Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Carter Cavorting Again With Terrorists

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President Jimmy Carter (D), who presided over a period of general national malaise and foreign policy calamity in the late 1970s, periodically jumps back into the news and generally in ways that most thinking Americans would find unpleasant.

Well, he’s at it again. Carter has met with the exiled leader of Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel, the Jewish people, and their allies, in Damascus, Syria. When Hamas, which holds de-facto control of the Gaza strip, isn’t busy blowing up city buses and killing innocent Israeli civilians, they pretend to be a legitimate political power.

Under the Logan Act (USC Title 18, Part I, Chapter 45, §953), attempting to act in a foreign policy respect without the authority of the President (who definitely did not approve Carter’s idiotic trip) is a felony—one that Carter has committed before, as has Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA 8th). Further, I consider Carter’s actions to be giving ‘aid and comfort’ to enemies of the United States, which is the definition of treason.

People who would meet with terrorists are, in a sense, terrorists themselves. They are criminals and traitors, and should be treated as such. It is incredible that people like Carter, who would undermine rather than uphold U.S. foreign policy, are revered in certain circles. They are not deserving of reverence.

Finally, A Relaxing Weekend

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So for the first time in quite a few weeks, there’s basically nothing on the schedule for the weekend. So far I’ve slept in, put 200 rounds through my Smith & Wesson M&P 9 at the shooting range, and that’s been about it today. It’s a nice change of pace.

Of course I do have things to do. I haven’t made much progress this week on my office, which is still a chaotic mess (though slightly less so than the last time I wrote about it). That’s what I suppose I really ought to be working on, but it’ll take another day or two for my motivation to kick back in.

Tomorrow it’s church, maybe a couple of errands, and then I’ll try to get a bit of work done in my office. Then the insanity kicks back in on Monday (and will probably continue most of the way through to the end of the year).

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Posted in: Life

UAW Finally Does Something Right

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The United Auto Workers (UAW) union has finally done something right. After decades of working hard to destroy the American auto industry and, with the help of the ‘big three’ (Ford, General Motors [G.M.], and Chrysler) leadership, succeeding, the UAW has successfully done something to prevent the massive waste of money.

The UAW’s short-sighted, self-serving strategy has been to inflate employee wages so high that screw tighteners and power window testers are compensated better than most school teachers, software developers, and project managers in real world industries. UAW auto workers are paid significantly higher wages than the well-compensated workers at Honda, Toyota, Subaru, and Nissan factories here in the United States.

But, after digging the ‘big three’s’ hole, the UAW is doing little to dig them out. They are not making salary or benefits concessions, not agreeing to downsize, and generally not agreeing to anything that might help the ‘big three’ to survive. Now, it is the UAW’s hard-headedness (no surprise) that has derailed the ill-advised 14 billion dollar bailout plan where widespread public opposition couldn’t.

Union insanity has bankrupted many U.S. companies by demanding wages that are far inflated over a fair wage for the work done. They are the single biggest reason for the ‘big three’ failing. I have no love for the UAW, but for once they have done something helpful. Had they been rational, willing to do anything possible to save their members’ employment, then the Senate would likely have approved another multi-billion dollar boondoggle. For the first time I can remember, I want to thank the UAW: their selfishness finally had a positive impact.

RIM Blackberry ‘Bold’ 9000

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bbe4I have made no secret over the past several months of my serious disdain for the status quo in the ‘smartphone’ universe. My desires are not especially complicated. I want a phone that is reliable, extensible, usable, compatible with IMAP push email, and has a physical keyboard. There are plenty of nice-to-haves—a decent camera, a stylish design and interface, 3G high-speed Internet access, a physical mute switch, long battery life, and more—but I would gladly sacrifice all of those for a phone that met each and every one of my simple primary desires.

After much comparison shopping and mounting frustration with my previous phone—a Windows Mobile-based AT&T 8525—I settled on the RIM BlackBerry ‘Bold’ 9000 as the phone to serve me for the next 18+ months. BlackBerrys, from Canadian firm Research In Motion (RIM), have long been held in high esteem among corporate and government buyers as a mobile email powerhouse. The Bold, however, is aimed squarely at buyers like me: those who like the flash and finish of the iPhone, but want a phone that actually has some power under the gloss. Yes, we like web surfing and media capabilities, but we also want a solid, reliable device that has a full-function personal information manager (PIM) and can be extended without the express approval of the manufacturer or carrier.

The Bold came closest to meeting my requirements, but it did not meet them completely. I didn’t like the ‘BlackBerry Way’ of doing email and had some misgivings about the relatively limited PIM functions, but I went ahead and took the plunge because I could find nothing better. Much to my surprise, after a solid week-and-a-half as a BlackBerry user, I’m finding that I actually like it quite a bit and—dare I say—am completely satisfied with my choice.

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Auto ‘Rescue’ Bill In Peril

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It is becoming tiring to oppose our federal government’s binge of socialist bailouts, but it is a duty all thinking Americans have to our country. We are on a road to a repeat of Roosevelt’s ‘new deal’, a well-intentioned but horribly misguided policy of government economic intervention that prolonged the Great Depression instead of shortening it and saddled us—literally for generations—with unsustainable entitlement programs. Worse, our ever-growing federal government is accumulating more and more power and making toilet paper out of the Constitution.

Republicans in the Senate however, seem poised to oppose the 15 billion dollars ‘rescue’ (i.e., socialist bailout) of the big-three U.S. automakers who have made their bed and should now be expected to lie in it. Perhaps the wayward party of limited government, still stinging from an electoral defeat of their own making, has begun to find its bearings.

Of course, I’m not apt to get my hopes up. Congress seemed to come to its senses once before with regard to socialist bailouts, but then passed the much-derided 700 billion dollar plan that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (R) lied through his teeth to sell. These things change like the wind, and the wind on Capitol Hill seems lately to be blowing decisively away from capitalism, liberty, and limited, republican government.

You should write your congressional representatives and tell them to oppose this boondoggle, but these are (mostly) the same morons who passed the last boondoggle in the face of loud, constant opposition from their constituents so I’m not sure what good it will do.

I weep for the republic.

Update: The House of Representatives has passed a 14 billion dollar bailout for U.S. automakers. It now moves to the Senate for their action (or, preferably, inaction).

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.