The Washington Post on Cheney, Part 2

Here is the second part of the WaPost Article on Cheney:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/a_strong_push_from_back_stage/index.html

I know I said I wasn't going to be updating as regularly, but I don't want to lose any regular readers I might have gained, and I have a few minutes, so...

I found this article deficient in the ways that the first installment was, but not nearly as bad. I think the basic problem the Post has is that they want to be perceived as objective, but if they wrote an objective piece on Cheney it would come off as a hack-job because the guy is so fucking evil.

Or maybe I'm just reading the article as a free pass because the things they are saying aren't a surprise to me. Looking at their narrative, it is actually a rather stark description of a Vice-President seeking to expand his power by deceiving anyone he has to, including the President. It's just that I already knew that was Cheney's MO. It's like a guy in prison for murder, and then somebody tries to shock me by telling me that he shot a guy. It's like, yeah, I get it, the guy's a killer. Tell me something I don't know.

Also, the article really hasn't dealt with a lot of the newer stuff about Cheney, and that's the stuff that I find the most problematic and absurd. I mean, compared with the transparently, flagrantly dishonest shit he's trying to pull now, the "I'm not part of the Executive Branch thing, all the stuff he's done as a run-up to that seems tame.

As a side note, I heard something really insightful on Hardball last night about that whole affair. I think it was David Gregory who said "Cheney is just trying to run a delay right now. He knows how much longer he has in office, and if he can stall with these ridiculous tactics for that long, he can do whatever he wants until he leave office." Great point. Cheney may indeed be the Anti-Christ.

Back to the article: One thing I did find really interesting was their blow-by-blow description of how Cheney got his way on the specifics of Bush's 2003 Tax Cuts. First, he screwed Greenspan (Chairman of the fed and most respected economist in the country) out of getting his say by placating him and then discrediting his evidence. Then, when Bush didn't want to include the capitol gains break that Cheney wanted, Cheney pitched the idea directly to members of the relevant House committee, had them put it in the bill, then went back and told the President that he had to give in to get the bill passed. Asshole.

So overall this profile has been a disappointment so far. Hopefully they'll get more into the meat tomorrow. I'll make sure to blog again at that point.

Voting and sympathy for the poor

I just had a two-hour argument with my roomates about welfare (and by welfare we were talking about a host of social security and other programs in this country designed to benefit the poor) in this country, in which I argued that not that many people get on welfare who don't need it, that welfare fraud doesn't cost taxpayers that much money, and that it is money well spent since people kicked off welfare would likely turn to crime, and it costs much more money to incarcerate someone than it does to just cut them a check every month.

Now, I believe in all those points. I believe that people on Welfare by and large don't want to be on it, and that they would get jobs if they could find jobs that paid a living wage and that they could execute. Many of them are mentally ill, or just plain stupid and illiterate. I have a lot of sympathy for such people. Not in the least because many of them came from families trapped in cyclical poverty, without any reasonable parents or guardians.

But there is one thing about poor people that pisses me off, and I'm not just talking about people on welfare. It pisses me off about black people, poor people, and a host of other groups that legitimately complain that they get the shaft in this country: They don't vote.

Less than half this country votes even in the most important elections. The national elections that determine much of this country's policy every four years, and its really the middle and upper classes, and old people, that determine the outcome of those polls.

And even among groups that do vote, and I'm thinking here of poor religous people, many don't vote in their actual interests. They vote on three social issues: Abortion Rights, Gay Marriage, and Stem Cell Research. So they vote Republican, even though on EVERY SINGLE OTHER ISSUE, they should be voting Democrat.

If every single person in this country voted, and voted according to what was actually in their overall interests, this country would experience a sea change overnight. We would take a gigantic leap to the left (although I hate even making left/right distinctions), and the politicians could finally stop pandering to a small group that actually votes and has all the money.

My point isn't that I hate poor people. It's not even that poor people need to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps" or some bullshit like that. It's just that voting is free. It costs nothing. It's hardly even an effort. So I get sick of defending people who are too apathetic even to do that.