logic

You may recall the story of Anthony Gruber. In July of this year he was speeding down a highway. An undercover police officer pulled a gun on him to stop him. Gruber was videotaping his joy ride and decided to post the video on YouTube, a decision that ultimately lead to his arrest and being charged for a violation of Maryland’s wiretapping law. Gruber faced up to 16 years if convicted.

Well it turns out common sense has prevailed and a judge has thrown out the wiretapping charges against Gruber, leaving only the moving violations for him to face. In his decision, the judge made perfect sense:

"Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public," the judge wrote. "When we exercise that power in public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation."

Isn’t it a shame that those who enforce the law can’t use the same type of common logic when deciding who to charge and who not to charge?

Everyone has had to see this graph by now. It’s the one put out by Nancy Pelosi’s people.

The blue line is the 1990 recession, red is 2001 and green is current. Just looking at that you start to comprehend the seriousness of the current financial situation.

Now let’s consider this. Republicans attribute the Bush tax cuts to getting us out of the 2001 (red) recession. The estimated cost of those tax cuts is $1.35 trillion. The current stimulus bill is at $800 billion, and even Republicans say it could cost up to a $1 trillion. Now look at that graph again and how much more serious today’s recession is than the 2001 one. See where I’m going? Republicans are complaining that this stimulus costs too much, yet we are much worse off than in 2001 and the bill is actually less.

Like I have been saying all along; the Republicans don’t really want a cure to the current economic problems. They want a way for the economy to remain the same or get worse so that they can hit the campaign trails in a few months saying “see the Democrats are making us hurt”. This is a pure example of putting ideology above country and something we can’t let happen. Hopefully we can get some surrogates out there for the Democrats echoing this message and informing America how the Republicans arguments are not only failing in logic, but also risking putting our nation in a bigger purgatory.

Of course what they are paying attention to is a poll that says McCain leads Obama and Clinton on the issue of Iraq by 14%. They also seem dumbfounded by the results. Really? I'm not.

Here's why McCain is doing good in that part of the poll. The fault lies in the same people who are wondering why - the media. McCain has made numerous gaffs on Iraq in the past few weeks, which would have proven fatal to any Democrat. Instead the media covers them up for John. They dismiss them as "senior moments" or just let's them go unchallenged. It's part of that love fest we have witnessed between McCain and the media, and it's disgusting.

Do you really think McCain would be doing this well on the question of Iraq if the media did their job and reported that McCain doesn't even know who the enemy really is?

Just because he fought in a war doesn't make him commander ready. If we followed that logic then we should expect a President Lynndie England in the future.

It doesn't look like it:

The recent price rally in farm commodities such as grains, oilseeds and sugar beet can be attributed partly to higher biofuel demand but their share of the blame has been exaggerated, a top official of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Loek Boonekamp, a division head in the Agro-food Trade and Markets Division at the Paris-based OECD, said the surge in farm product prices -- with cereals more than doubling last year -- would have happened even without the rise in biofuel production.

"Closing your eyes and blaming the current high prices to biofuels is just too simplistic," he told the Reuters Global Agriculture and Biofuel Summit.

The deniers want to blame the people trying to save our planet and ourselves for all the problems. The flaw in their logic is that it's false. Now we have proof coming that their claims are baseless, and that proof is from a food manufacturer. Of course they will try to spin this some other way.

That is the logic of the same man who thought in 1992 we should quarantine HIV patients, even though we had known for years the disease was much harder to contract. Think progress has the transcript and video up.

I guess this logic has played well for the GOP in the past. Just ask Mark Foley. He tried so hard to conceal his sexuality that it allowed him to go after children. These Republicans are about the sickest lot of idiots to come across the radar in years.

That is exactly what war monger in chief Bush said today.

Let's look at that logic from our President, and applying it to other countries.

Germany - They could let Nazis take back over the country

Russia - They could restart the cold war

UK - They could try to put us back under their rule.

Japan - They could bomb Pearl Harbor again.

The world is full of "they coulds", but do we wage war on everyone because of that? No - but Bush appears to now use that as his justification. It's no wonder the whole world frowns upon us now. Before long they might develop their own lists of "they could", except we will be the subject of it.

Waking up yet Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid?

While all the news agencies is busy comparing the recent friendly fire deaths in Iraq to the death of Pat Tillman, Editor and Publisher has the scoop on something even more disturbing regarding the incident:

One of the soldiers died just hours after arriving in Iraq -- and was one of those troops rushed to the country in the "surge" who did not receive full training.

Not even a month after this happened, Tony Snow was making light of the news that troops were being rushed into combat, without training.

Q There was also a report this morning that two Army combat brigades are being sent to Iraq without desert training — the Associated Press has a story out today — and that it’s because they’re being rushed to Iraq to help get the surge in place.

MR. SNOW: Again, let me stress, what happens is, a lot of times you will also do training in theaters, as well as equipping in theater. The generals have made it very clear, and military commanders have made it clear, nobody is going to go into combat activity without proper equipment and training. Period. So if things –

Q But the story flatly says that two brigades are going in without desert training in California. So that doesn’t sound like –

MR. SNOW: All right, I understand.

Q — they’re getting the training.

MR. SNOW: Well, but they can get desert training elsewhere, like in Iraq.

Bush and Ed Henry from CNN just had an interesting exchange regarding the roadside bombs. Henry was simply looking for more concrete evidence to the claim Iran is supplying the bombs in Iraq. Bush responds with:

It is preposterous to think that we would be manufacturing intelligence!

Isn't that what got us into Iraq in the first place? What is preposterous is to think that Bush would present actual intelligence.

Something else sticks out regarding this entire "Iran bomb" fiasco. The proof the administration is using is that the bombs are coming from the Qud army, which is part of the Iranian government. Well do we have proof these are coming from the Qud army, or is it coming from some rogue people in the army?