November 04, 2006

Remember Clinton's War?

You know, the one Germany and some other Euro countries got us into because they wanted more EU say-so in the Balkans? You know, the one in which the late Mr. Milosevic, the one they tried for five years in the aftermath and could convict of nothing was "ethnically cleansing" the Muslim population while the Muslim population did the same to non-Muslims? Yeah, that one, the one way street where Clinton felt it was just fine for Muslims to ethnically cleanse to their hearts' content, as long as Milosevic could not?

We and several other countries really did the Muslims a favor there, helping them to practice their Islam on Christian Serbs with a minimum of interference.

Julia Gorin's got a present day perspective up at JWR's Political Mavens, done in her own uniquely humorous-yet-to-the-point style that bears a read, here.

Posted by Seth at 08:20 PM | Comments (2) |

October 29, 2006

The Democrats And Taxes

According to such cartoon characters as Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats, should they manage to get enough of their fellow travellers elected so as to have a majority in the House of Representatives, with Pelosi expected to become Speaker of the House (well, Halloween is almost upon us, so what's a good scare among friends?), one of the first priorities of the Democrats will be to stamp out the Bush tax cuts and roll back our taxes to 1990s levels.

If I were an enemy of the state, I would utterly destroy my hands applauding this ambition. Unfortunately, I am a patriot who loves America, to say nothing of the fact that I am also an American who lives and pays taxes here, so I must convey the blatant fact that I am not a fan of this intended tax increase.

I understand the Democrats' need to tax me into the ground. Well, not exactly understand it, per se, but I realize that the Democrats have a serious problem with their fellow Americans being able to keep some of the money they earn and are fixated on the concept of raising taxes whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Some people are into sky diving, some people collect butterflies, some people are passionate stamp collectors, some people love archery, some tennis, some throwing rocks at passing cars, some surfing porn websites, some collecting sea shells, some climbing trees, others mountains.... Democrats are into raising taxes. It's what they do, just as sucking blood is what mosquitos do, or what leeches do.

It's not their fault, it's simply who they are.

They particularly like to tax those who are successful, like the rich and like large, prosperous corporations, and are very much like Robin Hood -- they take from the rich, and give to the poor. It makes them feel good -- hell, it makes them feel great -- stripping a big company of its investment capital plunges them into ecstasy.

Back in the 1980s, during the Reagan Administration, the greatest President in my lifetime stopped the bloodsucking practice of penalizing American business for its success, allowing it to keep its investment capital in order to put it to work, and lo and behold, despite the Democrats' criticism of what they fondly referred to as Reaganomics, our economy exploded into a dynamo of successful professionals, low unemployment, newly created millionaires and prosperous companies.

This trend continued through the Bush 1 Administration, but then, alas and alack, American voters sent Bill Clinton, a Democrat, off to the White House.

Keeping to the sacred tradition of Democrats, he raised taxes, as usual targeting the rich.

Before the end of his second term (he was actually reelected, go figure!), we were plunged into recession. The unemployment rate soared, businesses struggling to stay afloat transferred record amounts of their production to outsourced labor pools and after Algore, Clinton's Veep, lost the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, the newly elected President engendered massive tax cuts.

Naturally the Democrats, dismayed that Americans were being permitted to keep more of their earnings, mounted yet another of their innumerable bumper-sticker friendly campaigns -- "The Republicans have given tax cuts to the rich, screwing the poor as always!"

That was worth, at the very least, a good chuckle, since every American taxpayer was entitled to the cuts. The Democrats somehow managed, once realizing that they really couldn't produce any low income working folks who were being either neglected or recieving the fid, cited poor people on welfare and other premature social security venues who weren't benefiting from the tax cuts, the fact that these people didn't pay any income tax to begin with notwithstanding... they actually forced the government to give something "back" to these noncontributors as well.

Meanwhile, the tax cuts enabled corporate America and smaller business people to use the "surplus" equity to expand existing business and create new enterprises.

The result has been a major rebound in our economy and a serious decrease in the unemployment rate that is still adjusting downward. America is again flourishing!

