LeftLibertarian Rants

What is a left-libertarian?

2007-12-12T10:32:00.000-08:00

I've figured out what I mean by Left-Libertarian. It means that I am a huge proponent of markets to deal with many issues. However . . . and this is a big difference between me and other Libertarians . . . I take a much bigger view of what 'the market' should be.

What that means, is that I feel products and services must fully incorporate their costs into the price of the products and services. And when some cost is not being accounted for in the price of the product/service, the government should add a tax to add that cost into the product/service.

The most obvious example is fossil fuels. Fossil fuels appear to be a relatively inexpensive source of energy. However, one of the reasons for this is that a huge amount of the costs are not being incorporated into the product. Let me list several:
1) The cost of wars waged in part to secure access to fossil fuels. (If you don't believe oil had anything to do with the Iraq war, you are kidding yourself.) Tax-payers pay for this, not the oil companies.
2) The cost to defend supply lines. Those navy ships that patrol the Persian gulf do so in part to protect those oil tankers. Tax-payers pay for this, not the oil companies.
3) The cost of terrorism from terrorists that are funded in-part by oil money. The Saudis fund madrassas world-wide and some of those kids become terrorists.
4) The cost of pollution on public health. Many respitory ailments are caused by particulates from pollution. Coal-fired power plants release particulates, mercury, etc. . . . even the ash from such plants is a toxic waste issue. Cities often have to declare 'spare the air' days when weather patterns trap the pollution close to the city such that the danger is increased for vulnerable people.
5) The cost of pollution on property. Ever walk through a tunnel and see that black grime covering the walls? That's from cars & trucks (largely from diesel vehicles).
6) The cost of climate change. The effect of climate change is real. It is clear from the ice record that the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has greatly increased since the industrial age has begun. And the costs from climate change are very long term and very difficult to calculate. There are things like increased storm damage, droughts, increased disease as tropical diseases spread northward, etc. And I'll admit, there are even some advantages that might need to be taken into account . . . Canada and Russia will probably get longer growing seasons in their higher latitude areas. However, it is clear that the damages vastly outweigh the benefits.

Due to all of these costs that are not reflected within the price of fossil fuel energy, the government should tax fossil fuels. Taxing fossil fuels accomplishes two things at once.
1) It creates a source of funds that can be used to pay for at least some of the costs that are not reflected in the price of the fossil fuel. For example, these funds can help pay for the military costs of securing access to fossil fuels and supply lines to get the fossil fuels. These funds can help pay for some of the healthcare problems created by the use of fossil fuels. This funds can also be used to pay for research into alternate energy sources that will not have so many hidden costs.
2) The tax raises the price of the fossil fuel such that demand decreases and alternate energy sources that do not have such hidden costs are more economically viable.

Now many Liberatarians would accuse me of meddling in markets with such taxes. However, I feel the opposite is true . . . such taxes would fix broken markets where hidden costs are being foisted upon others instead of being included within the cost of a product/service. For example, innocent victims of ailments directly caused by fossil fuels are subsidizing the low cost of fossil fuels. Tax-payers are subsidizing the energy companies by waging wars for access to fossil fuels and securing the supply lines. These costs should be factored into the price of the fossil fuels.

By incorporating these 'hidden' costs into the price, the true real market is created.

Another way that such market repair can be done is with tariffs. If a country produces very inexpensive products for export to America but part of the way they accomplish such low prices is by slave labor, massive pollution of riviers, child labor, dangerous working conditions that kill workers, massive pollution of the atmostphere, etc. then those products should have tariffs that compensate for such hidden costs.

Huckabee and the meltdown of the GOP

2007-12-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

The GOP has largely consisted of an alliance between the Christian-right with their theocratic views and a corporate wing that wants no taxes and no regulations to hamper them. Bush was a strong combination of both and even though he is clearly an incompetent under-achiever, he was a perfect mix of the two main alliances with a big well-known name. Well, his incompetence an ultimately unproductive over-reaching of those policies has created a disaster. A disaster in foreign policy and economics.

With the upcoming elections, the corporate side is pushing Guilliani and Romney as faithful tax-cutters (or deficit creators, as I call them). However, the social views of Guilliani and the Mormon faith of Romney do get the approval of the Christian-right. There was even some talk of a third-party theocrat candidate. But now Huckabee seems to have emerged as the candidate of the Christian-right wing. But the problem is that Huckabee does have some populist economic views that the Corporate side doesn't like.

If Huckabee wins the nomination, a lot of the corporate money could go to support the pragmatic and centrist Hillary Clinton assuming she is the candidate. Well, at least this campaign has started to become interesting.

BTW, I'm going to try to post more from now on. Of course no one is actually reading this but, it is good for me to get it out there and on the record. So when things happen that I predicted, I can go back and point to this blog as proof of my great wisdom. ;-)

Bush and Ahmadinejad are the same just different religion

2007-12-07T10:35:00.000-08:00

A recent article hailed Ahmadinejad: rock star in rural Iran, here is a quote:

Ahmadinejad: rock star in rural Iran
By Scott Peterson Fri Dec 7, 3:00 AM ET
Birjand and Bideskan, Iran - Shoes off, and packed so tightly in a mosque that they sweat in the chilly night, several thousand men in eastern Iran await their hero. The air is electric.

