Palin Leaves Office

To "fight for what is right." Whatever Sarah. Her speech was the most cringing, insincere, bullshit and painful political speech I have EVER heard. I was actually laughing it was so embarrassing -- she made herself out to be the savior of America using horrible public policy puns. Seriously, it sounded like she hired Kim Jung Il's speechwriter.

Whoever is in her political team has consistently given her some of the worst advice I have seen in the modern political era.

American Right Holds It's Own Hostage

Interesting article on CQpolitics online relayed to me yesterday by a friend.

Shortly after Arlen Specter and two other centrist Senate Republicans struck their deal with Democrats and the White House on the economic stimulus package, Specter was approached in the GOP cloakroom by one of his colleagues.

“ ‘Arlen, I’m proud of you,’ ” the second senator said. Specter declined to say who the lawmaker was, but he recounted the rest of their conversation this way: “‘Are you going to vote with me?’ I said. He said, ‘No, I might have a primary.’ And I said, ‘You know very well that I’m going to have a primary.’”

That brief encounter clearly illuminated the position moderates hold in the ranks of the Senate Republicans these days — weighing their ideological inclination to find common cause with President Obama against the political risks and rewards of such dealmaking, both for themselves and for their party.

My friend David Amerikaner narrowed the list down to ten names, all male, up for reelection in 2010: Bennett (UT), Bunning (KY), Burr (NC), Coburn (OK), Crapo (ID), Grassley (IA), Gregg (NH), Isakson (GA), Shelby (AL), Vitter (LA).

Good place to start. I'm going to throw out Bunning (already facing primary challenge) and Coburn (known anti-government activist) off the top of my head. This leaving Bennett, Burr, Crapo, Grassley, Gregg, Isakson, Shelby and Vitter.

Bennett: While I know (from personal experience) politicians do not always believe their own rhetoric, I think this statement from Bennett in a Huffington Post article rules him out:

"We have a very, very clear model, because we passed a stimulus package in the last Congress -- bipartisan. Republicans voted for it. Democrats voted for it. It didn't work," said Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah), who led financial-industry bailout negotiations for the GOP.

Bennett argued that the last plan "was based on economic analysis of past recessions and past problems and not the depth and seriousness of this one. We saw personal income spike up as a result of the stimulus we put into the economy, and the economy was stimulated not at all."

For Bennett, the plan failed because high debts and the dire economic outlook persuaded people that they should save their money or pay down loans rather than spend. "When you're having an economic crisis, whether you're a company like General Motors or a bank like Citi or an individual, you do what you can to pay down your debt. That's what was done with the last stimulus package. That's the rational thing to do."

Burr: Not only did Obama win his state, Burr just saw Liddy Dole lose reelection by 9 points. Furthermore, his favorables are under 50 points. However, Burr has not ventured against conservative orthodoxy in his time in the Senate often. I doubt the GOP would want to further weaken an already weak candidate (see Arlen Spector). Plausible candidate.

Crapo: Won 99 percent of the vote in his reelect in 2004. It has been rumored that he's a candidate for GOP leadership in the Senate. Popular back home, doubt anybody takes him on. I'll rule him out.

Grassley: Although he got the Obama Administration to move a $69 billion AMT patch into the stimulus bill, I doubt he is the one in question. A weekend hog farmer who visits all 99 counties in Iowa every year, a viable primary challenge is not in the cards here.

Gregg: Interesting candidate here. Gregg abstained for a cloture vote when deciding on whether to take the Commerce position. That aside, he is popular with conservatives in New Hampshire. Considering the changing dynamics of the state I doubt Gregg is worried about a primary challenge from the right in an open primary system. I'll rule him out.

Isakson: Isakson is fairly conservative but has taken some moderate steps here and there (ie. the bailout and immigration). His ridiculous amendment that would have done little else than put money in realtor's pockets showed he was at least willing to play ball. No primary challenger has announced, yet there have been rumors of it happening. Strong candidate.

Shelby: Originally elected as a Democrat from Alabama to the US Senate. Shelby is now questioning Obama's citizenship (seriously?!?!). Shelby has a $13.4 million war chest (the biggest of any incumbent on the board for 2010). Doubt he is concerned with a primary challenge.

Vitter: Extremely worried about a primary challenge (voted against HRC for State as a result). His track record is ridiculously conservative, so I doubt he would even contemplate voting for the stimulus bill.
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My best guess: Isakson.

But if You Ask Really, Really Nicely They May Stop!

The federal American government has spent more than $1,500,000,000 in taxpayer dollars since 1996 in abstinence-only until marriage sex education.

On one side of the debate we have Derek Dye the Abstinence Clown (the video is absolutely unreal -- and paid for by your tax dollars!), Sarah Palin and the Pope; on the other side we have the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, the Society for Adolescent Medicine, the American College Health Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Public Health Association. Hmm...