But let's not be too confident, friends, okay? We still haven't had this year's elections, so we don't actually know where we stand.

We're pretty confident about holding a Republican majority in the Senate, but there has been a lot of negative conjecture regarding the House majority after 7 November. Personally, I believe we'll hold our majority there, as well, though we'll have a few less seats.

But...

Should the Democrats gain a majority in the House Of Representatives, they will raise taxes, and you can bet your bottom dollar, assuming you still have one, that the late 1990s recession will return even more quickly than it went away.

Of course, the Democrats will find a way to blame Bush....

Posted by Seth at 04:27 PM | Comments (29) |

October 20, 2005

Sheeple

Walter Williams has a pretty on-point column going in today's JWR about a nation of sheeple.

The column's about the way we, as Americans, have been gradually ceding the guardianship of our rights to the very elements they are supposed to protect us against.

...In the name of safety, we've undergone decades of softening up to accept just about any government edict that our predecessors would have found offensive. Let's look at some of it.

The anti-smoking movement might be the beginning of the softening up process. They started out calling for reasonable actions like no-smoking sections on airplanes. Then it progressed to no smoking on airplanes altogether, then private establishments such as restaurants and businesses. Emboldened by the timidity of smokers, in some jurisdictions there are ordinances banning smoking in outdoor places such as beaches and parks. Then there are seatbelt and helmet laws that have sometimes been zealously enforced through the use of night vision goggles. On top of this, Americans accept government edicts on where your child may ride in your car. Americans sheepishly accepted all sorts of Transportation Security Administration nonsense. In the name of security, we've allowed fingernail clippers, eyeglass screwdrivers and toy soldiers to be taken from us prior to boarding a plane.

Yeah, I know what he's talking about. Micromanagement by government does kind of suck, it goes against the grain of the Constitution and the American way of life as a whole. It would, however, be just fine in a socialist country or San Francisco.

The article began with reference to President Bush's proposal for using the military as a primary disaster management entity and the author's belief{mine as well} that the Posse Comitatus Act serves a positive purpose toward preventing the federal government using the Armed Forces for domestic police duties.

In my opinion, the only reason the Administration has been so quick to volunteer our military thusly is that they are overreacting to all the undeserved flack they took in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, panicking when there's no reason to panic. At least there wouldn't be if the current batch of Republicans(you know, the majority?) could be counted on to support their president instead of appeasing the Democrats at every turn.

But I digress, an ongoing problem I have.

It is quite true that we've been "taking it sitting down" while we allow our politicians to run amok, pretty much controlling our lives and circumstances through the incremental introduction of increasingly invasive and restrictive laws. The majority of Americans have become lazy in that they don't look over their elected officials' shoulders from time to time to learn the details of these people's voting agendas.

We've accepted federal intrusion in our financial privacy through the Bank Secrecy Act. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, says, "More than 99.999 percent of those [who] had their privacy invaded were law-abiding citizens going about their own personal financial business." Most recently there's the U.S. Supreme Court Kelo decision, where the court held that local governments can take a private person's house and turn it over to another private person. Politicians have learned and become comfortable with the fact that today's Americans will docilely accept just about any legalized restraint on their behavior.

He weighs in on a time when Americans reacted quite differently to government infringement on their freedom.
You say, "Hey, Williams, but it's the law!" In the late-1700s, the British Parliament enacted the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts, and imposed other grievances that are enumerated in our Declaration of Independence. I'm happy that we didn't have today's Americans around at the time to bow before King George III and say, "It's the law." Respectful of the Posse Comitatus Act, President Bush has suggested that he'll ask Congress to amend the law to allow for the use of the U.S. military to enforce regional quarantines. Whether Congress amends the law or not, Bush has no constitutional authority to deploy military troops across the land. Why?

Give the entire column a read, it's surely food for thought.

Posted by Seth at 06:20 PM |

October 18, 2005

Tomorrow's Derelicts Today

You see them in most big cities, but I've never seen nearly as many of these tragedies in the making anyplace else as I have here in San Francisco.

