Study: Jokes Target McCain More Than Obama

Morning Edition, August 26, 2008· Late-night talk show hosts are having a field day with the presidential candidates.

http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=93970729&m=93970697

A recent study finds McCain is the butt of more jokes than Obama (but about even with Clinton apparently). The big winner, not surprisingly, is W--by far the most devastatingly comical president in US history.

Shift in battle over voter IDs

Missouri measure fuels debate over illegal immigration, disenfranchisement

By Ian Urbina

The New York Times

updated 4:43 a.m. ET, Mon., May. 12, 2008

The battle over voting rights will expand this week as lawmakers in Missouri are expected to support a proposed constitutional amendment to enable election officials to require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote.

The measure would allow far more rigorous demands than the voter ID requirement recently upheld by the Supreme Court, in which voters had to prove their identity with a government-issued card.

Sponsors of the amendment — which requires the approval of voters to go into effect, possibly in an August referendum — say it is part of an effort to prevent illegal immigrants from affecting the political process. Critics say the measure could lead to the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of legal residents who would find it difficult to prove their citizenship.

Voting experts say the Missouri amendment represents the next logical step for those who have supported stronger voter ID requirements and the next battleground in how elections are conducted. Similar measures requiring proof of citizenship are being considered in at least 19 state legislatures. Bills in Florida, Kansas, Oklahoma and South Carolina have strong support. But only in Missouri does the requirement have a chance of taking effect before the presidential election.

In Arizona, the only state that requires proof of citizenship to register to vote, more than 38,000 voter registration applications have been thrown out since the state adopted its measure in 2004. That number was included in election data obtained through a lawsuit filed by voting rights advocates and provided to The New York Times. More than 70 percent of those registrations came from people who stated under oath that they were born in the United States, the data showed.

Already, 25 states, including Missouri, require some form of identification at the polls. Seven of those states require or can request photo ID. More states may soon decide to require photo ID now that the Supreme Court has upheld the practice. Democrats have already criticized these requirements as implicitly intended to keep lower-income voters from the polls, and are likely to fight even more fiercely now that the requirements are expanding to include immigration status.

“Three forces are converging on the issue: security, immigration and election verification,” said Dr. Robert A. Pastor, co-director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University in Washington. This convergence, he said, partly explains why such measures are likely to become more popular and why they will make election administration, which is already a highly partisan issue, even more heated and litigious.

The Missouri secretary of state, Robin Carnahan, a Democrat who opposes the measure, estimated that it could disenfranchise up to 240,000 registered voters who would be unable to prove their citizenship.

In most of the states that require identification, voters can use utility bills, paychecks, driver’s licenses or student or military ID cards to prove their identity. In the Democratic primary election last week in Indiana, several nuns were denied ballots because they lacked the required photo IDs.

Measures requiring proof of citizenship raise the bar higher because they offer fewer options for documentation. In most cases, aspiring voters would have to produce an original birth certificate, naturalization papers or a passport. Arizona and Missouri, along with some other states, now show whether a driver is a citizen on the face of a driver’s license, and within a few years all states will be required by the federal government to restrict licenses to legal residents.

Critics say that when this level of documentation is applied to voting, it becomes more difficult for the poor, disabled, elderly and minorities to participate in the political process.

Excerpted from MSNBC.com

This article, Voter ID Battle Shifts to Proof of Citizenship, first appeared in Monday editions of The New York Times.

I am really uncomfortable with requiring documentation to vote in general because it does work against the poor, elderly, and disabled--e.g. those people who are less likely to have a driver's license or other type of state ID. This, however, is going over the edge in big way. First, the whole ID thing bugs me because there is no Federally-issued ID card nor a law that requires anyone to have one. Until that is the case, requiring people to show state or federal ID for voting is more than a little troubling. I am fine with IDs to verify who someone is, but the polling places would need to accept any type of ID if they are going to be fair and just about whole thing. Second, and what is probably a larger problem, is that the creation and enforcement of these laws is and would be at the state level, leaving huge discrepancies from state to state--in NC one might need only a utility bill while in Missouri one might be required to show a passport or birth certificate?

