2012 State of the Union

I guess this come from living in another country, but I finally watched the 2012 State of the Union today, the enhanced version from YouTube and I have some of my own comments.  Hopefully I am not repeating things said by other pundits.  First of all I would like to say good job to whoever made the graphs for the White House, I love the way that graphs can show your point of view and be misleading at the same time.  I am sure the Republicans could take any of these graphs and rip them to shreds.  The president’s policy on education really should be a hands off approach.  We need to give kids school choice, it will force schools who want to keep their kids to do better and offer more, while forcing schools that don’t perform to close.  It’s rough and capitalistic, but what it does is force competence.  Before free public education students went to tutors, and the best tutors received the best fee.  School choice doesn’t even mean public vs private school.  Here in Bulgaria kids have the right to go to any high school they want, public, private, or special.  These schools compete for these students, and offer better programs because of it.  Now I don’t know how this would work in a country that is much larger, but there has to be a way to do this.  School choice is a way to keep the government out of our classroom and alow the best teachers to keep his/her job.  His environmental plan seems spot on for the future, allowing for job creation, and for an increase in clean energy.  Everything from college tuition to energy policy focused on job creation, which makes sense.  This is not a time in our nation’s history where people are looking for high-minded policy.  The average American is looking for relief and a job.  And the president’s push for insoursing is a great one, although his use of tax terminology was a bit misleading.  I find this year’s State of the Union to have many great ideas that I hope will be looked at, although I fear, as Obama said himself, that nothing will get done due to election politics.

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Twitter Censorship or Good Business

Image via CrunchBase

Ok, so I have been on Google+ this morning and everyone seems to be all abuzz about Twitter and their new “censorship” policy and I feel as a good political blogger and tweeter myself I should comment.  Twitter has become an institution, everyone has a Twitter account, and only 30% use them regularly.  We saw Twitter moralize people in Egypt and Iran during political struggles last year, so how could Twitter do this to its users.  It’s easy, it’s all about the Benjamins.  Twitter is a business, and as a business when China says that either the country should have the power to delete Tweets or your service will be blocked, then Twitter has a choice.  Twitter can be all high-minded and say “No” to China, or realize that there are over A BILLION people in China, and that having their site blocked there would not make good business sense. https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169222

Now Twitter did something very specific with this issue, and I give them credit.  Twitter only blocks the tweets in the specific country that has deemed that tweet illegal, and users are able to change which country their account is set in.  https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169220  As an example if China doesn’t like your tweet about the government then that tweet is only blocked from people who are in China, now your friend will see that tweet as grayed out and know that you tweeted something that China doesn’t like.  You can change your country in your account settings.  It is that simple.  I am surprised that a million users from “China” won’t just change their country settings.  I’m sure eventually the government in China will figure this loophole out, but until that day comes, that’s all you do to get around Twitter’s censorship.

Now I do agree what Twitter is doing is censorship and as an American I detest censorship, but I do believe that Twitter has done what they can to allow for freedom of speech and to give its users the ability to tweet.

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Social Networking Must

Hello Readers.  Every so often people who run blogs must remind their readers about other social media outlets that you may find information about their blog.

You may “Like” theSexyPolitico at the right of this screne or by following this link https://www.facebook.com/thesexypolitico

You may add theSexyPolitico on Google+ here

https://plus.google.com/b/108673935517489881442/

As always you can find thesexypolitico on Twitter

https://twitter.com/#!/thesexypolitico

And check out my tumblr which has all my ramblings together in one place

http://jacms85.tumblr.com/

also check out my pintrests

http://pinterest.com/jscott385/

Thank you for understanding, this article is a necessary evil

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Gingrich actually Winning?!?!

Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr

Nancy Pelosi was commented stating that, to summarize, that there is no way in hell that Newt Gingrich will ever be elected president.  Why is that, well here is a link to a 1280 page document discussing ethics violations by Mr Gingrich http://ethics.house.gov/committee-report/matter-representative-newt-gingrich .  Now we have a candidate with a shady political history and a shady personal history and he is the Republican front-runner, being called a reliable family man.  I have never heard more bull in my life.  I cannot understand where this is coming from.  Will someone help me?  Why is the Republican party throwing their mony away on a candidate that will never be elected, and is a unequivocal jerk?

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On to Florida…

Image via Wikipedia

The next primary is in Florida, the question is will Gingrich continue his rise?  I apologize readers that I have not kept myself abreast of the political situation for the last few days.  I know that politics are crazy and volatile and change minute by minute, and I have just been out of it the last few days.  Gingrich was able to pull a sweeping upset on Romney in South Carolina and many wonder if this will continue.  The man who has had 3 wives is trying to speak as a religious conservative value voter, and yet I don’t by that with a 3 dollar bill.  I guess you can see that I have a detest for a flip- flopping, adulterous, jerk who was fined $300,000 for ethics violations. Gingrich is playing himself off as a hero, an avenger who can talk the talk.  He is doing EXACTLY what Obama did, playing off of rhetoric, but will he win, the same way Obama did?  Obama was virtually an unknown entity who rose to power, Gingrich has had a stormy political career, along with a stormy love life.  What will actually win?

