Politics

I have a love for technological advances. But to me, greening doesn't mean the killing/withholding of technology or even blunting the advancement of society. In fact, the old guard methods resisting compatibility with the natural systems of the living world actually seem pretty backwards (in thinking). The future world, upon remembering the technological advancements of this era, likely won't be congratulating those who urged "more of the same" policies in alignment with the industries best positioned to rake in the most $$ from such crafted logic. As beautiful as the marvels of technology are to me, I love the marvels of nature far better -- however, it also se…

On Thursday the US House passed a bill that proposes directing the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the tobacco industry. Interestingly, they would not actually be allowed to ban tobacco, but would instead be required to state what nicotine levels the companies could include in their products. Which in my mind raises a really significant question: Doesn't that put the FDA in the position of saying what nicotine levels are "safe"? I realize they won't state it that way, but that's how we normally view government regulation -- they're saying that this level is safe and this other level is not. At least that's how we normally view food and drug regulation. D…

Title Erratum : "exercise" Let A and B two people wanting to make a community. Suppose A has 1'000$, B has 5'000$. What is the common money (common to A and B) ?

What is America’s “Achilles heel”? I'd say it’s our polarizing hypocrisy. Americans are an ambiguous species—a population of hypocrites. We tolerate homosexuals but we oppose gay marriage. We embrace the principle of free choice in our democracy but we oppose a woman’s right to reproductive choices. We punish athletes for artificial performance enhancement but we reward beauty queens for artificially enhancing their boobs. We legalize guns, alcohol, gambling, drag racing, and sometimes even prostitution, but we outlaw an innocuous weed that was once used to make rope. America’s ambiguity may be fatal. Indeed our economy is the worst hypocrisy of all. We uphold th…

More and more often I have seen some rather severe criticism of Obama, not just from the Fox Noise side of the media, but from the likes of Keith Olbermann, Rachel Madow, and Bill Maher: EoFY_UdZNe4 1uuWVHT1WUY It's almost as if this new breed of entertainer journalist (which the Daily Show was at the forefront of) can exhibit a degree of journalistic integrity and not just be partisan mouthpieces! Amazing!

President Obama called today for a renewal or re-enactment of PAYGO, which was a government law effective mostly during the Clinton administration. I think this is a VERY good idea and directly addresses concerns about ongoing profligate spending now that certain precedents have been set by the various massive bailout and relief programs. The article I've linked below erroneously states that it requires that all spending be balanced with savings elsewhere -- actually the way it worked was that you could decrease cost elsewhere OR attach a corresponding (same value) revenue increase from some source. The point being "neutral" impact on the budget (no deficit increa…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28788175/ Shortly after halting trials for those imprisoned at Gitmo, Obama has officially announced he is shutting it down. Words cannot express how happy I am about this. Gitmo was a big black eye on America's international image and one of those things that made me ashamed to have associated with the government of my country. I feel better about America today.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aT01vl_zTYJ8&refer=home Yeah, this situation isn't getting any better. Is there any resolution in sight? I'm afraid the resolution is going to be: North Korea uses a nuclear device on another nation (i.e. South Korea) and the world will have to forcibly remove Kim Jong Il from power.

Dr. Michael Weiner (pronounced "whiner") a.k.a. Michael Savage, is a PhD nutritional enthomedicine radio commentator, who, well, apparently decided being a well-educated person isn't a good thing and decided to fashion himself after a redneck. Anyway, the UK has deemed him a persona non grata. What do you think? Personally I'd like to talk to him about his motivations, specifically whether he ever had gay sex with Allen Ginsberg.

This was a rather interesting interview: http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?maven_referralObject=5457154 General Petraeus says he thinks a responsible closure of Gitmo is a good idea. He would like us to move forward beyond scrutinizing past cases of torture, but suggests that existing methods of interrogation work just fine and there was no need for "extended interrogation" techniques. He suggests that torture has lost us huge points in the court of public opinion and thus is counterproductive to winning in Afghanistan. I've had mixed opinions about Petraeus in the past but this was a very interesting interview to watch and I'm generally please…

Thankfully in a good way -- Justice Souter is stepping down at the end of the current session (June). Souter is generally considered part of the liberal side of the court's current socio-political balance (though he was actually placed there by Bush 41), so his Obama replacement would be unlikely to change the balance. With a 60-seat majority in the Senate any confirmation will likely be pro-forma, so it could be someone much farther to the left. On the other hand the president runs the risk of angering moderate conservatives with an extreme candidate. So this could be an interesting decision for that reason. IMO Obama will pick someone considered liberal but…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/21/AR2009052104045.html So yeah, Obama is now a fan of tossing habeas corpus out the window and detaining some suspected terrorists indefinitely without trial. I can't help but think "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Seriously. This is another WTF Obama. These seem to be happening with decent regularity too. Ugh. So basically, we're holding people without trial, because of tainted evidence blah blah blah. So in other words, our legal system is so f-ed up that the only solution is to hold people without trial? Zuh? It's so broken we need to break it even more?

