Obama wins Nobel Peace Price

All I am saying is this: do we really live in a world where the Arizona State commencement speech committee has more stringent standards than then Norwegian Nobel Committee?

Owned!

Chicago eliminated in first round of Olympic 2016 voting. Obama's reputation as being unable to get things done will be solidified by the time you go to bed tonight. Happy 2010 elections! (Oh, and good luck on Iran!)

Speech! Speech!

Assuming you saw the President's address to Congress last night. Apparently The Daily Beast has highlights from it. I thought it was a bit professorial, and painfully fast-and-loose with the facts, but overall a pretty decent speech (with quite a finish).

Ultimately, I don't see this changing much. And I believe Joe "You Lie" Wilson, for all his lack of manners, probably did an excellent job of undermining Obama. If you think about the subset of people who came into the speech against Obama's reform efforts but were warming up to it as the speech went on, that sort of outburst is exactly the sort of thing to snap one out of the increasing level of trust building between the speaker and viewer throughout the speech, reminding viewers that there was a reason they opposed this guy before, and his "sweet-talk" shouldn't necessarily win them over now.

As a side note, it is sort of terrifying how divisive this issue has been, given that there's so much everyone agrees on (like pre-ex's). I mean, even the school speech was a bitter partisan issue. And Drudge Report is reporting higher readership than at the same time a year ago, which is astounding given that a year ago we were in the height of the election season (and about two weeks into the Sarah Palin Era).

"The Jews and Their Lies."

Holy shit. I had no idea Michael Steele and the RNC could be so stupid as to create The Obama Card, a game that allows players to use their Obama credit card to purchase "Anti-semitic, anti-Latino, and overtly pornographic literature - with pictures to boot" (AMERICAblog). Apparently this material helps the public understand just how Obama's spending is destroying our country.

Using a search engine modeled after Amazon's, 'players' search for keywords relating to items they wish to purchase. A search for Jews brings up a set of thumbnail images including, you guessed it, "The Jews and Their Lies." One can also, with proper searching (as done by AMERICAblog), find items like "Sex Secrets of Escorts" and "Porn: Have Anal Sex and Call Her Best Friend for a Threesome". Seriously.

Also hilarious is the fact that certain words are banned: one must use homosexual instead of gay, and the word vagina is banned.

Check out the AMERICAblog post to see screenshots of some of the searches (for some reason Blogger won't let me upload these images).

Best. Excuse. Ever.

During a town-hall style meeting in Green Bay President Obama wrote a note excusing an attending fourth-grader's absence from school, then walked off the stage to deliver it to her. Kennedy, the fourth-grader, will present her teacher with a note that says, simply, "To Kennedy's teacher: Please excuse Kennedy's absence. She's with me. Barack Obama." If nothing else, Obama is a pretty fucking cool president.

Visualizing Obama's budget cuts.

"Roman Catholic priestess" dragged kicking and screaming from Air Force One

pretty funny

Robobama is coming for you!

Actually, this is pretty awesome.

Growing Extremism

Sorry for the half-ass post - I just don't have the time right now.

But as funny as it is to go to all of our friends and say "Wow, did you hear this crazy-ass shit that the Texas Governor implied the other day?" it's just as important not to underestimate the long-run effects of the bitter partisan divide that is growing stonger everyday.

Something like a secession or a civil war is certainly unlikely, nearly to the point of being negligible, but you've got an angry and motivated (if not informed) populous, a minority party without a good strong leader or message (which is now pretty extreme as well, thanks to 2008's decimation of the moderates) and an economy in epic (-ly ununderstandable?) shambles. Not to mention the fringe extremist, yet still relatively common (10%?) view that we elected a Black Arab Communist Socialist Muslim Nazi for president.

love this photo

caption contest...?

Arrogant, Incompetent, and Greedy? I thought Obama was only one of those things ...

(and I mean that in the best way ...)

Just picture someone saying "It's the principle of the thing!" and you've probably got in mind someone who is at least 80 years old, and one way or another could be described by the word "crusty."

Well that's just what's going on with AIG. $165M is a lot of money, but the undeserved portion of that (due to arrogance, incompetence, or greed) is a far smaller number. Generously calling it half, I'll say this $80M is not that much to get worried about, and it's certainly not anything worth upending the structure of our legal system for.

That said, "someone" secretly removed a provision from the stimulus bill that would deal with this issue of AIG bonuses. And no matter which side of the argument you are on, you can bet that when there's a sixth of a billion dollars on the table, Principle can't afford a ticket to the show.

