Politics

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7635929.stm ach! so, there's a huge prohibitive tax on tobacco, we've got warnings 'reminding' us of some of the more extreme repercussions of smoking, soon we'll have pictures that would disturb most people indipendantly of wether they had anything to do with smoking (most people wouldn't like looking at a healthy human lung either), there's talk about only allowing the selling of 20-packs and not allowing them to be on display in shops, the age-limit recently went up to 18, it's illegal to smoke in public places (including pubs) and, just to ultra-annoy people, it's illegal to smoke in bus stops, or within 10 feet of an entrance…

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/who_caused_the_economic_crisis.html Very interesting article. They say that if anything, the bipartisan repeal of Glass-Steagall helped soften the crisis (and quote Bill Clinton saying the same thing). They list the real causes of the financial crisis as:

In nearly 40 years of following politics I have never seen a populace more opposed to anything the government was doing than the current financial institution bailout plan (not Viet Nam, Iraq, Watergate, or even Guantanamo Bay). My personal opinion is that the American public realizes they are not being dealt with in an honest manner, even if they dont understand the intricacies of the problem. Economists can't come to a consensus about what to do,either. You have well respected and knowledgable economists weighing in at every point from total bailout and control by the gov to doing nothing at all. Without knowing anything else, you have two "experts" telling opposite thi…

This whole bail out and the state of the economy is really starting to bother me, and my first thought is: do we need to start teaching better economics in highschool? My second is: what are some good books on the topic - as free from political ideology as possible? I think I need to read up on everything from personal finances to Keynesian economics and the like. What my common sense tells me, is we are far too leveraged in debt, and as a culture we don't understand the fundamental implications of debt well enough. Americans are tied down with debt both personally, and nationally through our national debt and it seems to me unless a debt is going to bit…

Interesting story from the Politico: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/14088.html Apparently McCain began disseminating word that he build the winning coalition to pass the bailout bill hours before it failed. This was subsequently followed hours later by McCain accusing Obama of "politicizing" the bailout and not putting "country first". You know, one presidential candidate is certainly seeming almost clownishly "partisan"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nMuR1TFq1s

In case you missed the debate: http://www.youdecide2008.com/2008/09/27/video-obamamccain-debate-from-mississippi-926/

I guess you guys have heard about the current scandal revolving around the tainted milk in China. Thousands of babies sick, etc. This of course comes after a couple of rough years for Chinese manufacturers with various tainted product scandals (lead in paint, etc). It's an interesting combination -- an unregulated market + controlled press + very large population + one-child-per-family law + huge corruption problem. Quite the recipe for disaster, eh? It's become to common -- maybe we should bundle it all together, along with post-disaster governmental reaction, and label the phenomenon a "Chinese Fire Drill". One thing I've been wondering is whether they w…

... they hadn't even launched yet. http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/151564/xinhua_runs_spacewalk_story_before_astronauts_leave_earth.html No matter how things change, they always stay the same! Here's a similar story from the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/3082804/China-fakes-reports-from-space.html Cute how a "technical error" can produce actual quotes from the future. To heck with space walks, these guys are time travelers!

http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/09/23/bailout-paulson-congress-biz-beltway-cx_jz_bw_0923bailout.html Are you kidding me? The $700,000,000,000 figure didn't actually come from any sort of calculation? They just pulled it out of the air? "What's the biggest number you can think of?" "$700 billion?" "Sounds good to me!"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/05/AR2008090503351.html And the economy continues to unravel...

So, here's the latest. Obama puts up an ad and misrepresents McCain and Rush Limbaugh. Rush barely even tolerates McCain and has only recently started saying good things about him and it started with the Palin pick. Rush and McCain are on opposite sides in the immigration issue and Rush was pro-NAFTA, which is where the main comments come from. The Politico actually agrees with Rush on this and defends him, but oddly enough, I can't find the story on their page. http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/18/obama-ads-linking-mccain-to-rush-limbaugh-stir-controversy/ Let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do it, as opposed to stupid and unskilled Americans…

Well, look at Johnny come lately. McCain says he's suspending his campaign and wants to postpone the presidential debates scheduled for this friday: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/mccain-suspending-campaign-wants-to-postpone-debate-2008-09-24.html What... the... hell? I'm not downplaying the seriousness of the financial crisis, but this is absurd. From what I can tell, McCain wants to push the $700 billion bailout through, and is going back to Washington to do so. Ugh.

...is disgraced Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina... ousted by the board for accusations of mismanagement and the most botched corporate merger since AOL / Time Warner. At a time when we're seeing an unprecedented failure of some of the country's biggest financial institutions, McCain has picked someone to advise him on economics who seems hand picks from the ranks of failure itself. This as the McCain campaign blasts corporations who leave their CEOs with a golden parachute: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/09/mccain-economic.html WTF?

Interesting story yesterday on press coverage of Sarah Palin. The McCain camp has tried to keep her more or less away from reporters, I guess on the theory that they're not going to get any good coverage from the press. And hey, I guess that's not hard to understand. I mean lets face it, the only Sunday show she's likely to do anytime soon is the kind that begins with a prayer! But the press is hopping mad about the lack of access, and that's not hard to understand either. She's given a grand total of three near-worthless interviews (one of them with Sean Hannity!), and basically the press corps has been reduced to simply shooting her photo ops. They're feeling…

Last week was a pretty bad one for the country, and also for John McCain. He did not weather the news of collapsing financial institutions well, and you don't have to take my word for it. Take it from that tie dye-wearing patchouli-smelling hippie, George Will: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/22/AR2008092202583.html? He echoed similar sentiments in an ABC news panel, for those of you who prefer the teevee to reading: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzc0re_3hQw George Will both calls McCain "unpresidential" and suggests his populist tactics involve capitulating in order to be popular, which isn't becoming of a leader. Last …

Interesting article at CBS News about a new poll run by the Associated Press and Yahoo. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/20/politics/main4462623.shtml The gist of it is that the pollsters set out to see if racism might explain why Obama isn't soaring over McCain in the polls right now, given all the factors at work against Republicans at the moment. That in itself is seen by many as a loaded question, or perhaps even an indication of media bias, but I think it's based on a lot of non-partisan factors and therefore a legitimate question. At any rate, that's the question they asked, and some of the results were interesting. Interesting. They're n…

With the economy struggling and public opinion very much in favor of government intervention, and both candidates supporting some degree of intervention, I can't help but wonder if we're headed towards some new version of the New Deal, at least in terms of massive government spending programs and new regulations for the financial sector, which has become so important to average Americans due to mortgage financing, educational lending and retirement planning. The Bush administration is talking about a whole new agency devoted to bailouts and management of government-owned corporations -- something we would not have even dreamed of in this country just a year or two a…

For months now Republicans have been telling us about how we need to start drilling, and it's all Democrats' fault that we haven't been. It's been, what, two weeks since the "drill drill drill" chanting on the floor of the convention? So what happens today? The House passes a bill that would allow offshore drilling, and Republicans threaten to filibuster it in the Senate and the President announced that he will VETO it! No really. This actually happened today. No no, I'm serious. No really, stop laughing, I'm not kidding. Really. Really. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/washington/17cong.html?hp

I'm not asking if partisanship should be allowed, or if it is someone's right to be partisan. I'm asking if you think it is useful to society? Does it serve a useful purpose, or does it divide us further? This is, of course, a science board, and in every other subject people are expected to rely on reason and evidence. But here we are asking if, when it comes to politics, reason and evidence can be set aside in favor of opposition based on perceptions and larger, more general affiliations (such as "Democrat" or "Republican"), rather than the specific pros and cons of each issue. Is that a reasonable, productive approach for people to take? Does it make sense…

hence less violence. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080919/sc_nm/iraq_lights_dc_2

A video for those with short attention spans! http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1185304443/bctid1799203760 And the whole plan here: http://my.barackobama.com/page This was quite a welcome change from the campaign ads we've been seeing recently, which have been nothing but vitriol and invective. This ad actually has substance.

Apparently, Jews living in Florida, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have been getting phone calls asking a series of leading questions about Barack Obama insinuating an anti-Israeli agenda. For example, "Would it affect your vote if you knew that..." ...Obama has had a decade long relationship with pro-Palestinian leaders in Chicago? ...the leader of Hamas, Ahmed Yousef, expressed support for Obama and his hope for Obama's victory? ...the church Barack Obama has attended is known for its anti-Israel and anti-American remarks? ...Jimmy Carter's anti-Israel national security advisor is one of Barack Obama's foreign policy advisors? ...Barack Obama was the…

Obama wouldn't admit the surge worked, so I doubt any of his religious followers will either. I'm curious how AIG is going to work out. Will that be another bail-out successfully predicted as "implied" government backing, if this loan thing doesn't work out? The financial market sure is a mess. I love it. It's what we need and what we deserve. We're made up of credit junkies and hacks and the credit market had to take a hit at some point. There is a risk to loaning money to people with bad credit, yet over the years it has become easier and easier to qualify poor credit scores. How does this happen? There is no such thing as risk if no one gets screwed…

What do candidates mean by " change " .To me that is not the fundamental problem in political discourse because what they are really referring to is the give & take of pro vs con of a variety of issues . This will always be with us no matter what & the only way to ameliorate it is to have an overwhelming majority of one party & a president of the same party . In this respect a parliamentry system may have significant advantages over our US system where we have to let an incompetent president run out his time in office w/o significant results & propositions which result in gridlock .