ED-P: Reflecting on 2009

As the year 2009 draws to a close,
There is a question that one must pose.
The political scene has been one hell of a show,
But here’s what the world really wants to know:
What did the ED-P regulars do this year?
That is what they really must hear.

Anarcho’s still the P.M. and the guy in charge,
Comrade Mann became a criminal at large,
(But not anymore)!
Dermie’s still China’s whore,
While pockybot’s still ED-P’s Conspiracy King, no surprise there!
METALFumasu’s now in charge of the Death Star,
But that’s not the strangest thing in the forum by far.
Mann’s President of Apocalypistan, a country of zombies,
We’re not exactly sure if they wear Abercrombie.

BlueCollarJoe’s still the oldest reg here,
In other news, political geek turned 17 this year.
Omnileech tried to correct facts on every page,
And mitoguard's still the lurking political sage.
Curse brought us the latest on Australia’s proposed Great Firewall,
Conroy’s still pushing it forward, damn it all!
Meanwhile Amora and Mokie went at it like cats and dogs,
And some of the Regs made a group blog!

As the collective ED-P flips 2009 and the rest of "Big Zero" the bird,
From the depths of the subforum a newb’s tiny voice can be heard.
It asks: “What sort of political year will 2010 be?”
The Zen Master say, “We’ll see.”


© METALFumasu aka The-Metal-Maniac

Honor a Veteran! Today's Veterans Day in the US!

Today in 1918, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, an armistice was signed that officially ended World War I. President Woodrow Wilson declared the first Armistice Day the following year.

In May of 1938 Armistice Day was declared by Congress (and FDR) as a legal holiday designated as: "a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as 'Armistice Day'." In 1954 President Eisenhower signed into law a bill that changed 'Armistice Day' in the US to "Veterans Day", and it has been known in the US as Veterans Day ever since.

[Shamelessly hijacked and summarized from Wikipedia]

Today (unless your Australian, you've got to wait until April 25th for Anzac Day) we honor and give thanks to the veterans of our military for their service in protecting our country from danger. And we also honor those who gave their lives to defend our homes from those who threaten our glorious homeland.

May there come a time when war is a thing of the past and our governments find peaceful solutions to the problems of the world. But until that day comes, the men and women of our armed forces will continue to defend this beautiful country from harm.

Will there ever be world peace?

The Zen Master says, "It's an idealistic goal...But we'll see."

All this talk about Health care reform...

...will amount to nothing if the Democratic members in power (Nancy Pelosi, this means you) don't bring HR 3200 to a vote.

It's interesting though. This was brought to my attention by TheTick900, a partisan for the Democratic party on the ED-P who apparently loves to taunt the conservative reg known as Amora about the health care debate.

Case in point, the OP post by TheTick:

According to CNN, HR 3200's support has now jumped double digits and now people overwhelmingly support the bill:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Two out of three Americans
who watched President Barack Obama's health care reform speech Wednesday night favor his health care plans — a 14-point gain among speech-watchers, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation national poll of people who tuned into Obama's address Wednesday night to a joint session of Congress.
Sixty-seven percent of people questioned in the survey say the
support Obama's health care reform proposals that the president outlined in his address, with 29 percent opposed. Those figures are almost identical to a poll conducted immediately after Bill Clinton's health care speech before Congress in September, 1993.

Take that, Amora Bun Buns.

Amora bashin' aside, here's my thoughts on the poll results.

Sixty-seven percent of people questioned in the survey say the support
Obama's health care reform proposals that the president outlined in his address,
with 29 percent opposed. Those figures are almost identical to a
poll conducted immediately after Bill Clinton's health care speech before Congress in September, 1993.

Bolded and italicized for emphasis.

Doesn't TheTick realize that it is never wise to count one's chickens before they hatch?

Remember what happened after Clinton's health care speech in '93? Health care didn't pass.

CNN Polling Director Keating Holland agrees with me on that point:

"But the real question is whether those conversions will last. Bill Clinton
got similar numbers after his 1993 address to Congress, but five months later a
majority of the country no longer supported his plan."

Moving on...

