Politics

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…

It isn't hard to do...you could say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. (I couldn't find a thread on this, but I'm just sure this was a topic at some point.) So what if there were no parties? What if we didn't create partisanship and competition right out of the gate by proposing the whole pyschological notion of grouping up, permanently more or less? Here's a decent answer I found doing a google search on "What purpose do political parties serve?" If that's a fair list, then I can see the immediate attraction and the obvious contention. Consolidating the message of a group is why marijuana laws continue to put good people in prison, because …

There is something I don't understand about you Americas and your love for referencing the "founding fathers" all the time. No doubt I probably would agree with A LOT of what these fine people had to say. The founding fathers were people...they weren't perfect...not only that I think it defeats what they represent. Freedom, truth and justice. I can't really explain it but I just get very uncomfortable when mutliple sources use the term to strengthen their ideology. It's becoming to the point it's almost used to get people to listen to there side, it's like an automatic attention grabbing device, because everyone holds the "founding fathers" in such high regards. It'…

Okay, so this guy's like a former Reagan policy adviser and stuff... and worked under Bush for the US Treasury. http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/07/deficit-tea-party-opinions-columnists-bartlett.html He basically says the tea parties were retarded. Republicans were thrown out of power because of the giant mess they created. Within a little more than 100 days of Obama's presidency, there's suddenly a massive conservative outrage at the budget deficit. Apparently Democrats need to fix the budget deficit at the same time as dealing with a financial crisis and a recession/depression. We need to go haphazardly slashing through the national budget now, but unde…

In relation to the post about Britain's list of people who are not allowed to enter the UK I want to pose a question. Does the right to not be physically attacked and live in peace lawfully in a democratic secular society extend to the right not to be offended? It is clear that some of the laws in the UK about inciting hatred could if abused be used to attack freedom of speech. Lets imagine that I said* "Homosexuality/Islam/ Christianity/ being not of white ethnicity etc is wrong/bad/undesirable etc". I may have offended people but do I have the right to say such things? I may have offended lots of people, but why should we have laws that effectively m…

A triple contradiction seems evident in Carrie Prejean’s failed attempt to become Miss USA: 1. She had her boobs artificially altered to enhance her sex appeal and performance in beauty pageants. Is that fair? 2. A-Rod (apparently) took steroids to enhance his baseball performance. Why isn’t a boob job equivalent to an athlete’s use of performance-enhancing drugs? 3. She disdains same-sex marriage on the principle that it offends the natural order of things. Natural? Is this surgically bosomed woman caught up in a web of contradiction?

There's been a bit of an "I told you so" thing going on between Democrats and Republicans in regard to swine flu. Democrats originally included some $900 million in flu pandemic preparedness in the stimulus bill which Republicans successfully fought to remove as part of their newfound love of "fiscal responsibility". Democrats argument for including pandemic preparedness in the stimulus bill was simple: the effect of a flu pandemic on the economy would be disasterous and extremely damaging to economic recovery. Now the World Health Organization is telling us to brace for a potential flu pandemic. Perhaps this is a case where more spending would've been wise! That …

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/specter-to-switch-parties.html ...and as soon as Al Franken is sworn in, this means Democrats will have a 60 seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. I'd certainly hoped for the 60 seat thing but didn't really think it was actually going to happen. I certainly never thought it would happen this way. Wonder what his constituents make of this.

Retain more capital Loan more Spend less I have been hearing for quite a while that banks need to lend more, which was the purpose of the bailouts, but now we are seeing that some of these banks need to retain more capital for hard times. I understand Obama's call to spend less, but that alone isn't going to allow capital increase while lending more, IMO. Is Obama asking the impossible from the banks?

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN19326905 Apparently Khalid Sheik Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in the first month after his capture. There are 31 days in March, so that's, what, over six times per day? Gee. The Bush administration insisted that he gave up important information. So, what, we're supposed to believe that he enjoyed 182 waterboardings, and then just suddenly decided to spill all the important beans after the disastrous 183rd time? What, did his mask slip or something? Pfft. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop here, where we learn about how he also identified the true Kennedy and Lincoln assassins, Nicole Simpson'…

The Bush Presidency represents what happens when primitive religiosity is confounded with policy making . Tragic results .

