The Contest For The Stupidest Congressman

Is the winner Alan Grayson? Would that it were true — it would be nice to think that he establishes a floor, but I think that he’s unfortunately typical, particularly among Democrats.

[Afternoon update]

Considering all of the trollery in comments, in which people desperately want to change the subject from economic ignorance to BUSH! and TORTURE! of INNOCENT TERRORISTS!, I wonder if any of them even bothered to follow the link, or just decided to pathetically play pin the tail on the Republican?

44 thoughts on “The Contest For The Stupidest Congressman”

  1. We should nominate Ted Poe of Humble, Texas – for the Republican party.

    He has often supported earmarks by saying that we should not allow unelected bureaucrats to distribute money, earmarks made sure the money went to the right place. Say what you will about the government, but the Congress established the procurement system, established training requirements, established how to appropriate and how to distribute money. If the civil servants are doing it wrong (and there are lots of improvements possible!) then hire the right people, provide the right guidelines, provide the right training. Fix the system don’t establish a parallel, wasteful, competing system.

    Ted told Glenn Beck that waterboarding was not torture. No less an expert on torture than John McCain has said that it IS torture. If any elected member of the government can identify torture, it is John McCain.

    Ted wants to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service – an idea that sounds good but we can’t do that without a workable replacement.

    These are three examples of the stupid stuff that Ted Poe says – I am only sad that I don’t live in his district so that I could vote against him.

  2. Two out of three of those examples are more reasons why you’re not all that intelligent, Charles.

    Don’t worry, I’m sure you vote for bigger idiots regularly without realizing it.

  3. No less an expert on torture than John McCain has said that it IS torture.

    Being tortured doesn’t make you an “expert on torture.” Particularly on the types of “torture” that didn’t happen to you.

  4. Well lets see who lines up to get The Rack and tell us if that is torture. Any volunteers? Anyone?

  5. While this is an admittedly high bar, I care even less what Jesse Ventura thinks than of what John McCain thinks. Of course, they’re both veritable fountains of wisdom compared to you.

  6. Rand Simberg believes water-boarding is not torture and can be relied upon to obtain accurate information.

    Okay, it is good to know where you stand.

    Thanks!

  7. I don’t know who the stupidest Congressman is, but Charles wins it for the comments section.

    Tells us Phillip, where does Ted Poe stand on requiring civilian entities to pay employees not to work? You seem worried that he wants to dictate what bureaucrats do, but you don’t seem worried that Grayson want’s to tell civilian employers what to do.

  8. Dang it, I wrote my comment before reading Bill White’s. Perhaps Phillip has a run for his title.

    Tell us White, do you believe waterboarding US servicemen is legal, but waterboarding enemy combatants is illegal? Eric Holder couldn’t answer that question, but perhaps you can.

  9. Rand is certainly one of the guys with the most common sense that I have run into, but this site will always have to be one of those that I visit a bit less frequently – due to the vitrolic exchanges. You don’t often get to work “vitrolic” into a conversation now do you?

    Working around lots of people with all sorts of impressive degrees and very impressive resumes – they have some of the dumbest ideas of what to do next. But they are all very pleasant.

    I seldom disagree with Rand – but being tortured DOES certainly make you far more an expert on the subject than someone who has merely read about it. And experiencing the full range of pain yourself is not necessary, I think that a bit of extrapolation is all that John needs.

    Rand may not like John McCain, but the fact remains that John’s opinion counts when he talks about torture. Just don’t listen to John for campaign advice, there he is way out of his element!

    One good thing about this site is that it is fun to know that people like John Irving and Leland are sitting in their anonymous cubes fuming at some opinion that they differ with. Not that they apparently have any opinions of their own, they seem to take offense at someone else who actually is able to cogently write a response to Rand’s opinion. John McCain would probably agree with me that reading responses from people like them comes close to being waterboarded.

    But we digress. Does anyone here think that any other Democratic members of Congress are in the running for the award? Do people automatically feel that a nominally Republican (or Libertarian) is exempt from the contest?

  10. Tell us White, do you believe waterboarding US servicemen is legal, but waterboarding enemy combatants is illegal? Eric Holder couldn’t answer that question, but perhaps you can.

    In the context of SERE, the waterboarding is consensual, thus legal.

    In any event, it is my opinion that waterboarding does not produce reliable information as the subject will say ANYTHING to get it to stop.

    Jesse Ventura’s comment — “Give me Dick Cheney, a waterboard and an hour and he will confess to the Sharon Tate murders” is spot on, IMHO.

    Nothing that comes from a waterboarded prisoner can be relied upon as authentic or actionable intelligence, ignoring all of the moral, legal or ethical issues.

