 2. The fact that a significant chunk of illegal immigrants (that is, aliens without a valid visa or work permit) come from Europe. So far, the only person I’ve heard talk about that is John McCain.

So here’s an intellectual puzzle for you: Why is it okay for trade to cross the borders without restriction (i.e. NAFTA), but not workers? Discuss amongst yourselves

 

4/3/2006 9:44:30 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Addictions and other thoughts

George Bush's comments about our “addiction to oil” seems to be getting a lot of buzz now. Scott Adams, in his blog, said “Let me begin by saying there are lots of good reasons for conserving energy. It saves money, it’s good for the planet, and that’s good enough for me. I drive a small car.”

The way I look at it, if you buy into the whole “people wreck the environment” philosophy, then the best thing for the environment would be the extinction of the human race. I don’t know anybody advocating that (I could be wrong, they could be out there). Frankly, I’m a “people firster”: We should conserve the forest because it’s nice to look at, not because a certain sub-species of owl has so over-specialized itself that it can’t live without it.

That being said, I like Adams’ comments about reducing oil consumption. It would have zero affect on terrorism. Our president has wanted to increase development of alternative fuels for a long time (surprise, surprise), and tying it to terrorism is just his latest attempt at gaining some traction there (remember when the feds were running anti-drug commercials, tying illicit drug use to terrorism?). And, for those naive enough to be surprised that George Bush is pro-alternative energy, keep in mind that we don’t really have “oil companies” anymore; we have “energy companies”. If we do find a commercially viable energy alternative, it’ll be the same guys who are now selling us our oil that’ll sell that too. And we’ll thank them for it (metaphorically speaking, of course).

And, for those who think in terms of “war for oil”, keep in mind that the U.S. didn’t care one whit about the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq (remember that bit of historical fact), until the Kuwaitis were able to get their appeal to Congress televised. The U.S. was perfectly happy to buy their Kuwaiti oil from Iraq, up until the media decided to make it a humanitarian issue.

 

2/21/2006 10:59:57 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  politics | world affairs

This just in...

Big news. The President not told of the shooting by the Vice President for hours! It makes me wonder, just what does the media expect the President to be told about instantly?

Is the news so slow right now that this qualifies? sheesh.

2/14/2006 8:49:12 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  TV | politics

Will wonders never cease

And now for something completely different.

John Bolton, the controversial U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was nominated for a Nobel Peace prize!

I feel like Alice.

For those of you who don’t follow this kind of stuff, last year the Democrats in the Senate successfully blocked Bolton’s appointment to the UN. It was only by the President performing a last minute appointment, when the Senate wasn’t in session, that allowed him to (temporarily) take the position. In fact, he’ll be up for re-approval sometime this year. I wonder how the Democrats will deal with him as a Nobel Peace prize nominee…

 

2/8/2006 2:20:59 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  world affairs | politics

Honesty in journalism - What a concept!

Today, Joel Stein wrote a column titled Warriors and Wusses. In it he says something very honest: “… I’m not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken…”.

Bravo (at least half-way) to Joel for telling it like it is. At last, someone on the anti-war side who tells it like it is. You can’t (honestly) be against the war, but for the people performing the war. Come on!

Now, let me be up front here. I’m for the war. Before the war started, I felt that we had worked ourselves into a “fish or cut bait” situation: We either had to accept that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq (sound familiar? 20/20 hindsight out there?), pick up our toys, and go home… or we had to accept that we had to go to the next step and invade. To be honest, I never expected the President to invade. I expected what we saw during the 8 years of the Clinton administration (and to be honest, the end of Bush 43’s administration): lots of sabre rattling followed by us backing down. But, once the decision had been made, it can’t be unmade: we’re there for the duration.

Back to the central point of this rant: The armed forces in Iraq are doing what they believe their duty is. By and large, they believe that they are doing the right thing. If you think they aren’t, then you’re not supporting them! Be honest about it. As Joel says, this doesn’t mean that you need to spit on them when they come home (as happened way too much during Vietnam), just be honest with them about what they’re doing.

