It has come to my attention that I have not been clear in my blog over the past couple of years (due to the fact that I largely stopped blogging for reasons now unclear to me) that my opinions of Bush and his policies have changed significantly from when he was first elected.
I was recently challenged on another forum to cite examples of my own writing where I have denounced various Bush era activities and policies. I was surprised to find that I was not able to give such citations, as they exist only in my mind. I have never committed it to print. So I will rectify this.
GUANTANAMO BAY
The capture and detention of prisoners of war is acceptable. What was not acceptable was the fact that the facility simply imprisoned them and then did nothing more. The prisoners should have been investigated according to military procedures to establish their crimes and involvement (to make sure we didn’t imprison actual innocent bystanders).
Prisoners of war captured on the battlefield are not entitled to the protections of the American civilian justice system.
But as a prison for convicted terrorists, I don’t have a problem with it.
IRAQ
Wrong target. Although it is nice that Saddam Hussein is no longer around to torture his people, that was never our job or our responsibility. We should not have invaded Iraq. We should have invaded Iran.
AFGHANISTAN
Although terrorists do hide in and are supported by Afghani forces, Afghanistan is not the main target. It is peripheral. Establishing “democracy” in Afghanistan is not going to solve the problem.
IRAN
Iran is the hornet’s nest, the source of the funding and training of most Islamist terrorists. We should have invaded Iran and wiped out that support infrastructure, but we didn’t.
THE MIDDLE EAST IN GENERAL
We should not be trying to “liberate” the Middle East. For one thing, what Bush/Obama want to do is not liberty. Secondly, the cultures of the Middle East don’t know how to be democratic (nor do they really want to be). Sometimes various factions hate their governments, but tyranny is okay. They just want it to be their kind of tyranny.
Dictatorship, especially Islamic dictatorship, has been the government of choice in that part of the world for centuries. Various religious factions vie for supremacy. They don’t want to get along — they each want to be the one in charge.
Even if we free them and give them democratic choice, they will just choose to install another dictator, and be back to square one. We are seeing this pan out in Iraq right now.
PATRIOT ACT / WIRETAPPING
I am not an expert on the contents of the Patriot Act or the implications of it. But in general I do not endorse the restriction of individual rights and/or liberty. Government invasion into personal freedoms never has an innocent motive and never has good results.
TSA / AIRLINE SECURITY
All this new “security” at airports in the US is a farce, a dog and pony show some call “security theater”. It doesn’t actually make us safer. There are still many obvious loopholes that would allow a determined terrorist (or even a halfway intelligent one) to destroy an airplane and kill everyone on board.
The failure to apply proper profiling further reduces it to a circus. That 82-year-old white grandmother from Iowa is not a terrorist. But that 27-year-old Arab guy from Turkey might be.
DEFICIT / NATIONAL BUDGET
Bush’s military spending would have been justified if we had actually fought the right war, in the right place, against the right enemies (Iran). But we didn’t.
TORTURE / WATERBOARDING
I do not and have never endorsed torture (including waterboarding) as a method of interrogation on prisoners. It doesn’t work. A torture victim will say anything to avoid more torture. Information thus gained is not reliable.
SUSPENSION OF HABEAS CORPUS
On November 13, 2001, Bush suspended the right of habeas corpus by executive order. Basically, habeas corpus means that detainees have the right to seek relief from unlawful imprisonment. This is tied up in the right to a hearing, a trial, legal counsel, and the right to be free from detention if not charged with a crime.
This was to be used on “enemy combatants”, to allow the government to capture and indefinitely detain terrorists. The status of “enemy combatant” has been applied to American citizens, effectively suspending their rights to due process.
Foreign enemies are not “tried in courts”. They are captured on the battlefield and dealt with as prisoners of war by the military. The people waging war on the United States are typically not Americans. They may be here on visas, but that’s not the same thing. They are usually citizens of a foreign nation, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, etc.
I do not support the suspension of habeas corpus. An American citizen who wages war on the United States (such as John Walker Lindh) is guilty of sedition and treason, and should be charged and tried appropriately, with all rights normally due to citizens in an American court.
TARP / BANK BAILOUTS
This was never a good idea and I opposed it entirely from the first moment it was mentioned. “Too big to fail” is ridiculous. The banks should have been allowed to fail and recover on their own. Yes it would have impacted the economy. But it has anyway because TARP doesn’t work and was never capable of working.
AUTO INDUSTRY BAILOUTS
That’s Obama’s mess, not Bush’s.
I stumbled over this amusing video talking about the correct procedures for oil containment booming and why it’s being done totally wrong by BP and why everybody else is contributing to it being done totally wrong. CAUTION: lots and lots of cursing. NSFW.
I can’t get this stupid song out of my head, so I’m going to inflict it on you. If you haven’t ever seen Weebl & Bob, by the way, I highly recommend the series for pure weirdness.
This video is NSFW, so wear headphones and don’t watch with other people around.
One of the criticisms surrounding Barack Obama is whether or not the man is actually eligible to be president. The US Constitution states:
No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
Obama’s biological father was Kenyan. His mother was born in Kansas and has always been an American citizen. All very well.
‘So what’s the problem?’ you might well ask. That’s pretty much what I want to know.
But there are a number of people, apparently enough of them to form a named group (”Birthers”), who claim that Obama is not a natural-born citizen. The primary claim, as far as I can tell, is that he was born in Kenya. This, despite the fact that the man has a birth certificate from Hawaii (which is where he was actually born) and that the certificate’s authenticity has been verified numerous times by multiple parties.
Birthers claim the Hawaii certificate is forged. Okay, then where is his Kenyan one? Assuming, of course, that there is even any evidence that the Hawaiian one is a forgery.
Here’s the best part: it doesn’t matter if it is. Obama’s mother, being an American citizen at the time of his birth, makes him a natural-born citizen no matter where in the world he is born. That’s the way American law works. No one disputes Ann Dunham’s citizenship (as far as I’m aware). His father’s country of citizenship doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t even matter if Obama had been born in Kenya. He’d still be a natural-born citizen.
But Birthers are pretty adamant about this:
These people are crazier than squirrels with their heads stuck in a dog food can.
But it got me to wondering. In the face of such obvious evidence, to persist in their vitriol suggests that the real motive for their anger is not Obama’s country of birth. It must be something else. In this video, the touchstones are “my ancestors fought in wars for this country” and the Pledge of Allegiance (the meaning of which obviously escapes these people).
Are we seeing nothing more than pure racism? “I don’t want a nigger for President”? But they know they can’t say that out loud. Or, more precisely, they’re afraid to admit to themselves what really motivates them. Is this apparent insanity the logical manifestation of a culture where it is believed that changing how people talk will change how they think? Outlawing the word “nigger” doesn’t make people stop being racist. It just sends that racism underground, to seethe and foment and seek other avenues of expression that are more acceptable.
I don’t know a great deal about Delaware’s social customs or cultural origins, but I wouldn’t generally call them Southerners (despite the accent of the shrill woman in the video). The Southerners I’ve encountered over the years are pretty blunt about their racism (if they are racist, which most of them are not) and are not afraid to use the words that go with it.
Birthers are, then, a possible window into the consequences of a culture where speech is regulated (and don’t kid yourself about that). They may also be an example of jingoistic craziness, which is also still alive and well in this country.
A Canadian astronaut on a six-month stay aboard the international space station said on Sunday it looks like Earth’s ice caps have melted a bit since he was last in orbit 12 years ago.
Bob Thirsk said that there is a “very thin veil of atmosphere around the Earth that keeps us alive … Most of the time when I look out the window I’m in awe. But there are some effects of the human destruction of the Earth as well,” Reuters quoted him as saying.
“This is probably just a perception, but I just have the feeling that the glaciers are melting, the snow capping the mountains is less than it was 12 years ago when I saw it last time,” Thrisk was quoted as saying. “That saddens me a little bit.”
It’s “probably just a perception” and he “has a feeling”, eh? Oh that’s solid scientific evidence right there. He actually used instruments from space to somehow measure the amount of ice on the surface of the earth? No? Yeah that’s what I thought.
Why is this bullshit even reported? Why is an astronaut, supposedly a highly trained, intelligent, scientifically-minded individual, offering a totally subjective opinion about something that he is in no position (figuratively or literally) to have information about? His education is in mechanical engineering and medicine (he’s an MD). What the hell does he know about polar ice?
Naturally, we can expect the viros to latch onto this throwaway opinion as “evidence” of global warming or some shit.
Interestingly, we don’t really need that evidence. It is true that the data show a general warming trend over the past 100 years or so. It is also true that polar ice volumes are changing, apparently getting smaller, and that glaciers are moving and losing volume.
What is NOT clear, however, is the cause. The link between global CO2 levels and global temperatures is actually reversed from what is commonly believed. That is, the temperature went up, and THEN the CO2 levels increased. CO2 increase is not causal. And yes, I am aware of the so-called refutations of this conclusion:
The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.
So basically, this guy is saying that a warming cycle takes 5000 years to complete, and yet we have somehow concluded that the earth is warming up because of human activity just within the past 100 years? That makes no sense. Also, the assertion that warming “could” have been caused by CO2, is dishonest, because it is speculation with no data to support it. I’m not a geoscientist, but the article in question seems intentionally circuitous and misleading. If anyone cares to explain more clearly the position being advocated, I’m interested.
Then there’s the famous “hockey stick graph” that supposedly shows a dramatic increase in global temperatures over the past thousand years. It is highly flawed, one might even conclude intentionally so, and is no longer considered valid.
So what exactly is my point here? My point is, the data we have indicate that we are in the early stages of a trend that is normal for this planet over many past millennia. Whether or not human activity is contributing is something we are not able to discern. Astronaut Thirsk is showing an unscientific and unsupportable bias in his statements that serves no purpose other than to be inflammatory and perpetuate an irrational belief about human civilization and the planet we live on. It is beneath him as a scientist and a human being to speak this way, given his highly public occupation.
You folks may be aware of an incident that happened in Cambridge, Massachusetts recently. A Harvard scholar named Louis Gates, Jr. was observed by a neighbor shoulder-forcing the door of his own home at night after returning from a trip and being unable to find his keys. Crucial of note here is the fact that the neighbor didn’t know that it was Gates himself, and that Gates is black (and apparently famous even though I never heard of the guy). The cops show up, responding to a possible break in at a residence. Gates refuses to show identification (according to the police report) and becomes belligerent. He calls the cop a racist, pulls out the “do you know who I am” card, and finally gets arrested for disorderly conduct.
There are a number of interesting details about this story. One is that Gates is supposedly some famous Harvard “black scholar”, whatever that exactly means. Another is that the cop refuses to apologize for how he conducted the situation:
Crowley, however, has refused to apologize, and he told the radio station he did nothing wrong. He added he was surprised that a man as educated as Gates would start yelling epithets about Crowley’s mom, part of the incident that never made it into the police report.
“That apology will never come. It won’t come from me as Jim Crowley. It won’t come from me as a sergeant in the police department,” Crowley told WEEI.
“I know what I did was right. I have nothing to apologize for,” he added.
This is 100% pure awesome. This is exactly how the cop should respond to this situation. Indeed, he did nothing wrong and acted properly. I mean come on. Somebody reports a guy busting into a house, the cop knows a lot of things could await him at the scene. A burglar might be there. The homeowner might be in trouble. It’s entirely possible that people could still be in the house without the homeowner’s knowledge after the cop arrives.
The officer has to make sure he knows who he’s talking to. That requires ID. He’s checking to see if the person he’s dealing with is, in fact, the resident of the home. Then he has to check the house to make sure nobody unauthorized is there. Officer Crowley was alone when he first responded, so he had Gates come outside onto the porch, for his safety and for Gates’ safety, and waited for backup.
But the only thing on Gates’ mind is that some white cop is hassling him for being a black man, and he won’t shut the fuck up about it:
“I can’t believe that an individual policeman on the Cambridge police force would treat any African-American male this way, and I am astonished that this happened to me; and more importantly I’m astonished that it could happen to any citizen of the United States, no matter what their race,” Gates wrote.
“I would sooner have believed the sky was going to fall from the heavens than I would have believed this could happen to me. It shouldn’t have happened to me, and it shouldn’t happen to anyone,” Gates continued.
You would think, from the level of whaargarbl in this response, that the cop had randomly stopped him while he was walking down the street and proceeded to arrest him for being a negro in the wrong part of town. The officer responded to a disturbance, acted in the best interest of everyone there, and this is the thanks he gets? What if it hadn’t been Gates, and the officer had ignored the call and the house had been robbed? What if Gates was being held hostage by armed thugs in his house? He could be dead, or worse.
The whole thing got worse when Obama decided to offer his totally unnecessary and uninformed opinion on the matter:
Asked about the incident, Obama, who is friends with the professor and documentary filmmaker, told reporters at a Wednesday night press conference that he didn’t know all the facts. But he said, “the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.”
Later, a press secretary tried to spin it to be a little less insulting:
“Cooler heads should have prevailed. That’s what the president denoted,” he said. “He was not calling the officer stupid. The situation got out of hand.”
No, I’m pretty sure that this comes perilously close to Obama simply calling the cop a racist without actually saying it in those words. As for Crowley being surprised that Gates would insult his mother, call him a racist, and say “You don’t know who you’re messing with”, he shouldn’t be. Gates is just one of that class of elitist, leftist oligarchs in our society who thinks that everyone should recognize him and accord him some kind of deference based on that.
The fact that Gates has a PhD in English Lit and a BA in History (neither is from Harvard, he just teaches there) is no guarantee that he has manners, or, ironically, class. It’s not even a guarantee that he has any common sense, wisdom, or sense of fucking perspective.
So, Officer Crowley, you go right on ahead telling people to shut the hell up, including the President of the United States. You acted correctly and Gates is being a whiny bitch whose shit suddenly got real.
Kyle tends to give good advice. Following my message to the White House conveying my displeasure regarding Obama’s support of Zelaya, Kyle suggested that I balance that out by letting the Honduran Embassy in DC know that I support their decision to remove Zelaya from power. So I sent the following message:
As an American, I want to let you know that not all Americans support President Obama in his attempts to return Manuel Zelaya to power. We know that Zelaya is a criminal, that he was trying to circumvent the Honduran Constitution, and that he is no friend of freedom or the rule of law.
I am angry that Obama supports Zelaya, but not surprised. I have sent a message to the White House expressing my disapproval. Hopefully my countrymen will do the same.
Hondurans, take comfort in knowing that not everyone is against you. Many of us support your decision to remove Zelaya. You are doing the right thing, and his removal is just. He should not be allowed to return. Ignore the rest of the world; they are fools who believe in dictators. Stand strong and do not give in.
I do not know if the sentiment will be appreciated, but I feel better for sending it. Balancing the negative with the positive — it’s good for me as well as for them.
I just sent this letter to the White House through their comment form at whitehouse.gov. I am thoroughly disgusted with the United States’ support of that socialist thug.
Mr. President,
I am angry and disappointed that your administration supports Manuel Zelaya in returning to power in Honduras. It is clear that Zelaya violated Honduran law in his failure to enact properly passed legislation in Congress, and it is also clear that as a friend of Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro, he is an enemy of freedom and democracy. He sought a referendum that would have removed term limits in the Honduran Constitution, thus cementing his power as dictator of that nation. How can America support this? Further, why are we interfering in what was clearly a legal and proper removal of a criminal from government? They even managed it without anyone getting hurt. Zelaya tried to return, and they blocked his plane from landing. They could have simply shot it out of the sky, and would have been fully justified in doing so, yet they did not.
You say that we should be impartial regarding other nations’ form of government. I disagree. We can and must be vocal defenders of liberty, and we should take every opportunity to denounce socialism and leftist thuggery no matter where it is found.
Mr. Obama, we should not be attempting to return Zelaya to power. We should be supporting the just rule of law in Honduras, and congratulating them on their successful defense of democracy in removing Zelaya.
I feel a sense of despair in being just one voice in this nation. I debate the merit in even sending such comments. Kyle points out that positions are counted, and the government does tally such things. I presume this is true. I have to, otherwise I succumb to apathy and disinterest like so many of my countrymen.
Last week, an eBay bidder was the lucky winner of a brand new 2008 E90 M3 BMW. The winning bid was $60,000, which is considerably under the sticker price for such a car. It’s pretty — black with a red interior. Not my style, but probably a fairly unusual color combination.
Long story short, Husker BMW Mercedes of Nebraska is refusing to honor the deal and will not sell him the car for the winning bid. According to the buyer in his thread on M3post.com:
15 minutes after auction end, this guy Michael Barett (At BMW of Nebraska) calls and nervously tells me the auction was a “mistake”.
I reminded him of his contractual obligation to complete the transaction, to which he continues to reply “it was a mistake”, and refused to honor the deal.
He then offered to call his manager and confirm what they could do, but same response. When I pressed the issue and raised the possibility of legal action, this guy had the nerve to condescendingly laugh and say we are a multi-billion dollar company, ebay will definitely side with us.
If true, something tells me that Michael isn’t going to have his job for much longer, if he is even still working there as I type this. EBay auctions are legally binding contracts, and eBay has a history of siding with the person who is in the right according to their rules. The size of the company is immaterial to them (eBay is the 900 lb. gorilla here, anyway; a piss-ant BMW dealer in Nebraska is small potatoes to them).
The auction did not have a reserve, just a starting bid of $60,000. Winner states there was a Buy It Now price of $66,926, but he was the only bidder so he won it at the starting price. From my experience as a seller on eBay, and the specifics of eBay’s contractual rules, the buyer certainly seems to have a legitimate claim.
I’m wondering what BMW thinks of all this. It can’t be happy that a single dealership in Nebraska is damaging its reputation by being such assholes about this.
And there is the larger issue to consider of eBay Motors. It is not unusual for dealerships to “auction” cars on eBay. I would never, in a million years, buy a car sight-unseen on the internet. You have no way of really knowing that car’s history without examining it yourself, or even verifying the VIN in some cases. I can’t be the only person who feels this way, so there has to be a huge component of trust and reputation involved for dealers to still be doing car sales this way. It wouldn’t be profitable otherwise.
If a major new car dealer can screw a customer like this on eBay, it’s devastating for all the other, honest dealers. People are going to start avoiding internet car sales, and that carefully built-up trust is gone in a blink of an eye.
Now, a smart dealership in another area, like a BMW dealer in another town in Nebraska, or even in another state, should jump on this situation and offer the guy an identical car for the winning price. They get a sale, and honest dealers everywhere have their reputations restored.
So how about it, all you BMW dealers out there? If you have a 2008 E90 M3 with a Jerez black exterior and a Fox red interior, why not give this guy a call?
UPDATE 3/25/07: This incident made the eBay buyer’s (whose name is Ken Tanisaka) local newspaper. He reports that the dealership is currently negotiating with him, although the details are not public at this time. The dealer group’s sales manager, Ryan Mathis, indicated that they had posted the auction incorrectly:
“We didn’t have the reserve set properly,” Mathis explained. “We had a ‘buy it now’ at $67,800. It was an error by our eBay [sales] manager. $67,800 was supposed to be the reserve.”
Mathis has indicated that he intends to sell Tanisaka the car, although what the price will turn out to be is anyone’s guess at this point. Probably an honest error on the dealer’s part that blew up in their faces due to the internet exposure.
UPDATE 3/26/07: Apparently the dealership was just playing nice to try to get their internet exposure to go away. Ken, the buyer, posts on M3post.com:
The dealership wanted me to assist in defusing the situation, in letting the sites I contacted know that I was getting my deal. I didnt mind doing that,as long I was JUST that. I had no intention of becoming a pawn for this dealer, not after the way they treated me!
SO I went out and contacted Channel 8, Ebay, BBB and m3post to let everyone know things were moving in a positive direction. But in subsequent conversations, I got placed under the impression that the dealership really isnt sorry for anything they have done here. Their attitude, it seemed was that I am to blame for the firestorm that culminated, implying that I wasnt being proactive enough in getting the word out Hello? Did you not see the international outrage from this situation? Root cause, gentleman. Introspection.Why are hundred of thousands of people around the world so pissed? Until they get it, im under the impression that nothing will change.
We are not that easily distracted.
Husker BMW and Mercedes seems to be of the opinion that bloggers have too much time on their hands, because we’re making such a big deal out of nothing. If you ask me, it’s the dealer that has too much time on their hands, to be balking like this (and damaging their reputation as well as the reputation of BMW as a whole) over a paltry $7,800.
So, I reiterate my call for another dealership to step up and offer Ken a 2008 E90 M3 (black ext./red int.) for $60,000. Surely that media coverage would be worth the “loss” on the car’s price.
Having failed to stop piracy by suing internet users, the music industry is for the first time seriously considering a file sharing surcharge that internet service providers would collect from users.
Griffin’s idea is to collect a fee from internet service providers — something like $5 per user per month — and put it into a pool that would be used to compensate songwriters, performers, publishers and music labels. A collecting agency would divvy up the money according to artists’ popularity on P2P sites, just as ASCAP and BMI pay songwriters for broadcasts and live performances of their work.
Oh HELLS no.
Why should I pay for something I don’t do? I have never in my life downloaded a pirated song, nor do I ever intend to. And how would my $5 in any way compensate for the kid down the street who is exchanging thousands of dollars worth of illegal material daily on his open file server?
“I love Paul McGuinness’ idea,” says another scheduled SXSW panelist, Dina LaPolt, a Los Angeles attorney who represents Mötley Crüe and the estate of Tupac Shakur. “And I love the idea of trying to make ISPs pay artists and make up for all the free crap that’s going on. I support both, so long as artists are getting paid for their work.”
Why should ISPs pay for it? They haven’t done anything wrong. That’s like trying to make the phone company pay for a stolen goods transaction between a thief and a fence having a phone conversation. As the article states:
Technology experts say it would be impossible to reliably inspect trillions of packets for pirated material, especially if file sharing networks resort to encryption mechanisms. Legal experts point out that any attempt by an ISP to monitor its traffic in this way would jeopardize its status as a common carrier.
The hypocrisy of the record labels is galling, too. They talk about “artists” getting paid, when in reality the artists barely profit from their own material. It’s the publisher that takes the lion’s share. Just be honest and talk about the copyright holder, which is the record label and not the artist.
I am sooooo fucking tired of this shit.
You can’t stop music piracy. That’s the reality. Trying to get the money out of whoever you can lay your hands on is not an appropriate response. Identifying and locating the individuals who commit media piracy is basically impossible, due to the nature of the internet. RIAA is going to have to live with that, and stop throwing lawsuits in random directions to see who they can bully into forking over some money.
