Funmurphys: the Blog

The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Archive for category Politics

Michael J Fox, Missouri, and Amendment 2

Oct 27

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Local Politics | No Comments

I didn’t have a lot of reaction to Michael J Fox’s ad for embryonic stem cell research and Claire McCaskill when I first saw it. Surprise, surprise, surprise, a political ad that doesn’t tell the whole truth. Personally, I found it much more interesting that he pronounced Missouri as Missoura – the pronunciation used in the rural part of the state which means the ad was aimed more at conservative democratic voters and not the urban and suburban voters.

I don’t get a lot of the complaints – Mr. Fox is entitled to his opinion, he’s entitled to express it, and he’s entitled to endorse politicians as he sees fit. If a politician or political group thought putting my mug on a TV ad would help persuade people to their position, you’d be seeing my mug on TV ads.

As far as playing up his disease, Parkinson’s is a terrible disease. And for those of us (yes, me included) who are opposed to embryonic stem cell research, I think we owe it to sufferers to hear them out, to see how it affects them, and then to tell them the honest truth of our thoughts and they should hear us out. If you want my sympathy Michael, you already have it. But that doesn’t mean that your suffering, or my suffering, outweighs all else.

Nobody is against adult stem cell research. Lot’s of people are against embryonic stem cell research because they think as I do that you are destroying human life in the process, or something close enough that it’s protection outweighs possible cures – especially when adult stem cells show much greater promise for real life cures. Why is it that supporters of embryonic stem cells won’t come out and make that distinction? Given that is the reason that most of us who oppose ESCR actually oppose it, why make an emotional play that has nothing to do with our opposition? Is it because fundamentally you don’t understand the opposition?

Last night I saw the other ad, this time with a mix of local and national celebrities, this time with a couple of St. Louis celebrities, Kurt Warner and Jeff Suppan. Was it wrong for them to speak out? While I think the Fox ad did a better job of presenting it’s case, the rebuttal ad did a better job of addressing the actual Amendment 2.

The Michael J. Fox Ad


The Rebuttal Ad

Tags:

Political Strategist Straw Poll

Oct 27

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Inside Blogging, National Politics | No Comments

I’m holding a referendum on Tom Maguire:

Is Tom Maguire

[ ] Not Smart Enough to be a strategist for the Democrats, or

[ ] Too Smart to be a strategist for the Democrats.

I don’t want to bias the results by proclaiming my opinion, but let me just say that if Tom were to become a strategist for the Democrats the age of signs and wonders would clearly be upon us.

Of course he’s too smart to be a strategist for the Democrats; he’s too smart to be a strategist for the Republicans too. I could become President if Tom became my brain like a certain other, better known team (that actually is a team).

Tags:

Romney Sets A Reporter Straight

Oct 26

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism, National Politics | No Comments

I want to have Mitt Romney’s baby:

That has to be the best smooth rebuke I’ve seen.

Via Powerline.

Tags:

I Have A Dream

Oct 24

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Fun, National Politics | No Comments

Here’s a Democratic platform I can get behind. Too bad it’s only satire, although I don’t doubt that Scott Ott also wishes it wasn’t. Could a Democrat today say with a straight face:

“Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.”Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.”

Other than Joe Lieberman, that is?

Tags:

Lost In Translation

Oct 20

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Economics, National Politics | No Comments

Here’s my problem, when I hear the phrase “common good” I think “tragedy of the commons”.

Perhaps my problem is that I’ve found I like economics outside the academic setting, where I found it boring and repulsive.

Tags: ,

Faster Feiler Meets Confirming Best

Oct 18

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | 1 Comment

A couple of years ago my Adult Bible Fellowship teacher (Ken Best) mentioned that people are wired such that the feedback they get from life tends to reinforce (or confirm) their prior opinions, and that’s because how we process information depends on what we think it will tell us. I have to say I agree with this observation. Generally, it takes something big (e.g. 9/11) to cause such a disconnect that we actually reexamine our prior opinion, but normally we see what we expect to see and disregard the rest.

Mickey Kaus has championed the Faster Feiler Thesis, which essentially is that we have speeded up both the information flow and its processing for people. And I have to say I also agree with this.

Put the two together, and what do you get – increased polarization. Our opinion is converted from jello to cement in ever faster times. And if there are two sides to every argument, then we have two sides set like epoxy around every policy, every politician, around pretty much everything (those Taste Great/Less Filling ads aren’t so funny now). Not only do we process the increased information flow faster, the increased flow drives us to become set in our positions ever faster.

Sound like real life? Perhaps how Bush Derangement Syndrome can become both widespread and hard to cure so quickly? Perhaps why so many people seem to be so completely convinced that they are not just right, but so right that any disagreement can only spring from impure motives — or you’re not just wrong, you’re evil.

