Politics

The Supreme Court snuck in a final ruling at the last minute yesterday, issueing a decision in the case of Davis v Federal Election Commission. Davis, a wealthy New York Democrat, lost a couple of elections in which he spent a great deal of money. He argued against a state law that allowed his opponents, once Davis had put more of his millions into his kitty (information which was exposed to the public as part of this law), to raise money of their own beyond the normal spending limit. He was denied at the district appeals level but appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor. The New York Times has a write-up here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/was…

I'm surprised nobody is talking about this, it's a major issue. We all know what will happen if McCain get elected president; the most liberal justices will be appointed by a pro-life president.

http://www.9news.com/news/world/article.aspx?storyid=94341&catid=347 McCain is offering a lot of $ for something the documentary Who Killed The Electric Car tells us already exists and is owned by Cobasys, a subsidiary of Chevron. Cobasys is selling a version to only hybrid carmakers now, but the documentary tells us the technology Chevron is suppressing could make a fully electric car with a range of well-over 100 miles. What concerns me is that Chevron could easily take this $ by arguing that mass production would easily bring the price down by the required 30%. Is this the new way for taxpayers to subsidize oil companies? I'm working right now and can…

I've started a thread over on the Environment sub-board to discuss the Everglades land buy-back. It has a political angle so I just wanted to mention it here as well. http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=33769

The New York Times is running a piece today about what they characterize as close ties between the Obama campaign and the Ethanol interests in the country. Couple links below (second one included in case you get stuck at login with the first one): http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/us/politics/23ethanol.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25324195 I'm sure it's no accident that this comes just days after the controversy surrounding Obama's decline of public funding, because it appears to (at least superficially) counter the campaign's claim that it is publically funded, i.e. mainly supported by small donors. This doesn't contradict that …

We got our first indication this week of where Obama will be spending those hundreds of millions of dollars he'll have, being the first presidential candidate not to accept public funds and spending limits. He made a television ad buy in 18 battleground states, 14 of which were won by George Bush in 2004. The ads are even running in states like Alaska, Montana, North Carolina, and North Dakota, described in this article as "perennial Republican strongholds". It'll be interesting to see if the advertising hits a saturation point, where it's no longer effective, or even becomes counter-productive. In a related note, FactCheck has a problem with one aspect of t…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7465170.stm The Israelis have just finished a high profile military exercise over the Mediterranean which seems to foreshadow what an Israeli attack on an Iranian nuclear facility might look like. Do you think the Israelis are just flexing their muscles or is this a serious preparation for going into Iran? I heard another interesting suggestion: Olmert might be trying to create a crisis to bolster his own domestic support.

The House took out the trash late Friday (too late in the day for major news reporting), overwhelmingly passing the new wiretapping law, giving the White House a major victory in the War on Terror. The bill re-approves FISA and also gives the telecoms (more or less) a pass on their liability for earlier wiretapping. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/washington/21fisacnd.html?hp The bill is expected to pass the senate, also by a wide margin, and will, of course, be signed by the not-so-lame-duck President. Yessiree, those Democrats (who also reauthorized Iraqi war spending last week) sure are changing things in Washington!

McCain says: LET'S DRILL FOR MORE OIL! http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/17/mccain.energy/index.html?eref=rss_topstories Obama says: that doesn't make sense http://obama.senate.gov/speech/060228-energy_security/ Obama calls for drastically reducing our consumption of oil by ratcheting up fuel efficiency standards and also heavily promoting biofuels as an alternative to oil. At least to me, it's sort of feeling like... McCain: More of the same! Obama: Change!

Well tomorrow the gay marriage issue comes to the fore again, with California beginning to marry gay men and women. Interestingly, the marriages may not ultimately count if the Californian people pass the constitutional amendment in November banning them. Polls have consistently shown Californians to be opposed to gay marriage. It's unclear whether that law would nullify people already married, though. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/15/MNQC118UG3.DTL&tsp=1 Both presidential candidates are opposed to gay marriage. For McCain that's obvious, but with Obama it's a bit thinner line to straddle. But ultimately this is, like video game…

I thought this was a strong example of Obama's ability to act as a strong and positive role model for black men (in the Bill Cosby mold). We've all heard the awful statistics of black families in the US, how most black children grow up to single working parents and how they're usually missing father figures. I think it's possibly one of the most serious problems facing my country at the moment, and I'm glad to see him stepping up on this issue. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080615/ap_on_el_pr/obama;_ylt=A0WTcW.r.1VIzvYANwxI2ocA A common political view is that it's a move to try and deflect accusations of extreme liberalness, and that may have some truth to it, …

AQ Khan, father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, recently recanted his confessions regarding selling centrifuge technologies, including plans and parts, to Iran and North Korea. Now, he's denying claims that complete plans for nuclear bombs were sold by his group to the black market: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jprNveWzuD_a9kRZ9Spjt5VY_UMgD91BU8700 A recently released report by the UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, reveals that digital copies of nuclear weapons plans are unaccounted for and may be in the hands of the black market. According to its author David Albright, a former UN arms inspector: Khan claimed Albright's report was funded by the …

If Hillary is now permanently out of the running due to her age (not at all certain, I readily admit, but a good possibiltiy), it might be interesting to speculate about what other women could possibly become the first female POTUS. Here are some of the more prominent female figures in the Democratic Party along with their current ages: Nancy Pelosi (68) Barbara Boxer (67) Dianne Feinstein (74) Blanche Lincoln (Sen. from Arkansas) (47) Claire McCaskill (Sen. from Missouri) (54) Less well known: Patty Murray (Sen. from Washington) (57) Maria Cantwell (Sen. from Washington) (49) Debbie Stabenow (Sen. from Michigan) (58) Amy Klobuchar (Sen. from Minnes…

Well, that's pretty much that... Obama is the Democratic nominee. But with Hillary being such a psycho bitch, I really think it's unlikely she'd ever agree to be Obama's running mate (although it wouldn't surprise me if Obama would accept her as his running mate) Who do you think will end up being Obama's running mate? A handy dandy poll is attached!