Let's get to the main point of this post. All this talk about health care has been going on since the middle of the summer. Why hasn't there been a vote on the damn health care reform bill yet? Is it because the Democratic party wants to get the Republican party on board so they can blame the "Evil, Fearmongering Republicans" if it tanks after passing,or so they can look 'bipartisan' when it does pass?

The Democratic Party has a clear majority in both houses of Congress but yet they still seem to lack the spine and balls to put this bill to a vote. Of course all the barking by the Blue Dog Democrats hasn't helped the courage of the collective Democratic mind. And with the Blue Dogs and the Far Left bickering over that public option, the Democratic Party's doing its old implosion routine again, and all the while its getting sucker-punched by the so-called 'rich white' Republican Party. (And seriously guys on the left, stop generalizing the Republicans. I may be an independent but generalizing your opponent starts getting annoying after the hundredth time).

Will HR 3200 come to a vote in the near future, if at all?

As the Zen Master says, "We'll see."

The Cop, the Prof, and the Pres.

So you've probably heard about the arrest of a certain Harvard professor in the town of Cambridge. That means you've probably heard about how Obama shot his own face off during the last thirty seconds of a 55 minute, primetime speech on what was supposed to about healthcare.

Events like this are quickly picked up by one of the regulars on Gaia Online's Political forum, given a cynical title for the discussion and create a new thread to discuss/troll. This thread had the witty title "Ooops! No teleprompter this time, Obama...", and was written by Semper Ducemus, one of the forum's few conservative regulars.

Anywho, another reg, GunsmithKitten, pointed out that Sgt. James Crowley (the "racist" cop) should have left Gates alone when the prof showed him his ID.

(Notice: the rest of this blog post follows along similar lines with the thread response)

Except that according to the police report Gates did not show his ID. (Gate's attorney disputes this claim.)

The report says Crowley had asked Gates for some identification and Gates
shouted that he would not give any information and called the sergeant a racist.
According to the report, Gates then yelled, "This is what happens to black
men in America." When Crowley tried to calm him down, Gates shouted, "You don't
know who you're messing with."

I'd like point out that Gates is the head of Harvard's African and African American Research. Given Mr. Gates' job he may have immediately jumped to the conculsion that Sgt. Crowley was being a racist cop, even though the officer was following procedure, according to the Cambridge police commissioner (who is black).


I'd also like to point out the little, but very significant fact, that Sgt. James Crowley teaches a course for cops on how to avoid singling out people based on race.

For five of the past six years, Crowley also has volunteered alongside a black
colleague in teaching 60 cadets per year about how to avoid targeting suspects
merely because of their race, and how to respond to an array of scenarios they
might encounter on the beat. Thomas Fleming, director of the Lowell Police
Academy, said Crowley was asked by former police Lowell Commissioner Ronny
Watson, who is black, to be an instructor.

Because of this fact I find it very hard to believe that Mr. Crowley is a racist.


In the end our new president looks like a complete fool on prime-time television, but the good news is that almost publicly apologized to Sgt. Crowley and even invited him and Gates over to the White House for a beer.

Will those 'two words' come back to bite Obama later?

As the Zen Master says, "We'll see."

In case you've been living under a rock...

China's on the another anti-protest crackdown. Again. This time it happened in the western region of Xinjiang.

There were at least 156 fatalities and over 800 casualties on Sunday, according to official reports.

This time the protesters are a group of oppressed Muslims called the Uighurs. They started protesting in response to a deadly brawl last month. The brawl happened someone posted rumors that six boys from Xinjiang had raped "two innocent girls". Apparently that sent people over the edge because it sparked a particularly nasty fight between Han Chinese and Uighurs at a factory. The fight killed two Uighurs and left 118 people injured. Police say this claim was false so the brawl was probably pointless.

China seems to have a problem with possible independence movements on the western edge of their massive country (Tibet, though powerful Tibetan figures such as the Dalai Lama are actually willing to accept a mostly autonomous region that is still a part of China).

But instead of sealing off the region from outside reporting, China is letting reporters inside the region. They're playing this off as ethnic tensions between two different groups: the Han and the Uighurs. It seems the Chinese have learned that hiding something from the rest of the world makes it look like you are, in fact, hiding something.

Completely unrelated note: Some singer named Michael Jackson got buried in a gold coffin this week and the American media covered the funeral like flies on a pile of dung.

