September 10, 2005
Commentary - Girly Man
:I have both criticized and praised Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the past. He has been an independently positive and negative force in California politics. This week he blew it. No matter what your position on same sex marriage, you have to believe he made the wrong decision this week by vetoing the same sex marriage bill in California this week. The Conservative response to the same sex marriage movement is that the courts should not decide. It should be the legislature not activist judges to make the decision. Yet in a state where polls show a slight majority approve of same sex marriage, where the legislature by a slim majority passed the law, Governor Schwarzenegger vowed to veto the bill because it should be up to the courts. It was bad policy for California. And it was a horrible decision for Conservatives. The court in California will eventually rule in favor of homosexuals being able to marry. It will be legal. And Conservatives across the country will only have Schwarzenegger to blame for making such a poor political decision.
(Filed under: Commentary, Politics, Same Sex Marriage)
Commentary - The Conservative Safety Net
:The references to the difference between President Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina and his response to 9/11 probably became almost unbearably nauseating this week. But columnists would not be doing their job if they did not point out the obvious – a true conservative cannot deal with this type of disaster. They just are not ready for it. Their whole mindset is wrong. In the end, President Bush could not respond as well as he did after 9/11 because he had already ruined any opportunity to provide the response he needed to.
Why was Bush’s response different than how he responded to 9/11? Well, natural disasters require a government to mobilize and provide social programs that provide people aid that are in need. A social safety net has to be provided. But anti-big government Conservatives do not believe in safety nets. They believe in cutting things like levies for rivers, Medicare, and public transportation systems. Everything that could have been in place to provide aid had been cut by this administration and this Congress.
To make matters worse, the National Guard has been stretched thin by the war in Iraq and FEMA was turned into an office for those that were politically loyal to the President. It was all a recipe for disaster. No wonder the President didn’t know what to do this week – his political philosophy crashed around him. Conservative thought was dead. Government is needed. Services are need to be provided. His belief in the need for a lack of a safety net was shown to be false when that lack of a safety net failed to hold anyone up.
(Filed under: Natural Disasters, Hurricane Katrina, Bush Administration, Commentary, Politics)
Sports
:The NFL kicked off this week as the New England Patriots, the defending Super Bowl champions, defeated the Oakland Raiders 30-20 on Thursday night. The NFL will use next weekend to remember the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The rest of the league get started on Sunday.
(Filed under: Sports)
Technology
:Apple announced new versions of their popular iPod and iTunes technology. The new iPod is the largest flash music player that Apple had replaced. The flash storage system allows the player to be smaller then their hard drive models. Apple also announced the first iPod cellphone. Meanwhile, Sony announced that they will be releasing new Walkmans to compete with the iPod. There hope is that the company that introduced the portable music players a quarter century ago can compete in the new marketplace.
(Filed under: Science / Technology, Apple, Music)
Hurricane Ophelia
:Over the weekend, the coast is again preparing for a hurricane early next week. Hurricane Ophelia has been hovering just off the eastern Florida coast. The storm is expected to hit land somewhere between the peninsula and the Carolinas early in the week.
(Filed under: Natural Disasters)
Egyptian Elections
:Wednesday, Egyptians voted in the nation’s first multi-candidate race for president. The election was marked with irregularities and violations of democracy. Outside monitors were barred and it was believed that the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, would and did do anything needed to win the election including bribery, intimidation, and vote tampering. Still, there is some hope that the election will have a positive effect on Egypt. During the open campaign, numerous opponents of the President came forward with numerous protest marches.
(Filed under: Middle East, Egypt)
Same Sex in California
:California became the first state in the Union to have the state’s legislator pass a bill that would make same sex marriage legal. Massachusetts, the only state where it is legal, had it legal due to actions of the court. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vowed to veto the bill. He cited that it should be the courts that decide the issue. His spokeswoman Margita Thompson said that “the governor would uphold whatever the court decides.”
(Filed under: Politics, Same Sex Marriage)
Kashmir
:India’s prime minister announced on Monday that the nation would pull back from Kashmir (a disputed territory between India and Pakistan) if the militant infiltration and violence in India’s north ends. This came as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had a rare meeting with Kashmiri separatists from the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. This announcement comes about a week before the Pakistan and Indian meeting during the UN General Assembly in New York. Kashmir has been the main source of conflict between the two nations.
(Filed under: Asia, India, Kashmir)
Food for Oil
:After a yearlong investigation, UN investigators heavily criticized UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for failing to curb corruption and poor management at the UN during the food for oil program. This program was designed to buy oil from Iraq that would provide supplies help the people of Iraq who were starving during oil embargoes enforced after the first Gulf War. Saddam Hussein used the program to siphon billions of dollars for his own uses. The investigators suggested the UN make a number of changes so that future programs would not be mismanaged and help dictators. One positive from the program is that the investigators did find that the program reached the goal of alleviating the general populace’s starving and medical needs.
(Filed under: Iraq, UN)
Iraq
:In a week where the President came under much heat for whether Hurricane Katrina’s response was diminished due to so many troops being in Iraq, it was perhaps not helpful that the U.S. military announced that they were dropping plans to boost its presence in Iraq before October elections since the army was stretched thin. This stretching is being shown weekly as insurgents continue their attacks. Last Saturday, 19 people were killed in Baghdad in one of the largest attacks in recent weeks. Meanwhile, oil pipelines are increasingly being attacked by insurgents. Thursday, another attack killed 16 near Bosra, which had been relatively quiet since a large attack killed 68 in April 2004. Further damage came this week as former Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his first interview since his resignation as he said that he had never seen evidence of Iraq being connected to September 11th.
(Filed under: Iraq, Middle East)
Earlier Reports / Older Reports