Things to Ponder: ISIS, Racism, Guns, Chris Christie, Gay Rights, Joe Biden

Neo-conservatives really need to think about exactly what they hope American troops would accomplish if they enter the fight against ISIS.  ISIS we learn today is now fighting Hamas in Gaza.  They have lone wolf's in Tunisia, Kuwait, France, the U.K. and the U.S.A.  These lone wolf's uniformly say they want to fight America and its allies because there is a war on Islam.  America and its allies see a War on Terrorists (or anarchists as I prefer).  But the one thing that is clear is that if we put American troops in harm's way, ISIS's recruiters will be very successful in increasing their numbers of people who join ISIS.  Might it not be better to go after the money that is necessary to support this gang and might it not be better for Islamic Armies to put them down.  After all, if there is a non-anarchist philosophy to ISIS it is a Sunni-Shiite divide and why should American troops be part of that.  It has been 1500 years in development and breaks out now?  We should try to fix the source of what caused it to break out now (which means restoring Sunni governance somewhere in Iraq) and allow Islamic armies to control the radicals.  American troops can only do so much and they cannot do that unless they occupy Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Libya, Yemen and who knows where else.  We haven't even gotten to the Taliban and if American troops were in all those places, it sure would look like a Western War on Islam, even if we were doing the Saudi's and Iran's bidding.  Those 2 countries are after-all the source of funding for ISIS, AlQaeda, HAMAS, and Hezbollah. I don't know who funds the Taliban.

Conservative GOP leaders who want to expand their party need to look closely at what is going on in the South.  Low life pick-up truck drivers flying confederate and American flags together parading around small towns in the South.  6 African American churches burned to the ground in the South, at least 3 known to be arson, in the last week.  The Congressional GOP rhetoric against Obama has fueled this by giving it political cover.  When you want to ruin a Presidency and do everything in your power including shutting down the government to try and accomplish that and fail, the hate in that message provides fuel to low life action, which in the rural south, is aimed at local African Americans and results in different forms of violence against those African Americans.   The GOP needs to ponder what cost their messaging creates.

And Chris Christie calls Obama feckless.  He took out Osama Bin Ladan, has drones taking out everyone they can.  Just what does Chris Christie want to do in addition to that?  I hope he reads the 1st paragraph.

And finally, with almost 300 million guns in America, we cannot put the genie back in the bottle anytime in anyone living's lifetime.  But I do not believe mentally ill people should have access to guns.  And I do believe that Policeman kill young unarmed black men because they are in fear for their lives from not knowing who possesses a gun when they are in difficult situations, although there are certainly examples where they had no valid reason for fear and they shot/killed someone anyway.  So I hope police everywhere will ponder their responsibility to protect everybody.  And I certainly respect the civilian populations desire to hold police accountable, just as I respect the job the police do when they put their live's in danger from people who just want to cause harm to them.

Any while I know Conservative bloggers are mad as hell at the Supreme Court for extending what 36 states had already done to the last 14 states, I am putting a quote below that one of my Evangelical Conservative friends put on his Facebook page.  I give him credit for seeing the equality rights of individuals as a unifying theme in the American fabric.

"Claiming that someone else's marriage is against your religion is like being angry at someone for eating a doughnut while you are on a diet.

And lastly as an edit add-on thought that I picked up in a Washington Post op-ed column.  Run Joe Run.  I know it will be painful, but you care deeply about the issues without being a liberal wing nut and don't have Hillary's baggage.  Please Joe, Run.  Save us from Bernie.  Save us from a Bush Clinton race.  Joe Biden for President, YES!!!!

How I Evolved on Same Sex Marriage

I can vividly recall a conversation RedStateVT and I had on a golf course in 2011, it was basically "Why isn't Civil Union good enough?" and we were in agreement.

But I now recognize that wasn't sufficient in many ways that matter to the individuals effected by the distinction between Civil Unions and Marriage.  Those individuals are the individuals who want to form families and the children that come to those same sex couples.  They want to be equal under the law and marriage is an outcome of law in country where church and state are distinct from each other.

I came to this realization slowly over the past 4 years, although I probably beat the President to the conclusion that "all men (and women) should be treated equally under the law", but not by much.

And I attribute all this evolution on my part to Ted Payne, RIP Ted.  Ted died in 2001 and he was both an individual who worked for me and a friend.  And I had no idea he was gay until I learned that he had AIDS and had died.  I wanted to go to his funeral but I was unemployed and believed that I should spend every day looking for a job in NYC rather then drive to New Jersey for a funeral.  I regret that every time I think about it.

And in Ted's memory, I embrace the Supreme Court decision today, just as I was thankful 36 states saw fit to end discrimination against same sex couples before today's decision.  The real issue decided today is whether all people have the same rights when they move from state to state.  Once 36 states said same sex couples could be married, the other states at least had to recognize the validity of those marriages if such people moved to their state.  But those states were saying no we will not recognize them.  And that is what the Supreme Court decision today should have said at least.

