Saturday, February 28, 2009

Obama = McCain



Remember way back in September and October, when Obama and McCain supposedly had completely divergent views on Iraq? McCain wanted to stay there for a 100 years, while Obama wanted to bring the troops home in 16 months? Well, the two agree now. Seems like 50,000 troops is just the right number to placate the neocons while at the same time convincing everybody else that this administration represents a clean break with the past.

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Mittens!



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Buffett – my derivates don’t stink



Warren Buffett tells Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, in essence, “invest as I say, not as I do,” as he tries defending his own company’s investing in what he famously once called “financial weapons of mass destruction.”
There is no god and I am his prophet.


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The sixth Carnival on Modern Liberty



This week's carnival can be found on Liberal Conspiracy and is brought to you by James Graham.

Next week the carnival will alight here (hem, hem) at Liberal England. It should be posted some time on Friday evening.

Please nominate any blog postings about civil liberties that catch your attention before then by using the form on the carnival's home page.

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Love That Girl





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Electoral Reform Process Proved Public Efficacy



A

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Obama – prayer-vetter in chief



The White House doing advance vetting of invocations before ceremonial events is wrong on so many different First Amendment and other levels I don’t even know where to begin.

Plus, it won’t work as a “bipartisanship outreach” to the Religious Right if part of the reason for vetting the prayers is to keep them from being too faith-specific, or otherwise politically incorrect.

(Or to keep them from praying that, in a riff on the Lord’s Prayer, President Obama would not only deliver us from evil, but “lead us not further into Afghanistan
There is no god and I am his prophet.


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Plastic bag tax in Texas?



Even if Texas state Rep. Rafael Anchia’s seven-cent plastic bag tax fails in the Texas Legislature, nonetheless, it’s a sign of Lone Star environmental progress for it just to get a respectful consideration.

That said, I don’t favor state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte’s idea of a more voluntary plan, where plastic-bagging retailers would have to offer alternative reusable bags and recycling bins.

Of course, Wal-Mart supports this idea, and not only because it has recycling in place. Nobody besides real environmentalists like me use its front-doot plastic bag drops, and it charges, it sells, reusable bags.

The world’s largest retailer does NOT want to pay a seven-cent-a-bag tax at all.

Anchia has introduced Van de Putte’s bill in the Texas House as “Plan B.”

I disagree with that, both tactically and strategically.

You never introduce Plan B until Plan A is exhausted.

And, Plan B isn’t really much of a plan.
There is no god and I am his prophet.


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Notes from Newt



I'd like to feel sorry for people on Newt Gingrich's e-mail list, but I really can't.
A lot of these e-mail messages are deeply wonkish, written in single-sentence paragraphs without punctuation or capital letters. It’s almost as if you can see Gingrich twittering away at a Starbucks while doing calculations on a wrinkled napkin. On Thanksgiving Day, for instance, in an e-mail message one recipient shared with me, Gingrich fired off a riff on an idea by Louie Gohmert, a Republican congressman from Texas, who had suggested that, instead of a stimulus bill, the party propose a payroll-tax holiday. “FICA and personal income tax combined are about $160 billion a month (you might want to check my math),” Gingrich wrote to a group of Congressional allies. “So if Pelosi proposes a $700 billion stimulus spending package in January, we could propose a 4-month tax holiday as the alternative.” In a separate e-mail message to his own aides, he wrote: “Think of no personal or corporate income tax and no fica tax for a year as a stimulus package. Am I nuts in rome or is the contrast startling.”
You could add the clause "like a crazy person" to the end of every sentence in that paragraph, to say nothing about the rest of the article. That said, I can't object to the idea that Newt Gingrich has refurbished himself as the new intellectual genius of the Republican party. With a second baby due at any moment in my household, I'll happily seize upon any reason to sleep peacefully for the next few years. I'd be especially pleased if Gingrich will agree to keep endorsing such winning notions as, say, John McCain suspending his campaign to single-handedly address economic issues he openly claimed not to understand. Comparing McCain's defeat-ensuring move to Eisenhower's October 1952 declaration that he would "go to Korea" was a magical moment.

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The Day Each Year that I Get to be Joel Surnow...



The 2009 Patterson School Crisis Simulation has ended. Coverage of the simulation was provided by the UK School of Journalism, and can be found here (start with the very bottom post and work your way up). The story was this: A Panamanian flagged, Pakistani owned container ship named MV Straat Malakka was seized by pirates after an extended firefight. The RFS Pyotr Velikiy responded, and began to escort the merchant ship to port. Hijinks ensued.

