Politically Homeless ... and Loving It

So we come to the second half of 2009. The Obama administration has been in power for over half a year. The economy is in the tank. the Democrats are in control of all 3 branches of government, as well as continuing their solid lock on higher education and the mainstream media.

In my home state, both parties are completely at a loss as to how to properly govern. This is really nothing new, but we now have the pleasant experience of seeing our former, indicted governor hawking his book all over the place, and his wife appearing on a reality TV show. We have the second stupidest Senator in the land, now that Minnesota has confirmed the stupidest senator.

Eight years ago, the greatest military in the world was sent to right some wrongs, and rid the world of some extremely dangerous and evil people. If the troops on the ground, and the local commanders had been given free reign by the Bush administration back then, we wouldn't have troops on the ground in the middle east right now, and no one would be concerned with the Taliban, or Bin Laden. Both would be dead. But the lessons of Vietnam were not properly learned. The politicians back home pulled their punches and we are left now in an unwinnable position in Iraq, and a winnable, but much harder position in Afghanistan.

As the father of a US Army soldier-in-training, it bothers me a great deal what the current administration is going to do. As Obama has discovered, his promise of pulling out of Iraq as quickly as he promised just isn't going to happen. We are doing it better in Afghanistan, but this administration, just like the previous one, will not commit the kind of resources needed to really get it done. Nor will they, like the previous administration, take on the Pakistani home base of the Taliban. 

It also scares me that we will not use the techniques we need to produce intelligence that will keep my son and many other sons from walking into traps. 

Immigration is a problem that no one wants to touch. Building walls is no good. The United States was built on the backs of hard-working immigrants, who understood that this was their new home, and considered it a privilege to become an American, without leaving behind the culture and religion that makes them unique, strong parts of the world stage. Amnesty is no good. All that will do is encourage more of the layabouts and criminal elements in the illegal immigrant sub-society. I don't have any answers, but my observations from where I live is that the Hispanic immigrants, both legal and illegal are among the hardest working people. The biggest constituency of the Welfare State are the blacks and whites.

The US Government is rapidly becoming a Socialist state. They have already gone a long way to nationalizing ALL major industries. 

So where am I in the Label Game. There is no doubt that I am Right of center. I am in favor of our efforts to crush totalitarian regimes that foster hatred of freedom, while teaching people how they can own their own lives. I am against abortion in every circumstance, except where it is the inevitable result of efforts needed to save the mother so she can care for her other children. Rape and Incest are very nearly always the wrong reasons for abortion, because they are often covered up by the abortion. I am not in favor of criminalizing the woman involved, because she is also a victim of the Hatred of Life society we have allowed to develop. Nor am I in favor of roadside protests displaying explicit photographs. No one is in any doubt as to what abortion is. The question is what Life means to us.

It sounds like I'm pretty far to the right, right?

Here is where it gets a little complicated for me. I am in favor of the legalization of marijuana. Regulate like alcohol, tax the snot out of it, and crank up the penalties for any sort of driving or other activities under the influence. One strike and you lose the privilege of driving. Forever.

For a long time I was in favor of the death penalty. I am not, any longer, because while I believe that some crimes deserve no lesser punishment, our system is broken. Justice is not as blind as we like to think. I am now firmly of the opinion that the state has the right to execute capital criminals, but should refrain from exercising that right in almost every case.

I'm pretty neutral on gambling and prostitution. As long as children are not involved, and it's kept off the streets, I'm not in favor of either expansion or additional crackdowns.

Free trade and immigration get fuzzy for me. I'm not a big fan of labor unions, but I'm also very interested in Fair Trade and other mechanisms for subverting the virtual slavery that exists in emerging markets because of large multi-national companies. 

We need to get off of oil, soon. But not because of some Doom and Gloom Global Warming or 'Peak Oil'  hogwash. The science is just not convincing. The economic and political reasons are much more convincing. The sooner we can get practical, cheap electric vehicles, the sooner we can stop writing checks to the eternally unstable Middle East. In the mean time, we drill in all the places we can get to without having to bow and scrape, which means more Gulf Coast and More North Slope drilling.

I am in favor of free-range and organic farming methods. I think it's better for all of us to eat better. But I am also in favor of continued research and development of GM foods. The fact is, GM foods require less natural resources and less chemical pesticides. While I'm in this  particular area, I am not in favor of growing corn for ethanol. It's a losing propsition, and we would do better turning that corn into food for export. The United States has the ability to feed the entire world with the farmland we still have. It's criminal that we aren't doing it better, and GM crops need to be a part of that.

When it comes to diplomacy, both the talking and shooting kind, we need to listen more, talk less, and be very clear at all times what we expect from other nations. If it should become necessary to start shooting, we go in fast, hard, and we do not stop until the job is completely done. We have the best trained, best equipped military in the history of the world. Our politicians, from both the major parties have shown time and time again that they haven't the stomache to actually win a war. Truman understood this, when he ordered the atomic bombs on Japan. The loss of life in an instant was regrettable. But the eventual loss of life, on both sides, would have been far higher if the war had been allowed to continue as it was. 

The second Iraq war, that is still ongoing would not have been needed if we had gone to Bagdad during Desert Storm. We had the resources then to finish the job, save many Iraqi lives that have been loss since, and we would have ended up with a stable Iraq, and possibly a World Trade Center still standing.

Since that didn't happen, the second Iraq war became inevitable, and, again, we did it half-assed. In Afghanistan, we didn't go in with nearly enough force at the beginning. If we had, we would have crushed the Taliban, and bin Laden while we still had the chance. 

I've got a bunch of stuff yet to go, mostly dealing with the current domestic situation. That is for another post.