Politics

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13528837/site/newsweek/ In short, Lieberman faces a serious challenge in August against a candidate who's almost entirely known as an anti-war candidate. Lamont, who is described here as a "wealthy Greenwich cable-television executive", is polling well and shows every sign of being able to beat Lieberman in August. But this quote is particularly revealing about Lamont's true nature: Nonsense. There's absolutely no indication that the Iraqi forces are either being held back or are holding themselves back in any way. None. Everything we know about the situation in Iraq indicates that they're standing up as fast as they possi…

This is an idea I've hadl ingering in the back of my mind for a little while now, and so I thought would just share it with you to see what you think of it. What if instead of going through the slow process of drawing up peacekeeping forces from individual countries; the United nations had its own army that it would readily be able to draw up and deploy as a peacekeeping force. The army would be made up entirely of volunteers from different parts of the globe and with absolutely no affiliations to any particular army or other organisations. It may even be helpful if they denounce allegiance to their own country. The force would have to be highly well trained and e…

American viewers may wish to tune in to 60 Minutes tonight. Mike Wallace will be interviewing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (No, I pasted it in from the Wikipedia, are you kidding?)

That other topic about a "UN Army" got me thinking. The UN is obviously a deeply flawed organization in a lot of ways, but I think that it's also done a whole lot of good in the world, and that the basic concept, a permanent organization where representatives from all nations can meet and work out their common problems in a neutral setting, is a wonderful idea. So I guess I'll just ask two pretty wide open questions that can hopefully generate some good discussion. If you had the power to reform and restructure the United Nations in any way you chose, what you do? Specifically, how would you deal with the more active aspects, where the UN as a whole makes resolutions?…

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/17/domesticspying.lawsuit.ap/index.html So what's next? Will the appeal uphold the ruling? Will anyone ever be held responsible?

Interesting op-ed piece by Florida Governor Jeb Bush and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the Washington Post today regarding the No Child Left Behind act, which is apparently up for reauthorization soon. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/11/AR2006081101565.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns The gist of their piece is that the act should be reauthorized, and the following changes should be made to improve it: - Making the testing standards completely uniform so that states can't dumb it down - Track individual student progress to show improvements beyond whether or not X number of students have met the minimum goal (per FL & N…

Due to a re-classification of what qualifies as a planet, our solar system could have 12 orbiting planets, compared to the age old and accepted 9.

Queensland's health system has major problems. In the last couple of years; 1. Dr. Jayant Patel (Dr. Death) working at the Bundaberg Base Hospital was linked by Coronial Enquiry to the deaths of 13 patients. (More like 80 but we can only provide convicting evidence of 13) He was considered so dangerous by staff that nurses would actually hide patients from him. He's currently in hiding in the US after being flown out of Australia by the Queensland Health Dept. 2. The Casualty (E.R.) ward of Caboolture Hospital closed due to lack of staff. Victims of a car accident 200 yards from the front gate had to be transported to Brisbane (50 miles) for treatment. 3. A D…

George Allen "Macaca" This guy has a good chance at becoming a front runner for President in 08'. I wouldn't label him a racist, but what was he thinking? Why would you call someone a name and not understand the meaning? And the confederate flag? That is a sign of a low IQ. Should anyone vote for this guy?

yes that cap S is deliberate. every country has a National Debt it seems, so Who are we all endebted to? these often run into the Billions of <Insert local currency denomination>. we can`t ALL be in Debt can we:confused: and if we are, HOW? it just doesn`t seem possible unless I`m missing something.

Whenever I talk to a republican, everything is always someone else's fault and everyone is out to get them. I mean they control the presidency and the senate but for some reason the democrats are the ones to blame for all of the USA's problems. They have an excuse for everything. For example: the war is going badly and all the sudden its the democrats fault because the "liberal" media took away all their support. Im not a democrat just out to bash republicans (im not anything ATM; too young to vote) but this is just my observation.

hello saw this http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060815/od_nm/mideast_implants_dc just goes to show humor can still survive even in a time of war. and a laugh is sometimes still the best medicine mr d

Ok, perhaps not exactly politics, but I couldn't help make note of this. Apparently we've had our first "same-sex divorce", following the recent spate of controversial same-sex marriages. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060721/ap_on_re_us/gay_marriage_separation I got a sad little chuckle out of this contradiction: Um, yeah, okay....