We divided the Patterson class into the following teams:

United States:
Department of State
CIA
CentCom

Islamic Republic of Iran:
Revolutionary Guard
Foreign Ministry

Somali State of Puntland

United Nations International Maritime Organization

Note that the exercise was intended solely for educational purposes (for both Patterson and School of Journalism students), and reflects no particular position on Iran, the United States, Russia, or pirates.

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‘Touching’ Morning News editorial ignores natl healthcare boat



The Dallas Morning News today had a touching editorial on the fatherly dedication of David Cameron to his son, Ivan, afflicted with cerebral palsy and epilepsy.

David Cameron also just happens to be the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party. As a result of all the time spent with his son, he would…

Strengthen Britain’s National Health Service if he came to power.

And, the editorial ends shortly thereafter, with a “silence gives assent,” it would appear, nod toward Cameron’s plan.

The same week that President Barack Obama announces a plan for a major overhaul in American healthcare, at least moving our country toward national healthcare, sure to generate GOP opposition…

And the Snooze either cannot or will not do a second-grade logic level of connecting the dots to its tacit support for the leader of Britain’s conservatives in expanding national healthcare there.
There is no god and I am his prophet.


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WaPost ombudsman has backhanded non-defense of George Will



Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander resorts to hack journalism to attempt a defense of George Will’s ax-grinding anti-global warming column of Feb. 15.

If you read through Alexander’s own column, you’ll see him trot out the following claims:

1. Moral equivalence between global warming recognizers and deniers (putting “falsehoods” in scare quotes is a good tip-off);
2. Scientific equivalence between the two (putting “falsehoods” in scare quotes is a good tip-off).

Yet, he ultimately can’t do it.

He says he believes WaPost op-ed staff (that’s YOU, Fred Hiatt, ultimately) are simply wrong in asserting, and continuing to assert, that Will’s claims about polar ice levels are supported by the Arctic Research Climate Center. He also notes that somebody should have called the center before Will’s column ran.

Let’s see Hiatt answer this.
There is no god and I am his prophet.


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We Could Never Be This Fortunate...



This would be awesome, but there's just no way...
Already in conflict with his party’s leaders, Sen. Jim Bunning has reportedly said privately that if he is hindered in raising money for his re-election campaign he is ready with a response that would be politically devastating for Senate Republicans: his resignation.

The Kentucky Republican suggested that possible scenario at a campaign fundraiser for him on Capitol Hill earlier this week, according to three sources who asked not to be identified because of the politically sensitive nature of Bunning’s remarks.

The implication, they said, was that Bunning would allow Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, to appoint his replacement — a move that could give Democrats the 60 votes they need to block Republican filibusters in the Senate.

I do kind of like how the old man is playing hardball, though...

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"Unsound Mind"



I was speaking at a forum organised by the Associated Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Malaysia (ACCCIM) this morning with regards to the "Declassified Highway Concession" contracts. I won't bore you with many of the details which I have already written about, but I thought this particular exchange with a member of the audience was most witty ;-)

Someone asked, given the unreasonableness of the terms of these highway concession contracts, isn't it possible that someone challenge their validity in the courts? To a lay man like me, that certainly sounds plausible. No?

But my colleague who was speaking at the same forum, a lawyer and MP for Serdang, Teo Nie Ching, responded that the unreasonableness of the terms of these contract can only be challenged for their validity in court for 2 possible grounds.

The first, was if the contracts were signed under duress a-la the alleged resignation letters signed by the Perak assemblymen. Well, this is clearly no go, for the Government couldn't have justified itself in court that they signed these unfair terms "under duress" (they're the Government, for goodness sake!). So that's out.

But the second, was more interesting. You could challenge the validity of the unreasonable terms, and hence the contracts, if you could prove to the courts that they were signed when you are of "unsound mind".

The floor cracked up laughing when Nie Ching asserted that, it might just work for not many would deny the fact that the BN Government (and its ministers) are of "unsound mind" especially in the light of the their many perplexing decisions, and worse, their subsequent flip-flops and U-turns! ;-)

Anybody want to volunteer giving it a shot? ;-)

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Friday, February 27, 2009

Canadian immigration policies and the right to health



A

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Obama Speech About Withdrawing Troops From Iraq