Where’s the Outrage?

Barack Obama was the guest. He was thoughtful, smooth, intelligent, funny and presidential. Yep, I said it. While, I’m talking about Barack let me say that he has been great on the campaign. I don’t think that he has put his foot in his mouth. I think that the American press has portrayed him that way. If one looks at his whole statements, you don’t find a gaffe but instead you find thoughtful policy.

We’ll go after Bin Laden. How’s that a bad thing? Policy folks were saying that we could destabilize Pakistan. What? Obama wasn’t talking about sending in 100,000 troops. He was talking about sending in a couple of hundred to do the job with air support. In/Out.

 

 Obama on the Daily Show [10:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Election 2008, The Daily Show by ecthompson
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I don’t usually comment on local politics for a number of reasons including the fact that I just don’t follow it. But a recent Guest Commentary in the Asheville Citizen-Times is worth comment. The commentary is entitled Electoral College Part of Checks, Balances. The author, Dr. Joe Morgan, argues that the Electoral College is a “vital part of the checks and balances that have been written into the Constitution.” All I can say is that was exactly what I was taught in junior high school. Fortunately, I’ve grown up since then and found out the world is much more complicated than it was presented in junior high.

If we go back and look at the Electoral College, we find out something very interesting. We find an election system that was jerryrigged in order to please the South. The North clearly had a larger population of “voting” Americans. These southern states had a large population of “nonvoting” Americans — slaves. James Madison understood exactly what was going on when he said, “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.”

Without the Electoral College there would have been no America. The Framers had to balance liberty with reality. The reality was that Southern slave owners were not going to give up their slaves and they weren’t going to give their slaves the vote. This was the reality. Therefore, the Constitution was a balancing act between the slavery issue with the realities of the Southern slaveholders and the ideals of John Locke. Madison stated that the divisions between the states were not because of size “but by other circumstances; the most material of which resulted partly from climate, but principally from (the effects of) their having or not having slaves.”

With a little research, one can see that the Electoral College was developed in order to appease Southern states. I must question any system that was derived to appease slaveholders. As it turns out, the Electoral College system also discouraged Women’s Suffrage. There was no incentive for a state to give women the vote since more voters did not equal more Electoral College votes. The basic question is do we believe in a system of one man one vote? Do we, as Americans, truly believe in one man, one vote? If we do, then the Electoral College needs to be abolished.

Tags: Civil Liberty, Election 2008 by ecthompson
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Bush is going to break the record for the most number of days on vacation.  I would like to know any job that you can get where you can take off 6 - 8 weeks per year.  Let’s not forget that the president goes to bed early at night.  He works out every day.  I have no idea but I bet you he doesn’t put in a good 4 - 5 hours of work in a normal day.

 

 TDS - Bush goes for record [2:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: The Daily Show by ecthompson
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This is a funny interview.  I’m sure someone in the proposed getting an expert on memory on the show and everyone laughed.  Someone then thought hey that’s not a bad idea.  So, The Daily Show bring an expert on to about memory and lying.  The funniest question that Jon asks is why are all of the administration officials forgetting things.  Could it be some sort of virus?  An administrative herpes?

 

 TDS - Expert on Memory [4:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: The Daily Show by ecthompson
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What?  You can’t be serious.  It seems that every year Bush or Cheney trot out in front of the VFW and tell us a whopper of lie.  The Vets get all whipped up and the lie enters the mainstream.  Whether it was Cheney’s famous (August 26, 2002) -

“But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.”

“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors — confrontations that will involve both the weapons he has today, and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth. “

I remember that fondly because back then I said, No Doubt?  And last year, he continued to bob and weave with the truth.  He said, “I know some have suggested that by liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein, we simply stirred up a hornet’s nest. They overlook a fundamental fact: We were not in Iraq on September 11th, 2001, and the terrorists hit us anyway.”   Vice President Cheney’s argument for Al Qaeda in Iraq is so bad I can’t even go there.  So, to top Cheney we have the President.

President Bush has gone out of his way not to link Vietnam with Iraq.  Now, 5 years after the war has started.  4 years into the insurgency, he now sees lessons in Vietnam that we need to learn.  Okay, now, stay with me as I try to take you thru Bush’s Logic.  When we left Vietnam the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia.  The ruthless reign of the Khmer Rouge caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.  So, the price of us leaving Vietnam was paid by the deaths of possibly millions of people in Cambodia.  I’m happy to admit that I’m not a student of Cambodian history but this seems to be far fetched.  Bush is saying that if we leave Iraq millions of people possibly in Jordan, Syria or Iran may die.  

What I’m saying is get out of Iraq.  We don’t know the consequences.  I do not that if we aren’t there more Americans won’t be dying there.  I’m not saying forget the Middle East.  We need to stay engaged.  We need to be in Afghanistan fixing the mess that we left there.  We need to find Al Qaeda, not a facsimile of Al Qaeda.  We need to find the real thing and arrest them or kill them.

 

 HB - Bush draws parallel between Iraq and Vietnam [3:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Bush Administration, Hardball by ecthompson
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