But, the Justices, to their credit, said more than that.  They said all people are equal under our Constitution and that is certainly a true statement, as I understand the Constitution.  How can anyone dispute that?

And at least, unlike ObamaCare, this cannot be undone by the Congress because this is state law sanctioned by the Supreme Court.  Those *ssh*les in Congress can't do a d*mn thing.

Conservative's Supporting the NRA Are Blind to Reality

Conservative's, when they are not in general conversation disparaging to President Obama or obfuscating the failures of trickle down economics, will generally rally around the theme that Jihadists are coming after us and that the NRA policies are not only protected by the Constitution, but are our best way to combat Jihadists who make it to American soil.

Of course, I think almost every Jihadist who has been arrested on American soil has had that arrest come from a trained police officer.  And now the New York Times has added up all the anarchist acts on American soil and found that since 9/11 48 people have been killed by white supremacists, anti-government fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists.  26 have been killed by lone wolf Jihadists.  It's too bad, for reference sake, the article did not add up the unarmed young black men killed by police & other "stand your ground" vigilantes.  I am sure that would have exceeded the Jihadist death count.

What do those white supremacists and anti-government fanatics have in common with the NRA, they no doubt vote for people who support those policies that allow them the freedom to have all the weapons they want, which aligns them with the NRA and the Conservatives.

I am not advocating taking away law abiding citizens rights to own hunting rifles and handguns for protection, although I do wish we had some way to protect big city policemen from handguns in the hands of drug gangbangers.

What I do wish is there could be a rational discussion about keeping automatic and semi-automatic weapons out of general circulation.  Supporting the NRA positions is supporting the rights of white supremacists and anti-government fanatics to use those weapons to wreak havoc upon the rest of us and not protecting us from any jihadists.  For that we need intelligence and active police work, which is what the police are focused on.

Question for the NRA

From E.J. Dionne.

"But when will we arrive at such a point when the first argument of the gun lobby is that the solution to the problem of too many guns is — more guns? We now have an estimated 270 million to 310 million guns in the United States. Will another 10 million, 20 million, 100 million make us safer? Must we all be ready to pack heat when we go to pray for salvation from violence and hatred?"

"Are our politics so demented and our senators and house members so cowardly that they cannot even pass laws to keep guns out of the hands of the troubled and those with a history of violence? Apparently so."

Good Point. Caucasian Murderers are called Mentally Ill, People of Color Murderers

are called terrorists and thugs.


Link to Column


I prefer to call them what newspapers over 100 years ago called them.  Anarchists.

The one thing they do not believe in, no matter what their skin color, is respect for other humans and a peaceful way of life.

Duke Energy Shows Why Corporations Should Not Contribute to Politics

And to RedStateVT's complaint that it is necessary to offset union campaign contributions, I would make those illegal too because what Duke Energy gets away with in North Carolina is outrageous.

We in NY don't always appreciate how tight corporations can be with legislatures and regulators in various states because (i) we are equal opportunity soakers when it comes to state taxes and (ii) all the bad money in politics seems to come from NYC real estate developers who are LLP's.

But to N.C. politicians, Duke Energy is everything.  They employ a lot of people, they provide a common good, they are regulated, and they produce pollution on an unimaginable scale, that they have to manage.

So N.C. politicians get a lot of money from both Duke Energy and Duke Energy employees.  Specifically, N.C. politicians with a firm hand on the regulation of electricity and the pollution that comes from it.  Voters like cheap electricity and cleaning up pollution drives up electricity rates.

So there has to be a happy medium between keeping the water and air clean and the cost of power.

But Coal Ash is nasty stuff (arsenic, cadmium, iron, manganese, and other stuff) and Duke Energy had a lot of coal powered electricity.  They have less now as other forms of heating water to create steam are more economic, but they still have 100 years of coal ash sitting in ponds that leach into ground water and streams (i.e. drinking water) and no plans to clean this all up.  After one pond put 35,000 tons of coal ash in a river (that is Duke Energy's estimate), Duke Energy is still "studying" the issue.  And the politicians are not putting the heat on the company because they get a lot of money from Duke, even when the citizens pretty clearly want clean water.

So, there is Exhibit 1 on why it is bad policy to allow corporations to contribute money directly to political campaigns.  Corporations are not people.  They employ people.  Corporations rights can be restricted if all are treated the same and the law doing so is deemed Constitutional, like antitrust laws have been.

I don't want Bernie Sanders as my President but he is the only one campaigning on this issue.

Do No Harm

I have a new standard for judging politicians and political policies.  The standard is "Do No Harm".  In other words, does this proposal improve something somehow?  If yes, then pass the damn bill.

