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The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Archive for category National Politics

Veterans Speak Out

Aug 30

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | 1 Comment

Dodd gave a heads up about C-Span showing John Kerry’s testimony before a Senate committee in 1971 so I was able to watch it. I had a negative, visceral reaction to it. McQ had a much stronger, more personal reaction to Kerry’s anti-soldier (yes, Kerry in opposing the Vietnam war did so in a manner that slimed and smeared every soldier who fought there) actions after he returned with his medals in hand:

Well I’m very angry as well, Becky.

I’m angry that a nation treated its soldiers the way it did 35 years ago. I’m angry that actions of John Kerry led to that dishonorable treatment. But more than that, I’m angry that now that we who were maligned and smeared by Kerry and the VVAW want to speak out about it, people like you want us to shut up. 

Well we’re not going to shut up. 

We kept quiet about it for all those years and we’re damn tired of living with the lies Kerry and others told about us. We’ve as much right to speak as John Kerry. And we’ve got as much right to tell you and others he was full of crap as any other citizen of this country. 

Its not just YOUR country. Its OUR country as well. And this is about how OUR country treated us because of the lies people like John Kerry and the VVAW spread.

When Kerry grows the balls to stand up and tell the Vietnam Vets that he was wrong, he lied and he portrayed them falsely and that he’s sorry for doing so, then perhaps, some real healing can begin.

Until then, I agree with John O’Neill … he’s unfit for command.

Since I’m not a veteran, some will say I have no standing to comment on McQ’s remarks. But as a citizen, I agee with him.

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Promises, Promises

Aug 23

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | No Comments

John Kerry is running an ad here in Missouri about how George Bush doesn’t care about healthcare but John does, and so much so he has a plan. The plan sounds wonderful of course – something for everybody, but it does have one big problem. The plan requires legislation to be passed for it to be implemented, and John Kerry is running for President, an office that can only veto legislation. I suppose it’s bad form to point out that Kerry has been a Senator for almost 20 years and so has had ample time to try to get this plan passed yet somehow has managed to propose nothing in his long yet unmentioned Senatorial career. I suppose it’s too bad that big John has been so busy this year to show up for votes, let alone do all the hard work in actually crafting legislation, but once he’s President apparently then he’ll have time he needs to work on legislation.

Now John Kerry isn’t alone in this odd habit of politicians who run for executive offices; just about everybody who runs for President or Governor runs on a legislative agenda. Even the Libertarians do this, although they mainly talk about the laws they’ll repeal, not pass. When candidate George Bush was running for President, he made tax cutting the main message of his campaign, and after his election he had to work with Congress to get tax cuts passed — ones to be honest that were not exactly what he first proposed but what he was willing to accept.

Our lack of understanding is shown in other races, where for instance we vote for members of the House or any state office based on abortion when the only people who matter on that subject are US Supreme Court justices, and the President and Senate since they select and confirm Supreme Court justices. And that doesn’t include all the platitudinous promises politicians dish out — like how they’ll lower crime without providing details (a colorful costume complete with cape usually springs to my mind) or they’ll be good for families — usually through shared values or some such, although they never explain if I’m supposed to adopt their values, or they’ll adopt mine, or if it’s even sanitary to be sharing values.

The problem isn’t the politicians, it’s the electorate that keeps voting for the politicians. We’re the ones who lap up all these feel good but can’t be implemented promises. The perversity of the electorate doesn’t end there. The one thing all Americans can agree on is that our Congresspeople should work tirelessly for our interests while other peoples Congresspeople should work for the common good (which surprisingly enough is amazingly similar to our interests).

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Cannae Again

Aug 21

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | No Comments

Maybe I’m easily impressed, but I think the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth laid the best political trap for John Kerry I’ve ever seen. Hannibal would be proud.

Step one was to document and gather affidavits and write a book so that there was a wealth of credible material to draw from.

Step two was to put out an ad attacking Kerry’s service. Believe them or not, Kerry and the media have reacted by being outraged that anybody would crap on a combat veteran like the SBVTs did. The fact that they were combat veterans every bit as much as Kerry was immaterial. “How dare you impugn him! He fought and bled for his country!” Let’s face it, this is a strong defense.

