reactions to bush farewell address

"he is the president so why is he asking us to fix things! Thats his job."

I rest my case. I have no words to explain the discrepancy between reality and this dream land that a young woman from facebook inhabits. I would name her, but to be fair, this is probably the attitude of a great many people who could never be bothered to actually read the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, or the Federalist Papers. I'm more and more convinced we need some manner of common sense check in order to allow people to vote in this country.. because the government does not exist (or cannot exist for long) to provide for the people in their needs and wants.

SotU live blog

In the spirit of a favored sports writer, I figured I'd go blow by blow here. I already have some good idea what is about to said anyway. I'm sure if anyone follows this, they know I'm not going to be happy with the 'education' portions. I'm going with C-SPAN to get minimal interference via commentary. Plus in the unlikely event someone decides to try to decapitate our government tonight, I'll make sure to note it.

9:05pm I'm always confused as to why so many handshakes have to be made when it's pretty obvious these people can't work together to resolve problems other than spending our money rapidly. It is funny to watch a collection of stiffs trying to make small talk and after a few moments simply standing awkwardly around and adjusting suits.

9:07p, Bush announced, but it seems to take a few minutes to walk the political gauntlet. Why these people cheer... oh wait, right, it's the last one of these ghastly things done by Bushv2. I suppose we can hope someone who can make a speech will be on next year, but that's small consolation to the likely political bent.

9:11 Vigorous debate? I haven't seen much of debating. There's a juxtaposition for calling on cooperation and debate on the same sentence that makes my head spin.

9:13.. I don't recall the Constitution empowering 'ordinary citizens'. Economy did have to be first on the topic. Really the only thing the government does, including this goofy stimulus idea, is to inspire confidence. I like the shot of Rangel sitting passively for the tax relief plan since he's undoubtedly wanting to shoot some pork into the bill.

9:15 IRS takes checks and money orders. I suppose we could go to a send whatever you want method. There's a thought.

9:20 That whole cooperation thing went away as soon as we could say 'raise taxes' and 'veto'. American families don't balance their budgets. There's a reason these DC morons spend money like water. Why haven't they put something in there already for HSAs and private insurance already.. that's been mentioned for oh.. 4 years in a row.
Bush needs to a) stop twitching. and b) stop using the word empower for Americans. Americans are already empowered. The government is the portion getting empowered.

9:25p NCLB sucks. No amount of rhetoric which says it is working is not going to declare it a success. It reminds me of the Trump element for Iraq, bring everyone home and just say we won. This federal education stuff is silly. Bring it forward as a tax credit on the federal or state level and leave it alone. Tax credits can be spent individually or used to fund college funds/scholarships. Grants and vouchers, not so much because they get tied to religious education.

9:30p.. Columbia fighting drug traffickers and terrorists. Poorly. Very poorly. And all because we haven't figured out that the drug war needs to be fought on a demand level, not a supply side. Again with the 'empowering Americans'.

9:32p.. Nu-cle-ar. heh. Never could get that one could you Mr President? No cheering for clean air in India and China.. but plenty for the 'greenhouse gases'.. weird.

9:35p I'm sure those stem cell embryos aren't human life.. .yet, but as far as I've seen it isn't yet very promising research anyway. So what's the point. They don't have regs on the cloning of human beings.. do we need them?

9:37p.. What the hell is Pelosi reading? Boy she faded into the backdrop of history fast once she got her position. For all the worrying over her newfound authority, she hasn't managed to do much with it. Social Security.. I like it being listed as 'entitlement' program. There's a derogatory statement for it. It is funny how Bush put forward a plan and all that happened is people complained about it rather than a) trying to understand it before denigrating it and b) offering a counter-proposal that actually does something to attack the problem, hopefully better.

9:40.. What are these highest ideals and how do they conflict with immigration? Illegal immigrants, I guess.. nope don't conflict with highest ideals. Simple solution, penalize the bosses. Arizona already made the blueprint and illegals are fleeing in droves.

9:42p.. "Advance of freedom".. "justice to our enemies".. whatever this means, it doesn't seem reasonably consistent with what we've been doing. America is the 'world's policeman', thus a force of order and security, not freedom. Freedom unfortunately doesn't work like Johnny Appleseed. It actually seems to need some semblance of stability through an advanced economy and semi-educated population in order to work. There have been exceptions.

9:45. "If your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to." It would have been nice if they'd figured that out several years ago. Like before the invasion. It seems to me that Wolfwitz and Rumsfeld need to be brought up and shot or detained in military prisons for being complete dumbasses and not listening to the generals on how to run a war (I'm not worried that they went to war without my tacit approval, but they didn't seem all that interested in doing it properly or rather they seemed to assume that their enemies would cooperate in their defeat). I would say Bushv2, but we already knew he was an idiot. Why people were in a hurry to go to war with this man at the helm..

9:50p. It is strange that a SotU for the USA has about 20 minutes devoted to the state of Iraq. Safer America doesn't just mean physical security. I wish people would understand that safety is a general illusion brought on by a general agreement to be civilized. Once that's set aside, boom. Security also entails general positive futures because security is also the basic expectation that life will go on (and eventually maybe even get better). ... Iran.. .perhaps we should try another coup d'eat. That's only slightly illegal though.

9:55p Is this thing over yet? Basically he's prattling on about things that do not in any way improve our ability to make war on terrorists. Would we be in greater danger simply because the terrorists would be able to use global communications more freely? What basis do we have that a) they need to coordinate and b) they can't use more primitive and patient methods to do so? Human intelligence, fine. Reliance on communications intercepts from Americans.. sounds a bit like a mission creep to me.

10:00p. What part of funding democracy in foreign nations, when it is convenient to us, is necessary. Trade will usually suffice to create stablity. It doesn't always work (Germany top trade partner prior to WW1 and 2: France). The fact that we have a huge military should take care of most countries though. In any case, our top allies in this 'global war on terror' have been places like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which are hardly democracies. Burma or Cuba, not very important globally.. they'd better be democratic. Pakistan.. hmm.. nuclear and long-time ally.. they'd better be stable. Sounds to me like stability is more important than democracy to the general order.

10:02. Finally. I'm glad not much was really said on education aside from the bald-faced self-congratulatory lies that the federal programs are working.

Some of the commentary after on other channels: Ideological check list that is mandatory for a 'republican president'.. isn't it necessary for either party?
It is an interesting point that these Presidents keep trying to set up a Mid East peace accord in the final years of their terms, when they no longer have any real political weight. Maybe someone should start on that in their first year. Just a thought.

they are still changing

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/

Specifically here, I'm confused about the 'blasting' over a Reagan reference in the Democratic primaries. Several amusing points developed.

1) Reagan being an agent of change but 'being openly intolerant of unions' is somehow not being an agent of change. Unions used to be an agent of change. I'm not sure what they are anymore, but the fact that he was 'openly intolerant' doesn't mean much by itself.
2) Tax structure that 'favors the rich'. Last time I checked the rich pay more in taxes than the middle class. Incredibly more. In any case, the 'struggling' middle class has since the 1980s become considerably richer. American standards of living are ridiculously high in comparison to other countries. Complaining about this is pretty silly.

And then the original quotation that somehow brought on these spurious remarks "I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not," Obama said. "He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing." --- Which is basically an analysis of history. When it is considered that Vladimir Putin was Time's man of the year this year and Josef Stalin was 3 times, it's not necessary for a historian to agree with the types of change that occur, merely to understand the agents who help bring them about, or who capitalize on the need and timing for it. Bill Clinton pretty obviously did not do much. Those years spent searching for a 'legacy' were of no use to causing real and effective changes in the country and it's dynamics. Reagan, for better and worse, did.

inflation, yes have some

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080116/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/economy

(I'm not sure what ap on bi go ec fi means)

Story points out that food and energy prices rose a lot, making the inflation rate what it was. But neglected in the coverage is the steady rise of higher education costs and medical care. They do mention medical care, but it's buried in the back end of the story. It beat out food cost rises.

Food, based on the general waistline of Americans, probably should be rising in cost. This however assumes that it is largely the foods that Americans are consuming in copious amounts and not some things that might be overall healthy in their effect. I did notice bananas went up 2 cents a pound. And milk seems to be on sale less often. That's about it.

In any case the idea that inflation is a constant for all people is something that Americans like to believe, but seem to be ignorant about. It's rather silly to index consumer prices for anything because those prices rise more sharply for some people over others. Parents with college age children or the elderly, people with high levels of travel in their work, etc. For most people, while the energy spike was troubling and worth complaining about, very few Americans did anything about it. Fewer SUVs or trucks were sold I suppose. Whoopie.

update to real id

http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-jh20070508.html

There's actually several different updates to the recently enacted REAL Id law. Several key points
1) The law was tacked onto a defense spending bill and was not in open forum debate or even in committee debates in Congress.
2) No federal funding is provided for the increase in bureaucracy and lost productivity, meaning most states will refuse to follow it for lack of funding (border states may be a notable exception).
3) It doesn't accomplish anything other than to conjure up images of black and white news reels of Soviet Russia or Eastern Bloc countries and the people there who need government papers to do anything at all.

There's some supposition that it might cut down on identity theft. But as I've come to understand the principle reason that that's such a common crime now is because so many people we conduct business or regular affairs with are unknown and anonymous to us. We live in such a mobile society as well that it is even easier for someone to move into a new community with assumed identities and few if any questions will be raised. At its face, it would do well for places that issue identification of any sort do some measure of verification or checking. Credit issuing agencies or the DMV barely do this, thus the reason it is so easy to commit identity theft. To say nothing of the reasons it is so easy to get away with. And in any case, most ID theft cases have little to do with one's state issued identity cards. It's usually disgruntled employees, co-workers, or family members who get hold of some discarded form or application. So the amount of discouragement it would actually provide is pitifully small.

But the supposed reasons for the actual passage of the law, the basis of it and the regulations being handled by the Dept of Homeland Security (another government excess in and of itself) were to combat terrorism. Now I will grant that someone can say just about anything is an initiative to combat terrorism and it will pass because no sensible politician wants to be described as 'supporting terrorists'. Even voting against those most unreasonable things that offer little to no effective advantages in security and counter-terrorist capability is later construed as a weak record, hence the Patriot Act and FISA courts. But issuing a federal identification paper does not restrict the ability of terrorists to commit atrocities. (This is the same circular reasoning that says that gun control will reduce crime, by definition it increases it because people who acquire illegal guns have broken the law and people who want to commit crimes anyway have another one to add to the list).

I'm really quite despondent at the level we've sunk to. The idea that government is doing 'nothing' when we as Americans have a ridiculously high standard of living and (most of us) have a clean and safe environment in which to conduct our affairs because that government is doing 'nothing'. Instead, the government is given license to expand its power in the issue of safety because people believe the government is responsible for that safety. It isn't. It is responsible for creating conditions that feel safe (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness line). Its appointed agents have duties to help us if they see immediate need and to constrain problems that it cannot always control (like say hurricane refugees). But its agents and agencies are not ubiquitous. We have the ultimate responsibilities. Maybe that is a scary thought for most, but I for one certainly wouldn't want to live in a society where I am given no powers whatsoever. Ideas like this ID card are a slippery slope toward that country.

free speech

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8989

This is really the biggest and easiest knock on McCain. It's not the "amnesty" bill or his trademark arrogant 'straight talk'. It's the idea that somehow politics is and has to be 'clean'. It never has been. There's no reason for it to be. What politics does is allow societies to allocate resources on a social level. But people are selected to allocate them, and people can be twisted, contorted, or out right liars. Sometimes this is a good thing, even fulfilling the 'greater good' as McCain sees it, sometimes not.

I agree there are needs to reform the finance arrangements for elections, and that mudslinging or negative campaign ads are generally a waste of time. But that doesn't mean that a candidate cannot run them or that a we should create restrictions and regulations on who and when they can be run. The concept of 'equal time' is pretty ridiculous too. Nobody ever said the election had to be 'fair'. Candidates can and have done just about anything to beg, borrow, or steal elections in America (except kill people, dead people can vote, but murdering them is not so wise). That isn't changing because the government says it should. Otherwise the government wouldn't be staying in charge very long.

There's good reason that I'd prefer a system like a European parliamentary system where coalitions are needed to get anything accomplished at all because it makes it a 'clean government'. It is easier for people to find different points of view in politics somewhere rather than pooling their hopes on one of two choices and assuming that a shared point of view on one particular issue is not accompanied by a radically different view on some other related issue. Ideologically, America really has more view points than is typical because of the diverse cultures from which it has historical roots in and the massive economic and educational differences. We just don't see it because for some reason the public has bullshitted itself into believing that the two parties are radically different. Some of the candidates are, but the parties aren't that different.

What McCain is doing through McCain-Feingold is make it harder to achieve this 'clean' government because it restricts the ability of people to whine and complain (sometimes accurately) about the candidates that are elected. Not to mention putting a ridiculous strain on the ability to police the various resources and outlets available for individuals to voice their concerns (or just to plain old mudsling). Mudslinging is unpleasant, wasteful and distracts the intellectual voter with unimportant information on which to base their decisions. But other than that, it's hardly so much of the unclean function of politics that we must remove it to have a cleaner election. If, as he claims, his motivation is that it fosters distrust of government, I say this is a healthy thing. America was born out of suspicion of government.

Strangely, it's really the one point that the Democrats probably would not be able to hard press him on because they have voiced considerable restraints over conservative talk radio hosts or other major media outlets who cause dismay to their causes (swift boats was apparently the impetus for the law in the first place). Most reasonable people might find it easier to simply create a public resource that demonstrates where or from whom money is coming to a candidate. In the absence of legitimate and meaningful political parties, this is probably the only way to have a 'clean government' because informed people (those that make up the swing votes in close elections) will be able to make informed choices. Considering the random rags that pass for journalism in the supermarkets, it seems to me that the average person is going to be assaulted with a series of worthless and bizarre pieces of information on these candidates anyway. It is the informed consumer of politics to which a candidate must take aim with some information to sway one way or the other. That takes more work than sound bytes and tabloid leaks on their opponents. But it is work that cannot be done with such restrictions on free speech as McCain-Feingold makes. The idea that a government that does not respect the rights of its public as listed in its own Constitution can be a 'clean government' is manifestly ridiculous.



In other news, Moody is considering lowering the US A+++ bond rating (insurance companies are usually satisfied with A+, or A++). We might want to explain to DC that Social Security is a donation to the elderly for people my age. None of that money is coming back unless something is done now to fix it, reform it or otherwise make amends. At the very least, I should be able to write it off as a deduction for charitable contributions.

monty the categorical imperative

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrShK-NVMIU&feature=related

Anybody needing a refresher course in philosophy should start here.

paperz please

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080111/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/secure_driver_s_licenses

I'm really tired of this idea that we need to be 'secure'. There are any number things that are related to this 'REAL ID' that made sense. Verifying SS numbers for example, taking pictures of con artists or illegals. But did these things require an overhaul of how driver's licenses were distributed and issued? Not really. Mostly they required less bureaucratic laziness. This idea perpetuates the laziness and replaces it with something potentially easier to commit fraud with (because of the laziness that allowed to begin with).

why don't you just ask for a gagillion dollars

http://news.theage.com.au/katrina-claims-reach-quadrillion-mark/20080109-1kya.html

I'm rather annoyed at lawsuits anymore. I think we should seriously consider a loser pays system. 3 quadrillion dollars for 'pain, suffering, and damages'? You, whoever you are, are an idiot. I'm personally disappointed that the storm did not add wrongful death to the claims listing there; Darwin clearly needs help. Are there legitimate problems and claims for Katrina due to negligence, absolutely. Does that mean that any one person's claim should dwarf the entire national economy, no. I haven't yet been impressed by the quality of the New Orleans residents in their handling of this matter (including re-electing Nagin). And this sort of thing makes it clear that these are people bound and determined to believe that the government exists to take care of them. Perhaps not living in a city that partially rests below sea level next time?

Or perhaps demanding that the city leaders pressure for necessary civil improvements? I heard few such complaints from the public masses prior to the disaster of Katrina. It was mostly a few meteorologists or oceanographic researchers who said Narleans was in trouble. So perhaps these morons should shut up and quit pretending they are owed something so outrageous. Some amount will be attributed, but it won't be ridiculous. To my mind anything exceeding the total claims of the city of New Orleans (77B) is going to be ridiculous.

doesn't look spacious to me

http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/driving/article3164205.ece

And on the flip side, 'environmentalists' are pissed about a car that gets 50mpg and is so small it probably produces little to no pollution? What the hell is wrong with these people?
It doesn't look nearly spacious to me, but then I don't fit too well into most smaller cars. I suspect that the average Indian citizen has a much easier time of it.