So we have the specter of labor unions fighting free trade which is one of the few things supporting manufacturing in this country.  I know, anti-free trade types like to cite the fact that manufacturing moved to Mexico under NAFTA, but we export a lot to Mexico and jobs in Mexico means there are fewer Mexicans seeking work in the U.S.A.  And many more jobs have been lost to China than to Mexico, and we have no free trade agreement with China.  And China is not part of the Asian trade agreement at this time, and if they were, it would open up China for U.S. exports, which are currently hindered by anti-free trades policies of China.

You would think that having watched technology and global wage pressures in global manufacturing destroy jobs, that labor unions might have figured out that technology gains need to be respected as they have been increasing standards of living for 200 years across the world.  The U.S.A. is a leader in that technology advance and we cannot be an island.  Where would this economy be if the U.S. were not a leader in technology?

You have to get with the program which is the reason the retraining of workers is a foolish thing to vote down, just because you have the power to do so.  The exercise of that power brings harm and therefore is a bad policy decision.  I could say the same thing for many GOP policies, but there is no need to do so here.

The Democrats in the House of Representatives have been so beaten down, they needed a morale boost from this, but that was stupid because if the U.S. doesn't create a framework for free trade in Asia, China will, and it will favor China, not the U.S.A.

China is engaged in a global economic war on the U.S.A. to benefit China.  They know they have advantages on us, (i) lower labor costs (but they are losing this one quickly); (ii) a dirtier environment (but they know their citizens want them to clean it up and that is expensive); (iii) they have a big influence on interest rates in the U.S.A. through their purchase of bonds; and (iv) they supply the goods at low prices that keep inflation low in the U.S.A.  But they also need the U.S. to buy those goods and keep employment high in China.  So they need a stable U.S. which is why I don't understand why their Army hacks away at U.S. computers.  It is something that needs to be dealt with somehow in a manner that does not disrupt the economy.

But back to my standard of "Do No Harm".  Many in the GOP acknowledge that climate change is happening, but don't want to believe that 200 years of carbon energy consumption that pumps CO2 in to the atmosphere has any influence on it and certainly don't want to pay anything to reduce carbon consumption.  That is why the GOP developed Cap & Trade (back when they acknowledged Climate Change) and the Greens were ones who were anti-Cap & Trade because it didn't go far enough.  But Cap &Trade would be an economic incentive to find economically sound ways to deal with carbon production.  It would be gradual and smooth, unlike draughts, floods, and other changing weather patterns that are very disruptive.  This is not say that any of this won't happen, but you would think when faced with the possibility of massive costal flooding, the GOP would at least like to have a discussion about this rather than bury there head in the sand and hope for the best.

And as for Iraq, we should have split the country up from the beginnings but didn't for some reason that seemed to make sense at the time (I think it was perhaps all the oil being in Shiite and Kurds parts of the country).  But the Sunni- Shiite war is fed by money from the Gulf States, Iran and Turkey and it can only be solved by those states.  The U.S. should be banging heads there while we split up Iraq into democratically governable segments, not the arbitrary colonial combination what Britain or France decided upon for reasons we now know to be flawed.

And finally, for the GOP, whatever you want to do with healthcare, remember the old system drove healthcare costs to represent 20% of GDP, and the boomers are retiring heading into their peak healthcare cost years.  Either we promote preventive choices by people who understand what it takes to be healthy (i.e. not smoking or being obese for a start) or we will need strong end-of-life counseling for families that want to keep their diabetic obese fat f*cking relative alive. Most of them are GOP voters because they hate the nanny state, but death management does have an inevitability about it that might save Medicaid and Medicare some big dollars if pallative care and universal health insurance were supported by the GOP.

Almost everybody ends up in the individual health insurance market eventually, and we would all be better off if employment and access to health insurance were separated.  We only have this combination of health insurance through employment because of wage controls in WWII.  I understand why the War demanded this, but it certainly created a harmful future situation.  I am studying for a health insurance sales license and the study materials are based upon pre-affordable care act materials (I wonder why this is?).  Active discrimination against pre-existing conditions is considered a basic mode of operation without the Affordable Care Act because it is the key to proper pricing for profitable insurance companies.  That makes sense, except for the fact that Congress passed a bill and President Reagan signed the bill, saying every hospital must treat whomever shows up with a need.  That needs to be paid for and paying for it without sound preventive care increase that cost.  And society has decided that the elderly should not go bankrupt because they don't have access to health insurance, so why should people under 65 go bankrupt because they have pre-existing conditions?  The GOP needs a positive health care policy and they do not have one.

Thank you to the following columns for stimulating my thoughts this Sunday morning.

Nicholas Kristoff on Bad Choices Matter but are not everything

Maureen Dowd on Obama's Bad Choices

Ross Douthat on Too Many in Prison?