Politics

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Here is a link to the article.

I highly doubt that any liberals will want to think hard enough to listen to the answers.

In every case — public-sector members included — the livelihood and job security of Hoffa's members depend on a growing economy and robust employers to deliver the wages, benefits, working conditions (and tax revenue) they expect in exchange for the dues money they pay regularly.

Why is that so hard to understand? When Obama offers his prescription for jobs tonight to a joint session of Congress, the folks that Hoffa and other private-sector unions represent should let pass the partisan shots and thinly veiled anti-business riffs and consider submitting the president's overdue plan to a simple test:

Does it propose to ease tax and regulatory burdens on the businesses who employ people like them? Does it promise to deliver — finally — a federal budget that begins to offer some certainty to gyrating markets? Are his proposals more likely or less likely to benefit your employer, which could benefit you? Are whatever tax reforms he seeks permanent or the temporary kind that tend to deliver diminishing returns?

In short, does the president show any inclination to leverage the power of a well-capitalized private sector? Or is the core of his plan a bid to take advantage of historically low Treasury bill rates, to increase federal borrowing, to focus the proceeds on public works projects and direct aid to cities and states, leaving the bill for whomever comes next?

The answers will speak for themselves.

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110908/OPINION03/109080348/Howes--Hoffa-rant-riles-’em-up--doesn’t-create-jobs#ixzz1XOc2ybpj

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And you (general "you" not specific) can make it uglier.

If you want to discuss ideas, great.  let's discuss ideas.

If you want to discuss the candidates, great.  let's discuss candidates.

If you want to attack people - really? If you claim "tolerance" - put your money where your mouth is.  Prove it.  Treat those you disagree with politically as you want to be treated.

Why would I want to call somebody "friend" who obviously thinks badly of me because I'm a conservative?

I believe that the "run of the mill" voter who is liberal has bad ideas.

If that voter think that the "run of the mill" voter who is conservative is a bad person - just let me know now.  And stop telling me how bad conservatives are.

 

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I don't listen to Glenn Beck very often, but this caught my attention today.

Beck was talking about this New York Times opinion piece.  Mocking the Time's linking of a belief in God and a belief in space aliens seems absurd.

Then it hit me.

Beck is a Mormon.

The god of Mormonism IS a space alien.

If a candidate for president said he believed that space aliens dwell among us, would that affect your willingness to vote for him? Personally, I might not disqualify him out of hand; one out of three Americansbelieve we have had Visitors and, hey, who knows? But I would certainly want to ask a few questions. Like, where does he get his information? Does he talk to the aliens? Do they have an economic plan?

Yet when it comes to the religious beliefs of our would-be presidents, we are a little squeamish about probing too aggressively.

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The Church and the "Clobber Scriptures:" the Bible on Homosexuality

I think this is going to be an issue - some of the media have already targeted Herman Cain's personal stand on homosexuality, expanding it to his public behavior (the media coverage doesn't stand up to examination, but it won't keep them from trying, and it won't keep a lot of folks from buying.)

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Proof that S.F.’s circumcision ban Is anti-Semitic

As you may have heard by now, San Francisco will be voting this November on whether or not to ban circumcision in the city.

Defenders of the measure say it’s all about “human rights” and “protecting babies” from unnecessary procedures.

But critics suspected there was something vaguely anti-Semitic about the whole proposal, since among Jews (and Muslims, as well) circumcising male babies is a religious duty, not just a mistaken medical procedure.

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..just a little weird...but when a liberal government gets its fingers into things...yeah.

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how Guvmint works - Written by a consultant spying on the government
Guvmint and How Guvmint Works

Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said, "Someone may steal from it at night." So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job.

Then Congress said, "How does the watchman do his job without instruction?" So they created a planning department and hired two people, one person to write the instructions and one person to do time studies.

Then Congress said, "How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?" So they created a Quality Control department and hired two people, one to do the studies and one to write the reports.

Then Congress said, "How are these people going to get paid?" So they created two positions, a time keeper and a payroll officer, then hired two people.

Then Congress said, "Who will be accountable for all of these people?"

So they created an administrative section and hired three people, an Administrative Officer, an Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary.

Then Congress said, "We have had this command in operation for one year, and we are $918,000 over budget. We must cut back." So they laid off the night watchman.

NOW slowly, let that sink in.

Quietly, we go like sheep to slaughter.

Does anybody remember the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY..... during the Carter Administration?

Anybody?

Anything?

No?

Didn't think so!

Bottom line: We've spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency...the reason for which not one person who reads this can remember!

Ready?? It was very simple . . . and, at the time, everybody thought it very appropriate.

The Department of Energy was instituted on 8/04/1977 TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL.

Hey, pretty efficient, huh???

