Faith-Based Presidency Part 2

The Republican presidential debate last night had NBC anchorman Brian Williams asked all the candidates "whether or not the invasion of Iraq was worth the loss of lives and treasure?"

Born-again Christian Mike Huckabee answered that it was worth it, and "that Iraq probably did have weapons of mass destruction" giving as an example that "if you haven't found all the easter eggs, doesn't mean that the eggs haven't been planted."

Only the guy that doesn't believe in evolution and ignores the geological evidence that proves the earth is older than 6,000 years old, would be the lone guy to believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of the even five years of occupation where our guys have looked in every nook and cranny of Mesopotamia and couldn't find them. Only Huckabee could believe that despite all evidence proving otherwise that either our Armed Services are incompetent (which I do not believe) or Saddam Hussein is the world's greatest illusionist. Its same sort of conservative idiocy that thinks John Kerry didn't deserve any medals while he was serving in Vietnam (possibly because Republicans believed the Nixon Pentagon handed them out like candy) that can see things that aren't there . Idioacracy that has put Bush into the Whitehouse, that allows fairytale believing idiots to control the GOP, and is central to Mike Huckabee's presidential run; needs to be stomped out.

Competency within our government depends on a strong attachment to reality. I obviously would never vote for Huckabee, or Bush or any other looney right wing-nut, but I am mature enough to realize that not every candidate I vote for will win so the important thing is that the loyal opposition should be at least be fact-based. If have people in charge that are faith-based that could care less about the results of their policy (infrastructure failings in New Orleans and Minneapolis, invading a foreign country because of a gut feeling, trickle-down economics while believing greed is good) we will all suffer under their rule as we have seen with current Bush administration.

Nevada Polls

Electoral-Vote.com has listed some public polls that shows Saturday's Nevada Caucus much closer 3-way race than I would have imagined. Given that the Casino workers union endorsed Barack Obama, and the second most powerful union in the state the teachers union endorsed Hillary; it is a little surprising that Edwards is within the margin of error of winning the state in the Research 2000 poll and Edwards is plausible to win in reality if we take the pollsters' track record (ie NH polls) into account. Obviously we will have to see what happens this Saturday.Just a point of order about political reporting premature electoral obituaries: Chris Mathews the weekend before NH's primary asked 12 of his regular contributing pundits and unanimously agreed that Barack had the nomination in his back pocket.

There should be serious discussion within the fourth estate that
we will see a brokered national convention. As long as Edwards gets 15% in most states and Clinton and Obama continue to fight it out splitting up most of the Feb 5th state the delegate count will never reach a majority.

Brokered Convention

We could see the first televised brokered convention one maybe even both national parties this summer. With the GOP so scatter-shot four or even five candidates that are plausible to be nominees (plausible= Giuliani; Huckabee; Romney; McCain, and much less plausible Thompson). On the Democratic side Obama and Hillary are unlikely more than 45% of the delegates except in their respective home states. A brokered convention is probably what Edwards is banking on, because when Denver rolls around and head-to-head match ups are the only thing the political press can write about Edwards will certainly look better than Hillary, and Hillary will probably start slinging mud at Obama to take the shine off him. Saving grace for Hillary and Obama are that some states have winner-take-all primaries, I couldn't find a list of them on the net , but thenattering-nay-bobs of negativity (aka the media) will get around to talking about it by Febuary 5th.

Likelyhood of a Bloomberg Campaign

Over the holidays I spoke with family and friends living and working in the beltway and they seemed to have a surprising consensus that if Hillary is the nominee, then Bloomberg will not run for president. They seem to believe that because Mayor Mike's personal friendship with the junior senator he will hold back his national ambitions and desire to rollback hyper-partisanship that is occurring in DC, but if a less polarizing candidate like Obama or Edwards he will jump in. It is my opinion that Bloomberg is probably going to jump in the race no matter who the nominees of the parties are.

NY1: Transit

NY1: Transit
The city's taxi & limousine commission has voted to extend handicap accessible taxis from 80 to 143 as well as allowing those needing the service to be able to call 311 to find the closest handicap accessible taxi to their location. One has to ask oneself how in the world would the 311 operator know where these 143 taxis? These 143 obviously will have GPS/credit-card terminals that cause this year's 2 taxi strikes.

So is the Taxi Worker's Alliance ultimately anti-handicap? It is just might lowly opinion that Taxi Worker's Alliance attempt to organize the city's taxi driver flailing, in large part because the premise of protesting against GPS devices instead the economics of it (ie. let the TLC or advertising company pay for the equipment and installation).

Democrats: Colleges must police copyright, or else | CNET News.com

Democrats: Colleges must police copyright, or else | CNET News.com
Ridiculous! Democrats can not find the huevos to stop Bush breaking the law regarding American's right to privacy and from illegal searches, but they can crack down on peer-to-peer networks (not the individuals who participate mind you but the colleges that may have only one student illegally downloading music and movies). The Democratic Congress is threaten to withdraw all federal finacial aid and benefits to institutions of higher learning that will not name-names of students who download copyrighted material. The Congressional Democrats cannot get it together stop the Iraq War which they were given the majority last November for, but they twiddle their thumbs and do the bidding of copyright holders! American universities and colleges do not have anything better to do that track every move their students make online? Really!?! Because I remember in 2004 Kerry, and the Democratic platform had nothing but bad things to say about unfunded mandates regarding education... what happened to that old saw? It is not the government's job insure the movie and music industries' profits. It is not the government's job to be the movie and music industries' thug to scare individuals. We do not have the FBI or local cops standing in the doorway of Wal-Marts to prevent Wal-Mart customers from shoplifting. Our government does not pull up the roads that lead to the Wal-Mart to punish the shoplifters.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are throwing a temper tantrum over the fact that their industries are changing. Despite the legal concept of safe harbor (ie media hosting services such as YouTube.com who pull copyrighted material after notified or internet service providers not being culpable of their customers' actions online) the media industries cannot seem to get over the fact they are going to have start suing all of their potentional customers or deal with the fact that they will always have some of their copyrighted media loose on the net.

Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politics

MyDD :: Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politics

This blog post really hits it on the nose. Edwards campaign being so focused on economic justice is the greatest crisis that is facing this country. While the Hillary Clinton campaign seems determined with only one crisis, her own personal electoral victory, and Barack Obama's campaign is centrally focused on changing the nature of politics. Out of every candidate that is running for president only Rep. Ron Paul and Senator John Edwards seem to be running a campaign that is solution and results centered, (Rep. Paul solution being eliminating 90% of what the federal government does, while Sen. Edwards' solution is cure our economic ills.) The fear of the current economic trends are leading our country is not just a fear for us lefties, Billionaire and ardent fiscal conservative Warren Buffet has been heard to say "Class war, of course there is a class war going on right now and my side is winning."

New York Times columnist and class-warfare apologist Thomas Friedman often writes in his column and books about how it is good that our economy holds no protection from competition (and I would postulate no protection from bad luck.) The prevailing corporatized common wisdom is that we the consumer or employee for all intensive purposes and for all future generations shall hold all economic risks while the elite of the investing class shall retain all the benefits in some sort of ass-backwards Adam-Smith-envisioned capitalism.