Pangloss

A $50 Lesson I recently asked my friends' little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day. Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, 'If you were President what would be the first thing you would do? ' She replied, 'I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people.' Her parents beamed. 'Wow...what a worthy goal.' I told her, 'But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house.' She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, ' Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50? ' I said, 'Welcome to the Republican Party.' Her parents still aren't speaking to me.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/michelle-obama/4945638/Michelle-Obama-serves-lunch-at-Washington-soup-kitchen.html Michelle Obama served lunch at a soup kitchen for the homeless near the White House on Thursday. Here's a picture from the event: Question: If that guy is homeless, where does the cell phone company send his bills to? (Yeah I know, could be prepaid. I just thought it was funny.)

From Jay Leno: The first group of western tourists is spending spring break in Iraq this week. Apparently spring break in Iraq isn't much different from spring break in Florida -- half of the tourists got bombed, and the other half got stoned.

SNL had a couple of great political sketches this past week that I thought worth mentioning. This first one features Treasury Secretary Geithner setting aside $420 billion for... anyone who might know the answer to the economic crisis! The real fun begins when he starts taking calls, so wait for that. http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/geithner-cold-open/1056121/ This second one shows what happens when you make Barack Obama angry. He becomes... TheRock Obama! http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/the-rock-obama/1056126/

From tonight's Jay Leno: In the news, Governor Sarah Palin's daughter, Bristol Palin, was interviewed by Fox News. She said "A year ago I never would have thought that I'd become a mom, or that my mom was going to be chosen to become a vice presidential candidate". Oddly enough, both things happened because some guy failed to take the proper precautions!

I've started a sticky thread on the Politics board for political humor, and we will be moving politic jokes and humor over there. Please post any political humor in that thread from now on. Thanks. http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=37962

Use this thread to post jokes and humor related to politics and political events. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedHere's one to help us get started:

I don't think you'd be offering rewards for putting someone in a wheelchair if that person wasn't a Republican. But that's neither here nor there. My real concern is that one-sided political humor in a general-purpose humor thread has a direct impact on the atmosphere of acceptable commentary across this site. (Which is exactly why you do it.) I've suggested that we move political humor to a similar thread on the politics board, which I believe will not only solve that problem, but also make it easier to back-search for good political jokes.

You know, I like political humor as much as the next guy, but I have a problem with this thread being used to spread political messages. I don't think it's appropriate, I think it's underhanded, I think it's cowardly (hiding), and I think it undermines our credibility as an open forum.

The Wall Street Journal's Shelby Steele explores the differences between Jesse Jackson's approach to black-white relations versus Barack Obama's. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121668579909472083.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Slate op/ed on changing the War Powers Act: http://www.slate.com/id/2195152?nav=wp Howard Kurtz on the death of Tony Snow: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/13/AR2008071302054.html line[/hr] From the Wall Street Journal and Cook Political Report. What's interesting about this image is mainly the lower portion, which indicates how currently-competitive seats are leaning amongst voters in those districts. line[/hr] Interesting article from Politico.com about Oliver Stone's efforts to make his upcoming film "W" as realistic as possible. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11776.html line[/hr] The New Yorker's very long biography on Obama's early days. This is the story that came out this week (for next week's issue) that has resulted in controversy, not for the story, but for the cover that the New Yorker ran. Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama line[/hr] Fannie, Freddie spent $200M to buy influence

Lame effort to restart the thread incoming (you've been warned!): What did the nuclear physicist have for dinner? Fission chips!

T. Boone Pickens made headlines yesterday regarding his new wind power venture. Today he writes in the Wall Street Journal, explaining his overall energy strategy from an investor's perspective. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121556087828237463.html?mod=djemEditorialPage line[/hr] US Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt writes about Congress' lobby-driven efforts to stop competitive bidding in Medicare equipment purchasing for the elderly. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121556116413437535.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

It's conveniently located right over there behind YT's experiment booth.

