Category Archives: Politics

You Could Hear a Pin Drop

If any of you know me personally, you probably know my feelings for the army run pretty deep. While I don’t necessarily agree with the implicit reasoning of most of the material below, the last statement should blow you away, and at least give you a deeper understanding for why I have so much respect for Armed Forces.

A friend at the Air Force academy, whose two parents are both Lt.Cols in the Army, forwarded me this from an email her dad sent:

When in England at a large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of ‘empire building’ by George Bush. He answered by saying, ‘Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.

You could have heard a pin drop.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Then there was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break one of the French engineers came back into the room saying ‘Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intend to do, bomb them?’ A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: ‘Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck.. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have? ‘

You could have heard a pin drop.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian and French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of Officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, ‘whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English.’ He then asked, ‘Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?’ Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied ‘Maybe it’s because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you wouldn’t have to speak German?’

You could have heard a pin drop.

AND THIS STORY FITS RIGHT IN WITH THE ABOVE…

A group of Americans, retired teachers, recently went to France on a tour. Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane.. At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on. ‘You have been to France before, monsieur?’ the customs officer asked sarcastically. Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously. ‘Then you should know enough to have your passport ready.’ The American said, ‘The last time I was here, I didn’t have to show it.’ ‘Impossible. Americans always have to show your passports on arrival in France!’ The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained. ‘Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in ‘44 to help liberate this country, I couldn’t find any Frenchmen to show it to.’

You could have heard a pin drop

What Is A Veteran?

A “Veteran” — whether active duty, discharged, retired, or reserve — is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to “The United States of America,” for an amount of “up to, and including his life.” That is honor, and there are excessively many people in this country today, who no longer understand that fact.

So apparently, there is a slight difference in their policies

An interesting piece by Paul Krugman

Maybe the most notable contrast between Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton involves the problem of restructuring mortgages. Mr. McCain called for voluntary action on the part of lenders — that is, he proposed doing nothing. Mrs. Clinton wants a modern version of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, the New Deal institution that acquired the mortgages of people whose homes were worth less than their debts, then reduced payments to a level the homeowners could afford.

Finally, Barack Obama’s speech on the economy on Thursday followed the cautious pattern of his earlier statements on economic issues.

I was pleased that Mr. Obama came out strongly for broader financial regulation, which might help avert future crises. But his proposals for aid to the victims of the current crisis, though significant, are less sweeping than Mrs. Clinton’s: he wants to nudge private lenders into restructuring mortgages rather than having the government simply step in and get the job done.

Mr. Obama also continues to make permanent tax cuts — middle-class tax cuts, to be sure — a centerpiece of his economic plan. It’s not clear how he would pay both for these tax cuts and for initiatives like health care reform, so his tax-cut promises raise questions about how determined he really is to pursue a strongly progressive agenda.

Vice President doesn’t believe that the people have say in policy

What the Vice President thinks about you:

It is Cheney’s all-too-revealing conversation this week with ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz. On Wednesday, reminded of the public’s disapproval of the war in Iraq, now five years old, the vice president shrugged off that fact (and thus, the people themselves) with a one-word answer: “So?”

“So,” Mr. Vice President?

Policy, Cheney went on to say, should not be tailored to fit fluctuations in the public attitudes. If there is one thing public attitudes have not been doing, however, it is fluctuating: Resistance to the Bush administration’s Iraq policy has been widespread, entrenched and consistent. Whether public opinion is right or wrong, it is not to be cavalierly dismissed.

My brother thinks this is how the founding fathers intended it from day 1, and that VP Cheney is only continuing that.

I disagree. (not that the founding fathers may have not had faith in the American people, but that the VP should think that this is an appropriate model for our current representative democracy)

The Future of the US …. from Britain, to US, to China

Interesting article here:

March 07, 2008 Free Trade and Fair Trade: SIEPR 2008 Economic Summit Conference

J. Bradford DeLong

The question of “free” versus “fair” trade, has three baskets: an environmental regulation basket, a labor-standards and freedom basket, and a “wages basket.”