I still don't see why election are a state issue and not a federal issue--this is the whole reason that Jim Crow laws were so successful in disenfranchising Black voters for so long. In federal elections, a federal election body should monitor and enforce voting regulations, including acceptable identification, regulations about which parties get on the ballot, and how votes are counted.

U.S. gas: So cheap it hurts

By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer

Last Updated: May 1, 2008: 12:18 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Despite daily headlines bemoaning record gas prices, the U.S. is actually one of the cheaper places to fill up in the world.

Out of 155 countries surveyed, U.S. gas prices were the 45th cheapest, according to a recent study from AIRINC, a research firm that tracks cost of living data.

The difference is staggering. As of late March, U.S. gas prices averaged $3.45 a gallon. That compares to over $8 a gallon across much of Europe, $12.03 in Aruba and $18.42 in Sierra Leone.

The U.S. has always fought to keep gas prices low, and the current debate among presidential candidates on how to keep them that way has been fierce.

But those cheap gas prices - which Americans have gotten used to - mean they feel price spikes like the ones we're experiencing now more acutely than citizens from other nations which have had historically more expensive fuel.

Cheap gas prices have also lulled Americans into a cycle of buying bigger cars and bigger houses further away from their work - leaving them more exposed to rising prices, some experts say.

Price comparisons are not all created equal. Comparing gas prices across nations is always difficult. For starters, the AIRINC numbers don't take into account different salaries in different countries, or the different exchange rates. The dollar has lost considerable ground to the euro recently. Because oil is priced in dollars, rising oil prices aren't as hard on people paying with currencies which are stronger than the dollar, as they can essentially buy more oil with their money as the dollar falls in value.

And then there's the varying distances people drive, the public transportation options available, and the different services people get in exchange for high gas prices. For example, Europe's stronger social safety net, including cheaper health care and higher education, is paid for partly through gas taxes.

Gas price: It's all about government policy. Gasoline costs roughly the same to make no matter where in the world it's produced, according to John Felmy, chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute. The difference in retail costs, he said, is that some governments subsidize gas while others tax it heavily.

In many oil producing nations gas is absurdly cheap. In Venezuela it's 12 cents a gallon. In Saudi Arabia it's 45.

The governments there forego the money from selling that oil on the open market - instead using the money to make their people happy and encourage their nations' development.

Subsidies, many analysts say, are encouraging rampant demand in these countries, pushing up the price of oil worldwide.

In the U.S., the federal tax on gas is about 18 cents a gallon, pretty low by international standards.

But those relatively low gas taxes make it hard now for Americans to deal with gas prices that have risen from around $1 to over $3 a gallon in the last seven years.

"Everybody pays more, but the U.S. pays more in absolute terms," said Lee Shipper, a visiting scholar at the University of California Berkeley's Transportation Center. If you're already paying $4 in taxes, said Schipper, then an extra $2 a gallon isn't that big of a deal.

Revenues from Europe's high gas taxes are used to fund a variety of things. One thing they have built is better public transportation, said Peter Tertzakian, chief energy economist at ARC Financial, a Calgary-based private equity firm.

They gave people an alternative to driving, something we don't have in North America," said Tertzakian.

Low fuel taxes and prices sprung out of a national love for mobility going back generations, said Robert Lang, director of the urban planning think tank Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech.

In fact, the U.S. could not have had the western expansion it did without the cheap mobility railroads and horse carriages afforded long before it became an auto-obsessed culture, said Lang.

"You couldn't have Manifest Destiny unless you could move," he said.

The automobile, and its promise of personal mobility, only deepened the nation's love affair with travel.

"Nobody sang 'She'll have fun fun fun until her daddy takes the tokens away,'" said Lang. 'It's totally romanticized."

Gas consumption Europe vs. U.S. There is some evidence Europe's high gas taxes have capped its oil consumption.

Oil use in the United Kingdom has basically stayed flat from 1980 to now, while in France it's dropped 17%, according to figures from the Energy Information Administration.