And I’ll continue to disagree with you about that, and support the war…

1/24/2006 11:09:19 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [2]  politics | general

Geese and ganders

Norman Solomon has an interesting article in the Huffington Post regarding leaks, the Plame case, and the NSA case.

He treats both cases as simply political issues and trivializes their legal impact.

He ends by assuming that journalists will either be on the “side” of the “truth” or “powerful government officials”, and completely misses the “side” of the “large corporate interests” held by most media outlets. Let’s not forget that the New York Times sat on the NSA story until they could get the best monetary gain from it.

Frankly, I don’t buy the idea that newspaper writers (supposed “journalists”) and TV news writers are somehow entitled to special shielding from the government. IMHO, Freedom of the Press is a right shared by all americans, and grants all of us the freedom to publish, in print and otherwise.

1/23/2006 3:58:59 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  general | politics

Who's Antonin Scalia trying to kid?

Today, the Supreme Court released its ruling on Gonzalez vs Oregon, John Ashcroft’s parting shot at Oregon’s assisted suicide law. The decision was 6–3, in favor of Oregon (yay). When I first heard about this (on the morning news), I wondered who the 6 were and who the 3 were.

First, I figured that Scalia was probably one of the three (and his buddy Thomas), but then I thought, Scalia says he’s an originalist, and the Founding Fathers had no intention that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution would allow Congress to regulate drugs. So, he had to be in the majority on this issue.

duh.

As it turns out, he was one of the three: Scalia, Thomas (what a surprise, he voted the same as Scalia), and Roberts (he showed signs of this during the testimony).

So, who’s Scalia trying to kid with this originalist nonsense? The only time he cares about what the Founding Fathers intended, is when that belief supports his own ideology.

1/17/2006 11:16:31 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  politics | general

The other (next?) shoe on warrantless wiretaps

Instapundit has an interesting reference related to Al Gore’s recent speech and history. It points to an interesting article at Gateway Pundit.

Apparently, George W. Bush isn’t the first president in recent history to use warrantless wiretaps. The Clinton administration is on the record as, not only using wiretaps for “agents of foreign governments”, but also expanding its use to warrantless searches in certain housing projects.

I wonder if the network media will (ever) report this…

And, I’m surprised that Republican Senators haven’t mentioned this.

1/17/2006 10:39:22 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Judge Alito

I spent much of last night listening to Judge Alito’s testimony before the Judiciary Committee. A few things come to mind:

1. He’s not as smart as John Roberts. Roberts’ body of knowledge was amazing. While Judge Alito isn’t in the same category as Chief Justice Roberts, he has a solid understanding of the law.

2. He’s eminently qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice. Judge Alito shows the right mix of judicial temperament and intelligence.

3. For what its worth, the man is very conservative. He’s no Scalia, who’s an idealogue, but he is darn conservative. I was entertained by watching him put together answers that would be neutral and not inflame his detractors. He did a creditable job.

Good luck, Sam. I’m looking forward to seeing you on the Supreme Court.

1/12/2006 8:28:58 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  politics

A Revelation

I saw today that the House of Representatives are considering a total ban on privately funded trips. This brought to mind the case of Mike Espy, back in the ‘90s. Mr. Espy was the Secretary of Agriculture when he was charged by an independent counsel, Donald Smaltz, of illegally taking gifts. At the time, I assumed that Mr. Espy had run afoul of the difference between the rules for Congressmen (he had previously been a member of the House of Representatives) and Cabinet Members.

As it turns out, however, Mr. Espy was acquitted of all charges in 1998!

This led me to a few thoughts:

1. Why didn’t I know this? The press was all over Mr. Espy when he was indicted on these charges, but I don’t remember anything when he was acquitted (to their credit, I discovered this via a Washington Post article, which they did publish, on the front page!).

2. The whole “independent counsel” thing was such a travesty. The concept came out of the Watergate scandal, when President Nixon attempted to exert undue influence over the Justice Department’s investigation of the Watergate affair and cover-up. However, the result has been just the opposite, with these investigators trying every sleazy trick in the book to “get” government officials. Frankly, I think these guys watch too much TV, and think they should be operating similarly to what they’re seeing in the cop shows.

