Tag: Politics

Explain to Me Again How Cell Phone Bans Will Improve Automobile Safety

I’ve already explained that the increased use in cellular phones is not responsible for automobile accident rates in the United States as cellular phone usage has increased drastically while the rate of accidents has decreased. Now the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety are brining up the fact cell phone bans accomplish nothing (except increase revenue for police departments of course):

Cell phone bans, such as those recently recommended by the National Transportation Safety Board, have so far proven useless when it comes to actually reducing car crashes, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

The Insurance Institute is a private group financed by auto insurers. The National Transportation Safety Board recently recommended that states adopt strict rules banning all non-driving-related use of hand-held devices such as cell phones — even hands-free — while driving.

Many states already have bans on hand-held cell phone use and on texting while driving. The Insurance Institute has studied crash rates before and after bans were enacted in various states and also compared them to crash rates in nearby states with no such bans.

While the bans have resulted in actual reductions in phone use, they have not resulted in any reduction in crash rates, according to the Institute.

Since insurance companies are the ones who end up paying out when automobile crashes occur I would say their best interest lies in advocating any restriction that reduces the rate of crashes. In other words it would be in their best interest to find the exact opposite of these results so any accusations about these results being skewed because of the “evil greedy corporations” need to be backed by some pretty hard evidence.

Seeing these results we’re forced to consider there is a different cause for auto accidents. Perhaps some people are just bad drivers and if they’re not distracted by their phone they’ll find something else to distract themselves with. Of course this study will be entirely ignored by various state government and our overreaching federal government because, damn it, we have to do something!

Televising Supreme Court Hearings

C-SPAN televises a great number of congressional hearings and other political shenanigans but they do not broadcast Supreme Court hearings. A number of people have been advocating that Supreme Court hearings also be televised on C-SPAN and I agree wholeheartedly. Unfortuneatly these things aren’t up to me and some opponents believe televising these hearings will have negative side effects:

Senators from both parties have been pushing for decades to allow cameras into the Supreme Court’s chambers. But many of the justices fear their dense, aggressive questioning would be taken out of context, and that cameras would foster the public grandstanding often seen in Congress and the executive branch.

First of all this is bullshit. Why would the justices change the way they do their hearings? Who cares if anything they say is taken out of context? Claims that adding cameras will foster public grandstanding is also stupid because people already grandstand in the Supreme Court, just read through some of the rulings.

I think the Supreme Courts wants to keep its hearings as secret as possible because they don’t want to be caught doing anything naughty. The history of the Supreme Court as a defender of the Constitution (their job) is not very voluminous, they mostly work to advance the statist agenda. Were their hearings televised people would be able to see this and criticize their attempts to gain the government further control.

Many people believe the separation of powers in our government help protect us from tyranny. Unfortunately for us this isn’t the case because all three branches of our government work together to further empower themselves. Even though they each compose separate divisions they realize that they’re all in the game together and what grants additional power to on branch very likely grants additional power to the other two branches as well.

The ongoings of our government as supposed to be transparent because ultimately the government can only govern an overall consenting population. We the people are supposed to be the final judges of government action and that can only be properly accomplished if we know everything they’re doing. Members of our government also know this and thus fight tooth and nail against every attempt to further pull back the curtan concealing their doings.

We need to televise Supreme Court hearings because not doing so forces us to rely on the transcripts provided to use by government employees. I don’t trust any government employee to be honest or keep me property informed.

Under Newt Gingrich There Will be No Court of Appeals, Only the Court of Newt

Newt Gingrich has decided that the president is the law:

During an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Gingrich suggested the president could send federal law enforcement authorities to arrest judges who make controversial rulings in order to compel them to justify their decisions before congressional hearings.

When asked by host Bob Schieffer how he would force federal judges to comply with congressional subpoenas, Gingrich said he would send the U.S. Capitol Police or U.S. Marshals to arrest the judges and force them to testify.

So if Newt gets elected he will become the supreme judge in the United States. Tremble he who hath rule against the wishes of Newt for he will be collected and forced to answer for his actions. If Newt’s position doesn’t scream dictator I’m not sure what does.

The idea of having three branches of government was to prevent any one branch of obtaining supreme power. Obviously that has failed but to this day the courts have remained somewhat autonomous. Judge’s rulings are seldom the final word as decisions can be appealed to higher courts. Ultimately a case can make its way to the Supreme Court where a final decision will be made but a judge is never supposed to be under threat of violence for ruling “the wrong way.”