What will happen next in the world?

As the Zen Master says, "We'll see."

Election Results in Iran Pt Deuce

It's June 15, 2009 and the protests in Iran over the election results are still going strong.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had previously closed the door to a possibility of disputing the election results, but now he's apparently changed his mind and is pushing for an election probe to examine the charges of alleged rigging.

Whoever said protests didn't work?

Meanwhile people in the city streets are in open confrontation, with police and people in plainclothes (armed with bludgeoning weapons) combing the streets for anti-Ahmadinejad protestors. It is certainly getting ugly over there.

What will this election probe find?

As the Zen Master says, "We'll see."

Election Results in Iran

Unless you've been under a rock for the past couple days, the Iranians just held a presidential election.

Ahmadinejad, the hard-liner incumbent pres who basks in the Ayatollah's support, VS. former Prime Minister Mirhossein Mousavi, the moderate candidate with the best chance of winning.

And...Ahmadinejad won.

Not that surprising.

But what is shocking is the fact that Ahmadinejad won by 62.6%! And this is after his old club, the Revolutionary Guards, said they would not tolerate a "velvet revolution"* by Mousavi's supporters.

Oh yeah. I smell an election fraud. And so do Mousavi's supporters. They have gone into "Fight the Power" mode big time. (And Anarcho, if you're reading this: ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWAH!)

Iran be very interesting to watch over the next week or so.

What will happen to the Islamic Republic of Iran since these protests are the largest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution?

As the Zen Master says, "We'll see."

*(term used for the non-violent overthrow of the Communist government in Czechoslovakia in 1989)

THE WAIT IS FINALLY OVER!

The California Supreme Court has finally come to its decision on the controversial Proposition 8.

*rips open letter*

Proposition 8 has been upheld.

Well that's one less thing the Zen Master has to watch.

You'll have to pardon my lack of shock on this development. I said on the ED-P more than once that it would be unlikely that the CSC would go against the will of the people. It's a blatant example of the Ad Populum logical fallacy, but when did the common American man ever vote logically on the issues?

On the plus side, all the gay couples who got married before Prop 8 was passed get to remain valid.

My personal stance on the whole gay marriage thing? Every pro-gay marriage argument saying that black civil rights movement/slavery = the struggle for gay marriage is a load of crap, in my opinion. I also don't think that there is any logical reason for gay marriage other than a bunch of tax benefits (maybe the couple has 'true love', but

That said, I am pro-all civil unions, meaning that I want civil unions for everyone and the word marriage removed from government entirely.

So the question is: What's the pro-gay marriage camp going to do now? The state that prides itself for being 'the most progressive' state has rejected gay marriage? Will they try and take their argument to the state courts (they tried - and failed in Washington awhile back)? Will they go the initative route (IMO that's the best route for them at the moment), or will they try to push legislation like in the majority of New England?

As the Zen Master says, "We'll see."

GOP (Finally!) rethinking strategy

Doomed. 

Obsolete.

Outdated. 

Marginalized. 

Extremist. 

Destroyed.

Ever since the Republicans lost big back in November, people have been saying that the GOP is done for. People politically-ignorant and savvy have started saying on that if (though many a Dem partisan has said when) the Republicans lose more seats in the 2010 legislative elections, the party will simply implode.

The Zen Master said, "We'll see" and waited.

That was November 5th.

The Republicans aren't going to lay down and die. Now the GOP is taking steps to reconnect with the American people and rebrand their image.

Their plan: the National Council for New America. 

This initiative sends party leaders across the country for town hall meetings on the issues like health care, the economy, energy and the GOP favorite,  national security. (Thankfully they didn't include gay rights and abortion. Maybe you can teach a dog new tricks...).

High-profile Republicans like John McCain, (former) Gov. Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and Gov. Bobby Jindal are members of this council.

Wait.......no Palin? (Thank the Lord!)

The Republicans look like they might be moving toward to the center...Interesting.I'm a little skeptical about this plan as a die-hard centrist, but if the GOP actually pull this off I will be impressed.

Will the GOP become a moderate political party and make a comeback in the 2010 elections?

As the Zen Master says, "We'll see."