3. (a corollary to #2) What if what we’re seeing here is how these guys conduct investigations of the average citizen? This is both ridiculous and scary. I’d say that this is a scandal waiting to happen.

1/11/2006 9:05:23 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  general | politics

More on Knowledge

I’ve been thinking about my previous posts on News vs. Knowledge, etc.

Just what is the “proper response” to this state of affairs? Should we point out when inaccuracies are published? And, if we do this, aren’t we just giving more attention to the inaccuracy?

Yesterday, Michael Barone commented on James Risen’s interview on the Today show… BTW, Risen is the New York Times reporter who co-authored the paper’s story about NSA surveillance of Americans. Risen seems to believe that Democracy is best served when decisions are left up to the civil service, and not up to elected & appointed officials, such as the Vice President or Secretary of State.

Now, in my mind, this is patent nonsense. But, 1: The Today show published these thoughts via an interview. 2: if these thoughts are not refuted, they become part of the public “conventional wisdom”. 3: if we do refute them, then we lend credence to the words, treating the idea as (in some way) valid.

I suppose, we could simply say that James Risen’s views of Democracy are ridiculous in the extreme, and probably self-serving, since he’s really just hawking a book he wrote and didn’t consider the topic newsworthy before the book was published.

In short, the man’s a hack, and Today should be ashamed of themselves for giving him a forum. Did you hear that, Katy Couric? Matt Lauer? Ashamed.

1/10/2006 3:00:22 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  politics | general

News vs. Knowledge

Cathy Young in the Y Files is reporting some interesting statistics from New Orleans and hurricane Katrina. This data completely contradicts the conventional wisdom on the storm.

Of course, this data is not news, since it doesn’t result in anyone being “blamed”. This is to be expected. Contemporary “news” is about real-life drama and astonishment, not about boring facts.

The unfortunate thing is that for many people, the news becomes what they “know” about the incident, so those “dramatic” stories regarding the aftermath of Katrina becomes their understanding of what “really happened”, and the so-called racism reported becomes enshrined in their personal history.

This is the real tragedy of Katrina: that most people won’t know what really happened there, because there’s no “story” for the media to tell.

1/6/2006 11:37:16 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  general | politics

Math problems

Something has to be wrong with my information or calculations.

I’ve been doing some investigation, and, in 2004, the national murder rate in the U.S. was 5.5 per 100,000 people.

According to the CIA, the US population is 295,734,134.

This means that in 2004, approximately 16,000 people were murdered. Is this right? What am I doing wrong? This can’t be right. That’s sixteen thousand people murdered last year.

I can’t believe that this is correct…

12/14/2005 12:02:46 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  general | politics | world affairs

What does it mean to be "Tolerant"?

Michael Barone published an interesting entry on the limits of tolerance. I think that it raises an interesting question: Does tolerance require the tolerating intolerance?

For me, it brings to mind the “fact” (at least I think its a fact) that America’s religious freedom was born out of religious intolerance. Part of the “free expression of religion” that folks like the Pilgrims and Puritans came to America for was to limit free expression within their own group (or even locality).

There seems to be a fine line here.

12/6/2005 9:11:56 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  world affairs | politics | general

Remember the Kyoto Accords?

The US (and its current president) has taken a lot of heat for not ratifying the Kyoto Accords. Yesterday, Michael Barone wrote that, in fact, European countries will not meet their emissions targets. It seems that outside of the United States, the developed nations of the world are just paying lip service to the Kyoto Accords, and those two up and coming juggernauts, China and India, don’t even have to do that much. So, it looks like, in all practicality, the Kyoto Accords are dead. It’s time to put together a rational strategy for worldwide environmental protection.

And don’t talk to be about global warming. Groan.

