Polisicks

Polls Show that Some People Don’t Like Michelle Obama/Don’t Know Who Cindy McCain is.

Hey kids! Ready to get drowned in some meaningless statistics???

According to an Associated Press-Yahoo! News poll released today, 30 percent sees Obama favorably while 35 percent see her unfavorably. On the Cindy McCain side, nearly six in 10, or 56 percent, said they know too little to say much about her — exceeding the 34 percent clueless about Obama. Half of Republicans say they don’t know McCain, while three in 10 Democrats say that about Obama.

Still here? You didn’t click onto something else? Well, than I haven’t done enough. Check this out:

Whites have an unfavorable view of Obama by 18 percentage points, while eight in 10 blacks like her. That is reminiscent of how Barack Obama fared in the Democratic primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In the AP-Yahoo! News poll, whites saw McCain positively by 17 points, while one in eight blacks like her.
Michelle Obama does better with unmarried people and college graduates but is viewed poorly by people age 65 and up. McCain is seen more favorably by older people, married people and the more affluent, but is less well received by singles.

Still here? Wow, you are a glutton for punishment. Ok, here are some quotes:

“Cindy seems like she’s laid back and not trying to run her husband,” said Linda Kaiser, 60, a Republican and church secretary from Clairton, Pa. “It’s nice to have a brain, but they should let their husband be president.”

“(Michelle Obama’s) African American, she’s highly articulate, she’s young and she seems highly devoted to her husband and her family,” said Edythe Friley, 61, a retired teacher from Detroit. “She serves as a role model. There’s not a parent on planet Earth who wouldn’t want a daughter like this.”

What does all of this show? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. This is why I inch closer and closer to the idea that anyone who would choose to run for president is both insane and delusional. Imagine being either one of the two candidates and their wives and reading this study. Wouldn’t you be a combination of confused/angry/laughing at how single folks like you, married folks don’t, whites do, blacks don’t? Or listening to old women comment on you as if they have had several hours to get to know you?

You know I thought that the handwriting thing I did a while back was moronic news filler, but I now know that polls about who will be the possible first lady is the CLANG sound in the test of strength meter that is media.

The Political failure of the Second Amendment

Chicago’s Mayor called  it “very frightening” and other big city America Mayors likely agreed with the sentiment. That reaction is coming follow the Supreme Court decision in the case of D.C. v. Heller this week. Reaction from those that like their guns seems to be something along the lines of CELEBRATION and how it was a great day for America when this single Supreme Court opinion came down.

The Supreme Court decision was not a great day for America. Not because the Court got the case wrong, but because of how little impact the decision will actually have on our country. Is it a great day for people, personally, in DC who want to have a handgun, but couldn’t? Sure. Is it a meaningful day for those around the country who do have handguns and don’t want to see them banned? Yeah, why not. But, for America as a whole?

Not a chance.

But, it does mean that Politicians like Daley have every right to be frightened by the decision as it means one thing: More work. For years, politicians in big cities blame gun violence on gun control, but it is hard to say that the two are so intertwined as to rest comfortably only on one outcome. D.C. had their gun ban since 1976 and that didn’t exactly do much to stop gun violence in the city. Yet, for some reason politicians would point to a ban as a cure, when it is anything but.

To solve gun violence in cities, you can’t rest on one type of ban, one type of regulation or one Supreme Court case.

I’m tired of politicians talking to me about gun control being the solution to the problems that tear apart American cities. I’m not attempting to make an argument that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. If all the rules were based on my opinions, our gun control would be much more stringent, but at the same time, that would not be the end of the story. Gun control is a polarizing issue, but in reality, is something much more complex. Constantly we want to break it down to either give me the guns or get rid of the guns. We misconstrue information all the time to make our point, and maybe we do that a little bit more when it comes to guns.

The folks that just won the Heller case on behalf of all gun supporters are a good example of this. Taken from the DCGunCase.com FAQ about whether the DC Gun Ban has worked:

Absolutely not. In 1976, the year that Washington’s unconstitutional gun ban went into effect, the city experienced 26.8 homicides, and 1,481.3 violent crimes, per 100,000 inhabitants. The crime rate skyrocketed since then. In 12 of the years between 1980 and 1997, including all nine years from 1989 through 1997, the violent crime rate in the District exceeded 2,000 per 100,000 inhabitants, reaching a high of 2,921.8 in 1993. The high point represented a 97% increase in violent crime, seventeen years after citizens were forbidden from defending themselves with firearms. Moreover, the murder rate climbed as high as 80.6 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1991 – triple the pre-ban levels. As of 2005, the last year for which we have statistics, the murder rate has yet to decline to pre-ban levels.

I understand the concept of twisting reality to make your argument, but when we get this irresponsible with our persuasion a line needs to be found somewhere. During the 1980s and 1990s Homicide rates soared at levels that no gun control laws could handle. If you want to argue that a ban won’t work, you need to at least find cities that have implemented handgun bans after this culture change. But, even still, an argument about the relevance of a flat handgun ban misses the point.

