by Greg Krehbiel on 27 January 2012
This article is from The Onion, which is a parody site. It is not for real.
It’s still funny. (In a sick way.)
I’m just going to level with you—the earth’s carrying capacity will no longer be able to keep up with population growth, and civilization will end unless large swaths of human beings are killed, so the question is: How do we want to do this?
:: What do you think? :: 2012-01-27 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 26 January 2012
I try not to post political stuff (or comment on political stuff) on Facebook. (I don’t always succeed.)
Recently I’ve seen this image (from that flaming partisan Lawrence O’donnell) that tries to imply that liberals are always the force of progress and social reform and conservatives are knuckle draggers trying to keep us in the dark ages.
Of course it depends on how you define “liberals” and “conservatives.” If you define “conservatives” as “people who oppose new ideas” — which completely misrepresents modern “conservatism”! — then there’s some truth to it.
But even with that definition, “people who oppose new ideas” have also kept us from …
All ideas from the left. And the list is fairly easy to make.
So, IOW, the concept is a lie no matter how you cut it.
5 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-01-26 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 26 January 2012
This is a very damaging story for Newt.
ABC & John King bust Newt Gingrich for lying at debate about character witnesses
In the famous interaction with John King, Newt claimed that his campaign offered witnesses to ABC to counter his ex-wife’s account, but …
Newt’s campaign finally admits that Newt’s statements were wrong and that the only people that were offered by the campaign for ABC to talk with were his two daughters.
3 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-01-26 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 25 January 2012
I didn’t know who Cynthia Nixon was until I saw this story. (She’s an actress.)
Anyway, to the dismay of some people in the gay community she has announced that being gay was, for her, a choice.
So … what exactly are they saying.
“You can’t join our club unless you’re born this way?”
Isn’t that sorta like racism?
Does this mean that before somebody can “come out” they have to get approval from the hierarchy to ensure that they are officially homosexual and not just choosing that lifestyle?
Or does it mean that people who do choose that lifestyle have to toe the party line and pretend that they didn’t?
It’s very confusing, and it’s quite obvious that groupthink is more important than reality.
4 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-01-25 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 25 January 2012
This is a good article about the amateur president’s foreign policy and whether it will cause lasting damage to the country.
The Perils of Obama’s Foreign Policy
8 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-01-25 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 24 January 2012
I didn’t listen to the speech because I don’t like listening to these things, but I tried to read it.
Obama complained that manufacturing jobs left the U.S. Well, why did they go? In part because of cheap labor overseas, of course, but also in part because other countries offered a climate that was more favorable to business. The Obama administration has been famously anti-business, so I really don’t think they’re going to help much.
Obama says the state of the union is getting stronger. Of course he has to say that, but a lot of people would say it’s not true.
The thing about helping GM …. How do we know what would have happened if we hadn’t bailed them out? What if we’d let the regular rules apply and let them go through bankruptcy?
We have no way of comparing what did happen with what could have happened, so we really can’t evaluate if the GM bailout was a good idea.
And when Obama says “your country will do whatever it can” to promote domestic manufacturing, that’s ridiculous, especially coming from this president.
Then he goes on with the old “government picking winners and losers” thing.
If you’re a high-tech manufacturer, we should double the tax deduction you get for making products here.
The master will reward his good servants and punish the ones he doesn’t like. (Just like he’s done with health care, giving waivers to groups he likes — that give him money.)
The talk about trade agreements is a bad joke, especially since the White House sat on two trade agreements for a couple years and then ignorantly blamed Congress for not moving on them — when the ball was in Obama’s court!
Then he talks about job training (which isn’t the federal government’s business), and I get the strong sense that this will be another command and control deal, where the government gets to pick which kids of training get what kinds of benefits.
It’s also not the federal government’s business to get involved in education.
The lies about energy are just too much to hear, especially after he blocked the Keystone pipeline deal.
