It’s the 21st Century, Stupid!

Gee, does anyone else think that Senator Clinton’s campaign keeping money from IPA might cause some problems? If it gets more into the public eye I think it certainly will.

Well, back to politics and stuff for a bit. This coming week is the Iowa caucuses to be followed five days later by the New Hampshire primaries. No one really knows who is going to win in either party at this point. Polls show different things at different times though the only major differences seem to be things see-sawing between the recognized leaders.

When it comes to the polls there are those who claim that there will be a major upset because Ron Paul has an amazing amount of support from new voters that are filtered out of polls because of the “likely voter” qualification and people who aren’t being contacted by phone polls because of the cell phone factor.  While there might be some truth to this there in all likelihood isn’t as much to the argument as Paul’s supporters want to believe. Mostly they want to believe that their candidate has so much support that is flying under the radar that he will win both Iowa and New Hampshire. They want to believe that his message has so much strength and truth behind it that it can carry Ron Paul to the presidency. They are wrong. While it is possible that he will do better than the polls show, I think it will not be as great a factor in Iowa as they think and that while it just might be a greater factor in New Hampshire it still won’t be enough to carry him to victory in either state and he certainly doesn’t have chance in a general election.

I make no secret of the fact that I feel that Ron Paul is wrong on many issues. I disagree with quite a few libertarian positions, whether the “L” is big or small. But Ron Paul isn’t a real libertarian and where he has chosen to differentiate himself from them happens to make even more points where I disagree with him. As I understand his beliefs and those of his supporters their desire is for a basically non-existent federal government that is only involved in defense, foreign relations and interstate law enforcement. No IRS, no federal regulatory agencies and certainly no social programs would exist in their ideal world. They believe that in order for us to be following the Constitution the states must reign supreme and the federal government must be a fraction of its current size and function. Oh, and the Federal Reserve Bank must also be eliminated and our currency must be backed by gold like it used to be. Roe V. Wade was a bad decision, as was Griswold v. Connecticut and Lawrence v. Texas. Here is what Ron Paul wrote on the issue:

Consider the Lawrence case decided by the Supreme Court last June. The Court determined that Texas has no right to establish its own standards for private sexual conduct, because these laws violated the court’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Regardless of the advisability of such laws, the Constitution does not give the federal government authority to overturn these laws. Under the Tenth Amendment, the state of Texas has the authority to pass laws concerning social matters, using its own local standards, without federal interference.

Nowhere does he place any limits on what these moral standards might be. Think about it. How libertarian is that? What the supporters of Ron Paul fail to recognize is that should he have early success there will be even more attention paid to him. More digging into his positions won’t necessarily translate into more support whatever some may think. He didn’t acquit himself that well on Meet the Press largely because of the inherent contradictions in what he does as a member of Congress and the principles he holds. And should he do as well in either Iowa or New Hampshire as his supporters hope then this will only be the beginning of a much closer examination of his history, his policy positions and his writings. I don’t think those positions, like the one about eliminating Social Security, are going to win him enough supporters to go very far in the run for President.

MSNBC reports on the last Republican candidate debate before Iowa’s caucuses. It is noted that they all basically agreed on at least one big lie.

Republican presidential rivals called for deep cuts in federal spending Wednesday in a debate remarkably free of acrimony and agreed the reductions they seek need not require painful sacrifice by millions of Americans who rely on government services.

“The sacrifice we need from the American people is saying, ‘Let the programs go that don’t work. Don’t lobby for them forever,’ ” said former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, one of nine GOP presidential hopefuls sharing an Iowa stage little more than three weeks before the state’s caucuses provide the first test of the campaign.

Anyone who looks at where the government spends its money and what other promises the Republicans are making knows that this is a lie so big that it might well collapse into a black hole at any moment. Not one of the leading contenders is about to cut military spending and even the anti-war Ron Paul is unlikely to do that, he just doesn’t want our soldiers in Iraq. After all, while they all speak of cutting programs that don’t work have the words V-22 Osprey passed their lips as an example? Of course not.

At least Ron Paul admits that he believes in eliminating every social program and every regulatory agency. The others won’t admit it, but the numbers would only work out if that’s what they did. The tax cuts they want and the military spending they want pretty much leave no alternative but to make up the difference by taking it out of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and every other department that isn’t run by the Pentagon. Does anyone think that this truth will pass the lips of Romney, Huckabee, Giuliani, Thompson or Paul? I don’t.

Brad DeLong points out a couple of articles that speak of the reality of tax cuts and that the Republican claims that they always produce more revenue, currently being pushed extra hard by Rudy Giuliani, just aren’t true. None of what they say is really hard to understand and it makes a lot of sense. What does it say about the politicians who refuse to acknowledge the blindingly obvious? Nothing positive. Nothing positive at all.

The Washington Post tells us about a truly tragic situation where a soldier in Iraq broke down, threatened fellow soldiers and then attempted suicide. The professional consensus is that she was truly insane at the time of the incident and should receive the treatment she needs. The Army’s response? Court-martial her. Threaten her. Bully her. This drove her to seek an alternative to court martial, offering to resign her commission even though this would result in the loss of her veteran’s benefits. Of three recommendations, the only one from a physician said that this shouldn’t happen because there was no doubt that she had

But…

But then, from her battalion commander in Iraq, Whiteside learned that an investigation there had concluded that there was “insufficient evidence for any criminal action to be taken against” her. Furthermore, it had found a hostile command climate and recommended that the officer who had been her nemesis be removed from his position and “given a letter of reprimand for gender bias in assignments and use of intimidation, manipulation and hostility towards soldiers.”

With this news, Whiteside asked that her letter of resignation be withdrawn. She would fight the charges.

In an e-mail exchange, the prosecutor, Wolfe, told MacLean that even if Whiteside won in court she would probably end up stigmatized and in a mental institution, just like John Hinckley, the man who shot President Ronald Reagan.

Wolfe suggested that the military court might not buy the mental illness defense. “Who doesn’t find psycho-babble unclear . . . how many people out there believe that insanity should never be a defense, that it is just, as he said, an ‘excuse.’ “

 What kind of incompetent physician do the Army personnel who want to prosecute her seek to override? The man who is now the Army’s surgeon general, Major General Eric B. Schoomaker.

To answer the question in the title I propose that the prosecutor and every single officer involved in deciding to bring this prosecution are the ones who deserve dishonorable discharges for failing in their duties to their fellow soldiers in the most callous and incompetent way possible. Failing that, some long and intense courses in the real world of psychiatric medicine before they are ever put near a situation like this one again is certainly called for.

The New York Times titles its article Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts. And it’s right. Those donor countries who relied on the blind belief in free markets that is currently the fashion in many developed countries and the World Bank were wrong and the new president of Malawi was right. Subsidies for poverty stricken farmers to be able to have seed and fertilizer was necessary for them to produce their own food and should probably be expanded to other countries with similar situations. The free market has little to do with farmers whose current production isn’t even enough to allow them to feed themselves.

So can we arrange for the Economics School of the University of Chicago to lose its government funding since we shouldn’t be subsidizing religion even if it’s the First Church of Free Market?

Congress finally passed a compromise bill affecting auto mileage standards. Notice the finally part of that. Also notice that it was passed in spite of the automobile companies continued resistance. When you see the ads they run pretending to give a damn about the environment and mileage remember that. Also, when they say that it just isn’t technically feasible keep this guy in mind. It’s true that his full blown rebuilds aren’t economically feasible for anyone but the wealthy and that their cost would never be recovered in fuel savings. But it is also true that it puts the lie to the claims that there is no technology that exists to reduce mileage as drastically as we really need.

 Then there’s the research at MIT that would produce an engine that while more expensive than current ones would be much less expensive than hybrids. What I wondered about when reading this was whether in their savings calculations they accounted for the reduced weight of the smaller engine and reduction in supports needed for it in determining what it would do for gas mileage.

When it comes to innovations that would allow even further divergence from the old gas engine standard there’s the in-wheel motor that has different companies creating their own versions of it including Bridgestone, Mitsubishi and PML.

There’s lots of tech out there to do what Detroit is saying can’t be done. They apparently just don’t want to put forth the effort. There might be what they view as good reasons for doing it given their current financial problems but looking solely at the short term will do nothing to help guarantee their long term existence. Now in my opinion if there was a technology that was proven to produce major fuel efficiency improvements and they just couldn’t feasibly afford to retrofit their factories to produce it I wouldn’t have a problem with the government subsidizing that retrofit so long as the accounting was transparent. It would just do too much good for our country to not do so.

Lots of single mothers, whether they are such because of their children’s illegitimacy or divorce have a hard time financially. It’s a commonly known item of our social and political environment. The public funds that the poorest among them receive hardly constitute a fortune and is basically barely enough to scrape by. The politicians who like to preach against welfare rail against the fathers who aren’t helping provide support They then pass laws to help track these men down and get the child support they should be paying from them, generally making it seem that they care about these women and children. But they don’t force the men to send money to the mother of their child(ren), they collect the money. And keep it. Yes, they keep it in order to reimburse the government for the welfare the mother and children received. The mother might get part of it but if they are receiving public assistance it won’t be all of the funds or even most of them as the New York Times points out today. What’s wrong with sending these funds on the the families, maybe keeping a small part of it to help defray expenses? I think it would be the better approach.

Via Making Light comes this interesting article from The Nation about the below the radar smear machine of the right. I’ve seen a couple of these e-mails sent to myself and other people. One question that occurs to me is to wonder what kind of person would really want something as important as the Presidency of the United States to be decided by this kind of trash. And of course there is the question of why so many people are willing to believe anything they get in their in box. I think it’s basically the fruit of the years long smearing of mainstream news by the American right wing. They know they are correct on every issue and there cannot be any compromise with any other viewpoint. Since they cannot be wrong and the mainstream news doesn’t report things that agree with them it has to be liberal bias. It obviously can’t be that they are wrong about anything. So repeat the mantra over and over again that the MSM is liberal and it lies about everything. Never let up. Lie over and over again. Then it will be believed by enough people so that when something is claimed that is blatantly false so the MSM doesn’t report on it you have a base of people who will believe your version because they know that the MSM will never report the truth.

Thus is born the credibility of dishonest e-mail chain smears. It’s very sad that so many Americans are willing to buy into this and never think to actually research the claim. Everyone should know about web sites like Snopes and how to dig through search results and dismiss blatantly biased sites. But then, of course, they’ve been conditioned to believe in the veracity of the more biased sites, haven’t they?

When was consistency declared the supreme virtue? You’d certainly think that it had been promoted to that status based on the actions of our current administration. From “stay the course” to the latest speech on Cuba it seems to be the only virtue that interests the powers that be lately. Time reports on the hard line that Bush echoed yet again. It’s been the constant line from every politician of every party who wanted to pander to an irrational subset of the Cuban immigrant community for over four decades now. And what has it gotten anyone? Maybe some votes, but that’s it. Has it helped one Cuban still in that country? No. Over forty years of embargoes that no one else takes part in and constant rhetorical hits and no real progress towards ending the repressive Castro regime to show for it. I’m not going to say that some of it, maybe a lot of it made sense before the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the client state status of Cuba but that boat sailed 18 years ago now and maybe some change would have made sense by now. But will anyone anytime soon be able to see past the votes that might be gained by political pandering to part of the Cuban population in Florida? Somehow I doubt it.