Politics

I don't know if you all remember or not, but a year ago I said that what would be most revealing about this administration would be the fight over its first budget. Well that budget is coming out this week, and it's about to get interesting. IMO this will be a very graphic demonstration of just how far we've gone down the rabbit hole. The Wall Street Journal has already weighed in, focusing on $1 trillion in tax increases and the growth of debt-as-a-percentage-of-GDP from 53% to a whopping 77%. (No, those really aren't the numbers for this sector of the galactic empire, but your local sector official in Rigel thanks you for your inquiry.) BTW, here's a very …

In light of this thread, I was reminded of something I've been curious about for awhile... Where in the Constitution is the federal government granted power to regulate "substances", especially in cases where they aren't crossing state lines? Why aren't drugs a states rights issue?

The Pearson Correlation Coefficient masseurs the strength of the linear relation between two variables. The higher the absolute value of the coefficient the stronger the correlation. A negative number indicates an inverse relation while a positive number indicates a positive relationship. Today I was home sick from school so I calculated a few correlations about crime: Correlation coefficient between high school gradation rates and violent crime rates: [math]-.337[/math] Correlation coefficient between population density and violent crime rates: [math].132[/math] Correlation coefficient between average income and violent crime rates: [math]-.046[/math] (this o…

Haiti doesn't have a lot going for it, but it does have tourism, of a sort. Cruise ships stop at isolated pockets of Haiti that are separated from the rest of the country in order to avoid any security concerns. I've been told by friends who've done these trips that visitors do not even enter the country in the sense of passport processing and so forth, and excursions are very limited. A few news articles, mostly local here in South Florida (but some have been picked up by the wire services today), are asking the question of whether this is appropriate right now. Royal Caribbean, which operates one of these isolated pocket resorts, has apparently decided to conti…

Hey, some of those senators are kind of old... what are the chances that one of them die during a filibuster?

The US Supreme Court has struck down the key element of campaign finance reform, saying that limits on non-profit corporate donations to campaigns are unconstitutional. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2010/0121/Supreme-Court-Campaign-finance-limits-violate-free-speech Limits on for-profit corporations were left intact, and unions are still limited as well. That has been often seen as the dividing line between conservatives and liberals on this issue, with conservatives preferring no limits at all and liberals preferring limits only on for-profit corporations (leaving unions and non-profit special interest groups free), however Democrats roundly d…

Two separate polls out today show the majority of Americans favoring the abandonment of the current health care plan. A Rasmussen poll says 61% want the emphasis shifted to jobs. According to a USA Today poll, 55% of Democrats, 56% of independents, and 87% of Republicans say a new bill should be drafted. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2010/01/poll-congress-should-focus-on-jobs-not-health-care/1 http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-01-22-Poll-health-care_N.htm Given that the Senate bill has no chance (according to Pelosi) of passing the House as-is, that pretty much ends the issue. It also puts most of the 2009 legislative …

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html Google implied they, along with 20 other companies, were hacked by the Chinese government to obtain information about human rights activists. They are now saying that they are going to ask the Chinese government to let them serve unfiltered search results. If (when) the Chinese government refuses, they will be leaving China. I applaud Google on this one.

On Tuesday Massachusetts is holding a special election to replace Ted Kennedy's spot in the Senate, and it's starting to look like something almost unthinkable is going to happen -- Kennedy's replacement may be a Republican. Scott Brown is either tied or leading in most polls over the Democrat candidate Martha Coakley. The election has national interest because if Brown wins Democrats will lose their 60-seat majority. Many were already predicting the loss of that mark in November, but that would have left them with a whole year of legislative possibilities and opportunities to win back waning supporters. (Democrats will retain the majority, and will likely retain it i…

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/01/assembly-committee-oks-bill-to-legalize-marijuana.html Looks like the California assembly could soon be voting on a bill to legalize and tax marijuana statewide. The opposition to the bill is laced with the same cliches and fallacies that have dominated the debate for years: "We're going to legalize marijuana, we're going to tax it and then we're going to educate our kids about the harm of drugs. You've got to be kidding me,'' Gilmore said. "What's next? Are we going to legalize methamphetamines, cocaine?'' I would ask Mr. Gilmore what he thinks about the fact we legalized alcohol, tax it, and then educate …

This week Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (a Democrat) was able to keep his job after a report surfaced that he made some insensitive remarks about Obama during the 2008 campaign, calling Obama "a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.'" Reid apologized, and Democrats piled on to say it was okay. (source) But that's not what happened to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (a Republican) after he made comments about former segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond, saying "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had al…

On Christmas, a man attempted an act of terrorism on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. His explosive device failed to detonate properly and the assailant succeeded in only harming himself. He was treated for second and third degree burns. http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/crime/2009/12/26/nr.bergen.interview.cnn

An interesting new report by the Center for American Progress: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/01/pdf/immigrationeconreport.pdf They claim a program legalizing immigrant labor would massively expand the GDP by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. I'm not an expert on teabaggers but and they would not be in favor of such legislation. What do you think? Could a legalized immigrant program be a huge boon for the American economy?

