Bring Back Judging!

I love Adam Carolla. Between him and Greg Gutfeld, FOX News has almost cornered the market on sapient social commentary.

Last night on The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly invited Carolla to "talk directly to" Orlando Shaw, a deadbeat father of 22. Here's the segment:

I quite agree, except it wasn’t just some idiot; there were a lot of idiots—and even some smarter but nonetheless misguided fools—who convinced the lot of us that it was wrong to "judge" people.

 

Yes, Jesus did say, "Judge not, that ye be not judged," but I don’t read this as an admonition not to judge others; it's an admonition against hypocrisy. There are many circumstances under which it’s entirely appropriate for human beings to sit in judgment of others. How else could we have trial by jury?

 

I also think Carolla was too kind about the use of a Denver boot as a chastity belt. If it were up to me, then I’d see that Mr. Shaw undergo an orchiectomy. I would much rather my tax dollars pay for that than to take care of his indigent brood. (I’d pay for the costs of the operation, but if Orlando wants to anesthetized, then he’ll have to pay for that himself.) Then I'd put him in a work camp so he could begin to pay off his debt. If at some point he is able to secure gainful employment, then he might be released from his forced servitude, and we could simply garnish his wages.

 

Carolla is right that "we need to bring back judging." Every time in my life that I've heard someone say, "Don't you judge me," or "How dare you judge me!" or something similar, it was said by someone who clearly didn't want to take responsibility for his/her actions. If we refuse to judge those who are in the wrong, then they either won't realize the error of their ways or they will, but they'll have no impetus to change.

 

But, remember the words of Jesus. Worry about the mote in your own eye before you go around concerning yourself with the motes in others' eyes. And, to all the Orlando Shaws out there, as my mother would say, "If you can't feed 'em, then don't breed 'em!"

Richard Nixon at 100

(AP Photo)

 

My apologies to our readers for not posting anything in a while. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been spending between 90 and 95% of my waking hours either studying for the bar exam or searching for a full-time job in the Obama economy. sportsfan is recovering from watching his beloved Fighting Irish get their asses handed to them in the BCS Championship, and the rest of our contributors have various excuses (some very compelling) for not wasting their time on blogging.

 

Still, I couldn't let such a significant occasion pass without acknowledging the man who would have been 100 years old today.

 

Perhaps no U.S. president has had a more mixed record than Richard Milhous Nixon. His achievements included re-opening relations with China, France and Egypt, ending U.S. involvement in Vietnam (and the draft), and lowering the federal voting age to 18. But then there were the scandals. Oh, the scandals.

 

Nixon fit the classic definition of a Greek tragic hero: a great man with a tragic character flaw that brought about his downfall. In his case, it was paranoia. That paranoia drove him to plant listening devices around the White House during his presidency and five members of his re-election campaign to break into the DNC headquarters at the Watergate complex on an apparently ham-handed investigatory mission. What the White House originally dismissed as a "third-rate burglary" ultimately led to an unprecedented (and, to date, unrepeated) event: our president's term cut short, not by death, but by his own resignation.

The Watergate scandal alone would have been enough to indelibly tarnish Nixon's legacy, but his administration also suffered the taint of corruption from the activities of his vice president, Spiro Agnew, who turned out to have been on the take since his days as Baltimore County Executive. in October of 1973, less than a year prior to Nixon's departure, Agnew pled nolo contendere (no contest) to a charge of federal income tax evasion and resigned his office.

Even as scandal brought down his second-in-command and other scandals threatened to prematurely end his presidency, Nixon never let up in his efforts to further American interests abroad. After making good on his promise to withdraw all U.S. troops from Vietnam, he met repeatedly with then-Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev, their last meeting taking place while former White House counsel and unabashed weasel John Dean was spinning tales as fast as he could to the Watergate Committee in a desperate attempt to save his own skin. Negotiations between the two leaders (known as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, or SALT) led to the signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 1972.

