I Think, Therefore I Blog » Politics

Hooray for Ron Paul

fsherman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:32:38 +0000

I’m not usually a fan of Rep. Paul, but I must give him and Florida Rep. Alan Grayson credit for getting an amendment calling for a complete audit of the Federal Reserve through the House Finance Committee, as Glenn Greenwald details.
It’s all the more impressive because this amendment ran into a lot of flak: From the Fed, from committee chair Barney Frank, and others. But it passed; while there’s a long way to go yet, of course, an audit of an organization with the power and lack of transparency of the Fed would be a good thing (it would be good for a whole bunch of institutions in Washington, of course).
While the Congressmen didn’t do it alone, they led the effort, and Paul, in particular, has been pushing this idea for years. My compliments.
Read Greenwald’s piece and the linked news articles and learn how much resistance there is in Washington to oversight (if you didn’t know already).

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Kathleen Parker’s finger points in the wrong direction

fsherman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:51:07 +0000

In her column today, Parker discusses how “recent events and trends” in politics such as the tea partiers dominating town hall meetings, “sideshow rants on television” and Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie” to Obama “have brought vague unease about manners into sharper focus.”
She then discusses such historical notes as the 1828 and 1832 elections (neither one a model of decorum) but concludes that there has been a huge change in civility levels which she blames on “the new media—the Internet, the blogosphere, and all the social applications from Facebook to Twitter.”
As media watchdog Bob Somerbsy points out, this makes it sound like Parker was asleep since Bush one left office. How else did she miss the incivility of the Clintons being accused of drug dealing, murder, killing Vince Foster, or the press penchant to make up stuff Al Gore never said?
And all of those were the work of the mainstream media—cable news, the papers, talk radio—not bloggers.
For that matter, her recent examples all take place since Obama’s election. There’s no reference to the countless screams about how Democrats were traitors who wanted terrorists to win and were hoping for an attack on America for political gain (the latter is another charge made by Limbaugh). Or Cheney’s “Go f___ yourself” to a member of the Senate.
Or Ann Coulter’s declaration that she’d have no problem with Timothy McVeigh if he’d blown up the New York Times instead of the Murrah Building, or that someone should murder Supreme Court Justice Stevens.
Or Parker’s own article quoting with approval a man who said the 2004 Democratic presidential candidates should be lined up and shot.
I think we have much worse problems than incivility, but if impoliteness is going to be an issue, we should at least get the history right.

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Another point against Palin

fsherman — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:56:48 +0000

From Laywers Guns and Money: If God didn’t approve of cannibalism, why did he make US out of meat?

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Palin on vegetarianism

fsherman — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:40:43 +0000

according to a leak from her book: “If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore: If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?”

Ah yes, the old “it’s natural to eat meat” argument—which Palin’s wearing glasses seems to refute. If God didn’t intend Sarah Palin not to see things clearly, how come he made her eyes bad?
For that matter, if God didn’t intend sharks to eat people, why did he make us out of meat? Does that mean she philosophically thinks it’s OK for sharks to eat us?

(Note: God actually didn’t have anything to do with it. We evolved from the same source creatures in the primeval past so it’s not surprising that we’re biologically compatible).

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Hey, someone’s got to lose.

fsherman — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:51:22 +0000

Pundit Peter Beinart explains why the Democrats did right to eliminate abortion from insurance coverage under the health-care plan: To have political clout they need to return to the days when the sexists and racists were part of the party: “This was the devil’s pact that defined the Democratic Party for more than three decades, until the civil rights and women’s movement forced party leaders to choose. They reluctantly chose racial and gender equality, and so the racists and the misogynists drifted away. The Democratic Party became culturally liberal: pro-affirmative action, pro-choice, and smaller, since the old racists and sexists, now repackaged as racial and sexual conservatives, flocked to the GOP. Starting in 1968, Democrats began consistently losing the presidency. And in 1994, the realignment finally trickled down to the House of Representatives, and the Democrats lost that, too.”

In other words, going back to the days when Democrats opposed women’s rights and civil rights would be a good thing for America!

As several bloggers have pointed out, it’s telling that pundits frame the debate over the Stupak anti-abortion amendment as a matter of “well, the pro-choice forces had to compromise to get this passed.” Never a suggestion that the right-to-lifers who voted for the bill should have compromised.

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Ron Hart, wrong again

fsherman — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:17:08 +0000

I can’t really blame him, I guess: The media have been full of discussions of how the elections this month are a massive blow to the admministration, so it’s not surprising he parroted the same idea—”the most important votes took place in the purple-to-blluish states of New Jersey and Virginia, where the citizenry rejected Obama and elected Republican governors … Nancy Pelosi articulated a whopper by saying this was a big win for the Democrats and Obama.”
Nancy Pelosi is, of course, House speaker; with two special elections to fill two House seats, the Democrats won both, gaining a congressional seat. So from her perspective, it is a big win—why would she fret about the governorship?
And of course, the Republican lost in a traditionally Republican district, because of infighting that squeezed out a moderate in favor of a far rightist. That certainly doesn’t bode well for the Republicans’ prospects.
As for the Virginia governorship, I’ve read that the Democratic candidate specifically distanced himself from Obama’s policies, particularly on health reform. And Virginia’s Republican votes were only marginally higher than when Obama beat McCain last year.
Like I said, standard pundit wisdom is that this was great news for Republicans (as many bloggers have pointed out, the supposedly “liberal” media seem to find everything is good news for Republicans), so I guess I can’t blame Hart for being as wrong as he always is.

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For some people, I guess it was all about oil

fsherman — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:52:42 +0000

A New York Times article details how Peter Galbraith—Iraq-war supporter who negotiated a Constitutional deal giving the Kurds control of new oil finds in their territory and championed that right in multiple opinion pieces—stands to make millions due to his relationship with an oil company investing in Kurdistan.
Galbraith’s own statement: “I may have had interests, but there were no conflicts.”

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Al Gore, carbon billionaire

fsherman — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:27:48 +0000

The Daily Howler discusses how the idea that Al Gore is becoming a billionaire from clean energy entered the debate (and no, he isn’t). Mostly courtesy of a congressional aide who gets funding from an business group that opposes environmental regulation. This was then picked up and parrotted by that supposedly liberal media of ours.
Read on.

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Perhaps they have a point

fsherman — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:14:39 +0000

You know all those people who say nobody’s read the health-care bill all the way through?
Well, it turns out the LA Times just discovered a provision that would require insurers to cover costs related to praying for cures, a la Christian Science (it’s unclear from the article, and maybe the bill, what exactly qualifies for funding).
I have no problem with anyone praying for a miracle or believing that disease is divinely caused, but there’s not the slightest evidence that these are true. So why are we shelling out money (albeit, according to the article, small quantities) on this when the government is straining to contain costs?

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Hammers and nails

fsherman — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:28:38 +0000

There’s an old saying that the person who’s an expert with a hammer sees every problem as a nail. Apparently it applies to pundits too.
Specifically, Walter Williams, whose columns focus repeatedly on how government, in his opinion, is screwing up the world. Which is, of course, a valid topic, except that he tends to use it on topics that have only marginal relevance.
When Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Building, for instance, Williams devoted one paragraph to what a bad thing that was, then devoted the rest of his column to all the terrible things government does that drive decent people to terrorism (contrasting this to his post-9/11 screeching about Muslim terrorism is illuminating—apparently being hard on terrorism is a good thing unless the terrorist is a white right-winger).
In his latest column he discusses how Americ has gone from “an 18th century Third World nation into the freest and most prosperous nation in mankind’s entire history … what accounts for what some have called American exceptionalism?”
More specifically, how have we avoided “the level of hideousness seen in other nations … despite the fact that our population consists of people who have for centuries been trying to slaughter one another in their home countries, whether the struggle was between the French and Germans, or the English and Irish, or the Japanese and Chinese, or the Palestinians and Jews” plus of course, longstanding religious conflicts. “Why is the United States an exception?”
His conclusion: It’s because Americans drafted a Constitution that set strict limits on government, and that by unconstitutional acts such as the bailout, “we are losing what has made our country great.”
And the connection with why we’ve not wound up killing ourselves is—what? Does he really imagine that hostility between the Palestinians and the Jews is caused by big government.
Also, while I agree with him it’s amazing we haven’t wound in endless Civil War, the amazement isn’t over all the wars immigrants had back home, it’s because of all the horrors we’ve had here: The slaughter of the native tribes, keeping blacks in slavery for centuries, Jim Crow … That has nothing to do with the wars between Japan and Ireland and Germany and France, it’s something ingrown in us.
But Williams never fusses about discrimination unless it affects straight white males, so it’s not surprising he’d rather not discuss that stuff.

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