Politics

That subject line ought to raise a few eyebrows around here, but I just live for stories like this! http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/presidentbush/2008/07/bushs-faith-bas.html His position seems to be not that it's a violation of the separation of church and state, but that Bush didn't do ENOUGH of it, and he supported the wrong set of zealots! So, what, we're going to publicly fund "Condoms from Christ" and "Jesus Loves Pregnant Teens" now?

http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=95430 Kucinich has stated, in no uncertain terms, that the Iraq war was about oil, citing secret meetings between the Cheney Energy Task Force and executives from Exxon, Shell and BP:

Firstly, you're mixing quotes from my responses to different people. Secondly, you are reaching with both hands into the assumption bag about my mentality, based on what I've said so far about this matter. It shows you have a rabid response to any kind of inquiry that is at odds with your opinions. And thirdly, despite attempts and entreaties to avoid going off-topic in this thread, you persist in doing so. Let's start another thread or resurrect one of the old WMD threads. Didn't I say that I was arguing against that very point. Oh, yes I did, just a bit earlier, in the first sentence of the last paragraph in post #30. It is an area denial agent, meant to fl…

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2461214.ece Wow look, it's a Milton Friedman protege agreeing with all those long haired Alex Jones worshiping hippie freaks... Worlds are colliding... Perhaps this will even convince those who despite past protestations continue to deny that oil played a major role in the Iraq War (hint hint: Pangloss)

Was recently formed to prevent any sort of telcom immunity as part of the FISA bills: They've received over $325,000 in just a few weeks. I think I'll donate.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1828132020080619 I guess this could be damaging to Obama, but I think it is a wash, as long as it remains true that Obama gets most of his money in small donations. That is public funding in my opinion.

An interesting piece on Bill Moyer's. Full video available at the following: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06272008/watch.html Two decades later, even as the leading scientists in the world have reached a consensus that global warming truly does threaten the planet, Congress still has not passed any law mandating major cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions. So this week, twenty years to the day after his first appearance, Dr. Hansen was back to tell press and politicians of some striking similarities between then and now and one crucial difference. "The difference is that now we have used up all slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global w…

What is the difference?

Interesting point raised on Meet the Press today. NBC's Chuck Todd was talking about the convention with Tom Brokaw, and the issue of which Clinton would speak at the convention came up. The Obama camp doesn't want Clintons to dominate the convention, so they only want a Clinton-named speaker on one night. Well that has to be Hillary, out of respect for her candidacy and desire for her voters (a quarter of whom currently say they'll be voting for McCain). You only typically have one headliner on an evening, so you'd undermine her by having Bill speak after her. You can have Bill introduce her, but according to Todd there's a whole history there of speaking engag…

Time ran a fascinating piece by Amy Sullivan yesterday about in-fighting in the religious right. One of their more interesting points is that when James Dobson came out slinging mud at Obama this week, there was a backlash within the religious conservative community. One brand new anti-Dobson PAC was created and, low and behold, immediately picked up thousands of dollars in Colorado Springs, the small, overwhelmingly conservative city where Focus on the Family is located! The piece goes on to look at the struggles of political evangelical leaders right now. Rush Limbaugh is no doubt playing this as attributable to "white guilt" and "racial fears". (sig…

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/27/asia/korea.php Looks like some great progress in regards to North Korea. I hope this will eventually encourage Iran to do the same. I think this shows some desperation on the part of North Korea via China and perhaps more flexibility from Bush to get the ball rolling. I have a feeling that our administration bent a little more than they wanted in order to have this done prior to Bush leaving office. The results look good so far though and that is what matters.

Namely Cuba and the Chinese. I'd forgotten all about this story, which came out in early May, but my wife reminded me about it last night. Cuba made a deal with Chinese and Indian companies to drill the same oil that Florida is now considering drilling. In the past Cuba withheld drilling, in part because Florida also promised not to allow it. But they made the first move here, not Florida. The agreement is basically right down the middle of the Florida straight, but that straight is only 80 or so miles across, and the fields surely cross over that boundary down deep. So if they start drilling that oil, they're going to get oil we could have pulled up on our sid…

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…