Per Nixon's directive, the U.S. provided vital support to Israel during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. He visited Cairo in June of 1974 and agreed to provide Egypt with nuclear technology. Not long after that, the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment related to the Watergate cover-up. Before the House of Representatives could vote to impeach him, Nixon released transcripts of tape recordings that implicated him in the cover-up and announced his resignation.

Even after leaving office, he remained an authoritative voice on international affairs. President Clinton even reportedly sought his advice, and the New York Times (which seemed to never have a kind word for Nixon when he was alive) acknowledged, "The former President was always strongest writing about foreign policy." He continued to visit foreign countries and meet with world leaders, and he wrote prolifically. (His memoir RN was okay, but if you really want to get a handle on the man's world view and/or mental processes, then Six Crises and The Real War are both worth a read, and I've read good things about Beyond Peace.)

I can remember learning of his death in 1994. I was in first grade; as I left school, I stood under the flagpole gazing at Old Glory. It's my earliest memory of seeing a flag flown at half-mast.

One day not long after that, while rooting through my parents’ closet looking for a box of monies (you know, like every kid does at one point or another), I found a shoebox full of political memorabilia. My father and grandmother had collected it over the years. There were buttons from every presidential campaign from 1900 to 1972, many of them bearing Nixon’s name. It turns out the '68 campaign was the first one my father had been involved in. He told me how he and his best friend David would stand out in front of my grandmother’s house, near the road, with a big NIXON sign, and passing motorists would honk or smile or shout at them (Every once in a while, someone would stick his head out the window and shout, “Vote for George!”—i.e., George Wallace, the Alabama governor and defender of segregation who ran for president in '68 on a states’ rights platform.) Nixon, of course, won the 1968 election but narrowly lost Texas. We still have the issue of the Star-Telegram from the morning after Election Day with the headline “NIXON IS ELECTED PRESIDENT.”

Dad wasn't the only active Nixon supporter in my lineage. Years before my folks ever met, my other grandmother served as precinct chair for Nixon's re-election campaign in 1972. Like many Nixon supporters, she was bemused by the scandals that unfolded so soon after an incredible victory she and thousands of others had worked fervently to ensure.

"All I got out of it was a red face and a letter from John Wayne," she later told me. (The Duke had supported Nixon in all three of his presidential bids and apparently sent letters to those who worked on the campaign, thanking them for their work.)

As a child, I idolized Nixon. Not because of my family, but because of what I learned about the man through my own research. Certainly, Nixon did a lot of things to warrant admiration, even by those who never knew him personally. His ascendancy to the vice-presidency was one of the fastest in U.S. history; after returning home from World War II, during which he had served in the Navy, Nixon was elected to Congress in 1946. While his role in the Alger Hiss investigation arguably stood out as the most salient highlight of his time in the House of Representatives, he also helped write the Taft-Hartley Act (a.k.a. The Labor Management Relations Act of 1947), which passed over President Truman's veto. During his second term in the House, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. His support for civil rights and opposition to price controls, illegal immigration and public power, along with his erudite speeches warning of the threat of "global Communism" endeared him to many conservatives, and in 1952, the Republican National Convention nominated the 39-year-old freshman senator to run for vice president on the ticket with Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower and Nixon won in a landslide--twice--even carrying several states in the "solid South" (including Texas, Tennessee, Florida and Virginia). 

 

As vice president, Nixon honed his already keen foreign policy credentials, touring dozens of countries and chairing National Security Council meetings in the president's absence. On a trip to Moscow in 1959, he challenged Khrushchev during their infamous "kitchen debate," bluntly telling the Communist leader, "You don't know everything." 

 

Nixon held the distinction of losing the closest presidential election in U.S. history and winning a presidential election by the biggest landslide in U.S. history. His successful 1968 campaign, waged eight years after a devastatingly close loss to JFK and six years after losing his bid for governor of California, remains one of the great political comebacks of all time. He's the only person to be twice elected vice president and twice elected president of the United States.

My appreciation of his work wasn't ideological, either. Domestically, Nixon could not be called a conservative, not in any sense of the word. He expanded the size of the federal government, signing into law legislation that created, inter alia, the EPA, EEOC, OSHA, CBO and FHLMC (better known as "Freddie Mac"). As part of his "New Federalism" agenda, he proposed a new welfare program that would have guaranteed a minimum payment to all needy American households, regardless of work ethic. He also put in place wage and price controls and took the U.S. off the gold standard. He cut some taxes but raised others, including the capital-gains rate. His administration commenced affirmative action, though arguably at a time when institutional racism was far more widespread in the U.S. than it is today. The federal revenue-sharing program, under which the federal government shares its tax revnues with local governments, also began under Nixon, so every time you see/hear some worthless politician wailing about how spending cuts will mean fewer teachers/police officers/firemen, they're probably lying, but their mendacity is facilitated by one of President Nixon's policies.

His policy mistakes aside, Nixon was a brilliant and hardworking man who made some bad choices. Nothing he is known to have done, however, is/was bad enough to justify ignoring all of his good deeds in damnatio memoriae. Count me as a fan who believes his accomplishments were far greater than his transgressions.

To some, Nixon will always be a villain, but he was certainly a hell of a lot better president than the one we have now.

One Reason NOT To Check My E-mail Every Five Minutes

I've gotten burned before for being less than diligent about checking my inbox, but something happened on election night that made me glad I wasn't furiously refreshing my e-mail as often as I was the live election results from the Ohio and Colorado Secretaries' of State web sites. At 8:04 p.m. (according to the time stamp on the message), an email with the following subject appeared in my Yahoo! Mail inbox: 

WSJ NEWS ALERT: Romney Wins Michigan

The error wasn't limited to the subject line, either; the message read, in part: "Mitt Romney wins Michigan, the Associated Press reports." Of course, Mitt Romney did not win Michigan, and the AP did not project that he had. This message was followed by another at 8:10 with the subject, "WSJ NEWS ALERT: CORRECTION: Obama Wins Michigan".

I won't fault the Wall Street Journal for this mistake, but I hope there weren't too many Romney supporters who were made to feel false (if temporary) joy and crushing disappointment because of it.

Not Your Typical Saturday

This was an emotionally draining day.

This afternoon we laid my grandmother to rest. She went to be with Jesus last Sunday, and I traveled to Arlington yesterday for the visitation and funeral. My mother wanted me to speak at the service. A series of her friends and relatives spoke; I opened and closed. It was my first formal eulogy. I was very pleased with the turnout; that little chapel was packed. It was also the first time I was a pallbearer. After the service, we held a reception at this nice place in southwest Arlington called the Ventana Grille. Nearly all of the relatives who came to the funeral showed up, which really meant a lot, especially since some of them had to drive all the way back to Houston that evening. I myself had to drive back to Waco, where I learned that Robert Griffin III had won the Heisman Trophy. Now that was exciting. No Baylor footballer had ever won the Heisman before. Naturally, I and the rest of the Baylor Nation were very excited.

There's a tie-in here: my maternal grandfather and his brother attended Baylor back in the '40s. I didn't learn this until I had started college, but I think that my grandparents came down here while I was an undergrad. I was glad to have the chance to walk around the campus with my grandfather, especially since after he succumbed to Alzheimer's disease and died in 2008. His deterioration and death were a terrible blow to my Grammy, who was already dealing with serious health problems of her own. They had been married for over 55 years. She was never the same after Papa died. That was three and a half years ago. Now they are together again.

It's always appropriate to grieve after the loss of a loved one, but in the case of both my maternal grandparents, the worst tragedy was watching them decline and not being able to do anything about it. While I mourn the loss of my Grammy, we are all happy that she has been reborn and will spend eternity with her sweetheart in the kingdom of God.

I Don't Understand What Happened to This Post.

The Right-Wing Genius in Washington, D.C.

Adrift in a Sea of Left-Wing Crazy Talk

Today, I made a stupid mistake. I visited RealClearPolitics.com. It was the first time I had done this in a while, and I'm deeply ashamed of myself. This is not to say I regret it; RealClearPolitics is a great site and an excellent fix for political junkies, newsmongers and dataphiles. (I made that last word up.) Yet, therein lies the biggest problem it poses. If you're like me, then you've visited RCP in the past hoping to find one or two opinion/analysis/editorial pieces on a salient issue and maybe spend 20 to 30 minutes total on the whole endeavor before returning to your work. Sometimes it works out that way, but sometimes you get pulled down a rabbit hole and wind up sifting through site after site, article after article, wasting hours of time that you'll never get back. By the time you're satisfied, all you can do is cut your losses and try to avoid making the same mistake in the future. Such was the case with me on many occasions; I had finally resisted the urge to visit RCP for so long that I thought I could check out the site without falling into the same trap that I had so many times in the past. When I tried to do that earlier today, however, it didn't quite work out that way. One click led to another, and I soon found myself adrift in a sea of left-wing crazy talk.

I decided to write this blog post to call attention to two particularly ridiculous pieces of nonsense by well-respected (in left-wing circles) commentators. The first was a blurb by UC Berkeley professor and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. It was entitled “How to create (lousy) jobs.” (Somehow, before I even read the piece, I knew it was about Rick Perry and Texas.) The sub-head read, “Rick Perry has spurred job growth in Texas by driving out unions and effectively lowering wages.” Now, I’m not sure whether Reich wrote that or the site editors at Salon put it in, but it’s just B.S. What’s more, Reich admits in the first paragraph of his article that “governors have as much influence over job growth in their states as roosters do over sunrises.” So, how exactly can Perry be “driving out unions and effectively lowering wages”? Reich doesn’t say. Instead, he rattles off a series of talking points, making specious assertions without offerring any hard-core data to back them up. Then he gets to the crux of his argument: when "governors try hard enough," he says, "they can create lots of lousy jobs. They can drive out unions, attract low-wage immigrants, and turn a blind eye to businesses that fail to protect worker health and safety."

Reich adds:

Rick Perry seems to have done exactly this. While Texas leads the nation in job growth, a majority of Texas's workforce is paid hourly wages rather than salaries. And the median hourly wage there was $11.20, compared to the national median of $12.50 an hour.

First off, if you're not counting benefits, then $11.20 an hour is pretty good money for someone just starting out, especially if you don't have more than a high-school education. Second, Reich neglects to mention that Texas is one of the youngest states in the U.S. (only Utah has a lower median age), which explains our relatively low median wage. In his eagerness to dump on the Lone Star State, Reich neglected to carefully edit his piece and let a positive fact or two slip. For example, he mentions that Texas "has the lowest percentage of workers without health insurance."

Reich then goes off on a tangent, bashing supply-side economics and conservatives in general. The only other part of his post that I want to call attention to is this paragraph:

Besides, how can lower incomes possibly be an answer to America's economic problem? Lower incomes mean less overall demand for goods and services -- which translates into even fewer jobs and even lower wages.

First of all, that's only true if everyone's incomes are lower, meaning total income, and with it, overall demand, is down. However, until recently, household gross income had been growing steadily in the United States. Second, Reich purports to be concerned about American jobs and wages, but while higher incomes translate into more consumption, they don't necessarily translate into more consumption of domestic goods. As a former Secretary of Labor, Reich should have known this.

The second little gem I wanted to critique here was Jonathan Capehart's latest column for the Washington Post. It was entitled, "Obama’s fight — for respect." After listing a series of what he perceives as House Speaker John Boehner's slights at President Obama, Capehart offers this analysis:

When George W. Bush was president, harsh things were said all the time by congressional Democrats and their leaders. Some even crossed the line. Yet, while there was disdain for the man in the Oval Office, respect for the office itself was never in doubt. I seriously worry that it’s in doubt now among some Republicans. Each petty slight by Boehner is one more chip away at respect for the presidency.