AND, NOW, IT'S 2011 -- 34 YEARS LATER -- AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS "NECESSARY" DEPARTMENT IS AT $24.2 BILLION A YEAR. ITHAS 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEESAND APPROXIMATELY 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES, ANDLOOK AT THE JOB IT HAS DONE! THIS IS WHERE YOU SLAP YOUR FOREHEAD AND SAY, "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?"

A little over 34 years ago, 30% of our oil consumption was foreign imports. Today 70% of our oil consumption is foreign imports.

Ah, yes -- the good old Federal bureaucracy!!

NOW, WE HAVE TURNED THE BANKING SYSTEM, HEALTH CARE,AND THE AUTO INDUSTRY OVER TO THE SAME GOVERNMENT?

Hello!! Anybody Home?

What are your thoughts on this?

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I read this article on March 8, 2009.  I blogged on it then and wrote this post on this day, setting it to publish on October 1, 2010 (about a month before mid-term elections.)

Barring unplanned things (like when I lost pages when I changed web hosts or if inflation gets so far out of hand that I stop paying for webhosting or internet services) this will post again on October 1, 2012.

An Open-Letter to My Pro-Obama Friends
By Bretigne Shaffer
Dear pro-Obama friends,

I got a call from one of you the day after the election.  You were so happy.  You had "not been so proud to be an American for... decades!"  You're living overseas, and you told me about watching the results in a bar with other Americans and how you were all hugging and crying you were so happy.  As I hung up the phone, I found that I felt happy for you too.

Most of you know that I supported neither McCain nor Obama, that I view them as equally opposed to peace and freedom and equally ignorant of sound economic principles.  I wasn't going to be happy with the election results no matter who won, so I can at least be glad that some of my friends are happy, and I am.  And after his first few days in office, even I have to admit that Obama has done some very good things for which he is receiving well-deserved praise.  It is not my intention to dismiss these accomplishments, nor is it my intent to rain on anyone's parade.  But I do want to ask you all a big favor.

I'm going to make some predictions about Obama's presidency.  Essentially, I'm going to predict that four years from now, an Obama presidency will not look very different from the George W. Bush presidency, or from what I imagine a John McCain presidency would bring.  If I'm wrong about this, then I promise that I will re-think my beliefs about our political system and about politics generally.  But if I am right, then I'm asking you to do the same.  I'm asking each of you to consider the seemingly bizarre proposition that there really is no significant difference between candidates offered up by the established party system; that Republican and Democrat are virtually indistinguishable; and that neither party has at heart the interests of you or me or "the American people."  I'm asking you to consider the possibility that continuing to vote for these people just helps to perpetuate the very ills you seek to cure.

So here are my predictions.  I'm going to leave aside areas such as the environment (I don't believe that government solutions to environmental problems will help anyone other than special interest groups — many of you probably don't agree with me) and wealth redistribution (I'm old fashioned and believe that theft is wrong even when the government does it) because we may not be on the same page on these issues.  (However, on the issue of wealth redistribution, I will say this:  Do you really believe that the same man who voted to bail out billionaire bankers at the expense of ordinary taxpayers is really going to help the poor stick it to the rich?  Really?)

I'll stick to the areas where I think most of us agree:  War and foreign policy; civil liberties; and the economy.

Let's start with war and foreign policy.  Obama was not an anti-war candidate, and he is not an anti-war president.  His opposition to the US occupation of Iraq was based not on a principled stance against pre-emptive invasion and occupation of a foreign country, but on his view that it had damaged the US's credibility and therefore its ability to engage in military interventions in the future.  Senator Obama voted to continue funding the Iraq war and voted against a 2007 pullout in June of 2006.  He does not plan to bring troops home from Iraq, but to redeploy them in Afghanistan, and he "support[s] plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 soldiers and the Marine Corps by 27,000 Marines." (from Obama's website, change.gov)

In an article for Foreign Affairs last year, Obama said "I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened."  (Emphasis mine.)  He has promised AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) that he will "...do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.  Everything."  Coming from the future leader of one of the most heavily nuclear-armed nations in the world, these are chilling words.  Prior to his election, Obama also spoke of expanding the war on terror to Pakistan (indeed, by the end of his first week in office, he had already ordered air strikes on villages in Pakistan, killing at least 17 people including three children), and prior to his inauguration he remained silent as the Israeli government killed hundreds of civilians in Gaza with weapons provided by the US government.

The sad truth of the matter is that George W. Bush in 2000 ran on more of an anti-war platform than did Obama in 2008.  Indeed, the danger inherent in a President Obama is that he will be perceived as being less bellicose than Bush or McCain.  I believe that this will allow him to get away with even more than McCain might have, as he will face neither the public opposition nor opposition in Congress that a Republican president would have.

So, here are my foreign policy predictions:

At the end of Obama's first four-year term:

1. The US will still have an active military presence in Iraq.
2. The US will have attacked at least one more country that poses no direct threat to us.  (I'm not even going to count his early air strikes on Pakistan.)
3. Military spending will have increased.
4. US citizens will be no safer from terrorist attacks. I say this because I believe the (sadly all-too-accurate) perception of the US as an imperialist warmongering nation will persist.  I realize this one is open to interpretation.  I would just ask you to honestly ask yourselves at the end of these four years whether this is the case.

My one caveat to this section is this: If the US government becomes financially unable to maintain its empire abroad, then Obama's military aspirations may be hampered by budget constraints.  However I maintain (and Obama's own words support me here) that this will not be because of any lack of will on his part.

Moving on to civil liberties and human rights, I have to admit that this is the one area where Obama's presidency is already looking different from that of his predecessor.  In his first few days in office, President Obama signed executive orders to 1) close Guantanamo within a year; 2) officially ban the use of torture in the military; 3) close the CIA-run secret prisons around the world; and 4) review detention policies and procedures and review individual detention cases.  He has also suspended the military trials at Guantanamo for 120 days, and has acted to combat government secrecy.  These are all good things and Obama is receiving well-deserved praise for them.

More important though, the fundamental problems facing civil liberties and human rights in this country do not stem from the operation of some detention centers.  The damage inflicted has its roots in such things as the USA PATRIOT ACT (which Obama voted to re-authorize), drug law enforcement, and the repudiation of the very foundation of due process of law, habeas corpus.  The big questions then, are: 1) whether Obama's administration will actually follow through on his executive orders and close Guantanamo, close the CIA prisons and truly end torture (there is also of course the question of what will then happen to the detainees); and 2) whether Obama will be able to tackle the more fundamental problems such as restoring habeas corpus and due process.

And there are some fundamental issues that Obama has not even taken on.  While he is aware of the fact that more than one percent of American adults, and one out of every nine black men, are in prison, he does not tackle this issue head on.  Nor does he really address the war on drugs in its entirety, nor the increasingly dangerous police state it has helped to spawn.  To his credit, he has promised to end the illegal federal raids on medical marijuana clinics, and to eliminate the inherently racist sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine.  However these measures don't even come close to addressing the fundamental problem that is the drug war itself.  And some of his moves so far do not inspire hope:  His appointment of Eric Holder, formerly a big proponent of mandatory minimum sentencing is worrisome.  Even more disturbing, Obama has pledged to strengthen two federal programs ("Community Oriented Policing Services" (COPS) and the Byrne grant program) that have actually contributed to increased militarization of local police forces.

My predictions, then, are a bit more muted than in the other sections.  On some of the big questions I listed above, I do not have any predictions.  I hope that he does do all of these things, and if he does I will give him credit for it, and even admit that he may be better than McCain in this one area after all (although remember McCain said he was against torture too).  To me though, real change means more than simply reversing the most outrageous of measures put in place by the previous administration.  However if under Obama habeas corpus and/or due process (including an end to warrant-less searches and seizures) are fully restored, then I will absolutely admit that there are significant differences between the two men, and I will reconsider my view that real change cannot come through the political process.

I am also very concerned about Obama's plans for what amounts to compulsory national service for young people.  The idea is that schools receiving federal funds will be strong-armed into implementing "service" (for government-approved endeavors of course) as part of their graduation requirements.  I am not going to include this in my predictions however as I really don't have a strong view on whether this will come to pass or not.

What I do predict is the following.  By the end of Obama's first term in office:

1. More than 1% of US adults will still be in prison.  This number will very likely be even higher than it is today, and the black and Hispanic portion of that population will not have decreased by any significant amount.
2. We will still suffer from the kind of police abuse that is becoming more and more common: military-style raids on unarmed civilians in their homes; the shooting and tasering of unarmed citizens; and police and judicial corruption leading to the jailing of many more innocent people than can be acceptable under any system.  The militarization and aggressive behavior of police forces will probably become worse before they get any better.  This is another one that is somewhat open to interpretation.  I would ask you to rely on your own honest judgement regarding whether you believe things have really changed in this area.
3. "No-Fly" lists will still be in place, and there may even be more restrictions on travel.
4. There will be more restrictions on gun ownership and the right to self-defense.
5. The police tactics and suppression of dissent at the 2012 RNC and DNC conventions will be just as brutal as they were in 2008.
6. Government surveillance of US citizens will continue (remember that bill Obama voted for that gave immunity to the telecoms companies that assisted with this in the past?),

Now for the easy part: the economy.

It is true that President Obama has inherited a tremendous problem from the previous administration.  Any president would be hard-pressed to come out of the next four years claiming victory in this area.  In fact, the best that anyone could do would be to not make things any worse by allowing markets to function, overvalued assets to depreciate and poorly run companies to fail.  Barack Obama is not going to do that.

With his support for the massive financial-industry bailouts, and his plans for stimulus packages to get the economy on track again, President Obama is doing all the wrong things.  What got us into this mess was too much borrowing and spending, too much government involvement in markets, and now he wants to implement more of the same as the solution.  I'm not even going to ask you all to agree with my assessment.  Just watch what happens.

My prediction:  By the end of Obama's first four years in office, the US economy will be in much, much worse shape than it is now.  Specifically:

1. The US will have massive inflation.  The dollar will lose at least 50% of its value against most goods and services, and certainly against the goods and services most people use every day.  This is a very conservative estimate.  It will probably be much worse.
2. Unemployment in the US will be worse than it is now.  It will be at least in the double digits.

Maybe you all have a different concept of what "change" means than I do.  If so, then fair enough.  But for me, at a bare minimum, any real change cannot possibly include a continuation of the US government's interventionist and imperialist foreign policy.  Nor can it include the maintenance of the police state that allows government agents to spy on US citizens, burst into their homes in the dead of night armed to the teeth, seize the property of people not even connected to crime s, shoot and taser non-violent citizens with impunity and incarcerate nearly 1% of the population — or incarcerate anyone for crimes that have no victims.  I believe that these things will continue unabated under the Obama administration.

If you agree with me that the continuation of these problems would not constitute the kind of "change" you are looking for, then I'm asking you to accept my challenge:  If, by the end of Obama's first term in office, these areas are not significantly different from how they are now — that is, if the US is as much an imperialist, warmongering state as it is today, if civil liberties at home are no more protected than they are today and if the economy is in significantly worse shape than it is today — then I will ask you to admit that you were wrong about Obama.  More than that, I'm going to ask you to rethink your views on about the political process more broadly.  And I promise to do the same.

For years, I have said that real progress towards peace, freedom and respect for individual rights cannot come from working within the very system that sustains itself through war and the expansion of state power over people's lives.  If in fact the Obama administration does herald great and significant change in these areas that we agree upon, then I promise to rethink these beliefs.

Let me correct myself on one point.  Up above I said that there was no discernible difference between the Republicans and Democrats, or between McCain and Obama.  That's not quite true.  Obama is smarter.  He will pursue his ends in a more intelligent and a more publicly palatable way than John McCain would have, and he will very likely be more successful in attaining them because of it.  But what remains the same are the ends themselves.  Ultimately, both parties stand for upholding American empire overseas and expanding the scope of the state in people's lives and the economy at home.  If I am wrong about this, then I promise to re-think everything.  But if I am not, then I hope you will do the same.  Let's talk again in four years.

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Washington (CNN) -- Facing a bruising midterm election in less than four months, President Barack Obama's aides are putting together an aggressive schedule to deploy former President Bill Clinton at campaign and fundraising events in key states around the country, according to Democratic officials familiar with the plans.

"It's a no-brainer you would use one of the most talented politicians the country has ever had," said one Democratic official familiar with the discussions. "There are few as good at laying out the contrast with Republicans."

It could work...remembering Clinton's mid-term election...

While Clinton came into office with a Democratic majority in 1992, Republicans romped to huge political victories in ’94, winning a majority in the House for the first time in 40 years. Throughout the rest of his years in office, Clinton faced a Republican congressional leadership that mistrusted and disliked him, helping to lead to his 1998 impeachment for the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Bill Clinton is a good fund-raiser...but I say, go for it.

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blog update...as of 10:00 AM Sunday morning, I'm down to 983 uncategorized posts.

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On "The Private War in The Mind" from Reformation Theology

Yet there is a reality to spiritual warfare and it is something God certainly wants us to know about, or else He would not have revealed it to us in His Word. If we just stay with the Scripture, we will be on safe and sure ground. God wants us to understand the warfare, know our enemy and live a life free from his clutches.

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Hillbuzz on waking up Americans:

this paragraph is talking about why the Republicans don't seem to be all that interested in winning:

Maybe these men truly don’t know how to do that…but we think it’s more like the Washington Generals knowing they have a pretty good racket losing basketball games to the Globetrotters, so why start working harder and winning when the script their all following says they need to lose in the end (if they want to keep their cushy existence as the lovable losers).

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A good article on gay marriage by "The Gay Patriot"

If you feel a victim because the state doesn’t call your union what you want to call it, well, then you have really politicized your psyche.

He says that gay marriage (the union of 2 people) already exists, what they lack is state recognition.  If they went for the recognition of the union (without calling it "marriage"), they would have the rights of the state recognition of the union.

A commenter said,

Even for straights, a State marriage license is a thing created by State legislation (which I call a privilege); not a thing which morally precedes the State and exists apart from it (which I call a fundamental right).

Which is why, in certain circumstances, I would decline piece of paper that tells me that the state has given me permission to marry.

That's God's job, not the state's.

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