News Today

Too angry for words right now, but the people who need to know already know why. Tread softly, my friends. It seems that these are dangerous waters.

Editors Note: Anyone who finds this post looking for the composer of the “Stop hey, what’s that sound, everybody look at what’s going down” - it’s Buffalo Springfield.

Did anybody catch the former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin’s farewell speech? That is if you could call it a speech even. The text in its full can be read here, but I’ll go ahead and quote my favorite part.

I say it is the best road trip in America soaring through nature’s finest show. Denali, the great one, soaring under the midnight sun. And then the extremes. In the winter time it’s the frozen road that is competing with the view of ice fogged frigid beauty, the cold though, doesn’t it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs?

And then in the summertime such extreme summertime about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter than just some months ago, than just some months from now, with fireweed blooming along the frost heaves and merciless rivers that are rushing and carving and reminding us that here, Mother Nature wins. It is as throughout all Alaska that big wild good life teeming along the road that is north to the future.

Umm, Sarah Palin, what the hell are you talking about? Are your brain and your mouth playing marco-polo again? Somebody go get Charlie Gibson…

I personally think Conan O’Brien and William Shatner got it right on The Tonight Show. It wasn’t a farewell speech, it was a poem!

So William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and frequent Fox News contributor made an appearance yesterday on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to talk about healthcare. You’ll be shocked when you hear what the “godfather of neoconservatism” had to say.

STEWART: So you believe in no public option, so even though that’s good enough for the military, not good enough for the people of America.

KRISTOL: One of the ways we make it up to the soldiers, since they’re risking their lives, we give them first-class health care. The rest of us can go out and buy insurance–

Okay let’s take a break to analyze here. Think for a second about what Kristol is saying. He’s talking about the strength and quality of our military healthcare, which is run by the government. In other words he’s pretty much admitting that the government can provide first-class health care.

STEWART: I just want to get this down: “The government runs the best health care.”

Crafty wording by Jon Stewart to back William Kristol into the corner that he did, but it brings up a pretty good point. If the government can run quality care for our military then why would they not be able to do it for the public?

This got me thinking a bit and guess who else receives government run health care? Our congress. So government run health care is good enough for them but not us, and then half of the congress has the balls to turn around and claim it won’t work.

Our government does have a tendency to royally screw things up sometimes, and it can often be a costly mistake. However, this does not mean that something funded by the government is automatically going to fail. Look no further than our government funded firefighters. What a bunch of commies, right? No wonder their trucks are red.

The Chinese brought 150 senior officials to Washington this week for the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue to find out how their number one borrower plans to deal with a still sagging economy.

I don’t blame them for being concerned, if someone owed me over $800 billion dollars of I would be a little concerned too.

For the most part Americans did their best to assure the Chinese that everything is going fine while the Chinese questionning focused mostly on the Obama administration’s plans to handle the lackluster economy.

“There were serious questions about what the economic outlook is,” said David Loevinger, a Treasury Department official.

The Chinese, Loevinger continued, wanted to know what the plan is for the fiscal stimulus and when the U.S. would be able to bring down the fiscal deficit to an appropriate level. Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag defended the stimulus spending, saying that it was the right thing to do temporarily, but admitted that it is ‘not sustainable at the current rate.’

Speakers for the U.S., in between reassuring nervous Chinese officials, did have a few points that they tried to hammer in.

“There was notable agreement that the world has changed, and we’re not going back to 2006 and 2007,” said Loevinger. “China’s going to have to promote more home-grown consumption-led growth.”

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner attended several sessions in the event and also tried to focus on adapting to changes in the global economy.

“The global economy has changed fundamentally since the visionary individuals at Bretton Woods designed the architecture for the 20th century economy,” said Geithner while opening a session. “Today, we are working with China and other partners to ensure their full engagement and representation in the design of the key multilateral agreements and groupings, such as the G20, the Financial Stability Board, and the international financial institutions, that will chart a course of more balanced and sustainable global growth into the future.”

Vice President Joe Biden, fresh off of a four-day trip to Georgia and Ukraine, had some pretty scathing words to say about Russia in an interview with the Wall Street Journal today.

“Russia has to make some very difficult, calculated decisions,” said Biden. “They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they’re in a situation where the world is changing before them and they’re clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable.”

That’s quite a different tone than the one offered by President Barack Obama on his recent trip to the Kremlin. So does this signal a change in foreign policy towards Russia or is it merely Joe Biden opening his mouth a little too much again?

“I think we vastly underestimate the hand that we hold,” said Biden.

This sounds like a mix of both to me, perhaps the Obama administration does want to get tougher with Russia, but I’m not sure using Joe Biden is the best way to do that.

“It’s a very difficult thing to deal with, loss of empire,” said Biden.

Oh and there’s the money shot, I’m pretty sure that one wasn’t on the script (please tell me they’ve got this guy on a script by now). Needless to say Russian officials were not amused by Mr. Biden’s comments.

“The question is: who is shaping the U.S. foreign policy, the president or respectable members of his team?” Asked Sergei Prikhodko, the chief foreign policy adviser to Russian President Medvedev.

This won’t be the first time that Obama has had to backpedal off of an all too characteristic slip of the tongue from Biden. During the height of the swine flu scare Biden urged people not to travel, alleging that when one person sneezed on an airplane it would travel through the whole plane. Obama quickly rebutted the statement, which was false, and assured people that they would be safe to travel.

