Tuesday thoughts

Just some thoughts:

1) we spent last year listening to Democrats harping that we didn't have enough troops on the ground (from Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Kerry, et al), that that represented a failure on the part of the administration. Now we're listening to the same people complaining that we have as many boots on the ground that we have. Then, we weren't supporting the Iraq process toward government enough; now we're "there too long" -- which says nothing of the fact that, in the interim, we've had one election (successful), a constitutional assembly that produced a constitution (successful), and are on the cusp of the next election. What we have last year are Dems arguing that we need to support "the process" (elections, forming a constitution, etc.); what we have this year are that they don't care about the process anymore, it's "going too long". Which is historically ignorant and dangerous -- remember, it took the United States literally DECADES to secure itself as a democracy. Note to Dems: make up your mind. Stop playing politics with something that will literally affect the world going forward and OFFER A VIABLE, REALISTIC alternative.
2) Moveon.Org has already demonstrated over and over again that they don't care what facts are, they'll just run whatever ads they think supports their positions. Case in point: the latest ad, criticising U.S. troops, which they finally just pulled. Why is this agregious? Because the ad showed troops in shorts in chow lines... who were BRITISH, not U.S. troops. When confronted with the error of their ad, Moveon.Org... didn't do the decent and honest thing and withdraw the ad with an apology, they touched up the ad and graphically darkened the uniforms to look more like U.S. uniforms and touched up the shorts to look like full-length pants -- or, rephrased, they refused to pull the lie and furthered it by deliberately tailoring a photo to represent something that wasn't. When confronted (finally) about their blatant hypocrisy and lies, they have finally withdrawn the ad altogether. What is astonishing is that any American (or any person of the world) would give money to an organization that knowingly and deliberately falsifies information in order to push its politics. Note to MoveON: if you can't make your arguments without falsifying information and deliberately lying, you might want to reconsider the merit of your arguments. Second note: grow up.
3) Firefly. Nothing to do with politics. Just a note on how grateful I am to the powers-that-be that they released the Firefly series DVD with the episodes in the order they should have been run (as opposed to Fox's idiocy of running the series out-of-order). Wish the movie (Serenity) had made more bucks, but hopefully they'll resurrect the series on SciFi -- it drew more viewers on Fox than anything on SciFi, including the new Battlestar Galactica and the two Stargates, so it would be a shoo-in. Fantastic series, deep characterisations, morals without being "in your face" or preachy about it... nothing like it on television now (a shame).
4) Note to Republicans: keep pushing to get drilling in the arctic (we're talking about a few hundred square miles in the midst of literally tens of thousands of square miles), it's worth it to get at the huge reservoir of oil up there. Go back and rewrite the moronic bankruptcy bill that was passed -- start by junking what was passed and actually focus on helping people instead of crushing them. Stand up for what's right -- deposing a dictator who used poison gas on his own people and on other nations, who set up "rape rooms" in his palaces, who did things far more disgusting than even those, is NEVER a bad thing, nor an improper thing. There is NO decency in arguing that the Iraqis were "better off" in Saddam's world, where women were grabbed off the streets and mass-raped and worse. It's a pity there are so few Republicans with backbones who will stand up and say so, forcibly and with conviction. There are a few Democrats (VERY few), like Joe Leiberman -- nice to see a rational adult among the Dems.

Cindy Sheehan, the ongoing saga

So we have the latest from Cindy Sheehan to dwell on. Seems that she wrote a letter to the President's Mother, criticising the former first lady's parental skills.

First, when other grieving mothers of sons and daughters who have died in Iraq tried to write to Sheehan during the summer, we were treated to Miss Sheehan complaining how despicable and unworthy these other grieving mothers were, for daring to disagree with her and for addressing themselves to her and her actions. That's an interesting (and arrogant) standard, one which we now have Miss Sheehan violating herself. If it was so "despicable" for someone who disagreed with her to write her, it's also despicable when she does it herself. But then, that would require Cindy Sheehan to actually apply the standard she forces on the world around her to herself.

Second, she again repeats the tired refrains we've all heard before. The war was for oil. Well, that doesn't even pass the smell test. Were we interested in cheap oil, as she implies, we would have simply lifted the sanctions and gone back to working with Hussein, as we did as a nation in the 1980s. THAT would have guaranteed cheap oil -- not continuing to apply sanctions. If the war were "for oil", then after militarily defeating Hussein we would have at least immediately upgraded the Iraqi oil infrastructure so that it could immediately begin pumping oil at high quantities. We didn't. We would have nationalized the oil infrastructure, to let us control it -- we didn't. We did literally NOTHING after defeating Hussein militarily that would result in "cheap oil" -- which is the point. If cheap oil were the goal, we wouldn't have gone to war in the first place; if cheap oil were a goal of the war itself, we would have done things very differently than we did. At no point does the phrase "the war was for oil" reach anything approaching even logical -- it is transparently ideological, which does not require the same honest standard as logic.

Lastly, we again are treated to Miss Sheehan's ongoing hubris. When she put up crosses in Texas with the names of the dead soldiers on them, she didn't bother to find out if that was okay with the other grieving mothers of those soldiers -- she just did it, piously standing over those crosses and lecturing the world. When those grieving mothers showed up to remove the crosses with THEIR children's names on them, we were treated to Miss Sheehan -- putting them back up. She demands that we respect her as a "grieving mother", and that that instantly qualifies her as an expert on international affairs, and that that instantly makes her worthy of respect -- but she refuses to give the same respect to other grieving mothers. Not only is that a double standard, it's a particularly heinous double standard -- if one grieving mother is worth respect and listening to, then they all are, even if they happen to disagree with Miss Sheehan.

Then again, that evidently never bothered to occur to her as she was angrily telling those other grieving mothers that they shouldn't speak up or take up "her microphone time" (love that phrase). Sort of like the enormous respect she showed the survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita -- when she complained that she wasn't being listened to anymore or getting airtime, and I quote, "because of a little rain and wind which aren't nearly as important as what I'm trying to say". A little rain and wind? Can you show any more disrespect for people who just had their lives thrown into utter disarray, their homes ruined, their loved-ones killed? A Cat-5 hurricane, a "little rain and wind"? But that isn't the worst part, it's what's behind the words that's horrible. We're treated again to the fact that, in Cindy Sheehan's world, she's the only one who should ever get any attention, she's the only expert on whatever she's saying, and no one else, particularly those who disagree with her but also those who suffered through the hurricanes, should get any attention.

As standard-bearers and spokespersons go, she is literally the worst for any cause. What happened to the day when liberalism had intellectually-honest spokespeople like Daniel Patrick Moynihan? Where did those honest, thoughtful liberals go? Or have the Michael "never-saw-a-fact-I-couldn't-ignore" Moore and Cindy "respect grieving mothers, but only THIS grieving mother" Sheehan chased them out of the party?

Frightening.

playing politics

The worst thing a politician (or political party) can do is play politics - by which I mean, pursue something for purely political reasons, regardless of reason, philosophy (even their own), or standard.

Let's look at the elections of George W. Bush. The Dems and their interest groups ranged far and wide to talk up his personal failings in the far past - as far back as his teen-age years, back into the sixties. We were told by the Dems that that sort of thing mattered, since those years are the "formulative" ones that help form who we become. We were told that it all mattered, because it proved -- proved! -- that the George W. Bush of today was the same person as the George W. Bush back then.

Let's look at the election of Bill Clinton. The Dems and their interest groups ranged far and wide trying to assert that past behavior didn't matter, that it didn't matter how many women accused him of rape (rape!) or sexual assault if it were all "in the past", that his writing the phrase "I can't go in the military, I have to maintain my political viability" at age eighteen didn't matter because it was "all in the past and that has no bearing on who he is now". We had Dems saying what one did during the Vietnam War didn't matter, that deferments didn't matter and were perfectly honorable, that Bill Clinton's deferments (to "maintain his political viability", which is an amazing statement from a college-age person, and a horribly cynical one from an adult) were fine and we shouldn't waste our time looking at these things.

