Politics

Since I don't know how to do a poll, I was just wondering; in your honest opinion, how is President Obama doing in running our country? I'm a "Hill Billy" tweener, so there's no offense taken one way or another. If my question is too provocative, I hope an administrator will kick it to the curb before anyone can reply. Otherwise, can we turn it into a poll?

Not the new one (yet). This is a recent but older Arizona law in which the state imposed more stringent penalties against employers of illegal aliens than what federal law does. The Obama administration's position is that it usurps their authority to enforce immigration law. The Court was originally asked to hear the case last fall, but it has not replied to the petition yet. This new filing today, and the particular way of phrasing their position, suggests that they wish the court to consider the case in light of the new law as well. If the court agreed with them then the new law could also be struck down, perhaps even by the same ruling. I think this is an in…

ABC News ran an interesting piece today about how "emergency" spending has exceeded $230 billion since February. Why is this date range significant? Because in February Congress and the President passed PAYGO, which was designed to stop deficit spending. Ah, but it's emergency spending, right? Or is it? Even many of the items that seem urgent (like highway construction in light of our declining infrastructure) don't sound like "emergencies", at least in the sense of not having to pay for them. Just charge it to the credit card, right? It's not as if we really need that credit line for anything, and it doesn't hurt, so just rack up some more debt. …

Interesting article in the Washington Post today about how Bill Clinton's continued popularity and Senator Blanche Lincoln's struggle to get re-elected in Arkansas put a spotlight on the ongoing struggle between centrists (edit: meant to say "moderates") and progressives in the Democratic party. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/29/AR2010052902329.html Not particularly profound, but interesting stuff, and I think worth a read.

I wonder sometimes how these stories make it up the chain to appear on Google News, but hey, their algorithm has sure produced some juicy material for SFN Politics over the years. At any rate, this story is about a bar in (if I read this right) Hamilton, Ontaria, Canada. The bar has the amusing name "The Honest Lawyer", and inside the men's bathroom were some mouth-shaped urinals, with big, red, glossy lips. The urinals were there for about three years, according to the owner, but for about the last year an activist group called the "Woman Abuse Working Group" began protesting the urinals, saying that they were linked to violence against women, that it's "no joke t…

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Politics/national-debt-soars-past-13-trillion/story?id=10748382 The National Debt has just surpassed $13,000,000,000,000, up from $10.7 trillion when Bush left office, increasing some $2.3 trillion under Obama. For comparison, the debt increased $4.97 trillion under Bush's 8 years in office. The national debt is simply out of control and I really have no suggestions at this point. It seems at this point America will have an incomprehensibly large national debt for quite some time. Personally I think the government should sue Wall Street financials who defrauded the entire country in order to recoup the TARP money the financials…

first George Galloway, and now this? i mean wtf? and btw, it's been quite some time since i was planning to post this, it's not something that just turned up;)

It just boggles the mind the reasoning people will stoop to sometimes in an effort to uphold a single, narrowly-defined ideological principle. In this case, the allegation is that the ACLU is involved in a concerted and deliberate effort to photograph CIA agents and provide those images to terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why? Defenders say it's to protect their "right" to know who their potential torturers are so that they can avoid them. No, really. And yet the left went bonkers over the outing of Valerie Plame, the worst-kept secret in DC. Do you guys really wonder why conservatives get frustrated with liberals? Seriously? Some articles for ba…

Bascule asked recently why I haven't posted more examples of liberal commentators doing what Glenn Beck does. The answer isn't because they aren't doing it, it's because I'm not obsessed with finding such examples. But I did happen to catch a few minutes of AC360 tonight while puttering around the house, and I was rather shocked at what I saw. Anderson Cooper 360 is touted as "CNN's premiere nightly news program", not commentary! (you can see this on the page immediately below the video linked below) (Does Fox News do this too, now -- calling their commentary/entertainment programs "news"? Yeesh!) I found a video on the CNN web site that contained most of t…

Fox News has been all over this for days if not weeks (I don't really know, but I noticed it the other night when I tuned in for the first time in years), but I think it's pretty clear that no laws were broken. Unfortunately the White House has now acknowledged that Rahm Emanuel asked President Clinton to offer Sestak a job on a Presidential advisory board or some similar role, and they also confirm that this was done in order to get Sestak to withdraw from the race against Alan Specter. (Sestak declined the offer and won the primary.) President Obama did not take part in the offer, but the offer was made and it does involve access to the President. In sh…

So, Rand Paul's is cut in the image of his father, where he favors small government in a big way... So big, in fact, that he thinks the Civil Rights Act did more to restrict liberty than to make liberty universal. He's taking heat from Republican and Democrat leaders alike. I'd like to make clear my own feelings. I am abundantly confident that Rand Paul is NOT a racist. I am, however, not so confident that he's capable of seeing the negative impact the implementation of some of his ideology would have... I am not confident that he's willing to adjust his philosophy due to that negative impact. He has canceled his appearance this Sunday on Meet the Press …

In my opinion, the Democrats are significantly more Internet-savvy than the Republicans. The 2008 election saw massive leveraging of social networks like Facebook and Twitter for campaign purposes. Millions followed Barack Obama on Twitter when McCain could barely drum up tens of thousands. Recently the Republicans tried to launch a site called AmericaSpeakingOut, largely reminiscent of Obama's Open for Questions site, which allowed users to submit questions that the community can vote on in order to weight their importance. Unfortunately, in doing so, the Republicans seem to have forgotten the comparative imbalance of Internet savvy between themselves and Democ…

http://consumerist.com/2010/05/poor-people-spend-9-of-income-on-lottery-tickets.html So... why do we exempt them from paying taxes, exactly?

