Recently in Politics Category

I downloaded a track from the iTunesU UC Berkeley Politics and Policy area. It's a recording of Helen Caldicott titled "The New Nuclear Danger".

While I don't agree with everything she said, or the way she said it (for example, while I am no Ronald Reagan fan, does it do any good to describe his as being a capable chicken farmer, but not capable of being president?), if you listen to her lecture and don't feel like our world is a scary place, and we're letting people like the current administration make things worse by our inaction, then you are completely close minded.

I found a YouTube clip of the lecture. I haven't watched it, but since I don't know how to link to an iTunes clip, I'll use that link instead.

Heck, I'll even try to embed it - it's split into 4 parts.

Last night in the SOTU, the President said,

We set a goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009 — and met that goal three years ahead of schedule.

Not really something to celebrate, IMO, since. when he became President, there was a surplus.

We’re now in the 41st month of uninterrupted job growth, a recovery that has created 7.2 million new jobs, so far.

A bit misleading, really, since it doesn't count the number of jobs lost before the recovery. If you factor that in, 3.7 million jobs have been created since Bush took office.

Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are commitments of conscience, and so it is our duty to keep them permanently sound. Yet we’re failing in that duty.

Total agreement with this point. I hope he finally proposes a real solution. He hasn't yet.

Five years ago, we rose above partisan differences to pass the No Child Left Behind Act preserving local control, raising standards and holding schools accountable for results. And because we acted, students are performing better in reading and math, and minority students are closing the achievement gap.

No Child Left Behind went into effect in 2002, and the last report on it is from 2005. Fourth-grade reading scores haven't improved since the Bush program, and eighth-grade scores are actually down. In math, scores are up among fourth-graders and have increased slightly less among eighth-graders. The achievement gap results are mixed, too.

A future of hope and opportunity requires that all our citizens have affordable and available health care.

I agree, but then he proposed solving the problem by giving a tax cut to some people. Huh? Why not give them health care? You know, do something to solve the problem.

...we cannot fully secure the border unless we take pressure off the border, and that requires a temporary worker program. We should establish a legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis.

I totally agree (take that people that think I'm a Bush hater - when he's got a good idea, I give him credit for it).

Maybe more later.

Congress is finally waking up - Cook: The abandonment of George W. Bush - National Journal - MSNBC.com

Even though one of the main reasons the Democrats took control of the House was because the American people wanted a new approach to Iraq, Bush won't listen. From SFGate.com, Critics Wont Halt Iraq Surge, Bush Says.

So much for working with the Democrats in Congress. So much for being a uniter, not a divider. It's just more of the same from the President - no outside input, no compromises, and no sense.

According the the transcript of President Bush's statement tonight, I'm trying to figure out whether he apologized or not. Here's what he said,

Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.

Another great quote:

A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

The rest of the speech was more of the same, but it's nice to see some movement from the Bush administration.

In the article Republican Committee Agrees To Stop Some Campaign Calls, a New Hampshire TV station details how the Republican national committee is being a nuscience by using automated calling to people on the "Do Not Call List". The people of New Hampshire think it's illegal, but the RCC said, "It's a complicated legal question that's not going to get adjudicated this weekend". In other words, "We don't care if it's legal because we can get away with it this weekend, which is all that matters".

This shouldn't be surprising, it's the same thing that Karl Rove has been doing for years.

Researchers released a study showing that Americans are sicker than the English. There could be many reasons for this, but the study did everything they could to take into account every difference (including obesity), and yet Americans are less healthy than the English.

Why? Perhaps we lead a more stressful life, and that contributes to it. I think, though, it's because our health care system isn't as good as a single payer system like England has. We spend more than twice (per person) what the English do on health care, and we're less healthy.

Astounding as it may sound, an economist in the Bush administration said that a Gas Tax Cut Not the Answer to lower gas prices.

What? An economist in the Bush administration that doesn't think cutting taxes will improve everything from interest rates to the taste of my coffee?

He's right, of course. Cutting the gas tax would just increase demand, thus raising prices back to where they already are. It's astounding, though, that anyone in the Bush administration would admit that.

There's a little known part of Federal bill signing called signing statements. It's what the President adds to the bill when he signs it. It's not part of the law, it's often used by the President to signify his understanding of the law.

Bush has taking this to a new level, one that is questionably legal. He is using the signing statement as a legal ploy. He's using it to say which parts of the law he believes don't apply to the administration.

The Boston Globe has a list:
Examples of the president's signing statements - The Boston Globe

It's scary. He doesn't think laws that were specifically designed to apply to the administration, do, and rather than challenging them in court, the way the administration has done in the past, they just ignore them.

There's a great opinion article on the Neiman Watchdog by past NSA director Lt. General William E. Odom called
Iraq through the prism of Vietnam.

As General Odom points out, don't go too far when drawing comparisons between the two conflicts, but we shouldn't ignore them, either.

Unlike what happened in Vietnam, I believe that it is possible to end our invasion of Iraq in a positive manner, but to do that we have to commit to working with Iraq for decades to come. Walking out and leaving the American trained forces in place isn't good enough. We need to help Iraq toward stability, and once Iraq is there, we need to help Iraq create a self-regulating government so that it won't be continually threatened by coups or political overthrows.

The invasion was wrong. But we shouldn't ignore the reality that we have destroyed this country. Because of that, it's our duty as a country to do the right thing now. We can never make up for invading, but hopefully we won't leave behind an unstable country that will slip into ruin.