Next week the Senate will begin debating a bill brought out late last year by senators Warner and Lieberman. The bill has come under intense scrutiny already, with supporters and critics on all sides of the issue. Here's the Wikipedia entry on the bill, which serves as a good starting point for inquiry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Climate_Security_Act_of_2007 In a nutshell (if I understand it correctly), the bill caps emissions across the board (industry, transportation, and even personal (home)) at 2005 levels through 2012, then forces gradual reduction at 2% per year through carbon trading. The bill also provides $350 billion spread out o…

I have watched Meet the Press every Sunday for a few years now, and Tim Russert was an amazing man who quickly earned my respect. He will be missed. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25145431/ http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i47acW1Zt9ukocOXy9JlL412h3SAD919FQV81

Here's the deal. In a true meritocracy, we shouldn't care in the slightest about a candidates race or gender when deciding whom to vote for. The fact that the two main contenders for the Democratic nomination were a black man and a woman should be seen as a sign that such things, even if they do still matter to many people, at least no longer present the insurmountable obstacles they once did, and thus their success should be cause for celebration. However, if we are to truly justify the celebration of our liberal postracism and make it "not matter anymore," we can't support them on those grounds, either, or make ourselves reactionaries and hypocrites. I say these thi…

If the title of the thread doesn't make a lot of sense, I suggest you need a lot more Arlo Guthrie in your life, and a fair bit of his dad too. Anyway... It's kind of funny...a few years ago I did a series of "phone calls" I got from George Bush. It was just one of those things you e-mail to friends and relatives...yet another way to avoid writing by writing. The premise was that he thought I was the kind of reverend he was used to dealing with, when in reality I was a beer swilling yahoo. He'd call me up, and I'd tell him things...yeah, things. In the very first one I admonished him over and over again that literalism was a sin...kind of a warning …

I have to kind of disagree with that. The Jews I know...mostly secular, many agnostic or atheist...celebrate a lot of Jewish culture outside of religion. I think they (the people I know) are kind of a hybrid between nationality and religion. I'm not sure whether that's a fact in the larger Jewish community, or a local thing, but I tend to think it's pretty widespread. Most of them (again, Jews I know personally) disagree rather harshly with the government of Israel re: Palestine as well, for what that's worth. In a lot of ways they remind me of the Ukrainian community here...very difficult to separate culture from religion, but as the religion filters ou…

This just came in guys, Hillary finally admits defeat and endorses Obama to help unify the party. Read all about it right here: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/07/clinton.unity/index.html?eref=rss_topstories So, what are your reactions to this? You think the Democratic Party will finally start coming back together in time?

We have a situation in the U.S. election right now where the nominees from both parties have reputations for being less partisan and more genuine and open than their peers. Whether or not these reputations are deserved, the fact that they were both able to trade on them so successfully speaks a lot to the national mood right now, and weariness with the perceived evil shadow government we've been living with and the associated deep and bitter divides between red and blue cultures. The question is: are those reputations deserved? Personally, I think Obama and McCain were definitely the least partisan (though not necessarily most centrist) of their respective fields. But…

Not to jump the gun... Obama still needs 12 delegates the secure the nomination. But Hillary has announced that she's willing to be Vice President, and that's a pretty clear indication she's conceded her loss. Wonder if Obama would accept her. That'd be... weird.

Watching the developing political situation surrounding the economic stimulus package seems to be providing a unique insight into the difficulties that pervade the current US Congress. Bipartisan agreement that the package is needed, combined with the always-present need amongst politicians to be seen as "doing something", produced an agreement in the House in near-record time. But now the bill has reached the Senate, and the brakes have been applied. At a superficial glance this may seem odd, because even in the Senate there seems to be bipartisan support. Both the Democraitc majority leader and the Republican minority leader spoke in favor of the bill being pas…

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/wireStory?id=4952742 The definition of "recession" is two straight quarters of negative economic growth. That still hasn't happened, in spite of poor NBC News' desire to call it one. (Kinda funny how when they decide to call things "what they really are", they oddly turn out not to be those things! The "civil war" in Iraq comes to mind.) Perhaps new definitions are needed. I get annoyed at our media-driven sensitivity to the plight of the single-working-mother-of-three, but the economy has grown so large that problems like the housing market collapse can have far-reaching impact even if they don't produce an outright rec…

Many people do not realize that our total number of congressional districts (and therefore our total number of Representatives in the U.S. House) has been limited to 435 ever since 1913 (except for a four-year period when it was temporarily increased to 437). In 1929, this number (435) was made permanent by an act of Congress. During the debates preceding that act, Missouri Representative Ralph Lozier stated: “I am unalterably opposed to limiting the membership of the House to the arbitrary number of 435. Why 435? Why not 400? Why not 300? Why not 250, 450, 535, or 600? Why is this number 435 sacred? What merit is there in having a membership of 435 that we would …