OK. I hope all the rational people out there are reading carefully, because the sheer arrogance of the Democratic Party's double-standards is breathtaking. What they say is this: if you're a Democrat, it doesn't matter what you did in the past, or why you did it, because we need you to get elected. If you're a Republican, you'd best not have stepped on a spider on a sidewalk at age five, 'cause we're going to spend the time and money to investigate your past all the way back to that point. If you're Bill Clinton, you can go to Moscow and other European stops during the Vietnam War, using your deferment, "to maintain your political viability", and that's fine, and we shouldn't be looking at that, because it doesn't matter anyway, it was all so long ago; but if you're George Bush, we'll look at the same time-period and the fact that Bush flew in the Air National Guard and was honorably discharged... and find a way to smear that somehow, because after all it does matter what Bush did back then. Of course, the fact that even Mary Mapes and her five years of trying to smear Bush on this issue, by contorting it to show that he didn't really show up all the time and that therefore he was somehow lesser a person and a liar, turned up... evidence to the contrary, and that her only "evidence" to support her position turned out to be totally corruptible (forged documents; witnesses who were lifelong active Democrats with a record of among other things forging documents and lying to smear people).

If you're Bill Clinton, Dems turn a blind eye to his avoiding the draft, as I've said -- but we get Dems currently slamming Dick Cheney's deferments, as though not being in the military prevents a rational human being from being able to formulate national policy (also another thing that was said about Bill Clinton, who didn't serve at all, and to which we were treated to Dems saying that it doesn't matter if you serve, human beings are capable of rationally thinking out policy regardless).

The sheer hubris of this sort of enormous double-standard SHOULD be the sort of thing that the press takes up and holds up for criticism -- but it doesn't. I haven't decided what's actually doing more damage to this country, long-term: the arrogance of the Democrat Party's double-standards (which are as malleable as the wind, and utterly determined by which Party you belong to), or the absolute failure of the American Media to do its duty and through exposure hold up this sort of double-standard for all to see and thereby contribute to eliminating hte use of such double standards.

Here's a clue: we should have one set of standards by which to judge people. If we argue in the 1990s that it doesn't matter what one did during Vietnam, then it shouldn't suddenly start mattering in the 2000s. If we argue that one's past doesn't matter, it only matters what we say today, then that standard should apply across the board to our opponents as well. That's why we call them "standards".

What we have today from the Dems aren't standards and certainly aren't philosophies-of-worth: we have crass politics, double-standards, and whatever else they need to do to finally pull out an electoral win.

This column is more than happy to criticise Republicans (as we've done), but with regards to the standards each party holds and demonstrates, there is a clear uneven balance at work. The Republicans didn't like Ruth Bader Ginsburg or her policies, but they applied the same standard to her as they applied before and they voted her through, because she was the President's choice. The Dems at the time went out of their way to tell her, on the record, how to avoid answering questions, not to prejudge cases, etc. Fast forward again to the present day, and we have Dems complaining when the current nominees (from a non-Democrat President) do the same thing for the same reasons, and we have Republicans... arguing again that the President should get his pick. Which party is running a double-standard there? Hint: it's not the Republicans.

Only when the people of the United States stop accepting (and indeed being complicit, through our votes or non-voting, in) these double standards will the system begin to correct itself and will philosophy begin to reassert itself over ideology, will reason reassert itself over crass political maneuvering, and will actual, HONEST debates once more be possible.

So, I guess the conclusion is: the Democrats as above are guilty of the worst sort of double-standards, the Press is guilty for pretending these things don't exist or don't matter, and the People of the United States are guilty for either accepting double standards or not being smart enough or educated enough to realise the profound negativity that double standards create.

Sad.

Dems, Abortion Politics, and the Alito nomination

Well, I would have said it would be hard for Washtington, D.C., to offer up lunacy in excess of what we've already seen this year, but lo! along comes Democratic Senator Reid to disprove that.

Sen. Reid, Democrat Minority Leader of the Senate, says he has "concerns" about Supreme Court Nominee Alito, concerns rooted in a writing of Alito's from 1985 in which he expressed the idea that the right to abortion "is nowhere found in the Constitution". The Democrat line is that such a statement is enough to make one "a zealot", "likely to roll back our civil and abortion rights", "extreme", and also therefore likely to overturn Roe V. Wade.

Hm. Let me roll the clock back to the 1980s. What do Dick Durbin and Al Gore, among many, many other Democrats, have in common in the early part of the 1980s? They were, by their own words, pro-Life and against abortion and against Roe vs Wade. They didn't have their big epiphanies (read: realising that being pro Roe v. Wade, pro-Choice, would be better for a politician in the Democratic party) until during the 1980s and into the late 1980s. Hm. Wouldn't that, according to Harry Reid's standard, make Al Gore and Dick Durbin (Senator, Illinois, Democrat) "extreme", "likely to roll back our civil and abortion rights"? It would, if Senator Reid were interested in applying his standards honestly. Of course, Senator Reid is counting on the bulk of the people to not be aware of these little things we call Facts (that Al Gore was pro-life in his early political career and changed course only well into the 1980s, for instance). He's counting on playing his little criticism and expecting people to just nod and go "yup".

Here's the fallacy: no writings have come up from the intervening twenty years (since 1985) that would indicate that Alito would vote that way. We do have the sheer tonnage of Judge Alito's decades on the bench and all his rulings to look at --but if we do that honestly and fairly, you won't find any indication that he'd overturn Roe v. Wade. In fact, you'd find rulings that respect Precedent (we can argue over whether respecting Precedent is a good thing or a bad thing, or a bad thing when done blindly and without thought, later), which would incline him toward NOT voting to overturn Roe v. Wade.

But again, Senator Reid and his ilk don't want you to think for yourself or bother yourself with little nasty things like facts, or realising that, by the standard he offers up to criticise Alito, he would have to also then criticise, in the same words, folks like Al Gore, Dick Durbin, and many other once-Pro-Life Democrats who became Pro-Choice only later in their political lives.

Final word: it would be nice if the American Press were doing its job and pointing out when this sort of blatant hypocricy and extraordinarily dishonest reasoning was offered up. There are some good folks out there who do try to hold people to standards, or at least to point out that they should be applying their own standards fairly and against all those who don't match up; but the vast reaches of the mass media aren't bothering to do that anymore.

Instead, we get "the war was for oil" (if it was for oil, we'd have record-low gas prices, not the contrary; we'd have rebuilt the Iraqi oil industry quickly and turned up the tap, which we didn't do; etc.; the statement is so shorn of inherent logic as to be nonsensical, but it's passed on by the bulk of the media as though it were Written Fact.) and other nonsense that doesn't even hold up to its own inherent logic. We get Mary Mapes, who still doesn't understand that reporters aren't supposed to reach conclusions that are CONTRARY to the facts they uncover.

So, to Harry Reid: grow up. Apply your words and standards, as you should if you actually believe what you're saying, to everyone equally. And start criticising Al Gore, Dick Durbin, and the other Democrats who were pro-life at one time each and every time you criticise Alito and imply that people can't "grow" or "change" in the space of 20 years. (oops, I forgot: for Democrats, you're only allowed to change or nuance your opinions if you're a Democrat; and we aren't to look at a person's past when considering them for public office (so we heard about Bill Clinton), unless that person's a Republican, in which case it's fair game to go back forty and fifty years).

What a pathetic way to behave. And what a terrible thing that too many Americans just swallow this spewage and nod and applaud.

Oops, forgot one more thing (how very Columbo-like!): perfectly intelligent human beings can argue, quite persuasively, that there is no guarantee to protect Abortion (in Democrat's terms) in the Constitution, and that therefore overturning Roe V Wade would be the constitutional thing to do. And those same human beings may actually SUPPORT the concept of "abortion rights", but find supporting something that isn't constitutional inherently wrong. And, to go one more step, they might also then argue that the states would immediately pass laws protecting (or not) those rights, according to the belief of their citizens. Strange how that sounds -- like the way the U.S. Constitution was written to work. Hm...

Random Thoughts

The topic: Abortion.
The issue: the word "choice" and its implications.

We're told that women should have the right to "choose" what to do with their bodies, aka with respect to having abortions. That's "pro-choice" within U.S. political lexicon.

I have a problem with this. The pro-choice argument is that women are capable of making informed decisions for themselves with regard to having an abortion, that they're smart enough and should be counted wise enough to make such a decision (even at age twelve, one should point out). Why are we cutting off the "choice" at this point? Why should they be wise enough to choose to have an abortion -- only at that point in life? Why aren't they using this wisdom and intelligence when it comes to the choice that starts it all -- having sex in the first place?

My two-cents: if someone chooses -- chooses -- to behave in a certain way, they should be responsible for the consequences. That should be true for any and all behavior choices, not just abortion. If you choose to have sex, I say that your wisdom and intelligence should be applied at that point -- not just afterward.

The consequence of having sex is pregnancy and the creation of a unique living being (arguing over when life begins is pointless; the only way a unique human being is formed is through pregnancy, and the potential for such a life is started the moment the act is consumated and the "stuff" that makes babies begins evolving). If you choose to have sex, you should have to accept the responsibility for your actions. The CHOICE doesn't start AFTER a pregnancy has formed, but it starts by choosing to do the thing that creates the pregnancy in the first place. If a 12-yr old, as pro-choice arguments go, is smart and wise enough to go get an abortion because she chose to have sex and "got pregnant", she should by definition have been smart and wise enough to avoid getting pregnant altogether. If she isn't smart and wise enough to make the decision to avoid having sex, then she isn't smart and wise enough to be choosing to have an abortion. The pro-choice argument is precisely that: that wisdom and intelligence should only be expected AFTER the act, not prior to the act, that causes pregnancy. That women are wise and smart enough to choose to have an abortion (or not; and this includes 12-yr. olds, courtesy of California law, remember), but not wise and smart enough to think about consequences before choosing to have sex.

My final two-cents: if you choose to have sex, you should have to live with the consequences of that choice. If you didn't choose (rape, incest, etc. are not choices, ergo not included in this), then you should have the option to apply your wisdom and intelligence to the problem and resolve it to your own conscience (abort or not). By arguing that choice only takes place after pregnancy, the pro-choice side is effectively arguing: that we are free to have sex as wantonly as we choose and at whatever age we choose, because we aren't to be held responsible for the consequences of those actions.

None of this says that the choice to have an abortion is a simple or easy one. It isn't. And that's precisely the point: it isn't simple and it isn't easy, and it does and should require careful thought and consideration before choosing to do so. When pro-choice arguments advocate 12-yr olds being wise and smart enough to choose to have an abortion, and when they argue against laws that would require the 12-yr old to notify her parents without the parents being given any ability to prevent it (mere notification, even if it's from the doctor's office), then they are literally advocating consequence-free sex, and assigning to abortion the absence of any consequence. And they're arguing that this amazing wisdom and intelligence is only applicable and should only be considered at the time of abortion, not in the choosing of the act that leads to pregnancy -- selective application of intelligence and wisdom, timed so because if they argued consistently, they'd realise that there's little intelligence of wisdom in, for instance, the woman I worked with a few years back who was on her fourth abortion. What was her story? She was single, she liked sex, and she thought nothing of having an abortion or of changing her behavior. And she never will, in a world where excuse the consequences of having sex and only think of "choice" as existing after sex, not before.

Joe Wilson, Democrats, and chronology

There's an interesting side to the Joe Wilson story that none seem to want to look at -- at least, none on the Left side of politics, none of the antiwar crowd.

When Joe Wilson, who went to Niger to check up on stories of Hussein's attempts to trade for nuclear-weapon component materials, first got back, the CIA and the British intelligence agencies summed up his mission thusly:

That Mr. Wilson's efforts showed that Saddam Hussein was attempting to open new trading possibilities with Niger; that Niger's chief exports are goats and the raw ore that facilitates nuclear weapon-building; that by showing an effort to open trade with Niger, the most likely odds are that Hussein is trying to obtain those materials necessary to build nuclear weapons.

I would add that it is rather hard to believe that Hussein would be trying to get goats from Niger. Sarcasm intended. World data shows that Niger's chief exports are livestock (hence, "goats" for sarcasm) and yellowcake. If, as Joe Wilsons' report states, that Iraq was looking to open trade with Niger, it makes little sense for them to be looking to trade for livestock. And that only leaves... yellowcake.

So no one, at any intelligence agency, remembers the summary of Joe Wilson's efforts the way Joe Wilson does. And no intelligence agency conclusion supports the version Joe Wilson tells now, either. In fact, reading Mr. Wilson's report, a reasonable conclusion is exactly what the intelligence agencies came up with: it's nonsensical to assume Hussein needed livestock, and that leaves yellowcake as a trading material.

The Senate Intelligence committee's years-long investigation and report on this also indicated and documented Joe Wilson as a liar and verified the chronology (which makes Mr. Wilson's now-selective memory of events also, er, mistaken) of what happened and when. The investigation by Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald specifically stated that he is not indicting anyone for "outing" Valerie Plame, nor for anything else specific to the Wilson/Plame affair. In fact, the very splashy way that Mr. Wilson has been "outing" his own wife, particularly in their many magazine covers, renders his complaints largely moot. The Senate committee also said in its report that no one outed Ms. Plame, that the reporter's use of her name in no way impacted her ability to do her job, and that such complaints were 'without merit'. Yet Mr. Wilson and his wife continue to complain - and to rake in the cash that their now-celebrity status gives them, from the book tour, the lecture circuit, magazines, etc. I love it when someone complains that they've been "harmed" and can't make money like they used to -- even as they rake in more money than ever through lectures, talks, books, etc.

The sad affair of the American Left with a host of hypocritical, nonsensical spokespersons continues. From Michael "I never saw a fact I could ignore if it supported the conclusion I made BEFORE I investigated" Moore to Cindy "women were better off under Hussein than they are now" Sheehan to Joe "Ignore what I wrote when I got back, everyone was wrong but me" Wilson. There was a day when the Left had some geniune, deeply thoughtful philosophers on their side, like Daniel Patrick Moynihan. That the Left has sunk so far as to be holding up hypocrites and apalling creatures like Sheehan as their heroes is not simply disgusting but truly and deeply saddening.

The little "stunt" of closing the Senate to a closed-door session early this week only furthers the Left's self-denial of reality. They complain about prewar Intelligence -- but remember, these same Democrats were privvy to the same intelligence the President had, and we can run down their quotes in support not simply of the war but of the idea that Hussein, whether or not he had WMDs, had to be stopped BEFORE he could acquire such things. Of course, their own memories have to be ignored, their own statements ignored, in order for their current argument ("Bush lied") to be valid. Especially since it makes they themselves liars, since they argued and stated clearly the same things they accuse Bush of "lying" about.

What is similar about all these things? The reliance on the Left of taking advantage of ignorance. They want to be able to "create" truth simply by stating something is true, rather than taking verifiable information and relating that as truth. They want to prejudge information before having the facts -- so, they "know" Bush lied about WMD's, rather than simply having relied on the best possible intelligence and made conclusions from that; so, they "know" that Karl Rove is guilty and should step down, despite the fact that the Special Prosecutor and the Grand Jury have said specifically that he has not been indicted nor even accused of anything yet, nor that they will do so. They "know" that Hussein wasn't going after WMD's, despite the obvious intelligence to the contrary (as indicated above), despite Bill Clinton's, and many Senate Democrat's, assertions in the late 1990s and early 2000s that Hussein had to be stopped, that he was clearly after WMD's, that he had to be stopped before he acquired them, etc.

So they make statements that are not proven and many not true, despite knowing the contrary, because it serves their ideological and political purposes. One of these days, it would be nice to have our politicians actually wait until an investigation was over and actual facts were known BEFORE they made their conclusions. You know, like we're taught to in our 100-level college courses, or even in junior high school.

Religion and Politics

I've been listening to various religious-oriented issues as they crop up recently. These issues in our public forum make me wonder if anyone, including Senators, Congressmen, and lawyers and judges around this country have ever bothered to actually read the Constitution and the writings of our forefathers.

The founding fathers of the United States wrote that very special piece of the Constitution regarding the establishment of religion and forbidding said establishment to prevent the United States from suffering the same problems the European governments, across time, suffered from. Consider the phrase: the establishment of religion. What does that mean? The definition of "establishment" is the creation of or validation of some "thing", in this case religion, through an act -- or, rephrased, the creation of a state-defined and state-backed religion.

So consider: how does talking about the concept that the universe was created by a specific and deliberate source, rather than the happenstance of science, become "unconstitutional" or threaten to create a state-religion? It doesn't. There are multiple theories out there regarding the creation of everything -- big bang theory (but what was there before the "core" that became the big bang, to have created that "core"?); creationism (someone or something that is self-creating thus created everything, usually referred to as God). Is it not better to discuss different perspectives, to encourage children to actually begin to think for themselves? How can they learn to assess varying perspectives and viewpoints, if they are denied specifically the option to learn about the other ideas? Or: how can we say that we deny children and teenagers the capacity to talk about creationism, but we push the idea of a supposedly-neutral scientific perspective -- thereby not just closing the door on anyone thinking for themselves, but denying the school the capacity to encourage children to learn not WHAT to think but HOW to think.

The call that talking about both things somehow would be "establishing" religion is utterly bogus. Is discussing Fascism versus Mercantilism an "establishment" of Fascism? The two are exactly the same, in principle: simply presenting the varying perspectives and then discussing them and pointing out the strengths/flaws of these perspectives doesn't establish anything... other than an open and informed discussion, which is what each and every school should not only encourage but have as its principle purpose. When we claim that we cannot talk about God, or anything remotely religious (which in the United States tends to be specifically anything Judeo-Christian, since we simultaneously argue for the rights of every other religion to be able to express itself, without even seeing the glaring hypocrisy of that), then we aren't protecting a non-establishment of religion but we are closing off discussion, a public debate, and informing people of varying perspectives.

I'd rather be presented with what National Socialism in Germany was about, and realise the evils that came with it, than just be told "can't talk about it" or "it's bad". Neither of those things does anything but create closed minds and encourage a closed thinking environment. I'd rather be shown the pluses and minuses across time of Islam, and Catholicism, and so forth, since those things were and remain a large motivation in history. How can we look at the creation of everything, without acknowledging the enormous and overriding influences of religion through the tens of thousands of years of human history?

The real focus of those who offer up "the establishment clause" as the reason you can't talk at all about anything that might be called "religious" by the self-appointed guardians of the government is far more aggravating. They don't want to let children/teenagers think for themselves, they don't want to present varying perspectives before them to encourage debate: they want to close the door on all such things and present only the perspective that they, themselves, approve of. They are part of an overall trend in U.S. history toward not simply avoiding a state-established religion but to push as much of the Judeo-Christian experience and history out of public life. There is nothing about teaching creationism in its own terms, side by side with other theories, that establishes religion or requires it to be the "this is the only right" perspective. But by denying the discussion, by refusing to allow for freedom of thought and refusing the debate, they are saying the exact and equivalent hypocrisy: that "the only right perspectives" are the non-creationism ones.

That serves nothing. It certainly doesn't serve the creation of a dynamic learning environment which encourages students to learn to think for themselves and assess information. It creates exactly the opposite environment.

And that's the saddest part of all. We have Cindy Sheehan as the darling of the left as she shreds Judaism and Catholicism as twin evils in the world, while she holds up as paragons of virtue such notables as Islamic Jihad and Iran and calls Saddam Hussein "a better option for Iraqi women than the Bush-imposed leadership". How can such vile, empty thought exist anywhere, but especially here? Because she's the product of a system that encourages not analytical thought but forced thinking, not debate along factual and philosophical lines but solely along ideological lines.

We need schools to discuss, side-by-side with other perspectives, those things that affect and affected human history. Religion, plus or minus, has played perhaps the largest role across the millenia in motivating and informing historical progression. To pretend otherwise, to refuse to discuss that participation, is simply close-minded idiocy.

The writings of our forefathers are rife with religious thought motivating their thoughts, informing their decisions, and helping fashion their conclusions. They certainly never intended the U.S. to reach a point where we claim the total rejection of anything religious-in-reference is "constitutional" and thereby in keeping with what they, the founders, wanted. The hijacking of the establishment clause is a pity and a travesty.

Cindy Sheehan -- yet another poor spokesperson for leftist causes

You know, the Citizen is constantly amazed that the Left is as self-destructively focused on offering up truly flawed spokespersons, one after another, without ever, finally, waking up to that failing and actually requiring of their spokespeople that they pass some basic tests: be able to speak clearly; be able to speak coherently; and to be able to speak in a way that actually, dare we say it, makes sense?

Take Cindy Sheehan (please take her, preferably someplace quiet and where her rhetoric can't hurt anyone). The background, for those who don't know it: her son went to Iraq and died, and now she's an indignant and angry person who leads anti-war rallies and who serves as the darling of the (left-leaning, or at least anti-right) media. Nothing wrong with that. Her words state that as a mother, she has the obligation to speak up for what she thinks and why she's offended at her son's death. That's also fine. The problem is the rest of it.

For instance, Mrs. Sheehan evidently thinks that she's the only mother entitled to an opinion, since she shouts down other mothers who have dead sons from the Iraq war who disagree with her. We won't touch the hypocrisy there -- it's okay if you're Cindy Sheehan, but if you're another mother whose son died in Iraq and you, like the son himself, support the cause of being there, then you aren't allowed to speak and shouldn't be "hogging the microphone". A moment's weakness on Mrs. Sheehan's part? Nope. Let's remember that she called the hurricanes that ravaged the South, killed many, and left literally hundreds of thousands of people damaged... she called them "little bits of wind and water" as she whined that she couldn't get press coverage like the fawning she was getting throughout the Summer. Poor Mrs. Sheehan couldn't get the microphone anymore, and evidently she of the pristine motivations (if you listen to her describing herself) couldn't be bothered to feel anything for those hundreds of thousands of people who were hurt, killed, and lost everything in the storms.

We also have Mrs. Sheehan, whose son did not believe as she does, gifting us with her views on world politics. For instance, it's all a "Jewish conspiracy". We should support the Palestinians who never did anything wrong, in her world-view, against the evil tyrants of the Jews. We should realise that it was a Jewish cabal that led George Bush into war in Iraq. Oh, let's keep listening the most recent example of horrific bigotry and Anti-semitism that is Mrs. Sheehen. Or, let's not - and actually keep our sanity intact, thank you.

For all of it, the part that most offends the Citizen is that she allows no room for the mothers who mobilized to express their opposition to her and her viewpoints - after all, there can be only one offended mother, and that's Mrs. Sheehan, and no one else is allowed the time to talk or the capacity to actually be right. When her group made little crosses and put the names of the dead on them, and stood over those crosses and announced that they were speaking for these people, they evidently forgot to make sure that they were in fact speaking for them. A score of mothers descended on there and pulled up the stakes that represented THEIR children, for whom Mrs. Sheehan does NOT speak, and they stood in front of the press and rightly and correctly denounced the arrogance of Mrs. Sheehan in doing this. And what did our brave and pitiable Mrs. Sheehan do? She had her people put new stakes in the ground, once again with those same names on them. After all, it's not about what those individuals thought, nor what their mothers think. It's only important that SHE, the only mother who's allowed to be offended, who is the only one allowed to think or dare to be right about these things, does what SHE wants to. Lord forbid she actually have any real emotion, any real sympathy for the dead, any real thoughts at all about the other mothers who also lost sons and daughters. After all, through her actions, she's shown she doesn't care at all about any of them -- she cares only for Mrs. Cindy Sheehan, herself.

Let's not forget her sense of country. Quote: "I'm going all over this country telling moms: 'This country is not worth dying for'". We have to assume, given her comments in support of Islamic Jihad, that supporting terrorist baby-killers who murder children in restaurants are worth supporting and dying for. Yikes.

Or: "We have no Constitution. We’re the only country with no checks and balances." Um, Mrs. Sheehan? You might want to be bothered to, say, take a few seconds of time and go to an elementary school, where they can introduce you to some rather strange concepts like "checks and balances" and how the Constitution works. Here's a clue, since you evidently lack the capacity to check your own facts: just because you disagree with a President, does not make the President a criminal, nor does it mean the Constitution, which is in full power here, no longer exists. Such wild statements that have no bearing on reality only reinforce the opinions of those who look at her words and find her... frighteningly ignorant.

But we can go on, since she provides nothing if not a steady stream of extremist, anti-Semitic, empty-headed comments that are only frightening when we realise how many people just cheer-lead for her:

"It’s OK for Israel to have nuclear weapons but we are waging nuclear war in Iraq, we have contaminated the entire country." -- Um, Mrs. Sheehan? We've not launched or used a single nuclear weapon, to constitute a "nuclear war", in Iraq. Nor have we, in context of your statement, contaminated Iraq with nuclear after-effects.

"I will stay here until George Bush talks to me. We're not leaving here until he speaks to me at last, which he hasn't done yet!" -- Umm, Mrs. Sheehan? I have to assume grief is such that it causes terrific memory losses, since Mrs. Sheehan and George Bush did in fact already have a meeting, earlier in the year. But hey, the rhetoric wouldn't be as good if she acknowledged reality, would it?

Poster held by one of Mrs. Sheehan's group: "We support our troops when they shoot their own generals." -- The Citizen will not even respond to this, given how utterly disgusting and reprehensible it is. The Citizen prefers to allow Mrs. Sheehan and her ilk to wallow in their self-degredation, if they insist on spouting this sort of viewponit.

And the final quote from Mrs. Sheehan, with context:

Shortly after Casey died, Bush sent the family a form letter expressing his condolences, and Cindy said she felt it was an impersonal gesture. "I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis," Cindy said after their meeting. "I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith." And, later: "That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together," Cindy said (referring to the personal meeting the President instigated, by inviting the Sheehan family as a whole to meet with him).

And Cindy Sheehan on George Bush a few months later: "Every time we tried to talk about Casey and how much we missed him, he would change the subject. And he acted like it was a party."

And Mrs. Sheehan later: "And I'm gonna say, "And you tell me, what the noble cause is that my son died for." And if he even starts to say freedom and democracy' I'm gonna say, bullshit." -- from her Address to Veterans for Peace Convention, August 8, 2005.

And of course we can't ignore her comments that the whole war effort was "only about oil" (yup, we invaded Iraq so we could get cheaper oil -- so, I'll remember her genuis the next time I'm paying nearly three times as much as I was before the war. And I'll happily count how the U.S. has annexed Iraq and taken all the oil for ourselves -- oh, yes, that's right: none of that happened.).

So we have Mrs. Sheehan on the record praising the President for his religious faith, as sincere -- until she became aware that she could become a spokesperson for the antiWar Left. Then, we get the other Mrs. Sheehan -- whose own words are specifically contradicated by the earliest Mrs. Sheehan. Let's call them Cindy Version 1 and Cindy Version 2, since the two versions, by their own words, don't agree with one another.

There are plenty of places to find nice, documented Cindy Sheehan quotes. They're all equally offensive. Anyone who calls for the murder of U.S. Generals by their own troops, and states support for such action; anyone who thinks that we went to war "for oil" (which has become more expensive, not less; and for those with an ounce of intelligence, if we wanted oil, we would have made more deals with Hussein and lifted the ban instead of deposing him, as that would have actually given us a more-stable source of oil at cheaper prices... but again, it wouldn't make as nice a Left-side rhetoric piece, would it, to acknowledge reality?); anyone who uses her own grief for political purposes, and refuses to allow other mothers to do the same when they disagree with her... is not someone that anyone should be following. It is someone, however, who should be pitied and who needs deep counseling. And, preferably, some lessons on basic and consistent logic.

The Republicans in Power, or how to prove you are what your opponents call you

The Outrage meter has peaked. You can't have missed the many, many commercials for various law firms offering to help you with bankruptcy "before the new laws go into effect." Well, ring the bell -- they're now in effect. And that's a profoud tragedy, and a probably-lasting negative for the Republican Party.

What should a bankruptcy system for individuals look like? It should offer a safety net to those who, for reasons of health, long-term job loss, and other reasonable dilemmas, find themselves unable to keep up with their bills. It should protect them from the moment they file, and it should offer, if the case is severe enough, the capacity to wipe away existing debt with the corresponding negative of having a bankruptcy filing on your credit report for six years. I would go farther, and suggest bank loans that are geared to HELP an individual recover and become a productive member of society again, rather than making those exact people only able to get the worst interest rates, the worst support, etc.

Our current system takes someone who, for instance, can't work for eighteen months because of injury or health debacle, and leads them through bankruptcy... and then shreds them by leaving them high and dry. Not only high and dry, but that poor individual will now find it next-to-impossible to get any real help under terms that are doable -- he'll face only the highest interest rates and the like. We have a system that adds misery to financial disaster instead of helping mitigate it and overcome it.

And now, courtesy of the Republican Party in power, we have revisions to the bankruptcy laws that achieve exactly two things: it makes it far worse for someone in that debacle, and it gives to mortgage and credit companies who are already making tons of cash the ability to put serious hurt on those people who do fall into financial debacles. The system now offers little protection to those who file for the first few vulnerable weeks, while you go through the idiotic, over-complicated layers and steps to get to the court, so that your creditors, whom the court notifies immediately, can now swoop in and take away your house, etc. Thank you, Republicans, for screwing people when they're down. You've just made yourselves into exactly what Democrats have accused you of for years: being almost hyperactively against the poor and middle class and totally pro-business. Actually, in this case, it isn't pro-Business -- it's pro-financial-industry-only. And screw-the-individual, the poor person who perhaps suffered a catastrophic health issue and couldn't work for a year or more. He'll face no protections after he files for a short time, leaving him exposed to the circling sharks; he'll face a ridiculous array of hoops to jump through, including having to take classes in money management (um, the whole point of this is, it wasn't mis-managing money that got him to that point, it was a health disaster that came up unforeseen) and other inanities. After all of that lunacy, he may find that he can't get rid of his debts, because the new "formula" judges have to use is so arcane and twisted to achieving a pre-determined end (keeping people out of Chapter 11 and increasing the Chapter 7 filings, whereby debt is not wiped out and very little real help is offered).

So here's to the Republican Party, champion of the financial industry, beater of the downtrodden, for specifically and deliberately targetting the poor, the middle class, and anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in a position to have to file for bankruptcy in the misguided thought that the government might actually HELP them instead of adding to their misery. Under this Republican administration and this Republican Congress, don't delude yourself -- they don't care, and they have now taken specific actions to make sure that, at your worst moment, when all is darkest, the government (courtesy of Republicans) will now make sure to add to your misery rather than mitigate it or assist you with it.

Cheers, Republican Party! (sarcasm intended)

Okay, sarcasm off. (click) Do yourself a favor, Republicans, independents. If you can tolerate the Democratic candidate in your district, and the Republican in your district voted for this atrocity, VOTE HIM/HER OUT. In general, my votes have tended to fall more into the Republican category than Democrats, but there are time when that isn't the case. As when I lived in Louisiana and voted for J. Bennett Johnson, Dem., for U.S. Senator (twice). And now, if my area will serve up Democrats that are palatable, they will flatly have earned my vote -- and the Republicans will have specifically earned my contempt.

This does lead me to another conclusion, for another argument on another day: that the U.S. is best served with a Republican White House (more consistent foreign policy, who actually recognize that people out there hate the U.S. and do kill its citizens, etc.) and a Democratic Congress (whose far-left impulses are checked by the White House). We tend to get better laws that actually help people and build a better Republic under that organization than we do when either side controls all the levers of power.

Al Gore, his words, and the difficulty of being truthful

I first considered writing something about Al Gore's historic difficulty in being honest after the truly offensive 1996 acceptance speech before the Democratic convention. I didn't have a mechanism, and as a simple poor college student, I didn't have the time either.

Now I do, and yet, I think I'm going to just let Al's own words do the speaking here. I'll interject, where it's not blatantly obvious, to point to the lie in the words, but for the most part the absurdity is plain, simple, documented Al Gore.

To begin:

1) Facts: Al Gore's sister died in 1984. In 1988 (this would be four years later): "Throughout most of my life, I've raised tobacco. I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put in the plant beds and transferred it. I've hoed it. I've dug it. I've sprayed it, I've chopped it, I've shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it." Source? Newsday, 2/26/88.

1996: Al Gore stands up at the Democratic convention and rails against "Big Tobacco", and stirs up emotions and causes much weeping when he goes on about how his sister died of cancer caused by tobacco and how that changed his life. He does this to take advantage of the left-side "Big Tobacco as villain" rage.

Problem: AFTER his sister's death, he continued to: grow tobacco and profit from it; publicly stated that he was proud of his tobacco heritage and that his family grew and sold tobacco; take contributions from Philip Morris (Big Tobacco). And those nasty little FACTS contradict the weepy story he wove at the convention in 1996, since he couldn't have been "changed" by his sister's death, aka changed against tobacco's evils... and then take pride in raising and selling tobacco and having a tobacco heritage four years AFTER her death.

Conclusion: this is just sickening, to deliberately lie about the order of events and how his sister's death "changed him" from supporting tobacco to opposing it -- when his actions, words, and financing were all pro-tobacco for years and years afterward.

