Politics

Republicans Seize Momentum, Set Sights On . . . Light Bulbs? I am begining to really like politics...

Poll Finds Majority Of Male Voters Would Have Elected Naked Woman WASHINGTON—A CNN/Gallup Poll released Monday revealed that a vast majority of registered male voters would have strongly supported a naked woman in the 2010 midterm elections. Respondents also requested a longer, hard-copy version of the poll be sent to their home addresses. The online survey found that regardless of political philosophy or party affiliation, 85 percent of American men in every ethnic, age, and socioeconomic group consistently chose a completely nude woman over a Democratic, Republican, or independent candidate. "Male voters from 18 to 85 were shown pictures of the candidates r…

Despite the USA's relatively low taxes, its citizens often complain about how high the taxes are. While playing Fable 3, I got a half baked idea. What if we could put in place a program to eventually eliminate federal taxes altogether? In Fable, as King, I got rid of the taxes to up my morality status. To pay for the federal budget, I then went to work in a pie shop. What if the Federal government does the same? What if the government sets up low cost competitors and uses our free-market economy to fund its programs? A government-owned Walmart-esque chain could potentially bring in a lot of revenue. Such things could stimulate the economy by competition and job creat…

Wondering why those chumps in Congress can't seem to fix the deficit? Try the New York Times' online deficit-fixing calculator, which lets you choose various proposals for deficit reduction and see just how much of an impact they'll have. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?hp I was able to eliminate the 2015 shortfall, but only by pissing off a bunch of Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries, reducing the DoD's budget, and raising a few taxes. Hopefully this gives people a sense of the scale of the problem, and a sense that no matter what course is taken, it will hurt. Just cutting out waste won't solve the pr…

I know that it is a long watch, but well worth it. I thought that this video brought up an interesting point...where is the accountability of the spreading of misinformation for the rightwing media? Where does the debunking of misinformation happen when the information center is self-contained? I would like to hear you all's thoughts on this, since many of us are in a field where peer review is required.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/07/eric-cantor-compromise-tax-cuts-obama_n_780029.html Yes I'm linking a Huffpost article. Please evaluate it based on substance. If you make an ad hominem argument against the Huffpost, please realize your argument is predicated on a logical fallacy. Thanks. So yes, this is one Republican, and equating his opinion to the party as a whole would be a composition fallacy, but based on my anecdotal experience with Republicans (yes, I'm admitting I'm using a logical fallacy here) it's pretty telling. This Republican doesn't want to compromise, and is making a general statement about his party that the rest of them don't want to co…

Interesting news today that the President's commission on deficit reduction, formed earlier in the year, is just about ready to issue its report. The commission is bipartisan, headed by a Democrat and a Republican: Reaction to the proposal from the press today was overwhelming -- you'd have thought that the pair was advocating the immediate sale of every home in America and the immediate departure from cities to living in caves. But in fact the proposal only calls for a cut of $200 billion from military and domestic spending by 2015. It does allegedly produce $4 trillion in overall deficit reduction by 2020, but it mainly does that through tax increases of va…

OK, so I just randomly thought up a possible solution to our government spending spree, and possibly also to other problems. The idea is to have our congresscritters "own" the debt they generate; that is, they and the people they represent could be made to bear some of the responsibility for it. The idea is as follows: 1) Tracking the Congresscritter's Debt. The congresscritter's votes on various bills are tracked, and the spending and income of the bills are tracked and estimated. The estimated amount that they owe/bring in would be the Estimated Debt Dollars (EDD), and would just be so the congresscritter and the people have an idea of what their future holds. The…

According to the link below, Bush mentions Obama 10 times in his book, apparently favorably each time. He has a lot of criticism for McCain, and only a single word for Sarah Palin: "Unqualified." He's apparently not a fan of the Tea Party Movement either. Check out this quote, which comes from a recent interview with the Times of London, the subject being "right-wing populism": Nice line. I can't help but wonder if we may be headed toward a post-White House reinvention of ol' W, much as we saw with Clinton. http://www.thenation.com/blog/155939/obama-finally-gets-some-love-george-w-bush

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44895.html I love this. If at first you don't succeed, right?

If you have any questions/comments for the "Take over the world" contest, or wanna vote for any of the entries, post it here.

I'm kinda running out the door here but let me at least start a thread on this: Some background can be found in a number of articles here: http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&cf=all&ncl=daCvyinYwjANgEMuLRp4z5_EWD-yM&topic=h In case that link doesn't work, here are some more specific links: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/05/nbc-anchorman-suspended-donating-democrats http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/olbermann-sidelined-msnbc-making-political-contributions/story?id=12069567 http://www.salon.com/news/msnbc/?story=/politics/war_room/2010/11/05/olbermann_suspended I haven't had a chance to really digest this yet, but it seems to me that M…

The right's machinery tries (via con jobs) to define the left. But their made-up definitions either fall way short of reality, or compare them (dishonestly) to unrelated systems in nations lacking our Constitutional protections, freedom of expression, adequate system of defense lawyers, or healthy separation of powers -- at the very least. In the real definition of progressives and liberals, these groups don't fit it: militant rebels planting bombs to fight oppression; tyrants proclaiming to be communists yet nearly identical to tyrant leaders in right-winged nations lacking our free press and civil rights; many political groups with a narrow axe to grind. Certa…