The first two can, I think, be disposed of quickly. We don’t want those able to bribe governments in other countries to poison people or the globe by turning other countries into pollution havens. We don’t want environmental standards to be used to freeze the world distribution of wealth and keep people in other countries hungry, illiterate, and barefoot. The difficulties that remain are those of implementation.

Similarly, we want expanding trade to be a force for opportunity rather than for oppression: we like it when expanded trade gives ordinary people a path to a better life; we don’t like it when expanded trade gives rich and powerful people in the cloud city of Stratos an incentive to round others up and put them to work in the xenite mines. As then-Principal Deputy IMF Managing Director Stanley Fischer warned the great and good at the 2000 Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Jackson Hole Conference, there is nothing in the ILO’s principles that we cannot and very little that we should not be eager to endorse, all of us. The difficulties that remain are, once again, those of implementation.

The question of trade and wages remains: To what extent are rich countries obligated to open their markets to poor countries when the consequence is falling wages for the poor in the rich–bearing in mind that the poor in the rich are often wealthier and have more opporunity than the rich in the poor? To what extent do rich countries do themselves well–serve their national interest–by opening their markets to poor countries even when the consequence is falling wages for the poor in the rich?

Let me make four remarks on this “trade and wages” basket:

First, between 1950 and 1997 trade and wages weren’t an issue: our foreign trading partners raised their own relative wage levels at least as fast as globalization enhanced their influence, and there was no net effect of trade on wages–no link from greater openness to the global economy to greater inequality here at home.

Second, at times between 1950 and 1997 trade and wages became a political issue as a way of distracting attention from true problems. The voters of Michigan in 1985 did not want to hear that the problems of Michigan’s manufacturing industries were home-grown–in the fecklessness of management and in the Reagan administration’s budget deficits that pushed up interest rates which pushed up the value of the dollar and made the goods they made uncompetitive on world markets. They wanted, instead, to hear that the Japanese were doing something clever and illegitimate.

Third: since 1997 or so the link between expanded imports and wage inequality has become real, as our imports now embody a much larger amount of factors competing with our own lesser-skilled than they used to. How large? I don’t think we know. Paul Krugman is now writing a paper for the Brookings Institution in which he essentially throws up his hands at the question. But there are two points worth noting: (a) the effects of trade on pre-tax wage inequality are much smaller than the effects over the past generation of changes in the tax system on after-tax income inequality; (b) the effects of trade on inequality of opportunity are much less than the effects of educational inequities on inequality of opportunity.

Fourth, to the extent that we in the United States begin thinking of trade restrictions as a way to fight inequality, we are setting ourselves up for extraordinary trouble late in this century–extraordinary damage to our long-run national security.

Think of it this way: Consider a world that contains one country that is a true superpower. It is preeminent–economically, technologically, politically, culturally, and militarily. But it lies at the east edge of a vast ocean. And across the ocean is another country–a country with more resources in the long-run, a country that looks likely to in the end supplant the current superpower. What should the superpower’s long-run national security strategy be?

I think the answer is clear: if possible, the current superpower should embrace its possible successor. It should bind it as closely as possible with ties of blood, commerce, and culture–so that should the emerging superpower come to its full strength, it will to as great an extent possible share the world view of and regard itself as part of the same civilization as its predecessor: Romans to their Greeks.

In 1877, the rising superpower to the west across the ocean was the United States. The preeminent superpower was Britain. Today the preeminent superpower is the United States. The rising superpower to the west across the ocean is China. that was the rising superpower across the ocean to the west of the world’s industrial and military leader. Today it is China.

Throughout the twentieth century it has been greatly to Britain’s economic benefit that America has regarded it as a trading partner–a source of opportunities–rather than a politico-military-industrial competitor to be isolated and squashed. And in 1917 and again in 1941 it was to Britain’s immeasurable benefit–its veruy soul was on the line–that America regarded it as a friend and an ally rather than as a competitor and an enemy. A world run by those whom de Gaulle called les Anglo-Saxons is a much more comfortable world for Britain than the other possibility–the world in which Europe were run by Adolf Hitler’s Saxon-Saxons.

