Say Anything Blog

I’ve got your appeasement right here.

Talking with the enemy…what’s next?

About Wall Street and the credit crisis that is. My favourite line:

One truth, that deregulation is sometimes a good thing, has been followed down so long and winding a road that it has led to an immense lie: that deregulation carried to an extreme will not lead to calamity.

If Ben Stein understands this then there really isn’t any excuse for thoughtful observers not to get it. As little regulation as possible but enough to ensure fairness and stability. It is sometimes necessary to restrain human greed, not to save people from themselves but to ensure that those people don’t muck it up for the rest of us.

Stein’s piece is here.

I was glancing around Tony Zirkle’s website today and was pleasantly surprised to find the rich collection of links to an assortment of wacky and zany sites. For the uninitiated, Tony is running for Congress in Indiana and is currently in the news due to an appearance at the National Socialist Workers Party’s celebration of Hitler’s birthday.

Tony likely has less than a snowball’s chance in hell of seeing the inside of Congress in any capacity other than that of tourist as his views don’t represent more than an insignificant blemish on the American body politic. That said, if you’re a sucker for oddballs with odd ideas who link to odd sites, and I certainly am, then you could do much worse than checking him out.

Today’s Globe and Mail quotes Jimmy Carter as saying that Hamas is prepared to accept the right of Israel to “live as a neighbour next door in peace.” This would be very good news if true and once again demonstrates the importance of talking with enemies and even hugging them when circumstances warrant.

Recognising most readers’ distaste for Hamas and the even greater sense of aversion for Jimmy Carter, I expect that this news will only please about three or four of us SA regulars. Nevertheless, I’m hoping that Carter’s impressions are accurate and that Hamas will be engaged in dialogue sooner rather than later.

I got a chuckle about the earmark that was sneaked into a bill after the House of Representatives had voted to approve it and before it was sent to the President for signing. Balkinization has the story and some thoughts.

Why is the President telling ABC News that there have been times when he believed the mission in Iraq was failing? Why should we believe that he knows more about conditions in Iraq than Fred Kagan and Michael Yon and likwidshoe?

Seriously…why would he say that stuff now?

No, Who’s on second…WTF is on first.

So, just so that we’re clear on this.  We are building an army full of people who are still getting pension payments from an organization that the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.  And we are basing our entire future in Iraq on that army.

Read it at American Footprints. Take notes…there might be a quiz later.

Flying penguins. I missed this one on April 1.

I see that John Yoo’s memo of 2003 which provides the legal justification for the use of torture in times of war has been released. I haven’t read it yet but I have been following Marty Lederman’s posts at Balkinization as he commences his review. This quote absolutely floored me and I can’t believe that the memo actually supports it but I really would like to get it off my chest.

Here’s the remarkable thing: Page 11 of the Opinion states that “[t]he Criminal Division concurs in our conclusion that these canons of construction preclude the application of the assault, maiming, interstate stalking, and torture statutes to the military during the conduct of a war.”

In other words, John Yoo checked with the Criminal Division as to whether the military could torture and maim detainees in a war, and that Division, which ordinarily strongly resists narrowing constructions of criminal statutes, agreed that the torture and maiming (and other) statutes were inapplicable.

The head of the Criminal Division at the time was Michael Chertoff (now Secretary of Homeland Security). Nine days before the memo was issued, President Bush nominated Chertoff, like Bybee, to be a federal judge on a U.S. Court of Appeals.

I have two observations. First, if this is an accurate accounting of the memo then anyone who claims that America does not or did not employ torture is terribly naive or a fool. Second, if the circumstances surrounding certain Administration appointments are accurately portrayed then anyone who claims that the Bush Administration has not engaged in cynical manipulation and hackery of the highest quality is naive or a fool.

If Lederman’s analysis turns out to be wrong then I will be quick to slap up a mea culpa and engage in ritual self-humiliation, the level of which has been never before seen on SA.

If Lederman is right, I will probably vomit.

A survey of Chief Financial Officers reveals that 54% of them believe America is in recession. Do they share a common purpose with the Democrats and the MSM or are they merely useful idiots?

This may go deeper than any of us thought.

I just had to share this most excellent Balloon Juice post from Tim F which says almost exactly what I think. Since the conclusions drawn are completely opposite to what I read at SA, I knew I had to bring it to your attention.

Read and disagree vehemently but the truth of it is so obvious to me that I sometimes think many of the comments I read here are intended to pull my leg…of course I know they aren’t but it really goes to show how differently people view the world.

This is what I like…direct and to the point.

h/t The Agitator

I’m all for efficiency but you’d think that counting all of the votes would be more sensible. Very curious.

Doubt cast on allegations against Omar Khadr is a headline in yesterday’s Globe and Mail and the story appears to confirm the fears of those who question justice Gitmo style. Khadr is clearly no saint but did he kill American soldiers as alleged in his military trial? It’s hard to come to an informed conclusion when germane evidence is not revealed although when facts are released accidentally then one can seriously entertain some doubt.

I don’t know if he did it or not but it appears to me that the system in place is not be capable of determining guilt or innocence either. That is a shame and it doesn’t serve American interests very well.