Category: Politics 2005
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Squeezed
For me the last day of the year is a day to take stock of my financial universe. If I wasn’t feeling the pain of most middle income Americans before, after I got through looking at the details of my family’s personal situation I do now. Our upper middle class family is being squeezed too.…
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The Meaning of the Law
Back in May, I asked the question “Why do we have governments?” As I said back then, the answer was not rocket science. After disclosures this week that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless electronic eavesdropping on American citizens, not just once, but apparently thirty times since 9/11, I have to…
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You broke it, you own it
Earth to George W. Bush: no one made you invade Iraq. Rather you chose to invade Iraq. You broke it, so you own it. Stop trying to shift the responsibility to the American people. Yes, it is true that Congress did authorize you to use force against Saddam Hussein, but only if you thought it…
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The Unfair FAIR Act
Because I guess the federal government does not have enough to do, it is time to throw a little fear, uncertainty and doubt at my agency. The Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act, or the FAIR Act for short, requires the government to examine every position with a fine toothcomb to determine if a federal position…
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Clueless
If politics is theater then the last two days have been a lot like the movie Clueless. The American public has turned decisively and irrevocably against the war in Iraq. The American people know this war is lost and it is borne out in countless polls. Yet with a few exceptions, nobody in the White…
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The chickens have come home to roost, at last
Occam’s Razor likes to peer into the future. Sometimes I get it right, and sometimes I get it wrong. Overall though my ability to prognosticate is good. After all not many like me were predicting prior to our war in Iraq that it would turn into the insurgency that it did. My timing can be…
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Daylight Savings Time: Too Much of a Good Thing?
It is that time again. It is time to rollback our clocks an hour. Standard time resumes for much of the country at 2 AM tonight. I will do my part by gleefully enjoying my extra hour and setting our clocks back an hour before I retire. Some entries back I pondered the nature of…
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Bush’s Biggest Mistake
I know what you are thinking: Bush’s biggest mistake was invading Iraq. After all the war has cost at least $250 billion, the lives of over 2000 American soldiers and likely at least 10,000 Iraqi lives. Even the Bush Administration admits the intelligence it used to justify the war was flawed. What could be a…
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New Thinking Needed on Child Support
A comment left on my Red vs. Blue: Myth vs. Reality entry a couple weeks ago got me thinking. Our child support laws and procedures need a major overhaul. They are not working very well. Scofflaws aside, pretty much all of us would agree that those who choose to have sex that results in a…
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Red vs. Blue: Myth vs. Reality
This diary on DailyKos got me thinking, and then it sent me Googling. It posits a number of theses, but the general thrust of the arguments is that things are better overall in blue states. It also suggests that the family values so espoused in red states are not as widely practiced in blue states.…
Occam's Razor 