When he arrives, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is greeted like a rock star: with a collective inhale the crowd jumps up to catch a glimpse of the firebrand populist. "Sit down! Sit down!" a cleric implores, as laudatory whistling intensifies. "The friend of the Imam [Mahdi] has come!" While Mr. Ahmadinejad is under attack across Iran's political spectrum for his economic policies and unyielding nuclear rhetoric, even his detractors say these frequent visits to Iran's provinces are shrewd politics that give him a serious shot at reelection in 2009.
The president now also gloats – over Iranian rivals who say he brought the country close to war, as much as over American hawks championing attacks – about a new US National Intelligence Estimate that said this week Iran halted a nuclear weapons
program in 2003.

Just like Bush in America, Ahmadinejad is popular with religious folk in rural areas of his country with his belligerent right-wing fundamentalist policies. And Bush, just like Ahmadinejad, is strongly disliked by the more educated secular urban people of his country. They are mirror images of each other . . . the only difference is the brand of religious intolerance they follow. It is so sad to see people driven by superstitious sectarianism. Once again, I am disgusted how it is the 21st century and huge number of people are still obsessed about arguing who has the better God and prophet. Pathetic.

The lame GOP "Well, why don't the Dems totally cut the funding?" response

2007-05-15T12:55:00.000-07:00

It has become a common refrain among conservatives to say "Well, if the Democrats really stand behind their convictions then why don't they cut off the war funding all together?" The answer is obvious . . . because they care about the troops and don't want to cut off their supplies. And they do care about having an orderly re-deployment that puts troops in Kurdistan & Kuwait to keep a watchful eye on things.

So many of these lame Democrats need to turn that "if you really stand behind your convictions" logic on the GOP . . . ask "If the GOP thinks this war is so incredibly important, then why don't they initiate a draft, raise taxes to cover the war costs, and send the 500,000 troops needed in Iraq to actually do the job?" This "surge" (what a lie that term is) is a half-assed escalation consisting of a few more troops. All it amounts to is a few more hammers to play "whack-a-mole" with. The moles will simply pop up in different locations. The violence will just move out of Baghdad and plague other areas.

The re-deployment versus surge debate just goes back to John Murtha's original thinking. Murtha tried to get the administration to try to take the war more seriously. However, when it was clear that they were not going to allocate the full amount of resources necessary, he realized that it was better to re-deploy out.

GOP hubris continues

2007-05-07T14:58:00.000-07:00

I just read that GOP senators blocked a bid to allow drug importation. Many people want to allow drug importation (or 're-importation' as it is often called because the drugs are often made in the USA and then shipped out of the USA to be sold at lower prices) in order to bring down the prices of perscription drugs in the USA. The GOP has well-known huge ties to the pharmacuetical industry. The GOP passed the 'Guaranteed massive profits to Big Pharma Act' (also known as Medicare Part D - perscription drugs).

The GOP needed some sort of rationalization to protect their obvious pandering to their Big Pharma donors. So they trotted out the usual 'drug safety' excuse. Come on now . . . one of the Bush administrations first moves was to say that we were not getting enough arsenic in our water. They also decided that we were not getting enough lead in our diet. Mercury too . . . they felt little reason to reduce mercury emissions. The whole GOP philosophy is anti-regulation and anti-government inspection.

Yet we are supposed to believe the anti-regulation GOP is doing this for drug safety? Come on!

You'd think that after the massive reality-check they got in 2006, the GOP might actually start acting a little rationally. Nope. I guess another thumpin' is due.

Think outside the box: A psychological/philosophical difference between the left & right.

2007-04-09T16:02:00.000-07:00

There are many differences between the right & the left . . . but let me bring up a very high-level psychological/philosophical difference that I have noticed: The left-wing tends to look at all the evidence and consult experts in order to reach a logical conclusion. The right-wing tends to already have their conclusions and looks for evidence and experts to support their pre-existing view.

Granted, this itself is a broad generalization and there are many exceptions on both sides. But let me give a few examples by looking at a few issues.

Global warming/climate change: The left-wing largely believes that there is climate changing occuring and that is due in part by man made greenhouse gases. This view has come into being over many years of scientific research by scientific experts. Although this issue has received a lot of attention in the last few years, the science behind climate change goes back many many years. There has been over 20 years of study of this issue. The right-wing has been dismissive of this issue. They don't want to believe it, so they seek out what ever evidence & experts they can find to dismiss the issue.

So what is behind this? Well . . . it is the grand-daddy of all dogmatic issues: religion. Most religion basically say "Here is the book of what is true. Don't bother trying to examine the world and try to reach logical conclusions, just believe what is in this book and do what it says. And if you want some 'scientific' support, then just seek out the evidence & experts that agree with this book."

So many people on the right have picked a religion and dogmatically stick to it. They do the same with their politics. Fundamentalist Christians, Jews, and Mormons all tend to be right-wing. They just believe what they are told and stick to it no matter what. Even Muslims were strong backers of the Republican party back in 2000 before the Bush administration started killing so many Muslims. Religion is the backbone of much of the current conservative movement. Most of the big polarizing issues can be tied to religion. Gay marriage?. . . fundamentalist Jews, Christians, Mormons, and Muslims all hate it due for religious reasons. (Never mind that Jesus said absolutely nothing about homosexuality.) Abortion . . . fundamentalists Christians, Mormons, and Muslims all oppose abortion for religious reasons. (Oh . . . Jesus never said anything about abortion either.) Even the Iraq war . . . if you really probe the views of the minority that still support the Iraq war, you'll see that they still support the war largely due their view of it being a war against Islam . . . a religious war. (Who was that 'prince of peace'?) I know that the Bush administration denies that this is a 'war on Islam' . . . but if you look at the few remaining war supporters, it is clear that the reason they support the war is because they view it as a war on Islamists. Fundamentalists Jews, Christians, and Mormons all support the Iraq war with this rationale. The sad/ironic thing is that this stupid war has strengthened the Islamists. Only after the Iraq war began did the Hamas Islamists win the Palestinian elections, the Muslim brotherhood Islamists gained seats in Egypt, and Ahmedinijad won election.