So who might have been a little more than friends with the folks at AIG? Let's check out the top ten list from OpenSecrets.org and see who's been getting the most contributions from AIG in the past 20 years:

	Dodd, Chris (D)	$281,038
	Bush, George W (R)	$200,560
	Schumer, Charles (D)	$111,875
	Obama, Barack (D)	$110,332
	McCain, John (R)	$99,249
	Baucus, Max (D)	$90,000
	Kerry, John (D)	$85,000
	Johnson, Nancy L (R)	$75,400
	Sununu, John E (R)	$69,049
	Clinton, Hillary (D)	$61,515

An interesting list, to be sure, but still not the way I like it. Let's find out how much AIG has been shelling out to these guys on an annual basis:

	Federal Candidate	Total	Yrs	Annual
	Obama, Barack (D)	$110,332	4	$27,583
	Bush, George W (R)	$200,560	8	$25,070
	Dodd, Chris (D)	$281,038	20	$14,052
	Clinton, Hillary (D)	$61,515	8	$7,689
	Sununu, John E (R)	$69,049	12	$5,754
	Schumer, Charles (D)	$111,875	20	$5,594
	McCain, John (R)	$99,249	20	$4,962
	Baucus, Max (D)	$90,000	20	$4,500
	Kerry, John (D)	$85,000	20	$4,250
	Johnson, Nancy (R)	$75,400	18	$4,189

Now look, I'm not out-and-out accusing Barack Obama of being corrupt on this one, though I wouldn't be surprised either. But if you're mad about AIG, it's hard not to take a look at this list and think things through.

And honestly, if you really want to know who I think is behind this "secret revision" in the stimulus bill, my money's on Chris Dodd. That's one corrupt (looking!) dude right there. (Side note) And increasingly, the rumor is that his Senate seat might be in jeopardy, something unheard of for a 34-year, extremely powerful Democratic Congressman from a very blue state.

Baracketology

UPDATED:
Chris's 2009 NCAA Bracket
Obama's 2009 NCAA Bracket


I just love that the bracket has its own presidential seal.

(And let me add, by the way, that he has Syracuse beating Temple, whereas I have both teams losing before that game even gets played - we'll see who wins this epic showdown of knowhow (of which the president apparently has quite a bit) vs. basic mathematics!)

Well played, Missouri

You can argue back and forth about the legitimacy of their actual stances, but I just wanted to shed some light on what appeared to me to be votes that were slightly above-average in principle from Missouri's two senators.

Claire McCaskill has a much easier case to make. She was one of three Democratic senators who voted against Obama's spending bill, along with Evan Bayh and Russ Feingold. She stands out because she and Feingold were the only two Democratic senators not to insert any earmarks into the bill, and both Bayh and Feingold are up for re-election in 2010, while she is not.

Chris Bond - well, I'm doing my best for a Republican ... He's actually in favor of earmarks, but at least he still had the guts to vote for the bill.

This was all part of an article that's generally unrelated, about popular presidents who struggled with issues of unity in their own party.

Doom and Gloom

I always just skip past the big headline on Drudge, so imagine how depressing it was as a read all the headlines I could see below and then, already depressed, scrolled up to see the headline and image ...

Advice

On a lighter note, I like thinking about what cabinet meetings are like for Hillary Clinton after this:

Variations on the theme "Limbaugh Hurts the Nation"

I haven't been posting so much so here's one in the old vain.

To say that what Rush Limbaugh has been doing recently is hurting the country is a rather timeless statement. You could have said it in the early 90's (when Limbaugh was still on the junk and in his prime!), or yesterday, or any time in between.

But now it's a little different. As you probably know, Rush and RNC Chair Michael Steele have had a bit of a skirmish (I love that word) in the media recently, and as a result, Steele is just the latest on a long list of Republicans who have had to apologize to Rush (as Jon Stewart put it, the apology is for "determining that Rush's language is incindiary and ugly," also known as "being familiar with Rush's show").

But this isn't good for anyone. It's certainly not good for Republicans. Cliché as it may be, the Republicans as a party are suffering an identity crisis. They clearly need to move to the center, but most of their centrist Congressman were unseated in November. Add Rush to the mix, and you see the party is clearly on track to lose even more seats in 2010 (you might be able to argue that it's too late to turn this fate around) and is severly hurting their chances for a comeback in 2012, with the White House virtually guaranteed for Obama.**

(Update: I want to clarify: if they keep doing what they're doing, they virtually guarantee the White House for Obama. I am making no prediction about the 2012 presidential race.)

None of this should be particularly suprising, but I would like to argue that this is bad for the nation. The reason is that Democrats are already riding a pretty powerful wave of power that, as I said, will probably only strengthen through 2010. So with our foreign affairs in crisis mode and our economy an order of magnitude worse than that, we've already basically guaranteed that Democrats will retain the White House and both house of Congress through the 2012 elections, meaning Republicans won't have a chance until 2014.

And look: if you have any doubts about how much power the Democrats have right now, just imagine what you'd think and how you'd feel if a newly elected Republican Congress was passing legislation of John McCain's that was of the same magnitude - but a very different direction - than what Obama and the Democrats are doing. And then it becomes clear that, in times like these, weakening the standing of the opposition party is just bad for America.

But then again, Rush has been a specialist in "Bad for America" for quite some time.

Michael Phelps will be psyched.

The Obama administration has so far shown a willingness to, in many ways, seek out and subsequently ignore controversy, whether the controversy is legitimate or contrived. This willingness has taken many forms, ranging from a nearly $1T stimulus bill to a declaration that the deficit will be halved within the next four year, from the appointment of Judd Gregg to the declared but un-planned closure of Guantanamo. In some cases Obama has argued his case pretty well (think Guantanamo) whether or not he was arguing the correct point; in others he has demonstrated a brashness and confidence unexpected by many observers despite being on the wrong side of the argument (think Judd Gregg). It seems as if Obama has chosen to make the most of the impossible situation he faces by attempting to handle not only the immediate crises (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan, and the credit market), but also many less-pressing issues that other presidents would have left for later (e.g. the elimination of the Global Gag Rule, the institution of limits on congressional pay, and the recommendation of increased fuel efficiency standards). Obama has thus used the cover of “the worst recession since the Great Depression” to slide through some policies that would have brought down hellfire on the White House during past administrations. (This argument is related to Chris’ point that the stimulus was passed in a manner similar to the Patriot Act.)

It seems as though Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have decided to open another front in the Obama administration’s backdoor war on outdated, inappropriate, and absurdly expensive policies: Holder declared that federal agents will no longer raid marijuana clubs in states that have passed legislation legalizing medical use of marijuana. [On an embarrassing note: without “The first black […]” leading his name I almost feel as if Holder’s title is missing something.]



Chalk one up for states’ rights. While this is far from legalization of marijuana federally it represents a significant deviation from past policies, and I can only hope that this indicates a shift in focus in the War on Drugs. As the above chart from 538 illustrates, public opinion is slowly moving in favor of the legalization of marijuana (both from the support and opposition sides), a trend I interpret (while hindered in no way by data or fact) to mean that the public as a whole is gradually coming to understand the differences between marijuana, which can lead to mental addictions, and more serious drugs that form both mental and physical addictions and lead to very serious health and general welfare problems (read: crime). As Nate Silver points out, though, it seems likely that, “[…] we'll see other some other once-unthinkable things like legalized gay marriage [before we see legalized marijuana].”

I guess my main point is that the War on Drugs needs to be refocused in two major ways. First of all, the government should exert different efforts for the control of different drugs, with the distribution of funding and resources determined by an honest assessment of the impact of each drug on individuals and the country as a whole. Stated another way, marijuana related arrests should not account for nearly half of all drug arrests (see table below) in a country in which 97 million people have ‘admitted’ to having tried pot.


Source.

The other major change I support is less likely to be implemented, but who knows what this crazy Obama administration will do next? That change is a shift from a supply-side focus to a demand-side focus. Let’s try a mental experiment: imagine if the DEA made a bust in which it confiscated 80% of the heroin in the USA overnight. The next day, as junkies head to the corners, what will happen? Will the ‘drought’ lead users to rehabilitate, to realize the dangers of being a drug addict, to avoid crime and seek out Christ? Or will price go through the roof, likely leading to more drug-related crime as users attempt to scrounge up the necessary cash to buy some of the tiny supply? I think the latter is significantly more likely.

It is certainly easier to publicly justify supply-side programs to limit drug use: the publicity of drug busts; the visibility of border patrol agents; the high recidivism rates of addiction treatment programs; etc. Simply because a course of action is easier and less controversial, though, does not mean it is the best choice. I believe that if the United States wants to seriously attempt to combat the use of dangerous drugs it needs to rethink its classification system and the mechanisms by which it combats drug purchases.

There are a number of potential problems here, I admit. First, assuming demand for a drug falls, prices will fall. When prices fall the suppliers have less incentive to be there (less profit per unit sold), but the users have a greater incentive to use (more units of drug per dollar spent). I think these effects would interact differently based on the drug in question and the level of addiction it creates. Second, drug treatment programs are expensive. I would argue that some of this cost would be offset by the lowered costs associated with the reclassification of some drugs (e.g. if marijuana were not a drug for which one could be jailed, the country would no longer have to pay to jail those arrested with marijuana, or may not even have to arrest those people at all). Again, the net effect is ambiguous in this hypothetical world I have imagined. Lastly, and I am sure I am missing arguments for both sides, opponents of these reforms may argue that by enforcing treatment programs rather than jail time the country is choosing to give criminals a second chance at the expense of those who may have never committed a crime. I imagine an opponent thinking, “Why is that criminal allowed to walk near my child? Why do I pay for his wrong decisions with my fear over my own property and safety?” I have no rebuttal for this except for my own belief that even the best of men can fall prey to addiction and that each and every person who does deserves at least a second chance, if not more.

I hope to one day live in a country in which one mistake on the order of taking a drug does not ruin one’s life permanently. If he feels compelled to continue sneaking legislation through based on false pretenses, let’s hope Obama chooses some of the right legislation to sneak through. I apologize for the length of this ramble. I hope it received at least one drug-addled, "Hooray!" from the crowd.

LOL

Have I linked to LOLbama before? Maybe. If so, feel free to delete this post. Anyway, a couple of my friends make it, and it's full of stuff like this that makes me laugh:


worth a visit

Dreams From My Campaign

God I'm tired of this crap. I was hoping for some change. Maybe next time we could get this guy to run for president:

Prelude to: Clinton cheats on spouse in Oval Office, 21st century edition?