The hypothesis we can "educate" teenagers to go against their fundamental primordial drive is fairly ludicrous to begin with. No surprise then that the evidence reveals abstinence-only sex education fails to reduce teen pregnancy, STD or the proclivity of teenagers to explore their budding sexual desires.

From global warming to the Big Bang (seriously!) to this it is clear science played a back seat to ideology and political gain in the George W. Bush administration.

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Thanks for e-mailing me the Derek Dye the Abstinence Clown story Kaner.

End the "War on Drugs"

Unfortunately, I do not expect American public policy makers to come to terms with the absolute fact that the "War on Drugs" has been a colossal failure of epic proportions any time soon. Although the "War on Drugs" has resulted in:

• $49 billion spent per year by local, state and federal agencies -- money that could have been going to education, health care, etc.;
  
• 80 percent of the increase in the federal prison population was due to drug convictions between 1985 and 1995;
• somebody getting arrested every 17 seconds for violating a drug law (for cannabis alone its ever 38 seconds);
• more than half of all sentenced federal prisoners are drug offenders; and
  
• 17 percent of State prisoners and 18 percent of Federal prisoners committed their crimes in order to obtain drug money.

The only winners in the "War on Drugs" are criminal enterprises and politicians who appease public sentiments (I'm looking at you Rahm Emanuel, Eric Holder, Joe Biden, Ronald Reagan (for increasing mandatory sentences) and essentially the entire GOP/American Right). While these costs are relatively hidden to the American public and media outlets, the disastrous consequences are very apparent in Mexico.Here is just a taste from a blog post at Cato-at-Liberty:

Mexican soldiers are being killed and beheaded, and police officers are being assassinated (warning: violent content)... For more on this topic, click here, here, or here.

More recent evidence from the Washington Post:

After a long, controversial career, Brig. Gen. Mauro Enrique Tello Quiñones retired from active duty last month and moved to this Caribbean playground to work for the Cancun mayor and fight the drug cartels that have penetrated much of Mexican society. He lasted a week.

Tello, 63, along with his bodyguard and a driver, were kidnapped in downtown Cancun last Monday evening, taken to a hidden location, methodically tortured, then driven out to the jungle and shot in the head. Their bodies were found Tuesday in the cab of a pickup truck on the side of a highway leading out of town. An autopsy revealed that both the general's arms and legs had been broken.

The audacious kidnapping and killing of one of the highest-ranking military officers in Mexico drew immediate expressions of outrage from the top echelons of the Mexican government, which pledged to continue the fight against organized crime that took the lives of more than 5,300 people last year. Military leaders, who are increasingly at the front lines of the war against the cartels, vowed not to let Tello's death go unsolved or unpunished.

The underlying problem here for Mexico is simple; their isn't a damn thing they can do to address the root cause of the violence -- demand from American consumers. As America pumps in billions of dollars to cut off supply chains the money to be made from the drug trade is increasingly found not necessarily in producing the stuff -- it is in getting substances across the border.

Their is a full on war going on south of our border. One that CANNOT be won. The question we must ask ourselves is what is it going to take for our country to wake up and demand real change.

Join Sarah 2012

It has begun. Sarah Palin has started a political action committee -- a significant step to running for national office. The thought of this woman running our country and the free world is truly a terrifying thought. If nothing else I hope the Democratic Party and "progressive" interest groups learned their lesson from the years of George W. Bush... namely do not dismiss a political rival as stupid and expect enough Americans to agree with you that the individual is clearly not competent enough to hold the office of POTUS. A 2004 election of Obama vs. Palin would be absolutely entertaining. Not only would Palin fill the national void left by Bush 43 of embarassing comments made by elected officials (although Biden is trying his damnest), a loss worse than McCain's would further damage the credibility of the religious right as a viable ideology for the GOP.

Symbolism of Change

Image of the Naval Observatory (residence of the VPOTUS) found on Google maps prior to January 18, 2009.
Image of the Naval Observatory (residence of the VPOTUS) found on Google maps January 18, 2009.
Not to get to caught up with the symbolism of change and a new commitment to transparency from the office of the President of the United States... Although Obama might secretly be wishing that Biden would spend as much time in undisclosed locations as Cheney did in the role of VPOTUS after events such as this.

- Thanks for pointing this out to me Kaner.

Another Reason why The Economist Rocks

Nothing quite like the sarcasm and wit of the editorial board of The Economist. In a leader (November 15, "O give me a home...") discussing the possibility of the Maldives looking to buy a new homeland, as the country looks likely to be a casualty of rising sea levels, the editors expand the discussion to include the U.S.:

And Barack Obama, committed to uniting America, could defuse the nation’s culture wars by purchasing an alternative homeland for those of his countrymen who want more use of the death penalty, less gun control and no gay marriage. A slice of Saudia Arabia’s empty quarter would do nicely: there’s plenty of space and the new occupants would have lots in common with the locals.