They are young people between the ages of perhaps sixteen and twenty six and generally come in one of three "looks": frayed Gothic wannabe, often completely concealed within a mire of tattoos and face-pierce jewelry, "wish it was still the late Sixties" hippie wannabe and "wish this was ten years before I was born" punk wannabe.

Here in the liberals' Mecca, they are to be found sitting along the sidewalks on Market Street, giving the appearance of being in their own living rooms, often entertaining their street colleagues, eating, getting high, panhandling and bumming cigarettes, or doing the same thing up in Haight Ashbury. They leave the trappings of any meals or liquid party materials right there on the sidewalk when they get up to leave, because the local socialist attitude has indoctrinated them into the mindset that everybody else is their mother and father.

While in most cities, purely in the interests of what former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani used to call maintaining "quality of life," charges such as mendicancy , obstructing the sidewalk and littering(as a ticket) would be among those applied by arresting officers on the beat. In San Francisco, however, these young people enjoy two benefits, one being that they are accorded the "human right" to be both eyesore and irritant without hindrance, the other that the jails here are well beyond being merely overcrowded and the locals are much too worshipful of their real estate bubble to want to "waste" valuable land on anything as unprofitable as detention facilities.

So here we have these kids who sit there, stay stoned and drunk and produce nothing, not only for others, but for themselves.

To digress briefly, mostly for any younger readers who weren't around back in the 1960s and 1970s, back then, before the Internet and its provision of easy access to information, before the tidal wave of immigration brought on by lifted quotas, before living costs spiralled out of control as they have in many cities and before the workplace again became an employer's market, there was a lot of elbow room for young people who wanted to be lazy and utterly nonproductive for a few years. Getting a job, even one in a corporate environment, was a piece of cake.

You looked in the employment section of the newspaper{what we once called the "want ads" and where there were always scores of job openings of every description, hungry to be filled}, found some jobs you liked the sound of, made some calls on your rotary dial telephone, put on a suit -- there was this respect thing back in the day, you see -- went down, filled out this sheet of paper called an "application", resumes were nice, but not as necessary as they are today for most jobs, got interviewed a few minutes later and, if the interviewer liked what he/she "saw", you were working within a couple of days. And you were "in", you could work hard and build up a track record qualifying you for better paying jobs with other firms, or a strong future with the one you were at. You could leave and then rejoin "the establishment" at will.

Back then, let's say you took home $125.00 a week. You could easily find a nice one bedroom apartment renting for $175.00 a month and cover your telephone and utility bills, buy food, hygiene items, clothes and other necessities and maintain a modest social life. There were no ISPs, cellular phone or cable companies sending any bills, until HBO arrived on the scene nearer the end of the era than the beginning.

Back to today: No way! Ours has become an unforgiving society where the marketplace is concerned, because there's simply too much competition for every job and a prospective employer can afford to discard job candidates for a paucity of cause. Lengthy gaps in employment histories are examined, and references are thoroughly checked. Many employers even want credit references these days. People want to review resumes before they schedule interviews. It's a whole new ball game.

So we've got those young people on the street out there, trying to enjoy a kind of lifestyle that ran its course before they were born, paying no attention to the consequences they will face when they suddenly wake up in their late twenties, looking to straighten their lives out.

A fortunate few will make out, but most of them will be the aging homeless of an even less forgiving tomorrow, among them the idiots who think it's cool to have tattoos on their faces.

One of those guys who wear all black, much in need of washing, sport too many tats and use their faces for open-air jewelry boxes whom I estimated at about twenty three years of age, asked me for "a dollar" a few years ago.

"Why don't you get a job?" I asked.

"I'm lazy." He replied with a smirk.

"Good for you." I said and kept on walking. Asshat!

When he's "catching his rattling last breath with deep sea diver sounds"{a little Tull, there} on a filthy length of sidewalk someplace in another twenty someodd years, I hope he still remembers how to smirk.

The socialist political environment in a liberal city, where the ACLU rules the roost, enables these clueless doomed "children" to rejoice, unencumbered, in their quest to become the next generation of derelict lifers -- the homeless, after all, are a large cash crop for liberal interests. The more, the merrier.

