I Think, Therefore I Rant!

Every President, except for George Washington, inherited something from the previous administration. Sometimes this is good and sometimes it is bad.

President Barack Hussein Obama has been talking for quite some time about the “mess” that he inherited from George Walker Bush. He has made references to mops and other allegories to describe the challenges that he has faced. While that is all well and good for the first few days of the Presidency, at a certain point BHO needs to own the problem.

That day is today.

There is no defined time for the honeymoon period of a new candidate. Most people felt that September 11, 2001 was close enough to the inauguration of George Walker Bush (just under 9 months) that the attacks on that dreaded day were at least partially the fault of William Jefferson Clinton. The honeymoon is certainly longer than the first 100 days that are all the talk at the beginning of a term. Everyone seems to agree that it doesn’t extend beyond a year from the date the person is elected.  

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Bill Maher is a relatively famous television personality. Of course, he got this position by correctly realizing that he wasn’t a very good standup comedian and his real talent was getting famous people on TV and then making fun of them or using them as foils to make a political point.  He has bounced around a couple of different venues and has currently landed at HBO.  His show is called “Real Time with Bill Maher”.  He has used this notoriety and fame to also publish some of his remarks and is a frequent contributor to Huffington Post.  His latest article is the subject of this post.

Originally, I only wanted to reply to Bill Maher in his comments section.  However, Huffington Post limits comments to a small number of words so I am forced to make further comments here.  You can read my original thoughts at this link as there are currently over 2500 comments on this article and it would be difficult to find mine.  You may also want to read Bill’s original article before you read my comments.  

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I am not a big fan of federal government spending.  There are few times when I think that the government can do a more effective job of spending than my local municipalities where they are far more accessible to my influence.  However, the current economy definitely needs a kick-in-the-butt and so I supported the stimulus bill (now called “Economic Stimulus Package Act of 2008“) if it really is going to be used for getting things done on a local level.

I wrote about this back in February in my article “38 ways to fill the stimulus bill with pork and save our economy“.  I still question that the stimulus is being adequately implemented but an article in the Sunday edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer gives me some hope.  This is exactly what we should do as a stimulus – create hundreds of small projects that will get people in the local communities working.  I only hope that most of the jobs the article cites were contractors as opposed to government workers.  As contractors, this will insure that these entrepreneurs stay in business and can augment this public money with some private sector jobs and keep these workers on their payroll.  

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Michael Vick was released from prison today to continue his sentence in house arrest.  I know that there is a lot of desire to say that he has paid his price for his mistake and therefore should be allowed to play in the NFL.

I sympathize that a man or woman should be able to move on after they have paid for their mistakes. However, sports should be held to a different level of integrity.  We should not allow Michael Vick to play professional sports until Pete Rose is allowed to play baseball again.

As I discussed several times, we need to hold athletes to a standard that at least is equivalent to everyday life and they probably should be held higher due to their incomes. Check out the following articles:

RANT! Drugs and bad conduct in professional sports

RANT! Drugs and bad conduct in professional sports (again)  

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A lot of noise was made about how George Walker Bush ruined our relations in the international community.  I have discounted this since international relations are always opportunistic and this is a perfect case in point. 

Mexico has been a close friend to the United States for decades.  The President of Mexico was always warmly greeted by GWB and I am sure that Barack Hussein Obama will greet him warmly as well.  But the confusing signals that BHO has sent on NAFTA combined with the foolish blocking of Mexican trucks (surely a concession to the politically powerful Teamsters) have triggered a needless and foolish international crisis and show the lack of multi-dimensional thinking that is required to run this country.

Now this foolish move is going to cost us billions in tariffs on goods that we ship to Mexico.  Hurting our economy by violating NAFTA in a down economy is not something we should be doing.  Offending our international friends is also something we shouldn’t be doing.  

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For the last three posts we have been exploring the claim that George W. Bush is the worst President of the United States ever.  Some say that he is the worst, some say he is in the middle of the pack but just about everyone agrees he is not the best ever.  This post continues the job of grading W on the various issues that he faced in his two terms of office.  See the previous posts to get the background for where we are now.

Iraq occupation – D – same as Afghanistan.  A lot of good but the job is not done so W can’t get better grade until the job is done.  He can’t get better than a C ever since he messed up so bad by putting Bremer in place – Bremer’s decisions really messed up the nation for several years.  I think that history will eventually say that the US did better in Iraq than just about any other takeover of a foreign nation (Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Georgia, Poland, etc) although that is a terrible standard to compare us to.  

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A lot of us use instant messaging (IM) in our private and professional lives. It is a convenient and quick way to talk to others without the formality and delay of email. A new jargon has been created to talk in this medium and emoticons are often used to express feelings and emphasis.

You can tell a lot about someone by reading their instant messages. The biggest thing you can tell to see if someone is just plain clueless is if they send you messages like this:

IDontKnowHowToIM: Did you watch the game
IDontKnowHowToIM: this weekend? I thought
IDontKnowHowToIM: it was great and I was
IDontKnowHowToIM: amazed at how well Tom
IDontKnowHowToIM: Brady played he must be
IDontKnowHowToIM: the best player in NFL

What IDontKnowHowToIM meant to type was this:

IDontKnowHowToIM: Did you watch the game this weekend? I thought it was great and I was amazed at how well Tom Brady played he must be the best player in NFL

 

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I write this just a few days after the NFC championship game for the 2007 season. In this game, Green Bay hosted a frigid game between their beloved Packers and the New York Giants. The game was well played by both teams and ended in a tie at 20.

As dictated by the rules, the teams then met to flip the coin again and the Packers won the toss. Within the NFL, overtimes are decided by the first team to score any kind of point. The typical strategy is to get close enough for field goal and end the OT quickly. This definitely favors the team that wins the OT toss!

As fate would have it, the Packers turned over the ball and the Giants won the game with their own field goal. While this particular instance provided both teams an opportunity to have the ball, the rules are not that fair.  

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The United Kingdom and the US (to a much lesser degree) are actually the good guys in the entire Palestinian homeland issue, so the world should give them a collective break.

If you look at history, UK (and a few friends) beat the snot out of the Ottoman’s in WW1. They then broke up this massive land that was under Ottoman rule into states (basically the ones that exist today). Palestine was one of those states, as was Israel. Hurray for UK! Don’t believe me – see the map.  

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