10
Mar
I read this post on Independent Sources and loved it so much I thought I’d run with it here. Namely:
37-year old Arelia Margarita Taveras is an attorney with a serious ethics problem. She also has a gambling problem and lost her law practice, her apartment and her parents’ home, and she owes the IRS $58,000. Worse, she dipped into clients’ escrow accounts when she needed money and still faces criminal charges over that. Fortunately for her, and unfortunately for society as a whole, if her legal training has taught her anything is that fault should always lie on a deep pocket. In this case, it’s the casinos that allowed her to lose her money……
Now, you might think this is an odd post for a political blog. Well, due to circumstances in Kentucky, it’s not. Last year we had a gubernatorial election. The incumbent had been dogged by ethics issues, mostly trumped up political stuff. The challenger ran on the promise of bringing gambling casinos to Kentucky. The challenger, Steve Beshear, won. Immediately upon taking office Beshear announced the state was running about $400 million annually short of money and told higher education to expect massive cuts in funding. They didn’t like that. Now, he’s proposed legislation to legalize gambling that will raise ( drum roll please ), about $400 million annually, which would fix higher education. Beshear is basing his entire argument on the fact that gambling would generate revenues for the state at no cost.
As Independent Sources points out, Beshear couldn’t be more wrong. It comes with a heavy cost to society that does affect the state balance sheet. Along with gambling, we’d need increased police forces, gambling addiction programs, and increased funding for the court system to deal with the people who lost it all and resort to stealing to support their habit. Nothing is farther from the panacea Beshear makes it out to be, just Arelia Taveras.
In the meantime, let’s enjoy something good to come from gambling ( do I really need a reason to play Boz Scaggs? ):
4
Mar
Now, Hollywood has a long history of pretty much hating all things Republican. They usually don’t know why, and they usually get their facts screwed up, or in some cases, just make stuff up. However, they come to their conclusion isn’t important. If in Hollywood, or the media in most cases, you HAVE to hate Republicans. So, what’s the latest incarnation of this bizarre Republican-phobia? Check this out:
I kid you not. They even have a clip. It’s not on youtube that I am aware of, Now, what do you think the chances are that the people at NBC didn’t realize there actually IS a Senator from Arizona who is a Vietnam Vet? I find it almost impossible to believe they didn’t. It’s not like the guy’s running for President of the United States or anything. But, I may be biased because I think NBC is. So, I’ll let you all decide:
That folks, is a flat out unapologetic attack on McCain. It’s really a shame nothing will be done about it. I guess it would mean more if anyone ever watched the show and probably is why they would resort to such slander to boost what ratings they might have. I had never heard of the show before, obviously. But, it’s guaranteed I’ll never watch it now.
4
Mar
A lot is being made over this comparison:
According to Daily Kos, and I guess a couple of others, Hillary Clinton’s peeps doctored a screen grab of Barack Obama to make him look black. Well, for starters, althogh the pics are similar, they are obviously not the exact same screen grab. So, I don’t really know that this is some intentional effort on the side of Clinton peeps to make a Hawaiin-American look like an African-American or what. Quite frankly, I just don’t see the issue here even if they did doctor it. If they are going to Photoshop, they need to work more on Hillary’s image I think. I mean, stuff like this just doesn’t look presidential:
Are you with me on that? They should put digital imaging to work and fix her up a little. I mean, she just looks plum crazy there. They could make her look a little more, let’s say, sexy maybe? How’s about something like this:
Nah, people would probably get her confused with someone else. Well, maybe something a little more exciting, like:
Well, maybe not. Reminds me too much of Snakes on a plane. Thaat wouldn’t be so bad I guess, but that “3am phone ringing” commercial along with a look like that probably would unnerve some people. Once again, the loony factor would be a problem.
Well, maybe should go to for the liberal kill. She obviously hasn’t seperated herself too well from Obama on the issues. So, she should go for the “I’ve been liberal since you were in diapers” angle. That’d do it. Therefore, she’d need a look something like this:
Amazing what Photoshop can do with an otherwise mundane pic huh? What’s even more amazing to me is how people can see a conspiracy in every single picture. Bottom line, I don’t think they intentionally made Obama blacker to appear more sinister. I think that’s the ripe imagination of someone who THINKS being blacker appears more sinister. For those that don’t, like me, this makes no sense at all.
