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Politics FAQ, Useful Links, and Recommended Reading List


Pangloss

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Politics FAQ & Useful Links

 

This post is intended to be a reference for three kinds of information:

1) How to go about posting on the politics board (rules and guidelines) (coming soon).

2) Helpful links to reference sites that are useful for discussion here.

3) Links to previous discussions on hot topics so you can refer back to how we talking about an issue before.

 

To that end I could use everyone's help, especially with the second and third points, which you can start adding to right now by replying to this thread. This thread will be open but moderated -- I'll be able to see your replies but I'll only tap certain ones for visibility. Others will be deleted after useful information is culled and added to the FAQ post. You can contribute to the guidelines section as well if you want to write up any helpful suggestions about posting here.

 

FAQ Post Begins Here

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Frequently Asked Questions about the SFN Politics Subforum


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Useful Reference Links for Political Discussion


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News


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BBC Front Page (CDarwin)

 

 

Legal References


section[/hr](Submitter in parentheses)

 

 

Pending Government Legislation Watch List


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FISA Amendments Act of 2008 - Regarding current US wiretapping regulation.

 

 

Government Watchdogs


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GovTrack - Useful for looking at specific legislation in US legislature.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

 

 

Government Offices & Individuals


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US Republican Presidential Candidate and Arizona Senator John McCain, Official Web Site

US Democratic Presidential Candidate and Illinois Senator Barack Obama, Official Web Site

 

 

Historical References


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Significant SFN Political Discussions By Subject


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Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction

7/1/08

 

US Economy, Late Bush Administration

7/3/08

 

FISA and Other US Wiretapping Laws/Legislation/Discussion

7/4/08, 7/9/08

Edited by Pangloss
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(Note: This thread has been merged into the FAQ.)

 

This thread is intended as a reading list for the members, by the members. It is open and unmoderated, but a few rules apply. The general idea is to post links to articles here without any discussion. You can explain briefly what issue the article addresses or why it is interesting, but the idea is not to provocate or advertise or evangelize a specific point of view.

 

It's okay to pass along an article you feel might convince people of a certain viewpoint, but the purpose of the thread is really to share articles of interest that we come across in our own reading outside of the forum.

 

So a few ground rules:

 

1) No replies to specific posts, except for the following reasons:

a) Correcting a broken link (expect me to edit the broken link and delete your reply).

b) Add another article on the same subject.

 

2) Just include the links, without explanation if possible, but if necessary a brief explanation of the link is okay.

 

3) Try not to hound us with a bunch of links on the same subject. If you really feel compelled to do that, I can gather some links from previous posts into a single post for you. Or just do that yourself and I'll delete your previous posts in the thread.

 

4) Please try to keep the physical length of your post to a bare minimum, to allow for rapid reference scanning by members later on. We want to be able to search and refer to this thread in discussions; that's part of the idea (this is also part of why the extraneous conversation is being kept to a minimum).

 

I'm starting a separate thread to discuss this thread, so you can post any questions there. :)

Edited by Pangloss
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United States Supreme Court Decision on "District of Columbia v Heller", concerning the District's ban on firearms. (Warning: PDF!)

 

The Wikipedia also has a lengthy, sourced article on the case here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller

Edited by Pangloss
detail added by moderator (thanks DJBruce for the 1st submission!)
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T. Boone Pickens made headlines yesterday regarding his new wind power venture.

 

Today he writes in the Wall Street Journal, explaining his overall energy strategy from an investor's perspective.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121556087828237463.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

 


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US Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt writes about Congress' lobby-driven efforts to stop competitive bidding in Medicare equipment purchasing for the elderly.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121556116413437535.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Edited by Pangloss
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Slate op/ed on changing the War Powers Act:

http://www.slate.com/id/2195152?nav=wp

 

Howard Kurtz on the death of Tony Snow:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/13/AR2008071302054.html

 


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From the Wall Street Journal and Cook Political Report. What's interesting about this image is mainly the lower portion, which indicates how currently-competitive seats are leaning amongst voters in those districts.

 

NA-AR345A_COATT_20080713205616.gif

 


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Interesting article from Politico.com about Oliver Stone's efforts to make his upcoming film "W" as realistic as possible.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11776.html

 


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The New Yorker's very long biography on Obama's early days. This is the story that came out this week (for next week's issue) that has resulted in controversy, not for the story, but for the cover that the New Yorker ran.

 

Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama

 


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Fannie, Freddie spent $200M to buy influence

Edited by Pangloss
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  • 2 months later...

I've been using this site for the past several months to track the polls:

 

http://fivethirtyeight.com

 

(538 is the number of electoral votes, btw)

 

It was developed by a guy named Nate Silver who originally wrote a model for predicting baseball games called PECOTA. The model predicted the Rays would turn it around, going from losing 96 games to winning 90. They ended up winning 97. Who'da thunk it? PECOTA did.

 

Now he's turned to predicting elections. His model runs 10,000 times a day, and analyzes the history of polls vs election results with a data set going back to the '50s.

 

He predicts Obama has a 94.7% chance of winning... on election day.

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  • 1 year later...
  • 11 years later...
  • 5 months later...

Okay, so maybe a full selection would be a little ridiculous. Insead of even trying to select only those perfect top 10, of which I absolutely could not do. I'll just spit-ball and add a few authors and some of their works I consider important reads for a better heterodox understanding that most people do not possess.

David Graeber,


Thomas Frank,

Naomi Klein,

Michael Hudson,

Yanis Varoufakis,

Slavoz Zizek,

Noam Chomsky, and Edward S Herman,

 

Obviously, I would recommend the standard fare for more popular ideologies, aka...
Ricardo, Smith, Marx, Mises, Hayek,Keynes, Friedman
Adorno, Gramsci, Kropotkin
Hume, Descartes, Plato, Aristotle
Locke, Montesquieu, Paine
Hobbes, Burke

But I consider those to be in the "Well Duh!" of requisite readings.
And obviously, in terms of the populars, there are plenty more that could (and probably should) be added.

Edited by BlightedFox
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