People mostly sift politics and news videos that reaffirm positions they already have. It's fine to express your opinion, even via someone else's words, but it feels like 90+% of the top videos since the 2008 election campaign started have fallen into this category.

I get it, really. Bush was wrong and Obama is right. The Republicans are idiots and the Democrats are saviors. Fox News couldn't find their way out of a paper bag (because paper bags are all recycled now and recycling is part of the Muslim, Marxist, Liberal Hippie agenda).

You've all made your point, now can't we get some videos that teach/show us something new? Maybe ease off the frivolous news for a while? I could go back to watching TV at this rate.

In a study conducted at Stanford, psychologists discovered that people who hold extreme opinions are more likely to voice them loudly than those who hold moderate opinions. At last, science has explained most of what you read on the internet, and hear on Faux News.

The study also shows that people who hold extreme views also delude themselves into thinking that their opinions are shared by the majority.

Any opinions on this, QM?

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/majopinion.htm

The AP has fact-checked recent Dems who have claimed that health insurance profits have been "obscene" and "immoral" while "bodies pile up" and has found them to be full of hot air if not intentionally deceptive:

http://rss.msnbc.msn.com/id/33470129/ns/politics-health_care_reform/

Last year, the average health insurance company's profit margin was a measly 2.2%, but after you hear Dem representatives talk about it, you'd think it was near 40%. But last year was slow right? What about the average year? That must be the obscene number they're talking about right? 6% ...

You can argue that we would benefit from a federal insurance system or not, but let's not make stuff up out of thin air and call it scary truth. You can't form and informed opinion when your information is misinformation. I'm tired of all the major arguments being based in "feelings," sob stories, and skewed numbers. Half of the arguments are deceptions and the other half are fallacies.

I don't have the answers, but I certainly have learned who not to look to for them, and they all work in the same building.

The 60 char title limit kind of hindered me putting up a fully informative title as to this post.. It was discovered recently that Reznor's music along with a number of other bands is being used as torture at Gitmo. Their music is played at ear splitting levels, sometimes repeating the same song over and over for long durations.

This is all being done without any consent from the artists (did they at least legally purchase their copies?), and it would seem that any requests from the artists to have their music pulled from the 'enhanced interrogation' is being dismissed at a near hostile level by members of Liz Cheney's group, 'Keep America Safe'.

All of my news concerning this is being pulled from The NIN Hotline, I found this particular quote interesting: "A "Keep America Safe" spokesperson went so far as to say "It's almost laughable to think that heavy metal bands like Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine have a moral authority on national security issues.".

I guess loud edgy music must be evil and immoral even though it's almost always anything but, 'least the stuff I listen to.

You can read more: at http://www.theninhotline.net/news/
Including an organized attempt at asking for an apology from Keep America Safe for deeming the artist's stance as laughable and having no moral leverage concerning the use of their music, and as they word it - to stand up for all awesome musicians who have enriched American culture and deserve to have their rights respected, not dismissed.

I'm not quite sure I understand what the thinking was behind the Nobel committee's decision, but as usual, I find it fascinating to watch the political sphere react en masse to this kind of political hand grenade being tossed into the mix.

... more inside ...

The US president, Barack Obama, was today awarded the 2009 Nobel peace prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples".

The Nobel committee said "only rarely has a person such as Obama captured the world's attention and given his people hope for a better future".

"His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population," the citation said.

The committee said Obama, who only took up the presidency in January, had been acknowledged for his calls to reduce the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons and working for world peace.

"Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play."

The first African American to hold the country's highest office, Obama has called for disarmament and worked to restart the stalled Middle East peace process. He is currently considering whether to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan where the US is mired in an eight-year-old conflict.

The prize worth 10 million Swedish crowns (£880,000) will be handed over in Oslo next month.

Source: Guardian

I'm inclined to add it to the parody channel as well, since next to the news was an article about a US threat to Iran.

If you don't respect Gore Vidal, one of the giants of commentary, you won't like this.
Gore Vidal is a hyper-educated anti-academic, and also controversial. He would be in America's brain trust, if we had one, and ....
I hope reading Gore Vidal bashing the USA resonates with you as well as it did with me.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/obama-is-incompetent-and_b_311796.html

from raw story:
Federal regulators in the Bush administration blocked attempts by state governments to prevent predatory lending practices that resulted in the financial crisis now stalking the American economy, a new study from the University of North Carolina says.

In 2004, the Office of the Currency Comptroller, an obscure regulatory agency tasked with ensuring the fiscal soundness of America's banks, invoked an 1863 law to give itself the power to override state laws against predatory lending. The OCC told states they could not enforce predatory-lending laws, and all banks would be subject only to less-strict federal laws.

Now, a research paper (PDF) from UNC-Chapel Hill's Center for Community Capital shows that those anti-predatory lending laws had actually worked. States that had stricter regulations on issuing mortgages were found to have fewer foreclosures.