4
Mar
Hah! Now the secret is finally out. Much speculation has been made about Barack Obama’s religion. It has been implied, since he was born in Hawaii, that he is a closet extremist Muslem. However, yesterday he let the cat out of the bag. This whole race, he has been secretly courting radical Buddhists in Japan! Not being good enough to simply say “thank you” for all the covert support from the people in Obama, Japan, he had this to add:
“We share more than a common name,” Obama wrote. “We share a common planet and common responsibility. I look forward to a future marked by the continued friendship of our two great nations and shared commitment to a better, freer world.”
Now, one can assume that the common responsibility part is simply in reference to the common planet. However, he intentionally added it as a conjunction, which links two participle phrases. So, that means, grammatically, he shares a common planet, and SOMETHING ELSE. What is that something else? He doesn’t fish. He doesn’t speak Japanese ( that we know of ), and he doesn’t live in Japan. That means the something else HAS to be religion. And, if it’s religion based in Japan, it almost has to be Buddhism. Now, everyone here has this perception of Buddhists being all peaceful seeking enlightenment and all that, but I found this story that belies true Buddhism that MSM here does NOT want you to see:
Violence flared on the streets of Tibet Thursday as radical Buddhists began stamping on ants.
Police moved in to separate pro- and anti-ant factions and tear gas was fired.
At stake is the centuries-old tradition that followers should hurt no living creature.
Top Buddhists take a firm line, and will not even punch a shark in the nose if it seizes them as they bathe, say.
However, a breakaway sect has developed a new strain of the religion after years of meditation.
Yak Seng, a Nu-Buda monk, explained, ‘Our faith is that every creature is moving along the sacred path to enlightenment.
‘Ants and similar little creatures are at one end of the spectrum and we are at the other. As a living being dies, it is reincarnated at the next level up, until eventually reaching ‘pure spirit’ level. That much we agree on.
‘However, whereas old-style Buddhists believe in not stamping on ants it occurred to me in the temple the other day that that’s just condemning them to more time spent as ants.
‘Surely if we stamp on the little fellas we’re hastening their journey along the eternal path to enlightenment? As soon as we squish an ant, he’s reborn somewhere as a mouse. As soon as the mouse dies, he becomes a cat.’
Traditional Buddhists later conceded this was an ‘interesting idea’ but one added: ‘It’s going to need some thinking about.’
So, apparently he’s so desperate to keep this fact a secret, he’s resorted to this:
Buddhists don’t dress like that. It was a brilliant stroke blaming it on Hillary’s bunch I thought. MSM and most people I know jumped right on the terrorist Muslem trail. However, it’s obvious, his “commitment” is to Obama, Japan. I mean, if you have any doubt, try visiting Obama, United States. Nuff said?
A lot is being made of the recent data that shows about 1 in 100 US citizens are in prison. People are debating the pros and cons of this as if it’s some kind of issue that the government’s at fault here. Folks, I’m here to tell ya, the only people at fault are the ones in prison. Now, there are a hand full of prisoners I’m sure that aren’t supposed to be there, but I would guess the biggest majority are right where they belong. The latest round of second-guessing is going on at the esteemed Volokh Conspiracy. Orin looked at the raw numbers, Paul Cassell posted a chart that compares crime to prison populations. There’s a correlation for sure. However, a lot of the commenters came up with reasons why this simple correlation could be/had to be wrong. As Paul noted, there’s a lot behind the numbers. I agreed. There’s one set of numbers I thought merited looking in this discussion as well. Namely:
Year Death Row Murders Percent
1968 - 517 13800 4%
1969 - 575 14760 4%
1970 - 631 16000 4%
1971 - 642 17780 4%
1972 - 334 18670 2%
1973 - 134 19640 1%
1974 - 244 20710 1%
1975 - 488 20510 2%
1976 - 420 18780 2%
1977 - 423 19120 2%
1978 - 482 19560 2%
1979 - 539 21460 3%
1980 - 691 23040 3%
1981 - 856 22520 4%
1982 - 1,050 21010 5%
1983 - 1,209 19310 6%
1984 - 1,405 18690 8%
1985 - 1,591 18980 8%
1986 - 1,781 20613 9%
1987 - 1,984 20096 10%
1988 - 2,124 20680 10%
1989 - 2,250 21500 10%
1990 - 2,356 23440 10%
1991 - 2,482 24700 10%
1992 - 2,575 23760 11%
1993 - 2,716 24530 11%
1994 - 2,890 23330 12%
1995 - 3,054 21610 14%
1996 - 3,219 19650 16%
1997 - 3,335 18208 18%
1998 - 3,452 16914 20%
1999 - 3,527 15522 23%
2000 - 3,593 15586 23%
2001 - 3,581 16037 22%
2002 - 3,557 16229 22%
2003 - 3,374 16528 20%
