State of the Union 2012 – Does the President have our back?

Tonight’s State of the Union address was the most hostile I’ve felt toward President Barack Obama.

Obama entered this speech on a sour note with Progressives and other constituents who value civil liberties. On December 31, he signed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act with its original language intact, including the clause that implies broader authority for the U.S. military to indefinitely detain alleged supporters of terrorism, regardless of citizenship status.

This amid the floundering of his latest major policy proposal, a jobs act that was stopped by his Republican opposition in Congress. Amid criticism of his administration’s decision to stop the construction of TransCanada’s Keystone oil pipeline and without a high-profile alternative energy success story to point to. And with the need to defend an embattled healthcare plan criticized for lifting the formerly-conservative approach of the individual insurance mandate, with no fabled public option to appeal to Obama’s original base.

Obama went into this speech with a lot to prove.

But apparently he didn’t feel like he had to prove it to me or voters like me who elected him in 2008. Obama’s base is no longer a group of idealists who want to see dramatic, necessary change happen across several aspects of this country. His base is now constituted by those who feel they have something to prove. Whether out of partisan loyalty or nationalism, the new base has one primary interest: saving face.

This is the President’s third State of the Union. And his approach is getting familiar. He will always start with his major success stories, which have recently centered on foreign policy. Today, Obama opened with the end of the Iraq war and the death of Osama bin Laden. This was, in itself, a smokescreen tactic. We do have Americans fighting in Iraq. They’re private contractors and they’re there to protect U.S. diplomats. And to say this is the first SOTU where a President can say we’re not being threatened by Osama bin Laden depends on that comic-book-villain mythology that has been fading slowly in the later half of the decade. If bin Laden were so monumentally important in the grand scheme of things, why are we still fighting a war in Afghanistan?

Two Laws that the Reddits Say will Usher in Armageddon [In the News]

There’s less than two weeks left in 2011 and, if all goes according to schedule, a little over a year before the collapse of modern civilization. Right on cue, the United States Congress is hastening America’s descent into tyrannical crapsack fallen Empire with two laws that could potentially infringe on our civil liberties and worse, fuck up the Internet. But some of us may not have noticed, because it’s Christmas and we’re trying to find the best deal on the iPad 2.

But you know who did notice? Reddit.

For the uninitiated, the Reddit community is like that one really annoying conspiracy theorist friend who “reads a lot” and looks at really weird porn. And he has it on very good authority that the Illuminati shadow government has implanted a tracking chip in all of our wrists. But also, they still bother with pesky laws and sham elections.

(To be fair, Reddit is actually a huge umbrella forum representing a variety of viewpoints and personalities. There’s just a running joke/observable phenomenon related to the “hive mind” that tends to be most visible in top posts and comments.)

Well, Reddit’s really up-in-arms about these bills that have been worming their way through Congress: SOPA and the NDAA.

The one that poses the most clear and present danger to the Redditor lifestyle is SOPA, which is Spanish for soup and also stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act.

SOPA is a bill with the expressed purposes of preventing copyrighted material from being pirated on the seas of the world wide web (there’s a Senate equivalent called the PROTECT IP Act which does many similar things and may get merged with it, but screw it, this is my first blog post in a while and I’m fatigued, DO YOUR OWN DAMN RESEARCH).

It was introduced by Representative Lamar Smith of Texas. This is what he looks like:

So, besides looking a little like Bill Gates, why does Representative Smith care about what happens on the Internet? Did he recently try to  make an honest profit from a video that was leaked on the Pirate Bay? Does his district contain a lot of families in the entertainment industry who are now facing home foreclosure because their independent films were distributed by the online equivalent of Somali machine-gun wielders?

Did the Movie and Television Lobby donate almost $60,000 to his latest campaign?

A more detailed view on the effects of September 11th [The Journal]

It caught me by surprise this morning when my friend told me that my “reader response” regarding the decade after September 11th was already on the Washington Post‘s website.

And my gut instinct wasn’t impending pride that my words would be on a national forum.

It was discomfort.

Not pictured: My logorrhea.

