Archive for Politics

On Hillary Marching On

May 8, 2008 at 4:29 pm · Filed under Politics

So Hillary has endeavored to continue on in her quest for the presidency even though it’s turned from an up hill battle to a up cliff battle. Frankly, I’m alright with that as long as she quiets the negative rhetoric and “he’ll only get the black voters” bullshit. She does still speak for some people: mostly people over 65 and anyone who’s looking for a more hardline version of universal healthcare.

Also, her continuing on does have some benefit for Obama. Even if she were to bow out now, West Virginia and Kentucky would probably be a win for her due to:

• Graying population (WV: 15.3% are over 65; National Avg: 12.4%)
• A lot of “I remember the good old days of good unionized factory jobs” type democrats with lower education levels (WV: 14.8% have a bachelors degree or higher ; National Avg: 24.4%)
• She has Methodist roots (WV 10% of the population) and does well with Catholics (WV 8% of the population)
• And lastly there’s also the potential issue of racism

In any case, if he lost those states to someone who was out of the race, it won’t look good for Obama from a publicity standpoint. With Clinton still in the race it’s less of an publicity issue, and even with those loses the math is strongly tilted in his favor, and he’s strongly lined up to win Oregon anyway.

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Matt Gonzalez’s Anti-Obama Diatribe

February 28, 2008 at 4:57 pm · Filed under Politics

Matt Gonzalez released an op-ed yesterday in BeyondChron. He points out some decent points. But I’m confused why he targeted Obama rather than Hillary (or maybe both). According to the National Journal, Obama has a more liberal record.

Obama’s not the perfect progressive liberal candidate, but Gonzalez himself is an example of the fact that a progressive liberal can’t even win — even in the San Francisco mayoral race. Frankly, my first choice in this race was for Edwards, but I’m happy with my vote for Obama.

Now with him announced as the VP running mate for Nader, his rational for this whole article makes a whole lot more sense. Nader’s campaign for president has never been about winning isn’t been about yelling “your not liberal enough!” which basically sums up Gonzalez’s article about Obama.

As a progressive liberal myself, I think these things should be said, and I applaud everyone who critiques the records of all the candidates. I’m happy to see anyone write good criticism of Obama or Clinton. However in a presidential race that looks to be close, running as an unwinnable leftist third party just to say these things is irresponsible. Nader himself proved this in 2000. As much as Gore was a pandering sycophant to the center during his campaign, Bush has turned out to be a tragedy for the interests of liberals.

The Nader candidacy may be fairly irrelevant in this upcoming election, but if getting out of Iraq is in any way important to your liberal values then every vote god damn counts against John “100 years” McCain.

Critiquing the Diatribe

Seeing now Gonzalez’s motivation for writing the article it should be obvious that it probably contains some hyperbole. I don’t have time to deconstruct it completely but I’ll take a crack at some of it.

1. The War in Iraq - Obama’s public stance here leans more towards a quick exit, but his votes have been less hardline. It would be great if he was otherwise, but the political climate has not been flavorful for hardline tactics like cutting off funds to the troops. Still he’s better than Clinton on this issue and obviously better than McCain.
2. Connection with Joe Lieberman - As much as I can’t stand Joe, Obama’s connection with him doesn’t worry me too much. Lieberman was his mentor when Obama became a Senator. I’ve heard that as a junior senator you’re basically assigned a mentor. Anyways, it’s not a surprise that he campaigned for his mentor.
3. Class Action Reform - I don’t have a lot to say here. Gonzalez may have a point but I’d like to see more of Obama’s voting recond on this issue.
4. Credit Card Interest Rates - Obama had a problem with this bill and I don’t know what it was, but neither does Gonzalez. Voting against it may or may not have not been a good vote but I believe Obama is in support of credit card customer considering his promotion of the Credit Card Safety Star Act and his policy of a Credit Card Bill of Rights. The fact the Gonzalos ignored these other measures is disingenuous.
5. Limiting Non-Economic Damages - Again Gonzalez may have a point here, but considering that this article already has a few holes I’d like to review Obama’s other votes on this issue.
6. Reform of Mining Law of 1872 - As this One Good Move commenter mentioned While Obama has stated his stance against the bill it hasn’t come up to vote yet. Still it seems like a decent bill that Obama should vote for so Gonzalez has a bit of point here.
7. Regulating Nuclear Industry - I’ve read about this issue before and it seems like the classic example of a bill getting weakened to death in the legislative process. The fact that Obama used this as a example of accomplishment is disingenuous. Point to Gonzalez here, though this topic isn’t a big issue for me.
8. Energy Policy - Another point to Gonzalez, ethanol is a waste and whomever is scientifically advising Obama on this is ignorant.
9. Single Payer Health Care - I am more supportive of a single payer system like Edward’s plan. I kinda doubt we could ever get there, and I bet Obama does too which is why he’s offered his compromise plan. I kinda don’t like that Obama has compromised this early in the game, before even getting elected, but I understand his reasoning. Also, again his plan is better than McCain’s which is basically just deregulation and tax credits. A good review of the different stances can be found in this NPR Report.
10. NAFTA - Again I don’t know Obama’s complete voting record details on this issue. I don’t completely trust Gonzalez’s summary. Obama has to be better than McCain on this issue.
11. Gonzalez’s other examples - most of his other points are decent though I never really supported the impeachment issue. I may want Bush and Cheney out but I never saw a concrete impeachable offense. The lists of reasons to impeach read more like reasons to despise them and vote them out. The war was sold using using propaganda and lies, it was wrong, unjust and possibly against international law, but none of those are impeachable offenses. The Plame scandal was the closest we got to an impeachment level offense, but there never was good enough evidence.

