Saturday, July 29, 2006

LaTourette fails

As a citizen of the 14th district of Ohio, the Northeast section that includes: Lake, Geauga, Ashtabula and parts of Cuyahoga, Trumbull and Portage counties, we are served by Steven C. LaTourette. In the last half year or so, the Club for Growth, as well as The Truth Laid Bear, has zeroed in on Congress members who are more interested in Pork barrell spending than using our tax money wisely. Recently they have focused on the 19 anti-pork amendments proposed by Jeff Flake, a congressman from Arizona's sixth district. The Club for Growth has produced a delightful chart that outlines the way congressmen from every district in America voted. Mr. LaTourette voted "no" on every amendment. Loosely translated, this means that LaTourette is more concerned with spending our hard earned tax dollars than he is with spending it wisely, or not spending it at all. One would think that with this much transparency, Mr. LaTourette would have made a better effort. He had 19 chances, and not one of them was worth voting for?
I have previously written posts on LaTourette's spending problem here and tried to contact him, but merely received a form letter in return. I was far more encouraged by the response from Senator DeWine, which actually seemed to be written rather than copied and pasted from campaign literature and then auto-stamped. At any rate, it's difficult to imagine a scenario that would cause me to vote for LaTourette when his next election cycle comes around.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

J-E-W-S

One of the things I hate most about politics is the endless finger pointing used to avoid accountability. The gentleman at Powerline have hit the nail on the head with this post. They basically ask the question that a lot of sensible people from any political persuasion should be asking, Why is it okay to point out anti-semitism or racism when it benefits you? They recall a number of "incidents" from recent memory, such as Jesse Jackson calling New York "Hymietown" or Cynthia McKinney's father blaming the Jews for her loss in 2002. I'm sure Powerline is aware that there is a minute opening left for some variety of counterattack from somebody. The examples they use largely involve black politicians who have denigrated Jewish people for political gain. Surely some asshole with a desire to attack Powerline will call them racist and connect them with some grand Zionist neo-con conspiracy. The point is that it shouldn't be okay for a political organization to call somebody an anti-semite without first taking to task its own members, who are also anti-semites.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Duke Redux

This is a compelling post about the inner struggle at Duke between common sense and certain members of its faculty. It seems to me that quite a few of the faculty members have come to their own conclusions about the case based on the notion that the accused are athletes and serve no purpose among the academic side of the school. It's a shame that this sort of bias will blind anyone, much less a professor. From what I gather, quite a few of these so called academics aren't interested in evidence, just what they "know." At any school you'll find professors who find a certain joy in tormenting athletes in any number of ways. What seperates average colleges from outstanding ones is the ratio of professors who treat each student equally to those who have bias or an agenda of some sort. In this case it looks like Duke needs some help.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Bye Bye Basayev

Before war started breaking out this week, I had intended on discussing the death of one of my least favorite people, Shamil Basayev. Apparently, Basayev had been hiding out in Ingushetia, a republic neighboring Chechnya, when a convoy he was accompanying went kaboom. One of the trucks in the convoy had 22o pounds of dynamite in it and may or may not have exploded accidentally. According to a Federal Security Service chief, this was a planned strike with the help of "the Russian intelligence position abroad." An unnamed security official said that some close to Basayev tipped off his position. Meanwhile, an Ingush official said that the explosion was accidental and occurred while a police operation was being staged to halt a terror attack. Obviously the Russians will claim they had a hand in his death, and why not? It strengthens Putin's domestic position. Whatever the case may be, one of the world's truly evil people is dead and he deserved every ounce of that explosion. If you play with dynamite you will get smeared.