That’s it. I can’t read any more. It’s the same old boring tripe, with lies thrown in for good measure.
2 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-01-24 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 24 January 2012
You’ve probably heard that Sen. Rand Paul missed his flight to D.C. to speak at the annual pro-life rally on Monday because he was arguing with some jack-booted TSA agents over a pat-down.
The cynic in me wonders if he calculated which was better for his political future — (1) going along with the TSA goons so he could make it to the pro-life rally and win points with that crowd, or (2) causing a fuss with TSA and winning points with the anti-TSA contingent.
(I realize I’m being rather hard on the TSA folks here. I don’t actually blame the workers — or at least not most of them. I’m sure they’re “just following orders.”)
But I get the impression that the Paul family skews in the “true believer” direction. I suspect that he caused a fuss with TSA because he believed it was the right thing to do.
And that’s most of what scares me about Ron Paul as a candidate for president.
A willingness to go it alone and suffer the consequences for your convictions is an admirable trait in a man. It’s not always a good trait in a leader of men, and almost certainly not a good trait in a politician.
1 comment :: What do you think? :: 2012-01-24 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 24 January 2012
Generally speaking I see two kinds of comments these days about Iraq and Afghanistan.
1. We were right to go in and we need to keep fighting forever and ever (or until the military commanders say the job is done).
2. We never should have gone in and we should get out now.
My position is that we were probably right to go in, but we should have promptly kicked their butts, taken enough oil to pay for our trouble (in the case of Iraq — or enough rare earth minerals from Afghanistan), and then left. The whole campaign should have taken six months and we should have left the place a smoldering ruin.
The problem is not the war, the problem is the conscience-assuaging “nation-building” we’ve been doing afterwards.
We’re like the people of Eminiar VII (see A Taste of Armageddon) who have made war too nice and polite. That’s a problem for so many reasons, but I’ll list two.
First, it makes it too easy to get into a war in the first place, because we know we’ll kiss and make up after we finish destroying things. Second, it takes away the fear of getting into a war with America. In fact, if you want new bridges and schools, it might be a good strategy.
I want a situation where G. Gordon Liddy is managing the war, not some politically correct weenies. Then everybody would know — if we go to war, we are truly unleashing the dogs, and they are not going to play nice.
5 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-01-24 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 23 January 2012
See Muslim without sharia? from the reliably misinformed Washington Post blog on religion.
Harris Zafar is taking Gingrich to task saying that he would not support a Muslim presidential candidate unless he publicly renounced sharia. (Which seems perfectly reasonable to me. Gingrich is not, so far as I can tell, talking about creating a law or a new requirement. He’s simply saying that he would not support such a candidate.)
Zafar then goes on with the “Muslims are nice and no threat” schtick.
How many nations have been taken over by Muslim extremists in the past couple decades? Does this guy really expect us to believe his platitudes, like “Sharia teaches freedom of conscience and religion.”
It reminds me of a comment by Lt. Commander Worf. “You must think me a fool to make your lies so transparent.”
Even if there are Muslims who believe as Zafar claims, that’s clearly not the whole story, and it’s dishonest for him to pretend that it is.
3 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-01-23 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 22 January 2012
In the post below about strict constructionism, John asks if any relatively recent president has declined to go along with a power grab. Misremembering something I had heard a little while ago, I thought maybe Hoover, but I had it completely wrong.
It was Harding who responded to the depression in a way that modern Tea Party people would like.
See Mister we could use a man like Warren Harding again.
The other president I’ve heard praised recently (by conservatives) is Calvin Coolidge.
I don’t know much about any of those early 20th century presidents, except for bits and pieces I’ve heard here and there. (E.g., just the other night I heard an interesting segment on some book by Hoover that he wrote towards the end of his life, mostly criticizing the policies of Roosevelt. It sounded very interesting.)
1 comment :: What do you think? :: 2012-01-22 :: Greg Krehbiel