There is a good chance that China is now on the same path to world preeminence that America walked 130 years ago. Come 2047 and again in 2071 and in the years after 2075, America is going to need China. There is nothing more dangerous for America’s future national security, nothing more destructive to America’s future prosperity, than for Chinese schoolchildren to be taught in 2047 and 2071 and in the years after 2075 that America tried to keep the Chinese as poor as possible for as long as possible.

And let me stop there.

While Obama talks about “hope and opportunity”

Does anybody know how he will derail the recession?

Bring the troops out of Iraq (after all he never supported the war ya know?)

Honestly, the more I hear and see about Obama is just disappointment.

He is a politician first, his orations on hope and opportunity don’t mean squat — there are serious problems in the US that need answering to, and while they play egotistical maniacs, the economy needs serious help, as well as a host of other problems.

let’s put it like this, if the situation was reverse, would Obama step down for the good of the country?

No — he has a super-ego just like HRC or McCain or any other presidential election.

The only thing that separates him is not the fact he will accomplish anything, but that he inspires people — but don’t go comparing him to a MLK or anything — Obama has no weight behind his words.

He can talk about race and international community, sure, by the nature of who and how he was raised, but honestly the question about Obama should not be “do you have experience?” but the question should be

What did you do in the last 8 years you were a politician.

Not, how long, but how MUCH did you do with the few years you had?

That’s the question we should be asking.

I have no doubt Obama will be elected, but this country will be in for a rude awakening when they realize oratory only takes you so far when you realize Greenspan has hamstringed the economy and Bernanke can’t save it.

When GEN Petraeus comes back and says the surge has done little to nothing in Iraq.

When we still have millions of uninsured americans, senators taking billions in pork projects (including Obama himself who took $300 million I believe, much of which was alotted to his mentor who gave him free pass in Illinois Senate), and those same black kids he talked about who are the victim of years of segregation will languish in their crummy, poor neighberhoods meanwhile his family sits comfortable in their $1.65 million house.

Man of great ideas, great speaking abilities, and great cogency he certainly is — but a man of the words he preaches he has not been seen.

Change I don’t believe in.

Plato’s Republic

I suggest every voting American read Plato’s Republic before they partake in the elections.

As Plato wrote in Book VII of ”The Republic”: ”The truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.

Generation Obama

A politician is a politician is a politician.

Again, real change does not come from the top, it comes from each one of us on the bottom.

This doesn’t mean that Obama agrees with Wright’s thoroughgoing and conspiracy-heavy anti-Americanism. Rather, Obama seems to have seen, early in his career, the utility of joining a prominent church that would help him establish political roots in the community in which he lives. Now he sees the utility of distancing himself from that church. Obama’s behavior in dealing with Wright is consistent with that of a politician who often voted “present” in the Illinois State Legislature for the sake of his future political viability.

The more you learn about him, the more Obama seems to be a conventionally opportunistic politician, impressively smart and disciplined, who has put together a good political career and a terrific presidential campaign. But there’s not much audacity of hope there. There’s the calculation of ambition, and the construction of artifice, mixed in with a dash of deceit — all covered over with the great conceit that this campaign, and this candidate, are different.

Why the Drinking age should be lowered.

Obama said earlier today that he would not push to lower the drinking age.

SCRANTON, Pa. - Democrat Barack Obama on Monday promised Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans help with their grievances — save one. “I know it drives you nuts. But I’m not going to lower the drinking age,” the presidential candidate said.
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Army veteran Ernest Johnson, 23, of Connecticut, said one of the things that peeved him before he turned 21 was that he couldn’t come home and drink a beer — even though he was old enough to serve in the armed services and die for his country.

Obama told Johnson he sympathized, but that setting the legal drinking age at 21 had helped reduce drunken driving incidents and should remain.

Senator Obama, I’m sorry, but you don’t get it (or more likely you don’t want to alienate voters who would disagree with pushing to lower the drinking age.).

There’s something called artificial scarcity.