Posted by Seth at 02:56 AM | Comments (2) |

September 03, 2005

The End Of A Perfect Day

So Claire took me to a neat Brazilian place for dinner called Fogo de Chao, a dream come true for a carnivore like myself. I mean, they keep bringing on the meats....  That place rates a zillion yum-stars from me and another half million for  themselves.  That is, beyond any iota of doubt, a place to have dinner. Satisfying in an extreme, an eatery to get down on ones knees and be thankful for. Yummmmmmmmmmmm!

We came back to my hotel for a couple of drinks at the bar and a couple more in my suite, then I put her in a cab and sent her home. Many, seeing her, would wipe the drool from their lips and demand to know why "things" didn't go further, and my answer would be that sometimes friendships are more valuable than intimate relationships.

I learned that the hard way(no pun intended) when I had a fling with a woman I'd grown up with in a near brother-sister relationship. We had a lot of fun and excitement for a couple of weeks, then had differences that cost us our friendship for several years.  Unlike some, I learn from my mistakes.

Tomorrow,{actually, later today} I have some interesting things to do of a casual nature, and will blog on them.

Posted by Seth at 06:16 AM | Comments (2) |

August 15, 2005

Party Differences

I believe that one of the things that divides the left from the right in this country can be summed up using this old adage:

Give a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day.

Teach a man to fish, you'll feed him for life.

The Democrats, who have shown themselves to be more cosmetically oriented, would fall into the first category of belief. "The problem's been dealt with for today, we'll worry about it some more tomorrow when it comes back. At least we can tell the voters we've addressed it." Another benefit: The guy will have to depend on the Democrats, forever, if he wants his daily fish.

The bottom line, of course, will be that the government will have to buy fish every day to feed the man, and eventually the amount of money spent on fish will leave a dent in the federal coffers. No sweat, they can recover the expenditure by raising taxes. Yahoooo!

The Republicans, on the other hand, are easily in the second category. "Let's solve the problem once and for all, and move on."

The guy is catching his own fish now, he's self sufficient: He doesn't depend on the government to feed him. He can be proud that he is standing on his own two feet, and thanks to the money the government is saving on fish, they don't need to raise taxes-- "Heck, we can even cut 'em some more!"

But the simile doesn't stop there, apply it to the Global War On Terror, including our presence and our activities in Iraq.

The left, true to form, is again thinking in the now, American soldiers are dying, get them out of there! Iraq was none of our business, no WMD, Saddam didn't bomb the WTC, blah, blah, blah...

The right is, as usual, thinking long term.

I completely agreed with George Bush when he said that the best way to bring about world peace is to spread democracy, because in democracies such things as education and opportunity become available to everyone, not just the inner circle of a king, royal family or dictator. People who had given up all hope of ever having a good life are suddenly face to face with the possibility of realizing their dreams because they have a say in how their country is run. In Iraq, school attendance has multiplied exponentially, the people are elated as they exercise the freedom of speech they'd previously only heard rumors about and they are enthusiastically doing their parts to make their country prosper for the good of all. By remaining in Iraq and helping them as we are, we are giving them the opportunity to establish a working democracy rather than another Taliban or a group of warring religious factions. We need to stay the course, remain in Iraq until they are completely able to both defend and govern themselves as a nation.

The easiest young people to recruit as terrorists/suicide bombers are those who have little or nothing to look forward to, anyway. They live miserable existences and are bombarded with hatred and talk of jihad by their spiritual leaders.

If young Mohammed is doing well, his future looking bright,  how likely is he to throw it all away to blow himself up along with a few people he's never met?

And in democracy exists the opportunity for the exchange of ideas, for people to have better access to the foundations of one anothers' beliefs. They talk, they debate, and tell me, with the odd exception of some psychotic like Timothy McVeigh or Unibomber, how often do we free people in democratic countries blow one another up over our political differences? I can't say I've never met a liberal I didn't develop a nasty urge to snatch up by the neck and... but I don't, we talk, we don't, whatever, but we don't kill each other.