    As for Eric Holder, it shall be a sensitive matter to eradicate waterboarding from our intelligence practices with a minimum of harmful internal confrontation.

    Obama (and Holder) need to be circumspect in what they say and patient – very patient.

  11. I would nominate Michele Bachmann, who has written legislation to keep the U.S. government from adopting a (non-existent) world currency. Next she will stop evildoers from stealing our precious bodily essence.

  12. Rand Simberg believes water-boarding is not torture and can be relied upon to obtain accurate information.

    Where I stand is that I don’t give a damn what John McCain thinks. Though there is abundant evidence that waterboarding did give us much accurate information, though the Obama administration, unlike the “torture” memos that were favorable to their political ends, refuse to release it.

  13. I would nominate Michele Bachmann, who has written legislation to keep the U.S. government from adopting a (non-existent) world currency.

    Unlike Grayson’s proposed lunacy, at least her’s would be innocuous.

    You don’t often get to work “vitrolic” into a conversation now do you?

    I never do. I prefer “vitriolic,” myself. 😉

    Do people automatically feel that a nominally Republican (or Libertarian) is exempt from the contest?

    Of course not. I have little good to say about Republicans, other than that they’re not as bad as Democrats.

  14. Charles, Bill, do you have a solid definition of “torture?” Because, you know, that would be awfully useful going forward. In case you hadn’t noticed, the Obama Administration is still prosecuting the war in Afghanistan. Still capturing Taliban who may know stuff vital to saving American or innocent bystander lives. There’s a couple of guys who were just captured in Manhattan, ready to blow up synagogues. They appear to be clowns — but what if they were not? And what if, in the middle of a foaming rant, one of them let slip that there were two other guys, say, armed with Stinger, say, planning to sit outside JFK or Newark airport and take down a 747 or two? What kind of persuasion can the FBI use to get names and cell-phone numbers out of their prisoners?

    Or do you just want to leave it all up in the air? Let the guys on the scene wing it, make it up as they go along, do whatever they feel like? So you’re all on record strongly condemning the Bush Administration’s attempt to lay out precisely (the “torture memos”) what is and is not allowed. And you’ve condemned as outrageous one particular technique (waterboarding) the Bushies said marked the outer limit of what was permissible.

    OK, then. What’s your standard? What’s the outer limit? What, precisely, can be done and not done? Because if you want to criticize the work of those who shouldered the responsibility of making those decisions, you damn well better offer a better set of decisions yourself. Otherwise, you’re just sidewalk-supervisors, armchair generals, critics without merit.

    the subject will say ANYTHING to get it to stop. Nothing that comes from a waterboarded prisoner can be relied upon as authentic or actionable intelligence, ignoring all of the moral, legal or ethical issues.

    Must we go through this inanity again? Rand has answered it many times, that the goal is not confession but useful data, so probably he’s tired of stating the obvious. Let’s try it as a little docudrama:

    White Hat: OK, buddy, we know the antidote to the deadly poison you put in 400 milk cartons recently drunk by kindergarteners is in this safe knocks on safe door. What’s the combination?

    Black Hat: I’ll never tell you!

    White Hat: Allrighty then, bring in the towel. Pours water.

    Black: Aieeee!! Make it stop! I’ll tell you anything!

    White: What’s the combination?

    Black: 12-34-56!

    White: Hmm. Nope, doesn’t work. Pours again.

    Yes, Bill, Mr. Black Hat can say ANYTHING to try to make it stop, but, alas, only saying the correct information will actually make it stop. So how is the fact that the prisoner can lie relevant here? Lying doesn’t work. It doesn’t stop the torture. We can play the same script out in any case where the problem is, as it usually is in counter-terrorism, that of finding a needle in a haystack, e.g. finding where something is located (bomb, other terrorist, weapons, supplies) that would otherwise take impossibly long to find. The terrorist knows where the needle is. So we ask him — forcefully. Then we look where he says. If we find it, all’s well. If we don’t, we ask again, perhaps more forcefully. Lying does him no good. In fact, if in response to the lying we get more foreceful, and he knows it won’t stop until he gives a useful response, then lying is obviously not in his interest.

    The situation you seem to be imagining is some silly legal scenario, an Inquisition of sorts, where the goal is to get the prisoner to confess to something, so we can burn him at the stake with a clean conscience or something. No one has suggested anything like that has ever occurred, or would ever need to occur.

  15. Carl,

    You have added so many straw people to my “position” that I decline to respond in detail:

    I will say that I believe water boarding:

    (a) Has essentially zero utility in gathering useful information of any variety whatsoever (unless someone seeks sham confessions for show trials); and

    (b) Should be categorized as torture under applicable laws (whether it is so categorized today is a far messier question).

    Because our enemies desire false confessions for show trials (as was done by North Korea and North Vietnam for example) I support training our servicemen and women to better face such possibilities (SERE) however I also believe that all our enemies really got from torturing our men and women were signed “confessions” not useful except as propaganda.

    = = =

    One small point — the interrogator cannot know whether an answer is a lie or not unless he already knows the information.

    Where’s the bomb? assumes there is a bomb when in reality there may or may actually be any bomb anywhere.

    = = =

    What also is interesting is that it appears that George W. Bush quietly decided water boarding wasn’t useful in the later years of his Administration and therefore this is now as much of a “Cheney versus Bush” fight as anything.

  16. I believe water boarding…has essentially zero utility in gathering useful information of any variety whatsoever

    You believe that in defiance of both logic and the testimony of high government officials who declare otherwise, and the evidence of which the Obama administration refuses to declassify, despite their rush to declassify evidence that they hoped would put the former administration in a bad light.

    And when it turns out that if we are attacked again, and if The One does it as well, you’ll blandly accept his explanation, because he’s not George Bush.

  17. Thanks, Rand for making your position clear.

    Setting that dispute aside, I believe this factual (historical) summary also is accurate:

    “The reality is that after Sept. 11, we entered a two- or three-year period of what you might call Bush-Cheney policy. The country was blindsided. Intelligence officials knew next to nothing about the threats arrayed against them. The Bush administration tried just about everything to discover and prevent threats. The Bush people believed they were operating within the law but they did things most of us now find morally offensive and counterproductive.

    The Bush-Cheney period lasted maybe three years. For Dick Cheney those might be the golden years. For Democrats, it is surely the period they want to forever hang around the necks of the Republican Party. But that period ended long ago. By 2005, what you might call the Bush-Rice-Hadley era had begun.”

    And this:

    “Cheney and Obama might pretend otherwise, but it wasn’t the Obama administration that halted the practice of waterboarding. It was a succession of C.I.A. directors starting in March 2003, even before a devastating report by the C.I.A. inspector general in 2004.”

    = = =

    Cheney Lost to Bush

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/opinion/22brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

  18. Phillip, I see you still don’t want to talk about Grayson. So you don’t care for Congress reigning in bureaucratic spending, but you have nothing to say about Congress forcing civilian employers to pay their employees to not work.

    Does anyone here think that any other Democratic members of Congress are in the running for the award? Do people automatically feel that a nominally Republican (or Libertarian) is exempt from the contest?

    Well, Arlen Spector is a good answer for both. He’s now in the running on the Democratic side, but I don’t think any of us would have exempted him when he was a Republican. John McCain is pretty high on the list too, and he still claims to be a Republican.

  19. Yes, I know Spector and McCain consider themselves Senators, not lowly Congressmen. But they are still members of Congress, so I include them.

  20. I’ll also note that the trolls seem to have successfully diverted this discussion from the original topic, which was the monumental economic ignorance of Congressman Grayson, so they could instead whine about BUSH! and TORTURE! (of terrorists).

  21. Rand:

    You believe [that waterboarding has no utility] in defiance of both logic and the testimony of high government officials who declare otherwise, and the evidence of which the Obama administration refuses to declassify, despite their rush to declassify evidence that they hoped would put the former administration in a bad light.

    Since when does the “testimony of high government officials” hold such weight with you, Rand? If Obama, Panetta, Robert Gates and Jim Jones came out and said that the evidence showed that waterboarding did not save lives, would you believe their testimony? Why then believe Bush and Cheney and Tenet, when they have every reason in the world to exaggerate the utility of warterboarding?

    As for “logic,” all that logic tells you is that waterboarding will make the waterboardee want to do anything to keep the waterboarding from continuing. He might tell us something truthful that we already know. He might tell us something untruthful that we may or may not be able to disprove. He might tell us something truthful, and interesting, that we did not know before, but that does not make the difference in whether an attack succeeds. [For example, if waterboarding someone had let us know in advance that Richard Reed was going to try to shoe-bomb an airliner, we could have caught him earlier, but it would have made no ultimate difference in whether the attack succeeded.] Seeing as how KSM was waterboarded over 100 times, I’m sure he gave us information in all the categories above, but “logic” is not enough to prove that he gave us what we really wanted: new, truthful information that made the difference between an attack succeeding and failing. By the time we caught him he might not have had any such information to give.

    Waterboarding was developed to extract false confessions, and no one disputes its utility for that purpose.