Step three was to spring the trap. If you think the SBVTs were surprised by the reaction, you haven’t been paying attention to their second ad where they recount how John Kerry crapped on every Vietnam combat veteran after Kerry returned from Vietnam. The art of political Aikido in action is beautiful to behold. All that anger for Kerry gets turned around and used against him. “How dare he impugn his band of brothers, men who fought and died for their country.” The narrative becomes: if you thought you were mad at us when we said Kerry was a braggert, how should you feel when Kerry said all of us vets were rapists and murderers?

And what has to really hurt is that Kerry’s attacks are all in the public record. Kerry is his own accuser; the credibility of the SBVTs doesn’t matter on this attack. In a move of sheer brilliance, the SBVTs put on ex-POWs to testify to the emotional toll his accusations of atrocities took on them. What’s Kerry going to do — attack an ex-POW? McCain would lead the countercharge personally.

Kerry has only himself to blame for this. If he had run on his political record and his vision for the future, none of this would have come up, let alone matter. But by insisting that his actions 36 years ago mattered, that they were significant qualifications for office, he cannot insist that his actions 33 years ago don’t matter and are significantly disqualifying for office. I mean if he isn’t the same man he was 33 years ago, he sure isn’t the man he was 36 years ago. What was he thinking? How could he have forgotten?

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Back In The Straddle Again

Aug 19

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | No Comments

John Kerry has come out against bringing troops home after he came out for it. Why the straddle? President Bush has announced that we will reduce troop strength in Germany and South Korea in move that has long been anticipated. In his opinion, Bush is going to screw it up. If Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow was Clinton’s campaign theme song, Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better is Kerry’s. [Thanks be to Dodd for the links]

Here’s what gets me — Kerry is complaining about withdrawing troops from two countries that have, shall we say, issues with America and with American troops on their soil and are at peace. He’s worried that it raises questions about our commitment. His plan for withdrawing troops from Iraq, where Iraqis are fighting and dying along side our soldiers, doesn’t raise questions, it answers them about our commitment in the negative. He wants to keep troops in two countries where they aren’t fighting, but remove them from a country where we are fighting our enemies, including al-Qaida. That’s better how?

The case for removing them from Germany is a slam dunk. Germany is threatened only by its runaway welfare state. Of course, when I think back on the proud history of Americans fighting alongside Germans against tyranny, oops, we never have. We fought against German mercenaries in the revolutionary war, against the Kaiser in WWI, against Hitler in WWII, and they declined to fight with us in the Balkans, Kuwait, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Oh, they’ve sent forces after the shooting has stopped — a few thousand here and there. But then we’ll still leave one of our new Brigades behind — a couple thousand troops to fly the flag and reassure the Germans that if the French ever do attack, we’ll at last fire shots in anger together.

We’ll still keep troops in Korea, but reducing the number and moving them to positions where they don’t get annihilated in the first North Korean artillery barrage seems like a good idea to me and increases our freedom of action while reducing tensions with the locals. And isn’t part of Kerry’s foriegn policy to get foreigners to like us again?

Last night I happened to catch Norm Coleman on the Daily Show. He pointed out that debate is good for democracy, but that by and large we don’t have them anymore in this country – instead we have partisan bickering (my words, not his). When Jon asked him why, Norm said because of this and gestured to include the show. Jon made the joke “Comedy Central is responsible?”, but Norm had made his point — if politicians are reduced to brief soundbites on TV, all they can do is bicker.

And that’s all that is going on here. We’ve gotten to the point that politicians will say anything to win, and then say and do whatever it takes to stay in power. This isn’t the fault of the politicians, it’s the fault of us, the American people, for putting up with this kind of politics. We have the ultimate power – to demand that politicians be responsive through the vote, to demand that the media be responsive through the viewership. We just need to use it.

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College Costs

Aug 18

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | No Comments

Dave Nicklaus is a pretty sharp business columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He had a good column today about ever rising college tuition costs:

As in health care – another part of the economy where costs are out of control – third parties pay much of the cost of a university education. When the state government, the federal government or private philanthropists are paying much of the freight, the discipline that’s inherent in most business-to-consumer transactions doesn’t exist. 

What’s more, universities have a power that no ordinary merchant has: They get to look at your tax return. Don’t think that scholarship, loan or work-study offer came out of pure altruism. Think of financial aid as a discount off list price, like the rebate on a new car. Thanks to the data you provide on your financial aid form, the university can practice almost perfect price discrimination, charging each consumer as much as his or her bank account will bear.

…

And, because universities have no profit motive, Vedder [Richard Vedder, professor of ecomomics at Ohio University and author of Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much] says, they are extremely inefficient. For every dollar that colleges spent on instruction in 1929, they spent 19 cents on administration. That rose to 33 cents by 1960 and 48 cents by the mid-1990s.

As for the faculty, Vedder makes a strong case that productivity has been declining while pay has risen steadily in the past 20 years. 

Here’s a prime example of how if you don’t truly understand the problem, you’ll never fix it.

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Not Gone Yet

Jul 30

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | No Comments

OK, I’ve gotten so many calls and emails begging me for one last post before leaving, I’m writing one last one.

“Universal healthcare” as in government funded, not as in open market, is pushed as a panacea in certain circles. These circles find it such an obviously superior solution, I rarely see any real supporting rationale for it (everybody else is doing it isn’t a rationale that I, as the father of a teenage daughter, find real).

There are two main ways of allocating resources – one way that decreases the availability of the resource, and the other which increases the availability of the resource. Socialism, or single payer, or “universal healthcare” is the way that decreases the availability of the resource. This isn’t a question of theory — it’s been empirically proven repeatedly. The free market is the way that increases the availability of the resource. 

But healthcare is something too important to be left to the market you say. Or healthcare doesn’t work like other goods because you have to have it inorder to live you say. Doesn’t food meet those same requirements? Yet we allocate food in this country via the free market, and the crisis du jour is obesity. If we stopped allocating healthcare in this country via the current odd employer standing in for government system, and instead allocated healthcare via a free market, the crisis du jour would be longevity.

Forty Thousand Headmen

Jul 29

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | No Comments

I haven’t paid close attention to the Democratic convention, and doubt I will to the Republican one. One of the main reasons is that they don’t matter. The nominee is a foregone conclusion, so all you have is a bunch of speeches in which politicians lay out a wonderful vision of why their guy should be elected. The problem is that the speeches are pretty much devoid of meaning. A long laundry list of ideas, visions and claims but no idea of the hierarchy of values of the candidate. I’m not claiming that these politicians are lying — they aren’t — but the problem is when push comes to shove, which ideas, visions, and yes, values are more important? 

You take a backseat to no one in defending America, and you take a back seat to no one in multi-national cooperation and alliance building. You see a clear danger to the security of America, so you take action. You begin to build that multinational alliance, but discover that the UN is willing to issue only threats, but not take action. What do you do? You discover that your allies agree that there is a problem, but think negotiation will resolve the issue without force. Do you negotiate, or use force? How long do you do negotiate before you use force? Just how do you balance the interests and desires of America against those of allies? Both are important, but how do you resolve the inevitable conflicts.

You can think of your own examples without trying too hard. 

And it isn’t just about politicians. I’m sure if you polled people, 98 out of a 100 would agree that honesty is important: you shouldn’t lie. All 98 of those people have told a lie sometime in their life. They all had a good reason, good enough to do something they think would otherwise be wrong. No there would be a bunch of different reasons good enough, all the way from “if I told the truth I would be embarrassed” to “if I told the truth somebody would die”. If you’re trying to judge somebody’s honesty, the question isn’t whether they value honesty, but at what point do they start lying.

So if you want to hear a pleasing stream of platitudes, some delivered quite engagingly, tune into the convention. If you want an idea how people will balance competing values, look at their actions.

This And That

Jul 28

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Links, National Politics | 2 Comments

Comment Spam is starting to drive me nuts. Yes, I have MTBlacklist and I’m not afraid to use it. I think the answer is to sic pistol packing Tanya on them, though. I added a couple of sites to my blacklist this morning, and within five minutes I’d blocked seven comment attempts. My site traffic is up because now the little dears don’t add one or two comments, they add ten or twelve. I’m sorry to say, but you can no longer use the word “poker” in the comments.

