13 posts tagged “obama”
Because there is an online journal that actually publishes a monthly article about my political opinions I try and keep myself informed. I like to examine both sides of an argument before I write an opinion, and while I fully admit I'm no expert, I do make the effort to make comparisons to history whenever possible before wading into the debate.
Perhaps you've heard of this; the simple facts are that the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty is due to expire, and Russia and the US are starting to negotiate a new one. However as I am showing you right now, that bit of news is being exploited to say everything from Putin is chomping to start a new cold war, to Obama has magically made Russia give up it's nuclear arms with the sheer power of hope. There are no more words at my disgust at how bad some news sources can be.
We will dump nuclear treaty, Putin warns
"Vladimir Putin warned yesterday that Russia was considering withdrawing from a major cold war arms treaty banning intermediate nuclear missiles unless it was expanded to include other states.
President Putin said that Moscow was planning to dump the intermediate range nuclear forces treaty (INF) - signed in a landmark deal between the US and Soviet Union in 1987 - unless countries such as China were included in its provisions..."
From the UK Times Online:
President Obama seeks Russia deal to slash nuclear weapons
"President Obama will convene the most ambitious arms reduction talks with Russia for a generation, aiming to slash each country’s stockpile of nuclear weapons by 80 per cent.
The radical treaty would cut the number of nuclear warheads to 1,000 each, The Times has learnt. Key to the initiative is a review of the Bush Administration’s plan for a US missile defence shield in Eastern Europe, a project fiercely opposed by Moscow..."
From VOA News:
Russian Foreign Minister Says Nuclear Arms Deal With US a Top Priority
"Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov says a new legally binding Russian-American treaty on strategic offensive arms is his government's top priority. In a speech to the U.N. Conference on Disarmament, Lavrov outlined other area of concern including the spread of nuclear weapons and the prevention of an arms race in outer space.
Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, says he believes Russia can work with the new Obama administration in a way it was not able to with the previous administration. He says Washington seems open to dealing with questions of multi-lateral disarmament and this bodes well for future negotiations between the two countries on a variety of difficult issues..."
And Perhaps I'm showing my bias by actually believing that of all of these the Canadian source, CBC News is actually tells us what we need to know...
U.S., Russia seek nuclear treaty before year's end
"The United States and Russia have both said they hope to have a new agreement by the end of this year on limiting nuclear weapons.
The timing is right for the two countries to build on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on Saturday.
"The right moment has come, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, for making real progress in resuming the global disarmament process on a broad agenda."
Russia and the United States hammered out the START I treaty in 1991 and updated it in 2002, but the agreement is due to expire in December.
The original treaty limited each side to 6,000 nuclear warheads, as well as 1,600 missiles and bombers. START II brought the number of warheads down to 3,500.
A successor deal with the U.S. must cover delivery systems as well as warheads, Lavrov said.
On Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Lavrov for a two-hour working dinner in Geneva and later said reaching a new arms reduction treaty was "of the highest priority."
The new U.S. administration under President Barack Obama has been talking about "pressing the reset button" in its relations with Russia, Clinton said.
Despite disagreements in the past few years, sparked by Russia's invasion of Georgia and the proposed U.S. missile interceptor system in eastern Europe, the two countries plan to start work immediately on reaching a new nuclear treaty, she said.
"We discussed a number of specific issues that we believe are important for us to work together on to make progress. There is no time to waste on a number of these significant challenges, so we will begin to work immediately to translate our words into deeds," Clinton said.
The talks between Clinton and Lavrov were held to lay the groundwork for Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev before they meet for the first time at the Group of 20 summit in London on April 2."
It's interesting to note that the CBC entry was the top result on a google search: "russia nuclear treaty". However the Guardian UK, and Times Online posts were the second two. This honestly frightens me because top google rank is rewarded to entries that are linked-to the most. (Yes this means I'm part of the problem.) This means that internet users are forwarding disgusting lies that try to pass off as news so much that they can become near top rank on the search engine nearly everyone uses.
Obama is coming up to visit Canada today and of course one of the big topics of conversation will be trade. So I wanted to voice a few thoughts on the matter.
These last few weeks I've had a hard time finding something to write about. Obama got in, hasn't been shot at and Bush in his last few weeks as president actually acted like a responsible statesman. As a result it's been rather hard to find a subject to get worked up about enough to actually express my thoughts on it.
The last few day's I've found some neat and humorous things that I feel I must share with you.
The first thing I'd like to say is that I apologize for the insensitive nature of this post. While it seems like I'm trivializing the very real danger the people of New Orleans are in this is not my intention, I'm merely looking at the political convention and connecting a few dots.
I've been mostly quiet this past week, digesting the Democratic national convention, learning how things go and how things have changed and generally just taking it all in. Now more than ever I think the media likes to tell people what to think, it's frustrating and irritating but it gives me insight.
I know the rhetoric, candidates move toward the center during their federal election... so when I listen to Tucker Bounds, the McCain spokesperson (And a speaker I respect greatly.) and he keeps delivering the line that McCain is independently minded I know that he's trying to separate his campaign from the Bush Administration, but I can't help but feel like McCain doesn't have the strength and integrity to enact needed reforms to his party.
