Tag Archives: Politics

David Letterman, Senator Ensign, Roman Polanski

Posted on by
1

There are no parallels among these men.

David Letterman did get out in front of the “scandal”. That was smart media.  As long as the women with whom he was intimate were consenting adults — that means without fear for their jobs or career advancement — then it is just another philandering person.  What makes it news is that he is a TV star.  What is sad is that sexual harassment happens everyday and there is no famous star to blackmail to make it stop.  David Letterman has a lot of heartache ahead of him.  But he doesn’t need to apologize to me.

Conversely, Senator Ensign needs to apologize to his voters because he is a fraud — he is not the “family values” candidate that his constituency elected and he broke the public trust in the cover-up. His extra-marital affair was not criminal or actionable — consenting adults without any specter (so far) of harassment in the workplace.

Roman Polanski is, based on the information available, a scoundrel and a sexual predator.  A thirteen year-old is a child and is not capable of consent in sexual circumstances.  Justice delayed is justice denied.  Lock him up and throw away the key.

Let’s not lump these men and their actions together.  None is a shining star, but in only one case was there a sexual criminal.  In another, it was the cover-up that is criminal.  The third, well, unless we hear more, is just disappointing and ooky.

There is one guy, whose handle is TheFlaCracker on Twitter, who refers to all Libiots (liberal idiots) as defending Roman Polanski.  That’s unfair.  I am a G-d damn Democrat and liberal and a Hillary-lover.  I am proud of it.  But, child abuse is not a liberal or conservative issue.  It is solely about our expectations and demands for the safety of society’s and our children.

The true measure of our society is how we treat the children others have “cast off”and those who abuse them.

Share

People forgive mistakes but not lies

Posted on by
Reply

To err is human, but to cover up inane.  Haven’t we learned that time and again?

Senator John Ensign promoted himself as Mr. Family-Values, which — must I say it? —  precludes extra-marital sex. Now, he is faced with three problems: (1) he had an illicit affair with a staffer; (2) he abused his office to give this woman’s husband access to corridors of power and decision-making in order to keep the affair quiet and (3) he breached the public trust.  In short, he is a fraud who broke the law and sold out his constituents to preserve his fraudulent image and, if karma is a boomerang, he will get hoisted on his own petard.

Compare Senator Ensign with former President Clinton.  No one had any illusions about Clinton’s lechery. People were angry that he lied under oath.  But, the GOP made the impeachment proceedings about sex and morality and, because of that, Clinton avoided conviction.  If the GOP had been less mesmerized by the salacious details, the outcome might have been different.  Clinton squeaked by because we elected him knowing about his infidelity and his morally-challenged ways and, right or wrong, his lie was in a private lawsuit.  He did not sell out his office.

What did Clinton pollsters say at the time?  The public will forgive mistakes but not lies.  Clinton told one lie; Senator Ensign IS a lie.

Share

The Public Option

Posted on by
Reply

For my first and last sports analogy — you can’t score if you don’t get on base. 

Reform is a process.  I think many of us would be surprised by the narrow focus of the Social Security Act when originally enacted.  

If the emphasis on the public option defeats the broader reform bill, then that is a bigger tragedy.

I believe that a public option is necessary because insurance companies will now refuse to insure the currently uninsured at a reasonable cost because of the other reform measures that circumscribe an insurance company’s ability to deny coverage to existing policy holders.  

But first we need:

a law that eliminates pre-existing condition exclusions, prevents “dropping” coverage when an insured person gets sick, and eliminates life-time maximums.

a “best practices” safe harbor so doctors aren’t forced into costly, defensive medicine practices.  We need computerized record keeping to reduce costly, tragic mistakes from insufficient information.

If, within a year after bill passage, there is a spike in health care premiums, even the GOP and Blue Dog Democrats will want a public option because their constituents will demand it.

There are two other reasons to wait a year: 

one, the cost of creating a public option may be more than our economy can handle right now.  Do I know for sure?  No.  No one can know for sure.

two, we need to see how identifiable changes affect the system.  The law of unintended consequences may yield a different set of problems or a different set of options when we see how the reforms actually affect the economy.  And we need some room for tinkering.

I applaud those who recognize that a public option is necessary.  But, please, don’t hold up the other reforms that the nation needs. 

Share

Hillary, you look tired.

Posted on by
Reply

Poor Hillary Clinton.  She has been pilloried, humiliated, beaten by a young upstart from Illinois and then charged with heading one of the most dysfunctional and unmanageable departments of the Executive Branch — the Department of State. 

Two things you can say about Hillary is that she is a hard worker and persistent in seeking the goals she sets. 

But, it seems to be catching up with her.  She really looked tired as she sat behind President Obama in the Security Council meeting today.

It is amazing how well rested everyone in the Bush Administration looked.  Well, maybe not so amazing given the little they did to clean up their messes.

I am glad that the members of the Obama Administration look tired.  There is a lot going on.  I am impressed with the intensity of President Obama’s schedule these past two weeks.  George Bush would need two months — and a month in between to relax in Crawford, TX.

So, Hillary, I am sorry that you look tired and in need of a break.  But I am grateful that you are tired.