Obama set to propose a jobs plan, Republicans set to block it [Report and Reckon]

Report & Reckon is a regular feature in which Phil takes a top story, breaks it down, and proceeds to opine on the subject. “Report, Reckon & Reply” is too much of a mouthful, but it’s expected that you add your two cents in the comments.

Protestors outside prominent Representative Paul Ryan's office in at an event organized by the group Wisconsin Jobs Now. Via Flickr.

Can the U.S. Executive Branch really improve the jobs situation in America?

The American public certainly seems to think that the President Barack Obama is directly responsible for matters relating to unemployment, wage loss, and hiring rates. His most ardent critics blame the ailing economy on his inadequacy, but would react with new waves of hostility if he proposed any government-guided jobs programs.

This week, the President is set to release a new jobs plan that his opposition will inevitably tear apart. The question among those who might feasibly support an Obama-jobs-plan is: how far should it go?

The first step in the jobs plan has been nominating Princeton economist Alan Krueger, described as “center-left” by the Washington Post, as the head of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. But the elements of the upcoming plan have been kept quiet by administration officials, leaving political media outlets to speculate on what may be included. CBS News has listed the following as likely elements:

• an extension of the 2011 payroll tax credit (certain employees receiving paychecks get a 2% bump in pay)
  
• a proposed bank dedicated to financing infrastructure projects, such as highway and rail
  
• ratifying new free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea
• extending unemployment benefits – the U.S. unemployment rate is estimated at 9.1% by the Bureau of Labor Statistics
• tax-break incentives for companies to hire people, including veterans

All of these measures are contingent on approval by the divided Congress which includes the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. If this showdown follows the path of this summer’s caustic debt ceiling debate, the only guaranteed outcome of Obama’s jobs plan will be frustration and low approval ratings for both Congress and the President.

Before the proposal is even presented, it looks like the President is sure to catch fire. From both sides of the political spectrum.

The History of College [Veritas U]

Good to be back, blogosphere!

In honor of Phil the Pill finally obtaining that $40,000 piece of paper that says he gets to be considered for a position of employment, the inaugural post for the re-rebranded blog will be a retrospective at that coming-of-age factory that so many of us idolize and remember fondly: COLLEGE.

Those of us who are lucky enough to be raised by parents of a certain median income always had college dangling in front of us like a carrot during those excruciatingly confusing years of lower education. We arrived by different means. Some of us paid a lot for SAT books and were relieved to break 1000 (notice how it’s five years later and still nobody counts the Writing part?). Some of us were completely devoted to getting straight A’s, even if it meant standing outside our high school science teacher’s houses in the rain holding a boom box in desperation. Some of us smoked weed, but used somebody else’s urine for the drug test before every swim meet and got an athletic scholarship to Princeton. However we got there, we got there and we were proud.

Eat that Burrito or the Terrorists Win [Rant of the Moment]

The following is the column I turned in for Editorial Writing class today. I completed it after standing in line for two hours in front of Blacksburg’s new Chipotle and enjoying the taste of sweet, near-sustainable burrito. So Chipotle was on my mind, which led to “one of the biggest leaps in logic ever” according to my friend and classmate, Brodie.

CHIPOTLE AKBAR!

 

After bottoming out at the end of 2008 during the recent financial crisis, the stock of Chipotle (stock quote CMG) has steadily increased. My blog, PhilthePill.net, also began operation in December of 2008, its existence correlating with Chipotle’s success.  At the time of this writing, the stock has reached an all-time high, coinciding with a new increase in blog postings on Phil the Pill and the grand opening of the Chipotle in Blacksburg, Virginia, near the campus of Virginia Tech.

I could claim that the existence of my blog has been solely responsible for the addition of more Chipotles since 2008. Clearly, if we want more Chipotles to open and drive the inferior Moe’s out of business, I need to keep updating my blog. And if Chipotle growth slows down, that just means I’m not updating my blog enough.

This logical fallacy is familiar to most of us as “correlation does not imply causation” or its Latin-phrase counterpart, cum hoc ergo propter hoc or “with this, therefore because of this.”

