The random political thoughts thread (Part Deux)

[innerSpaceman]

And yet, popular or not - - frankly, I'm glad to see the Legislature proceed with a compromise that pleases no-one. I think it's the essense of represenative government - i.e., no winner takes all, but a compromise that addresses concerns of either side, but - of necessity - none addressed fully.


Nothing's perfect. But I prefer flawed action to no action, compromise to gridlock.

[Alex]

Does it hold true that any compromise is inherently better than inaction?

To me it doesn't. For even if the compromise itself it not inherently bad it will leach momentum away from efforts to achieve the ideal. "Let's just get this bit done and then we'll work on the rest" has a very bad habit of morphing into "well, we did that bit, so lets just move on."

[scaeagles]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

And yet, popular or not - - frankly, I'm glad to see the Legislature proceed with a compromise that pleases no-one. I think it's the essense of represenative government - i.e., no winner takes all, but a compromise that addresses concerns of either side, but - of necessity - none addressed fully.

Isn't this the best way of assuring that nothing works well?

I'm a too many cooks spoil the broth kind of guy.

[sleepyjeff]

Bill Richardson is running and Newt is thinking about it

[scaeagles]

To change the subject a bit, here's another reason I am hating all politicians at the moment....

House votes to sue OPEC

What the hell? These people have no concept. What gets me is the vote tally.

We can't drill for our own oil. We can't increase our refinery capacity. But by golly, we can sue OPEC for cutting their production. Doing this not only accomplishes nothing, but it will most likely have the opposite effect with China and India importing more and more oil to feed their growing economies.

At least those tough legislators can tell their constitutents they stood up to OPEC for lower gas prices. A$$holes.

[Alex]

Interesting, since we're the primary controllers of the oil production in one of the OPEC member countries (Iraq). (Just for the record, I know that Iraq oil is excluded from the OPEC production quotas and therefore has nothing to do with the effects of OPEC manipulating production.)

I'm not clear where exactly we'd be suing them? In American courts? And then seizing assets?

[scaeagles]

This would lead me to believe that it will be in American courts (should it ever happen) -

His measure would change antitrust laws so that the Justice Department can sue OPEC member countries for price-fixing, and would remove the immunity given a sovereign state against such lawsuits.

If it is going to change our antitrust laws, that must mean it would apply to our courts, correct?

[Gemini Cricket]

On a winter day when bomb blasts at an Iraqi university killed dozens and the United Nations estimated that 34,000 civilians in Iraq had died in 2006, MSNBC spent nearly nine minutes on the stories during the 1 p.m. hour. A CNN correspondent in Iraq did a three-minute report about the bombings. Neither story merited a mention on Fox News Channel that hour.
That wasn't unusual. Fox spent half as much time covering the Iraq war than MSNBC during the first three months of the year, and considerably less than CNN, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Source
Interesting article about our media.

[Not Afraid]

In comparison, how much time was spent on Paris Hilton?

[Gemini Cricket]

Originally Posted by Not Afraid

In comparison, how much time was spent on Paris Hilton?

Exactly.
The shuttle launch managed to bump Paris off the CNN.com top story for about 5 minutes and then she was back up again.
Sad.