That was a somewhat minor Joe Biden gaffe though, this is a lot different. It’s been decades since an administration was able to reach a breakthrough with Russia on foreign policy and Vice President Joe Biden’s statements may have put the progress we’re making now in jeopardy.

It’s just like the good old days for Wall Street executives. In fact it’s even better.

Despite public outcry and outrage at the multi-million dollar bonuses that Wall Street executives continued to give themselves throughout this recession Wall Street’s biggest players are already setting aside money for more bonuses. And the figures are astonishing.

The top six U.S. banks have set aside $74 billion already this year to pay their employees, up from $60 billion this time last year. Just last week Goldman Sachs disclosed that it had set aside a record $6.6 billion for bonuses (they prefer to call it compensation expenses) in the most recent quarter. They’ve spent $11.4 billion in bonuses so far this year.

Now to be fair Goldman Sachs had an amazing second quarter, earning a record $3.4 billion, but this isn’t the story with all of the banks.

Rival bank Morgan Stanley announced that it had set aside $6 billion so far this year in bonuses even as it took a loss for the third straight quarter. Morgan Stanley, after losing $1.26 billion last quarter, set aside $3.9 billion for bonuses. That’s almost 3/4 of the revenue that they made.

Luckily we have a president that has pledged to stop this kind of thing, right?

“With respect to compensation, I’d like to think that people would feel a little remorse and feel embarrassed and would not get million-dollar or multimillion-dollar bonuses,” said Barack Obama in response to the bailout news.

Well, Mr. President, they are getting multi-million dollar bonuses, at a record pace even. You are the one with the power to change that — isn’t that what you’re all about, change?

Pardon my sarcasm Mr. President, but something (track record, history, nature of their jobs) gives me a hunch that these “greed is good” Wall Street guys aren’t going to change their behavior on their own.

One of the reasons President Barack Obama defeated John McCain in the elections was his use of technology. The Obama campaign brilliantly utilized websites, text messaging and e-mails to create communication lines between him and voters.

If the republicans want to compete with the democrats then this is one area that they need to focus on and improve drastically. One of the latest .com trends is social networking sites. Sites like Twitter.com which give politicians an avenue to reach out to voters online.

For those of you who don’t know about twitter, it’s like a blog/instant-message website. Users can follow other people and post updates, but the update can’t be any more than 140 characters.

Enter Sarah Palin, whose twitter feed boasts over 100,000 followers (myself included). Well in response to the ethics violations charges that she is currently facing Palin tweeted this beautiful 140 character debauchery of the English language:

Re inaccurate story floating re:ethics violation/Legal Defense Fund;matter is still pending;new info was just requested even;no final report

…Oh Sarah -sighs-

I guess it could be worse though, anybody catch that video that California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger linked to in a tweet?

…

Just a couple quick questions here Arnold…

What the hell were you thinking? What is that knife for? Your budget cutting knife? You’re referring to yourself as the celebrity governor? Your solution to the ridiculous $26 billion budget defecit that your state is running is to sign cars? Have you gone insane???

The governator’s press secretary didn’t even bother trying to back up her boss’s bizarre prop choice when asked about it.

“I don’t know why he is holding a knife. The message is in what he is saying, not what he is holding in his hand.”

It’s an intriguing question, one that is likely to spark intense arguments from both sides of the political spectrum. This current map shows which way voters shifted in 2008. The democrats experienced growth all over the country, even in republican strongholds such as Texas and Alabama.

The results of the last few elections seem to indicate a shift of power, still critics of the left claim that America is and always has been a center-right country. It’s definitely a topic that is up for debate, but one important indicator of political power is the money trail, and the democrats are definitely winning that battle right now.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) had its best ever monthly fundraising performance in June, raising $7.15 million, or twice as much as the National Republican Campaign Committee’s fundraising intake for the same month.

The DCCC has brought in a total of $30.84 million for the year so far compared to the NRCC’s $17.55 million.

For all of their talk about reckless spending, the NRCC still owes $3.25 million in debt. While the DCCC currently owes $6 million in outstanding debt the latest month gives them $9.73 million cash-on-hand.

Editors Note: This is going to be kind of a different post today. I also want to make it clear I’m not singling out any specific blogs with this post, I’m just voicing an observation. Anyways, there’s your warning, let’s get into it.

There are a lot of talented writers from all sorts of backgrounds on today.com. The news blogs alone on the site feature all types of writers of all types of political persuasion. All too often though, one can read through one or two posts on a blog and they can already tell way too much about the author and their political affiliations.

Blogging is a form of journalism. In fact, it really is the future of journalism since print-media seems to be taking its dying breathes. The best journalists don’t have to interject their opinions, they just show the facts and let the reader connect the dots. I think we could use a little more of that on this site.

I’m not saying that John Doe the conservative blogger shouldn’t write his opinion post on abortion or that his friend Jane the liberal blogger can’t make her voice heard on emission standards, by all means write about what you are passionate about. Do it in a way that’s convincing though, if your position is correct then you shouldn’t have to resort to ad-hominem attacks or circular reasoning to win your argument. If you are resorting to those things then that’s a statement in itself.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is breaking the mold. Even if your site declares you a proud democrat/republican/liberal/conservative - whatever - try to step outside of your box. You’ll be that much smarter for doing it, and you never know you might even find out some things that change your mind.

The best debaters know what their opponent is going to say about them and therefore can come ready with a counter-point. The best bloggers have something to offer people from a wide array of audiences. Let’s try to be better at both here on today.com.

Alright that’s my two cents. Don’t let me have it in the comments too bad guys…