In the U.S., meanwhile, oil use is up 21% over the same period, although the country has added more people and seen its economy grow slightly faster.

Americans have taken advantage of cheap gas prices to do other things - like buy bigger cars and bigger houses further away from city centers, said Schipper.

On a per capita basis, Americans use three times more oil than Europeans, he said. That means Americans are more exposed to rising gas prices than their counterparts across the Atlantic.

"Five-thousand square feet in the suburbs, that's much rarer in Europe," said Schipper, referring to big homes. "We dug our hole."

Bogged down

Most expensive places to buy gas

Rank Country Price/gal 1. Sierra Leone $18.42 2. Aruba $12.03 3. Bosnia-Herzegovina $10.86 4. Eritrea $9.58 5. Norway $8.73 6. United Kingdom $8.38 7. Netherlands $8.37 8. Monaco $8.31 9. Iceland $8.28 10. Belgium $8.22 111. United States $3.45

Cruisin'

Where gasoline is cheapest

Rank Country Price/gal 1. Venezuela 12 cents 2. Iran 40 cents 3. Saudi Arabia 45 cents 4. Libya 50 cents 5. Swaziland 54 cents 6. Qatar 73 cents 7. Bahrain 81 cents 8. Egypt 89 cents 9. Kuwait 90 cents 10. Seychelles 98 cents 45. United States $3.45 155 countries surveyed between March 17 and April 1, 2008. Prices not adjusted for cost of living or exchange rates. Correction: A previous version of this chart showed Russia as the 8th cheapest country to buy gas. Russia is the 38th cheapest.

Just a little perspective...and an explanation. Gas prices can't stay low forever, and lowering the federal gas tax isn't going to fix a damn thing. And look were gas is the cheapest. I wonder how many Americans would trade the right to vote for gas that cost less than a dollar....hmmm. And all this makes me wonder what the Hell we are all going to do when gas here is the same price it is now in Belgium.

Candidates and the space race...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- One issue the presidential candidates are not saying much about is space exploration. But some scientists, military experts and intelligence analysts say the next president may well determine whether America keeps an edge in space.

Last year, the United States managed 16 space launches; Russia had 22; China blasted off 10. China's exploding economy is paying for the education of hundreds of thousands of engineers each year, they are acquiring less space technology from other nations and developing more of their own, and they appear committed to dominating the heavens.

Their space program is still behind, says Robert Zubring, one of America's strongest proponents for Mars travel, but it is rocketing.

"And we're standing still. If we continue to stand still, by the middle of the next decade, their space program will be superior to ours and they'll be moving on to the moon and Mars, while we're ... looking back on our former greatness," he said. Watch more on the space race »Just in November, a Chinese robotic spacecraft circled the moon, capturing 3-D images. Chinese scientists talk about mining the lunar surface for possible nuclear energy resources that are plentiful there but rare on Earth.

Mars is a real target for future travel.

And remember when the Chinese shot down that weather satellite? Military experts do. After all, American troop movements, bomb targeting, intelligence, banking and communications systems now rely on eyes in the sky.

"They're making a point, absolutely. ... They were demonstrating a capability not only to themselves but to the rest of the world that they're a power of reckoning in the use ... in the dominance ... of space," retired U.S. Army Gen. David Grange said.

All three major presidential candidates -- Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain -- say space is important, but none is strongly talking about a timeline for the moon or Mars. And certainly, there are other pressing issues: the war and the economy.

But there is genuine and growing fear among some scientists that if space does not become a higher priority, the Chinese program will be on par with America's by the end of the next president's second term. Then, it will be a real race to Mars even if we want to join in.

Just between you and me, if either candidate had the testicular (or ovarian?) fortitude to say "Yes, I will make it our goal to out a manned mission on Mars within the next 10 years", they would seel my vote outright. Nuts to healthcare, the economy, and Iraq! Earth is old hat! Let's freakin' get back into the business of doing cool stuff, and go to Mars already, dammit!