Documents available here: http://men.style.com/gq/features/topsecret So much for separation of church and state, eh? They're being released as part of a more comprehensive story on how mistakes and incompetence at the DoD cost American lives. This New York Times op ed was pretty interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17rich-5.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all And the message is pretty poignant: Obama will not be able to put Bush behind him until there's full transparency and accountability for what happened. Until then, little juicy nuggets like this will keep dripping out of the woodwork, stealing the spo…

Should the US start over ? Say we have a big debt and re-call all money and declare bacrupcy and start a new courancy. And say we had good time and now we face reality and lower wages to other countries? After all Canada and US had it too good when you look at South America , Central America ,Asia and Europe with wages and greedy lifestyle..

The Republican Party is showing declines in membership among all demographic groups, with a recent poll showing 21% of American voters self-identifying as Republicans (compared to approximately 35% for Democrats) Is this a good thing? A bad thing? I think this is the great thing, not just because I'm not a fan of the Republicans, but because I think this will be a boon to conservative third parties who more closely share my views, such as the Libertarian party. Hell, Ron Paul could probably go start a party on his own and attract a large following to it.

The quote above is my response (partly) of when life begins. Yet I think it's relevant to the vid below....which plays so unreal in your mind it almost looks staged. The police keep beating on the guy who tumbled out the flipping vehicle -- unconsious, it seems. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp=30850639 The criminal element in society is often treated the way religion heads liked doing it, before our Constitutional protections ended their fun. Yet still today, anyone breaking the law is viewed as sub-human in the eyes of certain religious "authorities". There's a connection to religion, the way it's been twisted by the power seekers of its est…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8059021.stm The UN intends to investigate Gaza despite not receiving permission from Israel. They say they will enter through Egypt. Both Hamas and Israel will be investigated as both perpetrated alleged war crimes throughout the conflict. It's really sad to see Israel giving the UN the finger. The UN group responsible, the Human Rights Council, has been accused of bias against Israel in the past, but that doesn't mean they should be barred from investigating. The article points out that the inquiry is being headed by Richard Goldstone, a "respected South African war crimes prosecutor who is also Jewish" which has giv…

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21cards.html?ref=global-home Apparently a last-minute provision regarding gun control was inserted by a Republican allowing people to carry firearms in public parks if they are already licensed to carry them. I don't know the whole story on that issue but it might only represent a minor change in real practice. At any rate, even before that happened it seems that a lot of Republicans had gotten on board, and in the end more supported than opposed -- a marked change from earlier bills. I wonder if this represents real bipartisanship. Some details on what the measure means for credit card holders: Sounds l…

It would appear that Hezbollah may soon be in control of the Lebanese parliament. Yes, Hezbollah, bad people, I'll agree with Faux News on that one. I'll refrain from using the word "terrorist" to describe them, first because I think that word is bandied about far too much, and second because the phrase is intended to describe organizations who aren't directly involved with the government, whereas it would appear Hezbollah will effectively be the Lebanese government soon (I mean, they were before, but now they'll have total control) Calling Hezbollah a terrorist organization makes about as much sense to me as calling the Republican Party a terrorist organization. …

That was the best one I could find. Anyone got better?

The proposed "57 state solution" would have the entire Muslim world recognize Israel (and I guess its right to exist?): http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1084660.html Could it work? I have my doubts about countries like Iran... (Edit: Bleh, title should read Jordan's king)

...by a considerable margin. 60 senators actively opposed the bill: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/us/politics/14cards.html?_r=1&ref=business I'm confused as to why there's so much opposition, especially in the wake of the recession/depression. It's okay to give banks hundreds of billions of dollars, but there's strong opposition to capping interest rates on credit cards?

Is it just me, or does the prosecution of the Bush administration actually seem to have a positive trend nowadays? I say this primarily because of the political and media buzz surrounding the recent release of the "Bush torture documents". Obama has expressed that he might be open to a fairly conducted bipartisan investigation of the Bush Adminstration. That's certainly more than we've been hearing out of him before. Are the winds changing, and Washington might actually begin to investigate what happened under Bush?

http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/07/news/economy/obama_budget_details/index.htm?postversion=2009050710&eref=rss_topstories What do you think, is this a drop in the bucket, or does every dollar saved count? I think this is great, but that the general reaction from the teabagging community will be that it isn't enough.

Although I think I already know which national (Dutch) party I favor to represent me in the European Parliament, I want to learn more about the European political parties and political party-groups. Some parties have formed alliances and have therefore effectively merged (although they still have their own programs). Those parties and party-groups aren't very well known, because in many countries, people vote for their national parties, and people don't seem to care much for the (larger) European groups. Your national parties are member of a European party / party-group (alliance). The groups/alliances are: - EPP-ED: European People's Party–European Democra…