Category Archives: morality

Hypocrisy

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Here is a 2008 exchange between Candidate Barack Obama (D) and the Boston Globe concerning the US’ use of force against Iran’s nuclear facilities [emphasis added]:

Globe: In what circumstances, if any, would the president have constitutional authority to bomb Iran without seeking a use-of-force authorization from Congress? (Specifically, what about the strategic bombing of suspected nuclear sites—a situation that does not involve stopping an IMMINENT threat?)

Obama: The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
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As for the specific question about bombing suspected nuclear sites, I recently introduced SJ Res 23, which states in part that “any offensive military action taken by the United States against Iran must be explicitly authorized by Congress.”

In the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing earlier this week concerning US intervention in Syria, Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) offered this amendment to the draft authorization bill being debated:

It is the sense of the Senate that the President does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

Paul’s amendment was voted down 14-4, with all 10 Democrats present voting against.

Apparently, the President does have that power, so long as he’s from the politically correct party.

Who’s Actually Repaying Federal Loans?

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Here’s one example.

Under the 2008 Farm Bill, the United States Department of Agriculture is required to buy sugars like refined beet sugar and sell it to ethanol producers if the sugar producers are, in the opinion of the USDA, likely to default on certain Federal loans (this requirement is unchanged by the current Farm Bill modifications wending their way through Congress).

You read that right: the Feds loan sugar producers money, then the Feds buy the producers’ output so the producers can repay the loans.  Federal money—which is to say, our money sent to the Feds as taxes—is loaned to sugar producers in support of an ethanol program that no one wants.  Then, when repaying those loans becomes inconvenient, or even impossible, more of our (tax) money is used to buy the borrowers’ output, providing them with the funds with which to pay up.  The borrowers, courtesy of…Uncle Sugar…use (our) purchase money to pay us back.  We’re screwed two times in one deal.

But wait—there’s more.  In one illustrative case,

[t]he USDA paid about $3.6 million for the sugar, which it purchased from Western Sugar Cooperative, a sugar-beet processor based in Denver, according to a notice posted on the agency’s website Friday.  Front Range Energy LLC, a Windsor, CO-based ethanol maker, paid $900,000 for the sugar, according to the USDA notice.

We’re screwed a third time.

And that’s the purpose:

By buying the sugar, the USDA aims to boost prices to a level where sugar processors will be able to repay $298 million in outstanding federal loans that come due at the end of August and September.

It really is just this barefaced.

It’s Circular

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Allison Benedikt, over at Slate, wrote this:

You are a bad person if you send your children to private school.  Not bad like murderer bad—but bad like ruining-one-of-our-nation’s-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what’s-best-for-your-kid bad.  So, pretty bad.

And this:

[I]t seems to me that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve.  This would not happen immediately.  It could take generations.  Your children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good.

Plainly, given her demonstrated ability to think, she must be a product of just such a public school education.

Oh, wait—proudly so:

I went K-12 to a terrible public school.  My high school didn’t offer AP classes, and in four years, I only had to read one book.

It just doesn’t get any clearer than this.

Playing With Guns

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…in this case, just another version of Obamatalk.  Here’s President Barack Obama’s latest [emphasis added]:

If we are saying in a clear and decisive but very limited way, we send a shot across the bow saying, ‘stop doing this,’ that can have a positive impact on our national security over the long term[.]

“Shot across the bow,” indeed.  Another example of avoiding doing anything of substance, but rather of satisfying himself with “sound and fury.”

Despite his ego telling him otherwise, no one in the world takes him seriously.  But his playing-with-guns ego trip will kill people.

Responsibility

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First, there was “It’s all Bush’s fault.”

Then there was “The situation is much worse than we thought.”

Then there was “It’s those obstructionist Republicans.”

Then there was “What difference, at this time, does it make?”

Then it metastasized, and he drew a red line: “Movement of chemical weapons is a red line.”

Then it was “We have to evaluate the data.”

Then it was “We’re still weighing the situation.”

Now our Secretary of YachtingState John Kerry, doing is level best to sound like what he thinks a statesman sounds like, says of al Assad’s use of chemical weapons on his own people last week,

 What is before us today is real, and it is compelling.

Now it’s two things: Obama’s red line was about movement, not actual use.  And it’s

…the international community must respond to the use of chemical weapons.

Responsibility.  This administration should try accepting some.