Yesterday I posted about Theresa Kerry, and now I’m the number seven search result for her at Yahoo! Isn’t this blog thing great !?!

I’m not watching the Democratic Convention, and I hope to avoid the Republican one too. I think I’m with my fellow Americans on this one for a change.

Is it just me, but are the boys at Q and O adding posts faster than you can read them?

We were warned that The Passion of the Christ was going to increase anti-semitism, and it didn’t. We were warned that concealed carry in Missouri would increase murders as traffic accidents and arguments over a can of peas wouldresult in wild west shootouts, and it didn’t. I’m wondering why if the left worries about America being disliked in the world, they don’t denounce Mikey Moore’s 9-11 opus because it will increase anti-Americanism. Will Theresa Kerry tell the French to shove their un-Americanism? Hey, if the NYT could finally admit that they are indeed a liberal newspaper, anything is possible.

Compare and Contrast

Jul 27

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | No Comments

In our never ending cycle of the scandal du jour, I’d like to take a look at a couple of recent ones. First up, Sandy Berger removing documents (and perhaps adding fake ones) from the National Archives. Sandy has offered the “I’m a chucklehead” defense. Look, nobody takes classified documents accidentally. The documents have brightly colored covers and back sheets, every page is distinctively marked, and a professional like Berger knows the rules about handling such documents. He knew exactly what he was doing — we don’t know what or why. But he was up to no good; he was trying to either cover his butt (most likely) or help the Kerry campaign. I think it would be a terrible precedence to laugh off both the mis-handling of classified documents or fail to consider he was putting his reputation above the safety of Americans.

And then there was Theresa Kerry’s kerfuffle with a reporter. I don’t think this is a big deal. Funny, but not a big deal. Yes, she’s a hypocrite — going on about civility and then going after a reporter — but then we’re all hypocrites. It’s funny that the Democrats have been whining about being called un-American, and then she goes and calls people that. But the whole using the word and then not realizing it, well, I’m willing to cut her slack on that (although, again, very funny). She’s not running for president — her husband is. She goofed. No big deal.

I think it’s interesting that a lot of the focus has gone into the “Shove it” part. I almost wonder if she didn’t go back over and say it to deflect notice from her “un-American” remark. That’s the goof. I think most Americans have no problem with somebody telling a reporter to “shove it” — either the sentiment or the language. Most people are assuming that she went back over because she found out who the reporter was that questioned her; I think she may have gone back over because she found out she really did say “un-American”.

But I think these two stories do point up the need to take what is serious seriously, and what is merely ironic laughingly. Partisans on the right will want to take Theresa Kerry’s words in the worst possible way. Well, you’re welcome to your paranoia. And for those who are partisans of the left, just remember that we’re all human when somebody on the right goofs up. I think every American should take Berger’s actions seriously. But we shouldn’t make the avatar mistake – he isn’t the representative of all Democrats. The right shouldn’t make him out to be, and the left shouldn’t defend him because of that. 

A More Full Transcript

Jul 27

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | No Comments

There have been some shocking scandals recently what with Sandy Berger under investigation, Theresa Kerry telling off a reporter for doing his job, and Andrew Sullivan endorsing John Kerry for President because while Kerry may or may not support the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) banning gay marriage, he knows full well George W. supports it. Here at Funmurphys: the blog we’ve done some “real journalism” and discovered that the principals have been Dowdified – that is their quotes have had verbiage selectively removed to make a point the media wanted to make, but not one the speaker intended.

The abbreviated quotes:

“I inadvertently removed a few classified documents” — Sandy Berger

“You’re putting words in my mouth” — Theresa Kerry

“The FMA wasn’t everything” — Andrew Sullivan


The full quotes:

“During the course of trying to deliberately remove every copy of a particular classified document, I inadvertently removed a few other classified documents”

“You’re putting my words back into my mouth “

“The FMA wasn’t everything, it was the only thing”

This post is based on what I thought was a (rare) pretty good comment of mine over at JustOneMinute