This was a crude tool, but one I think has it’s merits. It’s graphs where you fall on a political chart based upon your answers to 20 questions.
Here’s my result
Where do you belong politically
Tag Archives: Politics
The Price of Prohibition
When you mention the word ‘Prohibition’ in a political context most people’s thought fly to the 1920’s, Rum Runners, Al Capone, and the failed great experiment, but that is so much more to legal prohibition that simply alcohol. Continue reading
In Praise of Senator Warren:
Last week I praised conservative/libertarian Senator Rand Paul for his filibuster over this administrations stand on the use of armed drones on American soil. Today I am praising liberal Senator Elizabeth Warren for her stand on the HSBC scandal. (Mega-Bank HSBC has admitted to laundering nearly a billion dollars for Mexican Drug lords, and helping American enemies such as Iran and Cuba evade international sanctions.)
Senator Warren is outranged that not one person involved has been charged with a criminal action, or been personally sanctioned for this blatant law breaking. HSBC itself was fined 1.9 billion, but works out to about a month’s profits, a hit but hardly something that really smarts.
It undermines out system of government with being rich and powerful means you can flaunt the law. A person buying a personal amount of those illegal drugs would faces years, many years, in prison but the men who helped our enemies evade our sanctions are left untouched. It is a travesty, ‘laws must bind high and low alike or they are not laws at all’.This cozy relationship between regulators, and officials must be end.
Good Job Senator Paul
It is easy to be partisan. You cheer your party when they are right, you denounce the other party when they are wrong, and you stay silent on the inverse.
Let publicly state a admiration on Senator Rand Paul’s old-style filibuster this week. Now there are lots of areas where I part ways with Senator Paul, but here he is a lot more right than he is wrong.
The administrations dodgy answers retaining the option for military drone strike on US soil is flat out wrong. American citizens on American soil get full Constitutional protections and rights. (I know that there are those who extend that world wide, but I do accept the frame work we are at war with Al Qaeda and that people who in effect ‘take up the enemy’s’ uniform can’t complain when they are fired upon on the battlefield. However, here at home, we more than have the resources to capture them without using Hellfire missiles fired from drones. Any US Citizen get full access to courts and full protections. (It is one of my chief bitches about the Bush 43 that he violated that and why he ranks for me as the worst US president.)
Some may ask, ‘So do you now regret voting for Obama?’
No. The use of drone on US soil is still a hypothetical, albeit a very troubling one, where the Republicans have yet to renounced Bush 43’s torture program and abuse of US Citizens, which are matters of record, not maybe of future abuses.
What Paul did was a true filibuster, not that travesty that gets used so much today of quiet paper filings against things you do not like.
For that Senator I salute you.
Suggestions for the GOP
the election of 2012 should have been one favorable to the GOP. The US was still coming out fo a bad economic period, something that usually hurts thee incumbent, and yet no only did they lose the presidency, the Democratic party held the Senate and even gathered more popular votes than the GOP in the house. Only the fact that it’s district by district allowed the GOP to hold onto their majority there.
So here my question – since I do not have a Sunday Night Movie to discuss.
What one or two policy changes would you, if you are a conservative or a Republican, endorse or accept to gather in more votes in the next cycle?
For the liberals and Democratic party members reading, what one or two policy changes could the GOP do that would cause you to reconsider and possibly vote GOP?
Let’s talk Assault Weapon Bans
With the recent tragedies there has been a lot of talk of gun control laws and in particular reviving the Assault Weapon ban from 1990s. I am going to assume the best motives for those people who favor a ban on assault weapons, but in doing so at best I can say is that they are misguided.
Before I get started let me state that I’m working from a couple of premises.
One – That a desire to ban any class of firearms is advanced with an objective of a reduction in firearms deaths.
Two – The whenever anyone proposes a restriction of rights, the burden of proof is on those advocating the restriction. When in doubt I err on the side of granting rights rather than restricting them. Continue reading
Mini-Review Number 1: Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted
These reviews are not in the order I watched them in, but in just whatever random order they occur to me in terms of what I want to talk about.
This documentary was the least satisfying of all those that I completed. (I will not review any based on a partial viewing, that is not fair to the filmmakers or anyone reading the review.) 
The premise of the film is that the media, because of a liberal bias, failed to due their due diligence in vetting Obama as a presidential candidate,facilitating his election and damaging the republic. Perhaps this argument could be strongly made, but John Ziegler is not the filmmaker to do it.
This documentary is composed of two major elements. The first element is John Ziegler showing clips from the media coverage of the 2008 presidential election, and narrates in voice over his interpretation of what the clips mean. He doesn’t support the arguments with facts, or testimony, but simply keeps pouring on more and more clips with more and more of his views in what the clips show about the people who made them. There are times when he seems fairly on target and other times when it strikes me as Oz in Buffy would say ‘a radical reintrupretation of the text.’ Without supporting evidence it’s John stating his opinion over and over. Very unpersuasive. Continue reading
reduced to it simplest
Gun control at its heart is this:
Because Joe may abuse Item A, Steve is prohibited from owning Item A.
Yup this sounds right to me…
Mass Murder and Our Culture
There is no doubt that America suffers a high rate of spree killings than other nations. A lot of attention is given to the number and availability of firearms in this country because of this, but I believe that this is looking at symptoms and not causes. After all Switzerland has lots of firearms and doesn’t have the problem. The problem and the causes are far deeper than the tools used to create the effect.
The primary cause in my opinion is that we are a culture that venerates the concept of righteous revenge. Revenge is often the motivation of both our heroes and our villains. Continue reading