2) Honesty in Government, or how Al Gore would treat politicians who lied under oath and to the American people:

Quote: "Any government official who lies to the United States Congress will be fired immediately". Source: Seattle Times, July 29, 1987.

Quote: "I seek this office to restore the rule of law and respect for common sense in the White House." Source: Seattle Times, July 29, 1987.


The problem, of course, is that Mr. Gore here must be talking about the standard he'd apply to only Republican White Houses, since he held up President Clinton, after it was public and indisputable knowledge that he had lied not only to Congress but had stood up before the American citizens and specifically and deliberately LIED to them, as the "one of our greatest Presidents" (rally on Dec. 19, 1998). So, he would fire immediately "any government official who lies", making that point because he at that time understood that a public official who lies to the public on any topic is a public official whose interests are not the public's but their own. Along comes President Clinton, and Mr. Gore's modest and honorable standards, as shown by his own words above, are completely and utterly forgotten. Chalk it up again to Al Gore choosing political expediency and his own political neck over simple honesty (and for that matter being consistent to his own publicly-stated principles).


3) The self-proclaimed genius of the Environment and science! These quotes are fine if you're the average-Joe who doesn't walk around touting his excellent knowledge of the environment and all-things environmental, but if you do sound off at how great you are and how knowledgeable you are, then it's incumbent upon you to actually SHOW that knowledge and NOT make constant factual errors about the topic. Enjoy:

Al Gore on Trees:
Quote: "When we come here, we see the Longpole pine and the Douglas fir." Source: Al Gore, speech for Yellowstone's 125th anniversary, Albright Visitor's Center, August 17, 1997. (For the record, it's Lodgepole Pine, there's no such thing as Longpole pine.)

Al Gore on Breast Cancer:
Quote: how breast cancer victims faced "a long waiting line before they could get a biopsy... or, uh, a sonogram..." Source: MSNBC, 9/21/00, The News with Brian Williams. (For the record, breast cancer victims are not interested in sonograms, they're interested in mammiograms.)

Al Gore on doing Basic Math:
Quote: from his 2000 Democratic Convention acceptance speech, where he claimed the "Bush tax cut would save the average family 62 cents per week." He was using his vaunted science and math skills, as a thinker, to show how Bush wasn't helping the poor or middle class. Only problem? His math was off. He admitted that later, saying it was 62 cents per family per day ... which is, surprise surprise, also wrong. The Bush tax plan during the campaign was verified by the various financial bodies of Congress, BEFORE Mr. Gore went forth with his claim, as coming out to $29 per family per week.


Al Gore on how to be an expert in an environmental field:
Quote: "I'm very familiar with the importance of dairy farming in Wisconsin. I've spent the night on a dairy farm here in Wisconsin. If I'm entrusted with the presidency, you'll have someone who is very familiar with what the Wisconsin dairy industry is all about." Source: June 18, 2000, Atlanta Journal Constitution. (problem? Now we're experts if we sleep for one night in someone's barn -- wow, I'm going to go sleep in an abandoned nuclear silo and become a nuclear scientist!!!)

Al Gore's famous statement on the Internet:
Quote: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Source: Al Gore, on CNN, interview with Wolf Blitzer, March 9, 1999.

Problem? The Internet existed well before Al Gore entered Congress (email, file-sharing via UUCP, etc), making it a simple impossibility for him to "take the initiative in creating" it. Can't create that which already exists. But evidently you can try to claim it, no matter how untrue (and patently ridiculous) the assertion is. Or how easily disproved the assertion is. That's also sad: that he'd say something like this when it's chronologically false and takes five seconds to disprove!

Al Gore, on Zebras (basic ability to look at pictures, animal knowledge, etc.):
Quote: "A zebra does not change his spots." Source: Al Gore attacking George Bush in 1992.
Problem? Zebras don't have spots. Take three seconds to pick up a picture-book for children and look at it. Or, like the rest of us who aren't self-proclaimed knowledge-gods about everything, just remember it from seeing pictures of zebras.

3) Random Stupidity that would be shameful from any public official:

Quote: Al Gore, Monticello, before the inauguration, actually asked who the statues were around them -- and the statues? Busts of the founding fathers. Complete with nameplates.

Quote: "Dear Mr. and Mrs. Delgadillo, Thank you for your letter regarding the protection of the Texas eagle. I appreciate hearing from you. "I share your view that the urgent problem of species extinction and the conservation of biological diversity should be addressed. The first step in saving any plant or animal from extinction is to become aware of and respect the fragile ecosystems that make up our environment ... "Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. I look forward to working with you for the future of our planet." Source: reported in the 12/6/96 Washington Times "Inside the Beltway" by John McCaslin. Problem? The Texas Eagle that the elderly Mr. and Mrs. Delgadillo had been complaining about is actually a TRAIN, an Amtrak train that the couple relied on to travel to see their children in Chicago that the Clinton administration was nixing. When confronted with the couples complaint about an Amtrak train, the self-proclaimed genius Al Gore wrote the letter above. Way to go, Al! Right on target! (might have helped if he'd read their complaint, I guess).

Well, that's enough for now. The problem is, a simple search for Al Gore's own words and the self-contradicting nature of them turns up so many, literally THOUSANDS of times where he couldn't get basic facts right, forgets what he's talking about, or in the one I didn't use above, calls Mary and Joseph "homeless" when they brought the baby Jesus to Bethlehem -- and, for those who didn't know, Mary and Joseph owned their own home and were making a family-culture-related pilgrimmage (for lack of better words) to Bethlehem for the child's birth. But again, that would require Mr. Gore to either: know what he's talking about in the first place; or take ten seconds to look up the information so he doesn't look stupid. Given that he continues to this day to stand by the truth of his words and continues to give us more and more statements as above, I guess it is too much to ask that he do either one.

Oh, one last one, just because I can: the environmental-wizard that is Al Gore, the self-proclaimed specialist, called the Washington Post's editor in 1998 to warn him that he'd "printed a picture of the Earth upside-down on the front page" (Source: Florida Times Union, 4/3/98). The problem, for those not as knowledgeable as our Mr. Gore? There is no "up" or "down" in space and there cannot be a picture of the Earth "upside-down". To call and warn someone they were doing so demonstrates the true depth of Mr. Gore's knowledge -- which is scanty and superficial.

The Citizen will continue with more of Mr. Gore in a few weeks. Next up, the new bankruptcy rules, or how Republicans betrayed the American people and justified all the bad things Democrats say about them.

Random Thoughts, Part 2

On Friday the Citizen ranted through a bunch of related but poorly-connected thoughts. Apologies to all. Let me try again:

1. Harriet Miers. No offense is intended to Ms. Miers. She is, by her resume, a capable lawyer. The failings are simple: she has held only one position that required her to deal with constitutional issues, and that was as White House Counsel. And how long did she hold that position? Since midway 2004, or, rephrased, right around a year. Literally no other position she's held -- as head of the Texas Lotto Commission (?! -- one of those "first women" things), one of the staff secretaries at the White House (er, secretary?), and so forth; or as head of the Texas Bar (another "first woman"), which has no inherent value in terms of defining her Constitutional capacities nor requires in any way that she ever think about Constitutional law. Fact: we've found no writings of hers that support a claim that she was a "deep thinker" about Constitutional law (the precise opposite of the flawlessly-qualified John Roberts, whose breadth and volume of dealing with exactly Constitutional issues was enormous and deep). So it is palpably FALSE for the White House to assert that Harriet Miers is the "best person they could find" and "best qualified for the job" -- I can come up with a half-dozen female judges/attorneys and several non-lawyers who have a broader and deeper background in Constitutional law than Ms. Miers. What sets Ms. Miers apart from her competitors? That she's a Friend-of-George. Which is sort of ironic: Friend of George = FOG, which is what this nomination was made in. Conservatives are rightly angered, especially as the White House uses rhetoric that exactly undermines its own assertions in the past about how to judge candidates: by their capacity to think, as evidenced by their writings (oops, she doesn't have any!); by their experience with constitutional law (oops, she has less than one year of experience in that, out of her entire career); that a person be judged not by their sex organ but by their capacity to think and how they think (not the policies, the actual methodologies to their thinking process)... and OOPS, the White House has just gotten done holding her up as "the first woman" this and that, which would be exactly counter-intuitive to the "judge not by sexual organ or skin pigmentation but by mental/philosophical capacities" argument that the Right has trumpeted successfully. Well, it was successful... until a Republican White House started trumping exactly the opposite argument. Huh? I prefer Mr. Bush for his correct decisions regarding foreign policy, and some of his stands on domestic politics (some, by no means all), and he was head-and-shoulders better than Al Gore or John Kerry. But this is simply ridiculous, made moreso every time the White House opens its mouth and offers arguments that shouldn't be coming from any Conservative.