Share

Politics is making my head explode, so I am watching cartoons

Posted on by
Reply

It doesn’t get more stupid than this:

Glenn Beck’s attempt to co-opt Yom Kippur as a national day of fasting for the health of the Republic, a large, government-paid, medical providers’ sending scary letters to disabled and senior citizens, GOP’s sending out questionnaires implying that race will have an effect on who gets health insurance, the president’s heavy handed approach with the NYS gubernatorial race (I agree with the sentiment but not how it was handled), the ACORN debacle, FOX News’ orchestration of 9/12 march on Washington, leaking the CONFIDENTIAL Afghanistan report, the ideologues on both sides of the aisle in Congress not seeing that some reform is better than no reform . . . I could go on and on and on.

But, I won’t go on and on and on and on (today). 

I will go home tonight and watch cartoons on the PBS kids.  Because in the land of PBS kids, people learn to work and play and get along with each other.

Share

According to the Huffington Post, Bill O’Reilly Supports the Public Option

Posted on by
Reply

According to the Huffington Post, FoxNews psycho-in-chief Bill O’Reilly supports the public option.

WHAAAAAAAAT?

I got nothing to say because my mind cannot comprehend and my mouth cannot speak and my fingers are about to stop typing. . . right after . . . .

WHAAAAAAAAT?

Share

Well, Kanye West acted like a jackass

Posted on by
Reply

It is ok to poke fun at No Drama Obama for getting caught on an open mike.  Always a problem for politicians.  But fall-out and outrage at his comment?  Outrage is an outrageous response. 

And, “jackass” is better than George Bush’s reference to a reporter as an “asshole” or Reagan’s joke about bombing the USSR.

And, the truth is an absolute defense.  Kanye West deserves to be called an arrogant, impolite, egotistical jackass. So, Obama was tame.

Still it is fun to rib the President about the gaffe, but let’s not create a “Curser Movement”.

Share

I am worried about our nation’s appetite for change

Posted on by
Reply

Franklin Roosevelt was vilified by the right for his policies.  Many didn’t work; some were even declared unconstitutional.  But what made him an effective president and leader is that he kept trying and tinkering with programs and policies until they had the intended effect.  You cannot be right always and certainly not in the first instance when you are in crisis management mode.  So, the trick is to retool, regroup and get the job done. 

What sounds good in Congress might not work in the real world.  So, we can’t be solely ideological; we need to be pragmatic.  Our systems are so large that a fix for one aspect of a problem has an unintended adverse consequence on another aspect of the same problem.

Let’s have a national dialogue on what can achieve together and not how the Democrats or the Republicans have failed.  The future of our prosperity depends on this.

Share

An Outsider’s Perspective of US (and Us)

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday, I spent almost two hours talking with a friend who is a businessman from the Cayman Islands.  He is in New York on business.  Since his business is somewhat US-dependent, he makes it his business to keep up with the news in the States.  He is a Libertarian and a pragmatist.  I am Democrat and (I like to think) a pragmatist.  We agreed on many things, such as the need to compromise and get incremental reform because it is a matter of conscience that people have affordable access to health care.  And I agreed with him that the public option will not pay for itself and should be phased in later if other measures don’t rein in the insurance companies.  We simply cannot afford to institute this option at this point, given the deficit.

We disagreed on two points.  The points of disagreement fascinate me. 

First, he thought that death panels could be read into the legislation because it was not expressly disclaimed.  My friend is an intelligent, well-read man; he is not Todd Palin.  So I had to think about this more.  Here is what I have deduced:

  • if a person distrusts “government” enough to believe that it would kill its own citizens, well, then you can make that argument. 
  • if a person doesn’t believe that our government would kill its own citizens, you might argue that the panel of experts represented a disguised government take-over of health care. 
  • if a person believes that our government is not trying to kill us and trying to cut down on defensive medicine by setting forth safe harbor protocols, then you think the concern is ill-conceived and politically motivated. 

I guess what I am learning is while I am firmly in the third camp, not all of the concern may be politically motivated.  Sarah Palin must have hit a chord with many, many people who have a deep, abiding distrust of government.  Hey, I was scared of government under Bush/Cheney, so I guess I have to be more open to the fear that this legislation unleashed.  Interestingly, it took my Cayman Islands friend — an outsider —  to help me start to understand the perspective of  blog commenter “Jordana”.  We still disagree, but now I understand that we may not be starting from the same point of trust.  That changes the dynamics of the conversation considerably. 

The other point was related to torture.  Some torture is understandable under some circumstances.  I have never met someone who held that view.  While I can see not prosecuting the CIA, I believe that torture is not understandable under any circumstances.  I don’t want to be tortured and I would probably make stuff up just to make it stop. So, I don’t see how it helps get to the truth.

Share

Obama’s Detractors will come up with anything

Posted on by
4

Now someone says President Obama is gay.  It is clearly meant as an insult even though I thought that we had made strides in that regard. 

Because any man who is an intellectual, loves his children and seems to have a good relationship with this wife (at least from the outside) must be gay?  And, who cares?  Should we start talking about George Bush and his drinking?

So, you can’t fight him on the issues so you go for heckling and “disparaging” comments?  So, what if he is? So, what if he had blue skin or purple eyes? 

The right wingers can’t fight fair because they have no good arguments.  They only have their prejudices.

I hope Americans see through all of this and are disgusted by the absence of decency and fair play and calm discussion of the ISSUES.

President Obama, if you are gay, have blue skin or purple eyes, I don’t care.  I’m with you.

Share