Politics

I'm sorry, I just found this funny. Especially the "absolutely no link” part. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/1028/Osama-bin-Laden-threatens-French-troops-France-announces-pullout-from-Afghanistan

The Democrats are trying to fix problems the Republicans have largely caused, problems like the economic slump resulting from the financial crisis and the enormous budget deficit which is largely the result of Bush administration policies such as tax cuts coupled with massive military spending on two wars, one of which was completely unnecessary. The Democrats have received nothing but barbs and extreme vitriol from both Republicans and Republican mouthpieces like Fox. The problems have gotten marginally better but are nowhere near solved. We have Republicans running on the platform that the Democrats have not yet fixed the problems the Republicans caused. The Republi…

Huh, well you don't see that every day. I wonder if this is his way of getting back at the Democrats for putting him under investigation?

Republicans in Florida must be pretty mad about Charlie Crist, our current governor who is now running as an independent for US Senate against Republican nominee Marco Rubio and Democratic nominee Kendrick Meek. Apparently a state senate commission on elections has decided that it is time for the state to consider making it more difficult for people to do what Charlie Crist is doing. My question is: Why? What is so bad about allowing people to run for office as an independent? It turns out that my district's state senator sits on this commission, so I let her have an earful this morning in email (for whatever THAT's worth, sigh). Their reasoning (see article be…

San Francisco is considering a proposition that will authorize legal and illegal residents (all non-citizens) who have children in a district public school to vote in district school board elections. The city voted down a similar measure in 2004. "Pro" Argument "Con" Argument Interestingly, the "con" argument above comes from the San Francisco Chronicle, frequently cited by CTR/FNC as extremely liberal. Their argument is interesting: Why not House member? Senator? President? The same logic applies -- the people elected to those offices have direct impact on the lives and futures of these residents, so shouldn't they have the right to vote? I agree,…

Interesting story at Politico: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/44216.html According to the story, citing the Center for Responsive Politics, which runs OpenSecrets.org, apparently the Democrats are actually outspending Republicans this cycle by a long shot. This runs contrary to a story in last week's news cycle about spending by third parties on Republican candidates, which was running 2:1 over similar spending on Democratic candidates. The numbers cited (160mil versus 80) are a big drop in a very large bucket. But what's really interesting to me is that the article draws a comparison (on page 3) with the situation in 2006, when the ratio w…

I came across this site http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop where I found the world population to be approximately 6,276,000,000. I then checked http://www.netstate.com/states/geography/tx_geography.htm and found the area of Texas as 268,601 square miles. One square mile is 640 acres and hence the area of Texas is 268,601x640=171,904,640 acres. Thus if you fit the entire population of the world into Texas each person would have 171,904,640/6,276,000,000 = 0.027 acres. 0.027 arces is the same as 1176.12 square feet. A quick search on a web site that lists homes for sale and I see that the average 3 bedroom home, so I take it that this would be for 3 to…

Is it just me or did these folks hit a home run with this idea? It seems like such a simple message, the idea that while your life may suck right now, it will some day get better. So simple, and yet, it seems to really touch on something powerful. IMO it even transcends the gay message and speaks to kids suffering from all forms of bullying. Some background here and the official web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Gets_Better_Project http://www.itgetsbetterproject.com/?loc=interstitialskip President Obama recorded a message for the project which was posted today, putting it back in the spotlight. I don't think these folks can get enough attention -- …

National Public Radio fired 10-year commentator Juan Williams yesterday over remarks he made as a guest on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox News Channel earlier in the week. Here's what Williams said: Williams says he was fired remotely, without even a face-to-face meeting. This comes following controversy over Bill O'Reilly's appearance on The View, which is what was being discussed when the comments were made. O'Reilly said on that program that "Muslims attacked us on 9/11", a factually accurate statement that he later clarified to mean "not all Muslims", but which prompted a walkout by Whoppi Goldberg and Joy Behar. Following his firing, Williams added t…

So the Juan Williams firing got me wondering. Seeing how we all agree that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful, fun loving, middle of the road, get along types, why is it so hard to find that Osama bin Laden guy or his best buddy Ayman al-Zawahri. I mean both those guys have to be an embarrassment to all but a tiny minority of Muslims. Right? They have to be somewhere, and at the somewhere they must be surrounded by Muslims. I have also heard plenty of Muslims claim that Al Qaeda acts completely contrary to the teachings of Islam. So how is it that cartoonist Molly Norris had to enter an FBI witness protection type program for suggesting a draw Mohammed day, b…

Since I am more "right leaning" than left, perhaps someone can tell me why? I am church mouse poor, but proud as a "Nabob". Can anyone tell me why? Is there any truth to the below, or have I missed something? http://apathetic-usa.com/

Sometimes, what people want might be unreasonable. Is it still a good idea to try to reach a compromise with them, or would it be better to totally ignore them?

To Be Good, Sometimes Leaders Need to Be a Little Bad; Study Examines 'Dark Side' Personality Traits and Leadership The study was for military officers, so it might not apply elsewhere. Yet it seems that it does; for example people characterize Bush as arrogant and inflexible, and Obama as too hesitant, yet they got to be president. Also, some of these traits are better for different situations, for example you wouldn't want a leader to be hesitant in a combat situation. What about for our politicians though? I think we might need a slightly arrogant politician to get very difficult things done, and politicians usually have plenty of time to be hesitant whi…

I think it's interesting that it seems to be the prevailing "conventional wisdom" that the right uses fear more than the left. I've never seen anyone quantify this in any sort of objective way, and yet it's what people seem to think. (Or am I wrong?) Here are a couple of interesting examples from the current news that seem to me to show the left using fear: 1) White House attacks anonymous funding sources for Republican candidates in the 2012 mid-term election. (example) 2) Potential reduction in the number of women representatives in Congress. (example) Anonymous donations to orgs supporting GOP candidates is reportedly way out of proportion with Dems …

Last week Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident currently in prison, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China". The Chinese government immediately reacted by slapping down heavy search restrictions on domestic use of the Web. Since then an interesting discussion has arisen, initially only on the international front, but increasingly within China itself, as word gradually spreads through that country by other means. Today the Chinese government responded to the story officially, and it responded on at least two levels. This opinion piece by the state-owned Xinhua News Agency clearly delineates the …

I don't think racism was really something that was being seriously alleged here at SFN, but you hear it a lot in general these days (especially following the story about the NAACP stepping into the fray) so I thought it worth passing along, and perhaps it'll be interesting to discuss in some way. From the Washington Post: Few signs at tea party rally expressed racially charged anti-Obama themes No real huge surprises here, IMO, although the citizenship thing only garnering 1% of the signs was a little bit of a surprise. Of course signs don't equate to beliefs, and people have those to varying degrees, so many amongst the attendees may actually s…

Wikileaks has just released 92,000 Army reports on the war in Afghanistan, detailing everything from civilian casualties to suspicions of Pakistani involvement. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26warlogs.html?pagewanted=all Here's the collection of reports from each paper: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/warlogs http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html So. Now what? I'd love to see the administration's response to this in the coming days. This is not the sort of picture they wanted painted of the war in Afghanistan.

In China last year, 2,631 miners were killed on the job. In contrast, only 53 US miners died in 2008. http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/10/13/china.mining/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_world World explodes in joy as Chile miners emerge SAN JOSE MINE, Chile—A global audience watched captivated as the miners’ rescue operation got under way. People logged on and tuned in to read, watch and listen as they emerged from the depths of the earth. A CNN report described the mine as deeper than the height of the Empire State Building in New York City which is 1,250 feet or 381 meters. Read More....

There has recently been a proposal to pay off the UK National Debt by having a one off tax on the richest 10% of the UK population, who allegedly have £5 Trillion in personal wealth between them. A one off tax of 20% of their wealth would pay off the entire national debt and remove the need for the cuts we are facing. They tested it with a youGov poll and apparently it has a 74% approval rating. You can find more details in this guardian article or at http://www.glasgowmediagroup.org/ I am curious as to your opinions on this. In particular, if this is supported by the majority of the population, does it become automatically the correct course of action, as dic…

When I read this (link to BBC news), my first reaction was: WTF??? To which the UK replied by pointing at all the other European countries in an attempt to seem safer than the rest: I mean, it has little to do with actual safety. For example, according to the BBC, up to 25,000 tourists die in road accidents worldwide every year. Al-Qaeda terrorists might bomb a number of tourist sites, but they will never achieve to kill a number of tourists that is anywhere near significant when compared to the road kill... An American website conveniently lists all the tourist deaths in 2006-2008, placing terrorism on an insignificant 6th place, after Vehicle Accidents…

The current predictions from Professor Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia Center for Politics show the democrats losing control of the House by a sizable margin but holding on to the Senate either by virtue of a 51-49 majority or by virtue of a 50-50 split and the Vice President being a democrat. http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/ My observation is that conservatives are losing the momentum they had a few months ago while liberals are gaining some momentum. I would predict that the Republican bite of congress will be slightly smaller then expected. That, however, is besides the point of this thread. Even with democratic majorities in both hou…

According to a recent Politico article, 4 of the Republican candidates for President who do not currently hold public office are employed by Fox News, with Mitt Romney being the exception. So the odds are fairly good we'll end up with a Fox News employee as president. So which of them would you prefer, or would you rather someone who isn't employed by Fox? Note that most of these candidates have an exclusivity agreement with Fox, preventing them from going on another TV network that would actually ask them tough questions. Fox has said that they will terminate their employment when they can't continue pretending to be undecided announce that they are running for presi…

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43471.html Some interesting politics behind the decision can be found at the link above. I think this shows that the economic impact on the Gulf region outweighed any environmental concerns. But it seems likely that more regulation can be expected regarding the technical problems of fixing oil spills in deep water. I think it's the right call. What do you all think?

iNow and myself were having a discussion about the effects of the Bush Tax Cuts inside a thread about modern American conservatism. Our discussion got outside the realm of the thread. We could have moved to the already existing Bush Tax Cuts thread, but I decided I would rather enjoy discussion about the broader topic of the effects of tax policy on general market performance, namely equities, derivatives, and complex financial instruments. I conjecture that higher taxes propagate market uncertainty, reduce trade volume, and generally choke the efficiency and self-sustaining value system of the market. I will even "go out on a limb" and extrapolate that tax reduct…

I've wondered about this for some time and I thought I'd ask. America and Australia are roughly the same size and America isn't 60% unusable desert. You have 10 times our population and probably 100 times our manufacturing capability. Houses sell for $80k within miles of a City centre ( I was looking at Austin, Texas) whereas our prices start at $350k, yet you manage a housing crisis with people not being able to pay their loans. FFS, your monthly repayments in many places are less than most people pay in rent per week down here. You have arguably the most advanced medical technology on the planet, but one of the lowest life expectancies in the developed world…