Cheney needs to shut up!

I'm sure that Mr. Cheney would call me naive, but torture is torture and not appropriate for America. You can call it "enhanced interrogation methods" all you want, that doesn't stop making it torture. I grabbed the following bit from his speech to show some of the hypocracy in his words. He starts by praise what makes us a force for good and includes human rights, but then uses this to justify torturing of prisoners. Not only that Bush did more to destroy our liberty than just about any President in history, so was he helping the terrorists by taking away what they hated about us? Thank god these people no longer speaks for us!

The United States of America was a good country before 9/11, just as we are today. List all the things that make us a force for good in the world - for liberty, for human rights, for the rational, peaceful resolution of differences - and what you end up with is a list of the reasons why the terrorists hate America. If fine speech-making, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field. And when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don't stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along. Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for - our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity.

Bush/Cheney have ordered the deaths of over 30,000 Americans by fighting the war in Iraq, so how many lifes have they saved with this sacrifice? Does sacrificing our soldiers in some godforsaken land that we have no right being in really make us safer? How many more soldiers need to die to keep us safe? This is just in Iraq, where we have killed over 1,000,000 people! How many of them were terrorists? Why does anyone let him continue to speak without answering these serious questions? Dick Cheney lives in a dream world.

Prepare to be pissed

Meanwhile, check out this blog post in Reason and watch the attached video to see just how insane our police have gotten. Its truly amazing how far things have gone, with SWAT teams conducting alcohol permit inspections. What saddens me the most here is less that police are doing this and more that judges seem so comfortable with allowing them to. Are judicial system has really degenerated over the last few decades and the weakness in this branch of government is a disaster for us all.

California sinks

Another excellent column from George Will, one of the few voices of reason and intelligence out there. The point is clear, which is that my poor state has finally succombed to the years of abuse that are only possible under a staunch liberal government. Combine that with the past 8 years of conservative (if we can really call the insanity that was George Bush conservative) abuse at the federal level and its a wonder the country and state are not in worse shape. The most interesting part of this column was this bit:

Flinching from serious budget cutting and from confronting public employees unions, some Californians focus on process questions. They devise candidate-selection rules designed to diminish the role of parties, thereby supposedly making more likely the election of "moderates" amenable to even more tax increases.
But what actually ails California is centrist evasions. The state's crisis has been caused by "moderation," understood as splitting the difference between extreme liberalism and hyperliberalism, a "reasonableness" that merely moderates the speed at which the ever-expanding public sector suffocates the private sector.

The state needs a revolution, but who is there to lead?

Teabaggers Unite!

Good story on the recent tea parties to protest government spending. Its hard to condense this into a couple of key points, but here is a reasonable try:

This was not a typical conservative Republican rally, with local GOP activists, Ron Paul enthusiasts, and single-issue obsessives. (Those folks always show up—and they did in Atlanta.) The difference was the new people: Young hipsters, families, angry moms, and retirees alike left their normal routines and work obligations to show up in protest of government policies that they passionately believe will ruin what is unique about America. ...
Did the tea parties matter? One reasonable measure of progress may be the sheer volume of vitriol produced by their critics. ...
In the long run, the faces I saw in Atlanta represent a potentially potent new constituency for fiscal discipline and government restraint. Compositionally, this is the same voting block that showed up to vote for the very first time in 1994 in reaction to the big government overreaches of the Clinton Administration, throwing House Democrats out after 40 years of policy hegemony.
I don't believe that the official Republican apparatus can effectively organize these voters for 2010. Indeed, the very nature of the tea parties defies top-down direction. The protests, just like the free market process they tacitly espoused, were decentralized and driven by voluntary action. But as Saul Alinsky might tell you, activists need to stay active. Many of the most effective organizations and community leaders that emerged from the tea party movement have already gathered behind a March on Washington on September 12, 2009. Other efforts will add more structure to the tea party communities, and perhaps target some grassroots pressure towards particular politicians during specific legislative battles over socialized health care, higher spending, and other big government schemes.

I wish them well and agree that the answer, at least not today, is the Republican Party. In fact, the biggest danger that these activists have is that they will be taken over by Republicans, who will distort and destroy the key messages that they are trying to promote.

Three words: F*** you Scalia

It seems to be a day for cussing, with now this story about the Supreme Court ruling in the FCC's favor on the broadcasting fines for cussing. Bad decision, bad law, bad court.

ICE and DEA complicit in torture and murder

If you haven't seen this story, its not surprising. While the MSM has no problem attacking individuals like Bernacke and Paulson (well deserved attacks as I noted below), its another to show that our government can be even worse, especially when it comes to the War on Drugs. This is truly a horrific story, even more so as you learn the details, and illustrated how horrible our government can be in the pursuit of their own self-interests.

Soon we will own half of GM

So will the fact that us taxpayers will own half of GM, see this story, make us more likely to buy a GM car? Especially since Saturns, Hummers, Pontiacs, and Saabs will not be available.

Feds force BofA to buy Merrill

This is a good story from the WSJ opinion section on the recent news about Ken Lewis, head of Bank of America, being given an offer he can't refuse to buy Merrill Lynch despite the enormous debts and risk associated with the merger. Its truly shocking to think that we could have had such cowboy behavior from the feds, except that it was just another Bush legacy that Republicans can take such pride in. And this terrible behavior only serves to justify the next story's actions.

