Did someone die or something?

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Michael

First, I found out about bin Laden’s death via Facebook way before I saw a news article. Second,

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President Obama mocks Trump

Posted on May 1, 2011 by Michael

Good:

President Barack Obama told jokes at the expense of real estate mogul Donald Trump Saturday night, mocking his possible presidential ambitions in remarks at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

With Trump in the hotel ballroom audience of celebrities, politicians and journalists, Obama zeroed in on talk fueled by Trump that the president was not U.S.-born…

“Donald Trump is here tonight. And I know that he’s taken some flak lately. But no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than ‘The Donald,'” Obama said, using Trump’s nickname.

“And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter. Like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?” Obama added, drawing laughs and applause.

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Gov. Perry says President Obama is ignoring Texas

Posted on April 29, 2011 by Michael

The governor of Texas is complaining that President Obama is paying more attention to Alabama than Texas:

“You have to ask, ‘Why are you taking care of Alabama and other states?’ I know our letter didn’t get lost in the mail,” Perry, a Republican and frequent critic of the federal government, said after addressing a Texas emergency management conference.

President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency for Alabama, where storms — including a tornado that ravaged Tuscaloosa on Wednesday — killed nearly 200 people this week.

Texas actually does get significant federal help in its fire fighting efforts, but I digress. The more interesting question here is, why is Perry only criticizing Obama for ignoring Texas? Shouldn’t he be criticizing God for not doing anything?

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The irony of Limbaugh

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Michael

It only took about 3 minutes today before I heard Rush Limbaugh say something so ironic it was stupid. He was talking about President Obama’s response to Mubarak and in the course of making stuff up he said that Obama wants Mubarak to fail. Then he called Obama “the worst person in the world” for that (among other things, including being black, but I digress). Wasn’t it Limbaugh who said he hopes this president fails?

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Santorum loses chance at presidency

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Michael

Ex-Senator Rick Santorum recently said as a black man, President Obama ought to be more sensitive to the defining of a fetus as a non-person.

“The question is — and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer: Is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no,” Santorum says in the interview, which was first picked up by CBN’s David Brody. “Well if that person, human life is not a person, then, I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, ‘We are going to decide who are people and who are not people.'”

There are a number of things wrong with that statement. First, on what basis is Santorum claiming President Obama didn’t want to answer that question? He went to the 2008 televised interview with Rick Warren. That tells me he was more than willing to answer that sort of question. Second, black people are living, breathing, conscious, aware, have advanced nervous systems, etc, etc. They are not comparable to fetuses.

But then the article had to go and give this quote from Obama in 2008.

Santorum was referring to Obama’s comments at a 2008 forum with Pastor Rick Warren in which he said the question of whether a baby should have human rights was “above my pay grade.” Obama later said his remark was too flip, but “I don’t presume to be able to answer these kinds of theological questions.”

It isn’t a theological question. Theology has nothing to logically say about abortion. Of course, that doesn’t stop religious leaders and adherents from doing so, but that doesn’t mean they have any real basis.

But was I to be left disappointed with this article? Was I to be left with a dumb quote from a very intelligent man? Fear not:

“Just about everything else in the world he’s willing to do – have the government do – but he can’t answer that basic question which is not a debatable issue at all,” Santorum told Jeffrey. “I don’t think you’ll find a biologist in the world who will say that is not a human life.”

Two things. One, really? What constitutes life is not debatable? Come on. Santorum should be required to shut the fuck up at this point for that one. Two, really, really? No biologist is going to say a fetus is not a person? Has Santorum ever talked to any biologists? Has he ever looked at a mass of cells? I’ve never looked at a human embryo in person, but I’m confident that it isn’t any more a human being than any of those zebrafish embryos I decapitated dechorionated were living zebrafish. I’ll let you know if I change my mind at any point in my career. Just don’t count on it.

Oh, and the post title? It’s probably wrong. If anything, I see this as increasing Santorum’s odds with the Republican anti-science base.

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President Obama praises Michael Vick

Posted on December 27, 2010 by Michael

And I love it.

NBC’s Peter King reports that Barack Obama called Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie earlier this week to congratulate him for giving Vick a second chance after his release from prison. According to King, the president said that released prisoners rarely receive a level playing field and that Vick’s story could begin to change that.

The reason I like this so much isn’t that I’m a big fan of Michael Vick as a player – though I am – and it isn’t that I’m a big fan of the Eagles – I’m definitely not; every team that has ever been anywhere near Pennsylvania, and especially those in Philly, can go to hell. It’s that people are irrationally harsh towards released convicts. We have this whole system set up where we say, “Okay, you did these wrong things, so we need to fix the situation”, and the way we fix things is to come up with sentences of certain periods. If anyone thought for a damn minute about what we’re doing, they would realize that by agreeing to the very idea of releasing people after certain periods of time, we’re saying, “Okay, we can call the situation fixed after X days/weeks/months/years.” We may not considere it entirely fixed (hence probation), but we are, as an obvious matter of fact, considering the bulk of the situation resolved. But emotion gets in the way.

From sports shows to articles to conversations, I have heard people say again and again that Vick ought to be banned from ever playing in the NFL again. All that does is ignore everything we’re saying as a society about the very idea of prison sentences that result in release. He has served his time. Even though prison should not be about punishment (because that’s plainly petty), the pro-revenge/punishment crowd ought to be satisfied by the fact that Vick has completed his sentence. More so, for reasonable people (who aren’t usually American), the fact that Vick’s time in prison has made it virtually certain he will never again abuse animals ought to be satisfying. In this case, we can say he went to a correction facility – and we’ll be honest when we say it.

So I am very happy to read the President’s words on Vick. If we’re just out to make the lives of people terrible because they did a terrible thing, we’re just hypocrites. And more importantly, we aren’t improving anything. I would think with such a large Christian population that we might do a little more turning of the cheek. (Unless people are just picking and choosing their morality from their religion…) I cannot say I am overly hopeful that Obama’s praise of Vick is going to radically change things for the better, but it is a step in the right direction.

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Just pass it

Posted on December 20, 2010 by Michael

The GOP is just awful.

President Barack Obama tried to sway reluctant Republican senators on Monday to back a new arms control treaty with Russia as GOP aversion to giving a politically damaged president another victory intruded on his national security agenda.

There it is; that’s all you need to know. The GOP is refusing to pass the sort of thing that always gets passed easily because they want to politically harm the president. This was never about New START or anything important; it’s the height of pettiness.

Kerry bemoaned the politics atypical for arms control treaties.

“When the leader comes to the floor and says that our national security is being driven by politics, we really need to step back for a moment and calm down and think for a moment about what is at stake,” the Massachusetts Democrat said. He later added: “I mean is there no shame ever with respect to the arguments that are made sometimes on the floor of the United States Senate.”

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