Republican Debate -- Evolution

3 hands went up.

Mitt Romney on the Contract with America

More from the Romney File...

War on Terror

Iraq a "big moneymaker" for al-Qaida, says CIA

A major CIA effort launched last year to hunt down Osama bin Laden has produced no significant leads, but has helped track an alarming increase in the movement of al-Qaida operatives and money into Pakistan's tribal territories, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials.

In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said al-Qaida's command base in Pakistan increasingly is being funded by cash from Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.

The influx of money has bolstered al-Qaida's leadership ranks at a time when the core command is regrouping. The trend also signals a reversal in the traditional flow of al-Qaida funds, with the leadership surviving to a large extent on money from its most profitable franchise, rather than distributing funds from headquarters to distant cells.

Gallup poll

Public Favors Expansion of Hate Crime Law to Include Sexual Orientation

Majorities of Republicans, conservatives, and frequent church attenders in favor

Jon Stewart at his best...

Jon Stewart has done a great job with the Attorney General fiasco of late. Here is the latest installment.

Who needs to keep up with the private sector anyways!

White House: 3.5 percent pay hike unnecessary

Troops don’t need bigger pay raises, White House budget officials said Wednesday in a statement of administration policy laying out objections to the House version of the 2008 defense authorization bill.

The Bush administration had asked for a 3 percent military raise for Jan. 1, 2008, enough to match last year’s average pay increase in the private sector. The House Armed Services Committee recommends a 3.5 percent pay increase for 2008, and increases in 2009 through 2012 that also are 0.5 percentage point greater than private-sector pay raises.

The slightly bigger military raises are intended to reduce the gap between military and civilian pay that stands at about 3.9 percent today. Under the bill, HR 1585, the pay gap would be reduced to 1.4 percent after the Jan. 1, 2012, pay increase.

Bill Maher - New Rules: America Isn't #1

Republican Debate 5-15-07 - Ron Paul vs. Rudy Giuliani

Superb response to the attack from Giuliani by Ron Paul!

Explanation of Tags

Some of my tags which might need explanation... feel free to do as I have done and borrow ones you like.

2 + 2 = 5:

One consistent phenomenon that has and will probably always be a part of the human experience is that people tend to believe things they want to believe; even when logic, reason, and empirical science consistently contradict such beliefs. There are many factors as to why but as a whole it seems to be due to the comforting nature and rational benefits of cultural tradition,religious belief, and political belief.

"Liberal" Media:

People often speak of the existence of Liberal Media bias. For many its a obvious truism, I as of yet am not convinced. While I am up-to-date on the Chomsky-ian Manufacture of Consent thesis and therefore can concede and conceive of a "Corporate" Media bias. I have yet to see an empirically based media analysis providing testable evidence of "Liberal" Media bias.

Leadership by Example:

It is a historical truism that countries and peoples (read: in-groups) paint their own actions in noble terms while the enemy (or out-group) acts in hostile,irrational, and evil ways. But often times the in-group defies or ignores its standards of behavior, the standards that have been given as the definitional reasons for the nobility of the in-group to begin with. In the United States you find a pattern of agreeable and positive noble traits: civil liberties, human rights, democratic principles; they are praised with voracious passion by every man woman and chorus of polite neighborhood children, while examples and patterns of those traits being denied, violated or eroded; are written off as anomalies not worth mentioning or even pathologically ignored on the grounds that such claims are absurd and irrational. Leadership by example will be a tag used on items where an in-group (for me examples would be: U.S. Government, Progressive Democrats, Greens, Socialists, or atheists--to name a few) do not adhere to the self-professed noble traits. It is based on the belief that noble truths and moralistic framing are only valid if it is also adhered to in a consistent manner. You can't lecture others while doing the very thing you decry. (Well you obviously can, but a general truism is that you can't be taken seriously when doing so and should be called out on it when guilty of it)

Political Hobgoblin:

People with something to gain/hide often use scare tactics promoting nonexistent or statistically meaningless threats. This is often built out of and fed from bias, bigotry, and lack of education. Political Hobgoblins...We all have them. We all use them. We should all call each other out on them!

The Good Fight:

It is found too few and far between. But every day, sometimes small, sometimes large ways. People take positive and uplifting actions to address wrongs and influence opinions or groups who are acting contrary to the common good of humankind.

With time this list is certain to grow and change...

Human Rights Monitor denied access to US Jail (New Tag's: Human Rights, Leadership by example)

U.N. Official Says He’s Been Denied Access to U.S. Immigrant Jails

A United Nations human rights official said he was barred from visiting an immigration detention center in New Jersey yesterday. It was the second time he was denied access to an American immigration jail on a weeklong monitoring tour.

Gender & Ethnic Diversity on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows

From Media Matters:

Not only are the Sunday morning talk shows on the broadcast networks dominated by conservative opinion and commentary, the four programs -- NBC's Meet the Press, ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday -- feature guest lists that are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male.

on an Orwellian note....

Iraq bars photographers from scenes of bomb attacks.

