Hypocrisy

George Bush just used his first ever veto to prevent government funding of stem cell research on frozen embryos that were destined for destruction. The parents may, of course, destroy their embryos that are no longer needed rather than pay for frozen storage till the end of time. Heaven forbid though, that they may contribute these frozen embryos to a scientist for research that has a fair shot at developing treatments for some horrible diseases.

Of course, it is only government funded research that is blocked, so privately funded research can go on, at least for the moment. I wonder how many election cycles that will last.

During the very same week, this "culture of life" president announced that the US would interfere with the world wide pressure for a cease fire in the Middle East. He also rushed the delivery to Israel of precision guided munitions. They are using up their inventory very quickly. The world was told that Israel would have at least an additional week to kill people in Lebanon before there was any interference by the rest of the world.

I guess that the lives of actual Lebanese people, of any age, are not worth anything near the potential life of a frozen embryo. I think that the president had better stop using the "culture of life" sound bite. The hypocrisy smells far too foul.

Who Still Supports Bush?

I realize that the majority of Americans now understand that the Iraq War was a terrible mistake, but a significant number still support the man who made it happen. They find excuses for his mistake. He was misled by bad intelligence. His plan may still work. He is too good a man to do evil intentionally.

To hold those beliefs, you have to give the man credit for his self description and ignore all the facts. Should we really forgive monstrously evil actions from a man just because he says that he means well or because he describes himself as a Christian? I think not!

Without a doubt, Bush lied to the nation about Iraq's possession of illegal weapons. Indeed, the entire substance of the Valerie Plame affair was to punish a whistle blower who revealed the deception and to dissuade other potential whistle blowers who might be waiting in the wings. Thus, he started a war against a nation that was no threat to us and 100,000 plus souls are dead as a result. The cost in blood and treasure of this mistake is incomprehensible and it continues to grow.

The Bush Doctrine, the one that says that it is acceptable to start a war on the slim possibility that some nation might be able to hurt us came up wrong on its first time out of the box, yet they are using the same evil logic to try to justify attacks on Iran and North Korea. I cannot abide that my country would do such evil.
Now, if all that is not enough, George Bush has been guilty of some more crimes. Let's count:

1. Locking up American citizens as "enemy combatants" without charge or trial.
2. Locking up and torturing citizens of other nations in a totally random way. They are accused of "terrorism" but are unable to defend themselves. We know that the vast majority of prisoners in GITMO, Abu Graib and Bagrab are innocent of any wrong doing. They were largely turned over to our forces for bounties. For enough money, anyone can be a terrorist.
3. Kidnapping citizens of one nation and forcibly transporting them to another where they can be tortured (extraordinary rendition).
4. Wiretapping international phone calls without a warrant when warrants are trivially easy to get.
5. Recording phone numbers called by nearly everyone in the nation under the excuse of searching for terrorists. The process they claim to use cannot work. False alarms would swamp the system. The only use of that data is to search for dirt on specific individuals. Reminds me of the Nixon enemies list.
6. Searching through financial data of nearly everyone. See number 5.

To all you folks out there that still think that Bush is a good Christian soul and can do no wrong, please think again. The nation can not survive this evil and remain free. Impeachment, removal from office and prison is the only option.

The Inmates are Running the Asylum

Did you ever get the feeling that very little that happens makes any sense? It seems to me that our legislators, both state and federal, are living in some Bizarro world, where logic does not exist. Let us look at one small area of legislation, the drug war.

Tobacco, an addictive drug, kills about 400,000 people per year in the United States. It is freely available to anyone over the age of 18.

Alcohol, an addictive drug, kills about 115,000 people per year from its direct effects on health. It probably kills another 25,000 via traffic accidents to which it contributes (not all of these dead people drank alcohol, of course). It is available freely to anyone over the age of 21.

Aspirin is not addictive but kills about 2,000 people per year. It is available freely to everyone regardless of age. You can send your elementary school age child to buy it for you.

Marijuana kills exactly ZERO people per year and has maintained that record through all of human recorded history. There simply is no known lethal dose of Marijuana. It has several proven medical uses. Nevertheless, it is not legally available to anyone, of any age, for any purpose and is the cause of 700,000 arrests per year.

Can anyone explain to me the logic of this situation?

The possibilities that I see are:

1. Our legislators are, for the most part, insane.
2. Our legislators are in thrall to the alcohol industry. They fear that if Marijuana were legal, most users, being rational, would switch from alcohol (mostly beer) to Marijuana because it was safer from a health standpoint. You can get your gentle buzz without risking your liver and pancreas.

Maybe it is time to get some sane people into office; people who honor your personal right to run your own life without a nanny state making bad decisions for you. Maybe it is time to vote for Libertarians. The current two party duopoly is what gets us these insane legislative situations.

Why People Don't Vote

There are probably several reasons that cause people to fail to vote. Avoiding jury duty comes to mind, but mostly it is because it looks like a waste of time.

People who have decided that their vote doesn't matter because the two parties are both horrible are acting rationally as far as they know. The two party paradigm has been so thoroughly banged into everyone's head that the thought of a third party is not realistic to most. The main stream media openly suppress knowledge of third parties.

Think back to the 2004 election. You heard about every word and throat clearing of Bush and Kerry. Obviously Bush was pro-war and Kerry tried to be both pro and anti-war. The ONLY unequivically anti-war candidate was Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party. Did you even know he was a choice? His candidacy was one of the best kept secrets of the whole campaign. I bet that a whole lot of anti-war people did not vote because they thought that they had no viable alternative, when, in fact they did.

Electronic, unauditable voting is another reason that people might choose not to vote. Why vote when the powers that be will do what they want with the vote totals no matter what you do?

I simply don't know how we got into such an idiotic position. People, a computer that you may not examine is not an adequate voting system. Cheating the system is trivially easy. Now, you can use computers to print out paper ballots that are then inspected by the voter and voila!, we have an audit trail. Anything else is laughable.

The only solution to the unauditable voting issue must come from the courts. They must start to overturn any election that is not subject to a full, audited recount.

To overcome the deadly two party paradigm, we have a small window of opportunity now to learn about third parties on our own. The media will not help us. This must happen soon. The police state trap is about to slam shut on us.