"We believe that these findings are remarkable, since they suggest an important and yet unexplored link between [anti-predatory lending laws] and foreclosures," the study's authors state.

The study may be the first scientific evidence to back up claims made by many critics that the Bush administration and earlier administrations allowed last year's financial crisis to happen by not enforcing common-sense regulations on lenders.


the article in full:
http://rawstory.com/2009/10/study-bush-blocked-efforts/

excerpt from the following article by Veronique de Rugy:

http://www.american.com/archive/2009/september/making-bush-look-like-a-piker

Based on Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data, the following chart shows a projection of deficit numbers for each year until fiscal 2018. Each color represents the difference between the projected deficits at different points in time. The purple bars represent the deficit numbers as they were projected back in September 2008; the black and red bars represent the difference between the projected deficits at other points in time. The black bars represent the growth in the projected deficit numbers between September 2008 and January 2009. The red bars represent the difference between the January 2009 projections and the new deficit numbers as projected in August 2009. Finally, the orange bars represent the actual deficit numbers during President Clinton’s last year in office (fiscal 2001) and President Bush’s two terms.



Here are a few interesting things about this data:

First, while President Obama is fond of promoting what he calls a "new ethic of responsibility"—in fact he named his first budget, for fiscal 2010, "A New Era of Responsibility"—that is a misrepresentation of his actual budget plan. For each of Obama’s years in office, the deficit is projected to be larger than any year during Bush’s terms.

Read entire article

I can't believe this has been going on my whole life and I'm only now waking up.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/09/19/ED7B19P06H.DTL

I had a conversation recently with a friend of mine, who just happens to be a lawyer in DC these days, and we got to talking about con law and the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. I know a great majority of people on here aren't from the U.S. so I apologize for writing something that is of little relevance to you, but I wanted to speak about something I just recently discovered.

I've always heard people claiming the Constitution to be a living document, and always I've found that to be a peculiar remark. So, I've been doing a bit of research and debating outside of the Sift and wanted to share what I've found.



Interpretative positions:

Living Constitution : According to wikipedia, "suggests that the Constitution has a dynamic meaning." This means the document is a work-in-progress and open to changing interpretations.

Originalism : According to wikipedia, "is a family of theories central to all of which is the proposition that the Constitution has a fixed and knowable meaning, which was established at the time of its drafting." There are two interpretations of this Originalism, and they are:

Original Intent: "which holds that interpretation of a written constitution is (or should be) consistent with what was meant by those who drafted and ratified it."

Original Meaning: "is the view that interpretation of a written constitution or law should be based on what reasonable persons living at the time of its adoption would have declared the ordinary meaning of the text to be."

My take on these definitions:

I personally don't believe the Constitution can be a living document, because what's the point of having a written document if it's open to interpretation. It's not a Luther Blissett novel, it's a writ of governance, and if the meaning cannot be understood, then the document is worthless and petty and not worth giving legitimacy.

I personally don't believe in interpreting the Constitution based on original intent, either. How is any of us to know the intent of that document based on the people who wrote it? It would take countless scores of historians to piece together what would still be a loose interpretation of the men who wrote it. The major issue is that the men who drafted the document had differing opinions, so it would be pointless to determine intent and logically reach a consensus.

The only one that makes sense is interpreting the Constitution based on original meaning, because all we need to do is look at other documents at that time that can confirm the meanings of the words when that document was written. This can be easily accomplished by using published newspapers and the Samuel Johnson Dictionary (published at that time) to get a sense of the words' meanings in the Constitution. This is important to understand certain words as "regulate" which comes up very often in the text of the Constitution, and, of course, back then it meant "to make regular" which is different than the colloquial understanding of the word today.

Madison, one of the most notable framers of the Constitution, agrees with me. Here's what he said about the Constitution after it was ratified, "I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful, exercise of its powers."

Essentially Madison said he agrees in using the "sense" in which the document was written when it was "accepted and ratified". That means the document isn't open to interpretation based on changing lexicon.



Interpretation of Constitutionalists vs. Libertarians:

Constitutionalists and Libertarians agree rights are natural and cannot be given to you by a piece of paper, men, or government. They also agree the Constitution is a document that limits the power of the government and does not give rights to men and women. Even the Bill of Rights can be smartly interpreted as a list of government limitations more than a list of individual rights. It's written to protect individual rights, but it doesn't decree the document gives any rights to the individual, but instead protects them.

Constitutionalists believe the letter of the Constitution, and none of them believe the document is living and mutable; except for the Amendment process which is clearly part of the document's text, and requires a great deal of effort to properly amend. The Amendment process was purposely meant to be difficult.

Most Libertarians (who're not opposed to the Constitution) agree with everything the Constitutionalists agree with except for the Amendment process (this excludes me, because I tend to lean more toward the Constitutionalists on this one). Their position is that if rights are natural, then the Amendment process serves to restrict those rights. You need only look as far as the18th Amendment which prohibited alcohol in the U.S. This illegitimate Amendment was ratified and therefore became part of our Constitution, and if it hadn't been repealed by the 21st Amendment, we'd still be living with a Constitution that no longer was a means to restrict and limit government, but a document to restrict and limit the people, as well.



