I would really like to see Bush’s approval rating dip below 20% by the time he leaves office. It has hit a new low, 26% in a Newsweek poll. All the numbers here.
Category: Politics
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Bill Clinton Interviewed by Amy Goodman
I am not sure what I would do without Amy Goodman. Check out this interview she did with Bill Clinton in 2000. Clinton was just trying to call in to get out the vote, but Goodman actually asked tough questions. I thought Clinton did very well in the interview, except for when he briefly lost his cool, that is.
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Liveblogging the Democratic Debates
Update 27: Kucinich says he doesn’t believe in assasination, even with Osama bin Laden. Obama says he doesn’t believe in assasination, but would take out bin Laden. And my train has arrived in San Francisco…I am cutting out of the debate about a half an hour early.
Update 26: Clinton was asked what she would do if diplomacy with Iran failed. She said “I am not going to get into hypotheticals.” That isn’t very reassuring. John Edwards said that he “wouldn’t take any option off the table.” Joe Biden much more realistic about this question, saying that Iran is a decade away from getting a nuke and that nukes are the only thing keeping us from attacking them. But at the end of the day, if they stuck a nuke on a pad, he would take it out. No one mentioned anything about our own nuclear arsenal in response to that question.
Update 25: So far, there has not been a single mention of the number of dead Iraqis. There have been approximately 400,000 to 940,000 Iraqis killed as a result of the Iraq War, as of one year ago.
Update 24: Dodd says that the principal responsibility of the United States president is to keep the American people safe and secure.
Update 23: Obama has been asked about his desire to increase the size of the military. I didn’t hear from him why he wants to do this.
Update 22: Kucinich is advocating cutting military spending.
Update 21: Christopher Dodd took the subject of rising gas prices and turned it around to a question of global warming. I like that. Mike Gravel “There is nothing I would do as president to lower the price of gasoline.” Even better.
Update 20: Bill Richardson thinks Bill Clinton would make a good Middle East “peace envoy.”
Update 19: Clinton says we should allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. Joe Biden agrees, and is pissed. All of the Democrats now agree.
Update 18: Kucinich is putting forth the best health care plan; completely not for profit, health care for all. Applause from the audience (rare so far in the debate).
Update 17: Edwards is really sucking up to Obama. Is there going to be some Obama/Edwards ticket or something?
Update 16: Obama is letting Blitzer have it for asking the question about “Should English be the official language of the United States?”
Update 15: Again with the “If I had known then what I know now…” from Clinton. I am getting sick of that line.
Update 14: John Edwards is criticizing Hillary Clinton for not apologizing for her original vote to authorize the war. Obama isn’t criticizing her at all.
Update 13: Wolf is getting on Hillary Clinton for authorizing the war without reading the NIE report. She says she knew all the issues and was “briefed.” She didn’t say she regrets not reading the report. And she is blaming the Iraqis for their situation, not what we’re doing over there.
Update 12: Joe Biden is pissed off at Kucinich. He is saying the Democrat’s need 67 votes in the senate so long
Update 11: Kucinich is saying we should end the war by ending the funding.
Update 10: Mike Gravel is speaking. Already letting them have it. He says it is a Democrat’s war as well.
Update 9: They haven’t let Mike Gravel speak yet, 17 minutes in. They have given Kucinich about 15 seconds.
Update 8: Clinton is calling this “George Bush’s war.” I think it is just as much her’s.
Update 7: John Edwards is calling Clinton and Obama out on not speaking out on the Iraq War.
Update 6: Hillary Clinton says that all of the Republican candidates support the Iraq War. Is she not familiar with Ron Paul?
Update 5: Joe Biden says that if he funds the troops, he is protecting them.
Update 4: Kucinich says the PATRIOT Act needs to be overturned as unconstitutional. Wolf Blitzer is giving the candidates about 15 seconds per answer.
Update 3: John Edwards is calling the war on terrorism a bumper sticker. Right on, Edwards.
Update 2: Obama offering strong words on Iraq. Saying that the war there has only hurt our country’s security. He says we need to focus on Afghanistan. Question from me: Is Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan?
Update 1: According to this page, only two candidates, Democrat or Republican, supports same sex marriage.
The next Democratic debates are coming up. They are airing at 4pm PDT. I’ll be liveblogging them, in this post. You can watch the debates live on CNN.com. Hopefully my Verizon card won’t crap out on Caltrain.
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Dirty, Dirty Lawmakers
I was sickened when I read this article this morning: Lawmakers Push for Big Subsidies for Coal Process
I was very surprised to hear that Obama is on-board with this one. I really wanted to vote Democrat in 2008. They aren’t letting it happen.
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Hurdles to Combating Global Warming
I am organizing a Russian Hill global warming group through some postings on Craigslist. Our first meeting is tonight.
I am sitting in Starbucks trying to do my homework to answer some questions and get some ideas ahead of the meeting. Some questions are:
– What are the man-made causes of global warming?
We know the general list. Cars, trucks, airplanes, most power plants, deforestation. But in order to do something about the problem, we need numbers. We need to know where our efforts will have the most effect. A quick Google search turned up one promising link. Unfortunately it was several years old and the percentages added up to over 100%– Where does my electricity come from?
This turned up even less results (0) than the first question. I have no idea where my electricty comes from. A Google search implies that very few people in the country will be able to answer this question easily. PG&E does have some information. It says that 58% of their energy comes from non or low-emitting sources. This implies that 42% comes from heavy emitting sources, but it doesn’t say explicitly.
Update: Obviously, I was researching this while I was writing. Thanks to Wikipedia, I have a pretty good breakdown.– Where does my food come from?
This one will take a bit more research, and I couldn’t expect it to be answered by a simple Google search.– What can I do to combat global warming?
Most or all websites that you go to talk only of individual action. For real change in habits to take place, we need political action as well.Hopefully the group can put our minds together and come up with some answers and solutions.
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Mike Gravel
Mike Gravel seems to be doing to Democrats what Ron Paul is doing to Republicans. Calling them out on their BS on live TV.
Go, Mike, go.
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Cold War
For my book club this week, we are reading Globalization or the Age of Transition? by Immanuel Wallerstein. The essay says this about the agreements that came out of the Yalta Conference between the United States and the USSR:
…both sides were free, indeed encouraged, to engage in vigorous, reciprocally hostile rhetoric, whose chief function seemed to be to consolidate the political control of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. over their respective zones.
Holy crap…that is a pretty serious claim but now that I think about it, it is pretty plausible. I’ll ask the book club about that one to see if they can offer any insight.
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🙁 Gonzales
Alberto Gonzales’ Harvard Law classmates have taken out a one-page ad in today’s Washington Post. This story is getting more interesting by the day.
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Obama
I wanted to like Obama, I really did. There’s still hope for him getting my vote if he reverses the things he has been putting forth lately…Read up:
Reassessing Barack Obama
Obama’s Military Plans Conflict with Progressive ValuesBoth links from BeyondChron.
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28%
For only the second time, Bush’s approval rating drops to 28%.
Of course, approval ratings will go up and down slightly due to margin of error and also due to who you ask. This particular rating is from Newsweek, while others have him as high as 38%.