Speaking of Conspiracy Theories

"Stinnett’s book is dedicated to Congressman John Moss, the author of America’s Freedom of Information Act. According to Stinnett, the answers to the mysteries of Pearl Harbor can be found in the extraordinary number of documents he was able to attain through Freedom of Information Act requests. Cable after cable of decryptions, scores of military messages that America was intercepting, clearly showed that Japanese ships were preparing for war and heading straight for Hawaii. Stinnett, an author, journalist, and World War II veteran, spent sixteen years delving into the National Archives. He poured over more than 200,000 documents, and conducted dozens of interviews. This meticulous research led Stinnet to a firmly held conclusion: FDR knew."............This, folks, from the Independent Institute, the subject matter being Robert Stinnett's controversial book, "Day of Deceit"..................................................................................................P.S. I did not want to go here. I DID NOT. But when start throwing shit against the wall, you have to throw it ALL against the wall, not just the stuff that hurts the other fellow's "team".

Harry Truman on Keynesian Economics

"Nobody can ever convince me that government can spend a dollar that it hasn't got."............As if we really needed another reason to like this guy.

My Political Philosophy - The Essential Elements

1) Both sides have good ideas.............2) Neither side has a monopoly on the truth.............3) Compromise (generally speaking, anyway) isn't a dirty word.............4) Open-mindedness is a superior virtue.............5) The capacity to think outside the box is highly valued.............6) Dogma, certitude, and rigid ideology should always be viewed with suspicion.............7) Country is always more important than party.............8) The worshipping of politicians is something that should be avoided.............9) A spade is a spade is a spade (AKA, the importance of moral consistency).............10) Hyperbole and demonization should always be tools of last resort.............11) The stereotyping of others should be avoided.............12) It is not a bad thing to change your mind.............13) It is a very bad thing to change your mind for political expediency.............14) There are ALWAYS unintended consequences and it is NEVER a zero-sum game.............15) You can never be intelligent until you first learn how to doubt....YOURSELF.............16) Only vote the "party-line" when you absolutely have to............. 17) Be a provocateur , not a nuisance.............18) The act of signing a pledge is an act of cowardice.............18) It is rude to shout a person down (yes, even if that person happens to be Ann Coulter, Tammy Bruce, etc.)............. 19) It is wrong to impugn a person's motivation.............20) Try to seek out politicians who aren't afraid to lose (Paul Tsongas in '92, for example).............21) Just as times and circumstances change, so, too, must our ideas. Just because something may have previously worked....

On Why Progressives Apparently Hate Herbert Hoover

Two reasons, basically.............1) An abject level of ignorance on their part as to what type of President that Mr. Hoover truly was; the fact that the dude rang up unprecedented peacetime deficits, initiated a plethora of high-ticket public-works projects (yeah, Rachel Maddow, it's called the HOOVER DAM - hello!), created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, passed/signed into law the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, and, AND, raised the top income tax rate from 25% to 63% - all of these things to fight the Great Depression, all of these things that principled progressives normally endorse (the fellow was a full-bore Keynesian, for Christ).............2) He has an R in front of his name.

It Would Actually Be Funny IF....

So, just how massive has this "vast right-wing conspiracy" gotten? If you listen to the people on the opposite end of the political spectrum (i.e., those on the hard-core/extremist left), you'd probably come to the conclusion that it's gotten humongous. So, who's the latest to be put into this "esteemed" position? Try (and, yes, please, you really need to be sitting for this one) the 1993 Democratic Congress.................................................................................................Yeah, that's right, people, the Democratic Congress is now a part of this evil cabal in that they (supposedly) tried to protect Ronald Reagan from charges that he somehow brokered a deal with Iran that had them not release the hostages until after the 1980 elections (I believe that there was also something about Reagan being the Loch Ness Monster but that one didn't get nearly as far). Never mind that the evidence was full of holes and that a number of the witnesses had apparently committed perjury (this, not according to me but to then chairman, Lee Hamilton - a person of high integrity and with a still spotless record). Nope, none of that seems to matter to these individuals - their hatred of Mr. Reagan that so all-consuming.......................................................................................................P.S. As for their paranoiac insistence that "government investigations" and a free press never lead to anything substantive, they've obviously never heard of Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Alger Hiss, Andrew Johnson, Thomas Dodd, Adam Clayton Powell, Oliver North, Abe Fortas, Frank Brasco, Francis Shoemaker, Albert Fall, Wilbur Mills, John C. McDonald, etc., etc. (hell, folks, even frigging Bill Clinton). I mean, it's kind of like I alluded to in the title there, it would actually be funny IF....

The Forgotten/Compressed Recession

People tend to forget. This country also had a depression in 1920 and 21. And, while, no, it wasn't quite as devastating as the Great Depression of a decade later, it wasn't exactly a walk in the park, either.......................................................................................................Here are some of the numbers, people. The unemployment rate crested at 11.7% in 1921. GNP declined by 6.9%. There was an 18% DEflation rate and a 36.8% drop in wholesale prices. The stock market plummeted by whopping 47% and profits decreased by 75%. Add to that the fact that there was a near tripling of business failures and, yeah, all in all, it was a pretty nasty economic downturn........................................................................................................So, what, pray tell, did the government do in response to it? Well, it basically did two things. a) The Harding administration/Congress slashed Federal spending by a humongous 65%. And b) the Fed RAISED its discount rate to a then record high of 7%. They basically did the exact opposite of FDR, Bush 2, and Obama, in other words.........................................................................................................So, just how successful was this approach? Well, at least according to the unemployment figures, it was extremely successful. The unemployment rates of 1922 and 1923 were 6.7% and 2.4% respectively. Quite a bit different from the rates of the 1930s and today, no?

A Call to Freer Thinking

Throw off the ideological straight-jackets, folks. The country's imploding, and the very last thing that it needs right now is dogma, more dogma, idiots like Sean Hannity and Ed Schultz making total fools out of themselves NIGHTLY, etc.................................................................................................I mean, just take a look at this whole global-warming debate. You got people on one side who say that global-warming doesn't exist, PERIOD, and that the whole thing is nothing but a hoax/fabrication. This, and on the other side, you have people who not only say that it exists but that it represents Armageddon next week (yes, I'm exaggerating), and that we should be spending trillions in order to prevent it. It's (the two silly extremes bickering over it) almost like frigging romper room, for Christ..............................................................................................................And then there's the whole thing with the budget situation. The Simpson-Bowles debt commission AND the Domenici-Rivlin plan have both put forth very credible proposals on reducing the country's burgeoning debt/deficits. But each of these very serious proposals....ARE JUST SITTING THERE. The liberals don't like them because they address the damned Holy Grail; entitlement programs, and the conservatives don't like them because they also have the audacity to address revenues. I mean, it's almost as if the two sides (the Republicans more so, perhaps) are bound and determined to take the country....I don't know, somewhere, and it isn't good.