While I was surfing aound this morning, I came across an interesting piece by Stephen Green of Vodkapundit, who was wrinting at Pajamas Media. It was entitled "I Was a Card-Carrying Libertarian: Confessions of a Black Sheep Republican."
What caught my attention was the sub which reads:"It’s hard to remain a Libertarian in the post-9/11 era, bemoans Stephen Green of Vodkapundit, who has officially stopped trying to change the world “one losing candidate at a time.”"
I was immediately reminded of my wish that every ballot would have a place to vote for "none of the above." With due respect to Libertarians, I have often used their candidate for that, knowing they could not win. Occasionally, someone else provides a grand opportunity to do that, as in the case of Kinky Friedman in our last Governor's election. He got my vote.
My tour through the political wasteland has not been quite the same as Mr. Green's, but with similar results.
My Dad was a Democrat when I was growing up, but was not politically active except for 1958, when he agreed to be "Honorary Campaign Chairman" for Speaker of the House Waggoner Carr when he ran for Attorney General. That was my first introduction to elective politics, I got involved, and loved it. In 1968, I was elected to office as a Democrat. I was very active in statewide campaigns as a Democrat all through the 1960s and 1970s. I was involved in political meetings at the highest levels in my home state and in Washington, and could have remained so had I chosen to.
Jimmy Carter, among other things, did me in. The Democratic Party had moved so far to the left during the 1970s that I could no longer conscientiously remain in the party. So I switched in 1979.
I remained active politically, but not in any important way at the state or national levels. All my friends and contacts at those levels were Democrats. We remained friends, but I did not take part in any of the politics.
In 1988, I was elected to another office as a Republican, and served for another 18 years before I retired. My service there did not permit me to be acive in politics except at the party level, and I did not participate at all during that period.
Like all Republicans, I was delighted to see the party get control of Congress in 1994, and had great hopes that they would make changes in the culture in Washington, and make policies that were more sensible. Those hopes were soon dashed.
Republicans quickly moved to start slopping at the trough. Pork barrel spending grew to record levels, with nary a peep from our Republican President. The earmarks expanded exponentially, with little or no restraint. The Republicans were acting like Democrats, except worse. So the public gave Congress back to the Democrats, who campaigned against the "culture of corruption" which certainly did exist. Did this change anything? Of course not. The only thing that changed were the names of the corrupt.
Republicans also gained control of our Legislature recently. I was concerned about the new Speaker that was elected. My trepidations have been proved right. Our legislature is now controlled by a few "big money" donors, and has proved that they cannot govern well, if at all. It appears that the legislation is written by the big money lobby. It's a real shame.
Where does one go now? "None of the above" is not on the ballot. We are left with having to vote for the lesser of two evils. The idealism of my youth has been smashed by the reality of current politics. What about our kids, and their kids?
Disgusting.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Why don't we get the truth on Iraq?
Michael Yon has a new report out, entitled Resistance is futile: You will be (mis)informed. Yon is an independent reporter and blogger who has embedded with US Army and Marine units in Iraq, and sent firsthand reports back to his readers for quite some time.
He was recently home for a few days, and the report describes what he found here in the US:
"....I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions. Considering that my trip home coincided with General Petraeus’ testimony before the US Congress, when media interest in the war was (I’m told) unusually concentrated, it’s a wonder my eardrums didn’t burst on the trip back to Iraq. In places like Singapore, Indonesia, and Britain people hardly seemed to notice that success is being achieved in Iraq, while in the United States, Britney was competing for airtime with O.J. in one of the saddest sideshows on Earth.
"No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public......"
He is being kind and generous to our mainstream media. They have ignored good news and magnified bad news from Iraq from the beginning. Is it deliberate? Pehaps. Most people, even journalists, tend to view events from the perspective of their experience and beliefs. Something that might seem credible to one person, may not seem so to another. The same goes for a determination of what is important or not. What we do know is that most journalists are quite liberal. The result is that the news we get is tilted in that direction, whether intentionally or not.
A pretty good example of this is the current reporting out of Iraq. Has anyone noticed that the number of stories reported has gone down? Seems so to me. It also seems that the news, if reported, would mostly be good. Perhaps that is why it is not reported.
Yon has in the past offered his columns free to the mainstream media, but, of course, they would not accept. They wouldn't be caught dead printing or reporting the true story, when a bad news story fits their political leanings much better.
To try to get the real story out, Yon has offered his reports to the National Newspaper Association at no cost. Will anyone print them? We will see.
