Palin's daughter's pregnancy

[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]

If she marries him before she gives birth then she'll have to give up her health insurance. Hopefully this'll tie the GOP's nation of whiners into their hypocrisy on social issues.

Florida, Michigan delegates given full votes. What about the eighteen-year olds?

During and after 2004, many states decided to let people who will be of voting age in November vote in the corresponding primaries, but Florida and Michigan didn't think to do it when they moved up their primary in violation of DNC rules. With over nine months between Florida and Michigan's primaries and the November election, over three-quarters of these states' eighteen-year old general election voters were ineligible to vote in their primaries.

Though claiming disenfranchisement, the Clinton campaign, John McCain, and PUMA's ignored the fact that Florida and Michigan disenfranchised thousands of young people by moving up their primaries. Even if the two states hadn't let seventeen year-olds who would be eighteen by November 4 vote in the primaries, thousands of people who would have turned eighteen before the old primary nights but weren't yet eighteen on the new primary nights didn't get to vote in Michigan and Florida. California disenfranchised people even though we didn't break party rules; our primary used to be in May, but it was moved to February, effectively disenfranchising a quarter of the high school class of 2008.

Florida and Michigan could have let people who will be of voting age on by the day of the general election to vote in the primaries, which also would have enfranchised seventeen year-olds born after the old primary dates but before or on November 4. This is done in 19 states; a few, like Maryland, have done it for years but around half of these states only have since 2004.

But they didn't. Instead, they sacrificed young people, who were excited to vote for the first time, for increased influence, even though they could have easily gotten this influence without sacrificing young people by doing what Maryland, Maine, Iowa, and sixteen other states already do. They didn't even get their influence since their elections got zero media coverage, providing no boost for Clinton, and their delegates only got seated after Obama won the primaries.

HuffPost article on Florida and Michigan delegates getting full votes.

Country Club Republicans

Today, I read about and saw an Obama ad that refers to "country club economics" and shows McCain and HW Bush in a golf cart.

I first referred to "country club Republicans" in this blog yesterday, and I've been saying it in the physical world for a while now. So...

I thought of this before Obama! I thought of this before Obama! I thought of this before Obama! Yay yay yay!

The HuffPost even thought of the term "country club Republican" just like I did. Yay I'm so proud of myself! I thought of something so clever that both Obama and Huffington are using it, and I thought of it weeks before they did! Yay yay yay! :D

Here's the ad: YouTube link, Huffington Post link.

Obama attacks McCain for owning seven houses

It's about time we started attacking McCain's character; it may be dirty, but it's effective.

However, for a while I've thought that Obama should focus his attacks on the Republican Party itself and turn the election into one between the Democrats and the Republicans, not just between Obama and McCain. A HuffPost article from yesterday made a similar argument, claiming that McCain was the GOP's hood ornament and that Obama should attack the entire car since his personality is more important than McCain's.

People don't quite trust the GOP on the economy, so I think this ad is a good move since it reinforces this distrust by reminding people that the Republican candidate is out of touch. Perhaps a follow-up ad titled "Country Club Republicans" that shows Phil Gramm's "nation of whiners" soundbite would reinforce this message even more.

I still think we should attack the party itself more than tying McCain into Bush, but it chipping the veneer off of the hood ornament and make its exposed, chintzy plastic more visible doesn't hurt.

Link to the ad on YouTube

UPDATE: McCain's response to Obama's attack: He was a POW in Vietnam.

This reminds me of something else I've been thinking about: McCain's stuck in the 1960's. To me, a nineteen-year old, McCain seems more and more out of touch everytime he talks about Ayers, everytime he talks about being captured in a war fought forty years ago, and everytime he connects Obama's message to 1960's liberalism.

Door destroyed, house entered, no warrant shown, dogs shot, couple bound.

CNN article

There's a few circumstances where a residence can be searched and entered without a warrant; for example, if a crime was committed near a window or otherwise can be seen from outside, if criminal evidence is in plain sight and only that evidence is obtained and the residence isn't searched, or if a suspect flees into a residence after committing a crime.

I do not know Maryland animal and police brutality law, but the dogs probably did not post a lethal or serious threat, so it's likely that the police used excessive force, and they probably used excessive force by not knocking. Furthermore, if the dogs were threatening enough to legally merit shooting them in a lawful search, I wouldn't be surprised if shooting them is illegal anyway since this search was unlawful. It could be reasonable to not knock if the marijuana recipients (read the article now if you haven't already) knew that marijuana was being mailed to them and would thus hide the marijuana when the police announce their entry. However, the couple did not know that the package contained marijuana because the distributor planned to mail it to have it intercepted before the couple received it.