11/3/2005 9:44:45 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics | world affairs

Bye bye Harriet
So, Harriet Miers pulled her nomination. What a relief. It was becoming pretty obvious that the only people that wanted her confirmation were the Democrats.  We’ll see who the President nominates next. I suspect that the next time, it’ll go the other way: it’ll be someone with solid right wing credentials that the Democrats (and the media) hate.
10/28/2005 1:48:59 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Liberalism? What Liberalism?

A while back, I talked about my desire to explore contemporary Liberalism in America. My idea was that Liberalism had gotten a bad rap from the right, and so I needed to investigate the roots of the belief in order to figure out just who were the standard bearers for Liberalism in the 21st century, and just what was their agenda.

Contrary to what you haven’t read here, I didn’t give up on this. As it turns out, while I’ve gotten a pretty good education on American Liberalism and how its different from classical / worldwide liberalism, I haven’t found any real sign that it exists in America today.

So, my conclusion is that American Liberalism is dead. Of course, so is American Conservatism. There are no groups that either understand or support these movements today. Certainly, we have Democrats and Republicans, but it would be naive in the extreme to say that the Democrats are Liberal and the Republicans are Conservative. Because that’s not true.

10/7/2005 8:37:20 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

How can so many people miss the point?

There’s been a lot of buzz today about Bill Bennett’s Freakanomics quote / comment regarding raising the abortion rate among african americans to reduce the crime rate (for the record, he calls this “morally reprehensible”). Everyone (both right and left) are focusing on whether or not he was advocating african american abortions as a crime prevention tool.

To me, the real point is that he assumes (himself, not Freakanomics, not anyone else) that “poor equals black”. I just read a transcript of Mr Bennett’s radio show, where the statement was made, and he is the one that jumps from “poor person” to “black person”. Just how is this not a racist comment? Again, for the record, Steven Levitt, one of the authors of Freakanomics, says in his blog, that once economic factors are levelled, there is virtually no difference in crime rates between white people and black people.

Maybe I’m missing the point.

But, I don’t think so …

 

9/30/2005 2:20:28 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

History Lesson

Yesterday, Michael Barone posted some comments regarding the shuttle program on his blog. He talks about how the shuttle technology is basically ‘70s technology stretched out to the 21st century, and how Gregg Easterbook wrote about this in 1980.

All I have to say is “bravo”. I’m old enough to remember the inception of the shuttle program (heck, I remember the first moonwalk). Even back then, the whole tile thing was considered faulty, but the US was tight on money and we went ahead and did it anyway. The cover blurb for the Washington Monthly issue that included Easterbook’s article exclaims “Beam Us Out of This Deathtrap, Scotty!”.  No one should be surprised about the problems we’ve been having with the shuttle lately. The surprise should be that we haven’t had more trouble over the years. If you listen to the NASA apologists the right way, what’s obvious is that the reason we didn’t see more problems before was that we were ignoring the existing problems (they say that the reason that we “see” more problems now is that we’re looking harder for problems  ).

Inexpensive space flight (relatively speaking) is a laudable goal, but this shouldn’t mean “cheap”.

9/29/2005 11:25:51 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Civics PS

Now that I’ve finished reading the article, it brings up an interesting point:

The government's position is strongly supported by the former high officials and ex-diplomats, among others. Their attorneys bluntly declared in a brief: "When treaties are at issue, the states disappear and the President and Senate act, in the words of the Supremacy Clause, with the sole 'Authority of the United States.'"

This would imply that, via the Supremacy Clause, the Federal government has the power to “negotiate away” any of our guaranteed rights. Sounds pretty un-American to me…

9/29/2005 9:20:49 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics | world affairs

A Civics conundrum

An article on SCOTUSBLOG raised an interesting question in my mind, probably core to the issue they’re talking about:

According to the Constitution, the Federal government, through the Executive branch, has the sole power to negotiate treaties. However, the power of the Federal government is limited, and there’s a whole slew of powers that are left to the states and to the people.

What happens if the Federal government signs a treaty that agrees to something for which they have no power to enforce? Who wins?

