Wise Up, Suckers
The Suburban Ecstasies has a really great post entitled: Twenty Incontrovertible Truths About the American Criminal Justice System, From Someone Who Knows and Has No Interest in Lying to You About It.
You should read it even if you are not a law student or lawyer. You should read it because it’s chock full of things you should know and understand as an American (or know and understand about America for my worldly readers).
[Via ambivalent imbroglio]
Okay, it might seem like all I do is react to articles that Ernie the Attorney posts, but I swear, I’m not picking on him!
Today, he offers this tidbit and calls the press attitude towards Kerry’s speech “inane”. Well, he’s wrong. And as sometimes Democrat registered as a Republican who mostly votes Libertarian, I’ll tell you why.
Kerry’s speech was monumentally significant. Not because it was a great speech; Barak Obama stole the show on that count. Kerry is simply not a very dynamic public speaker. And not because it was brilliantly written. It did have some political double-speak and typical non-specific, non-committal policy points. What political speech these days doesn’t? (Save Al Sharpton and Barak Obama.) However, it was significantly better than any speech he’s given to date. And that is important. It’s also important that the speech did contain enough meat to make me feel okay about voting for him. In fact, that was critical; that is why it was monumentally significant.
The Democratic Party faces a real challenge with Kerry. To be honest, I didn’t support him in the primary and when it became clear that he was the nominee, I had the attitude far too many voters seem to have today: “Well, at least he’s not Bush!” Frankly, that’s a horrible way to feel about the person you are considering casting your vote for as the President of the United States. As voters, we want dynamic leaders, with vision, who stand for clear ideals and who we hope will be able to implement at least some of those ideals. And here we are, the nation’s “liberals”, ready to vote for “Not the Incumbent”. That sucks.
With his speech, Kerry may not have hit a home run, but it was a solid base hit. Kerry never inspired me, but before that speech, I honestly didn’t like him. And now, I do like him. Do I think he’s a great speaker? No. Do I think he would make a good president? Yes. Do I think he’s going to be Lincoln meets FDR and lead America to dominate the solar system? Well, no. But give me a break. Very, and I mean very, few politicians inspire like that today. I can’t think of a candidate since I’ve been alive who inspires like that.
I’m pretty representative of the average American voter. I’m a middle class Mid-Westerner, raised Christian (don’t practice much) fiscally conservative, socially liberal. Before, I was just voting against George Bush. Now, I’m voting for Kerry. If the power of one speech at one event can do that in today’s cynical world, I think that’s pretty monumental.
The New York Times has an article about Creekstone Farms. Creekstone had a very lucrative business selling premium beef to the Japanese market. Their business took a nose-dive after the case of U.S. mad cow.
Creekstone struck a deal with their Japanese client?le: they agreed to test all of their cows for mad cow, and the Japanese agreed to start buying their beef again. Now, the USDA has prohibited Creekstone from performing the tests! The USDA is claiming that it will set a bad precedent and that as a result, other US producers will have to start testing all their beef too (god forbid).
So, here we have a government agency, bowing to pressure from the beef lobby to stop a private business from voluntarily increasing their safety standards.
Unbelievable.
Meet Dudley Hiibel. He’s a 59 year old cowboy who owns a small ranch outside of Winnemucca, Nevada. He lives a simple life, but he’s his own man. You probably never would have heard of Dudley Hiibel if it weren’t for his belief in the U.S. Constitution.
One balmy May evening back in 2000, Dudley was standing around minding his own business when all of a sudden, a policeman pulled-up and demanded that Dudley produce his ID. Dudley, having done nothing wrong, declined. He was arrested and charged with “failure to cooperate” for refusing to show ID on demand. And it’s all on video.
On the 22nd of March 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether Dudley and the rest of us live in a free society, or in a country where we must show “the papers” whenever a cop demands them.
[Via Boing Boing]
Copyright © 2013 David Gulbransen · All Rights Reserved