Rep. Dennis Kucinich brought up 35 articles of Impeachment against President Bush this week. The pretty much universal reaction, including from the DNC leadership was "What's the point". Kucinich aparently gets extremely cranky when the media stops portraying him as a lunatic and has to find new and more ridiculous ways to get his 15 minutes of fame.
E.D. Hill, who referred to a "fist pump" between Obama and His wife as a "terrorist fist jab" has lost her show because of it. Ms. Hill will continue to work for Fox News. When I first heard about the "terrorist fist jab" it made me laugh in shock about the ridiculousness of some pundits. However, after learning a bit more, I tend to believe Ms. Hill that she was just trying to set up the debate.
"A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently," said Hill in her show.
I guess it really depends on her intent. If she meant to imply that they were terrorists, then she got what she deserved. Based on the context, I think that she was trying to point out how ridiculous the over analysis and spin was. If this is the case, she could've used a different example.
Tony Rezko, who is now in prison on charges of "wire fraud, bribery, money laundering, and attempted extortion", is claiming that federal prosecutors were pressuring him to implicate Obama:
They are pressuring me to tell them the ‘wrong’ things that I supposedly know about Gov. Blagojevich and Sen. Obama,” Rezko wrote in an undated letter released by the court this week. “I have never been party to any wrongdoing that involved the governor or the senator. I will never fabricate lies about anyone else for selfish purposes. I will take what comes my way, but I will never hurt innocent people.”
I think everyone was expecting Obama's name to be drug through the mud during this trail and to many people's surprise and disappointment (or glee) it wasn't.
Finally, this morning Tim Russert died of a heart attack at age 58. Russert was the host of the show Meet the Press. He was known as one of the last people in the media willing to ask the tough questions. For more information than you ever needed to know about him, you can check out NBC's webpage, which has turned into a virtual shrine for the day. Type rest of the post here
It’s not news that with the pure quantity of information on the internet comes a fair amount of misinformation. Anyone who has been using e-mail for more than a few weeks or so has gotten messages about the threat of microwaving water in a ceramic cup, or about needles filled with AIDS tainted blood hiding inside seats at movie theaters. These kinds of urban legends have always existed, and the internet just makes it easier to spread them. Since 1995 Snopes.com has worked to debunk these myths, from pop-rocks to Coca-Cola . This being an election year, there’s been a barrage of these urban-legend-style e-mails flowing at a constant pace into my inbox about the various candidates. In the heat of the Jeremiah Wright controversy, there was an e-mail about Hillary Clinton’s pastor being a pedophile. I remember an e-mail about McCain not being a US Citizen, though I cannot find it now. I also remember about half a dozen different e-mails about Barrack Obama, in both Spanish and English, about him being a radical Muslim and probable terrorist. Of course, none of these stories are true. I’m not sure which pathology is worse: the one that leads to writing these fantastical stories or the one that results in believing them.
If it were just limited to chain mail in your inbox it wouldn’t be as bad as the fact that some “news” outlets have taken to repeating these claims. While Snopes.com already addresses the majority of these claims about our politicians already, the Obama campaign has decided to fight back. Their new (unfortunately named) website Fight the Smears was launched recently in an attempt to fight the most egregious of these attacks, with the first round taking on “Rumors” perpetuated by Rush Limbaugh and other republican pundits.
It is sad that there is so much misinformation out there, that the campaign had to create a page dedicated to fighting it. On the other hand it is encouraging that not only can the media and the people demand more accountability from politicians, but Politicians can now demand the same accountability from reporters and the people. In the end, while the internet does make it easier for cowards to send anonymous e-mails perpetuating lies, it also makes it easier for those seeking the truth to spread it. It injects internet culture with a needed dose of skepticism, even if it is mixed with a bit of spin. For those who wanna skip the spin, do what I do and just use Snopes.
"Five billion years from now the sun will run out of Hydrogen gas" according to The Future of Energy. While worrying about the fate of the Sun is a waste of energy, for as far back as I can remember people have been worrying about the supply of oil. Having been born after the oil crisis in the late 70's, I have not experienced a world in which there wasn't widespread concern about our energy future. While the government spends billions of dollars on "energy alternatives", I would like to focus on what I believe will be the true solution to our energy woes: people out to make a buck.
I have more faith in entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to solve the energy crisis than I do in government subsidies. Government funded solutions like Ethanol are a failure and a waste of money. The reason they exist is more to do with politics and special interest lobbying than it is with finding realistic solutions for the end consumer.
In the field of power plants Ocean Power Technologies. The company, which netted over $90 Million in its IPO last year, develops buoys that use the mechanical energy of ocean waves to produce electricity. The company expects to be able to compete with traditional power plants within 10 years.
In automotive technology, I recently heard about Zero Pollution Motors, and their new "Air Car". Set for production by 2010, the Air Car's motor was designed by Guy Negre, who used to design engines for Formula 1 cars. Currently, the company claims that the fuel efficiency is about 105 Miles per gallon with an 8 gallon tank. Instead of using the gasoline to power the car, it is used to power a compressor that refills the air tanks when going at speeds above 35mph. For more in cars you can check out the X-prize competition, which is offering $10 Million prize for a car competition for real-cars (not concept cars) that offer more than 100mpg.
While this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of profitable solutions to our energy problems, it shows some of the ingenuity and creativity of the market. These and probably thousands of other companies are concerned not only with saving the environment, but also with making a profit. While I can't predict which, if any, of the new technologies will end up displacing the current standards, I can pretty much guarantee that the innovation that leads to it will come from the private sector, not the public one.
In a year when presidential politics are getting groundbreaking achievements in terms of race, sex, and even age, it's laughable to see how some people cling to xenophobia and racism as a campaign tactic. I'm referring to Buddy Witherspoon, a Republican running in the South Carolina primary against incumbent US Senator Lindsey Graham who has Sen. McCain's endorsement. I know little of the Buddy Whitherspoon's politics, but his latest campaign ad gave me a hint: (video after the jump)
It seems that Buddy has uncovered the biggest skeleton in Sen. Graham's closet: people who speak Spanish like him. The absolute dearth of information in what I would guess is intended to be an attack ad is laughable. This ad isn't likely to do much to help Buddy win the election, at least I hope not,However, this ad does show exactly the kind of strategy you really can't afford to use in the "information age".
I assume that the point of the ad was to allude that Sen. Graham isn't tough enough on immigration. What the ad actually shows is that Hispanic people who like Sen. Graham, implying that these people, because of the fact that they're speaking Spanish, are illegal immigrants. As a native born American of Mexican descent, and a native speaker of both Spanish and English, I can't help but feel that this guy is spitting in my face. That hardly seems like a sound policy for a Republican party who, as the Pew Hispanic Center claims, owed the 2004 election of President Bush to Hispanic-American voters.
The saving grace for the Republicans in this state, as far as Hispanics go, is Sen Lindsey Graham himself. When I went to the official site of the Buddy Witherspoon campaign, I was able to find this post titled "Lindsey Graham wants the "bigots" to shut up. Again Buddy's campaign seems to hit way off the mark. Instead of making Sen. Graham look as if he's a nut in favor of illegal immigration, he looks like a surprisingly reasonable man. The video of his speech is below:
Yesterday I went to Bluesfest in Grant park, and one of the announcers said something that bothered me. During his introduction to B.B. King he said that the City of Chicago had been "Giving us Bluesfest for over 30 years", which brought loud applause from the audience. I like the Blues Festival, and the other large events that are held in Chicago's Grant Park, but the idea that it's a "free gift" from the government is one that bothers me.
According to Melodytrip.com the Chicago Blues Festival is "the largest free-admission blues festival in the world". While the admission to the event is free, the cost of putting it on certainly isn't. From what I can gather from the City of Chicago site, this and other events held around the City are organized by the City of Chicago Mayor's Office of Special events. According to the 2008 Preliminary budget for the City of Chicago (page 23), this office of the Mayor is receiving $6 Million dollars this year. While the cost of the events subsidized by corporate sponsors, the budget of the office organizing the events is paid for by tax-payers. Anything that you have to pay for, is hardly a free gift.
As the government grows in size and scope I keep hearing about more things that are "free" services from the Government. It bothers me that so many people just accept this at face value: Free parks, free festivals, free schools, free health care. There's no such thing as a free lunch, and this is especially true when referring to the government. The source of the governments revenue is always taxes and fines, which are paid for by citizens. Therefore, when anything the government does is called "free" what they really mean is "funded by taxes". If we accept this language of "Free" as being appropriate, we're accepting the idea that the Government is a benevolent donor that "gives" us things, and that we should be thankful for these gifts. The truth is that any time the government "gives" something, it first had to take from someone. In the case of the Mayor's Office of Special Events, the bill is footed by the Hotel Operator's Occupation Tax:
The State of Illinois Hotel Operators' Occupation Tax is imposed on receipts from the occupation of renting, leasing, or letting rooms to individuals occupying such accommodations for less than 30 consecutive days.
So rather than thanking the government for its generous donation, we should be thanking the tax-payers that were forced to pay an additional 6% on their hotel bill for these events.
Welcome to Ricardo J. Gonzalez for a Better America, a blog focused on analysis and criticism of politics and current events. There is also a Spanish version at: rickyenespanol.blogspot.com
Ricky is a recent graduate of Political Science in Chicago IL. With a passion for Classic Liberal ideals he seeks to bring light to ideas of personal and economic freedom through analysis of the days news.
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Friday, June 13, 2008
