Google Stands up to China

Nicholas Kristof editorializes that Google, unlike Obama who ran away from the Dalai Lama so as to not offend China, is standing up to the growing giant of China.  Google is telling China that they will no longer censor search results even if that means they must leave the country.  Predictably, China tried to censor the debate with Google, but Twitters from Chinese citizens indicating “It’s not Google that’s withdrawing from China, it’s China that’s withdrawing from the world” was the response from China’s Netizens.

One event that appeared to prompt Google’s action was a sophisticated Chinese attempt to penetrate the gmail addresses of Chinese dissidents.  Kristof notes, “young Chinese also are infinitely creative. When the government blocks references to ‘June 4,’ the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Netizens evade the restriction by typing in ‘May 35.'”

Hooray for Google and Chinese Netizens!  What say you all?

iggy donnelly

Obama: A Wall Street Liberal?

E.J. Dionne wrote in today’s Washington Post that Obama needs to overcome the combined disrespectful label as a “Wall Street Liberal”.  The conservatives have made hay for years discrediting liberals and the populist loathing of Wall Street has never been higher.   Contrary to the arguments, not only does Obama’s record argue against him being a liberal, he has not caved into Wall Street to the extent he has been blamed for doing.  Dionne reports, “never mind that Wall Street is fighting Obama on financial reform, particularly on his excellent proposal to create a financial consumer protection agency. The fact is that the Wall Street tag is sticking, and Obama was always going to battle the L-word.”

Dionne offers some antidotes to the Wall Street Liberal tag.  Chief among them is moving the tax burden away from middle America to those earning huge investment incomes.  There is a reason that Warren Buffett decries the fact that his receptionist’s salary is taxed at a higher rate than his own.  Our government needs the money, one sector has a disproportionate amount of same – taxation can take care of that.

Dionne explains moving the tax burden to the investment class will have the added benefit of “challenging the Tea Party movement to come clean on whether it really is populist, or merely using populist rhetoric to pursue the same old low-tax, low-regulation agenda that got us into this mess.”

Sorry, I have been MIA. 

iggydonnelly

Something to think about…

Before reading this article, I never even thought about this aspect of using a credit card for making a donation to a disaster.  What are your thoughts? 

Lilac

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/14/as-wallets-open-for-haiti_n_423238.html

To Tea or Not to Tea – that is the Question

Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat is a key race for Democrats to keep their 60 vote majority.  It looks like the Republican who is running has some lingering questions as to exactly who he has aligned himself with.  Perhaps the rubber is meeting the road and Mr. Brown is keenly aware that the Tea Party movement may play in Purity Land of the GOP, it may not play in the general election.

Lilac

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/14/scott-brown-held-tea-part_n_423198.html

Haiti

“Money is worth nothing right now, water is the currency,” one foreign aid-worker told Reuters.

The United States was sending 3,500 soldiers and 300 medical personnel to help with disaster relief and security in the devastated Caribbean capital, with the first of those scheduled to arrive on Thursday. The Pentagon was also sending an aircraft carrier and three amphibious ships, including one that can carry up to 2,000 Marines.

fnord

Contract ON America Revisited?

Interesting note, in Newt’s list of possibile candidates – do you find someone’s name conspicuously absent?

Lilac

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/13/gingrich-2012-former-spea_n_422683.html

Justices of the U. S. Supreme Court

John Paul Stevens, 88
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 75
Antonin Scalia, 72
Anthony Kennedy, 72
Stephen Breyer, 70
Clarence Thomas, 60
Samuel Alito, 58
Sonia Sotomayor, 56
John Roberts (the chief justice), 53

Because of his age and length of service, Stevens is widely considered the most likely to step down, followed by Ginsburg. Both happen to be judicial liberals on a Court that has four liberals (Breyer and Sotomayor being the other two) and four judicial conservatives (Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts). The fickle Kennedy tends to provide the fifth vote in close cases, particularly those involving abortion, race, and religion.

The election of Obama over McCain last fall prevented a Republican goal (dating from the 1968 presidential campaign) of an unambiguously conservative majority on the Court. In this liberal nightmare, the relatively youthful majority would be busy whittling away at Roe v. Wade, eliminating race-based preferences in the public sector, strengthening the government’s hand in fighting terrorism, and facilitating a larger role for religion in public life–among many other bad, bad things.

I know most of you have these players, their stats and which team they play for memorized, but I don’t and always have to go looking for them.

This morning’s New York Times has an op-ed piece titled, “Discrimination on Trial, but Not on TV.” In a 5-4 decision that split the top judges along their political leanings, the Supreme Court barred the live broadcast of audio and video from a California court where rights activists are challenging a state ban on gay marriage.

I would like to know what you think of this decision made yesterday, and your thoughts of our nation’s high court in general.

fnord

Thursday, 1/14/10, Public Square