Constitution as a complete concept:

The Constitution was written to protect the individual by limiting government. And the document needs to be understood as a complete concept instead of a list of sound bites. One of the more important things to note about the Constitution is where the Congress derives its powers and where they're limited. Article 1 Section 8 gives the Congress their power. Article 1 Section 9 and the Bill of Rights limits those powers. So in other words, Congress can do everything listed in Article 1 Section 8 (and ONLY Article 1 Section 8) as long as it doesn't encroach on the limitations set forth in Article 1 Section 9 and the Bill of Rights... and don't forget the 10th Amendment. Ahem.

This is important to note because recently a lot of people are quoting the Constitution's Preamble and the Taxing and Spending Clause where it makes reference that the government shall "...provide for the... general Welfare". And those who use that sound bite, only use that sound bite. The recent bailouts are unconstitutional, as well, because according to Article 1 Section 9 (which limits the power of Congress), “No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law; and a regular statement and account of receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time.” And Obama used TARP money which was appropriated for banking industry, not the auto industry.

Food for thought.

UP VOTE THIS in case you missed it


http://www.videosift.com/video/WE-RE-SCREWED-Special-Edition-NY-Post

This is George from inflation.us and he has a message for Democrats. He also seems to be a bit tipsy in this video.



I also hope you enjoy my Fox News title above. It would be a statement except I added a question mark, so it has the illusion of being a fair and balanced question.

Here's what George from inflation.us wrote on his YouTube page:

Think the Teabaggers Are Crazy Now? Just Wait.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/9/15/782400/-Think-the-Teabaggers-Are-Crazy-Now-Just-Wait

If the above referenced Daily Kos article is anywhere near to what some of you are thinking about what we are thinking... Heaven help all of us....
We don't hate Obama because he is Black, we don't hate sick people. We have compassion. We want this country to work again and any fool can see it is broken. The Washington DC cesspool is not the answer....self sufficiency, self reliance, community cooperation, small businesses...these are the things that need to start working again...

If you think all this fuss is over the "public option" you are missing the point....the Second American Revolution is coming... I will be standing on the right side of history

From this article: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=506199

Actually, funny thing. The other month or so I sat down at my favorite Mexican Restaurant in Santa Monica and overheard a group of doctors sitting behind me chatting about the health care reform. Being that Santa Monica is largely, and almost exclusively, Democrat they spoke in hushed tones, but luckily I had my back inches from the doctor doing most of the talking. He had something to do with the show The Doctors, but I could not determine exactly what. He didn't look like one of the on-air doctors.

The table's consensus was they didn't agree with government involvement. They also disliked the current system and thought insurance companies were a racket. My brother works in insurance, and he basically says the same thing about health insurance being a complete racket.

The doctors believed under the new system they'd see a lot of medical professionals and doctors leave the industry. They explained why they thought so in greater detail, but after about three or four of those damn margaritas I couldn't remember any specifics. Maybe this article touches on some of their concerns? I dunno.

I just watched Olbermann and it makes me sad. He did his first segment on how everyone who opposes Obama should be accused of racism.

Again, it makes me sad. Way to drag yourself into the mud, Olbermann. Now the debate is the secret racists vs. the people who accuse racists.

Obama made another fine speech on the The anniversary is the collapse of Lehman Brothers (ok 1 day beforehand)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32841497/ns/business-economy_in_turmoil/

1. Obama is bought and paid for by Wall Street.
2. Obama crisis management skills are exactly equal to or defeated by a wet paper bag.

You can say Obama's economic policy is not bad, but you should know that they are really the last president's bailout policy.
Also the TARP plan has a good intention, but it's just a one time fix. It's supposed to kick the economy back up to speed. As if.

Anyone who pays attention to US politics knows that the level of political discourse over, well, everything seems to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. I like to think that we tend to have an above average level of civility and intellect around here, and would like to try to have a conversation about health care reform.

Here are my ground rules:
... more inside ...

I really enjoy reading popular science and other non-fiction books and would love to get some suggestions from other sifters. Please add amazon invocations and a bit on why you like a particular book.

The US Federal government will match the amount a presidential candidate raises ($250 per individual). There is a slight caveat. You must receive at least 5% of the popular vote, which typically means the money goes to the two party system. That's not very fair, but what is fair is this... the source of the funds come from a voluntary tax you pay on your income tax form.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matching_funds#In_politics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_election_campaign_fund_checkoff

Mister Bek has proven himself to be an omic genius. His ability to ast aside rucial letters in words proves to ater to everyone's sense of humour. So in reognition of his new style of omedy let's join in the fun and omit the letter " " this week in all of our orrespondence and omments.