The GWOT could conceivably go on forever, in fact we could eventually become prisoners of our own security measures as attacks increase, the terrorist armies ever growing.

Or  we take the only realistic course of action to prevent that: eliminate their recruitment pool. The only way to do that is to spread democracy in the region that spawns terrorists, which is what we are doing. The deaths of a few soldiers now, as tragic as it may be, can well spare the lives of hundreds, more likely thousands of times as many American civilians over the long haul, and that is what a military force is for.

Once again,

Democrats: Short term, cosmetic solutions.

Republicans: Long term, tangible solutions.  

Sounds about right to me...

Posted by Seth at 11:07 PM | Comments (6) |

August 14, 2005

Conservatives' Difficulties With Roberts

Okay, so the man George Bush has nominated to replace Sandra Day O'Connor in the Court has previously been instrumental, on a pro bono basis, in the winning of a gay rights case at the Supreme Court(Romer vs Evans), and we now hear that he also did some work for Playboy, in their winning a case in 1999 vs the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

These are both liberal causes. 

So Judge Roberts' nomination is now getting flak from the right.

The way I see it, we have two factions on this side of the aisle(the starboard side, of course). One consists of those who believe that, since we hold a no-nonsense majority in the Senate, we should put forth a hard core right winger ala Bob Dole and battle the left tooth and nail to get him/her approved. The other consists of those who are satisfied that Roberts will do the right thing(pun intended), and would prefer to see him confirmed without a dog and pony show from the left that might drag on for months, or longer.

John, as he did with many clients at the firm, was available for advice from time to time,” Corn-Revere told HUMAN EVENTS. “In this case, he helped with moot courts in preparing me for oral argument in the case at the Supreme Court.”

Corn-Revere, who left Hogan & Hartson in 2003 and is now a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine, said he worked with Roberts on at least two Federal Communications Commission cases during their time at Hogan & Hartson.

“I never had a sense that John’s work for any clients necessarily represented his own personal views,” Corn-Revere said. “He was being a professional and he was helping out colleagues.” He added, “Just like others in the firm, he was generally available for advice if something came up in his field.”

The liberals are already performing their "he's a Bush nominee and therefore he's evil" number without any real evidence that there's anything wrong with the nominee from the left's perspective, but that's the liberals; Over the last few years, they've gotten over such hang-ups as self respect and personal pride and don't mind looking stupid in front of the rest of the country. I seriously doubt that the Bush Administration will offer them a second nominee with gay rights and porn cases in his/her resume, so what's their problem? Do they simply want to fight?

The conservatives who are criticising the nomination based on the two cases mentioned above(in neither case did he actually address the Court, he mainly helped behind the scenes as a sort of coach for those who did) should take a couple of things into account:

Judge Roberts is, first and foremost, an attorney. A dedicated lawyer(excluding those who work for the ACLU or make themselves rich by victimizing hospitals and other institutions gratuitously-- hmmm, why does John Edwards suddenly come to mind?) believes that every case deserves the best legal representation it can get, on both sides.

 As far as his politics go, those demanding to examine documents from his Justice Department years provide as glowing an endorsement from a conservative point of view as we can hope for.

Speaking for myself, I'm behind the Roberts nomination all the way, and I believe it to be in the best interests of the entire country, with the exception of a small but loud minority of limited-agenda liberals, an unavoidable, gnat-like irritant we must live with.

Posted by Seth at 10:48 AM |

June 28, 2005

Man And The Environment: A Bible- Based Perspective

In today's Jewish World Review there's an interesting piece by Dennis Prager called The case for Judeo-Christian values: Without man, the environment is insignificant. 

Based on the Story of Creation, Mr. Prager's premise is that the environment, like all else that God created on the first 5 days, was put there for the use and enjoyment of man, who arrived on Day 6.

One major conflict between the Judeo-Christian value system and the various secular ones competing with it revolves around these questions: Is nature created for man or is man merely a part of nature? Or, to put it in other words, does the natural environment have any significance without man to appreciate it and to use it for his own good?