5 Things to Learn from Joseph Stack [News commentary]

I’m hesitant to write my whole opinion on Joseph Stack. Mainly, because it’s probably offensive without enough basis to justify it. It’s pretty tempting to gloat to tax-hating conservatives about a white domestic terrorist. That said, in the aftermath of the plane crash, it has become apparent that there was a lot going on with Stack that wasn’t strictly partisan. But it seems strange to not mention this pretty major news story on a blog that moonlights as a news supplement, so…

Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.

Subject: Joseph Stack
Full name: Andrew Joseph Stack III
53-year-old domestic terrorist who flew a light aircraft (Piper Cherokee) into Building I of the Echelon office complex in Austin, Texas on February 18, 2010
The building housed an IRS office and other state and federal offices
Stack had posted a “tortured manifesto” on his business website detailing his personal history and anger at the IRS, government, organized religion, and corporatism
One other person was killed in the suicide attack — Vern Hunter, an IRS manager and Vietnam veteran. Thirteen other people were injured.
Stack was a software engineer and musician. He played bass for the amateur country band, the Billy Eli Band.
Stack was divorced and remarried. He had one stepdaughter. Before crashing the plane, Stack allegedly set fire to his Austin, Texas house.
Stack had a history of conflict with the IRS – allegedly losing out on $45,000 and 10 years of his life in failed attempts to find tax loopholes and contest tax code, according to his final statement. He was apparently audited twice.
Links:

“Texas Suicide Flyer Had Real Populist Grievances” – AlterNet
“Suicide flier described as “offbeat,” “brilliant” – Houston Chronicle
2010 Austin plane crash – Wikipedia
Amped Out album by the Bill Eli Band – LaLa
Joseph Stack’s final manifesto

So his whole story is kind of fascinating in that awful tragic kind of way. I’ll make very brief statements about Stack to avoid devolving into some leftist loon who uses this to decry the Tea Party hate-provoking (I’m sure I can find fodder for that later).

Health care – Write your Senators

Update: Hey, Reddit. Thanks for reading.

Your comments on this post have been a combination of suffocatingly cynical and understandingly skeptical. Now, at first I didn’t really expect to throw myself into this with as much effort as I’ve been pushing others to show, but I will say that part of me just wants to prove some people wrong now.

Our opinions should matter to our legislators. And I’m going to function under the assumption that they do.

Please keep commenting here with arguments for and against and efforts you’ve made to contact your senator or representative about this issue. If you’re interested in a meet-up on Capitol Hill, leave a comment to that effect and we’ll see if we can drum up support.

As you can see, the debate’s moved on past health care. The proposed plan itself is imperfect. But we’ve got to stop feeling powerless in the face of this political system. It’s not lost yet. Good luck with the fight.

Again, thanks for reading.

P.S. Come on, Digg, you’re missing the party.
—–

The following is the letter I will be sending Mark Warner and Jim Webb. Hopefully one of the aides who reads it will pass along the message that you should all be sending to your representatives.

If you fail us in healthcare, we will not be voting for you any longer. Your political career depends on this.

Help me spread the word and encourage other people to actively participate in taking back our government from special interests: spread the word on the social media sites and vote me up.

Digg or Upvote on Reddit.

I cannot stress how important I feel it is that we actually mobilize to make a plan happen. I expressed my disappointment with the proposed bill, but Congress isn’t looking to instill proper reforms — they’re looking to kill it, completely and stall for another few years.

I, for one, am tired of not having adequate health care for myself or my family. I want reforms and a public option of some sort and I want it now. We’ll improve on the system as we see where improvements are needed, but we’ll never know what we need to do if we don’t take the first step.

If you are tired of absurdly high premiums, inadequate coverage and being treated like a second-rate citizen by an HMO or a private insurer then WRITE YOUR SENATOR. They may not get to it this week, but when they get back from their vacation, they had DAMN better do their jobs and work on this bill to improve healthcare.

You live in a democracy. Exercise your rights.