Wrong answer, its seniority

I was losing interest in this story up until the paragraph before last. Its about a teacher who was voted Teacher of the Year by the PTA, based on ratings by the students, but who will be laid off next year. The statement, by the school principal was the following:

"We've got a great teacher," Carpenter lamented, "and he's gone because of the budget problems."

This is exactly wrong. This teacher is being let go because of union rules forcing teachers with less seniority to be let go first. I'm going to come off as a cold, heartless bastard, but the teacher's union in California has destroyed our educational system, making it one of the worst in the country despite the huge amount of money that is spent on education every year (teachers salaries are the highest in the country, yet we consistenly rank near the bottom on test scores with states like Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and New Mexico). As a father of two going through public schools now, its painful to see and hear this hypocrisy.

Does California need a new constitution?

This story discussed the increased interest in updating California's constitution. About the only thing we can all agree on here is that the system is broken, but how can any citizen of this fine state trust a state politician to do the right thing here. Note that this is a state that has increased spending over the decade at a rate well above the inflation and population growth rate and yet has completely failed to provide its citizens with any significant improvements to their way of life.
The saddest part is that there is no obvious place to start to work for real reform. Certainly not with either party, one of which has orchestrated this mess (Dems have run the state for decades) and the other of which is more concerned with gay marriage and abortions than about the stuff that really matters in government. What a shame!

Libertarians were right

Good story about how much better off we would be if Bush had listened to libertarians. Of course, don't expect to see this elsewhere and don't hold your breath for the Republicans to actually become libertarian again. Its not even worth hoping for anymore.

Future of political discourse?

What's interesting in this Reason story about the Food Safety Modernization Act is not the discussion about the act itself, but Doherty's ideas about whether this is a model of future political discussion, with the fall of the mainstream press. Read to the end where he makes these comments:

To put it another way, the H.R. 875 debate is a lively representation of what “journalism” in a post-newspaper age can do for “democracy.” Which is something far more important and detailed than just one writer with a million other things on his plate making a few calls and making a decision for you.(Meta-ironies noted.)

Certainly, it’s more convenient for a reader to think he’s read one 900-word piece in a respected source and therefore understands some public policy topic. The debate over H.R. 875 may well be an example of the rising dominant model of political reporting: contentious fighting among often careless, agenda-driven forces producing
all of the information that the truly interested would need to know what they need to know.

This is certainly an interesting observation, but as a life surfer it provides some cause for concern. Few of us have the time to read the whole text of bills like this, its the whole point of having a representative democracy, so there will certainly continue to be a demand for "trusted sources" to do our homework for us and provide the crib sheet. Of course, this doesn't mean that we should subsidize the press, who's to say that they are any more trusted than a well researched blog or website.

Perhaps this is in bad taste, but don't you think that one of the CIA agents during these interogations, http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090420/ts_nm/us_usa_security_interrogations_2, must have said, "Well I don't know what else to do, lets just waterboard him again and see if that helps?" This is the only thing that we can take comfort in seeing some improvement with Obama, and its alot.

Politics as usual in Washington

An excellent story about how Obama's adminstration is not above the very politics that he condemned: http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/16/school-voucher-washington-dc-teacher-union-opinions-contributors-obama.html. Not surprising given all that has happened since he took office, but the sheer audacity of these actions is truly sad and shakes your belief in all politicians. For the kids, my ass!

Tea Parties!

Related to the previous post, and what sparked some of those thoughts, were the stories around the Tea Parties that were held on Wednesday to protest the bailouts and high taxes. The Republicans, and normally rightfully so, seem to absorb these as coming from them, but I believe the reality is much different. I read that at a counter protest there was a sign asking where were you 6 months ago when Bush was doing the bailing out and my first thought was exactly where I am now, just as pissed off and against his actions as now. But the point was real, where was Hannity and the others that think they can usurp this anger?

Can we ever be Republican again?

As someone who supported the Republican Party as a teen and who has never voted for a Democrat for any major office, the question above would seem like an easy one to answer. But my beliefs were always along the lines of a very small and focused government, only doing the core jobs that a federal government should do (defense, foreign policy, maintaining a level playing field in an otherwise open market, providing basic consumer support, etc.). This included keeping government out of our private lives.
But the Republican Party has moved away from these beliefs over the years, first with their dreadful alliance with the ugly Religious Right groups, and the last 8 Bush years have shattered all claims to small government conservatism. Is there any hope that we can again hear a top-ranking Republican rage against Obama's massive governmental increases and wonder why we didn't hear anything from them last year, or the one before, or the one before, going back through the whole decade?

Bailout Naivete

I always thought that this whole baloney about supporting Detroit and the car guys was about politics, but of course I was looking the wrong way as they want you to. This isn't about jobs or supporting businesses too big to fail or any of that. Its about protecting the UAW, because if GM (or Chrysler) goes into bankrupcy, as they should, then the union loses control over the company and they are forced to renegotiate. It might also call into question the value of a union that destroys its members jobs, given that the other auto factories don't have the same union control and are not having the same problems.

I still need to work on my conspiracy language to make this sound better, but hopefully the gist is clear.

Check out this site and especially watch the second video, http://www.stopspendingourfuture.org/! It really puts the bailout into a perspective that would scare anyone. And sign their petition while you are at it.