We commented just yesterday about how the Chinese are ahead of the U.S. in things like high speed rail, and now a new report from the wind energy sector reconfirms how we continue to lag behind a growing competitor on the world stage. Just released data from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) suggests the U.S. wind industry reported its slowest quarter since 2007, while China installed nearly three times as much new power from this form of renewable energy. Read more http://www.earthtechling.com/2010/10/u-s-wind-energy-industry-hurting-bad/ ================ Note CNN today had talk about how the US is going in stone age if people do not stop this liber…

Is there some one here, that would like to defend President Obama's planned Asian tour, in particular the first three days in India. The purpose, as I understand it is to encourage one way 'Free Trade" or exports from the US into India. Several big name CEO's are planning on being there, including the CEO's of Boeing and GE, which to my knowledge already do a great bit of business with India. I'm not sure the purpose of taking Mrs. Obama, other than her planned trip to Mumbai's red light district and I' really not sure their two daughters should be going at all...The Taj Mahal, has already been hit once by terrorist and Mumbai is the most densely populated city in the WOR…

Gallup today released it's final pre-election poll. The headline tomorrow will be the continued enthusiasm gap and the overall lead favoring the GOP. But I found something much more interesting in this story from Politico: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44468.html In other words, it's really just business as usual for Republicans and Democrats. GOP voters are a little more mobile at the moment, but not that much. The tale of the tape here is the vast increase in independent voters, and their inclination to vote against incumbents. This should be heartening for Democratic supporters, because it means that they're not really favoring Republ…

It wasn't quite the drubbing that some predicted, but it went way past the 1994 "revolution" and actually approached the 1922 record. In addition to taking control of the House, Republicans also picked up 6 seats in the Senate, bringing that body to something a 53-47 balance (several seats have yet to be decided, but it appears unlikely that the GOP will gain control of the Senate). Many prominent Democrats, such as Russ Feingold were turned out of office, Nancy Pelosi lost the speakership of the House, and even Barack Obama's senate seat went to Republicans. Democrats were not without their victories, however, with Harry Reid keeping his seat and Jerry Brown retu…

Politico has an interesting post-mortem on Nancy Pelosi's time in office. The main thrust of the piece is that while she's a heroine to liberals, she pushed too hard for a liberal agenda, not listening to the mainstream of the American public, which brought her right into the sights of both conservatives and independents seeking change. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44598_Page4.html What do you all think?

Today when I went to vote I was accosted several times by people wanting me to vote for their candidate, since I was in line I listened politely as the line moved but one guy asked me if I knew who i was going to vote for in the several non partisan local appeals court judge races. I told him (truthfully) that I wasn't planning on voting for any of them since i didn't know them and there had been very little information about them available. he covertly offered me a list of the correct choices for these judgeships. I asked him, what he meant by correct. He again pressed the list in my hand and said very quietly so no one would over hear, " i have a list of the candidates …

The poll question is intended to get a broad view of "lean", so please pick a category closest to your view, even if it is not entirely accurate. Note: This thread is about US politics. Sorry for not saying that up front (thanks John Cuthber).

I'm confused by the news stories out of France -- I don't understand why such a broad spectrum of people, including young people, are so concerned about the raising of the retirement age from 60-62(early)/65-67(full). Is this really just a general resistance to any pullback from an entitlement culture, or is it, for example, more of a broad attack on a distant ruling elite that's out of touch on many issues? I thought perhaps our international membership might be able to shed some light on this. Here's a story at the beeb for background: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11570828

This is a tough question to be specific about, and I'm sure I'm going to see a flood of nitpicking responses about how the Republicans never really had a supermajority and the Democrats did, but primarily I'm referring to the recent years of almost total Republican control of the country (2000-2006) vs the recent Democratic supermajority (2008-2010). The timeframes are larger so yes it's harder to judge, but I hope you have the ability to look past that and make a pragmatic decision. Who accomplished more, the Republicans in 2000-2006, or the Democrats in 2008-2010? Who affected better changes to this country? Who was generally moving things in the right direction? Sp…

Last week Sarah Palin confirmed her interest in the 2012 GOP nomination, and probably did more to sway independents to move back to the Democratic party in that statement than anything Democrats have done in the last 18 months. This article at Politico has some interesting angles on how various interests in the Republican party want to stop her. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/44449.html I've said it before and I'll say it again: Right now Sarah Palin is the one thing that would stop me from voting Republican in 2012 and bring me back into the Obama camp. I am always open-minded right up to election day, but I'm pretty steamed at Democrats righ…

what could he have done differently

Interesting argument for defunding NPR in today's Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303738504575568222953428174.html In a nutshell, what he's saying is that NPR's existence as a government-sponsored "highbrow" news organization inhibits the potential for competition from other ventures into "highbrow" journalism. In other words, if someone wants to start a news organization that leverages a very high standard for journalism, they would have a hard time doing that because of the perception that that role is already taken up by NPR. IMO there's a good argument to be made that it's the government's protection that allows NP…