Funmurphys: the Blog

The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Archive for category Politics

VDS

Jan 25

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | No Comments

I have pondered over why the left in this country favors wars that meet two simple criteria: (1) spill little or preferably no American blood and (2) do not involve anything that anyone would consider a vital national interest. So we intervene in Haiti or the Balkans without the anti-war left causing much stir. I’ve always found it odd that the anti-republican-war-left which always has such an exaggerated concern for the welfare of American Soldiers hasn’t the slightest concern for foriegn civilians if the above criteria are met. And I think the reason is that they really do fear a “Vietnam quagmire” in every war, so it’s vitally important to pick wars that don’t cause American casualties (apparently the only benchmark of a quagmire) and wars from which we can just run away and not suffer any repurcussions.

Vietnam sure seems to be a turning point because before then the Democratic party had no trouble with warriors as president – men who weren’t afraid to pay any price, bear any burden in the cause of Truth, Justice, and the American way, guys like Kennedy, Truman, Roosevelt, Wilson, Polk, and old Andrew Jackson himself. These guys spent blood and treasure in wars they thought vital to the national interest. Scoop Jackson was the last major Democrat politician of that tradition. As the generation that experience Vietnam fades away, I hope the Democratic party can get over the trauma and return to the American mainstream – the best government is the result of the competition between two fundamentally sound parties.

Isn’t It Bliss, Don’t You Approve

Jan 13

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | No Comments

So how do I dislike the Alito hearings? Let me count the ways.

1. Ted Kennedy Any claim that I need to take Ted Kennedy seriously is an offense. The fact that Massachusetts returns the broken down old drunk to the senate every six years is the best indication that the power of incubency is too strong in American politics. Ted, the man’s name is A-li-to, not Al-i-o-to. And for the record , it was Arlen Spector demonstrated who the real the ‘lion in winter’ is.

2. The Hypocrisy I’ll just pick one big example so as not to bore you. The Senate Democrats tell me I need to worry that an organization Judge Alito was a member of 40 years ago, Concerned Alumni of Princeton, was racist and sexist. OK, but how about Robert Byrd? He was not only a member of the Klu Klux Klan, which pretty much set the standard for racist organizations, he was a leader in it. And he still calls people “nigger”. And none of those Democratic senators has the slightest problem with Senator Byrd.

3. The Confirmation Process Confirmation hearings mix grotesque grandstanding with mud throwing by one set of partisans and mud removal by the other set of partisans in equal proportions, which leaves no time for an actual exchange of information with the confirmee. But when senators, who control the confirmation process, complain about the process like it’s something they have no control over, excuse me if I wretch and wretch again.

4. The Intellectual Dishonesty A significant segment of the left is always going on about how the Constitution is a living document that adapts to the needs of the present. How does it adapt? Well, nine people in Washington, AKA the Supreme Court, get to decide. And by golly if they say that the constitution has spoken to them in a new way, or that the American people have changed, well then, the Constitutionality of an issue has changed. So what’s up with this sudden devotion to stare decisis? How can a living document breath if it is put in the straitjacket of stare decisis? But what’s worse, it’s clear that approval/disapproval for someone holding such a position has nothing to do with traditional measures like judicial temperament, philosophy, or ability, but has everything to do with the person’s politics. Because what’s clear is you expect, even demand, that Supreme Court justices follow their own feelings and preferences, because that’s what this whole living document hooha is about. So the whole point of a confirmation hearing isn’t about finding out if a nominee is fit, but flinging so much dirt at a nominee of the other party that enough sticks to derail the confirmation. That and time on TV.

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Lynn Swann For Governor

Jan 6

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | No Comments

So Lynn Swann is running for Governor of Pennsylvania. Good for him. As a Republican. Hope he’s treated better by the Mediocrats party than JC Watts was.

When Dictators Make The Rules …

Nov 15

Posted by Kevin Murphy in International Politics | No Comments

Hey Hitch, don’t you know war never solves anything? President Bush should be commended for following the approved international process in the Sudan, unlike Iraq or Afganistan, because its more important that we follow international norms than save one single life. Since the weepy left only weeps over American soldiers killed (those that manage to survive are apparently “bad”) and those they supposedly killed, there is no weeping for those dying in Sudan — thus answering the question, if a person is killed without any relation to America, does anyone notice (or care?). Of course, the question was already answered by the reaction to the deaths inflicted on a grand scale in Afganistan and Iraq before the US intervened.

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You Can’t Handle The Truth

Nov 14

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism, National Politics, The War on Terror | No Comments

So, President Bush has finally decided to go after those Democrats who are smearing him by claming he lied or mislead about the intellegence on Iraq in order to drum up support for the war. It will be an uphill battle because not only will he have to contend with the Democrats, but the news media as well. The Democrats aren’t that formidable a foe, but the news media is much, much smoother at lies and misrepresentations. Good luck Mr. President, you’ll need it.

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Kevin In Wonderland

Nov 4

Posted by Kevin Murphy in International Politics | No Comments

There are times I swear I’m through the looking glass. This is about the nuttiest article I’ve read in a long time courtesy of Getting Nothing But Static From MSM. Its got Venezuala conducting an excercise simulating attack by the United States, Venezuala’s President (for life) Hugo Chavez fresh off his ban of Halloween as too Gringo musing aloud that he may sneak up behind President Bush and scare him at the Americas Summit, Cuba’s Speaker of Parliament Ricardo Alarcon showing up even though Cuba wasn’t invited since it isn’t even a pretend democracy and claiming “even if they invited us, we would not have come” (note to organizers, next time invite the Cubans so they don’t show up), and ignorant 30 year old students sporting a Che shirt and spouting off stupidity: “We are going to fight against all forms of imperialism,” Zamora said, voicing complaints against free-market programs some here blame for enslaving poor Latin American countries. Note to Zamora, the problem with Latin America is your lousy governments which Latin America is itself responsible for.

