Aren Cambre's Blog

CNN promoted the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA on its home page this morning. This is a snap of the page:

Look at the bottom of the bright green sign:

revcom.us is “Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA”. Check out their Wikipedia page; they’re borderline treasonous.

Thanks, CNN!

It’s good conservative policy to oppose pay restrictions, including maximum or minimum wage laws.

But some conservatives also object to TARP salary caps. They are clinging to positions without considering context.

TARP is welfare for terribly-run firms. (I still maintain that chapter 7-style liquidations would have been better in the long run.) These firms got to the precipice of disaster because of incompetent leadership.

What will bad leaders do with cheap taxpayer cash? Line their pockets! What should bad leaders really get? Drastic pay cuts.

So what’s wrong with this salary cap? Nothing. If you got TARP funds, you have to live by reasonable restrictions. If you don’t like these restrictions, then raise capital and pay back the funds.

I am a conservative. I don’t like TARP, but I support its salary caps.

David Nalle, Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus, wrote this in 2008:

The content of the Texas Republican Platform is a telling reflection of how divided the party is and how potentially destructive the most extreme factions are. Yet consideration of political realities renders much of what’s in the platform essentially irrelevant. Most of these extreme positions absolutely cannot make it to the national platform, and local politicians who want to get elected are going to have to ignore many of these resolutions, no matter what provisions are in the platform to try to force them to comply with it. For most Republicans with any political involvement at all, this platform is going to get stuffed in a drawer while they pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s ridiculously indulgent of counterproductive extremism and an embarrassment to a party which wants to have any kind of meaningful political future.

He’s right. Review Better Platform for specific examples of the flawed platform.

With this blog entry, I am publicly unveiling BetterPlatform.org, a movement to reform the Texas Republican Platform.

The 2008 platform is a farce. After removing problem planks, the platform shrinks 70%. That’s a lot of cruft!

Some of the worst planks:

1. Theories of Origin, which calls for replacing science with religious theory.
2. Support of Our Armed Forces, an unfocused grab bag of miscellaneous requests.
3. Emergency War Powers, which alleges the United States is in some overarching state of emergency.
4. Elimination of Executive Orders, which have been used since George Washington to conduct business.
5. Illegal Immigration, which starts with gibberish and prescribes little than punishment and deportation.

I don’t yet know where this movement will go, but it’s started!

The Texas GOP recently rolled out a new web site at http://www.texasgop.org/.

If you surf it, you’ll see asp file extensions. For example: http://www.texasgop.org/inner.asp?z=6

That means the Texas GOP’s runs its brand new site on a kludge CMS!

“Woah, Aren, isn’t that severe?”

No.

ASP’s most recent version is from 1999.

Microsoft replaced it with ASP.Net 1.0 in January 2002. ASP.Net is now on 3.5, and 4.0 is around the corner.

Vendors still delivering classic ASP code in November 2009 have colossally failed to invest or innovate and may be incompetent.

When I review products, those still on ASP start out such a disadvantage that they’ll probably never make the selection.

What is up with the Texas GOP? How did it get hoodwinked into a kludge CMS?

…and it’s right!

New imagery of my front yard, probably from October 2008:

Those are all Republicans.

Google also knows my across-the-street neighbors’ opinions about my signs. Look where they faced their signs. (Hint: Google camera’s straight-on view means they’re not facing drivers!)

Silly liberals!

See the whole scene for yourself. Pan around to see my neighbors.

Consumer Reports shows its liberal hubris in Apple rejection of the Google Voice app slammed by advocates. The mag now faults Apple for not adopting a competitor’s proprietary technology!

Wow, CR, if business and technology is as easy armchair quarterbacking, why aren’t you in the business?

Mark my words: a public option health care plan will someday be the only plan.

Don’t put any faith in today’s Democrat promises. With a few votes and a sympathetic president, future liberals can (and will) alter public option’s scope. With impunity. That is government’s track record:

• Social Security expands: At inception, a 1% tax on the first $3,000 of income funded the system. By 1940, it paid $35 million of benefits. Now it’s a 6.2% tax on the first $102,000 of income and pays $650 billion of benefits. (source)
• Income tax expands: In 1913, when the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified, the income tax was 1% of all earnings over $3,000. Now it is between 10% and 35%, depending on your bracket. (source)
• Even the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation expands: “When the PBGC was created in 1974, Democrats running Congress assured everyone there was no taxpayer risk because the agency would be funded by fees from pension plans, as well as by the assets of plans the company takes over.” “Now the PBGC has a $33.5 billion deficit,” and this is before it is about to take on much of Delphi’s pension, a politically-motivated, union face-saving “second biggest pension bailout in PBGC history.” (source)
• How about those automaker loans? What started in 2008 as large loans is now a giant taxpayer giveaway that just won’t end.

I could fill a whole blog post with expansionism.

Even with current Democrat promises, public option probably starts out with a massive tax subsidy and forced lower payments than what private insurers can negotiate (a la Medicare). It will creep like St. Augustine grass and gradually smother all other options. Future expansionists will just seal this fate.

Don’t get me wrong: the current system is flawed. And Obama is right about a lot of its flaws. But as an expansionist liberal, anything he prescribes is quackery.

Per Frontburner:

…it’s certainly a deterrent for me to walk down one side of the street when I see twenty yards in front of me a gang of menacing-looking thugs approaching from the opposite direction.  I’m most likely to cross the street and avoid the possible confrontation.  … However, if I were told as I walked down that sidewalk (with no thugs in sight) that some number of years after I have walked down the sidewalk, a group of thugs might be called together (after much legal wrangling and automatic appeals, etc.) and might possible menace me for having had the audacity to walk down that sidewalk on their side of the street — I probably wouldn’t be deterred.

This argument applies to any punishment far removed from the crime, including Texas’s silly “Driver Responsibility” fees. They have no deterrent effect, and they are not paying for a service.

This is simply a way that liberals and too many Republicans hide new taxes.

Kim Jong Il, twit extraordinaire

When you’re out of options, you do crazy stuff.

Does this explain North Korea’s missile diplomacy? They backed up implied threats against Hawaii only with mid-range missiles?

Is North Korea angering its best friend? I can’t believe China appreciates pointless destabilizing provocation of its neighbors and trading partners.

I don’t see a logical end. Sure, North Korea’s threats usually rocket past any logical end, but this is a new color of nuttyness.

Is North Korea having an internal struggle? Can freedom-loving nations capitalize on it? Has the media investigated this?