I LIKE Cheney

I had a bunch of other posts in the works---all saved as drafts, so you'll see them soon enough. But today, my attention was completely caught in Dick Cheney's speech. This, my friends, is a good man with a bad name. There is no need for me to go into all of the terrible things people have said about him. He was one of the most universally hated men in this country for the last several years. On my own campus, BYU in UTAH (the only all-red state in the Union), there was an enraged outcry and protests when he was selected as the commencement speaker at graduation.

But say what you will about Dick Cheney, he does not care what people think about him. He speaks his mind more straightforwardly than any other politician I know of, and is less afraid of the consequences when people disagree with what he has to say. This total disregard for the opinions of other is actually the single strongest evidence that he's honest. I feel like I'm getting to know one of the only adults in politics.

So, you can find the entire transcript of the speech here, and I cannot recommend strongly enough that you read the entire thing. This is one of those rare speeches to which every American should be exposed. This is NON-PARTISAN stuff. Sure, Republicans are going to mostly agree with it, and Democrats are going to mostly be enraged by it, but it is not playing to any political base. Cheney is Cheney. Most people don't like him and he doesn't care.

These are some excerpts--I share them not to give you the most important highlights of the speech, but to try to convince you to read the whole thing:

When President Obama makes wise decisions, as I believe he has done in some respects on Afghanistan, and in reversing his plan to release incendiary photos, he deserves our support. And when he faults or mischaracterizes the national security decisions we made in the Bush years, he deserves an answer. The point is not to look backward. Now and for years to come, a lot rides on our President’s understanding of the security policies that preceded him. And whatever choices he makes concerning the defense of this country, those choices should not be based on slogans and campaign rhetoric, but on a truthful telling of history.

...

So we’re left to draw one of two conclusions – and here is the great dividing line in our current debate over national security. You can look at the facts and conclude that the comprehensive strategy has worked, and therefore needs to be continued as vigilantly as ever. Or you can look at the same set of facts and conclude that 9/11 was a one-off event – coordinated, devastating, but also unique and not sufficient to justify a sustained wartime effort. Whichever conclusion you arrive at, it will shape your entire view of the last seven years, and of the policies necessary to protect America for years to come.

...

By presidential decision, last month we saw the selective release of documents relating to enhanced interrogations. This is held up as a bold exercise in open government, honoring the public’s right to know. We’re informed, as well, that there was much agonizing over this decision.

Yet somehow, when the soul-searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth. The released memos were carefully redacted to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question. Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release. For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers.

Over on the left wing of the president’s party, there appears to be little curiosity in finding out what was learned from the terrorists. The kind of answers they’re after would be heard before a so-called “Truth Commission.” Some are even demanding that those who recommended and approved the interrogations be prosecuted, in effect treating political disagreements as a punishable offense, and political opponents as criminals. It’s hard to imagine a worse precedent, filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse, than to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessors.

...

In the category of euphemism, the prizewinning entry would be a recent editorial in a familiar newspaper that referred to terrorists we’ve captured as, quote, “abducted.” Here we have ruthless enemies of this country, stopped in their tracks by brave operatives in the service of America, and a major editorial page makes them sound like they were kidnap victims, picked up at random on their way to the movies.

...

The United States of America was a good country before 9/11, just as we are today. List all the things that make us a force for good in the world – for liberty, for human rights, for the rational, peaceful resolution of differences – and what you end up with is a list of the reasons why the terrorists hate America. If fine speech-making, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field. And when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don’t stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along. Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for – our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity.

And there is much, much more.

I Want a Pet Like That

I discovered this animated short today, and I felt compelled to share. It's trippy and very cool. And the sound design is pretty incredible, it being a student film and all.

This one time... from nelson boles on Vimeo.

PS I found it on this blog, which is one that I follow pretty closely.

Congrats, Gov'na

You may have heard that Utah Governor Huntsman has been chosen by Obama to be the new ambassador to China.

I have little time and several thoughts.

First of all, I don't know a lot about Huntsman, but I've heard he's not a bad guy, and a pretty good governor. He might be a little left of where I consider myself to be, but I digress. He's also Mormon, which, naturally, I find palatable.

There are also rumors aplenty that he was set to be the strongest GOP (Grand Old Party, or Republican) candidate for the 2012 presidential run.

Anyway, read this article first. It backs up my first impression, which was that Obama picked him to knock out one of his most dangerous opponents when it comes time to run for reelection. It also makes him look bipartisan--you see, conservatives are supposed to now say, "Oh goody, our dear President has picked one of us for an important position." I'm not buying that angle. But you can decide for yourself...

...after you read this article as well. Some really good thoughts on all this. Regardless of what conclusion you reach about any of it, it's an extremely important development, both politically and internationally.

Do the right thing, Coloradians

I've decided that I like Ryan Frazier. You should watch this video.

BUT FIRST: Several disclaimers. The two hosts are incredibly, obnoxiously annoying. You also have to sit through a 15-30 second commercial. The interview (i.e. the reason I'm asking you to watch this video) doesn't start until about a third of the way through.