This action is no different than threatening jury members with punishment for ruling in a way opposed to the views of the state. At such a point the entire idea behind a jury trial is lost because juries no longer base their decision on whether or not they feel a crime has been committed but on whether or not they will be punished for the decision. If judges can be rounded up and force to justify their decisions then they to will make their decisions based upon whether or not it will lead to their punishment instead of whether or not they believe a crime has been committed.

In the end this is one of the most dangerous ideas a presidential wannabe could conjure up. It’s obvious if Newt became the president he would work fast to remove the few remaining constraints that prevent the Office of the President from being Supreme Dictator.

Apparently Romney Doesn’t Know About the United States Embassy in Iraq

Since the presidential campaign is next year everybody is on the war path. In the case of Republican presidential hopefuls there is a strong desire to blame anything and everything on Barack Obama. Romney is not happy with the United States “withdrawal” from Iraq:

He called the withdrawal “precipitous” and said the president should have left some US forces behind.

Apparently Romney is unaware of our Vatican City sized embassy in Iraq, you know, the one that houses some 15,000 personell. The place is a fortress and qualifies as a military base unto itself. There is no way to claim the United States has entirely withdrawn from Iraq unless you take into consideration the technicality that the embassy counts as United States sovereign soil.

I’m just brining it up because it’s a rather large thing to note.

We Missed the Government Shutdown Again

So much for luck, our glorious government “leaders” managed to compromise and avoid a federal government shutdown:

The deal averts the possibility of US federal agencies shutting down because of a lack of guaranteed funding.

The House of Representatives and the Senate are both expected to vote on the controversial $1tn (£643bn) spending bill on Friday.

Why is it those guys can only cooperate when it comes to fucking the American populace over?

Ron Paul Hands Michelle Bachmann Her Ass on Foreign Policy

During last night’s debate there was a great argument between Ron Paul and Michelle Bachmann on foreign policy. Dr. Paul totally obliterated the idea that we need to go to war with Iran, something every other candidate is chomping at the bit to do:

Some excellent facts were made by Dr. Paul. The most obvious is the fact the terrorists in the Middle East aren’t coming here because they hate our way of life, if that were the case they would also be striking Switzerland and Sweden. Unlike our country, neither Switzerland or Sweden have a foreign policy built upon imperialism. In fact Switzerland, because of their neutrality, is the only channel of communications that exists between the United States and Iran.

I also love the fact he brings up the drone captured by Iran. While the other candidates were berating Obama for asking Iran to return the drone Ron Paul asked why the drone was even being flown of Iranian airspace to begin with. That is the million dollar question.

Bachmann than falsely claims there are reports stating Iran is only months away from developing a nuclear weapon. Again Dr. Paul explains that this isn’t true and that no evidence exists of Iran being anywhere near developing a nuclear weapon.

Then Dr. Paul brings up the Cuban Misslie Crisis. We didn’t perform a preemptive strike on the Soviet Union when they parked nuclear weapons in Cuba, instead Kennedy called up Kruschev and talked. Through conversation we reached a compromise where the Soviet Union would remove their nuclear weapons from Cuba and we would remove our from Turkey.

I’ve been saying that a nuclear armed Iran is the biggest boogeyman put out by our government. First of all Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon, second if they eventually build one they will still lack a delivery system that can get it from their country to ours, and third we’re so far ahead of the game that our anti-missile defense system (which we’ve also given Israel so don’t worry about them) that it’s practically impossible for Iran to leapfrog ahead of us. We also encourage the Iranians to develop nuclear weapons by constantly threatening invasion. The leaders of Iran aren’t stupid, they realize the only countries that get any form of respect from the United States are nuclear armed countries. They also saw what happened with Libya where we encouraged them to stop development of nuclear weaponry, they listened, and we ended up killing them.

The more we rattle sabres with Iran the more they’re going to want nuclear weaponry. Looking at a map it’s pretty easy to see that Iran is now surrounded by American military bases. Iranians also still remember that little incident in 1953 where we toppled their democratically elected government and replaced it with a brutal puppet dictatorship. After 26 years they finally booted our puppet out and the new regime has been using anti-American sentiment caused by our last action in that country to both cement their own power and prevent an easy overthrow by our forces again. We should all stop and remember that the only reason extremist Islam was able to overtake that country was because we decided it was a good idea to eliminate their democratically elected government in the first place.