    Some of the Bush administration claims of its utility have been thoroughly debunked, for example the idea that it prevented flying a hijacked airliner into an LA skyscraper. Stopping that attack is the most significant “success story” claimed for waterboarding, and there was no chance it was going to succeed whether we waterboarded or not.

    As for the documents Cheney requested, if he really cared about getting them into the public’s hands he could have made that happen before January 20.

  22. And, back on topic, what exactly is stupid about requiring a week or two of paid vacation? Isn’t that in the same category as child labor laws, the 40 hour work week, etc.?

  23. Minimum paid vacation is law of the land in most of the OECD. The lack of such a law in the U.S. is what is stupid. It would legalize what is taken for granted in most work places – people taking time off to clear their head or run necessary errends, except now, they live in fear after calling in sick.

    I, for one, want the guy doing my brakes to have had a week long vacation, if he needed it, in the last year. And I dont want to have to go through his particular employment contract to find out if he could. This bill would mean that a company of 25 would only 1 more person to cover (and most if not all “irreplacable” people already have vacation time that exceeds this bill’s requirement)

  24. Why not make it a month? Or six?

    Isn’t that in the same category as child labor laws, the 40 hour work week, etc.?

    One of those things is not like the other.

  25. As for the documents Cheney requested, if he really cared about getting them into the public’s hands he could have made that happen before January 20

    He had no reason to do so before Obama started selectively declassifying memos for partisan political purposes.

  26. Yes, by all means, make an employer provide more pay for less work whether the employer wants to or not. I’m sure you in favor will be more than happy to pay a higher price for your goods and services. You guys probably shop at those neighborhood stores evil Wal-Mart is trying to put out of business with lower prices. Because, after all, paying less for something is un-American.

    Why is it Obama says he’s looking forward and keeps going back, back to the future?!! er, I mean Bush policies he castigated on the stump. You know, the ones he’s keeping in place.

  27. A month is actually about par internationally. Grayson’s proposal would be a right wing giveaway to business in most countries.

    Vietnam, Hong Kong, China and Taiwan all provide more minimum vacation time than the U. S. currently does – it’s not like there would be a major competitive disadvantage. Last I heard, Americans per capita worked more hours than the Japanese. People need time off for things like, well, democracy.

    As for six months, there is a quantitative difference between 1 in 2 and 1 in 12.

    Save that proposal for when we have flying cars and robot overlords.

  28. all that logic tells you is that waterboarding will make the waterboardee want to do anything to keep the waterboarding from continuing. He might tell us something truthful that we already know. He might tell us something untruthful that we may or may not be able to disprove.

    Why on Earth would we be interested in knowing something we can’t prove? That’s a good definition of useless information. The only information you want from a terrorist is information about future terrorist attacks on which you can act. By definition that is information you can prove, by indeed acting on it.

    Let’s try again, Jim. Say you’re standing next to your ATM with your card, and I come up behind you with some confederates and a big bucket of water. I want the PIN so I can steal your money with the ATM. But you refuse to give it to me.

    Are you going to seriously argue I can’t get it out of you by waterboarding you? I can check anything you say by turning around and trying it in the ATM then and there. Lying to me is hopeless. It’s also hopeless for you to try to convince me you don’t know the relevant information. So if waterboarding really will make you do anything to stop it, you’ll tell me.

    So how are you going to argue extracting useful information from a terrorist won’t work, ever, hmm? Or are you just going to weasel out by airily stating, like Bill, that the entire argument is somehow beneath you?

    You can argue waterboarding information out of someone is unethical if you wish, but arguing it can’t ever produce useful information from terrorists even though it obviously can in many other situations is some kind of weird special-pleading vacation from reality and common sense.

  29. Why not make it a month? Or six?

    Right now we’ve got zero; one or two weeks is a better place to start.

    I wrote: Isn’t that in the same category as child labor laws, the 40 hour work week, etc.?

    One of those things is not like the other.

    Okay, isn’t this in the same category as the 40 hour work week, occupational safety laws, the minimum wage, etc.? Is support for any of those a sign of economic stupidity?

  30. As for the documents Cheney requested, if he really cared about getting them into the public’s hands he could have made that happen before January 20

    He had no reason to do so before Obama started selectively declassifying memos for partisan political purposes.

    Nonsense. The legality, morality and efficacy of waterboarding was a controversy long before Obama took office. If the documents he requested help prove Cheney’s case, he had just as much reason to release them before January 20. Waiting has the advantage (to him) that he can now claim the decision is out of his hands, and we have to take his word on what the documents say.