OK. Now watch.

Please People Our Planet

This is a very good article. Here is an excerpt that should motivate you to do so:

Population alarmists have long enjoyed the freedom to project their fears onto whatever cause is uppermost in the progressive mind. Then it was war. Today it is the environment, which, we are told, human beings are ruining. This will be shown to have been as false as the earlier warnings, but not before our environmental scares have done much harm to a fragile economy (at the rate things are going with Obama). All previous scares were based on faulty premises, and the latest one, based on “science,” will be no different.

Oh, and an important note about this blog. I'm still debating whether to schedule unpublished posts to be published on Sundays to keep the ball rolling. If you don't see a post on Sunday, it's because I didn't. I typically don't do much of anything online on Sundays anyway. Just an FYI.

The Price of Health Care

You've heard about Universal Health Care. If you're clever, you want it but worry that it cannot be reasonable done. If you're not, you think one of two things:

A: The only reason we don't have it is because the evil capitalists that run the country prevent the government from doing its job and giving it to us.

B: Universal Health Care is just another word for socialism, and the evil liberals are trying to force the country to swallow something it doesn't want.

Them's the extremes.

The real issue is that the way health care runs right now, there are a lot (a LOT) of people that don't have much of a hope of affording it. And insurance companies have raped the system to the point that even people who are paying for coverage get nailed to the wall on a regular basis. We're in a bad way. Not as bad as most other countries, but we're America, and we're justifiably unhappy with the way things are. (If we're not, it's only because we're ignorant and sheltered.)

Democrats with good intentions (which is most of them) are obsessed with the idea of governmental control of the whole health care system. This is due to the mistaken notion that the government is there to solve everybody's problems, but that's another discussion.

So why not? Couldn't the government just take over and make sure sick people get taken care of? It's a nice thought. The permanent obstacle to that idealistic fix is that the government, bless its little heart, CAN NOT AFFORD IT. In a perfect world, we'd all take care of each other, which is what socialized medicine is. But even assuming we live in the kind of world where socialized health care is a viable solution (sadly, we really, really don't), we STILL can't afford it.

But not being able to afford things has long since stopped preventing people from buying things. When the government decides to spend, who pays for it? Taxpayers? Yeah, but we can only fork over so much before we stop being able to feed ourselves. Thankfully, the bureaucratic administration in charge of taxing us still recognizes this inconvenient detail. So then who else? Let's call it the national credit card. Debt pays for it. Sound counter intuitive? It is. It only works because someone, somewhere, sometime, will have to pay for it. And if we've learned anything about debt it's that it grows. It's immovable and all-powerful, and if it grows large enough, it starts destroying things close to it.

Anyway. Read this. It's written by someone who's clever, and it sheds some light on some very important obscurities. These are things we all should know.

Strange Loops

This is a post I wrote two months ago and, it appears, failed to publish. Please delight in the following:

I've been reading (little by very little) Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. It's about...hm. How do I summarize? Well, I've been telling people that it's about the nature and source of sentient intelligence, but I'm not sure how useful that summary is. It'll have to do, I guess. Doug's core argument is that intelligence and/or self-awareness is caused by something called "strange loops," and he goes into extensive detail explaining what he means by that.

Escher, for the uninitiated, was an artist that drew things like neverending staircases, waterfalls that feed themselves, "evolutionary" fractals, and hands that draw themselves out of paper. Gödel was the mathematician that, during his time, broke the brains of all the other mathematicians by sort of inventing the mode of thinking that is necessary to understand "strange loops." And then Bach was possibly the most profoundly brilliant musician ever, and somehow his music directly or indirectly illustrates almost all the principles that Doug feels like talking about.

So I've been reading this book, and then today see this xkcd comic:


There should be a little blurb of text that comes up if you leave your mouse over the image, but if it fails to do so, this is what it says: "If you actually do this, what really happens is Douglas Hofstadter appears and talks to you for eight hours about strange loops." I laughed out loud.

Jon's Gonna Hate Nancy, Too

Nancy Pelosi is a terrible person. Now, I'm not a Democrat, and I'm not a huge fan of the Democratic Party, but even if I was, I would be embarrassed and ashamed of this woman. She's a colossal discredit to the entire Party, and her position as the Speaker of the House of Representatives instills in me a great sense of pity for the House.

On the other hand, I very much like Jon Stewart. He's one of the few remaining liberal comics who's willing to dish out ridicule upon anyone who deserves it, regardless of their political persuasion. He's even laid a couple on Obama, which is essentially sacrilege these days.

And here he is again, proving that humor still matters more than partisan purity--especially on a comedy show. Kudos, Jon.

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Hot: Global Warming

Partisan politics is a perilous environment for actual facts. They tend not to be useful on their own. Anyone using them to push an agenda will not be able to help but massage them a bit to increase their value. I suppose facts, in politics, are like ore. They have to be refined, then sometimes mixed with other things, in order to effectively enter the market of propaganda.

And if the ore can't be refined or altered sufficiently to pay the bills, it's tossed out. So it is with the anti-science debate of Global Warming, which more resembles a popularized religion than a serious scientific issue. Are you a convert? You'd better be--the skeptics are not in favor just about anywhere anymore. It's a rough life for non-believers.

So is our globe warming? Probably. This issue, unfortunately, has been eclipsed by a unilateral condemnation of the perceived culprit: carbon, which also happens to be our most important element. The assumed wisdom is now (and has been for decades) that increased carbon emissions have led and are leading to Global Warming, which will, if left unchecked, surely freeze us to death, burn us to death, dry us out or drown us, depending on which fate seems most terrifying to the public on any given year.

Because carbon has been so successfully made the scapegoat for all our ills, our beloved government has finally gotten itself on the fast track to breaking the economy's spine by, well, outlawing it. How? Everyone is gonna get charged for doing anything that emits carbon. I'm only surprised that we haven't yet been told how many breaths we ought to be taking each minute. Because shoot, if seven billion people are breathing excessively, what is all that extra CO2 doing to our poor atmosphere? I quake.

Anyway, here's an incredibly, incredibly important article to read by a guy who knows a LOT more than pretty much anyone else engaged in this feverish conversation. You are sure to find it deeply enlightening. I don't know how else to emphasize how very much I hope you take the time to read it.

Oh, Politics...

I can't stand this anymore.

I do a lot of reading, and up to now, it's mostly just been for my own benefit. I like to be informed, to however small a degree, of what's going on around me. I live in a country I love, and I want it to stay the safest, strongest, most prosperous, and most philanthropic nation in the world. It's been that way for generations, and I don't want to have to see that change in my lifetime.

Well what can I do? Like I said, I read a lot. I vote. I even went to a rally recently (you've probably heard something about these so-called Tea Parties). But what else?

I've got this blog that I don't use often enough. Ostensibly, it's supposed to touch occasionally on political issues. But I don't feel comfortable or informed enough to put a lot of what I read into my own words, so what to do?

From now on, I will direct anyone who comes here to one post per day about something I think is pertinent. I'm sure I'll include my own commentary most of the time, but perhaps not always. Anyway, you can feel free to read or ignore these posts, but at least be aware that if it gets tacked onto my blog, I think it's important. I promise not to waste your time.

And don't worry, I'll still post movie reviews whenever they're appropriate and/or necessary, and other cool things as they come. There will simply be a whole lot more political blogging going on from my end as well.

For today, please go here. If you've talked politics with me at all, you'll know that my greatest frustration with the government is fiscal irresponsibility--and I'm not talking about minor mismanagement of funds. No, better to think of the government as a 13-yr-old with a no-limit credit card. Anyway, click on that link and read that short post. It's sobering, but also enlightening. And, I should say, sorry for the bad news.

Star Trek!

With an exclamation point, it becomes, in some sense, a musical. Don't ask questions, that's just the way the world works.

Of COURSE I saw it. The only remarkable detail is that I didn't see a midnight showing. You can only stomach so many really late nights. I preferred to be awake and alert on first viewing. Plus, it's cheaper. So perhaps not so remarkable a detail after all.

One thing demands to be said first: I am not a big Star Trek fan, or "Trekkie" as they are sometimes designated. I enjoy several of the films, and grew up watching "The Next Generation" occasionally, so I know who Kirk and Picard are, and the name "Enterprise" comes to mind fairly easily when someone mentions the space ship from the franchise. I even know a little bit about the Borg. But for the most part, I don't subscribe to the notion that much of what has been created within that whole universe is very good.

But it has potential. I DO like science fiction. I'm picky, but I love the good stuff. And most of everything I've seen that has the name "Star Trek" attached to it has been abominably disappointing because it turns out that the artists have eyes that are bigger than their abilities. Their concepts were better than their TV shows or their movies, but oh those concepts....

So we turn to J.J. Abrams, the man who decided to start at square one and rebuild a dying empire. If anyone could pull it off, he could.

And he did it. Oh my word, he did it.

The new film is everything I've always wished a Star Trek movie would be. The action is thrilling and beautiful, the special effects are groundbreakingly good, and the pace is perfect for the story in every single well-crafted scene. And happily accompanying these incomparably high production values, the writing is superb and the characters were brilliantly cast and directed.

This is not only Star Trek at its best (which is to say, as it's never been), this is science fiction at its most thrilling. We got a real space adventure, people! I've rarely ever had SO MUCH FUN in a movie.

If you like action and adventure in your movies, see this one. If you're a sci-fi geek, see it. If you're a Star Trek fan, odds are good that you'll love this latest and greatest installment. If you've never seen a Star Trek movie, and have never cared to, there's still a very good chance you'll have a great time watching this one.

OK, everyone, this summer of blockbusters has officially started.

(PS Wolverine sucked. And that's all I'll ever say.)