2004 - 3,315 16148 21%
2005 - 3,254 16740 19%
2006 - 3,344 17034 20%
What this says is in 1968 there were 13,800 murders. As a result, there were 517 people put on death row. In 2006, there were 17,034 murders, with 3,334 people on death row. Now, two things jump out at me real quick. First of all, in 2006, 20% of all murderers were put on death row as opposed to 4% in 1968. The simple math is that society’s not necessarily changed, as the murder rate has gone down substantially, but rather, our legal system has gotten better. It takes a perfect argument to get a death penalty, there’s no room for error. That folks is not a bad thing no matter how you look at it. Secondly, in 1968 96% of people committing murder got away with it apparently. Or, they got a sentence that allowed them to get back out eventually. People can argue reform all they want, but if someone’s capable of murder, they’re always capable of murder. Murder’s just not something most people do on a whim. Nowadays, only 80% aren’t sentenced to death. So, murder just being one example, I think part of what’s going on is the same number of people are committing crimes, or even less. But, they’re going to prison more likely, and, in the worst cases, they’re going there for much longer periods of time, sometimes life.
Which leads me to the question of why it is that we, as a society, feel compelled that caging people up for eternity is not any more cruel and unusual than ending their life now. The problem with the legal system that is compounding the problem today is we forced our legal system to enforce laws more stringently in the 80′s, but we didn’t make the hard decisions on what to do in the worst case scenarios. Endless appeals and protests and stuff for convicted murders just keeps them in prison, and the prison population growing, for no real justifiable reason other than society deciding that dealing with them on their terms isn’t what’s morally acceptable.
Speed up the death penalty process and I’ll bet the population starts going down. Right now, for most of these people, the punishment is worth the crime. That’s just not right.
Hugo Chavez has cozied up to FARC for a long time. Now, he’s threatening to go to war with Colombia for raiding into Ecuador to take out a FARC leader. In the process, Chavez is, of course, blaming it all on the US because the US has helped Colombia deal with FARC as best we can. According to Chavez, one more raid into Ecuador and he’s going after Colombia. Venezuela has beefed up its military some over the last few years. However, I’m gonna bet if Chavez makes one move into Colombia all hell will break lose in ways he doesn’t comprehend. As beefed and mighty as Venezuela’s military might appear to a small petty despot, it’s small potatoes comapred to Brazil, and minute compared to the US’s. Secondly, my impression is Chavez’s grip on his own government at this time is somewhat tenuous. And, lastly to consider, but not least important, the US has a pretty trigger happy lame-duck President on his way out in a few months with a political debate going on within the US over who’s best capable of dealing with despots like Chavez who are very vocally supporting terrorist groups of which FARC is one of the absolute worst. What he’s doing is seeing what happened in Iraq and believing all the world media hype that the US is way over-extended as it is now. However, the problem he has is Colombia is trying to deal with a terrorist problem. Ecuador and Venezuela are trying to protect those terrorists. That’s the easy sell. This is so local to the US that a LOT of people in the US already know who FARC is what they do. There won’t be any education involved like there was with the obscure Al Qaeda situation. All we have to do is say we’re helping Colombia protect itself from Venezuela and fire precision missiles from ships hanging out in Aruba. This is a no-brainer ala Libya 1986. In my opinion, a few precision missiles taking out critical Venezuelan communications and military functions, let Brazil send in troops to maintain order, and let the Venezuelan people handle the rest.
Simple.
So, Hugo, gotta ask yourself, do you feel lucky?
I guess you all are wondering what we do with Ecuador during all this? Just ignore them, they are a paper tiger to say the very least. When Chavez comes crashing down, you won’t hear a peep out of Ecuador the next time we ( oops, Colombia ), sends precision missiles to take out the next FARC leader.
A lot of this depends on the actions of Brazil, naturally. However, it’s my bet that the Brazilian government considers Chavez and FARC on equal terms of being a pain in the butt and doing more needless harm than good. It’s not that Brazil would want a war to break out, but if one did, it’s their turf and their best interests to control the result of one.