Begin letter to Warner (also sending a version to Webb):

Dear Senator Warner,

My name is Phillip Murillas and this is my first time writing a letter to one of my elected representatives. I represent not only myself, but my family. My mother and my father are naturalized citizens from Colombia who have worked for over 20 years to see me and my teenage brother succeed in a country that we depend upon and, in turn, support. Without my parents’ realization of American promise, I, the son of immigrants, would not have made it to where I am today – a proud student at Virginia Tech since the fall of 2006.

Senator Warner, we supported you during your candidacy for the Senate, because we believed in the leadership you displayed as governor of Virginia, our home state for over 10 years. This is why we trust that you will listen to our voices as we join the millions of Americans calling for proper health care.

During this time of recession, my family finds itself vulnerable in this void that our elected officials in Congress have been unable to replace with a functional system. My parents are self-employed and, as you should be aware, find it very difficult to find suitable coverage for themselves, my brother, or myself, without employer-provided healthcare. The simple, inarguable fact is that the insurance premiums offered by the so-called free market would cripple my family economically and heap the stresses of claims denials, high deductibles, and limited coverage onto their existing struggles in these hard economic times.

We firmly believe that the healthcare reform bill that the Senate should be thoroughly discussing right now is not only long overdue, but a necessary step to improve our quality of life and economic prosperity. We acknowledge that it is by no means, perfect. But it introduces vital regulations, more competitive market strategies, and the promise of a public option that we could trust to provide the necessary coverage to feel safe and secure in our day-to-day lives.

Senator Warner, all across the country we are hearing citizens recall times when they spent thousands of dollars out of pocket for non-elective surgeries, broken bones, and basic medication. These are not the signs of a functional health care system. They represent a mockery of everything the United States stands for. Our health care system as it stands today restricts our pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. That is why we are, for the first time, addressing you directly. This may be one of the most important pieces of legislation you come across in your career as a public servant.

Senator Warner, my family and I wish to make it very clear that we will be tracking your support of this bill very closely, along with thousands of your other constituents in Virginia. We know that there are strong interest groups in Washington that do not support reforms or a public option to introduce a competitive factor and lower skyrocketing insurance premiums for ordinary Americans. We wish to remind you that we did not elect you to legislate at the behest of lobbyists and campaign contributors. Virginians expect you to do what is best for the citizens of the Commonwealth. We can think of no bill more demonstrative of proper priorities than the Affordable Health Choices Act.

We hope that your record will demonstrate a commitment to Americans’ health and prosperity. We expect you to fight for a public option for Americans who cannot afford private health insurance. We expect you to fight for government enforcement of fair practice in the health care industry. And we expect you to fight for competitive premium rates that provide customers with fair and extensive coverage.

We also know that you have a lot of potential as a public servant. Should you prove you have ordinary citizens’ interests at heart, we will support you in your future endeavors as we have supported you in the past. But again, we must be entirely clear that if you fail to fight for our rights, we will no longer support you as our representative or in any other campaign you may run. And neither will the majority of Virginians who need Congress to bring the change that we were promised.

We are waiting. And we are paying attention.

Regards.

World in turmoil: Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan

We’ll open with [fanfare] things the media is parroting that I don’t give a crap about and you probably shouldn’t really focus on either [fanfare].

This guy

Moving on.
——

The latest AP article on Iran:

Iranian authorities arrested 70 university professors who met with embattled opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, his Web site said Thursday, but he vowed to persevere with his election challenge despite the apparent attempt to isolate him from his supporters.

Since Saturday, demonstrators challenging the election results have found themselves increasingly struggling under a blanket crackdown by government authorities.

State media reported Thursday that in addition to the 17 protesters killed in the recent unrest, eight members of the pro-government Basij militia were killed and dozens more wounded by weapons and knives. The reports could not be independently verified.

Stay strong, Iran.
—–

In other news, what the hell, North Korea?!?!?!

North Korea threatened Wednesday to wipe the United States off the map as Washington and its allies watched for signs the regime will launch a series of missiles in the coming days.”If the U.S. imperialists start another war, the army and people of Korea will … wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all,” the official Korean Central News Agency said.

A senior South Korean government official said the no-sail ban is believed connected to North Korean plans to fire short- or mid-range missiles. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.

