New Year thoughts... Alito confirmation, etc.

Well, the New Year's here, and the Citizen apologizes for his absence over the past month and promises to be more regular with his thoughts.

To-wit, today's thoughts:

1) Watching Democrats during this confirmation hearing didn't even make good entertainment, though it would make an excellent teaching tool: "how not to make good arguments".

-- To Senator Dick Durbin, who chastised Alito for not having a "clear" position on abortion and flip-flopping on it, goes the "look in the mirror" award. Fact: Senator Durbin for the majority of his lifetime, up to the 1990s, was pro-Life and went so far as to write many letters to his constituents promoting the overturning of Roe V. Wade. He "flip-flopped", to use his words, on the issue and now is pro-Choice -- making him scarcely one to criticise anyone else's positions on the issue, particularly when he describes his own process on making that change as "heart-wrenching" and "not simple". I guess applying the standard to himself would make him equally unsuitable, wouldn't it? Then again, that would require the Senator to be fair and honest, and judging from his behavior during the confirmation, I wouldn't expect either of those things anytime soon. And, as a citizen of Illinois, this is particularly disgusting to me, since this man represents me in the U.S. Senate.
-- To Senator Edward Kennedy, who couldn't come up with a policy or philosophical issue with which to fairly attack Alito, goes the "world's greatest hypocrite" and, in a double-win, also the "damn-the-facts-full-speed-ahead" awards. Senator Kennedy led the charge against Alito's brief involvement in an alumni association (involvement = paid dues; witnesses and records have already shown he wasn't active, didn't have any involvement in the management of it, nor did anything to promote it), calling the association "anti-woman" and "racist". First, as we've pointed out, it took ten seconds to look up the facts of the case on the internet and to discover that Alito had no role in the organization, did nothing to promote it, nor had any say in the formation of its activities. Kennedy's argument seems to be, if you pay for something, you're bound by whatever anyone else does who runs the organization -- a logic that would, for instance, require that all subscribers to a newspaper be held accountable for the editorial page of that newspaper and therefore be labelled as supporting and being liable for the opinions of that page. And that doesn't even pass the "smell" test. It's ludicrous on the surface and worse, both liberal and conservative (and media) groups had already looked into the group and found NOTHING untoward that could tarnish Alito. So, the good Senator from Massachussetts ignores all of this and uses this is as his line of attack -- which says more about Senator Kennedy's judgment and fairness than anything else. Secondly, the "documents" that Kennedy wanted, which he claimed would show the "racist and sexist" nature of the group and of Alito... had already been examined by the media and other groups and, as before, had already been put down because there was nothing there. But again, the absence of fact never stops the good Senator Kennedy from using non-existent facts to slander and malign someone. But let's not stop there. Alito is criticised for his actions in college and is required to remember every detail of everything back then -- I submit, let's find out the truth, finally, about why Senator Kennedy, back in his "bad old days" when he was that young, left the young lady to drown in Chappaquiddick. That story? Kennedy, drunk, was driving home with a young woman. He drove off the road and into a lake. He escaped the vehicle himself, made no effort to rescue her, walked home, and didn't contact the police until THE NEXT MORNING. By which time, the citizen would point out, he had already "lawyered up". Let's repeat this, because it's vital: he left a young woman to die, he made no effort to rescue her, he made no effort to contact the police for a dozen hours later and only then after he'd gotten legal advice. THAT is Edward Kennedy's judgment. If we hold Sam Alito to his actions as a young man, let's finally hold Edward Kennedy to his actions, too. I don't expect Edward Kennedy to actually hold himself to the standard he pushes on other people -- that would be fair, and honest, and decent.

-- to the Dems on the Senate panel (and the Republicans): go to a dictionary. Look up the word "brevity". Now look up the word "succinct". Now go re-read the Gettysburg Address. The point: learn how to make your point without the ludicrous bloviating that goes on whenever a Senator opens his/her mouth. I am far more impressed by someone who makes their point and does it succinctly, than when someone like Joseph Biden runs on for almost eighteen minutes while asking his first question.

2) Republicans in Congress and President Bush. Ah, the glory of the party that pushed through a Bankruptcy Bill that screwed over anyone who is in actual danger, who suffers a medical catastrophe that drives them into the poor house -- they passed a travesty of a bill that makes it more difficult on exactly those people. Couple that with the push to get the credit card companies to raise their minimum payments by as much as TWICE what it had been, which went into effect this month, and you've got Republicans behaving exactly as Democrats say they do: all about big business, and screw the individual citizen. A pox on the Republicans in Congress and on President Bush for behaving like this (and I might point out, throwing this sop to the credit industry as it reports record profits year after year WITHOUT this bonus).

3) Repeat after me: saying we went to war "for oil" is nonsensical. If we wanted oil cheap, we would have pushed to lift sanctions on Hussein and gone back to being buddy-buddy with him -- that would have gotten oil cheaply. We didn't do that. If we'd gone to war "for oil", and we ignore the logic of what I just said, then we must certainly have nationalized the Iraqi oil industry and moved to have U.S. oil companies upgrade the Iraqi oil infrastructure, to make it pump oil more efficiently and safely and quickly -- except, we didn't do that, either. We left the control and profits of Iraqi oil in Iraqi hands. So, please, grow up and stop using nonsensical comments like "war for oil". It just makes you look stupid, which is to say, as illogical and stupid as the statement itself.

4) Lesson to Democrats: reclaim the past and find better spokespersons. Gone are the day of such notable thinkers and speakers as Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Instead, the Dems offer up blatant hypocrites like Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, and that paragon of virtue and pristine philosophy, Howard Dean. Gone are the rational, measured, intelligent spokespeople for the Left, replaced by these bomb-throwers who evidently don't care how hypocritical they are or how empty of logical consistency their arguments are. The tragedy is, they don't seem to care, either, if they say something that isn't factually accurate. The absence of information, as in Senator Kennedy's case, is enough to savage another human being and slap labels on them -- even though there's no information to justify that behavior.

5) Basic lesson to all: do basic research before opening your mouth to make a point. Case in point: Senator Kennedy talking about how the Princeton group Alito was a dues-paying member of was "sexist" -- which ignores the fact that, at that time, the organization was run by Laura Ingram (that would be a woman), who was followed by an African-American gentleman (that would be a black man).


Hopefully, we'll see a New Year, 2006, that ushers in a politics that actually PROMOTES the exchange of ideas (instead of one side preaching to its side, and the other to its side, and both sides ignoring the thoughts of the other side... and in many cases, blindly saying that the other side's thoughts don't matter); one that brings in civility (that would require the firing of Howard Dean, among other things), since rational human beings are able to discuss and debate issues without ranting, raving, name-calling, etc. One that sees the Democrats in Congress doing the smart thing for these upcoming elections: 1) rage against the Bankruptcy Bill and make a campaign to undo it, in the name of the "people" and of "Fairness to the people", using rhetoric that talks about "helping people instead of hurting them" -- this is the ideal situation for Democrats, and since it's so obvious I'm equally as certain that they won't do it and will instead keep ranting and raving mindlessly as they've been doing for the past few years; 2) remove Nancy Pelosi and put in an effective leader for the House Democrats, one who actually listens to people other than those who parrot her own thoughts and opinions; 3) admit that, as the Republicans did on many ocassions in the 1990s and the Dems did in the 1980s, the President might actually have a point sometimes, instead of blindly and reflexively opposing each and every step or move. All that the last behavior achieves is to make Democrats look dedicated not to the country's best benefit ... but their own political benefit.

I can pray for civil behavior and measured, rational discourse -- pray for it, but the Citizen is not so blind as to expect it.