A Political Glimpse from Ireland

What To Do Next?

The RNC and DNC are over, however Governor Palin seems to be dominating the headlines lately as the media mulls over whether she is a good choice or bad choice. I have already stated my opinion in a previous post, and on Twitter so I won’t bother to do that again however I think the Governor needs to be thoroughly examined by the media because if any of the rumors floating around are true, she could be the worst VP in history. There are less than 60 days to go to the election with Senator Obama holding a slim lead in the polls, what is his next step? How can he gain a significant lead over John McCain or does he even need to do that? I believe the Obama campaign is in a good position, even with the Palin “bump”, but Senator McCain is still losing however this could change very quickly. Senator Obama needs to continue to attack Senator McCain aggressively while reminding his supporters to keep on fighting to ensure a win in November.

The Words They Use

Hi everyone it is 125am at the moment in Korea which means it is 1226pm on the East Coast. I am back to blogging, sort off, and I apologize to all my friends for not visiting your blogs first but I just wanted to get this post done and get back into my blogging routine. First of all I want to thank Gordon and Big Blue for posting and continuing to keep this blog going while I have been busy, your posts were both great and judging by some of the comments, well received.

Korea is actually amazing and not what I expected in any way or form, the people are really nice though I really need to improve my speaking and reading. I tried to take the bus to into the city today and only realized after 30 minutes that I was heading into the country. Thankfully I got off before I ended up somewhere I didn’t want to be. The language barrier is the biggest issue so far as I often have to resort to hand gestures that I am sure people perceive as: “another crazy foreigner.” I have taken some pictures and I will upload them in due course, but on to the politics.

I have managed to keep track of the politics while I have been here and regarding Sarah Palin, I think she is a smart move for the McCain campaign as evidenced by her energizing the republican base. This energy is only slightly less than the Obama campaign but the problem with choosing her is that Senator McCain can no longer use the experience attack line against Senator Obama because he will inevitably be criticizing his own VP who has minimal experience. Sarah Palin is too radical and conflicts with Senator McCain’s image of a reformer as she is by far more conservative than he is and this is not a good thing.

The New York Times has an interesting comparison up on their site detailing the number of times Democrats and Republicans have used certain keywords. The interesting thing to note from a liberal perspective is that the Democrats are hitting the economy more often than the Republicans which is what the majority of Americans care about at this juncture in the political race. The Republicans have talked about god twice as much as the Democrats but that is no surprise there given that evangelicals always side with conservatives. A cursory glance at this comparison gives me hope, yes I said it , if the Democrats keep hitting the right notes and the Republicans continue on old lines of attack, we are sure to win.

Senate Republicans To Blame

I just caught The Daily Show this morning before I head out to work, Senator Chuck Schumer from New York was on the show talking about the election with reference to Senator Obama and Senator Clinton. In the show he accurately blamed the Republicans for the lack of progress in the Senate because they have filibustered 90 times this session. 90 Times! Seriously, how can we expect politics to move forward in America when both sides are not willing to compromise. That is why I am going to be smiling in the general election because all calculations point to the Democrats achieving 60 seats therefore preventing any filibusters from the Republicans:

Why We’re Liberals

I finally finished Eric Alterman’s Why We’re Liberals on Friday and I am sure some of my readers will be surprised that I have done two book reviews in two days. I often keep a normal book next to my bed side for reading at night but during the day when I am heading into Dublin, I often listen to audiobooks of some kind on my cellphone or PSP. Today’s book review is going to be different because I have not read a single page of this book, instead I have listened to the 10 Cd’s and roughly 230 mp3 files that comprise this audiobook. Initially I will admit the book starts of in a very lack luster manner which made me lose interest immediately however after forcing myself to finish the first CD, I actually started to enjoy the book.

The book is read by Malcom Hillgartner who is a fairly popular narrator from my quick amazon search. He speaks clearly and concisely without speaking too fast as some narrator’s tend to do in other audiobook’s. Mr. Alterman is an academic and this book is written in a style you might expect to read in a post-graduate thesis. There are lots of references to sources, which makes for a very factual read but at the same time given the “heavy” nature of the subject matter, can lead the average reader to become quite bored. However upon listening to the second CD, the structure and style of the book starts to shift into place so that the listening becomes much easier and more entertaining.

If I had to sum this book up into once sentence, I would say the author’s main focus is to debunk some of the popular myths about liberalism. Beyond this focus, the author does manage to discuss how conservative logic has failed America in recent situations over the last decade:

…Echoing William Kristol, Richard Perle suggested that the U.S invasion had the potential to transform the thinking of people around the world about the potential for democracy. Even in Arab countries where people have been disparaging of their potential, the cynicism of the administrations policy was revealed in the summer of 2005 when investigative reporter Seymour Hirsch exposed the right-wingers plot after all their rhetoric about democracy to subvert the Iraqi elections. A Pentagon consultant who deals with the senior military leadership, acknowledged that the American authorities in Iraq did an “operation” to influence the election…

My intent when listening to this book was to discover more about the concept of liberalism however upon finishing the book, many of my questions were unanswered. This book is mainly for liberals who want to discover why conservatives are wrong and conservatives who want to discover the arguments behind liberal attitudes. It is an excellent book once I got passed the first CD, I would not hesitate to give it an 8 out of 10. It can be purchased from Amazon.com on Audio Download for $18.35.

Republican Riddle

I mentioned yesterday that I have come to a new realization with regards to the state of the media environment within the United States. This realization is that conservatives receive the lions share of content from organizations like ABC, CBS, MSNBC and CNN who are traditionally known as liberal news outlets. This leads me to the question:

Is politics ultimately about power? The ability to retain power within the government for yourself and your political party?

The Republicans/Conservatives seem to have done this on the radio networks according to a report published by the Center for American Progress in 2007. This report is over a year old but given the current FCC push for more deregulation, I doubt the facts of this report have changed. The main fact of the 40 page report is that through an analysis of 257 news/talk programs in the Spring of 2007, it was revealed that 91% of weekday programming is conservative and 9% is progressive:

This report may seem irrelevant because many people may be thinking how many people listen to the radio in the age of the internet? Well according to the report, Americans listened to 19 hours of radio per week on average in 2006. I myself listen to the radio roughly about 7 hours per week in Ireland and about the same when I was in America.

The report attributes these statistics in part to the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine by the FCC in 1987 during the Reagan administration. This repeal was another republican move under the guise of “regulation is bad” to take control of the media that they felt was dominated by liberal content. Secondly the report mentions the deregulation efforts on the part of the FCC recently to allow big networks to snap up all the media outlets they want. This further deregulation has been spearheaded by the current chairman of the FCC appointed by none other than President Bush.

Again the majority of the American public are being screwed by conservatives and the GOP so that we only recieve one side of a story. Any conservative must admit that there are two sides to every story and to make an informed opinion you need the liberal/progressive opinion as well as the conservative opinion. According to these statistics, if you live outside of a few liberal cities, you are in deep trouble of being republican washed.

These kinds of actions make me really angry since I am a fair player however I am naive when it comes to politics. I have come to realize that the Democrats are the true party for the people as they are the one’s who sponsored the Media Ownership Act of 2007 which has been squashed at the committee stage. Anyone want to guess why the Republican’s made sure this bill was never passed? Here is a video detailing why we need to get media back into serving the public interest because Fox is just a cog in the Republican machine: