This kind of thing drives me nuts. The cops arrest someone for doing something that’s not illegal and charge them for resisting arrest.
- Note: This is the first I’ve used Windows Live Writer for a blog post.
These people sound the same way the nutjobs on the left sounded when it came to President Bush.
Meanwhile, the conservative radio host Dana Loesch has launched a campaign urging parents to keep their children home on the day of Obama’s speech. In an email urging against the “Socialist Indoctrination of Americas children,” [sic] Loesch explains that Americans must not “mind our Ps and Qs and blindly follow their directives”:
Really? These kids don’t give a fuck. It’ll be luck if they even stay awake during the speech. If Reagan or Carter had given a speech directed at school kids when I was in school, I’m sure I would have slept through it. For all I know, they did and I don’t remember.
People just like to get worked up. Especially about their ‘team’. Morons.
From an interview with Nobel Prize winning Economist Thomas Schelling (Why you interview an economist about climate change is beyond me):
Well I do think that one of the difficulties is that most of the beneficiaries aren’t yet born. More than that: Most of the beneficiaries will be born in what we now call the developing world. By 2080 or 2100 five-sixths of the population, at least, will be in places like China, India, Indonesia, Africa and so forth. And what I don’t know is whether Americans are really willing to understand that and do anything for the benefit of the unborn Chinese.
….
If I were to come clean to the American public I would say that, except for a very low probability of a very bad result — which is the disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which would put Washington DC under water — we are probably going to outgrow any vulnerability we have to climate change. And in case we’ll be able to afford to buy food or import it is necessary. You know, very little of the US economy is susceptible to climate. All of agriculture is less than 3% of our gross product. Forestry may be endangered. Fisheries may be endangered. But recreation might actually benefit!So if we can double our GDP in the next 70 or 80 years, even if we lose some of our GDP from climate change — even if we lose 10% of our GDP from climate change — we’re still ahead so much that the effect of climate change wouldn’t be noticed.
While I think our current health care system needs to change, I don’t agree with what the Democrats are working to get through congress now. I also don’t buy the “any change is a good” start theory that I hear thrown about these days.
I’ve recently read two articles that pretty much reflect what I would like to see. The first one is from the CEO of Whole Foods. (who is getting a lot of hate mail for not toeing the nutty liberal line on health care- OMG!, He’s a capitalist).
While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment
He goes on to list 8 specific things that he thinks should be done. (something I’d like to see more opponents of Obamacare do – enough with the “death panels” and the government is going to kill your grandma scare tactics).
The other article is a long article in the Atlantic by David Goldhill.
The most important single step we can take toward truly reforming our system is to move away from comprehensive health insurance as the single model for financing care. And a guiding principle of any reform should be to put the consumer, not the insurer or the government, at the center of the system. I believe if the government took on the goal of better supporting consumers—by bringing greater transparency and competition to the health-care industry, and by directly subsidizing those who can’t afford care—we’d find that consumers could buy much more of their care directly than we might initially think, and that over time we’d see better care and better service, at lower cost, as a result.
I feel a bit better about the opposition to Obamacare after reading these two articles. Hopefully some of these good ideas will make it into the debate. I’m too pessimestic to think that they actually will however.
Wow, this article by Bruce Bartlett comes as close as anything to the way I feel about the current state of the Republicans and how much of a disaster Bush was as president.
I think conservative anger is misplaced. To a large extent, Obama is only cleaning up messes created by Bush. This is not to say Obama hasn’t made mistakes himself, but even they can be blamed on Bush insofar as Bush’s incompetence led to the election of a Democrat. If he had done half as good a job as most Republicans have talked themselves into believing he did, McCain would have won easily.
One of the big problems I have with the Republicans and Bush is that they did such a poor job while in power that they created an environment where a person as liberal as Obama could get elected president. If they had actually been fiscally conservative they might have been able to keep many independent voters like me. When it came time to vote my choice was between socially conservative big government and socially liberal big government. Since I don’t hate the gays, don’t believe in God and don’t wave the ‘merican flag every chance I get, I decided to vote for what I saw as the lesser of two evils.
If they had actually done a good job, I probably would have voted for McCain. (even though I think Palin is a complete moron). Through their incompetence and poor performance, the Republicans are the reason Obama is president.
Another point made in the article that seems to fly right over most conservatives heads these days:
In my opinion, conservative activists, who seem to believe that the louder they shout the more correct their beliefs must be, are less angry about Obama’s policies than they are about having lost the White House in 2008. They are primarily Republican Party hacks trying to overturn the election results, not representatives of a true grassroots revolt against liberal policies. If that were the case they would have been out demonstrating against the Medicare drug benefit, the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, and all the pork-barrel spending that Bush refused to veto.
Why weren’t all these tea-baggers out in the streets protesting when Bush & Co were spending all this money? The answer is, that they don’t really care. It’s really all about their team. They’ve picked the Republicans. For them it’s just like pulling for the Redskins or the Yankees. It’s just their team. The issues are there only to be cherry-picked when they support their side.
Since Bartlett has criticized the Republicans, he must now be a stinkin’ liberal. They don’t tolerate dissent well these days. If the Republicans maintain their current course, the best they’ll get from independent voters is that we’ll stay at home. I doubt that will be good enough however.
I’ve been trying to figure out what was going on with the arrest of the black Harvard professor in his home last week. I’ve read a couple of news stories about this, listened to some podcasts and listened to an interview with the police officer who arrested the professor. Just about everyone is trying to make this about race but I don’t think that’s the problem here. Since I don’t know exactly what happen, I’ve distilled it down to a few possible scenarios:
1. Professor locks himself out of his house, breaks into his house, neighbors call the cops, cops show up, professor is an asshole to the cop so the cop arrests him for disorderly conduct. (contempt of cop).
2. Professor locks himself out of his house, breaks into his house, neighbors call the cops, cops show up, professor is a nice guy, cop arrests him because the cop hates black people.
3. Professor locks himself out of his house, breaks into his house, neighbors call the cops, cops show up, professor needs a story for his new book so he goads the cop into arresting him.
In all three scenarios, the policeman is wrong. It’s not a crime to be an asshole in your own home. It’s not a crime to be black. The professor might have been guilty of bad judgment if he were being belligerent to the cop but that’s no reason to be arrested. Obviously the professor did nothing wrong, they’ve dropped the charges.
After listening to the interview with the police officer involved, the cop sounds like a good guy and a good cop generally. Unfortunately the police have the power to arrest you because they don’t like you with a bullshit charge of disorderly conduct or obstruction of justice. The charges are usually dropped (because they’re bullshit; just like in this case). Of course the cop refuses to apologize because most cops think people should be arrested when they don’t act in a subservient manner towards the police. The lesson to take away from this is to not be a dick to a cop. Even if they’re wrong the best case scenario is that you spend half a day in jail until they decide to drop the charges against you. The cop’s happy- he gets his daily authority boner by throwing you in jail.
As far as I can tell this story was not from the opinion page of the Washington Post but you can’t tell from its tone.
On a bad day it can take hours of crawling, and as of July 21 northbound drivers will not have a rest stop to, well, rest in, or whatever else they may need to do.
Is this tone really needed for this story? The last half of that sentence is completely unnecessary.
This will save the state agency $9 million against its $2.6 billion revenue shortfall.
I could be reading a little into this sentence but it seems snarky to me. Of course there’s no context provided for this. You have to make a lot of little cuts to make up that kind of shortfall.
Caldwell will tell you that that is all well and good, but those are mid-20th century highways and these are modern times. While Gov. Tim Kaine may no longer be able to afford you a bathroom, Ronald McDonald can.
What the hell is wrong with stopping at a McDonald’s or a gas station to use the rest room? Do I have to use a government provided shitter?
Though some rest stops will be open to truckers only (no, an SUV is not a truck), the state will continue to maintain 19 open to all drivers.
Thanks asshole for letting me know that an SUV is not a truck. I would never have guessed. Could we just have the story and not interlace commentary into it? I know it’s not normally how things are written but they’re usually better at hiding it.
I’ve ridden on back roads up and down the east coast, into Canada and all over Colorado on my motorcycle. I purposefully avoid major roads. (back roads are much more fun). There are no rest stops on any of these country roads and somehow I’ve managed to survive all these rides without pissing myself.
This is a good example of why the government can never stop spending money. You can’t cut anything without someone getting all bitchy about it. Even when they should just be reporting the story.