I've heard it, believe me.
If Obama LosesRACISM IS THE ONLY REASON MCCAIN MIGHT BEAT HIM.
Posted Saturday, Aug. 23, 2008, at 12:02 AM ET
What with the Bush legacy of reckless war and economic mismanagement, 2008 is a year that favors the generic Democratic candidate over the generic Republican one. Yet Barack Obama, with every natural and structural advantage in the presidential race, is running only neck-and-neck against John McCain, a sub-par Republican nominee with a list of liabilities longer than a Joe Biden monologue. Obama has built a crack political operation, raised record sums, and inspired millions with his eloquence and vision. McCain has struggled with a fractious campaign team, lacks clarity and discipline, and remains a stranger to charisma. Yet at the moment, the two of them appear to be tied. What gives?
If it makes you feel better, you can rationalize Obama's missing 10-point lead on the basis of Clintonite sulkiness, his slowness in responding to attacks, or the concern that Obama may be too handsome, brilliant, and cool to be elected. But let's be honest: If you break the numbers down, the reason Obama isn't ahead right now is that he trails badly among one group, older white voters. He does so for a simple reason: the color of his skin.
Much evidence points to racial prejudice as a factor that could be large enough to cost Obama the election. That warning is written all over last month's CBS/New York Times poll, which is worth examining in detail if you want a quick grasp of white America's curious sense of racial grievance. In the poll, 26 percent of whites say they have been victims of discrimination. Twenty-seven percent say too much has been made of the problems facing black people. Twenty-four percent say the country isn't ready to elect a black president. Five percent of white voters acknowledge that they, personally, would not vote for a black candidate.
Five percent surely understates the reality. In the Pennsylvania primary, one in six white voters told exit pollsters race was a factor in his or her decision. Seventy-five percent of those people voted for Clinton. You can do the math: 12 percent of the Pennsylvania primary electorate acknowledged that it didn't vote for Barack Obama in part because he is African-American. And that's what Democrats in a Northeastern(ish) state admit openly. The responses in Ohio and even New Jersey were dispiritingly similar.
Such prejudice usually comes coded in distortions about Obama and his background. To the willfully ignorant, he is a secret Muslim married to a black-power radical. Or—thank you, Geraldine Ferraro—he only got where he is because of the special treatment accorded those lucky enough to be born with African blood. Some Jews assume Obama is insufficiently supportive of Israel in the way they assume other black politicians to be. To some white voters (14 percent in the CBS/New York Times poll), Obama is someone who, as president, would favor blacks over whites. Or he is an "elitist" who cannot understand ordinary (read: white) people because he isn't one of them. Or he is charged with playing the race card, or of accusing his opponents of racism, when he has strenuously avoided doing anything of the sort. We're just not comfortable with, you know, a Hawaiian.
Then there's the overt stuff. In May, Pat Buchanan, who writes books about the European-Americans losing control of their country, ranted on MSNBC in defense of white West Virginians voting on the basis of racial solidarity. The No. 1 best-seller in America, Obama Nation by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D., leeringly notes that Obama's white mother always preferred that her "mate" be "a man of color." John McCain has yet to get around to denouncing this vile book.
Many have discoursed on what an Obama victory could mean for America. We would finally be able to see our legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism in the rearview mirror. Our kids would grow up thinking of prejudice as a nonfactor in their lives. The rest of the world would embrace a less fearful and more open post-post-9/11 America. But does it not follow that an Obama defeat would signify the opposite? If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to. In this event, the world's judgment will be severe and inescapable: The United States had its day but, in the end, couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race.
Choosing John McCain, in particular, would herald the construction of a bridge to the 20th century—and not necessarily the last part of it, either. McCain represents a Cold War style of nationalism that doesn't get the shift from geopolitics to geoeconomics, the centrality of soft power in a multipolar world, or the transformative nature of digital technology. This is a matter of attitude as much as age. A lot of 71-year-olds are still learning and evolving. But in 2008, being flummoxed by that newfangled doodad, the personal computer, seems like a deal-breaker. At this hinge moment in human history, McCain's approach to our gravest problems is hawkish denial. I like and respect the man, but the maverick has become an ostrich: He wants to deal with the global energy crisis by drilling and our debt crisis by cutting taxes, and he responds to security challenges from Georgia to Iran with Bush-like belligerence and pique.
You may or may not agree with Obama's policy prescriptions, but they are, by and large, serious attempts to deal with the biggest issues we face: a failing health care system, oil dependency, income stagnation, and climate change. To the rest of the world, a rejection of the promise he represents wouldn't just be an odd choice by the United States. It would be taken for what it would be: sign and symptom of a nation's historical decline.
So lately I've been pondering how we got to this point. It's Obama vs McCain for President... if I'd said that last year I would be laughed at but here we are, and I'm starting to connect the dots, and the picture that's forming show me that someone's carefully orchestrated plans didn't go as they were supposed to.
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