Democratic Debate on 2-26-07

Just in case some one wants to watch last night's Democratic debate, here it is in the entirety:

Notes on the Primaries

Well, if the Republicans are looking for the new Reagan it looks like McCain has it. He speaks now like an actor, damning America's "enemies" in vague and abstract terms, speaking out against the liberals who promote diplomacy and compromise as misguided--but maybe well-intentioned--fools that would ruin the country, and claiming that he has been reluctantly chosen by history as a humble leader void of ambition and self-interest. And on the domestic front, he of course wants people to get up and help themselves rather than allow government to help benefit the disadvantaged--big government will ruin the country and never helped anyone. Sounds like Reagan to me. So, I guess if people liked Reagan, they should support McCain. I for one thought history had shown Reagan's policies to accomplish bloating the pockets of the rich and driving the country into recession (let alone setting back AIDs research, sponsoring repressive regimes in the developing world, and further stratifying the nation economically). Ugh...that speech was painful both in its false sentiment and hollow in its message. I am even more worried about this since I am increasingly coming to think that the Republicans will likely win. The Democrats will eat themselves (and for some good reasons), leaving the Republicans to waltz in and set up shop for another 4 years. I guess the one upside is that things can't get any worse....right?

The Dream is Over...Again.

Formal announcement expected Friday

The Associated Press

updated 5:30 p.m. ET, Thurs., Jan. 24, 2008

CLEVELAND - Democrat Dennis Kucinich is abandoning his second, long-shot bid for the White House as he faces a tough fight to hold onto his other job - U.S. congressman.

In an interview with Cleveland's Plain Dealer, the six-term House member said he was quitting the race and would make a formal announcement on Friday.

"I will be announcing that I'm transiting out of the presidential campaign," Kucinich said. "I'm making that announcement tomorrow about a new direction."

Kucinich has received little support in his presidential bid; he got 1 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary and was shut out in the Iowa caucuses although he has a devoted following.

Kucinich, 61, is facing four challengers in the Democratic congressional primary March 4, and earlier this week he made an urgent appeal on his Web site for funds for his re-election. Rival Joe Cimperman has been critical of Kucinich for focusing too much time outside of his district while campaigning for president.

His decision comes a month after his youngest brother, Perry Kucinich, was found dead.

Kucinich said he will not endorse another Democrat in the primary.

Kucinich brought the same sense of idealism to his second run for president as he did in his first bid. He said he was entering the race again because the Democratic Party wasn't pushing hard enough to end the Iraq war.

Once dubbed the "boy mayor" of Cleveland, he made an unpopular decision to refuse to sell a publicly owned utility that pushed the city into default and drove him from office.

After the city's financial troubles, the mayor faced death threats, and was forced to wear a bulletproof vest when he threw out the first ball at a Cleveland Indians game. He barely survived a recall vote.

But he lost his bid for re-election as mayor of Cleveland in 1978 to Republican George Voinovich, who went on to become governor and then U.S. senator. His life and his political career were derailed. Kucinich spent more than a decade trying to get back into politics - traveling around the country and then working as a teacher, consultant and television news reporter.

In 1994, Kucinich was elected state senator and he then won a seat in Congress in 1996. His once unpopular stand against the sale of the municipal electric system was praised as courageous. In 1998, the Cleveland City Council issued him a commendation for having the foresight to refuse to sell it.

During his time in Congress, Kucinich has been one of the most outspoken liberals, opposing international trade agreements like the North America Free Trade Agreement and marching with protesters in Seattle during a meeting of the World Trade Organization.

As a presidential candidate, he has proposed a Department of Peace, backed universal health care and supported gay marriage. He also pushed for impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Kucinich married British citizen Elizabeth Harper, in 2005, ensuring his 2008 campaign would have one dramatic difference from his first campaign. Kucinich told New Hampshire audiences during the 2004 race that he was seeking a mate. Women then vied for a date with him during a contest arranged by a New Hampshire political Web site, but nothing romantic evolved from Kucinich's breakfast with the winner.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Dennis...Noooooooooooo! Say it's not so!