I could care less whether she was the first woman to head the Texas Lotto Commission -- or if she were he and he were the first Chairman of the Right to Surf organization. They're equally as relevant -- which is the point. They need to be talking about her qualifications in terms of actual qualifications for the position in question, which is Supreme Court justice: that she has a history that indicates deep constitutional study and thinking; that she has held at some point positions that lend themselves to constitutional study; that she has a philosophy toward the Constitution that is of the same philosophy that the President promised to appoint, and that there be evidence to show that she has that philosophy. The problem is, they can't talk about those things in specifics -- she doesn't have anything in those categories. They can't talk about her writings, she doesn't have any that relate to the job; can't talk about her constitutional philosophy, because her history has nothing in it to indicate or prove what sort of constitutional scholar (other than that she isn't, which is proveable given the absence of any supporting evidence) she is/will be.

The White House should either: withdraw the nomination NOW and get back to basics, or start immediately justifying the nomination by pointing to and providing the actual evidence that she is a deep Constitutional scholar. Neither is going to happen -- President Bush has among his failings a flawless loyalty that can extend into situations that get him in trouble, like now; and they have no evidence to speak of, because she has no writings/positions/etc. to offer.

Tomorrow, we look back at Al Gore, who continues to try to be a voice in American politics... and how one single event makes Al Gore utterly and completely unqualified for any office, even dogcatcher. Ah, the fun of videotape and chronology... :)

Random Thoughts

Consider:

1) Harriet Miers. She's held three different jobs in the past four years at the Bush White House. From White House Secretary (if she's a great lawyer, why be "White House Secretary" or appoint a great thinking mind to be secretary?) to, finally, her position for the past slightly-more-than-one-year as White House Counsel. From a Human Resources perspective, a prospective employee would be grilled, or ignored completely, if they had a resume that showed three positions in four years. Why? Because it generally shows either: an inability to hold a job; an inability to do the jobs held; or some character trait that keeps the person hopping around without settling into a career path. None of these makes for a good prospective employee. Nor does it speak well for Harriet Miers. Nor do the comments from other White House staffers who worked with her help -- since the lower-levels who have been interviewed on TV don't exactly paint a picture of a competent person.
2) The White House. They argue that Ms. Miers has great experience with the "higher-level issues" (Constitutional issues) since she's been the White House Counsel and had to deal with those issues. Note to the White House: one year in the position does not constitute enough experience to qualify ANYONE to be a Supreme Court Justice. You'll have to provide a lifetime of similar experience to rise to that level -- and Ms. Miers simply doesn't have the resume to support a conclusion that she's a great Constitutional thinker/scholar. Or, to rephrase: that one year is literally the only experience she'd had with Constitutional issues. Huh?
3) Democrats. Not much I can say positively about the Dems for the past decade or so, and many great Liberal thinkers like Daniel Patrick Moynihan whose passing I still mourn... but they're holding their fire on Ms. Miers, which is (for once) an excellent tactic. Letting the White House do their work for them is perfect for them -- every time the White House says that "her experience as White House Counsel is enough" (see #2), they only need to sit back and let the actual, thinking Republicans roar loudly for them.
4) Republicans. More power to the actual, consistent Republicans on the Harriet Miers nomination -- which does NOT include the White House. Republicans argued just a few weeks ago that the proper method for judging someone nominated to be Supreme Court Justice was to look at their history as a scholar and a thinker and judge from that history. Since Ms. Miers has no such history, the White House keeps throwing out other inanities that contradict everything Republicans have fought for.
5) White House idiocy. What was I referring to, at the end of #4? Take the following: "Ms. Miers was the first woman to be the head of the Texas Bar Association". Um, what does that have to do with being a Supreme Court Justice? Does it tell us something about her mental capacities, that she possesses the wisdom necessary? Does it tell us anything about her character, or how her mind works? Nope. Republicans have argued for decades that people should be judged on their individual MERITS -- right up to the point where the White House now specifically contradicts that Republican principle. And it contradicts it because it has nothing else to say, because Ms. Miers simply doesn't have the qualifications based on prior Republican standards. Again, the Dems don't need to do anything -- this White House is doing more than enough damage to Republican philosophy all by itself.
6) U.S. giving. We've given 'til it hurts, from one disaster to the next: hurricanes, hurricanes, floods, fires, and tsunamis. Now there's an earthquake in Pakistan, and I'm sorry, but the individuals in the U.S. are simply tapped out -- we've given and we've given and we've listened to the rest of the world criticising us for not giving enough (hypocrites they be, since the citizens of, say, England haven't exactly rushed out to give money in huge volumes (like we did) to help U.S. citizens struck by fires, floods, hurricanes #1 and #2, etc.). Sorry, folks. No money left.
7) Battlestar Galactica. The Reimagining. Somehow, the idiots who run this monstrosity took a family-friendly show and made it into the "who's sleeping with who" show, complete with rape. And let's not forget the utterly moronic portrayal of military personnel under stress. What a waste of great potential. Oh, and a special note to those who argue that the new show is a success and has "outdone" the original: the original had at its LOWEST point a 14 share and a 31 share at its highest. The new show's highest point? Right around a 3 share. It's average? Around 2.0. The last time I checked, the show that pulls in roughly 1/4 the rating of the other show ISN'T considered the successful one. Basic math.
8) Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Another truly superb show from the 70s. The reporter who, just by being the grumpy soul he was, kept happening upon the strange and unusual, if not supernatural. And what do the geniuses who run TV today do? Let's make it ultra-violent (the original managed to NOT show violence and yet be violent in nature -- something the suits today don't seem to understand can be very effective). Let's add an unnecessary female character in an equal role. Let's take it from a struggling news service to a mainstream, never-worry-about-money entity. Let's make Kolchak a brooding type, with a personal death in his background that had supernatural causes. Or, to rephrase: let's take literally EVERYTHING that was Kolchak: The Night Stalker and remove ALL OF IT. This remake is nothing more than a watered-down, violent X-Files -- completely unworthy of the name and the heritage. Suggestion to all: buy the newly-released DVD of the original series and enjoy a show that focused on characterisation instead of by-the-numbers-idiocy of modern TV.

Special note to Hollywood: just stop remaking old shows. You have no clue what made those shows special, and you keep, over and over again, demonstrating that fact with idiocy like the aforementioned shows. Just stop it. Get a clue, come up with original ideas. Then again, given that you can't seem to even reuse old ideas well...

That's it for the day. Have a good weekend, and the Citizen will return in full form on Monday.

Principle versus Ideology: hypocrisy, modern feminism, and the 90s

Yesterday the Citizen held forth on the misuse of words and why it should outrage everyone in the country. Today, the Citizen turns a scathing eye to another foulness in modern society: the trumping of philosophy, the core of ideals, by political ideology. And our highlighted case will be the behavior of modern feminist leaders in the 1990s.

So, consider: if a man in a position of authority and power, either directly or simply by having that position of power, extorts sex from one of his female underlings, is it not a bad thing? Women have fought for the right to be free of that sort of criminal misbehavior in this country and they've won that freedom, by law. Feminists have decried this sort of behavior when it occurs in the boardroom or from CEOs, requiring (rightly) that these foul creatures be jailed and removed from their positions. This is a philosophical issue, a core ideal: that no woman (or man, for that matter) should be put in a position where sex is required of them by a person of the opposite sex (or the same sex, for that matter) who holds authority or power over them.

So, consider: in the 1990s, a powerful man in a position of authority required of a girl barely out of her teens that she have sex (and, in fact, some truly twisted sexual favors beside basic sex) with him. What does principle, what does the philosophy of women's rights, require that we do with this beast, this man who used his position to extort sex from a child? That we apply the same fate that modern feminists have required of CEOs who behave that way: that they lose their jobs and be held up for public ridicule, that they pay fines and be ostracized. No feminist has given a pass or allowed a man who behaved that way to remain in their position. They shouldn't. It would be abandoning their core principles, their philosophy, to do so. It would bankrupt what they supposedly fight for and believe.