    Still no answer on why Rand, the opponent of unbridled government power, is more than happy to take the word of high officials when they tell him that they got good results from waterboarding.

  31. Carl:

    Are you going to seriously argue I can’t get it out of you by waterboarding you?

    That isn’t a very interesting question. One interesting question is whether any of the detainees had an ATM code — information that would make the difference between success and failure for a future plot, and which could be easily verified — to give. That has not been established.

    And of course you don’t know whether the prisoner has that information before you waterboard him — you might well be doing it for nothing.

  32. Right now we’ve got zero

    That’s the right amount when it comes to a federal mandate.

    …one or two weeks is a better place to start.

    “…to start…”

    As the old joke goes, we’ve established what you are — we’re just haggling over the price. Well, I don’t want to haggle over the price. I don’t accept the principle.

    Still no answer on why Rand, the opponent of unbridled government power, is more than happy to take the word of high officials when they tell him that they got good results from waterboarding.

    Because I’ve got good reason to take their word for it, compared to that of their continuously lying political opponents.

    And yes, if Gates and Tenet had said they got nothing out of it, I’d be inclined to believe that as well. But they didn’t. And Obama continues to be selective about which information he declassifies, which would help us determine whether or not they’re telling the truth, for obvious political reasons.

  33. “If the documents he requested help prove Cheney’s case, he had just as much reason to release them before January 20.”

    Cheney could not release those documents. The President could but not the VICE- President. Also, the AG wasn’t talking about prosecutions before 1/20. If you’re going to use 20/20 hindsight, please don’t conflate facts that had not happened yet with the situation at the time.

  34. > One small point — the interrogator cannot know whether an answer is a lie or not unless he already knows the information.

    Suppose that I think that I know the names of three of the four members of a terrorist cell and I’m interrogating someone who knows all four names yet doesn’t know which names, if any, I know.

    Maybe White really believes that I can’t get useful information from said someone who will say anything to get “it” to stop, but that just tells us about White’s incapacity.

    Note that it’s even possible to get useful information from someone who only knows three of four.

  35. Also, the AG wasn’t talking about prosecutions before 1/20. If you’re going to use 20/20 hindsight, please don’t conflate facts that had not happened yet with the situation at the time.

    Bush and Cheney knew full well that they might face legal jeopardy out of office over torture. Nothing about that has changed.

  36. Rand:

    As the old joke goes, we’ve established what you are — we’re just haggling over the price. Well, I don’t want to haggle over the price. I don’t accept the principle.

    Exactly. And not only that, but you think that believing in the principle that the federal government has a role setting labor standards makes Alan Grayson a contender for “stupidest congressman”.

    Meanwhile, the debate over that principle has been over in the U.S. for seventy years. The national minimum wage was established in 1938; since then we’ve just haggled about the price.

  37. Meanwhile, the debate over that principle has been over in the U.S. for seventy years. The national minimum wage was established in 1938; since then we’ve just haggled about the price.

    That doesn’t make it either right, or smart. And you completely missed the part where he thinks that the Treasury Secretary should determine the compensation of employees in the financial industry. It’s not only stupid, it’s fascist.

  38. And you completely missed the part where he thinks that the Treasury Secretary should determine the compensation of employees in the financial industry. It’s not only stupid, it’s fascist.

    Shouldn’t the Treasury Secretary have a say in the compensation of people who work for him? You should be objecting to the fact that we’re propping up the financial industry, not to the fact that doing so gives us the right to be stingy with compensation.

  39. You should be objecting to the fact that we’re propping up the financial industry, not to the fact that doing so gives us the right to be stingy with compensation.

    Apparently you have problems with reading comprehension. I have been objecting to that strenuously for months. Particularly when they have been “propped up” without requesting to be.

  40. I, for one, want the guy doing my brakes to have had a week long vacation, if he needed it, in the last year.

    Great. This is pretty easy to do. Ask the company who hires your mechanic if they provide paid vacation. When they ask why you want to know, tell them what you wrote here. If they give you the answer that you like, patron that company. If you don’t like the answer, go down the road to the next company. That’s called freedom of choice, and you get it with free markets.

    And I dont want to have to go through his particular employment contract to find out if he could.

    Oh, you’re lazy, so you want the government to mandate something, so you can continue to be lazy.

  41. > Shouldn’t the Treasury Secretary have a say in the compensation of people who work for him?

    Only if said “say” was included in the terms by which they came to be “working for” him.

    We already know that many banks didn’t want the money. We also know that they weren’t “given” the money under the conditions that the tax-cheat-in-chief wants to impose. We also know that he won’t take the money back.

    It’s like dealing with the Mafia.

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