Archive for the 'Policy' Category

THE Most Important Issue Today

Posted by admin on November 30th, 2011

Until this changes, nothing will change. Go here to see what you can do to help the cause! Free Speech is for People, not corporations!

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Mob? What Mob?

Posted by Aaron on August 11th, 2009

You just have to love the GOP hypocrisy. Here’s the Republican Party in Texas saying Democrats are trying to scare people by saying that the GOP is assembling mobs to threaten representatives, when in reality it’s just a bunch of mild-mannered people and kids asking for a town hall meeting:

Then in another video, the same Republican Party of Texas almost gleefully brings you this:

Ah, the Republicans. They just LOVE to talk out of both sides of their mouths.

Secret Memos Finally Released

Posted by Aaron on March 23rd, 2009

Back in April of 2008, I wrote a post about the Bush Cabinet creating the torture policy for the United States, and about how the Office of Legal Counsel authorized the use of torture on enemy combatants. I also talked about the John Yoo memo that said the Fourth Amendment did not apply to actions of the US military within the United States. This memo was not released by the Bush administration, it was only referenced in a footnote of another memo.

This week the Obama administration released a handful of these “secret memos,” over many objections by various government agencies. Glenn Greenwald over at Salon dissects the whole mess very well, and you can get copies of the memos from his links.

It’s amazing how suddenly there’s all this talk in the press about the radical measures the Bush administration took in order to “win’ the “war on terror.” Our rights! Our rights! Oh my god! What hath they done?

I’m reminded how little notice this got in the mainstream press at the time. Meanwhile, the liberal blogs were screaming about how rights given to us by the Constitution were actually being TAKEN AWAY. You’d think this would have gotten a little more attention WHILE it was happening. But no, we were just Bush haters who wanted the US to wave the white flag of surrender in the war on terror.

While I’m unhappy that President Obama seems to want to “stay the course” as it were with many aspects of Bush’s policies on Iraq and Afghanistan and so-called “enemy combatants,” I’m encouraged that he is finally allowing some of the more outrageous DOJ/Office of Legal Cousel opinion pieces to see the light of day.

Not that I think most people are paying attention.

Dems Strategy? Keep Rush Talking!

Posted by Aaron on March 4th, 2009

Who needs the fairness doctrine? Are you kidding, Rush? THEY WANT YOU TO KEEP TALKING!! As long as you keep talking, the Democrats keep winning. You’re eating up the attention since it brings you ratings, but perhaps somewhere inside that drug-addled mind of yours you think you’ll somehow convince those who aren’t already dittoheads that your arguments make any kind of sense at all? If the polls in this article are correct, it’s just not going to happen. People under 40 don’t like you. They know what you are, who you are, and they are not buying that “this is Obama’s economy — he owns it.” No, this is Bush’s economy and Obama inherited it, and Americans know that.

The brilliance of the Democratic strategy is just amazing though. You need to read this article at Politico, no matter if it reveals the magician behind the curtain.

James Carville, I owe you an apology. You, sir, are still brilliant.

Experts Analyze Bush Legacy

Posted by Aaron on January 8th, 2009

Salon.com consulted with seven experts regarding the eight-year impact of the Bush Administration on economics, infrastructure, Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, human rights, healthcare and climate change.

The verdict?

Bush’s legacy will be a path of destruction the breadth of which is unprecedented in American history (as if we didn’t already know). The numbers are staggering.

Check out the story here.

Take That, GM Bashers

Posted by Aaron on January 7th, 2009

So many people I talked with last month online and in person couldn’t believe how strongly I was defending General Motors. Here were the talking points I heard day after day:

  • Serves them right for making cars no one wants to buy (well, they sold ~12 million cars last year)
  • Serves them right for fighting MPG increases (my 2 ton Saab wagon gets 30mpg fully loaded on trips and GM has more hybrid models available than any other manufacturer, as well as the first mass-produced plug-in hybrid ready to go out the door this year)
  • Serves them right for making crappy cars (quality has steadily increased over the years to rival the Japanese automakers)
  • Why should we give them money if they’re just going to go under in the spring? You’re just prolonging the inevitable (you didn’t read the December plan, did you…)
  • What they need is a government-backed, customized bankruptcy proceeding (would you buy a car from a company that was going bankrupt?)

Well, nothing is ever entirely certain, but after none other than George W. Bush came to the company’s rescue, GM today surprised everyone by announcing that even though it now has the money in hand that it was looking for, and even if its worst-case scenario of only selling 10 million cars in 2009 comes true, the company won’t need any further injections of capital from the government. What? You mean they actually got the money and they are still saying that they won’t need more? Why, I thought that as soon as they had that money, they’d be right back with hat in hand?

“I was really expecting them to go for a second round, so this comes as a surprise,” Dennis Virag, president of Automotive Consulting Group in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “If GM could stabilize their financing, we were projecting a sales rate of about 11.5 million vehicles in 2009. It’s not the catastrophic drop that ourselves and others were projecting if we had major bankruptcies.”

Chrysler on the other hand is facing more pressing issues. The latest Consumer Reports had a rundown of the positive and negative aspects of each of the Big Three automakers. Bottom line is that Ford and GM are making vehicles that have excellent fit and finish, good reliability, and features that people want. Chrysler (Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep) has the distinction of having NO models featuring a “recommended” tag by the magazine. The reason? Poor reliability, poor fit and finish, poor ergonomics and use of interior space. I would not be surprised to see a GM/Chrysler merger which effectively does nothing more than fold the Jeep name into the GM family.

Perhaps if that happens there will once again be a Jeep worth buying.