In politics, 2005 will likely be remembered as the year of the demagogue.  Where facts, history, and truth take a second seat to loud, shrill accusations of wrong-doing. The latest one has to do with the wiretapping of suspected terrorist agents in the United States.  Now, I'm not going to argue whether I'm in favor or against said wire tapping because I do not (and neither do the pundits) know enough on the specifics of each case to know the merits.  What I'm going to talk abo...

Liberal. Conservative.  These terms have lost all meaning in recent years. They are effectively political party names in terms of usefulness as a description.  We need new names.  But what should they be? Many people have pointed out that American politics is over-simplified.  Two political parties? Two political philosophies? Nonsense.  I have come to agree with them. So for the sake of this exercise I've devised 6 political philosophies that permeate the American...

I'm just rambling here so if you're looking for a well written piece, you'll want to go elsewhere.  After 6 weeks of massive hours I'm spent.. It's not a good time to ideological.  If you're a conservative, you're quickly discovering that victory in politics quickly corrupts.  Conservatives control the congress and the presidency only to have record deficits, sloppy governance, and cronyism.  If you're an intelligent liberal, your ideology has largely been hijacked...

While the media is content to let pundits just shoot off rhetoric to back their own predefined agendas, some people in the blogsphere have put some effort into analysing the actual data from Iraq. Check out this link for some really detailed analysis of what's going on. Are we winning? Who's getting killed? What's going on?  

There's been a very stimulating series of articles written by JoeUser bloggers with regards to the opinions of civilians on the sidelines making claims about what the military should and shouldn't do.  I missed some of the first ones (particularly a great one by Texas Wahine) so here's the series so far: We need to help those Iraqis!  (a civilian frustrated with those who oppose the war) If you love war so much, why not go fight it?  (frustration with non-serving civilians...

This email is floating around. While it's totally unfair in comparing Texas and Louisiana in terms of their handling of hurricans (after Katrina, people were taking these things more seriously) but the general reality is still pretty accurate IMO.   :: A Tale of Two States 2 States, 22 Observations Things noticed while watching media coverage of the recent hurricanes: 1. Texas: Productive industrious state run by Republicans. Louisiana: Government dependent welfar...

Let's have a common sense excercise: Wilson, a civilian, is sent over to African to find out about the yellow cake claims. He comes back and not only reports that that the story was unfounded but writes op-eds to the New York Times blasting the Bush administration. Either: a) Wilson was stupid for not thinking that people would want to find out how the hell he got the job to go to Africa. His wife was stupid for pulling strings to get him the assignment since inevitably, questio...

I cringe everytime I hear people yell about SUVs and their gas mileage. I was talking to a friend of mine in California who made some pretty...militant remarks about people who drive SUVs and their irresponsible behavior.  To which I said, "Wait, don't you commute an hour per day to work?" To which he said, "Well sure, but I drive a Toyota Corolla."  So what? I don't care what kind of car you're driving, if you're driving over an hour (total) per day, you're burning a lot of gas. So...

Source The people who blame global warming on CO2 emissions have a lot in common with the people who claim that intelligent design is a "theory". Which is ironic since they politically disagree on almost everything else. Whenever I get into a discussion on global warming with someone in person, they are almost always, universally, completely devoid of first-hand knowledge on global climate history, other factors that can cause the warming and cooling of the earth.  They often sound,...

Dennis Miller put it best when (paraphrasing) he said: "Why it is liberals will compare everyone to Hitler except the little mustached guy gassing people over in Iraq?"  Once again, Democrats manage to trivialize historical catastrophes. In this case, the holocaust as Democrat Charles Rangel said: The Iraq war "is the biggest fraud ever committed on the people of this country. . . . This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed," the 74-year-old Harlem Democrat insisted...

Imagine what the uproar would be if say Dick Cheney said that Democrats pretty much act the same and look the same to him.  There's be cries for his resignation.  After all, Republicans ousted Trent Lott over a lot less.  But the Democrats..well, they have different standards of behavior.  It's okay for them to be overt bigots.  Whether that be former KKK Senator Byrd or Jesse "Hymie Town" Jackson, and now Howard Dean, Democrats have spent so much time accusing others of...

For all the talk about how Dubya is ruining the environment, the reality is somewhat different.  When it comes to auto emissions, the US has the tightest auto emissions laws in the world.  For instance, starting this year, US autos are only allowed to put out 1/4th as much NO2 as their European counterparts.  But across the board, from cars to industry emissions, the US air quality laws are far stricter than other industrialized nations.  When it comes to clean air, the US - ...

My last article on inheritence taxes sure drew some controversy.  Surprisingly, much of it from conservatives.  Perphaps it's because I'm an only child or perhaps I just don't have the "correct" attitude on families but to me there are two types of income: Earned and unearned.  My problem with welfare is that it provides unearned income to people.  And so to me, inheritence isn't much better than welfare. Before you turn your flame throwers on, hear me out.  My view...

The said that Afghanistan would be a quagmire. They were wrong.  They said that invading Iraq would cause an "unrelenting wave of terrorists attacks on US soil" they were wrong.  They said that an invasion of Iraq would cost "half a million civilian deaths" they were wrong. And most recently that the US was losing the hearts and minds of Iraqis. That turn-out in the the Iraqi election would be low because people didn't have faith in the system.  And they were wrong again. 72...

Glenn Reynolds had a very interesting discussion with regards to how the Democrats should deal with their kooks: You rightly point out that we liberals must do our best to shout down, disassociate ourselves, do everything we can to make ourselves no longer the party of Michael Moore, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, et al. And as you noted, the Right does do a better job of quieting its 'idiotarians'. The only problem is, they essentially do it with the "bribes and promises" approach. Jerr...