The Judeo-Christian responses are clear: Nature has been created for man's use; and on its own, without man, it has no meaning.

Dolphins are adorable because human beings find them adorable. Without people to appreciate them or the role they play in the earth's ecosystem to enable human life, they are no more adorable or meaningful than a rock on Pluto.

That is the point of the creation story --- everything was made in order to prepare the way for the creation of man(and woman, for those whose college education leads themto confuse the generic "man" with "male"). G-d declared each day's creation "good," but declared the sixth day's creation of man "very good."

Critics find three biblical notions about nature unacceptable: that man shall lord over it; that it was created solely for man and therefore has no intrinsic value; and that it is not sacred.

Go ahead and read the whole thing. If you are one of those liberals devoted to the atheist left's War On God or one o' them thar environmentalists it will probably piss you off, but who cares? I believe in God and it really irritates me that there are assholes in my country who are trying to legislate and sue every last vestige of Judeo-Christian belief out of existence while demanding that Muslims' religious beliefs are indulged to their tiniest whim.

Yeah, that's right, man rules nature, he's not its equal, according to The Book the left so detests. The environment is there for man. Go cry in your tofu, then learn to live with it.

Does this mean that the biblical view of nature gives man the right to pollute the earth or to abuse animals? Absolutely not. Abusing animals is forbidden in the Torah:

The ban on eating the limb of a living animal, the ban on placing two animals of different sizes on the same yoke and the ban on working animals seven days a week are just a few examples. To cause gratuitous suffering to an animal is a grave sin. As for polluting the earth, this, too, is religiously prohibited. If the purpose of nature is to ennoble human life and bear witness to G-d's magnificence, by what understanding of this concept can a religious person defend polluting nature?

We are indeed to be responsible stewards of nature, but for our sake, not its. 

Posted by Seth at 10:36 PM |

June 12, 2005

Medical MJ Issue Update

Last Monday I posted about the Supreme Court's ruling that it is okay for the DEA to bust medical marijuana patients.

Fox News, on their online video page, reports that the DEA has said it will not actively pursue medical marijuana patients, but focus its efforts on serious traffickers of nonprescribed marijuana. Fox news videos do not possess their own linkable URLs, but this report is presently on the page, which changes from day to day.

Go to the right sidebar, click on Only On Fox, then on Smoked Out? Here is the link to the page.

I have seen stories about the Court's ruling and surrounding issues in several MSM venues, but none seem to have mentioned the above development, probably because it's in the liberal interest to keep the folks concerned mad at the Bush Administration for as long as possible.

I know, the Supremes that ruled against medical marijuana were the liberals, those that dissented the conservatives, but you'll see: It'll somehow become Bush's fault, as always.

There's also a good take on the issue by Daniel Henninger in The Wall Street Journal Online.

Marijuana!

Supreme Court Just Says No

The Supreme Court's liberal bloc -- Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter and Breyer -- ensured Monday with the support of Justices Kennedy and Scalia that people sick from cancer treatment will have to think first about a house call from the federal drug police before using marijuana to treat their symptoms. Even the Court's language was unfeeling: "The case comes down to the claim that a locally cultivated product that is used domestically rather than sold on the open market is not subject to federal regulation. Given the...undisputed magnitude of the commercial market for marijuana, Wickard and its progeny foreclose that claim."

Liberalism to cancer patients: Drop dead.

Read the entire column. 

Posted by Seth at 07:27 PM |

June 06, 2005

Supreme Micromanagement vs States' Rights

Although I am pretty right wing by most people's standards, there are a few issues upon which my views differ from those of many of my fellow conservatives, and in this instance I think the Supreme Court has given its blessing to the guv'mint to interfere in affairs that should be left to the discretion of individual states.

Court Rules Against Pot for Sick People

Washington (AP) - Federal authorities may prosecute sick people whose doctors prescribe marijuana to ease pain, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, concluding that state laws don't protect users from a federal ban on the drug.

The decision is a stinging defeat for marijuana advocates who had successfully pushed 10 states to allow the drug's use to treat various illnesses.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana.