The Hypocrisy is Almost Palpable

The hypocrisy of the White House is so thick I fear it may suffocate me. Yesterday the White House’s official Twitter account tweeted the following:

Happy Bill of Rights Day! The US continues to stand with citizens & governments around the world who empower free expression. #FreeToTweet

I don’t know where they get the nerve making a statement like that. While the White House put out tweets celebrating the birthday of the Bill of Rights the legislature was busy debating the Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill that will utterly destroy the First Amendment:

If the bill at issue, SOPA, were to become law, it would create a “blacklist” of websites that infringe on copyrights. Private companies who allege that a site is unlawfully publishing their copyrighted content could, with a judge’s signature, demand that ad networks and companies such as PayPal and Visa stop doing business with such sites. Internet service providers would need to prevent Americans from visiting them.

The Department of Justice is trying to cover up their little false flag operation that was started to further neuter the Second Amendment.

The White House has revoked their threat to veto the National Defense Authorization Act, which has language declaring the United States a battlefield in the war on terror and thus legalizing the indefinite detainment of American citizens without charges. To rub salt into the wound it was also made apparent that they only reason Obama first threatened a veto was because the bill’s language may have restricted his ability to wield such power. If passed this will effectively eliminate the Fourth, Firth, and Sixth Amendment.

The White House has no grounds to claim they support the Bill of Rights in any way.

Fuck Rich Santorum

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I could bold the following text, I could italicize it, I could even put it in 24 point font but nothing could emphasis the words well enough to express my feelings. Fuck Rick Santorum. Seriously, fuck him.

It’s no secret that I hold zero love for any of the Republican presidential candidates except Ron Paul. With the exception of Dr. Paul every moron in the race is a complete idiot devoid of any capacity for critical thought. Saying this I can also say they’re all better that Rick Santorum. Even crazy religious zealot Michelle Bachmann has moments where she makes some kind of sense.

Santorum’s entire police can be summed up as, kill all the brown people and gays. What a sanctimonious jackass. During last night’s debate he was practically jacking himself off because he got so excited about the prospect of bombing everybody in the Middle East, Central America, and South America. I’d be surprised if he didn’t orgasm on the spot when he started talking about bombing the fuck out of Iran, because what we really need right now with our eminent economic collapse, vast government corruption, and the ongoing destruction of civil liberties is another fucking war. Yeah, let’s do that.

Then you have his absolute hatred of homosexuals. He was ranting about how he would make it illegal for gays to marry and even ripped Romney apart for his unwillingness to do everything in his power to prevent gay marriage in Massachusetts. While I still have no fucking clue how the state every got involved in the concept of marriage in the first place I’m even more baffled by the fact that they get any say in defining marriage. Who cares if two people of the same sex want to get married? Who cares if one man wants to marry multiple women? Who cares if one woman wants to marry multiple men?

After listening to Santorum’s dumb ass ramble on about killing foreigners and hating on gays I’ve come up with an idea for a new reality television show. We sent Rick Santorum on a tour to gay bars throughout the Middle East. Before anybody brings it up, yes there are gay bars in the Middle Easy. There is a market and that market is being fulfilled whether openly or through the black market. Either way we sent him to these bars to converse with the locals and express his ideas an opinions and let hilarity ensure. I realize the length of this show will be short but that’s kind of the point.

Please Santorum, from the bottom of my heart, I urge you to drop out. Not just drop out of the president race but drop out of this country entirely. Just get the fuck out. We don’t need your war mongering homophobic ass here.

Fuck Rick Santorum.

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Mission Accomplished… Again

Have you heard? We’ve declared victory in Iraq… again! I guess we had so much time winning last time we’ve decided to relive the glory and declare our victory a second time:

The US Defence Secretary, Leon Panetta, told troops the mission had been worth the cost in blood and dollars.

He said the years of war in Iraq had yielded to an era of opportunity in which the US was a committed partner.

Only about 4,000 US soldiers now remain in Iraq, but they are due to leave in the next two weeks.

All the troops are finally coming home, except for the paltry 15,000 that will be in our Vatican City sized Iraq embassy of course. I’m also betting that many of our troops in Iraq aren’t coming home but instead being redeployed to Afghanistan to prepare for our eventual invasion of Iran.

Seriously there’s so much damned doublespeak involved with our “exiting” Iraq that I can’t keep the meaning of some basic words straight anymore.