Not really sure where would be the most appropriate for this thread, but I wanted to open up discussion about it as it something that will affect every single one of us in some way regardless on which country you are from. The Codex Alimentarius Commission was created in 1963 by FAO and WHO to develop food standards, guidelines and related texts such as codes of practice under the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme. The main purposes of this Programme are protecting health of the consumers and ensuring fair trade practices in the food trade, and promoting coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organiza…

The President sent a bill to Congress today that proposes a new procedure that would allow the president in the future to create a package of spending cuts after the budget passes that would then be up-or-down voted on by Congress (no amendments). It's a kind of fallback from the line-item veto concept, and it's considered Court-proof because each package would be voted on by Congress. There's only one hitch: When the idea came up from Republicans during the Bush administration it was roundly chastised by Democrats, who voted overwhelmingly against it. Gee, I wonder why. But early quotes from Democrats this time around (see link below) are supportive, and fr…

Well isn't this strange... jackson33, you have me at an impasse. There's an article I'd like to discuss, but it's only available through News Corp outlets at the moment, specifically the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, and FoxNews.com. Also, it's a rumor... The New York Post: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/an_antitrust_app_buvCWcJdjFoLD5vBSkguGO The Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703612804575222553091495816.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEADTop And FoxNews.com: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/03/apple-adobe-flash-antitrust-investigation/ ...are reporting that Apple is under investigation for anti-tr…

President Obama broke a promise yesterday, asking Congress to authorize emergency spending for the wars outside of the budget. In the process he also circumvents the legal requirement to specify how the spending will be paid for, allowing the spending to go straight into the deficit. Adding fuel to the fire, only a little over half the money in the bill goes to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The rest goes to various places including aid for Haiti and other recent disasters. Certainly a worthy cause, but shouldn't the government indicate how it's going to PAY for such things? And by the way, this popped up on my Google News page, but I think it's pre…

Pangloss recently started a thread about President Obama asking Congress for another $60 Billion. I'm not going to comment on either the legality or necessity of the request, but it made me wonder, do the numbers mean anything to politicians any more? $60B is equal to 20% of the total Australian Federal budget. I know we are only a small nation, but, jees that's a lot of money. US pollies seem to throw around billions and tens of billions like ours throw around millions and tens of millions. While the scale differs you have to wonder if the pollies are connected to the reality that it's not their money, it belongs to the people. Because it isn't theirs, i…

Arlen Specter down in flames, and Dr. Rand Paul nominated in Kentucky. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/us/politics/19elect.html Yeah the tea party groups are pretty happy, but I think this is really more about anti-incumbency. People are pretty fed up with politicians. What do you all think?

At the Cannes 2010 film festival, a new movie called "Inside Job" about the financial crisis and how it was caused by reckless and often deceptive risk-taking and extortion which took place in the lead up to the financial crisis: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/05/i_am_but_a_naive.html Here is the argument of the film, in four sentences. From Roosevelt until Reagan, the American economy enjoyed 40 years of stability, prosperity and growth. Beginning with Reagan's moves against financial regulation, that sound base has been progressively eroded. The crucial federal error (in administrations of both parties) was to allow financial institutions to trade on th…

Another great Frontline, this time on the war between doctors and some parents on the safety of vaccines. The entire program can be watched online. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/vaccines/?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=bigimage&utm_source=bigimage One thing that surprised me is that I had been under the impression that this issue was being driven by the religious right, but in fact there wasn't a Bible-thumper anywhere in sight. The Oregon community shown in the opening scenes is full of new age stores, holistic medicine shops and organic foods cooperatives, which actually suggests the opposite, but no specific ideologies were mentioned in …

In politics, we often complain about supreme court decisions and how they've expanded power or restricted progress, depending on which side you populate for a given issue. But there is a methodology employed by the justices that direct how they interpret the Constitution. Needless to say, the depth of jurisprudence creates a wealth of philosophical distinctions and derivatives. If anyone wants to argue or discuss at such depth, that's great and I'm all for it, but I'm thinking it more productive to boil this down to Judicial Conservatism and Judicial Liberalism. Judicial Conservatism is associated with the Textualist (rejecting non-textual sources), Originalist …

According to the Daily Show, some of the TARP receipients (who received funds at 0% interest) are lending the money back to the government, to finance TARP, at interest. Whaaaaaa?

The National Republican Congressional Committee has issued a statement calling Democratic Congressman John Spratt an "amnesiac": http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/sc-dem-nrcc-using-sly-underhanded-references-to-my-parkinsons-disease.php Andy Seré, a regional spokesman for the NRCC, sent out an e-mail statement Monday referring to "amnesiac John Spratt," whose "memory is failing him - and the congressman is failing South Carolinians as a result." The e-mail also said "Spratt can't even recall what Obamacare does," and described how he is "clumsily" attacking State Sen. Mick Mulvaney ®, who's challenging Spratt in his bid for re-election. I…

A couple of weeks ago Los Angeles decided to boycott Arizona. What they apparently forgot is that the city gets 25% of its electricity from Arizona. But Arizona didn't forget. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/19/arizona-official-threatens-cut-los-angeles-power-payback-boycott/ Cute.