Because I Can

Homework Assignment

So a pretty standard tool in the political world is that of the Political Compass. Basically it ranks you on 2 different scales. One scale is Authoritarian vs. Libertarian and the other scale is Right vs. Left. I find this far more effective than being branded a Republican or a Democrat as it actually brings your own personal values into the equation.

Here is my result:

So I would be 2.8 Right, 2.5 Libertarian.

So here is the site www.politicalcompass.org/index and I suggest that everyone takes the test and figures out where they stand. Pretty cool tool and is a neat method for standardizing political views. Makes for interesting conversations over drinks (well at least here in DC it does)

Not Going to Talk About TedK...... How About Profiling Instead?

Trust me, you don't want me to talk about the late Senator Kennedy. No good would come of it.


MOVING ON....... I was riding the metro on the way to work and I noticed a lady next to me reading aloud from the Koran while rocking back and forth. She was decked out in a full burque (I swear it looked like she was working on a bee farm). Now, I don't normally look at someone of middle eastern decent and say "oh they must be a terrorist" but this lady had me downright scared. The situation was an extremely crowded metro car headed towards downtown DC during the AM rush hour, could you pick a better target for a terrorist attack?

Now, before jumping to conclusions, I looked at my fellow "infidel" passengers to see if they were as uncomfortable as I was. It appeared they were indeed. There was one guy between me and the lady in question who was visibly sweating and looked extremely worried (he would be the first to die if the lady suddenly lit the fuse on her shoes). Needless to say, my guard was up. At one point she bent down to get something out of her backpack and you could hear everyone just gasp (I was ready to tackle her or run for dear life at this point). Anyway, I got off at the next stop much to my relief and I haven't heard anything about a terrorist attack in the DC area so I think she probably wasn't a jihadist.

So should I be ashamed/mad at myself that I judged someone like this? The answer is no. It wasn't the skin color that made me sit up and take notice, it was the reading of the Muslim religious text on public transit which has historically been a prime target for Islamic terrorism. In fact, I would say that I was doing my duty as an American. Bear with me on this one ladies and gents..... Let's start back in 2001 when the WTC was brought down by Muslim fundamentalists. These were people of middle eastern decent who were deeply Muslim. I believe that event gave me (and every other American) the right to be cautious of everyone else matching that description. I know I lost some people with that last statement, people call it profiling or making a generalization and, while that all may be true, it is the price we must pay for vigilance. People who fit into that category have carried out numerous (13911 separate attacks according to thereligionofpeace.com) since 9/11. To me that means that people of the Muslim faith have a higher association with terrorist acts than those of any other faith or no faith at all (notice I did NOT say that being Muslim causes terrorist acts, any statistician/economist worth their salt would avoid saying that). So I do believe I have good reason to be wary of anyone reading the Koran and rocking back and forth while riding a crowded subway and wearing a backpack. Call me racist, call me a xenophobe, call me intolerant but at least I'll be alive.

CIA doing something illegal? Gasp!

Obama told Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint someone to investigate whether or not the CIA committed any illegal acts during the interrogations of the past few years (why Holder couldn't be bothered with this himself or why Obama didn't choose anyone himself is beyond me). Now, I can only be brief for I have to run to an all day training, but I know that any agency in charge of foreign intelligence gathering must be giving a whole lot of leeway when it comes to observing domestic law. Need I remind the rest of this country that most of the people interrogated are from third world nations (Afghanistan, Iraq, etc) that have a very healthy hatred for everything we stand for. And when it comes to people that hate us til the ends of the earth, we need to play hardball (aka not hold the interrogators to the letter of the law). On a side note, this means that I am agreeing with Cheney.... please don't hold it against me.

Good job Obama, you just significantly handicapped our ability to gather intelligence and defend our nation, good job slick!

because I am not that articulate, I leave others to say what I can't :http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/08/24/kt-mcfarland-cia-interrogation-intelligence/?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a16:g2:r3:c0.101844:b27320092:z0

Madoff, Cancer is Too Good For You

According to Reuters, Burnie Madoff is suffering from advanced pancreatic cancer. His prison "buddies" are quoted as seeing him take "20 pills a day".

You know what I say? Good! This sorry excuse for a human being deserves every second of suffering coming his way (and hopefully it is prolonged and agonizing). This ALMOST makes me believe in the existence of God or a Karma-esque system where evil do-ers get their come-uppins.