The powers of denial and rationalization in hardcore conservatives are amazing. Despite the Iraqi Survey Group finding nothing, a very large proportion of conservatives still believe there are unfound WMDs hidden in Iraq or that they were shipped off to Syria. (Never mind that this is completely illogical . . . if they really had WMDs, don't you think they would have used them by now?!?!) With the climate change issue, many conservatives have finally come to agree that climate change is occuring and that it is at least partly man-made . . . they now just think "So what?" So why don't they turn against the people who had been telling them for years that "global warming is a myth"? No respectable conservative will (publically) defend racism these days . . . yet they still support/admire people who defended racism until the bitter end (Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Joseph Smith, Trent Lott, etc.). The cognitive dissonance is amazing. If Ann Coulter was true conservative, she would shut up and get into the kitchen to start cooking for her husband & kids (I know she has neither . . . that is my point.).

An exception to this view are the big biz conservatives . . . they are just happy to go along with all the social conservative crap in order to keep getting their tax cuts & regulation cuts. One big irony is that the hardcore laissez-faire capitalism conservatives have been able to get these fundamentalist religious zealots to go along with their laissez-faire policies. Because when you really thing about it, laissez-faire capitalism is basically an economic version of evolution by natural selection . . . something the religious fundamentalists do not believe in! But even the laissez-faire capitalist conservatives suffer from denial & rationalization. If we continue to follow their policies, America will eventually become bankrupt due to endless budget deficits.

Think outside the box: California should split in two

2007-04-09T15:52:00.000-07:00

Occasionally I have ideas that are big & impractical . . . but they should be considered. I am going to label these my 'think outside the box' posts. They are big & difficult but should be considered.

My first will be this: California should split into two. Northern & Southern California often have very different views on issues. And when those differences flare up, the idea of having California split into two states gets mentioned. I think this should happen. It should take place in a time such as now when there is no big issue that is currently in the headlines so it can be done peacefully and calmly. Many people have often said that California is ungovernable. It is just too darn big, has too many constituents, has too much in-fighting, etc. I agree. So let's do it.

But here is my ulterior motive . . . California will then double its Senate contingent. California is a massive state with a huge population and a huge economy. Yet due to historical artifact (or a 'bug' as I call it) in the American constitution, we only get two senators like every other state including such sparesly populated states like Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. Splitting California in two would at least help rectify that massive injustice just a little bit.

So lets split in two now. Let's do it before the next North/South California battle flares up.

Lindsey Graham's amazing "5 rugs for 5 bucks!" gaffe

2007-04-09T15:06:00.000-07:00

When on a recent staged photo-op in an Iraqi market with John McCain (who's presidential bid is rapidly collapsing), Lindsey Graham happily said "I got five rugs for five bucks!" That statement is so offensive, that I decided to count up a few of them:
1) The whole point of the photo-op was to show normalcy in Iraq . . . well, people desperately selling their belongings to stay alive is hardly normalcy. Five rugs for five bucks shows just how desperate the poor Iraqi people are.
2) Lindsey Graham's home state has been suffering horrible job losses in the textile industry. Lindsey Graham's joy in buying cheap textiles made by exploited foreign labor is a slap in the face of the people he is supposed to represent.
3) The rugs Lindsey bought were Islamic prayer rugs. The right-wing went ballistic over Nancy Pelosi wearing a scarf during her recent trip to Syria (never mind that Laura Bush and Bush advisor Karen Hughes did the same . . . hypocrisy is the right-wing way), so why are they not upset about Lindsey Graham's purchase of Islamic prayer rugs? Did Lindsey buy one rug for each of the five times he will pray to Allah each day as per Islam.
4) The McCain/Graham market outing was a huge tax-payer funded boondoggle that involved 100+ soldiers, Blackhawk helicopters, Apache gunships, snipers, etc. Five rugs for five bucks? No. Lindsey Graham paid five bucks, but the U.S. tax-payer subsidized his purchase with hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is the standard faux-conservative strategy . . . privatize the profits while socializing the risk.
5) As is typical, any American attention is trouble for an Iraqi person, place, or thing. The next day, that market was attacked by snipers.

Well it is nice to see that McCain & Graham got really pummeled for his cheap stunt. McCain got caught parroting bogus right-wing talking points while on right-wing media. So McCain tried to defend those talking points with this tax-payer funded stunt . . . and all he did was make matters worse. The 'straight-talk' express has been stuck in reverse for a while now.

Neo-cons, you had your chance . . . but this war is over.

2007-03-27T15:38:00.000-07:00

Lawrence Lindsey of the Bush administration gave an 'upper bound' estimate of $100 to $200 billion for the Iraq war . . . and he got fired for making such a 'high' estimate. The preferred numbers were $50 to $60 billion. Well, we have spent 10 times that amount and more than twice Lindsey's "upper bound" estimate.

The war has entered its fifth year . . . thus, it has gone on for longer than World War 1 or World War 2. And there is no end in sight. Some say it will take another 10 to 12 years. Rumsfeld doubted the war would take 6 months.

Forget it. You had you chance . . . and you blew it. Your poorly thought out war has been a complete disaster. Your poorly planned war based on nonexistent WMDs that was poorly executed has become a complete quagmire. It is time to leave. We have accomplished all our goals (Regime change & secured the non-existent WMDs). If the Iraqis want a constitutional democracy, they'll have to fight for it themselves . . . we've given them more than plenty of chances to have one.

What is your last excuse for this pathetic war ?. . . "If we leave, then it could become a terrorist haven." Basically, that excuse is "We totally screwed the place up and it may become worse than when we invaded, so let us stay and fix it." Forget it . . . there is little reason to believe that you can fix it and plenty of reasons to believe that you will continue to fail. If we leave and Iraq becomes a terrorist haven then we can always re-invade. We are very good at invading. Leave a ton of troops in Kuwait & Kurdistan for that purpose. But we just cannot hold a country that is filled with people that hate us. So why even try? You naive "welcome us with flowers and sweets" and "they'll build a monument to George Bush" fantasies have failed.

Stop with the lame reasoning. If you want to stay there for oil then say it. We can then have that discussion. But you have run out of reasons to continue this war and you have had more than an ample opportunity to fight the war. Forget it . . . . It is over.

So who wants this surge?

2007-02-23T11:33:00.000-08:00

Who is really in favor of this 'surge' (AKA, escalation).

The American people? No. Polls strongly show that the American people are not behind this surge policy.

The Iraqi Study Group? No. The Jim Baker led study group did not propose a surge as being done by the Bush administration.

The Iraqi people? No! A majority of Iraqis think that they would be better off if the American forces left. I don't know their view is wise but that is what they believe.

The generals? No, even Bush himself kept telling us that the generals did not want more troops. But only after some chicken-hawk at a right-wing think-tank pushed for this 'surge' did Bush fire the generals that did not want the surge and put a general that wanted the surge in charge.

The only people that seem to want this surge is Bush & Cheney who just want to salvage their already pathetic reputations and some conservative "think-tanks" that want to accomplish the same thing. We are wasting money and lives for the vanity of ideological zealots that were proven to be completely wrong. What a waste. What a huge waste of blood and money.

The only rationale for invading Iraq that (sort of) remains standing is the "bring democracy to Iraq" rationale. Well, that rationale has now fallen. Democracy is the governance of the people, by the people, for the people. But instead of listening to the desires of the Iraqi people (or the desires of the American people), King George is pushing his Agenda on the people. I guess democracy is officially dead in Iraq. I just hope we can keep democracy alive here in the USA.

Bush, Cheney & the GOP lost a war against a third world country

2007-02-23T10:44:00.000-08:00

Someone needs to write a book named "How Bush, Cheney, and the GOP took the world's remaining super-power and lost a war in a third-world nation"

They've blown 1/2 a TRILLION dollars in a war that has now lasted longer than World War 2 and yet more Americans are dying now each month than during the early phases of the war. As the aptly named (and very good) book labels it, this is a "Fiasco".

Let me give an outline on how it happened:
1) This was a virtually unwinnable war to begin with. The Arab world has been seething for the last 40 years with sympathy toward the occupied Palestinian territories. What kind of complete idiots thought that the main ally of the Israeli occupiers would be 'greeted as liberators' when they began occupying another Arab/Muslim nation? Unreal stupidity by Bush, Cheney, and their Neo-con cabal. And then throw in the fact that Iraq was a nation that was intentionally created with severe ethnic and religious fault lines. Ethnic & religious hatred was kept under control by a harsh secular dictator . . . only ignorant people didn't see that these ethnic issues were a huge potential problem. This war was virtually unwinnable from the start but the delusional Bush administration was unable to see this and refused to listen to the many experts that said this was a very bad idea. If this war was winnable, it would require very smart policies and a lot of money & troops . . . . but . . . .
2) The administration mislead (AKA lied) their way into this war. Despite contradictory CIA & FBI reports, the Bush administration would tout aluminum tubes that could "only be used for enriching uranium" and (completely fictional) "meeting between Atta and Iraqi intelligence officials." Although these lies were sufficient to fool the American public who actually believed their government wouldn't lie to them, these lies were never believed by the Iraqi people. As a result, virtually the entire Arab world believes this war is nothing but an oil grab and help for Israel. Whether Americans believe these lies is irrelevant . . . the fact that Arabs don't believe them mean there is strong fuel for a resistance/jihadi movement.
3) Insufficient troops were sent to occupy Iraq. As mentioned many many times, General Shinseki told the Bush administration that some 400,000 troops would be needed to successfully occupy Iraq. For making this assertion, Shinseki was forced into an early retirement.
4) Incredibly bad civil occupation policies fueled resentment by the Iraqi people. Instead of keeping inefficient but functioning state-owned factories running that employed lots of people, the CPA disbanded those factories with some neo-con dream about how new private enterprise factories would just sprout up to take their place. Instead of reforming the Iraqi military and transitioning them into new police, military, or other jobs; the CPA disbanded the Iraqi military and sent them home with their weapons but without a paycheck. Instead of handing over Saddam's palaces to the Iraqi people, the USA took them over as military & diplomatic bases. (Meet the new boss, the same as the old boss.) Instead of hiring lots poor unemployed Iraqis, contractors imported low-wage foreign workers. The CPA's policies ensured that the the occupation would be a disaster . . . and as usual, the leader of this disaster was rewarded with a medal.
5) Incredibly bad military occupation policies fueled resentment by the Iraqi people. Checkpoints with a shoot-first, ask questions later policy has lead to hundreds (or thousands?) of killings of innocent civilians. House to house insurgents disrespected the people and violated cultural policies. Good anti-insurgent techniques were not adopted until very lately.
5) Very stupid interrogation (AKA torture) policies further strengthened insurgents. Even George Bush as admitted that Abu Ghraib was a disaster. But what he has not admitted is that he, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and torture-czar Gonzales are largely responsible for this. Instead of standing strong behind the Geneva conventions and official US policy, the Bush administration changed the definition of torture, they called the Geneva convention "quaint", and they said it didn't apply to many of their detainees. They created a new term of 'unlawful combatant' and tried to stuff these people into a legal black hole in Gitmo. The created a literal Gulag archipelago of secret prisons scattered in Europe, Asia, and the mid-East. And then when the Abu Ghraib scandal exploded, they actually had the chutzpah to blame it on 'a few bad apples'. No, the fish rots from the head . . . those 'few bad apples' were simply following along the guidelines they were given.

Anyone that thinks the GOP is better on defense is delusional. A party that took the only super-power and lost a war in a third world country cannot be viewed as 'good on defense'.

The Amazing rationalization abilities of the right-wing

2007-01-16T16:12:00.000-08:00

The American right-wing has a huge ability to rationalize things. They are able to see things the way they want to see things and not how they really are. And when Americans joined in that irrational exuberance, they were able run wild with their foolish policies. But willful-delusions have a nasty time when they run up against reality. And that is what we have been seeing in the last year or two.

Anyway, I just want to list a number of amazingly pathetic right-wing rationalizations. Some have smacked into reality lately. Others have not fully faced their reckoning yet. But the most scary thing is that many people continue to believe discredited right-wing fantasys. And even the people that will admit the fantasys that have been de-bunked continue to believe in the other fantasys despite the fact they are pushed by the same ideological losers.

Right-wing fantasy: Iraq has WMDs. Saddam is an evil dictator and they wanted to believe that he had WMDs. So they sought out and believed every shred of evidence that supported that conclusion (no matter how little credibility such evidence had).
Reality meeting: Yes, the Iraq Survey Group debunked this fantasy.
Right wingers continue to believe: The ISG proof doesn't stop plenty of right-wingers from believing that we found WMDs. Others insist on conspiracy theories like they were shipped to Syria.

Right-wing fantasy: Iraq had substantive ties with Al-Qeada. They wanted to believe Saddam & Iraq had ties to the people the committed 9/11 . . . so they sought out and believed every shred of evidence that supported that conclusion (no matter how little credibility such evidence had). Dick Cheney was one of the worst proponents of this fiction
Reality meeting: The Senate Intelligence committee released a report that de-bunked all of this crap.
Right wingers continue to believe: Even after the FBI debunked the Mohammad Atta & Iraq connection in Prague, Dick Cheney kept pushing that bit of fiction. Most right-wingers are completely ignorant of that Senate Intelligence report. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH (for right-wingers)

Right-wing fantasy: "We will be greeted as liberators".
Reality meeting: This war has continued for four years now and US soldiers continue to die.
Right wingers continue to believe: Many continue to believe. Others resort to re-writing history and saying that they never claimed such things.

Right-wing fantasy: Tax cuts are the cure-all for the economy and raise revenues.
Reality: Reagan cut taxes & ran up massive deficits. A Clinton tax hike wiped out the deficits and did not cause a recession as predicted. Bush cut taxes and has run up even more massive deficits. We currently have permanent structural deficits despite the constantly repeated right-wing fiction of 'cutting taxes raises revenues'. Well, if revenues have gone up so much, we surely don't have any deficits then, right? WRONG.
Right-wingers continue to believe: Most of them continue to believe this crap. Occasionally, some of them will face reality as Paul O'Neill did (and was then summarily pushed out of the Bush administration.)

Right-wing fantasy: Global Warming is some left-wing conspiracy
Reality meeting: Only slight. Although just about every reputable scientist has come to the conclusion that climate change is happening and humans are causing it, it is difficult to prove this completely. As a result, I believe that it will take a 1 foot rise in sea levels before right wingers believe.

Many people will believe what they want to believe . . . and to those people, facts are nothing but 'the opinion of the liberal media'.

And now, time for me to offend some people . . . what is at the heart of this phenomenon? Psychology. IMHO, the brain constructed with weird quirks that drive us toward such irrational and illogical conclusions. Why? Well, as conscious beings we are all fully aware that we will all die eventually. Absolutely nothing will stop that reality. And that depressing final disposition could paralyze us if we really thought about it too much. So we don't. We create elaborate rationalizations, delusions, and fictions about death. The most common delusion is that we won't really die . . . we will continue to live in an 'after-life'. It is a great delusion since it turns an awful thing (death) into a good thing (a whole new life). Just about every human civilization has independently come up with their own variant of this delusion. Whether it is going to heaven with Jesus, going to heaven with Mohammad, being reincarnated, or being transported to some spaceship as those Heaven's Gate people believed, most religions promise an after-life. It is something that our brains are hard-wired to believe. So, it should come to no surprise that the right-wing that is very prone to religious delusions is very good at coming up with other rationalizations and delusions.

OK, let the flames begin.

