Politics

Politics

There are 1,051 posts filed in Politics (this is page 94 of 106).

Obama’s form-letter response about FISA

I wrote the Barack Obama campaign expressing my displeasure with his flip-flop on the Senate FISA bill. I got the following canned reply in response. Figured I’d post it to save y’all the trouble.

Form letter or not, it doesn’t cut it. Obama says “trust me.” That doesn’t cut it, folks. Not for me. I’ve had enough with having to trust kings.

As a former cryptographer I’m intimately familiar with the safeguards put in place on this activity. They’ve worked well for decades. “Grave threats” are not enough reason to chuck the Bill of Rights, our biggest safeguard of all.
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Change I no longer believe in

Add my voice to those who, are sorely disappointed at Barack Obama‘s going back on his word in regards to the despicable Senate FISA bill passed last week. Its apparent that Obama is just another politician who thinks the U.S. Constitution is a “goddamn piece of paper.”

The Obama stickers are coming off the cars and the yard sign will appear on Craigslist within the next few days. Any further money I might have donated to Obama’s campaign will be going to the ACLU instead.

Adventures in canvassing

I spent Saturday morning canvassing a Cary neighborhood for the campaigns of Janet Cowell (State Treasurer) and Al Swanstrom (NC House 36). I love getting out and meeting people, especially when the weather’s great.

It was a fair guess that a lot of the folks in this upscale neighborhood would lean towards the GOP. Normally when I canvass I’m used to a list almost exclusively of Democrats, so having independents in the mix (and many undeclared Republicans) presented an interesting challenge.
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Misleading

Today’s News and Observer headline story about Mary Easley’s so-called pay raise may be the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as my being an N&O subscriber goes. I have no great love for the Easleys but the only way to describe this is overblown if not downright misleading.

Mary Easley is an accomplished lawyer in her own right. She lectures at NCSU and she recently went from part-time to full-time there. Her salary, while quite large from my point of view, is a pittance to what most attorneys earn. The N&O is twisting the facts. I can’t hep but think its punitive after the governor ducked out on an N&O reporter and his email deletion policy came to light.

Trust is critical to any news source; lose it and its gone for good. I have been an avid newspaper reader since I learned to read but that’s about to end. Unless the News and Observer cleans up its act pronto, it will find itself with one fewer subscriber. At least.

Why Pat McCrory is an idiot

Infamous bank robber Willie Sutton, when asked why he robbed banks allegedly replied “because that’s where the money is.”

In a press release explaining his position supporting offshore drilling, N.C. Republican gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory asked:

“If we’re not willing to drill off our own coasts, then where will you drill?” he asked. “Off Venezuela? Off Nigeria? Saudi Arabia? Russia?”

Um, maybe someplace where there’s actually oil, Pat? Have you noticed that Venezuela has four times the oil, Nigeria has almost twice the oil, Saudi Arabia has ten times the oil, and Russia has three times the oil we do? And it would be even more lopsided if Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay was excluded?

There is more oil in the Middle East than all other world regions combined. We don’t drill off North Carolina because that’s not where the oil is!

Please get a clue, Pat.

Offshore drilling

Anyone who wants to drill for oil off our beautiful North Carolina coast needs to check themselves into Dorothea Dix Hospital. Any oil there is too miniscule to make a difference in supply, it will take at least a decade to get anything from it, and one spill would absolutely devastate our coastal tourism industry: about the only thing Eastern North Carolina can depend on. Possibly for years to come.

McCrory and Dole need to get a clue. Bev Perdue wins on this issue.