Artificial scarcity describes the scarcity of items even though the technology and production capacity exists to create an abundance. The term is aptly applied to non-rival resources, i.e. those that do not diminish due to one person’s use, although there are other resources which could be categorized as artificially scarce.

I believe that lowering the drinking age to 18 — or even 16 — would lower the artificial scarcity of being 21-years-old to purchase and or consume alcohol in the U.S.

And believe me you, it is certainly artificial scarcity.

STudents create fake I.D.s, sneak into bars, go to parties, go to cabins, and any way they can usurp the rules.

Of course, after having spent some time in the military, one can see how ridiculous the 21-year-old age limit to drink alcohol.

“Die for country but can’t even drink a beer legally.”

I mean, there really is no argument against that.

Of course, alcohol abused can endanger the lives of others, needlessly, recklessly, and most definitely foolishly; but will the lowering of the age increase DUIs or DWIs?

I always think to myself — what is the difference between a person with 20 years and 355 days and a person with 21 years and 0 days (in the US)?

Absolutely nothing.

Again, it creates artificial scarcity, as youth just want to catch up to their friends and older peers and participate in the ritual of “becoming” an adult. (i.e. getting hammered)

Take away the age limit — take away the artificial scarcity.

Is that system perfect? No. — but the truth is the current alcohol system is broken. How many kids would want so desperately to go to College and party hard if they could throw the same sort of alcohol-infested parties as a 17 or 18-year-old?

I didn’t used to think like this by the way. I’ve been raised from the school of thought that alcohol is a detriment to society and people should refrain from indulging it regardless of age.

But the school of real life has taught me differently, and while I still refrain from the consumption and abuse of alcohol, it has more to do with taste and opportunity — I’d prefer a Coquito or Malta India to a Guinness any day.

Take away the artificial scarcity, and it will be a lot less “cool” for under-21s to go out and party, and alcohol can simply exist as a healthy part of culture and society rather than a drunken rite of passage.

And then Mothers Against Drunk Driving can change its name to Mothers Against Dumb Drinking.

If Spitzer were running mate, the economy might get better

Because you need somebody who’s actually effected change rather than somebody who just talks about it all day.

Ashley Dupre was his fall, and now she’s getting her reward, and unfortunately, Spitzer, rather the American public, are the fall guys.

From the Huffington Post:

Tell me again: Why should we get all worked up over the revelation that the New York governor paid for sex? Will it bring back to life the eight U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq that same day in a war that makes no sense and has cost this nation trillions in future debt? Will it save those millions of homes that hardworking folks all over the country are losing because of financial industry shenanigans that Eliot Spitzer, as much as anyone, attempted to halt? Perhaps it provides some insight into why oil has risen to $108 a barrel, benefiting most of all the oil sheiks whom our taxpayer-supported military has kept in power?

Sure, the guy, by his own admission, is quite pathetic in all those small, squirrelly ways that have messed up the lives of other grand public figures before him, but why is an all-too-human sin, amply predicted in early Scripture, getting all this incredible media play as some sort of shocking event? The answer is that, while having precious little to do with serious corruption in public life, it does have a great deal to do with stoking flagging newspaper sales and television ratings.

The sad truth is that reporting on major corruption, say, the rationalizations of a president who has authorized torture, doesn’t cut it as a marketing bonanza. Just days before this grand exposé, the president vetoed a bill banning torture, and instead of being greeted with horrified disgust, the president’s deep denigration of this nation’s presumed ideals was met with a vast public yawn. Torture, unlike paid sex, doesn’t have legs as a news story.

Sex sells, and frankly it would seem far more exploitative for the news media to pimp this tale to the public than anything that VIP escort service did with the pitiable governor. His behavior was not really any more wretched than messing around with a young and vulnerable White House intern who didn’t even get paid for her efforts, yet Bill Clinton survived that one, whereas Spitzer was presumed dead on the arrival of this “news.” The New York Times, which editorially has supported the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, whose vast White House experience clearly did not include corralling her husband, now editorializes contemptuously about Spitzer’s betrayal of the public trust as well as about his exploitation of his “ashen-faced” wife, who, like Hillary, stood by her man.