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Rand Paul Detained by TSA

 

Image via Wikipedia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJKjheVP7w4

Rand Paul, the younger and more articulate son of Republican nominee Ron Paul was detained today by TSA agents in the Nashville Airport.  Rand Paul believes that a glitch caused the alarm to go off, and when he asked if he could go through the monitor again he was denied, and refused the full body pat down.  Now Paul has different rights that other Americans don’t have.  Rand Paul, as a Congressman could have evoked his constitutional right to speedy travel to the capital to quote the Constitution “The Senators and Representatives…shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same….” according to Article I, Section 6.  Paul didn’t evoke this right, but he raised a question, that I think needs to be raised, why, ten years after the September 11th attacks are we still doing the same checks, the same random screenings, why don’t we have frequent travel programs, or other identifying programs that allow our identity to be known.  Why are three-year olds being subjected to pat downs and diapers being checked.  Why don’t we have frequent flyer programs.  Some things don’t make sense to me.

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SOPA, PIPA, Black Outs and Black March, Who do they really hurt?

I was trolling through Facebook this morning, darn habit I need to quit, but anyway I saw this image on a friend’s Facebook page.  If you read the whole thing it basically says that we should boycott purchasing any media as a protest to the media industry‘s support of SOPA and PIPA.  This leads me to a few questions about the SOPA/PIPA protests.  First if you don’t know what SOPA and PIPA are please read my previous post.  On January 18th many well-known sites blacked out their pages in protest to SOPA and PIPA, this included Wikipedia and our own WordPress.  These sites wanted to show the world what the internet would be like without the ability to load user content freely.  These protests I understand.  These protests were able to garner large amounts of national attention and get the politicians talking.  This form of protesting served its purpose.  Now how will Black March help.  The reason for these bills is because the music and movie industry believe that overseas file sharing companies like piratebay.com are stealing their profits.  All this protest would do is give more ammunition to these industries.  What we need to do as people who want a free internet, that allows one to exchange new ideas is to propose alternatives.  If these bills were about file sharing only, people wouldn’t be freaking out so badly, but these bills are about policing all content on the internet, and we need to show other solutions to this problem.  Solutions like Black March would only hurt the little guy, the author who is struggling to make it, the artist who is on the Indie Circuit, the film maker with a creative idea, and those are the people we want to support.

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SOPA and PIPA

These sound like the names of cartoon characters in my opinion but nope.  SOPA and PIPA are the two most hotly debated bills in Congress.  SOPA, “Stop Online Piracy Act,” is the House of Representative‘s version of the bill and PIPA, “Protect IP Act,” is the Senate’s version of the bill.  Now these bills are not identical but they have some similar characteristics.  Basically SOPA and PIPA are the federal government trying to protect copyright owner’s interest in their material.  These bills give legislative backing to law enforcement doing a number of things: blocking web content, blocking foreign IP addresses, and other things. There are a lot of critics and a lot of supporters of these bills, but the thing that bothers me most is the lack of oversight for these bills.  Who’s job is it to decide what is a dangerous website, who is maliciously stealing, and who isn’t.  These bills take away many creative outlets that are known and loved including many YouTube videos and websites like Reddit.  Now I, like most of my generation have dabbled a bit in downloading, and heck I write a blog.  I post links and photos that I try to give credit to, but sometimes I am forgetful.  Not malicious about it though.  I see these bills doing the opposite of their intended purpose.  Instead of protecting businesses they are going to stifle the creativity that America is known for and not allow it out.  We are a 21st century society, everything is online and available to see in minutes, the music and film industry should embrace the 21st century and move on, they have their own problems already.

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New Hampshire, the first Primary

The New Hampshire Primary is the first Primary that these candidates had to face.  Remember as I have stated in a previous post, a cacus is a collection of those who hold the same political beliefs who then choose among the candidates.  More in a town meeting type format.  A Primary is when there is an actual election.  According to 2012newhampshireprimary.com Mitt Romney won with 39.3% of the vote giving him 5 delegates at the convention, Ron Paul took second with 22.9% of the vote receiving 3 delegates, and Huntsman received 16.9% of the vote receiving 2 delegates.  Now a few, such as myself wonder if all of the negative press by Santorum and Gingrich actually hurt their chances because both only received 9.4% of the vote.  The major players in this election, although the media do not like to admit it, are Romney and Paul.  Both who stand by their principles and who do not sway towards popular opinion just because they think it will get them elected.  This proves this model wrong.  I am looking forward to South Carolina, that is an important state for Republicans.  I want to see what will happen next.

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Wow, these Candidates are going crazy

Cover via Amazon

I know that is quite the blanket statement but that’s the best way to describe what’s going on at the New Hampshire primary.  Just reading the comments that Gingrich especially making about Romney, there is NO WAY IN HECK, that Gingrich will ever win as a Republican.  Republicans are about free market economy, survival of the fittest, and about everyone having an equal ability to become rich.  Gingrich is making comments that better belong on an Occupy Wall Street poster.  There is no way that if Gingrich’s comments do help him, that he will make it past South Carolina.  He is feeding into popular support and is showing that he has no backbone as a candidate.  Santorum on the other hand clearly stated his support for the free market and has not been playing into the game of “Bash Mitt Romney.”  While these men are playing out the New Hampshire primaries like the movie Mean Girls what will happen to the Republican party and the election.  It’s only eleven months away.

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