Politicians continue to fail in their gun control measures because we address the issue with broad strokes or by turning away from the problems. There will still be gun violence in D.C., a few more innocent people might find their way into a grave and a few gangbangers might have a couple extra bucks in their pocket because they were able to steal their handgun from a D.C. home rather than buy it from some kid who cracked a home in Baltimore.

This decision means nothing without work. Unfortunately, politicians tend to avoid that concept. They enjoy talking about work and this week we heard from both sides of the aisle. One claiming victory, the other in fright. That’s not how it should be. The decision on the Second Amendment now allows for reasonable measures involving guns. Reasonable measures that fit with this decision are not easy to come about, and that’s the problem we’re left with today. It leads to one inescapable reality: things stay the same.

In a few months time, maybe a year, we’ll be listening to one side talk about how high the murder rate in D.C. is. We’ll hear the other side talking about how those people can defend themselves. In the end, it all misses the point. There is a middle ground there and it might be too hard to obtain at this point.  The middle ground involves fighting the core problems that lead to gun violence. Yeah, not so easy. As well, it’s a battle that simply has never been fought at a National Level since before Ronald Reagan’s Presidency.

And, so, the Second Amendment fails no matter how you look at it. Until we see the Second Amendment in a way in which we stop talking about militias and self-defense and start talking about how it relates to our current society the politics of gun control will remain a failure.

McCain Says “Only World War 3” Would Revive the Draft

In a victory for the poor, recently incarcerated and directionless stoners, John McCain pretty much came out and said that there will be no draft revived for the never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (remember, there are two wars going on, after all)

Asked about that possibility by a potential voter in Florida during a telephone “town hall meeting,” McCain said: “I don’t know what would make a draft happen unless we were in an all-out World War III.”

This is good, because what we’re in right now is more of a “Vietnam” than a “World War”. And McCain should know of this, as he was in Vietnam. Regardless, two points for the Hills watcher (remember he said he was a fan after Heidi threw her vote to him), as McCain is now on record as saying “I do not believe the draft is even practicable or desirable,”.

Double Bag it in MA - Teen Pregnancy Explodes in Gloucester High.

Right now in Gloucester, MA 17 girls in the local high school are pregnant, making the land up in the northeast very very fertile or the girls up there make poor decisions.

Now don’t get shook by this first line, as this story will get much much more interesting in a few seconds.

Administrators at the school couldn’t figure out how the hell this is happening. Was it movies? (Juno and Knocked Up have inspired us all!!!) Was it the fact that the recent dearth in finding jobs in the local fishing industry made divorce so high? That seems stretching it, but school superintendent Christopher Farmer says that “Families are broken. Many of our young people are growing up directionless.”

How about this for a reason: what if the girls formed a secret pact in which every one would get pregnant and they all would raise the kids together! Yes, this insane line of thinking is what the administration has found out after questioning some of the girls. And since it takes a village to raise a child, I guess the blame should be placed in Hillary Clinton.

“Some girls seemed more upset when they weren’t pregnant than when they were,” remarked principal Joe Sullivan. “We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy.”

Wow.

Apparently most of the girls reacted with high five’s, already planning baby showers when they got the news. What about the parents you say? Some of them were equally as psyched.

When recently graduated student Amanda Ireland became pregnant as a freshman, she would constantly have girls come up to her in school, (the school is very accommodating to this situation - strollers roam the halls alongside students) jealous as all hell over her new situation.

“They’re so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally,” Ireland says. “I try to explain it’s hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m.”

So at this point you’re probably a little shocked, or disgusted, or maybe even confused at how the hell all this is going on. Well, here’s the answer: Gloucester is a highly Catholic community, and until recently a girl had to travel 20 miles (!) to get to the nearest women’s health clinic. As a result of this baby boom, the town is now looking into contraceptives as a way to not have have every teen in the area pregnant.

Lack of Oil Ships Makes New Offshore Drilling Locals Difficult.

In response to the fact that the average American needs to rob folks to get enough money for gas, President Bush wishes to repeal a ban on drilling off most of the coast of the United States. But the issue is of course, that you can’t really drill offshore when THERE ARE NO BOATS TO DO IT.

A global shortage of drill-ships has created a critical bottleneck, frustrating energy company executives and constraining their ability to exploit known reserves or find new ones. Slow growth in oil supplies, at a time of soaring demand, has been a major factor in the spike of oil and gasoline prices.

Demand is so high that shipbuilders, the biggest of whom are in Asia, have raised prices since last year by as much as $100 million a vessel to about half a billion dollars.

“The crunch on rigs is everywhere,” said Alberto Guimaraes, a senior executive at Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company that has discovered some of the most promising offshore oil but has been unable to get at it.

“Almost 100 percent of the oil companies are constrained in their investment program because there is no rig available,” he said.

As a result of all of this the cost to drill is about $600,000 a day, compared with $150,000 a day in 2002.

So at what point do we start looking into alternative energy? Like seriously - in any other business if the materials you need to make your product get expensive, you either get cheaper materials or HEY! decide to use something else that is different but creates the same results. It happens everywhere and I get the feeling that the only reason it doesn’t happen here is out of either greed by the companies or a severe lack of new school thinking.