First off, to say that some Democrats "crossed the line" with their attacks on George W. Bush is, I think, a supreme understatement. Secondly, WHAT?!? So the intense, hyperbolic vitriol heaped on the last president (not to mention his family, his party and virtually every member of his administration) never evinced a lack of "respect for the office" of president, but earnest, understandable and (in my opinion) legitamite criticism of the current preisdent's policies and behavior does?

Capehart then showed us just how deep his hero worship of BHO runs. According to him, Obama "is bigger than most of us. So the petty slights that get a lot of us riled up probably don’t register to him. He’s a thinker and plotter with his eyes on the prize down the road, not the daily hysteria taking place on the road to get there."

Assuming Capehart is expressing his true feelings and not just trying to be inflammatory or provocative, I think he's kidding himself. Either that or he's incredibly oblivious to the manner in which this president has conducted himself. Ever since he took office, Obama's proven himself to be immature, vindictive and thin-skinned. I'll spare you all a long list of examples, partly because I think any reasonable, detached observer would draw the same conclusion. I contacted Mr. Capehart to see if he could explain his puzzling statements. If he responds, then I will be sure to update this post accordingly.

The Web is replete on any given day with similar examples of left-wing drivel that I could criticize, which is why I try generally to avoid venturing on to any "gateway" site that could lead to the sort of time-consuming endeavor that ate up much of my afternoon and evening today.

Going Postal

I got a package yesterday. Now, when I say I "got" a package, I don't mean that someone came to my apartment and delivered it to me. I mean that I drove to the Post Office and retrieved it. See, last month I ordered several books online for my courses this fall. I received all but one of them in short order. That one book was finally shipped out on Saturday, August 27, according to the tracking history I pulled up online. it apparently went to a "Fedex Smartpost" in Dallas. From there, it was supposedly shipped to Waco on the morning of August 29th (last Monday). Pretty quick. Trouble is, I didn't know any of this until yesterday when I still hadn't received my package and tried to track it online. (I had previously tried to track it online but couldn't because it had not yet been shipped.) The latest entry on the Tracking History said "Delivery attempted" at 04:05:00 PM on August 29, 2011. There's a couple of problems with that: first, I was home at 4:05 p.m. on Monday afternoon, and I didn't hear anyone knock on my door then. Second, even if they tried to deliver the package to me, why didn't they try to deliver it again or at least contact me to let me know they had my package? Then I noticed that the "ship carrier" was USPS. Suddenly I was not surprised.

A lot of people have plenty of bad things to say about the Post Office, and I don't want to waste my time attacking such an easy target. I never intended to use this blog to vent my frustrations, and I'm not going to start doing that now. What I did find interesting is that the Postal Service has been in the news a lot lately, and it's not good news.

It's no secret that the U.S. Postal Service has turned into a money pit. It's been operating at a loss for several years now. In March, a spokesperson said USPS would cut 7,500 jobs and close seven district offices and 2,000 post offices by March 2012. Then, in July, we learned that as many as 3,700 offices could be on the chopping block. Now comes the news that the Service will default on an upcoming $5.5 billion payment for future employee health-care costs. Earlier today, Postmaster Gen. Patrick Donahoe urged Congress to take swift action to save the 219-year-old agency, saying that "radical changes" will be necessary to stabilize the tightly regulated service.

Some members of Congress are way ahead of him. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who chairs the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee, is pushing a plan that would create a commission to recommend office closures, allow for five-day delivery and make other changes.

The real problem, as is so often the case with government, is that the Postal Service has made promises it can't afford to keep. Current union contracts prohibit layoffs. How can anybody run an efficient operation when their employees know they can't be fired?