04/12/2007

Lee Iacocca (remember him?) says this:

Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, “Stay the course.”

Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I’ll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

You might think I’m getting senile, that I’ve gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don’t need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we’re fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That’s not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I’ve had enough. How about you?

I’ll go a step further. You can’t call yourself a patriot if you’re not outraged. Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them– or at least some of us did. But I’ll tell you what we didn’t do. We didn’t agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn’t agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that’s a dictatorship, not a democracy.

04/12/2007

“Unless we could impeach Cheney at the same time, the best argument against impeaching Bush is ‘President Cheney’.”

— Lord Slepnir, on Slashdot

04/11/2007

Last week I was privileged and honored to receive a personal letter from Senator John McCain, in which he announced his candidacy for President. Of course he rambled on about his service in the armed forces and his long history in the Senate, dropping a few names here and there to impress me.

But then things got a little weird. The rest of his letter was a survey in which he asks penetrating questions about domestic and international policy. He wants to know how I, a common American citizen, feel about the pressing issues facing our country today. Although I don’t have a problem with that in principle, some of the questions were surprising.

Make the U.S. tax code fairer and simpler.
( ) I agree
( ) I disagree
( ) I have no opinion

Umm, what? Who on earth would say “I disagree”? Is there someone out there who thinks the tax code should be more complicated and more unfair? What kind of question is that?

Aggressively rein-in government spending.
( ) I agree
( ) I disagree
( ) I have no opinion

Again, what kind of boneheaded question is he asking here? “No, John, I think the government should keep spending money like it’s going out of style, funding every crazy pork-barrel project they can think of!”

Reduce federal deficit.
( ) I agree
( ) I disagree
( ) I have no opinion

Hmm. Let me think about that, John. No, I disagree– I think we should increase the federal deficit, because we all know the positive results that brings.

Continue to provide American troops with state-of-the-art weapons.
( ) I agree
( ) I disagree
( ) I have no opinion

John, I think we should give our troops muskets. Forget this body armor crap, too. Davy Crockett coonskin caps were good enough at the Alamo; they’re sure good enough for the troops in the Middle East today.

I used to actually respect McCain. That all changed a few years ago when it became clear he was one of Bush’s yes-men, and idiotic stunts like this survey only reinforce my opinion that he’s either

( ) a bonehead
( ) unable to form his own opinions, thus asking us to form it for him
( ) both

I shudder to think that someone like him may actually become President some day.

04/08/2007

“There’s always somebody who is paid too much, and taxed too little – and it’s always somebody else.”

— Cullen Hightower

(Particularly apropos as Tax Day approaches and I need to scrape together the money I need to pay the IRS. It seems like I pay them every year, sigh.)

03/29/2007

“We expect the Congress to be wise about how they spend the people’s money.”

— President George W. Bush

Hah hah! That George is such a kidder. He says this just as Congress approved a $122 billion-with-a-B request for additional funding for the Iraqi civil war. When has Congress ever been wise about spending money?

03/29/2007

Not satisfied with the usual docket of issues and problems facing the Minnesota state legislature, Representative Patti Fritz is leading the charge to make a major impact on the world.

She wants to make the Tilt-a-Whirl the official state ride.

Whee! That’s taxpayer money well spent. And it’ll work out nicely with Minnesota’s official state muffin (blueberry). No, I’m not kidding.

03/26/2007

Durango : 1
Saturn : 0

I was parked at a light and this woman in a big Durango (also parked at the light) backed into me. Of course since she was driving a huge SUV, the bumper basically rode right over the top of my hood, crumpling it. The car still runs, although I can’t tell if anything is damaged because I can’t open the dang hood.

Now begins the excitement of getting it repaired, dealing with the insurance company, yada yada. Argh.

03/24/2007

Last November, voters in Missoula, Montana passed a ballot initiative to give marijuana-related crimes the lowest priority in police work. Police, as we all know, are often overburdened with caseloads and struggle to keep up with the crimes and situations they’re asked to investigate. The voters thought that making pot lower on the list would help the police deal with more “important” crimes.

I don’t have a problem with that– it makes some sense. But this week, two of the three city council members in Missoula decided that the voters didn’t really understand what they’d voted for, so they took the liberty of amending the new rule.

That’s right– several months after the vote was cast, the council changed the wording. They adjusted the law so that only “small” marijuana crimes (those that aren’t felonies) would be pushed to the bottom of the police to-do list.

When asked about why they thought it’s okay in a democratic society to retroactively change laws voted upon by the people, council member Fed Van Valkenburg said:

It’s a gut feeling. I’m very sensitive to what voters in the community believe.

Wow.

So this is a guy entrusted by the public to manage the laws, and he thinks he gets to change them on a whim because he has “a gut feeling”.

Chalk up another KO against democracy.

03/24/2007

A quote from madpainter on Digg, regarding the ongoing furor over Gonzales’ dismissal of federal attorneys:

Just goes to show you something about the Bush administration.

You can start a war based on lies, and there will be no protests.
You can unilaterally remove the head of a sovereign nation because you didn’t like him, and the world will look the other way.
You can mismanage the biggest natural disaster in this country’s history.
You can usurp the Constitutional rights of millions of people and get away with it.
You can let your VP and all his friends make billions in a war about oil and nobody will care.

But if you screw around with a couple of lawyers, then you are going down.