Politics

The first presidential debate is scheduled for Saturday, August 16th at 8pm Eastern time, and will be broadcast live on the Fox News Channel. The debate will take place at the church of evangelical pastor Rick Warren, who's seen as a moderate, non-religious-right (kinder, gentler?) evangelical. Perhaps still somewhat anathema to many of us, but both candidates will be there taking questions from the man, so it's probably worth a look.

recently the Massachusettes state legislature passed a bill that will provide a mandate for the state to produce 20% of its energy through clean and renewable energy. My problem with the bill is that it prevents the state from investing in or developing clean coal technologies, and because of this it is likely that the bill will produce dirtier air on a watt for watt basis. currently Massachusettes produces its energy with a heavy slant on natural gas. now most of these power plants are going to have to be rebuilt soon as power plants are built with a 30-50 operational lifetime in mind and a large portion of these facilities are coming due. Now this is Mass s…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080819/ap_en_ce/people_keith_obama;_ylt=An7txlypEiZepe1.laSBRZRxFb8C This Southern Democrat says Obama is the man for him. Wow. This after "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue?" (title modified to include Harvard serial comma) The times they are a'changin?

Here is a side-by-side comparison of the answers provided by Senators Obama and McCain at Saddleback: http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/Saddleback_16AUG2008.htm

It seems like this is a major meme of the McCain campaign. Every ad about McCain includes the (often non-sequitor) phrase "ready to lead," and every negative ad about Obama includes the phrase "not ready to lead." Every talking head supporting McCain seems to work that into the talking points, as well. Clearly, they're working very hard to work this into the national subconscious, so... what does it mean? McCain obviously has been involved in national politics much longer than Obama. Is that all? In another thread, DoG (sorry to put you on the spot) mentioned that he's not voting for Obama because he's not voting for Obama because he's "not qualified to be Preside…

The Russians (and Czechs, incidentally) are not only angry over US plans to put ICMB defenses in the Czech Republic, but actually threatening a military response: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7496399.stm Specifically, that would probably mean targeting Russia's own weapons at the Eastern European sites. The US claims this is about Iran, but with that country's rather limited inter-continental missile capacity, that seems a bit of a flimsy justification for seriously alienating a country which, it so happens, is probably your best bet for preventing Iran from developing a dangerous nuclear weapons program in the first place. I think this is an excelle…

Interesting article in the Sunday Times (the famous British paper, not the New York Times) about Obama continuing to alienate the Bubba voter. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article4553100.ece The article interviews a southern Republican poll worker whose not afraid to speak his mind (to put it mildly). Here are a couple of standout quotes, and then my thoughts. Um, okay then. Sounds like a regular Rush Limbaugh caller, eh? But he does have an interesting (and amusing) point or two. This is what he feels Obama should be saying to people like him: Colorful. But also an interesting point. A…

Jerome Corsi, who launched the swift-boating of John Kerry with his book "Unfit to Command", has begun the same process with his new book "The Obama Nation". (Speak the title out loud for the ugly double entendre.) Mary Mitchell of the Chicago Sun-Times accuses him of racism: According to Mitchell (I haven't read the New York Times book review yet), the Times is reporting that a number of the book's charges are "unsubstantiated, misleading or inaccurate." Unlike with Kerry, there's a heavy religious angle in it this time around. In fairness, Obama has played up his faith to try and sway religious voters, but Corsi twists that in a pretty ugly way (accor…

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/14/clinton/index.html?eref=rss_topstories Well, so ends all that silly speculation about a Clinton uprising. The Obama campaign is totally okay with it. Awesome!

Russia is dipping its toe in the water to gauge the response from the US and Europe to see how (if) they react to a Russian attempt to reassert their former dominance. Part of the challenge is that this is more than mere threat or sable rattling. They are in the country, with tanks and missiles and soldiers, and they are killing people. They're heading toward the Georgian capital as I type this. Europeans are nervous, and justifiably so. They've seen this before. Putin has gone back to Russia to lead the attack, but unfortunatly, our president is too busy playing volleyball in Beijing to try correcting the failures he's allowed to ripple outward for all this…

Well, at the very least, Obama is at the center of the discussion...

The story about Britain being touted for even more surveillance does not make happy reading for me. We are already an information poor, entertainment rich society like the U.S. This makes many of us more likely to accept entertainment instead of real 'reality' We tend to passively accept the Government's suggestions for surveillance in order to aid security in this great nation. If push comes to shove, do we just quietly agree to be surveilled using Terahertz technology (not X-rays) which can see through clothes, invasive audio and visual surveillance technology and finally microchipped for I.D.? I cannot see the Americans being so receptive to being treted in this way.

As you may have heard, last week the Obama campaign announced that they would be announcing his VP choice via text message. Individuals can sign up for the text message here: http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/firsttoknow It is, of course, a novel new way to reach out with their campaign message, but one thing I wondered about it is whether we're going to see a sudden spate of fake Obama VP announcements, transmitted to famous but not-too-computer-savvy political analysts and reporters, perhaps from their very-tech-savvy friends. Could get interesting. I think it's a pretty clever campaign move. What do you all think?