But there was some meat to the article, namely that President Bush will continue to push for free trade and gathering support for the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. Chavez, meanwhile, is trying to bribe as many neighbors as he can with Venezualan oil money to stay out. Note to Hugo – things didn’t go well for the last dictator who spread his oil wealth around in an attempt to defy the United States.

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A Start But In the Wrong Direction

Nov 4

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Local Politics | No Comments

I admit I was shocked to read this article in my paper today: only about 20 percent of Missouri’s school districts spend 65% or more of their money on student instruction. Wow. And none in St. Louis County. Missouri spends 60.97 percent on student instruction, the national average is 61.34 percent.

I have to agree with the comments made in this article:

Rep. Ed Robb, R-Columbia, said with all the funding disparities examined by the Special Committee on Education Funding last year, the wide range between what districts spend in the classroom was eye opening.”When you think that more than one-third out of every dollar is going to overhead, I don’t think you could run a business that way, and I don’t think you can run a school that way,” he said.

Of course, that isn’t the end all and be all of educational reform. I’d prefer to use vouchers to create a market in education which would mean you wouldn’t need that kind of state mandate. All this demand for uniformity and micro-management would be out the window, although I assume we’d still have the never ending funding disputes.

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Law Reform

Nov 1

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

My biggest complaint with the civil justice system isn’t the system itself, but us. You know, Americans. We’re the ones who have adopted the idea that anything, and I mean anything can be litigated. Everything is open for review by fifteen strangers: twelve people off the street, two paid advocates, and a judge. There is no aspect of human interaction – business, personal, intimate, property – that can’t be hauled into a court at a later date for a do over. You may be thinking great, we need more oversight. But there is a penalty for all this, both in terms of direct costs paid to the practitioners and the opportunity costs in changed behavior. And our civil system doesn’t even protend to be speedly like our criminal system. Cases can drag on for years, which means that not only is everything subject to review, but it can be years before anything is final. That surely has to be a big drag on invention, risk taking, and business in general.

Another facet of the problem is that when you have breakthroughs in technology or science, everyone benefits. When you have breakthroughs in finance, everyone benefits as improved financial helps new ventures get financed. These breakthroughs are driven by the quality and number of people involved in these fields. But when it comes to law, it seems that breakthroughs there only benefit lawyers, which only increases the attraction to a field that is way over represented and talented in America. The explosion in class action lawsuits hasn’t done a thing for the average person — if anything it’s hurt them overall, but it sure has made a bunch of lawyers wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice.

It used to be that farsighted rulers would periodically reform the legal code (Hammurabi was the first recorded). I know the legislatures across the land are too busy with far more sexy and immediate stuff, but I think we’re getting to the point that we really need to consider the kind of top to bottom overhaul to rein in the reach of lawsuits and combine it with a wholesale pruning of government regulation. But that won’t happen until we demand it. Just having a “business friendly” Supreme Court Justice doesn’t cut it.

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Thinking Out Loud

Oct 28

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | 3 Comments

It’s the consensus view that if Roe Vs. Wade were to be overturned, abortion rights would then move back to the states. I read it all the time, and law bloggers don’t even discuss it, it’s just assumed. But I wonder. How exactly would it be overturned? Would a majority say, sorry, we got it wrong, those pesky penumbras and eminations are so hard to decipher, a right to privacy doesn’t cover going out and having a medical proceedure? Or more likely, would the court have to find a right of the unborn that is more compelling than the mother’s right to privacy? And if that were the case, would it really go back to the state legislatures, or would abortion then be unconstitutional, and thus beyond the reach of the states?

International News

Oct 12

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

Ghazi Kenaan, Syria’s Interior minister, is dead officially by suicide. He was questioned by the UN about the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minster Rafik Hariri. Apparently, Syria felt the Syrian interior covered more than the Lebanese did. Not everyone thinks it was suicide, me included.

Gerhard Schroeder will have no role in the “grand coalition” government in Germany. He took the opportunity to make some gratuitous insults, and spout some typical nonesense, like “I say to my British friend that people in Germany, in Europe, don’t want complete denationalisation, they don’t want the privatisation of lifetime risks. The Anglo-Saxon model will have no chance in Europe.” and “I don’t want to name any examples of catastrophes, where you can see what happens when there is no organised state. I could name countries, but the office I still hold forbids that – but everybody knows I mean America.” Good riddance to bad rubbish. Don’t let the doorknob hit you on the ass on the way out, Gerhard.

Is it just me, or does Angela Merkel look a lot like Harriet Miers?

China has launched its second manned spaceflight, sending two astronauts into Earth orbit. Xinhua, as the official news agency of China, focuses on the excitement of the people, along with Zang Ziyi’s new sexy looks. Apparently China is engaged in more than a space race with the West (which doesn’t seem to know that it’s in one).

A former French ambassador to the UN is under arrest in France as part of Saddam’s scheme to buyoff of the UN and others with Oil (known as the “Oil for food scandal”). This should not reflect on the UN or France. Who am I kidding, both are cesspools of corruption that are run for the benefit of their elites. Hmm, wasn’t New Orleans a former French colony? Anyway, one can only hope this is the start of a number of prosecutions that lead to criminals spending a long time in jail and start on the draining of a couple of cesspools.

And some good news in a place where any good news is needed — the weather has cleared over Kashmir and aid is “pouring in”. Still, the devastation is simply overwhelming, and with an official death toll of about 25,000, I’m am deeply saddened. I spent three months in Pakistan (Karachi) a long time ago and really like the people there. You can see my pictures here.