Another disastrous Bush Interview

2007-01-16T15:55:00.000-08:00

I listed to an interview of Bush on the McNeil News hour today. It was very depressing. Bush was a bumbling stuttering fool who just spewed forth the same old stale policies that have failed the country for the last six years. Part of me actually starts to feel sorry for the guy. And then I realize that is just my pathetic 'bleeding-heart liberal' side. There is no reason to feel sorry for Bush. He is a arrogant wealthy jerk. And here he sees that his policies are failing and he's been given a set of alternate policies by family confidant James Baker. But in his trademarke arrogant stubborness, he has discarded that advice and continue pushing his failed policies in a vain attempt to salvage his legacy.

With nothing but fake sympathy, Bush sends more troops to their deaths. When asked about whether the rest of the country should share in the sacrifice for the war, he immediately begins the standard refrain . . . "Raise taxes?" Bush and other Republicans are masters of denial and rationalization when it comes to taxes. They have convinced themselves that raising their own taxes is always bad for the country. Really? You mean having to buy a Lincoln instead of a BMW 7 series is bad for the country? Are we really helping the country by living with an unsustainable standard of living and pushing all the costs of the war onto our children and grandchildren? Of course not.

I'm struggling to find a silver-lining in this big black cloud. The only thing I can see is that Bush's horrendous policies continue to destroy the current corrupt and ideologically bankrupt GOP. It is very sad that this destruction of the GOP has to come at the expense of soldier's lives and excessive government debt. But that is the only good thing I can say about Bush right now.

Ever notice that any time Bush is interviewed, the interviewer ends up looking smarter than Bush? I always sit there and think "Why can't that interviewer be our president?"

A time comes when silence is betrayal

2007-01-15T15:01:00.000-08:00

"A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Iraq.
The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on.
Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements, and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Those are not my words, they are Martin Luther King's words. I just replaced 'Vietnam' with 'Iraq'. Happy Martin Luther King Day! Honor him by reading his views on the Vietnam war . . . they have scary parallels to the current struggle in Iraq.

Dick Cheney has NEGATIVE credibility on Iraq

2007-01-14T12:30:00.000-08:00

Dick Cheney doesn't have zero credibility on Iraq, he has negative credibility. No one should listen to anything he says . . . and if you do, you should probably do the opposite of what he says.

First of all, he has been wrong on everything. He said he believed that Saddam has "reconstituted nuclear weapons" WTF? Saddam had no nukes and he knew it. Even if we give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he meant "reconstituted nuclear weapons program", he was still completely wrong. There was no nuclear program in Iraq. The yellowcake ruse was exposed as a fraud. And the aluminum tubes were for missiles as they were told by experts.

Cheney said that the insurgency was "in its last throes". He said that about 2 years ago! He has been completely wrong about that.

And beyond the fact that he has been so wrong is his conflicts of interest. There are people who are paying a great sacrifice for this war. Years away from jobs and their families. Over 3000 have paid the ultimate price. But Cheney never served . . . he got five deferments. No one in his family is serving. His daughter could have served. Well if he is not personally giving to the war effort, is he paying a monetary sum? During most wars, taxes are raise to pay for the war. Nope . . . Cheney has given himself huge tax cuts. Not only is he not paying more, he is actually paying LESS.

But it doesn't stop there . . . no, Dick Cheney is profiting from this war. Well all know how the contractor Halliburton that was once headed by Cheney received the largest government contracts for this war. Many of those contracts were secretly awarded with no bidding. Is that not fraudulent enough? Do you actually believe the rationalizations about how they had to be offered quickly and in secret? Well, add in the fact that these contracts had multi-year terms! There was no reason for such contracts to be given such long terms. They should have been allowed to be re-bid after the urgency was over and things were no longer secret.

Cheney is getting deferred compensation. That not enough of profiting? OK, he owns options that have massively gained in value. He has said that the will give those options to charity . . . well, why didn't he do that right away? BECAUSE HE WANTED THEM TO GO UP IN VALUE BEFORE HE DONATED THEM SO HE'LL GET HUGE TAX BREAKS. He'll be able to use those tax breaks to offset the huge speaking fees and other gratuitous gifts that he'll receive after he leaves office.

So not only has Dick Cheney been wrong on everything he has said about this war, he actually profits from this war. His credibility is less than zero. Doing the opposite of whatever he says is probably the best choice of action.

Come on Henry Waxman . . . dig around and expose that bloated

The Surge

2007-01-11T11:53:00.000-08:00

In a fit of sheer vanity, President Bush has thrown a "Hail Mary" in attempts to salvage the disaster known as the Iraq war. Against the will of American military commanders, the American people, and the Iraqi people; Bush has decided to send additional troops to Iraq in a last ditch attempt to stabilize Iraq. Will it work? Maybe . . . but not likely. Bush simply does not understand Iraq. Iraqis have spent the majority of their lives living in sympathy of their Palestinian Arab brethren living under the occupation of Westerners. And now they find themselves in the same situation. Yet Bush thinks they will quit resisting because a few more occupation troops show up? Bush is just clueless.

Bush mentioned Al-Qeada ten times in his speech. Who does he think he is fooling? The vast majority of the violence is Sunni v. Shiia or Iraqi v. occupier. Al-Qeada is nothing but a bit player . . . . but Bush plays them up since they are the 9/11 boogie-man.

For the sake of the American troops in Iraq, I hope that I am wrong and that Bush is right. But that seems like a long shot. When has he gotten ANYTHING about Iraq right?

This situation is just so sad.

Bush to destroy McCains Presidential bid

2006-12-19T15:12:00.000-08:00

With regard to Iraq, the biggest issue in politics, John McCain has been calling for more troops. Never mind that we don't have more troops, McCain never says where they will come from, and rejects talk about a draft. He just keeps saying 'more troops'.