So the Dems finally made a decision on the most important issue facing Americans today: Whether to give Bill or Hillary the most prominent speaking positions at the convention. Hillary was given the less prestigious 2nd-night spotlight, and Bill gets the third-night spotlight, ahead of the vice presidential nominee. Neither is likely to get more than mere excerpt coverage by the networks, who will likely only live-broadcast Obama's acceptance speech on the 4th night. Now perhaps Dems will press on to more urgent matters, like how to convince the president to release a little more oil from the national reserve which we all know will instantly cut $3.99/gallon off t…

I decided to bring this up after it was (jokingly, I realize) suggested by ParanoiA in another thread that democracy be put aside in favor of drafting our leaders from the "super intelligent," much like jury duty. I thought this was funny, since I have some experience in that area, and was already considering commenting on it here. Even though it was a joke and obviously won't happen, it's still worth talking about in a theoretical way, since it's an idea that in various forms has been proposed since the very beginning of political arguments that didn't involve hitting one another over the head with clubs. Even Plato proposed it in The Republic, which even though I pe…

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/world/middleeast/06surplus.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin Now if only America had that... but unfortunately Iraq for us means bigger budget deficits... Maybe they should pay us to be there! Oh right, they want us out.

Columbian president Alvaro Uribe put on a freaking clinic on democracy in action this week, showing every other nation on this planet how it is bloody well done. What an amazing story. That hostage rescue was just a great story all by itself, but it's fitting into a larger picture of Columbian success against Farc that's really impressive. I think it actually makes me jealous -- I wish my own government and intelligent services could pull off this kind of stuff. The dramatic helicopter rescue of the hostages, all accomplished without a single shot being fired, is already seen as an amazing intelligence operation. All pulled off by a Latin American intellige…

...However, McCain far surpasses this, and the same study has shown that 1 out of every 3 McCain ads have a negative spin. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hDUFPuTNWTC7-8NapQmch4BNZ40AD9290DS80 Angry candidates don't win elections. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton won by running as sunny optimists — one promised John Winthrop's "shining city upon a hill" and the other was the "man from Hope." But McCain wants the presidential campaign to be about Barack Obama — that's why he talks about him so much. To that end, McCain is helping frame a not-so-flattering portrait of Obama for voters. His ads have become increasingly tough; a third of his commercials…

Now this is a debate we're probably having about 20 years too soon, as we don't know what's finally going to become of Iraq, nor can the indications we've seen so far tell us much definitively. As far as I can tell, and I'm limited not only by how little anyone can know but also by the fact that I know much less still, Iraq stands the best chance of all of them of shaping up into something like Lebanon with a stronger economy. But this is an inevitable debate, because it has immediate ramifications to US policy in the now. So, what should the Iraq experience mean to us? Should we take away from Iraq a general condemnation of interventionism principally in the name of …

In an op-ed today in the New York Times (here, Tom Friedman criticizes the short-term gas tax holiday proposed by both Clinton and McCain as deeply cynical and destructive in the long term for the economy, national security, and the environment, and applauds Obama for being the "bad guy" and calling them both out on it. All of this I agree with. What he proposes, however, and what he implies all the candidates secretly know is the best solution, is to actually keep gas prices high intentionally, noting that the current prices, for all the short-term individual woes they've caused, have also forced the market to respond in a very positive way. People drive less, energy…

This from the Washington Post: McCain is calling for across the board tax cuts with an emphasis on decreasing taxes for the rich. Obama wants tax cuts for 99% of Americans and a sharp increase for the richest 1%. I guess it's clear: Democrats like progressive taxation, and Republicans want the tax structure to be flatter. My question: how does McCain plan on addressing the budget deficit, which is presently the worst in history and quickly driving us towards breaking $10,000,000,000,000 in debt? Obama's plan certainly seems fine to me. But I guess I'm just a hippie liberal who doesn't mind a soak-the-rich approach to taxation.

Obama changed his position on offshore drilling today, saying that he would support limited offshore drilling. He did this in support of a new bipartisan bill from a group of ten senators intended to increase domestic oil production. The bill would expand drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coasts of four southeastern states (if they permit it). http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0140632620080802?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=10112 He's right, IMO. That's exactly the way to do it. Follow the science, listen to all the arguments, and make a decision that makes sense, while recognizing its limitations. That's exactly how …

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=5369090 President Bush will lift the executive branch's ban on drilling on the outer continental shelf this afternoon. But congress has its own ban so drilling can't begin without that being lifted as well. However, given Congress' nine percent approval rating and the overwhelming popular opinion on high gas prices, it could be difficult for them to say no. Plus they can approve it while keeping ANWR secure, which gives them something to placate environmentalists. Given the apparent safety of offshore drilling, and the need for interim solutions while we adopt alternative energy sources, I think this makes sense, …

It's easy to criticize the dialogue surrounding the election as substance-free and lacking merit, but this takes the cake: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121755336096303089.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today What happened to the Wall Street Journal? (oh right, Rupert Murdoch purchased them)

CBS cut out his mistake for him, but unfortunately for McCain the original footage was discovered: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/us/politics/24check.html This raises the question of how well McCain actually understood the surge when he voted for it. McCain has been triumphantly trumpeting his approval of the surge in 20/20 hindsight of its outcome, the entire time disparaging Obama for voting against it and instead suggesting an early withdrawal. CBS decided to cut directly to the remarks which disparaged Obama, omitting McCain alluding to the Anbar Awakening which occurred months prior to the surge as one of its successes. This is completely wrong. …