The Liberals/Democrats Eat Their Young….Once Again

Once again, the Democrats (I shall use the term Liberal interchangeably) have demonstrated the self-destructive capacity to figuratively eat their own young.  Representative Anthony Weiner of New York was basically forced to resign.  He lost the support of his Liberal colleagues and was going to be the subject of a long, personally destructive and embarrassing investigation.  He  was also going to be stripped of his committee assignments, all at the hands of his own Party. 

Weiner was arguably one of the brightest rising stars in the Democratic Party.  He was young, bright, charismatic, and was a firebrand with regard to Liberal issues.  Very clearly, he was destined to be great and do great things, which makes it all the more tragic that he has been forced to resign.  A bright, and possibly the brightest, light in the Democratic Party has been extinguished, and we broke the bulb ourselves, in the interest of intellectual honesty, and the appearance of impropriety.  Unfortunately, the negative consequences of this action far outweigh either the benefits or the offense, not to mention the fact that the opposition would never have committed themselves to this kind of destruction simply because it might be the right thing to do.

I cannot state it any better than the comment made by “DLW” regarding my previous post entitled, “Scandal….The Zombie Cat of Politics”.  He points out that individuals who may have perfectly dreadful decision-making skills in their personal lives can be extraordinary decision-makers in their professional lives.  I would only add that most of us tend to lead compartmentalized lives.  We try to neatly divide our lives into manageable parts that we can handle.  It is seemingly easier to manage life one compartment at a time, and I can tell you, from exquisitely painful experience, that sometimes, one compartment can bleed over into another; try running a business and getting divorced sometime.  However, for the most part, we do manage to keep the compartments separate.

History has shown us that this separation is entirely possible as great Presidents have had less-than-stellar personal lives.  We of course know of Bill Clinton.  He got impeached for what I refer to as “the BJ heard round the world.”  Once of our most revered Presidents, John F. Kennedy, can hardly be held up as an example of chaste behavior.  If you go back to the Founding Fathers of this great country, we have now nearly confirmed that Thomas Jefferson fathered children by his slave, Sally Hemings.  It was used by political opponents of the time against Jefferson.    So peccadilloes are nothing new in politics.  Now, however, in spite of the fact that he wrote The Declaration of Independence, contributed in large part to writing The Constitution of the United States, was the first Secretary of State and the Third President of the United States, under the circumstances, we would humiliate him, force him to resign or impeach him for lying about it (Jefferson did deny it, by the way).

I think that the Democrats can take a lesson from the Republicans on this one.  Senator David Vitter remains in office, blocking every single Liberal effort in the Senate at every opportunity, by the way, after being found to be utilizing the services of prostitutes.  Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho managed to stay in office after trying to pick up a man, who happened to be a police officer, in a Minneapolis Airport restroom; the infamous foot-tapping incident.  Let us forget for the moment the continuing hypocrisy displayed by the Right Wingers, the fact that they display this kind of party unity, loyalty and take care of one another, has placed them in a position to remain the disloyal opposition and thwart every effort to change the politics of our federal government.  They manage to remain in a position to be hypocritical by being, well, hypocritical.  Maybe it is time for liberals to be more consistent, and a little less intellectually honest.  This is politics you know, and we all know how to tell a politician is lying, right?

Anthony Weiner was sacrificed, unnecessarily in my opinion, on the altar of intellectual honesty, in the philosophical interests of morality.  Us Liberals seem to have this enduring dedication to near chastity as it relates to politicians, and we expect to them to fess up the minute they are confronted.  I am not sure there is a man or woman on the planet that, upon being first confronted with some sort of extra-marital, sexual indiscretion, whether it be in the virtual world and ether of the internet or real life, will not try to deny the accusation; it is human nature.  Apparently, it is the nature of Liberals to eat our own young, even the best and the brightest among us.

Scandal...The Zombie Cat of Politics

As I am so fond of pointing out, you can find incredibly smart things in, of all places, the movies. In this case, I refer to the Movie, "Dave" in which a guy who is a look-alike for the President takes over his job after the real President has a debilitating stroke (I recommend the movie, by the way). Anyway, Dave, as President, addresses a joint session of Congress and says, about scandal, "... once people start talking about scandal it’s hard for them to talk about anything else. So fine. Let’s talk about it." Truer words have never been spoken. As much as I hate to admit it, I think we are stuck with this scandal for a while; the Congressional investigations, the elections, what have you.

One of the most unfortunate things from which the American public suffers is an incredibly short political memory. A politician can do just about anything and, if he/she manages to weather the political storm for 6 months, they are pretty much home free; unless the scandal rises from the dead like the dreaded zombie. If there is an election and the opposition can manage to bring the allegation or charge to the forefront, then they can succeed in resetting the clock on the memory. The scandal rises from the grave and has new life, a lot like the career.

An excellent example of refreshing the political memory is the Willie Horton television ad in the 1988 presidential election. It refreshed in the eyes of the public the perception that Michael Dukakis was soft on crime recounting the release of a man with a life sentence on weekend passes during Dukakis' term of office as Governor. There are all kinds of arguments that it was not his personal responsibility, but it is an example of how a scandal can rise from the dead.

Representative Anthony Weiner may have such a zombie on his hands, assuming he can get through the six month period. Regardless of your political ideology, can you imagine how many times we are going to have to watch, over, and over, and over, the video of the teary-eyed Weiner apologizing (over and over and over) and accepting "full responsibility" (over and over and over)? I am already queasy at the prospect. This is going to be a zombie cat, and God knows how many lives this beast has.

In a fairly recent development, the scandal was actually turned into a television series. I refer to "The Good Wife." This show stars Julianna Marquiles and Chris North who are the husband and wife Florrick in the show. He had an affair, with a prostitute (or maybe more than one), got caught and was removed from his office as the Cook County, Illinois State Attorney. Is anyone thinking Eliot Spitzer at this point? In the show, former State Attorney Florrick is also arrested and jailed by his successor, something with which Eliot did not have to deal. The point is that this political scandal not only has risen from the dead, but has become King of the Zombies, with an eternal afterlife. Talk about adding insult to injury or rubbing salt in the wound...wow!

Well, I am not looking forward to the reruns on this particular issue and I am most certainly not looking forward to the eternal rise of the King of the Zombie Cats!

AAAAARRRGGGGHHHH !...

The disloyal opposition, the Right Wing, have a number of interesting characteristics.  One of these is that they treat words much like a soldier treats bullets.  A soldier, in a firefight, is pretty much winning right up until his gun goes click, click, click instead of bang, bang, bang.  The Right argues in much the same manner.  They treat words like bullets.  As long as they are talking, they feel like they are winning.  The easiest way to win an argument is never shut up long enough to let the other side speak.  We have seen this in action in various forms.  The filibuster in an environment of no cloture, Rush Limbaugh shouting down, well, almost everybody and Fox News taking the path of representing as the truth the Right Wing perspective on all issues.

Of course, they also tend to make fundamental promises they are not going to keep.  This is much akin to Charlie Brown and Lucy.  Year after year, Lucy promised not to yank the football out from in front of him; and like the people of this country, he believed her, only to have the ball pulled away as he sailed through the air, screaming that phrase, “AAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHHHH!!”  Even so, year after year, he believed her and followed even the most tenuous logic, he trusted her.

I wonder if the American People can be fooled as long as Charlie Brown was?  God, I hope not.

Personal Privacy...A Comment and Response

In response to my thoughts on Personal Privacy, I received, what I thought to be, an enlightened and thoughtful comment, worthy of further discussion and reply.  I share the comment of “ocoastperson” with you below and add my comments and thoughts.

I do want to thank ocoast, if I may presume to be on a first-name basis, for his/her comments and invite anyone, whether they agree or disagree, to comment.  I am fond of saying, I have defended the right to free speech with the offer of my life, and while I may not support or believe in what they do, even the KKK has the right to express an anti-Semitic sentiment in Skokie, Illinois…but as usual, I digress.  The comment of “ocoastperson”:

Other bloggers have tied the self-claiming libertarians with authoritarian personalities. Authoritarian personalities generally seem to view police of all stripes as realizations of themselves. Plus, they enjoy other disfavored people being pushed around.

Speaking more clearly, authoritarian personalities not only want order, they view the world as us vs. them. The police are in some sense the enforcers of this, by controlling and punishing the them.

Thus the authoritarian side of most libertarians makes them blind to the actual fact that others, the ones in control, can decide at any point to make THEM (the authoritarian) one of the bad guys - they just can't see it.

Your post contains several good points but is actually quite restrained in its implications. On the one side, existing police technology can take an image of a license plate and pull information from a police data base about the car owner, acting much like your [driver’s license electronic] strip or a transponder.

On the other hand, the true way to easily recognize individuals would be to place something unremovable on or in them. If radiation and recharging concerns can be dealt with, this "personal transponder" is the logical solution to the police state's ever growing need to know everything about everyone. The personal transponder could be coupled to an embedded information space and computer that could be updated on the fly by police (of every stripe). Plus read by employers, etc. .. random drug testing results, credit history, .. it could be required to be read as a part of every purchase ...

All necessary to keep us secure, folks!

Taking the technology to the logical conclusion tends to dwarf even the predictions of Orwell's "1984".  I am not sure that even Orwell's dystopia could envision satellite surveillance and computers, but correctly predicted the iniquitousness of television (although they had telescreens that sent as well as received).

Sadly, I am not sure that we have not reached the point where technology has not become so pervasive that it can no longer be controlled (pardon the multiple negatives).  There will always be someone that will use the technology to their own advantage (hackers), and politicians are no exception.  I can't help but wonder if an Orwellian Democracy is already upon us.  While people scoff at the idea, because of the source, mostly, can the electronic capability of the government be far from what was depicted in “Enemy of the State”?

In the movie “Enemy of the State, Will Smith does not really beat the system as much as he manages to manipulate it, with the help of someone that knows the technology (Gene Hackman), by the way, to obtain a favorable outcome.  Just as an aside, does anyone think the Congressman that was the proponent of that National Security Act was not a Republican?  Keep in mind that the movie was made in 1998 and the USA Patriot Act was just a gleam in the idea of some xenophobe, that had to protect us at all costs, including our privacy and civil rights.

The "true believers" that are willing to do anything based on their perception of what is best for everyone.  They will always be the most dangerous people in the world, for they will do anything to achieve their goal(s), and they will never believe they were not acting in the best interests of society.  As much as they may be despised, I am not sure even Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot or even Osama bin Laden believed themselves to be acting wrongly.  Parenthetically, I wonder if Richard Nixon ever came to the conclusion that what he did was wrong, or if he just regretted getting caught.

I agree with everything you have said, and would only add one defining comment.  Police are not all authoritarians to start off with; many of them get that way over time.  FSU Professor George Kirkham gave an outstanding explanation for this in his study and resulting book, "Signal Zero", (police code for a gun).  It is available through Amazon and is probably more relevant today than it was when it was written in 1973.  It shows how police work tends to create the us vs them mentality.

I wonder when we all have to report to be chipped?   Hey, they do it to pets…it must be good for you, right?

Thoughts on Memorial Day

On this Memorial Day, it is important to note a few things.  The first is that this is a holiday for the soldiers who fought for our country and, as Lincoln described, “gave that last full measure of devotion.”  They died for our country.  As a military veteran, I am fortunate not to be a member of this honored class of individual.  My holiday is Veterans Day, which I am quick to point out whenever anyone offers me thanks for my service on this most hallowed of days.

Those of us that celebrate Veterans Day, as opposed to Memorial Day, have a unique perspective on Memorial Day….”There, but by the grace of God, go I.”  It matters little whether you were a combat veteran that served on a front line somewhere, or whether you were what military personnel refer to a “REMF” (Rear Echelon Mother F**ker).  You know that there are those that died and you were not one of them, whether by virtue of luck, skill, training or Devine intervention, you survived combat or you were assigned somewhere that you were not at great risk of being killed.  While the feeling is probably more poignant for the combat veteran, those that served in support roles still have the feeling.