U.S. defense and counterproliferation officials in Washington said they also expected the North to launch short- to medium-range missiles. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

South Korea will expedite the introduction of high-tech unmanned aerial surveillance systems and “bunker-buster” bombs in response to North Korea’s provocations, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper said, citing unidentified ruling party members.

Meanwhile, a flurry of diplomatic efforts were under way to try getting North Korea to return to disarmament talks.

Russia‘s top nuclear envoy, Alexei Borodavkin, said after meeting with his South Korean counterpart that Moscow is open to other formats for discussion since Pyongyang has pulled out of formal six-nation negotiations.

In Beijing, top U.S. and Chinese defense officials also discussed North Korea. U.S. Defense Undersecretary Michele Flournoy was heading next to Tokyo and Seoul for talks.

South Korea has proposed high-level “consultations” to discuss North Korea with the U.S., Russia, China and Japan.

I need a foreign government expert here. What is North Korea trying to accomplish? It can’t hope to go head to head against the United States in a war. So is the leadership legitimately crazy? Seriously, I thought North Korea stopped being relevant after Kim Jong Il was turned into a puppet and laughed at by all America.

Things are inevitabrey going to change! God damn it, open your ****ing ears!

Seriously, at this point I worry more about innocent North Koreans who are going to get caught in the unholy wrath of the U.S. and its allies if they launch a missile. So, please, North Korea…calm the hell down.

And to round out our eye on international issues, the Pakistani government is calling for an end to United States drone missile attacks.

ISLAMABAD – President Barack Obama’s national security adviser reiterated the United States’ strong support for Pakistan in its battle with Taliban militants during talks with senior Pakistani leaders on Thursday.

Islamabad, meanwhile, called for an end to U.S. missile attacks on its soil, two days after a suspected drone strike killed 80 people in the country’s northwest.

The Obama administration has made the region a focus of its foreign policy, and is deploying an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan in an attempt to tame a growing Taliban insurgency there. Pakistan shares a long and porous border with Afghanistan and has its own problems with militants, and Washington views Islamabad’s role as crucial to returning stability to the region.

[Pakistani Prime Minister] Gilani, meanwhile, voiced concern that the beefed up U.S. presence in Afghanistan could send a new wave of Afghan refugees across the border, his office said in a statement.

Militant leaders have been targeted in dozens of strikes in the past two years from U.S. drones, high-tech, remote control planes used for both surveillance and to fire Hellfire missiles. The U.S. military concedes it uses drones in Pakistan, but never comments on the strikes.

Pakistan has loudly disapproved of the attacks because they involve the use of force by a foreign government on its soil and sometimes kill innocents and are highly unpopular among the Pakistani public.

No hard stats out there on how many Pakistani civlians have been killed by drone attacks. But that doesn’t change the fact that civilian casualties should be unacceptable. What are we fighting against anyway? Terrorists, right? You know…those guys who kill innocent people? Those people?

With each piece of news, I come closer to trying to find a way to protest this. At the very least, politicians should recognize that there are people who do not support mindless killing in the Middle East.
—-

Picture of the Day

Quote of the Day

“You can’t say that civilizations don’t advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.” – Will Rogers

The Mexican Threat?

Writing from iPod. Conversation with Sparky and Brau about international instability. Brau thinks Obama’s Iraq pullout plan sucks. I expressed worry about instability with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Sparky agreed that the Middle East situation is bad, but surprised me when he claimed Mexican drug cartels were the no. 2 threat to the US. Personally, while the Mexican security issue is bad, I am skeptical about the significance of the threat to us.

So, note to self: Do some research on the drug cartel problem south of the border and assess the “we’re ducked” situation (that’s what the iPod corrects “fucked” to and I like it).

If you know anything about the recent violence and instability in Mexico, enlighten me: what is going on? Should Americans do something about it? Is it one of the top threats to north american interests or will things eventually sort out?

A post on this next week. Perhaps on Tuesday.

In other news, two MCers have completed the sky on this ridiculously hard puzzle. iPod update – out.