Calderon Addresses Congress; Pot Addresses Kettle

“…it is a law…that not only ignores a reality that cannot be erased by decree, but also introduces a terrible idea…using racial profiling as the basis of law enforcement.  That is why I agree…I agree with the president: the new law carries a great amount of risk…when core values that we all care about are breached.  I don’t want to deepen the gap between the feelings and emotions between our countries and our peoples.  I believe in bridges, I believe communications, I believe in cooperation.  We must find together a better way to face and fix this common problem”—Mexican President Felipe Calderon, in his address to a joint session of Congress on May 20, 2010, seen here on YouTube

Okay, first off, who does Senor Calderon think he is that he can lecture the Congress of the United States of America?  How dare a foreign head of state lecturing our congress, telling them to act contrary to the will of their electorate and to detriment of the nation?   This is outrageous!  And while I know that “tu quoque” (essentially saying “No you!”) is not a legitimate logical argument, Mexico’s draconian immigration policies are worth noting.  A señor Calderon: Apártate que me tiznas, dijo la sartén al cazo.

Even more outrageous is that Obama and Biden just sit there so smug and sure, grinning and nodding and shaking his hand afterwards!  It’s an outrage and a travesty, and I personally feel that it’s bad enough that Obama should resign and apologize to the nation for failing his people.  Which then leads me to wonder if he indeed considers us “downright mean”, people, so ignorant and yet paradoxically also too “distracted” with the “over-abundance of information that we can access on our “Xboxes and Iphones and Ipads and Ps3s” to indeed be “his people”.  Such disdain for the free flow of information makes President Obama’s selection Kagan as his nominee to the Supreme Court even more worrying, as Miss Kagan has ruled in favor of it the past.  The case in question, however, was both one involving the right to free speech and the equally-touchy issue of campaign finance.  Campaign finances are a touchy area, but I personally lean to the side of public campaign financing with private contributions being forbidden.  Some would say that’s an unfair restriction of one’s free speech, but this is different, because the people, as part of the social contract, expect honesty and impartiality from their public servants, and have the reasonable assumption that their congressmen and senators will represent their interests and not the interests of private businesses who finance their campaigns.  Now, I don’t want the government to be some Marxist tool of wealth redistribution or class warfare or social justice or any other such progressive claptrap.  I just want it to do its job and stick to its contract.  It’s a business contract, and I think it was the artist Peter Paul Reubens-whose name lends us the adjective “Reubenesque”-who said that all trade and business is inherently based on trust, and I can’t but feel that he was completely spot-on in saying so. (more…)

Fairly Unbalanced: The State of the Modern Mainstream News Media

The internet, if it can survive as a free and neutral venue for the exchange of ideas, will be the salvation of us all.  Imagine a time before the web, when the only sources of information were newspapers, radio newscasts, and more recently network news.  Now we can have direct reports from bloggers who were on the scene, or instantaneously discuss the discrepancies between different networks’ coverage of an event with people all over the world.  We can access news reports from foreign news agencies such as the BBC, and get an outsider’s prospective on American politics and news events.  Unfortunately all this progress has not worked to reduce bias, inaccuracy, and sensationalism on the part of American cable news, but has rather worked to increase it.  To maintain their dwindling audiences, the networks have had to cater to their ideological bases and play up controversies and scandals to grab ratings, rather than striving for objectivity and rational discourse.   I would like to take some time to expose the bias, journalistic laziness, and irresponsibility of two major news networks.

First, permit me to turn my wrath on Fox News.  I will admit that they are just as unprofessional, sensationalistic, and biased as any other large news company, but this story just grates me.  You can find it online at:

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/07/wikipedia-purges-porn/

The long and the short of it is that Fox did a story where they discovered-shock and horror!-that there were sexually-explicit images and images depicting the naked human form on Wikipedia pages concerned with sexually-explicit topics and human anatomy.  Allow me to dissect some of that article:

“These images were and in some cases still are easily accessible to anyone, including school children, many of whom receive unfiltered access to Wiki projects in schools across the country.” (more…)

On Healthcare Reform and Tort Reform

Author’s Note:  I’d have commented on this all much sooner, but computer issues and other personal matters have delayed my completion of this entry.

It’s been quite an eventful couple of weeks in the world of politics. President Obama signed into law the healthcare bill which the House had passed the prior weekend, and that Thursday the Congress approved the “fixed” version of the bill which removed the so-called “Cornhusker Kickback”- extra $100 million in Medicaid funds for Nebraska-but kept other special deals for other states.  Twelve states are already set to challenge the bill’s constitutionality.

Now, I’m not going to attempt a point-by-point dissection of the bill, nor am I going to address its many flaws.  For an article which does a good job of that, see “20 Way ObamaCare Will Take Away Our Freedoms” by David Hogberg.  The latest Forbes also has a good article on all the taxes that Obama and the Democratic Congress have enacted, or will enact in the future, and I recommend that everyone read it, lest they be fooled by the oft-used talking point, “But Obama has actually cut taxes for most Americans!” Rather, I will simply go through what I think would have been better solutions and address the issue of Tort Reform, which has so often been brought up as a possible fix (or part of one) for the Health Care issue.  (more…)

What do conservatives want, exactly?

The political spectrum in the United States has long varied to some extent from those in the rest of the developed world. While the Democrats are host to a range of ideological stances that range from the traditional left to the center-right, the Republicans and those with associated or similar positions hold many beliefs that are, shall we say, not considered acceptable in the other G-20 countries.

The sanctity of entitlement programs and other forms of direct government assistance, essentially free education through the university level, acceptance of climate change, the necessity of strong government intervention in the economy in times of recession and universal single-payer health care are all accepted as canon in Europe, a place that not coincidentally is weathering this storm, save for the Greeks and their financial shenanigans and the Spanish housing bubble, much better than we are. The fact that these items are still seen as controversial and remain under heated debate in the United States is frankly stunning, and the rest of the world had a bad taste left in their mouth by our dysfunction after our embarrassing showing in Copenhagen, where we promised to show up with legislation passed ready to sign an agreement. Needless to say, we failed on both accounts. (more…)

The Arrogance of Power

The nuclear option has been decided on. President Obama and the Democrat majority leaders in Congress have decided to use the parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation to pass their unpopular health care reform bill, a bill that the Republicans oppose, a bill that some liberal Congressmen oppose for not being liberal enough, and a bill to which the majority of the American people, according to most polls, are vehemently opposed.

Here, you can see a compilation of leading Congressional Democrats lambasting the procedure… when Republicans tried to use it back when they had the majority and the Democrats tried to filibuster every bill and nomination they could. Pot, meet kettle.

My favorite quote is the one by Harry Reid. The “arrogance of power” is an apt summation of the main problem facing the United States; it is applicable to not just our politicians, but the unions and big business. (more…)

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