“Pro-Life” Pharmacy Refuses to Sell Contraceptives.

“Pro Life” pharmacy DMC, opening in Washington this summer is another in a growing trend of drugstores eschewing any and all contraceptives in favor of promoting what they call a “right of conscience”. The DMC Pharmacy in particular will be opening in a strip mall featuring a Ruby Tuesdays, a Papa John’s and a Kmart, which means anyone who is in the midst of a booze/fried food/stretch pants binge will have to look elsewhere before they decide to hook up with their new friend. Obviously, some people love this, and others not so much.

“The United States was founded on the idea that people act on their conscience — that they have a sense of right and wrong and do what they think is right and moral,” said Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel at the Thomas More Society, a Chicago public-interest law firm that is defending a pharmacist who was fined and reprimanded for refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control pills. “Every pharmacist has the right to do the same thing,” Brejcha said.

Marcia Greenberger of Washington advocacy group the National Women’s law Center says otherwise:

“Contraception is essential for women’s health. A pharmacy like this is walling off an essential part of health care. That could endanger women’s health.”

The issue here really is the fact that what would be the line between freedom of expression and belief and the responsibility of running a pharmacy that provides a service to the public. Whenever we go out into the world, we are always confronted with things we disagree with. What makes us all big boys and girls is the ability to see something and know intuitively that it has a right to exist beyond our opinions. Unfortunetly though, many have an idealistic view that makes them think that if everything were just how they live, it would be perfect.

So remember, if you are in this area and just want to have some lessened- risk sex by using protection to avoid STD’s or unwanted pregnancy, well get yourself to a 7-11, or something.

Adviser says McCain Backs Bush Wiretaps - Probably not the Best Thing To Say.

In an election in which Republican nominee John McCain must distance himself from the Bush administration while also not offending the party, his advisors are not exactly executing this to fruition.

????????
In a letter posted online by National Review this week, McCain adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance.

Mr. McCain believes that “neither the administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the A.C.L.U. and trial lawyers, understand were constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin wrote.

Soooooo. Hmmmmn. Lots of witty things to say on this one. Well, fuck it, let’s not be witty this time. It’s probably not the greatest idea for the current nominee to have someone who isn’t him go off and start saying scandalous shit like this, regardless if McCain does agree with what is said. I mean, at the very least spin it a LITTLE BIT. Here’s an example:

“Mr. McCain is very committed and passionate in the prevention of a terrorist attack like what occurred on September 11. Because of this, Mr. McCain must explore various techniques and strategies to monitor and prevent anyone who is suspected of carrying out another attack on America.”

See, I answered everything while also saying nothing. I hit up the “culture of fear”, I name dropped 9/11 and also the catch phrase “Attack on America” while neither confirming or denying my support of wiretapping. Sure, none of you smart Polisicks readers fall for this bullshit, but plenty do, and more importantly more people hear this and then forget about the issue. Man, I am wasted as a blogger - I need to become a political advisor.

AP Tally Shows Obama Clinches Nom.

Barrack Obama has supposedly clinched the Democratic Nomination today, according to an Associated Press tally of convention delegates. Now, nothing is official (in fact I am aboard the Polisicks news copter, just waiting to take off and circle the area where he will speak), but we can probably safely say that it is in the bag, or whatever catchphrases you would like to use.

Obama’s win comes from a seemingly 35 year battle against Hillary Clinton in which it felt more like a slow death than a life-filled political battle. There have been a few reports that Clinton will concede tonight, but then further reports come out that report that she will not give up yet. So, really it’s far too early to tell, and Hillary Clinton has become the houseguest that refuses to leave.

Anyways, enough about her – now the nation has to choose between Obama or McCain. A young, African American man vs. an old white man. Young vs. old, black vs. white, old school vs. new school – IT’S A BATTLE FOR THE AGES. Now all someone has to do is wake McCain up and tell him he’s finally got an opponent.

Fox News In A Nutshell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjYpkvcmog0

Bush Starts Raising Money/Gives Support for McCain – Probably not Good For McCain.

So if you were the Republican candidate, and the sitting President is a Republican with a really low approval rating, you’d probably want to distance yourself from him, right? Well John McCain’s got an issue, and it’s George Bush.

After giving McCain his endorsement (you can see in the above picture just how happy McCain is about this) Bush has started to throw a few private fundraisers to help raise cash for the McCain campaign. Problem though, is that the two men don’t really see eye to eye, and having George Bush endorse you at this point in his presidency is like having a woman with multiple STD’s telling random woman how good you are in bed.

From the AP: “Bush’s low approval ratings have raised questions about whether he will help or hurt McCain, especially as the Democratic candidates have argued that a McCain administration would amount to a third Bush term. In the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll last month, 28 percent approved of the job Bush is doing, his lowest rating ever in the survey.”

So I guess what John McCain needs to know is how to cordially accept some cash from Bush without having to make friends with him. My idea is as follows: accept the money and when it is in your hands then talk shit behind their backs. If they ask for it back, well you just say “what money? HOW DARE YOU!”