Cynical analysts say that McCain is just asking for something that he knows he can't have and that way he can never be proven wrong about his Iraq strategy because it was never tried. His campaign rejects that is his intention. Well, whether it was his intention or not, it was an astute observation of his Iraq positioning.

However . . . . it looks like Bush is going to give him what he never should have asked for . . . more troops. A leak has indicated that after the Iraq Study Group and other reviews, Bush is going to put more troops in Iraq. Uh oh . . . has Bush just planted the seeds for destroying the GOP's front-runner for 2008? Changing the troop strength by ten or twenty percent seems unlikely to have a real affect on the situation. When the 'more troops' strategy fails, McCain will be forever tagged as the guy who pushed for the failed 'more troops' strategy in Iraq.

Well, McCain deserves to be destroyed since he took all sorts of abuse from the Bushies and then sucked up to them. It is poetic justice to see him destroyed by the Bushies once again, even though that is not their intention. Watching McCain suck up to Jerry Falwell has been nauseating. Maverick, my ass. Goodbye John!

Ahmadinejad riles up his right-wing base

2006-12-13T15:59:00.000-08:00

Iran's president Ahmadinejad has been mouthing off about Israel again and holding his silly anti-holocaust convention. What a jerk. Why is he doing this? Does he really plan on wiping Israel off the map? Of course not.

Ahmadinejad is simply spewing venom about Israel in order to curry support from his own right-wing conservative base. The right-wing base are suckers for nationalism, jingoism, and tough talk no matter what country they are located in. All you need to do is wrap yourself in your nations flag and thump the local Holy book. Right-wingers world-wide eat up that crap.

I don't think Ahmadinejad even cares if we launched an air-strike against Iran. In fact, he might be intentionally trying to get Bush to launch such an attack. Such an attack would solidify support for his party.

(I'm going to try to post on a more regular basis . . . it help me to get these thoughts out even if no one is reading them.)

Bush spreading dictatorship to USA!

2006-12-13T09:37:00.000-08:00

The only "reason" for the Iraq war to remain standing was to liberate the Iraqi people and spread democracy. However, things haven't gone very well in that regard. The Iraqi people are liberated from Saddam, but there is no security such that they are more likely to be arbitrarily killed than under Saddam. And there is a weak democratically elected Iraqi government that would probably fall within weeks if we pulled out.

Right now, America is re-evaluating its policy for Iraq since it has become a quagmire. The James Baker lead Iraqi Study Group (named similarly to the Iraqi Survey Group to try make people forget about that previous failed group?) has published its report which basically amounts to strategic re-deployment . . . or, as the right-wingnuts would call it, "Cut & Run".

So today, there is a story about how the Saudis have warned against a US pull out from Iraq. They supposedly said that they will financially back the Sunnis in fighting against the Shiia if we pull out. Some reports have said that they are already financially supporting the Sunnis.

Well that is just great. In a new record for irony, Bush thought he would spread democracy in the mid-East . . . but instead, American foreign policy ends up being directed by a mid-East dictator. Wow.

We need a Bush Senior lead coup!

2006-12-08T12:35:00.000-08:00

The apparent dismissal of the Iraq study group is the last straw. These Bushistas are out of control. The Dems won't pull the politically risky move of going for impeachment, so what we need is a military coup. Not a crazy left-lead military coup . . . We need a paternalistic George HW Bush senior led coup to bring some sanity back to the whitehouse.

The Republican elders have tried to counsel Bush Jr. nicely. They, but he is too stupid and way too stubborn. He absolutely REFUSES to admit mistakes and he seems to rather let men die than admit a mistake and change course.

And Cheney is no help, when was the last time he was right about ANYTHING? "Last throes", "Deficits don't matter", his Saddam & Al-Qaida conspiracy theories, "No doubt Saddam has WMDs", etc. Cheney can't even be trusted with a shotgun.

So Bush senior, the former head of the CIA, needs to call all his CIA contacts and get a coup d'etat going. Bush senior can bring in lots of rational elder statesmen to run things. Scrowcroft, James Baker, General Shinseki,etc. Round up the usual GOP suspects EXCEPT for the Neo-cons. The Neo-cons had their chance, they failed. The failed BIG TIME.

Don't misunderstand me. I strongly dislike the GOP, but Dem led coup would be too much of a shift for the country to accept. A moderate GOP led could be accepted by everyone. Bush has been bailed out by his Dad and his Dad's friends many times . . . one more time would not hurt.

How's that for "thinking outside the box" on Iraq policy?

Bill Kristol is a Jackass

2006-07-19T16:56:00.000-07:00

Bill Kristol is one of the Neo-conmen behind PNAC plans to invade Iraq. His dreams of an Iraq invasion have been realized . . . and virtually everything the neo-con crowd promised about the Iraq invasion has turned out the be complete wrong.

For example, on an episode of Terry Gross' Fresh Air at the war's opening weeks, Bill Kristol said "There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America, that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's been almost no evidence of that at all," he continued. "Iraq's always been very secular."

Oh really, Bill? . . . hmm . . . so who won the Iraqi elections? SCIRI. Let me spell that out for you "Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq". Oh . . . yeah, I'm sure they have no interest in setting up an Islamist regime.

And how are those Sunni and Shia getting along? Well, they are currently in a full blown civil war wherein around 100 people are getting killed each day.

So, it is completely obvious that Bill Kristol has absolutely no clue as to what he is talking about. Nobody should employ this guy as a commentator about foreign policy unless they want to get the opinion that is completely wrong.