In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that states should be allowed to set their own rules.

Interestingly enough, O'Connor was joined in her dissent by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas. Liberals take note: Medical marijuana is a liberal issue and there's Clarence Thomas, the accomplished black man whom you demean, for his conservatism, as a traitor to his "people", coming down on your side of the equation. Try and find some spin to put on that!

I am totally on the dissenters' side in this.

Living in San Francisco and socializing with a lot of people here, I've gotten to know quite a few people who have medical marijuana prescriptions. These are people with severely painful, permanent internal disorders, AIDS and other ailments whose agonies are either relieved or minimized by smoking marijuana. It really, truly helps them and while it is profoundly less expensive than some of the pharmaceuticals they would otherwise have to take, many at the taxpayer's expense, it also works better than many of those prescription drugs and doesn't feature the harsh side effects that are associated with most pharmaceuticals.

I truly cannot understand why the folks on my side of the aisle are continuing to be so damned boneheaded about this.  

There is no interstate trafficking in California's medical marijuana program, all the legal herb sold here is grown in California and it is illegal to transport it out of the state for commercial purposes. People can also grow plants at home for their personal medical use, and a great many do because it's cheaper than buying by weight. Seeds and young marijuana plants are sold at many of the "weed shops"(my own term).

In short, as long as a state keeps its legal sweet leaf (think Black Sabbath here, with Ozzie on their album Master Of Reality) industry entirely within its borders, the federal government should allow that state to make its own determinations regarding marijuana laws and their enforcement.

That would leave a whole lot more ATF assets free to go after the heroin, crystal & crack cocaine, oxycontin and methamphetamine traffickers who constitute the real threats by purveying addictive products that destroy families, ruin lives and create violent street crime.

In my honest opinion, the government is wasting millions of dollars in man hours(ooops! This is San Francisco, so it's person hours) and logistics fighting the sale, use and possession of a product that will inevitably be decriminalized, at the very least, within the next few years as members of more recent generations replace the older politicians in the Senate. 

"The states' core police powers have always included authority to define criminal law and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens," said O'Connor.... 

Right on!

Posted by Seth at 07:31 PM |

June 02, 2005

A "Spot-On" Column

In today's N.Y. Times, the paper known 99% of the time or thereabouts for butt munching Old Europe while extolling their superiority to the U.S. under a GOP administration, there is a column by David Brooks titled Fear and Rejection that expresses the opinion that American liberals are, once again, being proved wrong. How? By failing to perceive that their goals for the United States have already been tested over time in Western Europe and found to be seriously lacking in favorable results.

Read the column here.

"The Western European standard of living is about a third lower than the American standard of living, and it's sliding. European output per capita is less than 46 of the 50 American states and about on par with Arkansas. There is little prospect of robust growth returning any time soon."

"Once it was plausible to argue that the European quality of life made up for the economic underperformance, but those arguments look more and more strained, in part because demographic trends make even the current conditions unsustainable. Europe's population is aging and shrinking. By 2040, the European median age will be around 50. Nearly a third of the population will be over 65. Public spending on retirees will have to grow by a third, sending Europe into a spiral of higher taxes and less growth."

And the above is what the liberals want for the rest of us? Our so-called "cultural elite", with all their self proclaimed intellectual superiority, are as dumb as the proverbial box of rocks. Even confronted with the truth glaring out of the reality that is the example set by today's Western Europe, they are determined to lead us down their Utopian trail to economic and cultural disaster.

The references made by the columnist to the Western European median age, by 2040, of 50 with one third of the population being 65, while not cited in the piece, are a result of a severe decrease in child births in the last couple of decades. Younger generations are having less babies, and less babies means less future taxpayers to support them when they retire, and it stands to reason that this, in turn, means that in order to take care of the old folks a few short decades from now, the thinned down working generation of that time will have to be taxed almost to starvation.

Do we really need to be there tomorrow, just so a few "cultural elite" jackasses can score some political victories today?   

Posted by Seth at 11:19 PM |