Politics

I don't need an IP address to identify him, and apparently many of you don't either, since several of you figured it out before I did. I have met few people in my 25 years of online debate that are as callously disrespectful of other people's opinions than he is, and as much as I respect his knowledge and insight, he is, in the end, 180 degrees polarized with my goals for this board. This will not be a board where people throw ideologies in each others' faces in the name of "debate", and denigrate and browbeat each other into submission. *WILL NOT!* I hope you all are okay with that, but if you're not, you're welcome to send me or another mod or admin a private me…

There's no reference sticky at all in the Politics forum, and since we have no academic history or social science section to speak of I thought this might fit in best here. I was thinking that since there is a vast body of research in countless fields and subfields, members should start off by picking a well defined and supported area of history or social science scholarship and provide links to only open access general resources. Perhaps, if SFN ever spins off a separate section for social sciences, we can delve deeper and maybe draw on particular avenues of research. Well, I'll start off with my area of interest. Strategic Studies Globalsecurity.org - Exce…

a continuation of the digression of this thread. highlights from previous posts: ^ecoli admitting he never saw spielberg's movie, then criticizing spielberg for message of said movie after spielberg's denial of any intent to portray said message. ^please note the bolded section ^me clarifying that the aforementioned question was indeed relevant to the discussion, then noting a few pieces of relevant information (pay attention to the bolded statements and figures) ^sayo makes a good point. which reminds me. i had an english teacher misinterpret a very ambiguous paper i wrote. she said it was on masturbation. i said it wasn't. she still trie…

Let's see if I can stir up some controversy. My take is that Alito has done an excellent job and will do just fine in the Supremes. Some of the democratic questioning has been intellectually dishonest but no more than was to be expected. Fortunately, the only clever tactic they have used is to ask questions the know Alito can't ethically answer (e.g. FISA) and then posture about a predictable lack of response. It does border on the surreal to see Ted Kennedy lecturing anyone about credibility but Teddy has never lacked nerve. Jay Leno joked the other night about him writing a story for kids about a dog named "splash." You just have to laugh... I should…

What would happen if minimum wage was $10 here in the United States? Ten dollars is not very much and I think it would relieve the strain on the various welfare programs that have to subsidise low wage jobs. Some say minimum wage allows more jobs for kids, but personaly I do not want my kid to thing their time is worth less than $10/hour. What are your thoughts?

Hayabusa, launched by Japan's space agency JAXA, appears to have failed in its mission, and hope is dimming for a successful return. The craft was originally designed to land on an asteroid, fire a pellet into it, and collect the resulting debris to be returned to earth. However, data suggests that it did not manage to fire its pellets, meaning any dust it collected would be in tiny amounts. To make things worse, JAXA is unable to maintain complete control of Hayabusa's orientation, suggesting that most of the gas thrusters have failed or frozen. The space agency managed to orient the craft with its ion engines, but this is only a temporary measure, and the ion e…

A little hypothetical here: If you were desighning a new political system, what would you concider vital to include, without which the system either wouldnt work, or wouldnt be fulfiling what you concider the central duties of a political system. eg, from what i understand of it, the american constitution seems to be saying that protection of certain freedoms (speach, religion etc) are central duties of the political system -- rights so inportant that the very political system of the country is desighned to maintain them It also seems to be saying that a democratic system is vitally inportant, either for the same ideological/ethical reasons as the freedom of s…

What do you think of the recently rejected plan to grant amnesty to republican fugitives? This guy, is pretty sure where he stands and he has a fair point but TBH, I think that the idea could have done some real good.

Just curious you all think the impact the loss of Ariel Sharon will be on the peace process.

I think this is fascinating given the current context of the "war on terror". It goes right to the heart of a number of issues. The gist of the issue here is that Steven Spielberg's latest film, "Munich", has raised some controversy because of its portrayal of the down side of retribution. The movie focuses on Israel's actions following the killing of its atheletes at the 1972 Olympic games, suggesting that there was an awful price to pay for hunting down those terrorists and killing them. In essence, the cycle of violence continues. I couldn't find the Sun-Times piece, but here's a quote from it at IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/news/sb/2005-12-26/film/4 …

Please find the news article here... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9871982/ 'NASA has outlined what it could do, and in what time frame, in case a quarter-mile-wide asteroid named Apophis is on a course to slam into Earth in the year 2036. The timetable was released by the B612 Foundation, a group that is pressing NASA and other government agencies to do more to head off threats from near-Earth objects.'

I was listening to a report on NPR yesterday afternoon about the piracy problem off the coast of Somalia. I didn't realize it has become to widespread and so dangerous to commercial shipping and travel in the region. According to the report, humanitarian groups in Somalia (which has been essentially government-less for 15 years now) are unable to get food shipments right now because of the problem, and it seems to be getting worse. And unlike that passenger ship we all heard about a couple of weeks ago, most freighters apparently can't outrun the pirates. I wonder if this might be a use of the US military that everyone would generally agree upon as a good idea, and…

This is probably an American phenomena more than anything, but heres an interesting essay thats been circulating through conservative magazines for quite some time, its called Heath Care is Not a Right by Leonard Peikoff (my comments in green): I'm pretty fiscally conservative for an insanely liberal feminist environmentalist, but saying people dont have a right to healthcare is just mindboggling. Why do some people think others arent entitled to good health when they need it

This cartoon was taken from today's "boondocks" cartoon provided by the Yahoo browser. Would you consider it racist? Do you think that a person of color might be offended by it?

I remember thinking how liberal the media was a long time ago, because I saw liberal ideas expressed all the time on TV. But then I decided to look for both liberal and conservative ideas on TV, and I found both! I was a little surprised, but more confused. I admit I didn't watch much news, but other tv programs seem mixed, or just change over time leaning one way and then the other. Some programs seemed to have multiple examples of both sides of the political spectrum all in the same half hour. This isn't something that I can look up on the Internet, each side points their finger at the other, and I can't decide for myself. What do you think?

With all the intellectuals swinging their massive cranial organs around here, I thought this might be enjoyed. CAUTION: Anyone with extreme Left or Right tendencies may suffer involuntary convulsions. enjoy! http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0512280311dec28,1,3243.story?coll=chi-opinionfront-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=1449254 The US Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against local election officials and Ike Brown, the chairman of the Democratic party in Noxubee County, Mississippi. Under the auspices of the 1965 Voter Rights Act, the contention is that they racially discriminated against white Democratic candidates, discouraging them from running for office and encouraging voters to vote against them. Brown is quite open about his bias against both white candidates and white voters, and while he isn't really supposed to be objective, being the chairman of a specific party, one would think that he would have to be racially unbiased. Per…

Do you think, considering the spy drones and commandoes in Iraq, we will invade them? We're accusing them of the same things we accused Iraq of, we're saying they have WMDs and we are saying we will consider military action if they don't stop thier Nuke programs.

I wasn't sure where to post this, maybe it belongs in General Discussion. Oh well. A couple of weeks ago, a kid at my high school posted on his MySpace website a statement about his desire to have sex with one of his teachers. The school administration caught wind of this, and suspended the student for a week. Do they have the right to do this? I'm not defending the guy, he's a jerk, but isn't this out of their jurisdiction? Or would they be able to argue that his actions were disrupting the learning of other students?

Hey, as some of you probably watched, President Bush gave an address from the Oval Office. This is a good thread to post any comments or analysis you have of the speech. The first obvious thing I noticed was that he did not give a time table, which has dissappointed many people. No one wants an indeterminantly long war that could drag on for an unknown amount of time. He introduced the word "defeatist" to describe people against the war. There are a few other things in his speech, but there were somethings he mentioned that the BBC didn't discuss afterwards. Mainly how he said "People will be gathering for Christmas and Hanukka" Then quoted a christmas carol. …

Since we've been discussing this in the thread here, I thought you guys might find this story over at MSNBC interesting, about the way the NSA is changing with the times. It has a lot of little tidbits about how they're incorporating newer data mining and artificial intelligence techniques to analyze data on a mass scale rather than individual cases at random (which we've talked about previously in this thread). http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10561911/ A couple of interesting quotes from this lengthy article:

For those of you who haven't seen this, it's a fun and interesting read: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/kitzmiller_v_dover.html Especially the cross-examination of Michael Behe: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day11pm.html#day11pm132

I have noticed that President Bush has made quite a few speeches lately about how things are going here, economically, and in Iraq, which is good, but often he will say something to the effect of "not as long as I am president." It is almost as if he is throwing the gauntlet down before the Democrats. Is it just me, or is he challenging the Democrats to write up articles of impeachment?

I've been following this trial from the beginning, and I'm happy to report a victory for science: Heres the decision in the judges own words: Notice the words in bold, here is what the creationist organization Discovery Institute says about the ruling: Activist judge, eh? Are they talking about the same John E Jones, the conservative Christian district court judge appointed by George W Bush? If there is any better proof that the words "activist judge" are really just codewords for "disagrees with me", I havent seen it But anyway, yay science!

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/IraqCoverage/wireStory?id=1303926