Entries from March 2008 ↓

Justin and I continue our discussion on the fair tax idea…

Fair Tax Part 2 from Justin Bradshaw & Joel Van Brunt on Vimeo.

From the Daily Show….. 

Justin and I begin to discuss the fair tax concept and break it down.Fair Tax Part I from Justin Bradshaw & Joel Van Brunt on Vimeo.

Joel here-

To continue the debate on global warming and the proposed legislation to curtail its effects, I submit the following lecture given by professor Bob Carter.  This is in response to the discussion that Justin and I had on a previous post about the candidates voting records on environmental bills in congress.  For me, the most important points in this lecture are found in part 4 with the conclusions - I particularly found conclusions 4 and 5 the most applicable.  I welcome articulate and thoughtful comments and counter-arguments on the data and conclusions in the lecture.

Conclusions found in part 4 

1.  The assumption that prior to the industrial revolution the earth had a “stable” climate is simply wrong.

2. Climate has always changed, and always will.  There is nothing unusual about present-day rates of change.

3.  Atmospheric CO2 is neither a pollutant, nor the primary forcing agent for temperature change; rather, CO2 is a benefice for humankind.

4.  Attempting to stop climate change is an expensive act of utter futility.

5.  The only sensible thing to do about climate change is to prepare for it - in both directions. 

Parts 1 through 4 are in order below.  Each section is about 10 minutes. 

Justin and I continue to debate the Iraq War.  I make the mistake of saying seven score instead of four score when I make a point about democracy in America.

Iraq War Part III from Justin Bradshaw & Joel Van Brunt on Vimeo.

For all those who still maintain that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, I think this Pentagon sponsored study of 600,000 Iraqi documents finally puts to rest this ludicrous debate.

My favorite part which supports my previous claims of clearly ambiguous intelligence on Iraq. I’ve always maintained that the Bush Administration cherry-picked the intelligence they wanted to use to support their case… (in my book, lies of omission this big count as lies… and in Rumsfeld’s case, the lies are flat out!)

The Bush administration claimed such a relationship to support its arguments for invading Iraq, though the U.S. intelligence community had conflicting evidence on the issue.

Moreover, it also confirms that Saddam saw Bin Laden as COMPETITION!

… so we just wiped out one of Osama’s biggest competitors. Awesome.

justin

Our debate continues… Iraq Debate Part II from Justin Bradshaw & Joel Van Brunt on Vimeo.

I just read a well thought out post from a guy on Vox in Chicago who makes the points I’ve been making since her Super Tuesday #2 win… she doesn’t have a chance at winning this thing fair and square. Any further push by her campaign indicates either a profound denial of reality… or an even more profound lack of respect for the voters because if she wins this nomination because of the superdelegates at a brokered convention we might as well crown John McCain right now because the Democratic party will not be united and the Republicans will be (against her!)

I say all of this not because I don’t like Hillary. I do. She’d be a great leader… but she didn’t win this round. She should pack it up and live to fight another day.

justin

UPDATE: Much is going on in the news cycle about this very topic right now… Despite stories that show Obama has much better favorable/unfavorable poll numbers, Hillary keeps attacking Obama on the very same issues that McCain is likely to attack him on… which makes her seem more like him and slowly takes away the advantage the Democrats have over McCain.

Check this out: (from the New Republic article linked above)

Justin and Joel get a little feisty in this first installment of their debate on the Iraq War.  The Iraq War- Where do we go from here? from Justin Bradshaw & Joel Van Brunt on Vimeo.