So how does everyone feel about the recent TSA guidelines forbidding people from carrying on liquids/gels? How much safer are these rules actually making us, and is that added safety worth the freedom you have to sacrifice? I would say the most notible thing is that the terrorist attack which was allegedly foiled in Britain demonstrates a working system. Why then are the additional measures of confiscating all liquids/gels necessary? How far will they continue to regulate, and when should they stop?

http://news.com.com/Physicist+James+A.+Van+Allen+dead+at+91/2100-11397_3-6104148.html

AOL recently released 21 million search queries by 650,000 of its users: http://news.com.com/AOL+offers+disturbing+glimpse+into+users+lives/2100-1030_3-6103098.html?tag=nl Usernames were replaced with numbers in hopes of protecting the anonymity of the users performing the searches. However, since searches could be cross-referenced by user, a large enough corpus of search data provided a substantial amount of personal data on the user performing the search. This was enough for Internet sleuths to figure out the identity of at least one of the individuals whose data was released: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?ex=1312776000&en=f6f…

the public face of MI5 is now online here:http://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page502.html it also has an Alert level (Currently Severe) for attack likelyhood. http://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page269.html here.

Year after year the war continues between Israel and it's neighbours. No reasonable solution to resolve the conflicting issues between Israel and it's neighbours exists. It has occured to me, that a solution might be arrived at, if the conflicting requirements of each side could be incorperated into a board game. The game could be played on the web by Palestinians, Israelis, and others. The game would consist of many boards, each board having at least two opposing players. The players of each board would negotiate/barter real issues, and respond to events. The game winners would be the players of the board that arrives at sustainable peace in a short tim…

Recent debate in Australia is weather the country should go nuclear ( power plants). Nothing is certain, but the cards are on the table. John Howard appears to be in favour of the idea. I am not so sure. Firstly, we have natural gas resources and by the time they are depleted some new technology could emerge. If not, we can always go back to nuclear power. And what to do with all the waste? We can bury it in sand but even then background radiation could cause problems. A much better alternative, in my opinion, is investing in hydro or solar power on mass scale. We have a enormous amount of space for either of these two options. Another problem with nuclear power is the ti…

One of the more interesting aspects of the current crisis between Israel and Lebanon is the impact it's having in internal Iranian politics. Iranian political and religious leaders have been playing a very high stakes game of "wag the dog" when it comes to Hezbollah, and there are signs that, while they've generally been playing that game very well, they may be getting more than they bargained for. This interesting article by Jim Sciutto of ABC News was broadcast from Tehran today, and appears to be unique amongst current reportage in the region: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2275230 At first Scutto reports about the demonstrations at the British Embas…

i think pakistan is responsible 4 the terrorism around d world!!!!! wats ur thoughts????? rply must.

I got one of those flyers from a local politician in the mail today, asking me what my priorities are and the like. The politician was still in university, so probably in her early twenties. I thought this was probably a bit young and inexperienced in the ways of the world to represent me in parliament. So I wondered what everybody else thought.

On January 16, Newt Ginrich had this exchange with Tim Russert on Meet the Press: On July 20, Sen. Sanatorum delivered a prepared speech to the National Press Club stating: And later in the speech: While I'm fairly hawkish by this board's standards and agree with most of the points made by Ginrich and Santorum, I'm still not sure what I think about two leading republicans in the space of five days saying we are in World War III. It feels like a signficant moment on several levels. First, they could be right and even I would need to rethink a lot of assumptions. Second, this could be the leading edge of the 2006 campaign: Reca…

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/07/19/stemcells.veto/index.html Another chapter of the GOP war on science ? I'm curious, did he ever admit his motives were religious ? He says it's about morality and "being conscious", but that's a diversion, without his religious beliefs, he wouldn't see those cells as "living beings".

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/21/Sept.11.prof.ap/index.html?section=cnn_topstories I'm pretty torn on this issue. On the one hand, I think 9/11 conspiracy theorists are completely delusional, propagate a bunch of hearsay/lies/misinterpretations/half-truths between each other. This pisses me off more than Ward Churchill (at least I could see where he was coming from) However, I can see a legitimate free speech angle here. In the end, I'd lean towards saying can his ass for teaching lies. In the words of the Onion... what do you think?