The short answer, I guess, is this is why we have a Supreme Court. The long (and decisive) answer, I expect, will be forthcoming from them when they hear the case.

As an aside, its official: John Roberts is the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Hooray!

9/29/2005 9:13:12 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics | world affairs

More on Bill Frist: Fair's Fair

In the spirit of fairness, I want to admit that I was wrong about Bill Frist.It turns out that he (and just about every other bigwig with the firm) had posted his intent to sell of shares with the SEC earlier, and there was nothing shady about his sell-off. Thank you Yahoo News for pointing that out. It sure would have been helpful if the Huffington Post had done the same (you hear that, Ariana?).

9/23/2005 8:28:10 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Bill Frist and the SEC

The Huffington Post is reporting that Bill Frist unloaded all of his stock in a family-owned hospital chain just before it announced disappointing earnings.

Remember Martha Stewart? If this were done by a private citizen, instead of the leader of the Senate, there would be both SEC and Justice Dept. investigations going on. We’ll see how this is handled…

I have to admit, I’m still a bit steamed at how Martha Stewart was treated by the feds. There is no doubt in my mind that they treated her as an “example” rather than truly believed that she was some horrible perpetrator.

9/21/2005 8:48:52 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Democrats: the party of the rich?

Michael Barone had an interesting entry on his blog, discussing Adam Smith. It concerned morality and the differing views of it vs. economic prosperity. Adam Smith’s point, that Mr. Barone commented on, was that a “strict” view of morality was generally valued by the “common people”, while a “liberal” view of morality was generally valued by the more affluent people.

Today, this is reflected in the constituencies of the Republican and Democratic parties. In a weird turnaround, the Republican party now has a core membership among the “common people” while the Democratic party has its core membership among the “affluent” people. Granted, there are still vestiges of union members and the urban poor who vote Democratic as well as the executives of large corporations who vote Republican, but I think these groups are definitely in the minority, the real power works the other way around.

Now, of course, the Republicans are very much aware of their “base”, and have used it successfully. But, the Democrats seem oblivious to their current constituency. I wonder what would happen if Democrats started paying more attention to this.

9/15/2005 9:29:38 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

John Roberts

Since I’ve already mentioned this, I thought that I’d drop in my two cents on the Roberts hearings.

As expected, he’s handling the hearings very well, showing himself to be a calm, temperate judge. It’s obvious that his real interest is the law and the fair exercise of the law. Both Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden pushed him hard (especially Biden. I guess the Presidential campaign has started  ), but he didn’t crack. He kept the discussion to the law and the precedents and successfully avoided talking about topics that he thought might come before him, either as a Supreme Court justice or (if the confirmation should go the other way) as his current “day job” of appellate judge.

Every time I hear Judge Roberts speak, I become more impressed regarding his understanding of the law. At this point, I can’t imagine that anyone could possibly be a better Chief Justice than him. In fact, I suspect that most Democrats will vote to confirm when its presented to the general body for a vote. Of course, I also expect that all Democrats on the committee will vote against, “just because”…

I tell you, Joe’s really going out of his way to lose my vote.

9/14/2005 9:53:08 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

This is ridiculous

This just in, the sun rose in the east this morning.

The AP wire is reporting that Bush has refused to set a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Now, how is this news? This has been the President’s position since troops first went into Iraq. At some point, people need to just stop pushing their own agendas and calling it “news”.

Now if he did announce a deadline, that would be news!

9/13/2005 11:20:47 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics | world affairs

We have a new acronym

We seem to have a new acronym. Everywhere I look on the Internet, I see MSM this, MSM that. It took me a while to figure it out. MSM: MainStream Media. sheesh. You’d think that the jokers pushing this would realize by now that everybody knows there’s no difference in the media; they’re all “mainstream”. Quit kidding yourselves, guys.

9/13/2005 11:01:50 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general | politics

Blame Game

Well, the news is (finally) starting to report good things out of New Orleans. It’s about time.

I was fascinated by the negative comments heaped on FEMA, the President, and (by inference) the Republicans. After all, both the Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans are Democrats. Interesting.

