Intelligent Discontent

It’s always been abundantly clear that Dennis Rehberg is more interested in those who make millions than those who struggle to make ends meet. While you and I are struggling with gas prices that seem to have no ceiling, Representative Rehberg says we shouldn’t tinker with a “free market” that has brought us to such a pass:

I never question people’s desire or motives of getting in and making a buck. And having been in the cattle business and having to deal in commodity futures, in my case I was never a speculator, I was a hedger, you always worry and wonder what’s going on on the other side.

This is precisely the danger of modern American conservative “principles.” It would be a consistent, if foolish, position to defend the idea of free markets, and conservatives like Rehberg fall back on this rhetoric when they are asked to rein in corporations. The problem is that adherence to free markets seems to end there for Rehberg. He doesn’t question the government’s interference when it means providing subsidies to oil companies, huge agricultural interests, and big donors.

In a sense, Rehberg is right. He is defending a certain kind of freedom, one in which corporate interests are free to take from the public coffers and free from scrutiny and oversight.

This substance of this Obama’s opposition to a ban on gay marriage is underwhelming, but the message that it conveys is encouraging, more than. The substance is this:

Obama aides emphasized he has opposed similar state bans in the past. They said the Illinois senator does not support gay marriage, but believes that federal and state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage can also threaten rights that couples have under civil unions and domestic partnerships, which Obama supports.

Obama quietly announced his stance in a statement in a letter to the Toklas club, a California gay rights group.

It’s nothing to hoot about, for sure. But what about the message?

… the Illinois senator said “I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states.”

… His position comes as a shift for Democrats, as 2004 presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry backed amendments to ban gay marriage in some of the states in which he campaigned.

The fact is that most people will take Obama’s stance in the simplest way possible: Obama is against marriage bans. This is a good thing. No, it’s a great thing.

Another example of how little attention should be paid to hyped-up media speculation: Obama is destroying McCain in the polls when it comes to the Hispanic vote.

A Gallup survey put Obama up 59 percent to 29 percent over his rival among registered Hispanic voters across the United States. The community will likely play a pivotal role in general election swing states like Colorado, New Mexico and Florida.

If you were listening to big media’s coverage of the Hispanic vote in relation to Obama during the primary season, you could have easily made the conclusion that America was on the brink of a massive race war between African Americans and Hispanics. For example, from The New York Times,

Mr. Obama confronts a history of often uneasy and competitive relations between blacks and Hispanics, particularly as they have jockeyed for influence in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.

“Many Latinos are not ready for a person of color,” Natasha Carrillo, 20, of East Los Angeles, said. “I don’t think many Latinos will vote for Obama…”

The New York Times was obviously not the only news outlet to beat the drum of racial tension, not by a long shot. It really makes one consider how reliable big media’s analysis (if you can call it that) is.

Our interrogation techniques in Guantanamo Bay are actually modeled after Chinese Communists techniques during the Korean War,

“…techniques to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners… [what] the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the C.I.A.”

Okay - so, we all know that the US government is torturing people, and is in complete denial about it. Torture is prohibited under title 18 United States Code §2340, and has been “banned” since 1948.  But this situation is just a little ironic.  Not only are we completely dismissing the fact that we are torturing, but also from where we learned the techniques - China during the ’50s.  I don’t know about you, but the huge amount of inconsistencies does not impress me.

“Mr. Bush has defended the use the interrogation methods, saying they helped provide critical intelligence and prevented new terrorist attacks.”

So, Mr. President, what is your response to the lies the Americans told while they were tortured? Does this in any way support the interrogation techniques that we still use? Can we trust the answers we get from our prisoners?

Err… um… no.

With no intention of being mean spirited, is McCain senile or just really confused - about everything? Yesterday McCain confused Somalia and the Sudan:

John McCain misspoke and confused his African countries while talking to reporters on the Straight Talk Express today. This time, he was bailed out not by Joe Lieberman, but by his close aide Mark Salter. “How can we bring pressure on the government of Somalia?” McCain asked, which prompted Mark Salter to correct him. “Sudan,” Salter said. “Sudan,” McCain repeated. “There’s a realpolitik side of my view of the conduct of American foreign policy.”

There is a pretty big difference in the conflicts that are taking place in both countries and our policy options towards both countries. This isn’t any small mistake. How does McCain expect to run on his foreign policy credentials when he is so easily confused by, well, foreign policy.

What is even more confusing is that McCain is starting to make a habit out of these self-described “slips.”

I applaud the fact that

A huge patchwork of privately owned forest in northwest Montana — much of it abutting wilderness, and together almost a third the size of Rhode Island — will be permanently protected from development under an agreement announced Monday by two private conservation groups, the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land.

The groups will pay $510 million for about 500 square miles of forest now owned by Plum Creek Timber, a lumber and real estate firm based in Seattle. It is one of the biggest sales of forest land for preservation purposes in United States history, conservation experts said.

And  Baucus deserves credit for  setting up the federal bond that allowed for this to go through. We, as Montanans, need to prioritize conserving Montanan’s beauty - it’s what makes Montana Montana.