Yet he persists. Isn't the definition of insanity "doing the same thing and expecting a different result."? Well these people are insane.

Bill Kristol is now talking about how we should launch some missiles at Iran such that the Iranian people will overthrow the Mullahs. How dare he even open his mouth? Who is giving this guy a platform? This guy has absolutely no credibility.

Bush wrong about everything to do with Iraq war

2006-07-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

The Bush administration was wrong about EVERYTHING related to the Iraq war:

-WMDs (They claimed Saddam had them)
-Ties to Al-Qeada (Did not exist at all.)
-Ethic tensions (They said there was no Sunni/Shiia ethic tension to worry about)
-Being welcomed as liberators (They said we would be)
-Cost of the war ($100 Billion was an estimate given . . . a guy was fired for saying $200 Billion . . . we have spent more than $300 billion so far.)
-The length of war ("could be 6 days, 6 weeks . . . I doubt 6 months" said Rumsfeld)etc.
-The Effect on Israel/Palenstine issue (They said it would help.)

Is there anything that they got right?

Liberals are NOT on the terrorists side!

2006-07-18T20:46:00.000-07:00

I'm so tired of hearing crap from conservatives that implies or states that liberals are on the terrorists' side. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The terrorists are:
-For mixing religion & government
-Against gay rights
-Against teaching evolution in schools
-militant and overly pro-gun
-Against women's right to choose

That's right, THE TERRORISTS ARE CONSERVATIVES. This meme about 'liberals supporting terrorists' is simple a fiction created in the paranoid minds of wingnut conservatives that think anyone who doesn't agree with them is teamed up against them.

Liberals just have different views on how to combat terrorism.
Here is a simple view of many liberals . . . Go after the terrorists. You'd think that would be obvious, but the Bush administration blew it by removing military assets from Afghanistan to go after Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was a dream come true . . . it showed the Arab world that Osama was 'right' about a lot of things . . . that the west lies (no WMDs), that the west only cares about the oil in the mid-East (since we abandoned Afghanistan and invaded an oil-rich nation that had nothing to do with 9/11), and that the west is not all-powerful (Iraq has turned into a quagmire under America occupation).

Terri Schiavo bitch-slapped Tom DeLay

2005-04-01T19:26:00.000-08:00

Tom Delay has been suffering through all sorts of ethics problems. And the word is that he could get indicted in Texas any day now. And then there was the recent disclosure about donations from foreigners and Indian tribes to pay for his recent trips.

But then, Terri Schiavo is 'delivered as a gift from God' to Tom DeLay. (His own words.) So Tom DeLay decides to use Terri Schiavo to spew about this 'culture of life' issue in order to distract attention from his many ethical failures (or is it just plain corruption?) and solidify his conservative support. So Tom DeLay gets up on the soapbox and starts screaming about how liberals are killers and all that crap . . . but it all backfired on him.

1) The GOP memo talking about how the Schiavo tragedy was a 'great political issue' surfaced in the press.
2) Then Tom DeLay gets recorded during a private speech with Christian conservatives wherein he talked about how 'God delivered terri schiavo' to them.
3) Polls come out showing that even conservative Republicans were angered with the Congressional activism into this judicial decision concerning a private family medical matter.
4) A story breaks out that in 1988, Tom DeLay himself decided that his father should be allowed to die. That's right, he decided that his own father's medical chart should say 'do not ressuccitate'. And the decided not to allow them to use dialysis on his father.
5) And the story about Tom DeLay's father discloses even more hypocrisy . . . after his father's death, Tom DeLay participated in lawsuit against a company that made bearings that his father used in a home-built tram system that caused his father's injuries. Yep, one of these 'tort reform' proponents participated in his own (meritless?) lawsuit against a corporation that happened to make a part in some home-made tram system that failed.

That was poetic justice at its finest.

Bush's Social Security 'plan' is margin investing for retirement

2005-04-01T18:49:00.000-08:00

I don't fully understand Bush's "plan" . . . because Bush refuses to disclose any detailed plan! That's right, Bush is trying to sell us something without telling what it is . . . that's pretty dishonest, IMHO. Of course, this is the guy that said he would not use American troops for nation building and that

But, from what I understand of Bush's social security 'plan' is that he wants to borrow *trillions* of dollars, put that money into private accounts and then invest that money into the stock market. But who has to pay back those trillions of dollars? Well us Americans, the very same ones who are getting those private accounts. So, Bush’s big social security plan is to have us borrow money and then invest that money. There is a term for doing that; it is called investing on margin.

Investing on margin is a risky strategy. It allows one to leverage their investment such that if they make money, they'll make more money than they normally would. However, if you lose money, you lose more money that you normally would. I've invested on margin occasionally . . . but a lot of people would never do it because of the risk (and these are people that accept the risk of investing in the stock market). But ask any financial person if investing on margin for retirement is a good idea . . . they'll say you are nuts. In fact, you ARE NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO INVEST ON MARGIN IN IRA & 401(k) ACCOUNTS.

So, can someone please explain to me why they think that Bush's social security plan (that is effectively investing on margin) is a good idea?

I am not at all against investing retirement money into the stock market. Like many people, I have thousands of dollars investment for retirement in 401(k) and IRA accounts. But I am against borrowing money to invest in the stock market for retirement. That is just stupid.

OK, time for the kicker . . . Bill Clinton proposed investing social security surplus money into the stock market. But Republicans voted it down. Why? It seems like they wanted to take the money away from the people and then when the people had no money to invest, now they want to force the people to borrow money to invest.