Even more interesting is the fact that the Mayor, prior to running for that post, had been a long time Republican. In fact, he’d even supported President Bush prior to his “epiphany”. While I don’t doubt that the feds have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do (thank you Ricky Ricardo), I think the local and state leaders better put on their dancing shoes too. Of course, the media may just ignore their contributions to the debacle in the name of “news”.

On the other hand (and there is another hand), the lack of funding for the levees around New Orleans and Dennis Hastert’s comments about the rebuilding the city, smack of hardball politics: Louisiana is run by the Dems, they get no money. New Orleans is headed up by an ex-Republican turncoat, they REALLY get no money. If the Dems are smart (and they’ve shown little sign recently that they might be), they’ll use this to their advantage during the mid-term elections next year. They should stay away from the President, and blast the Republican Congressional leadership instead.

9/6/2005 9:07:58 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Where the money is going

Last night over dessert, Kurt brought up an interesting question: Just where is all the money allocated for the war in Iraq going? This surprised me, mainly because it’s been a sore spot with me for a long while. Well, I’ve found a (partial) answer, or at least a way to get at the answer. The U.S. Central Command, who’s running the show in both Iraq and Afghanistan, publish two newsletters, a CentCom newsletter and a Coalition Bulletin, just chock full of information on what’s going on in these two theaters. Frankly, I think that the administration has done a piss-poor job of sharing this kind of information.

Those interested in keeping track of the real progress in the  mid-east can subscribe to the newsletters here.

On a more personal note, it was great having dinner with Kurt and Patricia last night. We always have some terrific conversation, something I sorely miss since moving on to a new job.

8/25/2005 9:52:56 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general | politics | world affairs

Michael Graham needs to go back to school

Michael Graham is one of those talk-radio hosts who likes to shoot-from-the-lip. Until recently, he had a show on Washington DC’s WMAL-AM radio station. On July 25th, he said that “Islam is a terrorist organization” (according to the Washington Post). He said this 23 times (just so that someone would know that this wasn’t just some sort of slip of the tongue). He was then was sufficiently unrepentant that WMAL fired him.

Okay, that’s all well and good. So, why does he need to go back to school?

Well, Mr. Graham has responded, on townhall.com, “The First Amendment and I have been evicted from ABC Radio…”.

I’m sick and tired of people not knowing what their own Constitution says regarding their rights. The Bill of Rights says “Congress shall make no law…”. It does not say that a person can’t be fired for saying something so stupid that it harms the private enterprise for which they work. Congress (or any other branch of the government) didn’t get anywhere near you, Mr. Graham. And, besides, you deserved what you got.

8/23/2005 2:45:12 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics | world affairs

Crackpots

On Monday, our own, home-grown crackpot, Pat Robertson advocated the assassination of the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez. President Chavez has responded by stating that Mr. Robertson’s statement is a “terrorist” statement that needs to be investigated by the U.S. authorities.

I must say that I agree fully.

Granted, Mr. Chavez is no friend of the United States (hence Mr. Robertson’s comments). And, granted, Pat Robertson is a grade-A crackpot who has a long history of saying some ridiculous things. However, it should be noted that if a muslim religious leader were to make such a remark about President Bush, we’d be yelling for the same kind of investigation. And, Mr. Robertson is sitting on a big enough pile of money that he could go ahead and follow through himself.

People may want to dismiss Mr. Robertson’s comments as those of a crackpot. But, I wonder how many “crackpots” are there in Saudi Arabia quietly sending donations to Osama Bin Laden. Wouldn’t we want the Saudis to do something about that?

8/23/2005 2:25:35 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics | world affairs

Straw Poll Time

I’ve recently seen both Republican and Democratic straw polls for the 2008 Presidential nomination. Putting aside the fact of a presidential poll being done the year before the midterm elections (sheesh!), the results are a bit interesting.

On the Republican side, the top candidates are:

• Raul Giuliani
• George Allen (who? Senator from VA. oh.)
• Newt Gingrich
• Mit Romney
• John McCain

etc.

