August 25th, 2008 -- Posted in American Politics |
Well today has flown by for some reason and I am pretty sure I didn’t get to do everything I should have done, anyway I’m going to move down stairs to watch the convention as soon as I make this post. First of all I wanted to apologize to The Griper for not completely replying to all of his comments today even though he spends some time on our discussions on various political issues, if some of you have not stopped by his blog, I encourage you to do so because you will find some truly though provoking writing.
Today, I thought I would try something new; I am going to “twitter” the convention basically meaning I will update my Twitter account with a 140 character sentence every 5 minutes. This is obviously nothing compared to actually being at the convention but its close enough for those people who live outside of America like myself. You can follow these updates on the right hand sidebar or alternatively open this page and refresh it every now and then while you are browsing.
I stumbled upon a few good YouTube video’s today but the most thought provoking of them was those created by people expressing why they are Democrats. Have you ever thought about it to those of my liberal/progressive friends and to those conservatives, why are you not a Democrat? One reason for myself is that I understand the Democratic party to be more forward looking in the sense that they readily embrace the future of America while not clinging to the past as some Republicans like to do:
July 30th, 2008 -- Posted in American Politics |
I have finally replied to all the recent comments and it just hit 1am here in Ireland so I am going to try to keep this short and sweet tonight despite my tendency to ramble. I promised I would steal this video from by buddy Jay over at the Progressive Politics Examiner and so I have:
Immediately when I saw this video, I really thought the McCain camp had released a video to try and compete with the Obama “Yes We Can” video which has been viewed 8 million times on YouTube. However, I was pleased to see it is a parody of Senator McCain hence I can continue to smile. In case you have forgotten the Obama video in question, here it is:
July 15th, 2008 -- Posted in American Politics |
Well in a previous post I made the statement that Senator McCain has made more flip-flops than Senator Obama but that is a given, considering his greater length of time in the political arena. Despite this length of time, flip-flops are only excusable if they express a sincere change in position based on the facts, a fellow blogger at the Progressive Politics Examiner mentioned that it would be nice to have a leader who changed his opinion based on the facts. I am biased towards Senator Obama hence I give him the benefit of the doubt most of the time but for the sake of this post, we will not excuse any flip-flops.
During my research, I discovered that Senator McCain has made a total of 61 flip-flops based on the data compiled by alternet.org. Alternet.org is a decidedly liberal media platform hence we can assume that their count is pessimistic. Senator Obama on the other hand has made anywhere from 17 - 33 flip-flops depending on which blog you are reading. Let’s take the most pessimistic scenario in both cases which leave’s Senator McCain with the greatest number of flip-flops. My two favorites from both candidates are:
13. McCain was against divestment from South Africa before he was for it.
I was born in South Africa and I know quite well what the Government did to the people there, the fact that Senator McCain opposed divestment at any stage is unfathomable.
Senator Obama supported the FISA bill despite calls from the majority of liberals to Vote NO.
I was dissapointed like most liberals given our feelings about the FISA bill, however I do understand the Senator’s position given he is running for President and a “No” vote would have fueled the fires of “weak on national security” until the general election. These fires would have given the Republican party a focused line of attack which they are unable to attain thus far.
Given the number of flip-flops by both candidates, do they really matter at this point? I am not so sure but that depends on what the media has in plan for both these candidates before the election. I found this great McCain video on politifact.org, whoever created it made one hell of a video with some cool background music:
July 13th, 2008 -- Posted in American Politics |
Glenn Beck the conservative radio talk show host who currently works for CNN recently wrote on his personal blog about why he will not vote for Senator Obama. In that post he lists some values that he believes defines conservatism, reading through some of those values I thought I might provide the opposite view or the values that some liberals like myself believe in:
A conservative believes that our inalienable rights do not include housing, healthcare or Hummers.
A liberal believes that every person should have a house to live in, healthcare regardless of our “inalienable” rights, policies must reflect the times we live in not the ones from the past. (Hummers are great but give me a BMW any day)
A conservative believes that our inalienable rights DO include the pursuit of happiness. That means it is guaranteed to no one.
A liberal believes that happiness is not guaranteed but it is the duty of every person and organization on this earth to ensure that every human on this planet is happy.
A conservative believes that those who pursue happiness and find it have a right to not be penalized for that success
A liberal believes that those who find happiness must give back to society in order so that other people in disadvantaged situations can attain that happiness.
A conservative believes that real compassion can’t be found in any government program
A liberal believes that the government is there to help those people whom society has forgotten or choose to conveniently ignore and social programs help people get back on their feet.
A conservative believes that people go to the movies to be entertained and to church to be preached to, not the other way around.
A liberal believes that the movie industry is the perfect medium to educate people hence we have the word “documentary.”
A conservative believes that a child’s education is the responsibility of the parents, not the government
A liberal believes that every child regardless of financial background has the right to a college education even if the government has to provide it.
A conservative believes that every human being has a right to life, from conception to death.
A liberal believes that a woman has the right to make any decisions regarding her own body. Furthermore the chance that someone might die that was wrongly convicted in the judicial system rules out the death penalty as a means for judicial punishment.
A conservative believes in the smallest government you can get without anarchy. We know our history: The larger a government gets, the harder it will fall
A liberal believes that a large government is not necessarily bad, society is increasingly complex and varied hence we need the same in our government.
These are not all of Mr. Beck’s views but I took the ones that I disagree with and stated my own opinions. Some liberals may not disagree with these views or the opinions expressed herein but please feel free to leave relevant comments and I might change the wording in this post. The one liberal view that is most important to me that Mr. Beck did not mention in his conservative ideology list is: A liberal believes in the racial, ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity of any nation, this diversity should be encouraged rather than demonized.
Other issues I did not mention because Mr. Beck did not include them in his list are the creationism/evolution debate, global warming and the interpretation of the constitution. As a liberal I believe that evolution belongs in the classroom and creationism in the church, global warming is already here and that the constitution should be interpreted in the context of the fabric of society as it exists today.
I hate just writing text because who wants to read a long paragraph on a Sunday night/afternoon, so I tried to find a conservative cartoon with Google Images. The problem was that with any combination of the term “liberal” or “conservative”, every single cartoon I found was anti-liberal within the first few pages. At the end of the day, I decided to go with a bastion of liberalism also known as The Simpsons:
June 19th, 2008 -- Posted in American Politics |
The political debate has intensified in recent days with both Candidates attacking each other on issues ranging from the economy to the environment. Who is right? Who is wrong? I am not sure and I don’t think anyone can make that decision unless he or she understands the ‘absolute truth’. I think I am becoming a tad bit too philosophical this early in the morning but I wanted to highlight another interesting political site I found. The site is CreateDebate.com where people can sign up and debate with the other users on the site about various issues. Each side receives a specific number of points so you can see who is winning the debate at any one point. It is a great site when comparing it to other similarly slanted sites like Helium.com which has a wider range of topics but no scoring system to see who is winning:
