Warner?

6:07 pm EST July 17th, 2006 | Politics | Comments Off

On paper Mark Warner looks fine, but I have yet to see whether he can make up the personality gap between Ds and Rs. I’d argue that this has been the deciding factor in the last couple of elections more than any issue (if this thing was solely on issues, Dems would have a clear advantage).

Unlike Hillary Clinton, or any of his other likely primary challengers almost all of whom are from the senatorial class Warner can talk about specific recent accomplishments: improving test scores, balancing the budget, and reforming the tax code. His central theme, “ensuring a fair shot for everyone,” lifts from being a mere standard progressive platitude when he talks about how he wants to guarantee that others have a chance to fail and succeed as he did. Since he made his fortune recognizing before others did that cell phones would be popular, he’s also smart to frame his campaign as “not so much about red versus blue but the future versus the past.”

Quick Thought

6:07 pm EST July 17th, 2006 | Politics | 5 Comments

I’m not against the U.S. being an ally of Israel, and in almost every case I think we’re generally on the right side with them in most issues. But I wonder about the thought behind giving unconditional support to Israel. I wouldn’t endorse it for our closest ally, England, much less anyone else.

I think that with regard to the current situation Bush apparently realizes that the bloodthirsty base of his has gotten us into trouble and all their cable news bluster amounts to squat, so the way to end this thing is not to be an ignorant s.o.b. like their usual tactics and methods.

Excuse The Hell Out Of Me?

5:07 pm EST July 17th, 2006 | Politics | 19 Comments

The American government is charging American citizens to get out of the war zone in Lebanon?

WHAT?

UPDATE: Dems demand some action on this.

We Are Doomed

11:07 am EST July 17th, 2006 | Politics | 54 Comments

These are the people in charge of our world.

A microphone picked up an unaware
President Bush saying on Monday
Syria should press Hezbollah to “stop doing this shit” and that his secretary of state may go to the Middle East soon.

Bush was talking privately to British Prime Minister Tony Blair during a lunch at the Group of Eight summit in St Petersburg about an upsurge of violence in the Middle East, not realizing a microphone was recording what he said.

UPDATE: Video here.

Video: Frat Boy President In Action

11:07 am EST July 17th, 2006 | Politics | 30 Comments

I find it interesting, because those potty-mouthed liberals are supposed to be the ones who are coarsening things. Well, at least according to the con blowhards that dominate the press.

You Gotta Wonder

11:07 am EST July 17th, 2006 | Politics | 12 Comments

If you’re talking about funders of political movements, what happened to all those front-page articles about Scaife, Coors, Olin and the wealthy men and women who fund the modern con movement? Also the article says Media Matters looks for “conservative bias” in the media. Really? That’s news to me and I’ve worked at the place for two years.

I’ll quote:

Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.

It as if the Post is demonstrating the need for such a watchdog, right there.

Funny how that works, eh?

You Don’t Say

11:07 am EST July 15th, 2006 | Politics | 45 Comments

According to… what is it again? Oh, yes, a scientific study us public school kids aren’t the drooling morons in comparison to the elitist private schools that the right is constantly pushing. Imagine that.

The Education Department reported on Friday that children in public schools generally performed as well or better in reading and mathematics than comparable children in private schools. The exception was in eighth-grade reading, where the private school counterparts fared better.

The report, which compared fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores in 2003 from nearly 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools, also found that conservative Christian schools lagged significantly behind public schools on eighth-grade math.

So how do we improve education in America? Improve our public schools that are the bedrock of our system, or transfer funds to a private system that doesn’t do as good a job as the public one?

#17

3:07 am EST July 15th, 2006 | Uncategorized | 6 Comments

This is the game that made me a football fan.

Topic: Redskins

Flat Earth Society Referendum In Kansas

4:07 pm EST July 14th, 2006 | Politics | 8 Comments

I’m not optimistic, but we’ll see what shakes out.

As the August 1, 2006, Kansas primary election approaches, evolution is a burning issue. The state board of education is at the center of the furor, of course; in November 2005, the board voted 6-4 to adopt a set of state science standards that were rewritten, under the tutelage of local “intelligent design” activists, to impugn the scientific status of evolution. The standards were denounced by a host of critics, including a group of 38 Nobel laureates (PDF), the National Science Teachers Association, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute for Biological Sciences, the committee that wrote the original standards, the authors of the Fordham Foundation’s report (PDF) on state science standards, and the Kansas Association of Teachers of Science. In addition, the standards have been rejected by at least one local school district. Because the terms of five of the seats on the board expire in 2006, the primary election (as well as the general election in November) afford a chance for supporters of evolution education to change the balance of power on the board, just as they did in 2000.

Biden

4:07 pm EST July 14th, 2006 | Politics | 1 Comment

Unlike many of my fellow Dems, I don’t have a lot of problems with Joe Biden. Biden’s about as knowledgeable as they come about foreign policy, a trait that can’t be undervalued in the era of Bush’s foreign policy incompetency. Biden’s biggest flaw in my mind is that he thinks somehow the Bushies can straighten up and fly right – still. The cons, frankly, don’t see anything wrong with what theyre doing and believe that correcting course is admitting failure. The fact is they’d prefer to be “right” than save lives.