Togo with a Chemistry Set

Oct 14

Posted by Sean Murphy in International Politics | No Comments

A great article on North Korea “nuclear test” in the Times Online by Gerald Baker (emphasis added) The price of shillyshallying

Stripped of the grandiose claims by Kim’s minions, the objective scientific evidence for a nuclear explosion is sketchy. The explosive yield, according to military analysts, was something less than a kiloton. A plutonium device such as that first used by the US in 1945 produces a yield in the range of 20 kilotons. Some warheads in the US nuclear arsenal now can deliver an impact about 1,000 times that of Hiroshima. Remember too that in July, the Koreans launched an “intercontinental” ballistic missile that fell into the sea about a minute into its flight and you have a sense of the truly exiguous scale of the country’s capabilities. If the Soviet Union was memorably nicknamed Upper Volta with Rockets, it’s probably fair to think of North Korea as Togo with a Chemistry Set. So why worry? Here’s why. Unlike all previous nuclear nativities, North Korea’s efforts this week have truly propelled the world into a new and much more dangerous age. There’s no good strategic reason for Pyongyang even to claim to have a nuclear weapon, as China, Israel, Pakistan and India had.

It will be the first nuclear power to be headed by a crazed monomaniac who boasts of his commercial interest in shipping nuclear weapons to terrorist groups. The sheer unpredictability of North Korea terrifies everyone in its neighbourhood in a way that none of those other countries ever did. Its actions this week will almost certainly escalate into a nuclear arms race.

  • truly exiguous scale of the country’s capabilities: I had to look tihs one up, exiguous means “scant, meagre.”
  • Upper Volta With Rockets: according to Wikipedia, the phrase “Upper Volta With Rockets” was used to describe the Soviet Union (in quotes, but with no attribution) in a survey on the Soviet economy in The Economist on April 9, 1988. The Economist on-line archive only goes back to 1997 so until I can figure out how to grep dead trees I will take their word for it.
  • Togo With a Chemistry Set Togo is south of Burkina Faso (the modern name for Upper Volta)
  • nuclear nativities is currently a GoogleWhack (I guess until this post makes it into the cache). Another great turn of phrase in an insightful article.

Tags:

One On One With Kim Jong-Il

Oct 11

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events, International Politics, National Politics | No Comments

Yes, this is going around so you can find it all over, and yes, it really is unfair to Madeleine Albright, but after She Who Must Be Obeyed opened her mouth, I couldn’t resist.

A less funny, more traditional rebuttal was provided by Sen. John McCain. McQ delivers a fisking. Personally, I can’t fault either administration too much because North Korea under Kim Jong-Il was simply going to try and develop nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them no matter what anyone said. It was worth giving talk a chance, but once it becomes clear that’s a waste of time, why continue? Now we need to talk to the North Korea’s neighbors about what we are going to do, not talk to Kim.

And another thing, why is it the same people who criticize President Bush for acting unilaterally, or for the US acting like a bully, demand that the talks with North Korea only be with the United States? It’s just more dead horse beating.

Tags:

Representatives Foley, Hastert, and Shimkus

Oct 3

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | No Comments

I’m just glad that Mark Foley wasn’t a Boy Scout Leader. Everything else about the sordid situation is just bad. And I have to agree with Dick Durban, someone I disagree with on about everything else, and that is:

Durbin also said the House Page Board should be abolished. Durbin said there are no senators involved in overseeing the Senate page program, and instead it is run by nonpartisan staff.”The Page Board in the House should go,” Durbin said. “It is clearly too political.”

I don’t want my representatives running the page program – it detracts from their time they should be spending legislating, they aren’t going to be as good at as professionals, and even if it isn’t political in itself, clearly it can become so at a time like this.

Hastert and Shimkus can stay, but the page board has to go.

Full Disclosure: My nephew was an intern with Rep. Shimkus several years ago — and yes, his respect for Shimkus does color my thinking on this one.

Republicans and Me

Sep 18

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | 4 Comments

I admit I was wrong. I thought that the theory that American system would create two parties that would be forced to the center in order to remain competative. This hasn’t happened lately, as the two parties seem to be engaged not in a race to the center but to the poles, or in the case of the Republicans, never never land. I understand that the Democrats have moved to the left to satisfy the vocal minority out there, but I’m not entirely sure where the Republicans are going.

I don’t consider myself a Republican for the reason I plump for principle over party. So while the Republican party has been the vehicle for conservatism, my loyalty is to conservatism, not Republicans. I’m both a social conservative and a fiscal conservative, so I’m prime Republican material.

My problem with the party these days is pretty much on the fiscal side, and I want to make something clear to Republican politicians – since you have (far) more control over the government than the culture, I judge you by the government under your control, and specifically for Congress the budgets under your control and the laws you pass.

For example, I’m against abortion for any reason besides saving the life of the mother, but I understand that (1) the laws on abortion has been taken over by the courts since 1973, (2) the attitudes toward abortion are not controlled by politicians. So guess what, as long as you do a good job on judges, you’re off the hook. I realize how little you can accomplish, so I can’t hold you accountable.

One last thing. While much is made about a revolt or dissidents in the party over interrogation techniques, I have to say finally. This is what the branches of government should be doing, and I have to wonder, where are the Democrats? At last we have a real discussion over issues, and the Democrats are nowhere to be found. So why vote Democratic if all they can do is partisan sniping?

Tags: