Politics

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 .

When McCain heard that Obama was promising to push for broadband distribution across the country and network neutrality, he stated that he didn't much care for the music teenagers are into and said he'd prefer a small town hall with harmonicas any day of the week. Crumby jokes aside, here's a talk Obama gave to the folks at Google regarding his ideas for technological innovation in November 2007. <hmmm... I wonder if this would have been better in the CompSci forum....oh well.>

As most of you have probably heard by now, there is some broohaha about Governor Palin, presently the VP pick on the McCain presidential ticket, wanting to ban books. A good summary of the issue and how it's come about is available via the Boston Globe at the following: http://news.bostonherald.com/news/2008/view.bg?&articleid=1117009&format=&page=1&listingType=2008pres#articleFull Accroding to this recent CBS News piece, there is an interesting new angle to the story: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/11/politics/animal/main4439414.shtml Ross emphasized an angle I previously hadn't heard much about. Palin was elected mayor than…

Sarah Palin broke her press silence, and was interviewed by ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=5778018 I'm reading through the transcript now...

This is one of those cases that initially sounds very simple, but turns out to be rather complex. Or maybe it isn't. Oh dear! How awful those doctors must be, denying medical care to gays and lesbians! Let's listen to the obligatory media straw man, shall we? Oh my god! Are you telling me he refused to help a pregnant woman dying on the sidewalk?!?!?!?!?! Er wait, how did he know she was a lesbian? ... Um ... <insert patented Jon Stewart camera stare here> I see. So this wasn't about emergency care, it was about an elective procedure, other doctors were available, and what we're really saying here is that the doct…

This thread is not about whether abortion is right or wrong. If you wish to discuss that, there is already a thread here, here, or here. Also, please keep it about things older than about 100 years ago. There is already plenty of discussion about abortion, I just thought some context would be nice. As I understand it, abortions were done thousands of years ago. They were very unsafe; I heard that 90% of such abortions resulted in the mother's death as well. The ancient greeks had few abortions, instead choosing the safer option of birthing the child, and then either abandoning it (especially for deformed children) or selling it into slavery. Link: http://www.fjkluth.…

First, view the ad here: Except Obama's legislation sought to give "schools the ability to warn young children about inappropriate touching and sexual predators." http://www.kansascity.com/445/story/789668.html Is there anything else to say except McCain is blatantly lying to get elected? (ed: oof, supposed to be "kindergartners" there in the title, whoops)

Democrats seemed to blink over the issue of offshore drilling the last couple of weeks, but Republicans don't seem real happy about that. With Nancy Pelosi now supporting the so-called "Paris Plan", Republicans seem to be saying "er, wait a minute, don't give us what we asked for, we want to wait and ask for something else instead. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-offshore15-2008aug15,0,5866232.story Amusingly, Pelosi seems to still be playing the no-beaches-for-oil card, grandstanding over the congressional federal restrictions and refusing an up-or-down direct vote on the issue. In an interview today she called it "a hoax on the America…

Obama is often sarcastically described as "the messiah," "golden boy," "the one," etc., due to his allegedly fanatical support base and media bias. I've been pretty much accepting that description, but it occurs to me that the reason why I've accepted it has a lot more to do with him being described that way than actual direct evidence. Yes, Obama supporters tend to be a lot more enthusiastic than McCain supporters, but a) isn't that more to do with the Republican base distrusting McCain, and b) since when is that a bad thing? Yet commentators can't seem to go two minutes without sarcastically reinforcing the notion of Obama as the object of substance-free "Obamania." Can…

This spate of hurricanes got me thinking about safety in Caribbean nations. Hurricane safety is, of course, a vital issue in regions where hurricanes are prone to cause great damage. While a lot of progress has been made in the science of prediction and understanding the mechanism of hurricanes in recent years, as well as how to defend buildings and people against their power, a lot of work needs to be done in third-world nations, some of which are gravely vulnerable. Just to look at a worst-case scenario for a moment, a brief glimpse at Haiti would seem to be in order. The other day Ike (which is currently blustering my house with its outer bands as I write this…