This begs the question, do we let him out to die outside of the prison system like the UK did with the Lockerbie bomber? The answer is absolutely not, the American public hates this guy far too much for that. But what does that say? A guy who took money (in the end, money is just money and no more) is hated more than a guy who killed 259 people. Since when did money become more important than lives? I am not arguing to let Madoff out but I am extremely upset that Al Megrahi is back in Libya. The fact that he is out is a giant slap in the face to the US, even Scotland doesn't take us seriously. Imagine what the US would have done to Al Megrahi if he'd been tried here keeping in mind that we sentenced Madoff to 150 years. That's the way it should be done, with a vengeance (cue John McClean and Die Hard theme song). America, f*ck yea.

source: http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN2413380120090824

Just a Quote for Today

Here is an excerpt from an old Teddy Roosevelt speech concerning American nationalism. I think everyone, no matter the political leaning, can agree with this:

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all... The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic... There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

If It's Broken, Make it Bigger and Give it More Money

Sorry guys, I have to talk Cash for Clunkers (C4C) again. It came out this morning that dealers and manufacturers are giving up on the program. The problems stem from the Dept of Transportation not paying dealers for the cars traded in under the program (check out my last post on C4C for more details). So the dealers took it on faith that the government would pay them back for the $3,500 or $4,500 discount they have the consumer on the new cars. No the government mullah hasn't materialized and the dealers (who were already desperate for cash in the first place) are stuck with all this fictional cash. So GM has stepped in for some of its dealers and is providing cash advances to the dealers themselves. Let's keep in mind that GM just came out of bankruptcy on July 10th. How good of an idea is to have a company that come out from Chapter 11 protection a little over a month ago lending large sums of money to faltering dealers? It's not a good idea at all but GM has little choice in the matter, the federal government has forced the auto industry into a corner (as if they needed the government's help). Once again, lofty goals from the federal government results in downright dismal policy and implementation.










Ok, now let's move on, the program sucks, let it die. But let's not forget to learn from this (the now infamous "teaching moment", copyright Boh'Rock during the Gates incident). The government can come up with these grandiose plans with extremely noble goals (save the auto industry and decrease emissions for example) but when it comes to writing the policy to "get shit done" so to speak and finally putting that plan into action, the government is lousy, inefficient, and dog shit slow. This often exacerbates whatever problem was trying to be fixed in the first place and everyone ends up worse off.





So take the above lesson and ask yourself "After this exhibition of governmental failure to manage a relatively minor amount of money, $3 billion, do we really want to hand them the keys to the healthcare system worth MUCH more than $3B?"




I was talking to a few people about this today and I came up with an analogy that I know my parents can relate to:

Your kid wrecks a nice car worth a good amount of money that you bought him (like my first car, nice but not that fast). Do you go out and then buy him a $200,000 Lamborghini capable of 200+mph? Absolutely not.



I don't want the government crashing and burning at 200mph because, guess what, all of us are riding shotgun.
























source: http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/20/news/companies/clunkers_sales/?postversion=2009082010

Freakin' Favre

Just signed with the Vikings. Seriously dude, make up your damn mind. I used to idolize this guy (even as a Bears fan) but I can't respect him anymore. He was the last real franchise player and he ruined himself.

Should make for an interesting season in the NFC North though.

Lofty Goals, Piss Poor Execution: The Story of Every Government Program

Ok, let's talk Cash for Clunkers again. Let's also put aside the arguments that I've had with countless people about the criteria and goals of said program (these points are moot now). It just came out that 2% of all clunkers claims have been paid out. (source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/16/auto-dealers-paid-just-percent-clunkers-claims-congressman-says/?test=latestnews) I don't care if you liked the program before, but you cannot argue with this.





Why is this you ask? Apparently there are a number of reasons but under-staffing (staff of 225 for 338,659 vehicles) and minor paperwork glitches are cited as the main causes. Isn't this typical of any government program? Hugely impressive goals coming from the mouths of politicians (they want to be remembered for having such a positive program when it comes election time) but, once the program has been met with positive poll results, the wind falls from the sails.





Now this begs the question, where is the collective $3B authorized by our "officials" to come from our pockets? According to my math (338,659 vehicles * $4,500 per vehicle to be nice and then take 2% of that), only $30,479,310 has been released to dealers. $30M out of $3B? What a terrible track record.


Now here's the real kicker. The dealers are not being paid for the cars they "sold" which means they still own the cars. This means they can take back the cars sold under the program that haven't been paid off.

The lesson to be taken from this (well one of them anyway) is that Congress should not act on their knee jerk reactions to popular opinion. For the most part, I would say the public knows best but they do not create and implement policy. It is Congress's job to take popular opinion (like "we can't afford new cars") and research if there can be policy built around it. In this case, the research was lacking in respect to funding and (I'm guessing it will come out later) the environmental impact.

So, big government, let this be a "teaching moment" (since you love that term so much). Research policy before you enact it. Better policy does not mean more policy.

The Newest Political Guru, Chuck Norris?

Believe it folks, Chuck is now writing about the healthcare issue and is making some sense. I didn't know he had half a brain.

It's a good read: http://townhall.com/columnists/ChuckNorris/2009/08/11/dirty_secret_no_1_in_obamacare