BarbinMD:

Toss in the U.S. policy of not including the victims of bomb attacks in casualty counts, and soon we will all be able to pretend that there is progress in Iraq.

The brilliance of the internet...

Go check out the 2nd Online Philosophy Conference. Free knowledge at your disposal...

A False Ad About 'Lawsuit Abuse'

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce misrepresents a study.

New tag: One Party System...

Kevin Drum on lobbying reform being in trouble

Come on, folks: show some spine. If Democrats want people to believe that there's really a difference between the two parties, then show them there's a difference.

Is that painting real? Ask a mathematician.

Engineers use a mathematical process dubbed 'stylometry' to set apart real Van Gogh paintings from forgeries.

news update...

The AP has picked up on the story about the farmers in Iowa the Giuliani campaign snubbed. To this point it had pretty much been blog's and a minor newspaper reporting this one.

Anybody can say anything!

Blogging, and the world wide web in general makes reality so much more real. It takes away legitimacy where none is deserved and it brings out actual thoughts from behind the shadows and into the light...



Makes people question the legitimacy of sources and the sources of legitimacy.

Kevin Drum on blogging

A couple of years ago I was at a small panel discussion in Los Angeles on the subject of blogging. My most vivid memory of the event — aside from the fact that Eugene Volokh actually had a bullet-pointed handout for the group — came about halfway through when a lady stood up and said, in a querulous tone, "The thing I don't like about blogging is that it allows anybody to say anything."

It's the kind of remark that pretty much leaves you speechless.

News

General says he needs more troops

The commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq said Friday that he did not have enough troops to deal with the escalating violence in Iraq's Diyala province, an unusually frank assertion for a top officer and a sign that American military officials might be starting to offer more candid and blunt assessments of the war

Major General John Batiste (ret) Talks to Keith Olbermann

update on the Batiste Ad... he gets canned by CBS! Watch the interview with Olbermann. This guy is very well spoken and he comes from the ranks of those who would and should know

Edwards speaks to DFA on Global Warming

Not a good start (seems like I keep saying that for these guys...)

Rudy Campaign Reportedly Snubs Farmer For Not Being Rich; Will Media Cover It?

Dean Baker...

Too Bad Economists Are Opposed to Free Trade (Part II)

The economics profession has produced endless studies estimating the losses from 10 percent tariffs on shoes and 15 percent tariffs on shirts. They have worked hard to ensure that all right thinking people believe that such barriers to trade are crimes against humanity.
For some reason economists don't show the same zeal in documenting the costs associated with patent protection for prescription drugs. This patent protection typically raises the price of drugs by several hundred percent above the competitive market price, often the price increases are several thousand percent above the free market price.

As economsts know, the monopoly profits created by this sort of government intervention also provide enormous incentives for corruption. For example, they provide incentives for drug companies to give kickbacks to doctors for prescribing their drugs in cases in which they may not be helpful or may even be harmful.

General Batiste:

New Ad from vote vets.org

lala land...

All you need to know about the Beltway journalist mind

Out of New Hampshire...

Bad news for Obama (9 point drop in from March to April), good news for Edwards (6 point jump), reassuring news for Clinton (steady as she goes)...

New Poll

Want to watch an extremely educated man get something totally wrong...

Mankiw on Living Wage....

But luckily in the comments section someone shoots a hole in his detached objective self assurance...

Of course, while Harvard's job is not to re-distribute income, its job is also not to employ people. So what do you care if in the long-run it hires fewer, more skilled people?

Different world on the same globe...

My Dad in the Philippines notes that...

Poll violence fatalities (murders) during the current election campaign reached 100 this week.

And its not just poll violence in my eyes

Of the 100 fatalities in the campaign for Monday's polls, 52 were candidates and politicians, 36 were identified as their supporters and 11 were civilians, police said.

52 were candidates. That is assassination, no? I mean its poll violence but at least here in the States you think of poll discrepancies as having something to do with poll workers, voters, political activists; half of these deaths were candidates. Its kind of a small example of the problem they are having in Iraq. How do you get people to run for office challenging a status quo that needs to be challenged, but every time you challenge it you end up shot in a ditch?

Probably the best political ad i've seen in a long time...

Bill Richardson's New Ads: Job Interview and Tell Me.

The second one, Tell Me is okay. But Job Interview is great.

Thinking takes time... and other examples.

People ask me what I mean when I say I want to be a philosopher, they ask me what I really want to be doing. I tell I think. And then I think about thinking. And then I think some more. Everyone does it, people plan, analyze, compare others thoughts. Philosophers just do it paying very close attention to what they are thinking and how they are thinking it and then take the next step and try to write some of it down. It takes time and patience. You'll spend days trying to understand an idea or come up with a solution to something. But then something happens, out of the blue, in the middle of a rain storm while you are waiting in traffic, talking on the phone, and eating a sandwich the answer or solution you've been looking for will pop out of nowhere. Basically you set the stage with proper maintenance and then you wait...

Well the same thing works with science. You need certain tools, you learn certain strategies that help improve your chances of success. But many times success is found in the random downtime as you can see here....