....to exist in our homes? Pure, unadulterated AI? A machine never forgets and would be able to do instant/extensive research, so the power brokers couldn't any longer falsify everyday reality. The public would know exactly, and immediately, the unfiltered details of events anywhere in the world, by communicating with other AI. Thus media reports couldn't be twisted so easily by the unscrupulous. Plus, AI might learn how to unravel secrets of national security, and how to reverse-engineer ultra weapons just by looking at their shape and effects of use. Maybe it's something to consider ahead of time

Obviously, the Republicans didn't do so well in the last election, with Democrats taking control of both houses of Congress and the presidency. CNN posted this question in a recent article: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/27/gop.comeback/index.html?eref=rss_topstories One Republican, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky opines: But are they winning some? As far as I can tell they are operating in a completely contrarian mode, refusing to reach out to the Democrats in power and sitting around coming up with their own solutions in isolations, solutions which will never see the light of day. CNN notes: ...so I guess they are getting some le…

I didn't see a thread about this anywhere yet, but I might suck at searching too: As reported by both USAToday and CNN, there's apparently a group of firefighters who are bringing up a lawsuit for reverse discrimination on a written and oral test for promotions in the unit. This kinda makes me wonder what kind of questions exactly are on this test - shouldn't a promotion test, especially for fire-fighting, be based on some competencies and what they know, as opposed to asking "what nationality were your parents?" Does anybody have a better idea of what kind of questions could be given to promote any sort of on-the-line results? I couldn't think of an…

I've been following this for a couple of weeks now hoping to see if the truth leaps out from one sector or another, but so far it hasn't so I thought maybe it might be fun to bat it around here and see what we can come up with when we add a lot more smart people to ponder search parameters and overheard stories. Let's have a look, shall we? The presumed fact is as follows: "90% of all guns used by the Mexican drug lords are acquired in the United States." That factoid has been widely reported since mid-march, and spiked again in the last couple of days after it was again repeated by Mexican President Calderón during President Obama's trip to Mexico: http://f…

Today Washington's state legislature passed the "everything but marriage" bill. This is exactly what I support. It’s the fairest of all solutions for legalizing same-sex domestic partnerships. And it preserves the titular treasure that many heterosexuals hold so dearly. Now everybody’s happy in Washington state, where we all respect the rights of everyone. Why isn’t Washington’s new law a model of things to come for the remaining 45 states that still prohibit same-sex civil unions?

http://governor.state.tx.us/news/press-release/12227/ With Democrats in power for a little over 11 weeks, and apparently irate over the "federal budget mess and other problems", Texas has decided it's time to "draw the line against the sand" against those tyrants in Washington. I'm a bit confused as to what exactly they're so angry about. They're asserting tenth amendment rights, but against what? The fact that the President is no longer a Republican? It practically sounds as if they're threatening secession... Perhaps the oddest part of this all is that the "ever-growing Washington bureaucracy" was massively expanded under Bush, who also brought ab…

Obama is taking something of a hardline stance over Israel's occupation of the West Bank: http://www.theage.com.au/world/obamas-stance-worries-israelis-20090417-aa90.html?page=-1 Essentially: want help dealing with Iran's fledgling nuclear program? Get out of the West Bank. Rahm Emanuel, whose father was a member of a militant Zionist group, is "laying down the law to Israel" Perhaps Obama can succeed where countless presidents in the past have failed (and Bush didn't even bother to try)

What the hell is wrong with news networks these days? This is a gross display. Remember when reporters used to question and report, and not insert snide remarks about the people they're supposed to be interviewing? Not to mention attacking a rival network in the middle of a news report. And I thought CNN claimed to be pretty neutral. 6G3fvNhdoc0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G3fvNhdoc0 Not sure if video works for you guys

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_Administration_quietly_expands_Bushs_legal_0407.html Ugh, I'm not exactly a huge Ron Paul supporter, but there were parts of him that I liked, and one of those parts was that he would never do anything like this. He would do the opposite, dismantling this unconstitutional program and shutting it down for good. This is the sort of thing I was worried about with Obama (although moreso worried about it with Hillary)... I'd really like to give Obama the benefit of the doubt and try to convince myself the program must have some merit, but uhh yeah, no. F*ck that. Don't compromise essential freedoms for temporary safety, thanks…

It's my belief, discontent in this country (however voiced), whether coming from 'Tax Protesters', 'Tax Reform- Fair or National Sales Tax', 'Policy implication' or any particular issue has it's roots in a failure of Federal Leadership, over at least the past 4 years, with a dramatic turn toward Federal involvement in the past year or so. This I believe has been building, since the Election of Bush 41 and 'No new taxes' on through the Clinton and Bush 43 terms and exaggerated by the extreme hands on policy of the Obama Administration (well before inauguration) and to todays continuing double talk of current or future policy. Yesterday's demonstrations, appeared to me …