On the Democratic side:

• Wesley Clark
• Russ Feingold
• Al Gore
• Hillary Clinton
• Bill Richardson
• Mark Warner
• John Edwards

etc. (more candidates on the Demo side, because the last 3 are so close, and besides, I wanted to include John Edwards)

Other than George Allen (how the heck did he make the list? He has zero national exposure!), the Republican list looks pretty rational to me. Not that I think the top 3 are winnable candidates (maybe Giuliani, but I doubt it. His attractiveness is 9/11 related, and that’s becoming ancient history). Mit Romney is a possibility, being a governor. He has good presence too.

The Democratic side is a mess. Chris Bowers refers to the poll as the “Donkeys Gone Wild edition”. And I think that’s pretty accurate. The top 3 candidates are ridiculous (Al, you had your chance. Go work on your TV network). Hillary’s a possibility, I guess, but I don’t think she has the leadership chops that her husband has. The next three all fascinate me. They’d all have a chance to get my vote (of course, they’d have to get the nomination first, since I’m a Republican during the primaries  ).

Of course, as I said earlier, this is way early to be paying attention to this kind of stuff. But it’s fun anyway .

8/23/2005 11:50:47 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

The Religion of Science

As reported in the New York Times, a student in the audience of a recent scientific conference at the City College of New York asked, “Can you be a good scientist and believe in God?”

To which, Herbert A. Hauptman, a Nobel laureate in chemistry responded with a quick and sharp “No!”.  Thankfully, his view is not one shared by all scientists.

More and more, I’ve seen a tendency for the non-religious in the US to adopt a world view where Science answers all questions and is considered “reality”. For those of us who remember our scientific method, we know that this is not the case. Science merely provides a “working model”, that helps to provide answers to questions in a mechanistic manner.

There is no basic conflict between scientific knowledge and belief in God, as many religious scientists will tell you. Now, this doesn’t mean that some religious tenets don’t conflict with current scientific knowledge (i.e. Creationism), but that’s an artifact of religious conservatism, not religious belief.

 

8/23/2005 10:01:11 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general | politics | world affairs

Alas

Well, the other shoe has dropped. I won’t be seduced after all. The Walken for President campaign was a hoax. sigh.

You know, I’ve always considered myself pretty good at spotting these Internet hoaxes, and I didn’t just accept this one at face value, but I guess we all get fooled sometime.

 

8/22/2005 8:28:52 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Economic Times...

I was catching up on Michael Barone’s blog (hey, Michael, where’s that RSS feed?), and followed a link to an old entry discussing why people think that economic are bad while indicators say otherwise. Other than a dig at the “mainstream media” (more on that topic later), Michael supposes that people concentrate on the issues that they perceive to be negative at the time. I think, more to the point, people use their own feelings about the economy as their litmus test regarding how well/badly the economy is doing. If they’re feeling shaky about how things are, then (obviously) the economy’s doing badly. If they’re feeling good, then the economy’s doing good.

Notice I said how they feel, not how things are actually going for them. I think there’s still a lot of insecurity in the public, and that’s what’s causing this general feeling of economic woe. During the Clinton years, people felt better about the economy because Clinton made us feel good about it. He was that kind of President. As much as I like GW, he’s more of an “everyman” than a real “leader”, he really doesn’t inspire confidence in the people, and I think that this is what’s showing now.

Regarding Michael’s reference to the “mainstream media”: Hey, Michael! The last time I looked, US News was part of the mainstream media. It amazes me how many people who are part of the media that don’t consider themselves that way. Own up to it folks. We’re all in the same boat.

Except that, as a blogger, I’m really not in the mainstream.

8/17/2005 4:48:21 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Once again I'm being seduced by the dark side...

So, Christopher Walken is running for president. You know, the idea’s just crazy enough to work. After all, it worked for Ronald Reagan, remember him?

Why do I keep getting pulled in by these out-of-the-mainstream candidates? Does anybody remember John Anderson?

8/17/2005 9:09:05 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics