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Random Thoughts #6

1) Listening to economists predict where this train wreck of an economy is going is confusing at best. Lately, one theme seems to be that many of them are calling this as a jobless economic recovery. I'm trying to wrap my brain around how that's going to work. I don't see much of a recovery happening if we can't get people back to work myself.

2) AIG CEO, Robert Benmosche, is ready to call it quits. Apparently he's tired of government oversight and restrictions on pay/bonuses. I say fuck him and AIG since we shelled out $182.5 billion dollars to this company to keep it afloat. He's worried about a "brain drain" with pay restrictions. Here's a clue Robert -- many of us in this country are working for less than we were before the economic collapse. And just how many of these "brainy" people you have working there were responsible for the near collapse of your company?

3) My daughter was home last weekend from college. Today I just noticed that I'm out of ice cream. I suspect there's a correlation between these two facts.

4) This thought is bound to upset some people. I'm bracing myself for a deluge of shitty comments as I type this. What does abortion have to do with a health care bill? Before I go any further I do respect and believe abortion is a woman's choice. But I don't have a problem with it being excluded from any health care bill, unless the life of the woman is at stake, cases of rape, or incest. For the most part, abortion is a choice of a woman who simply doesn't want to have a child. It's not a disease and it's not a medical problem. We have people dying with real medical problems who need to be covered. Making the choice to simply end an unwanted pregnancy doesn't fall into a health care category for me. The bill which passed the house doesn't ban abortions. It just means the government isn't going to pay for them. Let's keep our eye on the real prize here people.

5) For you people who are so against abortion, why are you so willing to protect the rights of an unborn child and not want meaningful health care reform to ensure the health of said child when born? You seem to forget about them once they're brought into the world.

6) I think a government best serves its citizens by ensuring the defense of our nation, providing quality health care for its citizens, and providing the best educational opportunities for all of its citizens. If I were passing out grades for these three issues they would be as follows:

a) Defense = C

b) Health Care = D

c) Education = C

Make Sure You Get The Complete Package

Christmas will be here before you know it. Like many of you I have a few friends and family members who lean to the right on the political spectrum. While I pity those misguided souls I can set aside the pity for the sake of Christmas and try to bring a little joy to their black hearts.

Sarah Palin's book is rumored to be 400 pages. I think this is the perfect gift to set their little hearts into pitter patter overdrive. One idea I have to fairly represent the principles of Sarah Palin is to remove the last 125 pages to represent how she felt toward filling her term as governor of Alaska. I see no need for them to see the end of this book any more than Sarah Palin felt the need to finish her term as governor.

Of course some of you may have an aversion to destroying a book in this manner and want your friends and family to read all the words of a nut case quitter. In that case don't forget to include crayons for use in this book. I'd imagine getting this book without the crayons would make a right wing nut job cry like a little child who received a toy which required batteries, but no batteries were available for it.

We Don't Know How To Fight Terrorism

Terrorism: A word that strikes fear in many people's hearts.

Terrorism is a war we're never going to win if we keep fighting it as a conventional war.

Terrorism is currently defined and constructed around extreme religious fanatical beliefs to some extent. I say "to some extent" because I personally believe a lot of the terrorist acts carried out by many terrorist groups hide behind and use specific religious beliefs to mask that they're simply evil and want power.

We're in Iraq and Afghanistan now fighting the war on terror. But where are the terrorists who attacked us at? The short and easy answer is not in either of those countries right now. I think it's safe to say that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake and the war in Afghanistan has been mishandled from the get-go. We went into both countries making war against two nations. Two nations that could be argued that harbored, or were willing to harbor, terrorist groups. But we were fighting a war against those governments rather than the terrorists themselves for the most part.

Yes, I know we managed to kill a few terrorists, but at what cost? Our actions have managed to kill scores more of our own troops and innocent civilians than terrorists. This war has also crippled us financially as well. But that's a secondary concern to me as far as this post goes. Do we keep invading nations who we suspect harbor terrorists? There's a long list and we can't possibly sustain this war as we have been. It's not practical and it's not working. We will eventually leave Iraq and Afghanistan. I suspect once that occurs the terrorists we have chased from those countries will simply move back in.

We have to find another way to fight extremism and fanatics. During WWII Harry Truman had to make a terrible decision to end the war with Japan. In my mind he made the correct decision to drop two nuclear weapons on two cities in Japan to drive them into surrendering. He correctly surmised that we were fighting extreme fanatics who were willing to fight and die to the last man if we mounted an invasion of Japan. While an invasion of Japan would have led to victory he knew American losses would have also been astronomical. The path he chose worked, ended the war with Japan much sooner than an invasion would have, and saved American lives.

While dropping nukes isn't the answer to this issue we have to come up with another approach to fighting extremists, fanatics, and terrorists. Thousands of lives have been lost since the 911 attack and unfortunately most being American soldiers and innocent civilians. We have killed few terrorists in comparison. The tactics we've been using cannot be sustained nor are they really effective.

I'm not a military strategist, nor do I have definitive answers. But I know when something isn't working. I do have the opinion that this is a problem that has to be fought from within. Within means from the Muslim religion and faith itself. They are way too tolerant of the extreme factions within their own religion. The Muslims themselves have to address this in a meaningful way and act in ways to show that these fanatics are masquerading as religious representatives of their faith and making a mockery of their faith. Their tolerance of the abuse of their religion has to stop before any meaningful headway to occur.

You've Got To Love A Great Hoax

You've got to admire and love it when a hoax gains traction and pulls in fools to spout off about the veracity of it.

Rush Limbaugh thought he had the goods on Obama's hate of America and the Constitution. And he shared that on Friday with his listening audience. You can listen here. He read the following excerpt from a thesis Obama wrote at Columbia University:

The Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy.

The only problem was that Obama wrote no such thing.

Now we all know, at least those of us with our sanity intact, that Rush Limbaugh doesn't often check for facts. But in this case he probably should have. Obama wrote a "thesis long paper" while at Columbia but the topic was Soviet nuclear disarmament. (At the time that Obama attended Columbia, the college didn't really have senior thesis papers.)

But Rush Limbaugh just plowed on with righteous wrath calling Obama a "little boy," and saying, "he still shares those same feelings."

Now Limbaugh wasn't the only one pulled into believing this also. This was also reported on Fox News' FoxNation.com as well. (Fox News also likes to post anything negative on our president without checking facts from time to time too.)

A conservative blogger wrote a post last August as a satire as the truth and many people fell for it. It just took Rush Limbaugh and Fox News almost two months to discover it and run with it without checking facts. Their delight in "exposing" Obama as someone who hates America clouds their ability to want to report the truth. To them the truth doesn't matter as long as they can malign Obama.

When Limbaugh was told that this was a hoax and he was wrong he stated on air that he didn't care. He justified it by stating it was okay because of a series of quotes were falsely attributed to him recently and because, "I know Obama thinks it." (Of course that makes sense to Limbaugh somehow, since he feels he was maligned personally by some quotes recently. Apparently you might as well malign someone else and falsely accuse them of things when that happens.)

Here's a tip for you Rush: Fact checking can be your friend.