As I understand it, only a very few Muslims are crazy killers. However, it takes only a few crazies to very badly damage their reputation. Many of their religious leaders will denounce the violence, at least publicly. My suggestion would be that the peace loving Muslims start a program to provide assistance to the people hurt by the crazy violent groups. Actions, after all, speak louder than words. As a bonus, this would provide a strong incentive to discourage violence.

The release of a Pew Research study on cellphone sex-texting by teens produced an eye-opening variety of responses from the media. A quick glance at these two widely diverging interpretations from two computer news magazines seems to bracket the range of responses pretty well: PCWorld: Sexting Study Finds Few Teens Participate CNet: 'Sexting' common among teens, survey says Other outlets tried to take a more objective view, such as this article at National Public Radio: Study: 15 Percent Of Teens With Cells Receive 'Sexts' And then of course there's MSNBC, nit-picking the data to find the most potentially terrifying numbers for parents: Nearly 1 in …

It looks like things aren't settling down at all in Iran, with protests becoming violent and looking a lot more like something out of Greece not so long ago. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8432047.stm?ls Due to the media blackout everything comes from video on cell phones and isn't verified by news agencies, but it really looks like things are heating up big time. I previously thought things were settling down, but it looks like the opposite is happening. Any thoughts on how this will play out?

The new healthcare comprimise drops the public option, lowers the age requirement for Medicare, and lets those under the Medicare age restriction 'buy into' Medicare. Do you think this is good or bad?

One of the emails contains a bit that demonstrates part of my concern regarding attribution of climate forcings. Kevin Trenberth said; email here. I see this as a problem in logic. One of the main attribution arguments is that we understand the natural forcings and systems and can account for them, therefore we know that CO2 is a major driver. However, if that were in fact the case, then wouldn't we therefore also know which forcing or part of the system has "reversed" itself and be able to account for the "lack of warming"? It seems to me that the two go hand in hand. If you know one, then you must know the other. Opposite sides of the coin, so to speak.…

If you had a choice what sort of society would you live in? It can be any society you want.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/72513-cantwell-sees-bipartisan-support-for-bank-breakup-bill Wow! It appears there's a bipartisan effort underway to bring back the portions of Glass-Steagall which were repealed during a streak of deregulation in the late '90s. Glass-Steagall, among other things, firmly isolated banks from financial institutions. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who joined with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to sponsor a bill re-introducing the Depression-era law separating commercial and investment banking, said she's heard quite a bit of chatter about their effort. "I think it's going to be a bipartisan issue," she said during…

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article6954603.ece Perhaps it's time to re-examine the US's sugar tariffs, which lead to widespread use of high fructose corn syrup (which is in turn bolstered by corn subsidies). Though this may seem strange to the rest of the world, it's quite difficult to locate products in the US which are sweetened with sugar. HFCS is ubiquitous as a sweetener.

This has gotten far too ridiculous. I certainly enjoy Republicans in Texas telling New Yorkers what they think should be done about trials for those who committed terrorists acts in New York City. Honestly, aren't these people supposed to have balls? Aren't they alwyas making fun of liberals as being "limp-wristed"? They're all afraid... afraid of the American justice system, afraid of shackled terrorists... afraid of what's happening in a state that ACTUALLY knows what it's like to be a victim of a terrorist attack. Republicans: afraid of the government... unless someone like Dubya is in charge. That makes everything better.

Dunno if there are any friends from Confoederatio Helvetica are here, but I'm afraid the other day the Daily Show just tore your country a new one: For starters, Switzerland has passed a ban on minarets, the towers of Mosques. Was the minaret situation getting out of hand? The minarets issue is an especially strange one considering, as Jon Stewart points out, that there are a total of 4 minarets in the entire country. John Oliver's subsequent interview with the Swiss ambassador notes the country took a stand on minarets, but not on HITLER. All in all it was quite a skewering of Switzerland.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/12/10/gop.congress/ According to this CNN poll out today, the country is now equally divided on whether the country would be better off run by Democrats or Republicans. I think this is mainly a sign of public response to Democratic leadership's failure to respond to the sudden and dramatic presence of the center in its midst. The back-and-forth on the abortion rule in the health care debate is a good example of this -- lack of unity, lack of planning. The GOP had the same sorts of problems when it acquired the majority and started pandering to the far right. I don't think the Dems are pandering to the far left (yet), but …

I don't know if you guys have been following the Litvinenko story or not, but the minor sub-stories that keep spinning out of the thing are just fascinating. This is the one about the former Russian security agent who was poisoned and died this past week. British Airways cleared one of their "radioactive" 767s today for flight, and unsurprisingly it flew back from Moscow to London passenger- (and hopefully polonium-) free. (Would YOU fly on that airplane?!) One of the more interesting statistics that came out of this is that BA finds itself having to contact thirty THOUSAND passengers who flew on the two planes over the subsequent ONE MONTH after the victim f…