The media consensus from the opening salvo was that Spitzer must resign and he will be thrown to the dogs, which is unfortunate because, like Clinton, he has done much valuable work in the public interest, and the outrage over this personal dereliction, tawdry in the extreme, is excessive. I certainly never wanted Clinton to resign, let alone be impeached, but why is Spitzer’s paying for sex more disgraceful than ripping it off? Yes, Spitzer allegedly broke a law that shouldn’t be on the books, and his resignation in disgrace is inevitable, but it bothers me that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney remain in office despite having violated enormously more serious laws.

Frankly, I don’t care what any of these politicians do in their personal lives as long as the practice is consensual, and the thousands of dollars that exchanged hands in this case would provide a presumption that the lady in question was indeed a willing partner in this commercial transaction. True, Spitzer is an outrageous hypocrite for having prosecuted others caught in what should not be considered criminal behavior, but since when is hypocrisy on the part of a politician, particularly as to sex, so shocking?

I wouldn’t have written this column had I not read the Wall Street Journal’s Page 1 news story headlined “Wall Street Cheers as Its Nemesis Plunges Into Crisis.” The article begins with the crowing statement “It’s Schadenfreude time on Wall Street” and goes on to quote those whom Spitzer went after over what should be considered the criminal greed that has predominated on Wall Street. It was Spitzer, as much as anyone, who sounded the alarm on the subprime mortgage crisis, the obscene payouts to CEOs who defrauded their shareholders and the other financial scandals that have brought the U.S. economy to its knees.

The best rule of thumb these days is that ordinary Americans should be mightily depressed over any news that Wall Street hustlers cheer, for they have been exposed as a dangerous pack of scoundrels quite willing to rob decent, hardworking people of their homes. And of course no one on Wall Street ever paid for sex.

A Crime With No Victim — Americans are focusing on the WRONG thing.

I love all these so-called “experts” (i.e. they have their own TV show or wrote a book) who get on Larry King Live, Fox News, AC360 and spout some garbage about “why is Spitzer’s wife standing by him” and “this is a crime with a victim.”

That is wrong on so many levels.

First, I’m not even going to link to the many pages, but just look for Dupre, and I’m sure you’ll find that this girl got like 700k plays on her myspace page yesterday and she even UPLOADED A SONG to Amie Street.

So, Dupre is obviously a smart cookie and is TAKING ADVANTAGE of her recent fame to parlay it into a quickly rising music career. Now whether she can make it last is another story, but she’s certainly hot right now.

Second, to ever call a woman weak or stupid for standing by her husband is absolutely ridiculous. This is precisely why the divorce rate is so high in this country — because you have all these fools standing up on their squawk boxes preaching “female empowerment.”

Female empowerment is saving the victims of sex slave trade (that’s the REAL time when there is a crime & a victim in prostituion.) Go to IJM.org and see real women victims who need empowerment.

To ever lambast a woman for standing by her Husband is absurd, and it shows the utter stupidity of the pyschologists, authors, and famous people writing books today.

So some woman who it happened to before spoke /wrote about the struggles. You know what? Life’s tough. Relationships are tough.

And who are you — who have no knowledge of this marriage, who have nothing to do with the family, that have no idea hwo this relationship started, how it developed, and how they have endured — who are you to say anything?

Third, honestly, this is when I say Americans are incredibly stupid.

Always focusing on the wrong thing.

They should looking to see who aer the people who most benefit from Spitzer stepping down (i.e. the crooks on Wall Street) and say to ourselves — hmm, now that Spitzer’s gone, can we make sure we get behind Paterson & Cuomo and allow them to tear down any corrupt super-wealthy fools?

The Victim in this crime is the people of the US, because with the fall of Spitzer, we have lost (not only a future presidential candidate) but someone who went after the big boys and made them shiver in their pants.

The fact that they cheered when he fell should be a red flag to anyone — with Spitzer gone, let’s hope Cuomo can help take on the ridiculous insurance companies, lying & cheating investment bankers, et. al.