Gonzalez ended his article with this:

“I remain impressed by the enthusiasm generated by Obama’s style and skill as an orator. But I remain more loyal to my values, and I’m glad to say that I want no part in the Obama craze sweeping our country.”

Gonzalez if you were loyal to your values, you and Nader would sit this one out and just yell from the sidelines. As a bee in the ring, you’ll do nothing more than make Obama falter and possibly give McCain the win. And if that happens you and all the others who share your progressive views lose.

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In Comic Solidarity

February 13, 2008 at 4:29 pm · Filed under Art Freak Culture + Politics

Yesterday, Danish authorities recently arrested three people allegedly plotting a “terror-related assassination” of Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist behind the drawing shown below — one of several printed controversially in September of 2005. Today, newspapers across Europe have reprinted the cartoon to show support for Westergaard and for freedom of speech.

Representatives for the Danish newspaper, Berlingske Tidende, stated, “We are [reprinting the cartoon] to document what is at stake in this case, and to unambiguously back and support the freedom of speech that we as a newspaper always will defend.”

Sadly, Westergaard’s life has been completely disrupted by this simple little drawing. He states, “I could not possibly know for how long I have to live under police protection; I think, however, that the impact of the insane response to my cartoon will last for the rest of my life,” he said. “It is sad indeed, but it has become a fact of my life.”

I thought I’d show my own support by posting the cartoon and add a bit of equal opportunity blasphemy with this classic by Serrano Andres.

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Code Monkey call to arms!!! Twitter voting tracker

February 5, 2008 at 11:24 am · Filed under Design & Web Geekery + Politics

Somebody with more programming chops and time than I have needs to create a real time twitter voting tracker!

Bryan Person smartly set up a ivoted twitter account. You don’t have to add him just twitter @ivoted (adding who you voted for is optional) and he’ll get the replies. Sadly he didn’t take it that one extra genius step and create a graphing tracker.

Ideally this graphing tracker would show @ivoted replies (and maybe “I voted” search totals) charted by time and with candidate totals for ivoted posts that mention a candidate.

Until some code monkey warrior takes up this challenge, you can watch the replies yourself in real time using a tweetscan search for ivoted or a tweetscan search for “i voted”.

Also Bryan has mentioned that he will publish the results on his blog, The Bryper Blog.

p.s. I also highly recommend Politweets, the well designed political twitter aggregator.

p.p.s. You can follow the actual results along with watch twitter feeds via the Google Super Tuesday Map or add the election results gadget to your blog, or read up on the news at Google’s Elections section. (tip thanks to Laughing Squid)

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CatCubed endorsements

February 4, 2008 at 2:55 pm · Filed under Politics

CatCubed, and by this I mean me, is officially endorsing Obama. I have a bunch of reasons for this, but really Andrew Sullivan says it better and more succulently than I can: Don’t screw up, Democrats, Barack Obama is your man. Yes Andrew Sullivan of all people. Like Hitchens and other pro-war libertarians, I sooooo don’t agree with him on a lot of issues, but he’s an excellent writer. And the article I links to is really good.

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Typically, I have a vote salon to go over the confusing CA and SF props with friends prior to the election — every year I learn to hate these props more and more. However, there are happily not that many of them this year, so it’s not as necessary. In any case, I’ve released my own endorsements for the props behind the cut, so if you’re interested click read more.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Cutting Through the Stem Cell Hype

November 21, 2007 at 12:31 pm · Filed under Politics + Science & Skepticism

Recent stem cell advancements have been been exploding across the headlines. If you somehow missed these headlines, the bulk of it is “researchers have figured out how to reprogram adult cell into a state that is nearly indistinguishable from embryonic, pluripotent stem cells.”

Unlike some science stories in the news this isn’t pure hype; it is truly important and has been tested by multiple labs. However, like normal, the media reports are mostly lacking in details and full of loud pronouncements about how this tolls the end of the culture wars and how using embryonic stem cells is now “old-fashioned.”

Like always the truth is more complex. And of course the fabulous ScienceBlogs lays it all out where the media falls flat. PZ Myers, of Pharyngula offers an excellent explanation of the research and it’s implications entitled Stem Cell Breakthrough. Also, the Denialism Blog has a great post about it entitled, Reprogramming adult cells into pluripotent stem cells - what do these new results mean. The blog Framing Science wrote two posts detailing how this is going to effect the future of the stem cell debate: The Next Stage in the Stem Cell Debate Begins! and THE DISCOVERY: What It Means for Framing & News Coverage.

I highly recommend you read these excellent articles, but for those of you who are too busy I offer a few important bullet points:

• “Americans did not make this discovery; Japanese researchers did. It required understanding of gene expression in embryonic stem cells, an understanding that was hampered in our country. ” (PZ Myers)
• This discovery is truly important and has been tested by multiple labs.
• “What the investigators have accomplished is to discover the reset button for the cell, but the way they currently press it is by hitting it hard with a ball peen hammer.” (PZ Myers)
• This new method is still somewhat crude and this means that the cells cannot be used for theraputic purposes as these cells have a higher chance of becoming cancerous than embryonic stem cells.
• This does not spell the end of embryonic stem cells as in order to find a more eloquent way of switching the “reset button” more research using embryonic stem cells will be needed.

Sadly, I think science has already lost the (religiously polarized, scientifically illiterate) American public on this issue. The media has already spin this as a win for the Christian Right and is ignoring that fact that it is really a win for embryonic stem cell researchers — and more importantly that more embryonic stem cell research is needed.

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