The feeling is a sort of relieved guilt.  We feel, at the same time, “Thank God it was him instead of me” and “Why him and not me?”  Those of us that issued orders to soldiers that died in the line of duty based on those orders will carry a special guilt the rest of our lives and will always, in the deep dark recesses of out minds, wonder if we had done it just a bit differently, would they be alive?

The second thing that is important to note is a more political way of thinking.  While I am loathe to politicize a holiday that honors our military dead, I can think of no greater an impact a political decision has on anyone than to potentially cause their death.  When a politician, be it the President or the Congress of the United States, makes a decision to go to war, engage in some sort of unilateral military intervention or become part of a coalition that undertakes military action, there is a likelihood someone is going to die as a result of that decision.  I can think of no more awesome responsibility and no more direct impact.  The eminent military scholar Karl von Clausewitz said, “War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.”  Thus, it seems appropriate to discuss these decisions in a political context.

All the above being said, it is entirely possible to discuss, argue and disagree about a war and not dishonor the troops who fight it.  The political Right does an exceedingly good job of wrapping themselves in the flag and screams at the top of their lungs “SUPPORT OUR TROOPS” every time someone disagrees with the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  They point the finger and scream blasphemer at anyone that dare asks the question, “Should we be fighting these wars.  They do so for the purpose of limiting debate and the robust discussion in which we should engage before, after, and yes, even during those wars.  This is a profoundly political use of our troops.

Again, as a man that has served, I can tell you that I want the politicians of this country debating, on a regular basis, whether to send me into combat.  I want them to be in some sort of agreement that I need to be fighting and that the purpose for my sacrifice is worthy.  I know there will be disagreement, but if the topic is always open for debate, then there is less likelihood that I, and those that have followed, will be sacrificed needlessly.  However, I resent the fact that support for our troops is being used by politicians to stymie that debate and being used to prevent that robust discussion that allows for careful consideration of the sacrifices young men make for their country.

Allow me to use liberally the words of a great man, Abraham Lincoln, as they are still perfectly appropriate today.  On this Memorial Day, in the name of all that have given the last full measure of devotion, let us commit to a rich, full, robust, open and honest debate, every chance we get, that allows us to consider carefully why precious lives are being sacrificed, and that that sacrifice is not in vain.  Let government of the people, by the people, for the people, not perish from the Earth.

Change is Always Bad !!

There are those that truly believe change is always bad. The political Right has this view.  The terms new, different and exciting cause them severe gastrointestinal distress for some reason.  I think that the concept of an African-American President scares the living Hell out of them, but this is a race issue that has become hackneyed and is just too easy; perhaps another time.  On to change.

Change sometimes involves a bit of risk. You have to put yourself out there and take a chance on being wrong.  So, what you have to do is make a determination of the risk/reward ratio. Those of us that have been administrators often call this cost-benefit analysis. You weigh the risks against the rewards and you figure out if it is worth it, but more on that later.

Change can cause discomfort. New, different and exciting can sometimes be the cause of fear; fear of the unknown. You do the best you can to figure out the benefits of a change, but you cannot always be right on in your determination, and often there are the dreaded "unintended consequences." You had no idea that unintended consequences would occur, but once the change is implemented, you discover, sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly, that there are results that you did not anticipate.

 If you listen to the Conservative politicians and believers, the reason the economy took a dump was the fact that the Liberals in Congress decided to change the rules regulating mortgages. Liberals have long believed that everyone should be able to own a home and dictated, by legislative fiat, that mortgages had to be given to lower-income groups, in a certain percentage. Ultimately, this resulted in persons that could not afford mortgages getting mortgages on which they could not possibly make the payments. Time passes and poof, they default. This happens all at once, the residential real estate market takes a huge crap on the economy and we get "The Great Recession."

An excellent example of this is a woman I dated a few years ago. She refinanced her home at 120% of the market value at the height of the market; the assumption being that the homes would continue to appreciate at the over-heated rate they had for the previous several years. In order to be able to make the payments, she amortized the payments over 50 years (she was in her mid-40's at the time...you do the math). This was the only way she could afford the payments, and she used the money to pay off her car and her credit cards, etc. This succeeded in financing her debt over 50 years instead of the usual 5 for a car (again, you do the math, 4% for 50 years vs. a higher interest for only 5 years).

Oh, did I mention that this was an adjustable rate mortgage? Well, the rate adjusted up and she had to do everything she could to make the payment, including getting a second job. She teeters on the brink of losing her home...oh well. I am a little distraught only because I, being the nice guy I am, and being able to at the time, loaned her the money to make a down payment. This is money on which I have not seen payments in a couple of years, but she was able to buy a new Harley...oh well. In many cases, this same thing happened and people lost their homes to foreclosure. The real estate market crashed and burned, and still lies in a heap of rubble as I type, but again, I digress.

I will not argue the point as to whether the Conservatives among us are correct or not, but, if true, I will say it is an excellent example of unintended consequences. Personally, I think the banking industry started cooking the books with “Mortgage-backed Securities” and had a vested interest in issuing mortgages that they knew no one could pay off.  If we decide to make sure all lower-income people can share in the "American Dream," regardless of whether they can afford to make the payments on their new homes and, as a result, we get an economic downturn the likes we have not seen in 80 years. This does not consider the fact that the mortgage foreclosure has devastated these people's credit even further into the future than it might have been before.

Many years ago, as part of a military project, I was doing what we called "hearts and minds" work in a far-off foreign land. One of the things we were doing was to train the farmers how to use things like fertilizer, rotate crops and till hillsides to avoid erosion. It was what we called Peace Corps work too. Each time we tried to get the villagers to do anything different, their reply was always the same, "But we have always done it this way." There was no rational reason for not doing things differently. There were no unintended consequences, just an irrational desire to not change because "we have always done it this way."

In spite of the rather ominous example of unintended consequences, change is not always bad. Change can lead to a more efficient and effective way of doing things. Change can bring about the ability to get more done, do things faster or with less effort. Change can bring about a change of image from old fashioned and stodgy to progressive and enlightened; you know, modern, but in a world in which change is feared and to be avoided at all possible costs; where change is bad, change will never occur. Things will stay the same and they will not get any better, until change is forced upon "them" by an outside entity, or progress marches on and over those that stand in the way.

In our society, we have a group that fears change.  They are the Conservatives.  They want to do things the same way they have always done them and that is a bad thing, given our economy.  Of course, the Liberals can be and are guilty of the same thing on different levels.  The conservatives want the same old, balance our overdrawn checkbook on the backs of those that can least afford it, the poor, the middle-class and working Americans.  I believe they do this for two reasons; first, they are deluded and believe that the rich will use money given or saved by them to make jobs.  History and math have proved them wrong, except in certain very specific circumstances.  The second reason is because they are practicing what I learned in Chicago to be “Machine Politics.”  They are bought and paid for by corporate America.  They are lining their pockets and screwing the working class because the rich will continue to line their pockets with cash.  They have convinced a whole class of people that they have the one true way to fix things.

Now, having said these bad things about Conservatives, allow me to say that things cannot stay the way they are and the Liberals do not accept all the changes that may be necessary.  We can no longer afford to pay for the kind of social welfare safety net we have in the past.  We cannot afford the kind of entitlements we offer from the U.S. Government.  We can no longer afford to have the kind of military we currently have.  These are the things that are causing the national debt to be astronomical. At the very least, these are the kinds of things that need to be cut so we can pay back the national debt.  In my opinion that fact that we had to inject trillions of dollars into the economy to prevent “The Great Recession” from becoming another Great Depression is to blame in large part as well, but far better minds than mine disagree on that issue.

Cowards are persons that fear change, any change, but should know better. However, they are not tribes of under-educated, third-world fiefs or serfs in a feudal system. The cowards are those that tremble at the mere thought of doing things differently; they think that if things stay the same, they have nothing to fear. They hide from progress and they wallow in the behavior of the past, governed by their fears, their insecurities and their false perceptions. Cowards do not realize that change is not only necessary; it is inevitable, just as progress is inevitable. They do not understand that they will suffer the fate of the Dodo if they do not change and accept change, for progressive thinkers will take charge and replace them in the blink of an eye. The cowards will be left trembling in the wake of change, having no idea what has happened to them, decrying their fate, a fate they truly deserve.

Most things can be done better as technology improves, as new methods of accomplishing a task or process are developed, so change is not always bad. However, just because we can change it, does not mean we necessarily should; to paraphrase Dr. Ian Macolm in Jurrasic Park, "You were so busy patting yourself on the back that you could, you never bothered to ask whether you should." We have spent so much time in our society changing things for the sake of change; we have screwed up a lot of things that never needed fixing.

My personal belief is that the education system in this country that focused on reading, writing and arithmetic, did not need to be changed. We changed it because we could, not because we should. We had to justify the employment of all sorts of bureaucrats that justify their existence by changing things for the sake of changing things. Sometimes you have to look at things from the position of, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." There are changes that need to be implemented, where things aren't working, but the cowards won't and that is a damn shame.

McHenry Resorts to Name Calling...Nothing Else Is Left

This afternoon Representative Patrick McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, resorted to what the Conservative Right Wing of the Republican Party has left to it. He called Special Advisor for the Consumer Financial Protetion Bureau, Elizabeth Warren, a liar.  Of course, he chose the most consequential of reasons.  No, it was not a matter of national security, it was not a pending criminal matter; it was not even a matter that dealt with consumer financial protection.  What was it that caused Rep. McHenry to call Ms. Warren, a Harvard Law School Professor, a liar?  It was a scheduling conflict.   Yes, it was confusion regarding whether a scheduling conflict existed and, more accurately, whose fault it was.

Rep. McHenry, who represents the 10^th Congressional District, which covers Mooresville, NC, the headquarters of NASCAR, is a graduate of Belmont Abbey College with a Bachelors Degree in history; not an ignorant man, but certainly not of the caliber of a graduate from Harvard Law.  Rep. McHenry became irked because Ms. Warren alleged his staff had created a scheduling conflict and she had a prior commitment to honor.  It must be something about being from one of the Carolinas that makes a politician rude.  You will recall that Rep. Joe Wilson, R-SC, yelled out “You lie!” during President Obama’s health care speech before a joint session of Congress.  It probably has a lot less to do with the fact that they are from one of the Carolinas than it is related to their being Neo-Conservative, Right Wing, True Believer, Republicans and/or Tea Baggers.  It must be a great feeling, albeit delusional, to believe that you are the only person that could possible know what is really true, right and good.

Members of the no-longer-loyal opposition have lowered themselves to the level of rude name-calling and bullying.  There is an old saying I have heard from lawyers that applies to this situation. “If you don’t have the facts on your side, argue the law.  If you don’t have the law on your side, argue the facts.  If you have neither the facts nor the law on your side, argue the Constitution.”  The final part of this has been ad libbed to be, “If you can’t argue the facts, the law, or the Constitution, then scream at the jury.”  The Right has been reduced to screaming, yelling, name-calling, and just being downright rude.

The Right can’t pass the laws they want.  They can’t massage the facts any longer and their warped interpretation of the Constitution has devolved to a reading of the document that leads some state officials to believe they have the right to secede from the Union.  Remember the argument made by 21 states couple of years ago, based on the 10^th Amendment?   I can’t help but wonder if, being part of the Bill of Rights, the 10^th Amendment is one of those “technicalities” the Conservatives are always railing against?  Apparently, only when an Amendment works for them does it really count.  Sorry, hypocrisy just makes me nuts.

My point is that, in the final analysis, the Conservatives occasionally show themselves for what they really are, and we should be afraid…very afraid.