In the meantime, we are stuck with having to ferret out the truth from disparate sources, and piece it together for ourselves.
Yon's perception of what we have now is pretty good:
"......Clearly, a majority of Americans believe the current set of outdated
fallacies passed around mainstream media like watered down drinks at happy hour.
Why wouldn’t they? The cloned copy they get comes from the same sources that
list the specials at the local grocery store, and the hours and locations of
polling places for town elections. These same news sources print obituaries and
birth announcements, give play-by-play for local high school sports, and
chronicle all the painful details of the latest celebrity to fall from
grace.
"To illustrate the absurdity to which this conceit of the collective has
grown, I’m tempted to borrow from the boy in the fairy tale, only this time
pointing to and shouting at the doomsday-sayers parading by: “Hey, they aren’t
wearing any clothes. . . . ”............."
How sad. You should read all of Michael Yon's reports, along with those from Michael Totten, and Bill Roggio. They have been there, are beholden to no one, and one can get a good idea of the real truths in Iraq from them.
UPDATE: The United Nations reports good news from Iraq:
"Taxi driver Ahmed Khalil Baqir used to station himself outside Baghdad's main morgue, waiting for grieving families who went there to claim their relatives’ dead bodies.
"I was totally dependent on them for my living," Baqir, a 44-year-old father of four, said." I never thought about picking up people in the street as I was being hired five to eight times a day by these families. But now it is a waste of time to wait there and these days I wait only for about three hours in the morning and I continue my work picking up passengers in the street.”
Read the whole thing.
Via: Instapundit
He was recently home for a few days, and the report describes what he found here in the US:
"....I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions. Considering that my trip home coincided with General Petraeus’ testimony before the US Congress, when media interest in the war was (I’m told) unusually concentrated, it’s a wonder my eardrums didn’t burst on the trip back to Iraq. In places like Singapore, Indonesia, and Britain people hardly seemed to notice that success is being achieved in Iraq, while in the United States, Britney was competing for airtime with O.J. in one of the saddest sideshows on Earth.
"No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public......"
He is being kind and generous to our mainstream media. They have ignored good news and magnified bad news from Iraq from the beginning. Is it deliberate? Pehaps. Most people, even journalists, tend to view events from the perspective of their experience and beliefs. Something that might seem credible to one person, may not seem so to another. The same goes for a determination of what is important or not. What we do know is that most journalists are quite liberal. The result is that the news we get is tilted in that direction, whether intentionally or not.
A pretty good example of this is the current reporting out of Iraq. Has anyone noticed that the number of stories reported has gone down? Seems so to me. It also seems that the news, if reported, would mostly be good. Perhaps that is why it is not reported.
Yon has in the past offered his columns free to the mainstream media, but, of course, they would not accept. They wouldn't be caught dead printing or reporting the true story, when a bad news story fits their political leanings much better.
To try to get the real story out, Yon has offered his reports to the National Newspaper Association at no cost. Will anyone print them? We will see.
In the meantime, we are stuck with having to ferret out the truth from disparate sources, and piece it together for ourselves.
Yon's perception of what we have now is pretty good:
"......Clearly, a majority of Americans believe the current set of outdated
fallacies passed around mainstream media like watered down drinks at happy hour.
Why wouldn’t they? The cloned copy they get comes from the same sources that
list the specials at the local grocery store, and the hours and locations of
polling places for town elections. These same news sources print obituaries and
birth announcements, give play-by-play for local high school sports, and
chronicle all the painful details of the latest celebrity to fall from
grace.
"To illustrate the absurdity to which this conceit of the collective has
grown, I’m tempted to borrow from the boy in the fairy tale, only this time
pointing to and shouting at the doomsday-sayers parading by: “Hey, they aren’t
wearing any clothes. . . . ”............."
How sad. You should read all of Michael Yon's reports, along with those from Michael Totten, and Bill Roggio. They have been there, are beholden to no one, and one can get a good idea of the real truths in Iraq from them.
UPDATE: The United Nations reports good news from Iraq:
"Taxi driver Ahmed Khalil Baqir used to station himself outside Baghdad's main morgue, waiting for grieving families who went there to claim their relatives’ dead bodies.
"I was totally dependent on them for my living," Baqir, a 44-year-old father of four, said." I never thought about picking up people in the street as I was being hired five to eight times a day by these families. But now it is a waste of time to wait there and these days I wait only for about three hours in the morning and I continue my work picking up passengers in the street.”
Read the whole thing.
Via: Instapundit
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