I doubt there's any legal precedent to suggest that it's reasonable for these cops to think that what they were doing was legal, so official immunity shouldn't protect them.

In defense of Pelosi and other alleged Bush enablers

EDIT: Earlier, I briefly attacked Pelosi for enabling Bush's policies, but I rethought it:

A few days ago, Nancy Pelosi called Bush "a total failure" after she criticized House Democrats for not passing a spending bill in twenty-six days.

Now, many of us liberals are thinking, "well, Pelosi enabled Bush's policies, so she has no right to attack him." "Why didn't she block FISA?" we asked a little while ago. "What about cutting off war funding? What about impeachment?"

Pelosi has very liberal personal convictions, but she's very pragmatic. She'd rather go along with something and gain a few concessions than oppose it, lose, gain no concessions, and irritate the conservative wing of her party.

"But what about principles? Why don't Democrats stand up for their principles?" many lamented after the FISA vote, and the 2007 Iraq funding bill. In short, Pelosi and other Democrats would stick to their principles less than they do now if they were stubborn and tried to block every single bad piece of legislation that Bush and McCain try to push through Congress since the resulting legislation would be worse since she, and other Democrats, extract concessions by going along with Bush and McCain.

After the 2006 midterm elections, the Democrats held 233 seats to the Republicans' 202, which means that the GOP needed to flip only 16 Democrats if every Republican toes the party line. They've lost a handful of special elections between 2006 and now so they'd need a couple more, but the forty-nine Blue Dogs, many of whom are flat-out Bush Dogs, are always eager to prove their conservative, anti-San Francisco liberal credentials to their constituents.

The bottom line is that conservative Democrats prevent Pelosi and other moderate and liberal Democrats from defeating the Bush-McCain agenda, so they go along with it and get whatever crumbs they can. But if we hold tight and win this election then we can establish a long-term liberal and communitarian consensus, and finally end the polarization that's plagued the nation since the Vietnam War.

"He's got eight tires sitting on twenty-two rims."

http://www.johnmccain.com/STETour/

First McCain golf gear, and now this?

When I thought Republicans couldn't get any more lame, McBush decided to make this video called "McCain Cribs" about the Straight Talk Express, the mobile lobbyist firm that also serves as his campaign bus.

Bush Republicans

I always hear "real conservatives" claim that "Bush isn't the Republican Party."

As Sheldon Whitehouse said, "If you think your opinion doesn't matter then maybe you should speak louder." Chafee was no classic conservative, and was perhaps the last liberal Republican in national office, but Whitehouse's advice applies to allegedly classic conservative Republicans too, since they gave Bush unprecedented support during the six years where he controlled at least one house.

The Republican congressmen and senators have a lot of back pedaling to do before the GOP goes back to its alleged small government roots; at this point, pretty much every national Republican is a Bush Republican.

The Dukakis-Kerry era draws to a close

I saw this video of Terry Mcauliffe, Hillary's campaign chair, and remembered a friend telling me that many of Hillary higher-ups are incompetent.

Mcauliffe definitely seems to be one of them. He virtually says "the election will be about national security since John McCain knows nothing about the economy" and "we're going to let McCain frame the debate and react to them on his terms, and Hillary's a fighter so she can beat McCain on his terms."

It's almost as if Mcauliffe was Dukakis' and Kerry's campaign chairman, since both of those candidates tried to out-Republican the Republicans, but he's too young to have been Dukakis'. Luckily, people are so pissed at the Republicans that Hillary will win the November election anyway if she gets the nomination.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24745502#24738885

Parents (and schools) need to chill out.

In 2005, Senator Hillary Clinton proposed codifying videogame ratings and making it illegal for stores to sell M-rated games to people under age 18. Today, some secondary schools ban social networking not only to free up their limited computer resources for more studious activities, but also because they fear that students will post personal information. If they're allowed to create their own content and publish it online with school computers, schools fear that they'll be tricked into meeting or be kidnapped by a child molester.

Some secondary schools even ban Wikipedia because they think that minors take everything at face value and are thus vulnerable to Wikipedia's supposed unreliability. It was feared that a 2006 bill would have required all schools that receive federal funding to prohibit Websites that allow students to publish their own content, like Wikipedia, but the Internet community may have simply overreacted and and overstated the bill's scope.

The thing is, even though schools and helicopter parents often fail to teach kids to not accept everything they learn as fact, kids are pretty sensible and can filter out poor and inaccurate information, and know better than to fall victim to online sexual predators. Though more violent kids may be more drawn to violent videogames than less violent kids, there's no evidence to suggest that kids absorb the violence they're exposed to in fictional videogames and recreate it in the real world. Kids aren't dumb sponges who unquestionably believe everything they're told by their teachers, friends, and parents, and read in Wikipedia, Britannica, and school textbooks.

Fortunately, I think a backlash against overbearing schools and helicopter parenting is just beginning, and it's about time. Moral panics only last for so long.

Five years later, John McCain attempts to rewrite history on his "mission accomplished" statement

I'm not surprised that it took the peace Senator five whole years to do this.

In 2003, during a Fox News interview...
CAVUTO: ... Senator -- after a conflict means after the conflict, and many argue the conflict isn't over.

MCCAIN: Well, then why was there a banner that said 'mission accomplished' on the aircraft carrier? ... the conflict -- the major conflict is over, the regime change has been accomplished..."

In 2008, on the fifth anniversary of Bush's carrier appearance...
"I don't know if you could ever say, quote 'mission accomplished,' as much as you could say 'Americans are out of harm's way.'"

So McCain was referring to the regime change, not the occupation, in 2003, but he still said that the major conflict is over, so at best he had poor judgment and at worst he sold out his short-lived life as a maverick to become a Bush hack so that he could get the nomination. In late 2007, he hit the Bush administration for deceiving the public about how easy the war would be, saying that "People were lead to believe that this would be a walk in the park...". McCain shouldn't be able to spin his "mission accomplished" statement as referring only to the ousting Saddam, and argue that he's been a pro-war maverick who's critical of the Bush Administration's handling of the war, since in 2003 he also said that "the end is very much in sight." Us Democrats can nail him for that.

In fact, Barack Obama nailed him for those words today, saying "Five years after George Bush declared 'mission accomplished' and John McCain told the American people that 'the end is very much in sight' in Iraq, we have lost thousands of lives, spent half a trillion dollars, and we're no safer."


The infamous words:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSIrSNf0m7Q
Another time in 2003, McCain said "This is a mission accomplished."

The retraction:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24418639/

Obama winning Southern states

I just made a post about Georgia, but Obama could win South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Mississippi too:

When 25% of a state's electorate is blacks who vote for Obama, he must win 33.34% of everybody else to win that state:
McCain: 49.995%
Obama: 50.005
Blacks for Obama (25%): 0%, 100%
Everybody else (75%): 66.66%, 33.34%

When 30% of a state's electorate is blacks who vote for Obama, he must win 29% of everybody else to win that state:
McCain: 49.7%
Obama: 50.3%
Blacks for Obama (30%): 0%, 100%
Everybody else (70%): 71%, 29%

When 35% of a state's electorate is blacks who vote for Obama, he must win 24% of everybody else to win that state:
McCain: 49.4%
Obama: 50.6%
Blacks for Obama (35%): 0%, 100%
Everybody else (65%): 76%, 24%

When 40% of a state's electorate is blacks who vote for Obama, he must win 16.67% of everybody else to win that state:
McCain: 49.998%
Obama: 50.002%
Blacks for Obama (40%): 0%, 100%
Everybody else (60%): 83.33%, 16.67%

I bet he needs 30% for Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, 35% for South Carolina, and 40% for Mississippi. Here's the 2004 statistics for these states (from CNN):

Virginia:
Bush: 54%
Kerry: 46%
Whites (72%): 68%, 32%
Blacks (21%): 12%, 87%
Latino (3%), Asian (2%), Other (2%): n/a

North Carolina:
Bush: 56%
Kerry: 41%
Whites (71%): 73%, 27%
Blacks (26%): 14%, 85%
Other (3%): n/a

South Carolina:
Bush: 58%
Kerry: 41%
White (67%): 78%, 22%
Black (30%): 15%, 85%
Other: 4%

Georgia:
Bush: 58%
Kerry: 41%
Whites (70%): 76%, 23%
Blacks (25%): 12%, 88%
Latinos (4%): 56%, 43%
Other (2%): n/a

Mississippi:
Bush: 60%
Kerry: 40%
Whites (65%): 85%, 14%
Blacks (34%): 10%, 90%
Other (1%): n/a

Obama can win Georgia in November

Blacks have won statewide office before, like Thurbert Baker and Michael Thurmond (of no relation to Strom Thurmond ;) ).

I figure that if blacks who vote for Obama are 35% of the electorate then we have a pretty good shot at Georgia.

In 2000, 71% of Georgian whites voted for Bush, and 76% did in 2004. Whites were 70% of the electorate in 2004. Blacks, including blacks who voted for Bush, were 25% of the electorate. Non-black minorities, including Hispanics, were 5%.

So, if 35% of the entire 2008 electorate is blacks who vote for Obama then we only need 25% of the rest of the electorate, which includes all white voters, all non-white and non-black voters, and blacks who vote for McCain, to vote for Obama and we win Georgia with 51.25% of the popular vote.

If blacks who vote for Obama are 30% of the electorate, then we need 29% of the rest of the electorate and we win Georgia with 50.3% of the popular vote.

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/GA/P/00/epolls.0.html

Anti-marijuana propoganda

http://www.abovetheinfluence.com/stoners/#

If marijuana actually posed a significant harm to people then the government wouldn't have to make propaganda to justify keeping it illegal.

My answers to the site's quiz:

"Approximately one in ten fatal car accident victims test positive for which drug?"

Obviously, marijuana since it wouldn't surprise me if one in ten people use it. Marijuana stays in your system for a long time, so you could have smoked weeks ago and not be high nor impaired whatsoever and you'll test positive for marijuana. If it significantly impairs driving then ban driving under the influence of marijuana, but don't continue prohibition. By the website's logic, we should reinstate alcohol prohibition because a third of car accident victims are under the influence of alcohol. This is not a strawman or a false dichotomy because both drugs don't usually harm non-users, but both probably impair driving (alcohol definitely does). You even could argue that alcohol hurts non-users in non-driving situations more than marijuana does, since alcohol makes some people aggressive, and others susceptible to sexual assault.

"Which has more cancer-causing chemicals? Marijuana smoke or cigarette smoke?"

I'm not surprised that marijuana smoke does, but it's irrelevant since cigarette smokers inhale more smoke than pot smokers. And even if marijuana's incredibly harmful, you shouldn't go to prison for hurting yourself. Of course, there's second-hand marijuana smoke. If it's harmful enough to non-users then perhaps there should be some legal penalty for smoking marijuana, or at least for smoking it around others without their consent, but there's no evidence to support that. Yes, there are more cancer-causing chemicals in marijuana smoke than cigarette smoke, but there's no evidence to suggest that inhaling second-hand marijuana smoke as much as second-hand inhalers inhale (a lot of inhales ;) ) makes people significantly more likely to get cancer.

"Does marijuana smoke increase the user's chance of a heart attack?"

Probably complete bull. Or, possibly, there's an unrelated factor. I'm making this up out of thin air to illustrate a point, but maybe pot smokers are more likely to be vegetarians, and maybe they have weaker hearts. It's still possible that marijuana causes it, but again, you shouldn't go to prison for hurting yourself.

"Is marijuana addictive?"

Since funding a 1960's Stanford study that showed that marijuana has little adverse effects, the federal government has been reluctant to fund or run on their own accurate marijuana studies. Thus, it's no surprise that federally-funded scientists whose job depends on marijuana staying illegal, find that pot is very addictive. This ad hominem is justified because it shows that the federal government is not a credible source for marijuana information.

However, in my Social Welfare: Propaganda in the Helping Professions class, we learned that around 9% of pot smokers are addicted to it.

"What are the withdrawal symptoms from marijuana addiction?"

Since only 9% of users are addicted, it's likely that most users don't have serious withdrawal symptoms when they quit using marijuana. Plus, the site again references no credible study supporting their claim.

By November, America will know that McCain is no maverick

McCain can talk about being the candidate of change all he wants, but whether the issue is the war, tax cuts for millionaires, or privatizing Social Security, John McCain has been in lockstep with the Bush Administration.

Here's what an Obama-McCain debate might look like:

"No matter what the costs, no matter what the consequences, you seem determined to carry out a third Bush term.

'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice -- and you can't get fooled again.'

And we're not falling for it again, John McCain. Not this time.""

McCain would rebut:

"But I gave a speech about how we don't need anymore cowboy diplomacy."

To which Obama would respond:

"Some words speak loudly, but John McCain your actions over the past five years have spoken louder than your words over the past five months. You only gave us words on diplomacy, yet you and George Bush continue your failed policies in Iraq and the economy."

McCain would respond with:

"You little jerk."

and storm off the stage.

States consider releasing prisoners early

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080403/ap_on_re_us/prisoners_early_release

Artificial punishments for drug offenses, like imprisonment and requiring drug felons to state their crimes on job applications, are usually more harmful to the community and the user than using the drug is. With the strength of prison guard unions and politicians unwilling to end the war on crime, drugs are unlikely to be decriminalized in the near future, costing states billions of dollars every year.

Luckily, some states are considering releasing some prisoners early to deal with budget deficits. Some state plans, however, apply even to violent offenders: Murderers, rapists, etc. Though many are falsely convicted, at least they were convicted for crimes that seriously harm other people.

Thus, releasing all drug users is a better solution since most (excluding PCP users, etc.) don't harm others by using drugs. They shouldn't be released at the same time to avoid a sudden, large influx of unemployed convicts (since they'll flood the job market, many won't find jobs and can't receive federal welfare because of drug convictions, so many will end up in prison again). Also, not requiring drug felons to state their convictions on job applications will make it easier for them to get hired when they're out of prison because they won't have to resort to stealing to live or, in some cases, pay for their drug habits.

Prison budget woes

Over one in a hundred Americans are in state and federal prison. In California, 31% are in prison for drug-related crimes. My state will likely choose to cut education spending by 10%, yet is not considering decriminalizing drug use because the Republicans have to be "tough on crime" and the Democrats are backed by the prison guard union (to his credit, Arnold has threatened to pardon some nonviolent offenders with less than 20 months left in their sentences and suggested cutting the prison budget by $250 million). Also, we constantly hear complaints about prisoners getting cable TV, three meals a day, etc. from the same people who insist on incarcerating drug users. Even if they really do get cable, our prison-industrial complex's inefficiencies cost much more than cable TV subscriptions.

Much of the money gets wasted on bureaucracy; in fact, overall the prisoners get very little. According to a friend's female family member who went to prison, they use a two cups (480 ml) of detergent per 100 lbs. of clothes and inadequately supply menstrual fluid protection products. Though I bet the feminine hygiene and laundry detergent lobbies are much weaker than the cable television lobby, a more likely reason that we spend too money per prisoner is that we really don't spend much on the prisoners themselves but instead spend too much money on unneeded bureaucracy, corrupt contracts, and overly unionized prison employees.

Ironically, one thing we need is more prison guards per prisoner, or at least a better system of running prisons so that pecky, violent hierarchies don't form. We can pay for it by ending the war on crime and breaking the prison lobby, including weakening the prison employee union. Then we'd have more money for balancing the budget, tax cuts, and education.

However, the prison budget's unlikely to shrink with state Republicans refusing to raise taxes or end the wars on drugs and crime for social reasons, and state Democrats refusing to end the wars on drugs and crime because they're backed by the prison guard union.

Obligatory "yay I made a blog" post

Well, I've always liked analyzing politics, debating politics, and talking about politics, and I've recently begun participating in politics. I'm soon going to a campaign kick-off for a local student government candidate so I won't make a lengthy post, so I guess I'll post a few things about myself and political views:

*I'm 19 years old, and go to UC Berkeley.
*I'm a registered Democrat.
*I voted for Barack Obama for President.
*I strongly support lowering the voting age to 16. Even though young people are less likely to be mature enough to vote than older people, it isn't fair to not let people who are old enough to pay taxes decide how those tax dollars are spent. So, to me the voting age is a fairness issue that has nothing to do with maturity.
*I strongly support lowering the drinking age to 18 or possibly lower; it must be federally lowered so that people from states with higher ages don't drive into more liberal states and get killed in a drunk driving accident on the way back. We can do this by changing the drinking age in the National Legal Minimum Drinking Age Act from 21 to 18 (or whatever age we decide on), and further amending the NLMDAA so that states cannot go above the drinking age; right now, theoretically a state could raise its drinking age and it wouldn't be deprived of federal highway funds.
*I know that not everybody of college age goes to college, and think that we often forget the people who don't.
*I opposed the Iraq War and think we should begin to leave as soon as possible. The troop surge slightly reduced violence but it is not working, and our continued presence merely delays, but does not avert, a temporary escalation in the civil war and thus an eventual stable Iraq (or multiple stable Iraqi states).
*I oppose the death penalty in practice since I think that executing one falsely convicted person is one person too many, though morally I support executing murderers, rapists, and child molesters.
*I don't support punishing most drug users in any way, shape, or form, including "drug courts" that give incredibly light sentences but still annoy the drug user.
*I support universal healthcare.
*I think Social Security should be abolished if we can figure out a way to not screw over everybody who's already paid into it.
*I don't think the government should issue marriage licenses, but if it does then it should issue them to homosexual couples as well.
*I strongly support anti-discrimination laws.
*I oppose affirmative action but don't think it's accurate to call it "reverse racism."
*I'm a liberal, and like most people my age, I don't think it's a dirty word.