But, of course, that's not what happened. The man in question was Bill Clinton, President of the United States, and he used his position of authority and power to require sex of a girl barely out of her teens. And what did we get from modern feminist leaders? Did we get outrage, did we get calls to hold him to the standard of punishment that they've fought for over the decades? No. We got, instead, the following quotes from various modern feminist leaders: Nina Burleigh of Time magazine -- "I'd be happy," she said, "to give him oral sex just to thank him for keeping abortion legal." Betty Friedan said that, even if Clinton did everything he was accused of doing, and more, "It's no big deal." And from others, we get such wonders as: "As long as he is in office and protects a woman's right to choose, his personal behavior shouldn't matter." And, we can't forget Gloria Steinem's "One Grope Rule", which literally excused the actions of a sexual predator and said it was an acceptable thing to her.

Um. Excuse me? When confronted with a sexual predator (whose history of sexual deviance and forcing himself on unwilling parties goes back to rape charges from multiple sources in the 1970s) who extorts sexual favors from children, these paragons of feminism... began justifying his behavior, excusing it, allowing it, and, most shocking of all, actually stating that they don't have a problem with it (aka, give him blow jobs)!

There's no other way to look at it. This wasn't "personal behavior" -- it was the act of a sexual predator, by definition, and confronting and punishing that sexual predator should have been FOREMOST the actions and words of any feminist who actually believes the principles they call for. But we didn't get that. We got permissiveness, we got excuses, we got "she should do it, as long as it protects Roe". There's no other way to interpret this: ideology, the protection of one single political issue (the protection of abortion rights re Roe Vs Wade), was more important than the philosophy, the principles, of feminism... was more important than anything else. So what signal does this send? What were these feminists telling us? It's perfectly okay for a man in a position of power to require sexual favors from women, as long as he has a political philosophy that protects abortion rights. We've now traded protecting women from sexual predators for protecting abortion rights -- trading philosophy and principle for rank political ideology.

Congratulations to these feminist leaders. In one fell swoop, you undid decades of fighting for women's rights, erased the value of your so-called principles, by defending the sexual predator and in fact, in some cases, telling the victim, the prey, that they should have "been happy to do so", as long as it "protects Roe". There is literally no way to describe the disgust, the outrage, that SHOULD have happened, all of it directed at these women who abandoned women's rights in order to protect a sexual predator. Protecting women? Not important. Confronting a sexual predator who used his power to get sex? Not important. Protecting Roe Vs. Wade? That's what matters to them. And that, fellow Citizens, is disgusting, it is reprehensible, and it utterly demonstrates, in their own words, how modern feminists have completely bankrupted their own principles. You cannot believe or support any woman or man who would excuse, condone, justify, and in fact promote through their permission the actions of a sexual predator. Yet, these feminists did that exactly.

It is a sad day indeed. It is moreso because... there was no public outrage. It is a sadder day indeed, because it seems to say that the United States has no interest in the principles of our ideas, no focus on the philosophy that underpins what we believe, and is instead a country obsessed only with political ideology.

For Feminists, as proven by their own words above, they'd rather side with a man guilty of the very behavior women have spent centuries fighting against, as long as he can protect Roe Vs. Wade.

Even if it means abandoning the prey to sexual predators.

That, fellow Citizens, is the worst outrage of all. Congratulations to these modern feminist leaders for bankrupting their own principles, by defending someone completely guilty of the very behavior women have fought against for centuries. Bravo.

How the Meaning of Words is misused by Politicians, and Why You should be angry about it

The one thing in American politics that aggravates me more than anything else is the flagrant, widespread misuse of words. That, and why that misuse occurs. Let's look specifically at the word "Nazi", which is flung around by members of Congress on a far-too-frequent basis to describe one another or one another's party.
What does "Nazi" mean, by the way, specifically or by association? The Nazis committed genocide, which for those who don't know means the complete extermination of an entire race (or at least the specific desire, and action to achieve that desire, to do so). That isn't "being racist" -- it's far, far worse, it's putting to action the specific, coordinated effort to utterly exterminate, to murder, every single member of a racial group for no other reason than a sense of racial superiority (where the actors are of the "superior" race and those exterminated are of the "inferior" race). Choosing not to sit on a bus beside someone who has chartreuse-colored-skin because of that skin color is racist; what the Nazis did, and therefore are, is far, far worse. The Nazis advocated the right to "living space" (Lebensraum) for the "superior Germanic people", which in turn translated into wars designed solely to force other people off their lands and give the Nazis more actual land for their own use. Being a Nazi means embracing National Socialism as an economic/social construction, which has its own definitions. Let's leave it with these, because these few offerings are more than enough.
How many politicians in Congress advocate the specific extermination of an entire race? Or advocate invading, say, Canada, so we can force the Canadians off their lands so we can move Americans onto that land? The answer is, none. Zero. Nada. Not a Single One.
How many politicians, therefore, should be called "Nazi"? How many politicians should be tarred with association, by being called that word, to the actions that Nazis brought to the world? The answer, again, is NONE. Doesn't matter if they disagree with your philosophy, no Democrat, no Republican, is right to call the other a "Nazi" or their actions "Nazis". Doing so is beneath contempt and should be actively and angrily condemned by every other politician and every American out there.
But, of course, that brings us to the fact that the use of the word continues to the present day. Why? Because there is no uproar, no condemnation, no actions on the part of the electorate to punish the disgraceful individual who did so. And that is the greatest tragedy of all. The politicians are mostly intelligent people, or at least they put themselves forward as smart and wise people. If they are indeed as smart and wise, or just 1/2 as smart and wise, as they claim, and I think they are, then they know what the word means, literally and by association. So why would they choose -- this is key, the act of choosing -- to deliberately misuse the word? They know the public will hear "my Republican colleague is a Nazi because he wants to redo the arcane methodology we use to calculate student lunches" and just associate "Nazi = Bad". Think about that, because there is an outrage lurking behind that reasoning: that the public isn't smart enough, or wise enough, to understand the full implications and meaning of the word "Nazi" and will just make the childlike association "Nazi = Bad". This is the greatest insult a politician can direct at us, the electorate, the American people: that they will use words knowing full well the words aren't right or correct or even fair, solely and specifically because they know the American people are ignorant and will react based on that ignorance. And what's sadder than that? The fact that they appear to be right. There's no uproar, no anger, no Press that points these things out. In a world where college graduates can't find Iraq (or Mexico, for that matter) on a map in large majorities, where the majority of college graduates can't even put the Civil War, World War I, and World War II in chronological order, the misuse of a word is a given -- because the public really is as ignorant as the politicians who take advantage of that ignorance believe.
As an American who does think about the words people use and how they use them, as a free-thinking American who is offended that the public at large can more readily identify Michael Jordan properly than identify the significance of Otto von Bismarck, I am offended and disgusted with these politicians -- but I am equally as ashamed of the American people who continues to revel in a social culture that puts no value on learning, puts no value on thinking, and therefore allows these politicians to get away with it.

Next time, we'll look at the 1990s, and how modern feminism bankrupted itself during that decade through its own actions. Brief summary: if your actions contradict your philosophy, which is to say the ideas behind the movement, then you've bankrupted the movement and become blatant hypocrites.

Thoughts of a Citizen

Greetings, salutations, and welcome to the debut of my second Blog. I originally was going to put all my thoughts in my "Thoughts of a Gamer" blog, but I've decided to divide the two. My gaming-related comments will remain in "Thoughts of a Gamer", but from now on, my musings on politics, religion, the public, and so forth will all be here, at Thinking Politics.

Who am I? A U.S. citizen. I hold an M.A. in History with a heavy emphasis in English and International Relations. I'm a tech geek, a Republican by principle though not necessarily by vote, a concerned citizen, and a husband. I've owned my own company, worked in the off-lease/used computer industry for several years; I've built my own computers, set up my own home and busines networks, and I'm an addict of online roleplaying games. Most of all, I'm a citizen who looks at today's society and today's politics and sees far too much to be troubled by.

So expect my musings to begin shortly. What can you expect? I create my arguments as carefully as I can -- this isn't a place to get a rant, it's a place to argue rationally, to expect discourse, to debate. You won't see me complaining about something without supporting my complaints and filling out the context of the argument. You won't see me throwing around words without understanding what the words mean -- and explaining why I'm using them.

Until then. :)