Conservatives may fight McCain on convention floor. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/06/AR2008070602322.html RNC makes first battleground-state ad buy, focusing on balanced energy plan. http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/07/06/rnc-unit-launches-first-big-ad-buy-in-battleground-states/

(Note: This thread has been merged into the FAQ.) This thread is intended as a reading list for the members, by the members. It is open and unmoderated, but a few rules apply. The general idea is to post links to articles here without any discussion. You can explain briefly what issue the article addresses or why it is interesting, but the idea is not to provocate or advertise or evangelize a specific point of view. It's okay to pass along an article you feel might convince people of a certain viewpoint, but the purpose of the thread is really to share articles of interest that we come across in our own reading outside of the forum. So a few ground rules: 1) No replies to specific posts, except for the following reasons: a) Correcting a broken link (expect me to edit the broken link and delete your reply). b) Add another article on the same subject. 2) Just include the links, without explanation if possible, but if necessary a brief explanation of the link is okay. 3) Try not to hound us with a bunch of links on the same subject. If you really feel compelled to do that, I can gather some links from previous posts into a single post for you. Or just do that yourself and I'll delete your previous posts in the thread. 4) Please try to keep the physical length of your post to a bare minimum, to allow for rapid reference scanning by members later on. We want to be able to search and refer to this thread in discussions; that's part of the idea (this is also part of why the extraneous conversation is being kept to a minimum). I'm starting a separate thread to discuss this thread, so you can post any questions there.

Politics FAQ & Useful Links This post is intended to be a reference for three kinds of information: 1) How to go about posting on the politics board (rules and guidelines) (coming soon). 2) Helpful links to reference sites that are useful for discussion here. 3) Links to previous discussions on hot topics so you can refer back to how we talking about an issue before. To that end I could use everyone's help, especially with the second and third points, which you can start adding to right now by replying to this thread. This thread will be open but moderated -- I'll be able to see your replies but I'll only tap certain ones for visibility. Others will be deleted after useful information is culled and added to the FAQ post. You can contribute to the guidelines section as well if you want to write up any helpful suggestions about posting here. FAQ Post Begins Here --------------------- Frequently Asked Questions about the SFN Politics Subforum section[/hr] Useful Reference Links for Political Discussion section[/hr] News section[/hr](Submitter in parentheses) BBC Front Page (CDarwin) Legal References section[/hr](Submitter in parentheses) Pending Government Legislation Watch List section[/hr](Submitter in parentheses) FISA Amendments Act of 2008 - Regarding current US wiretapping regulation. Government Watchdogs section[/hr](Submitter in parentheses) GovTrack - Useful for looking at specific legislation in US legislature. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Government Offices & Individuals section[/hr](Submitter in parentheses) US Republican Presidential Candidate and Arizona Senator John McCain, Official Web Site US Democratic Presidential Candidate and Illinois Senator Barack Obama, Official Web Site Historical References section[/hr](Submitter in parentheses) Significant SFN Political Discussions By Subject section[/hr](Listed by Date of Thread Start) Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction 7/1/08 US Economy, Late Bush Administration 7/3/08 FISA and Other US Wiretapping Laws/Legislation/Discussion 7/4/08, 7/9/08

a Clown has been banned due to hazmat violations (deliberate posting of pornographic material).

Ran across this while doing some research. It's a Wiki at York University that summarizes research topics in Information Systems/Science. It's a pretty good germ of an idea because it's a bit of a step up from the Wikipedia for people actually pursuing research in these areas, serving as a more useful starting point because of all the citations. http://www.fsc.yorku.ca/york/istheory/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni_rAamVP2s Thought you guys might get a little chuckle out of this. The comments on the YouTube page are hillarious.

From Iowahawk: http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/03/amid-charges-of.html

I didn't look for global warming humor, I looked for Al Gore humor, because I think he's funny. And my new applicance from yesterday's cookout!!!

This is a joke that's been floating around the Internet that was apparently included in the Time "Man of the Year" article on Vladimir Putin, but I heard it from EJ Dionne on "This Week" last Sunday: ------ Stalin’s ghost appears to Putin in a dream, and Putin asks him for help running the country. Stalin says, ‘Round up and shoot all the democrats, and then paint the inside of the Kremlin blue.’ ‘Why blue?’ Putin asks. ‘Ha!’ says Stalin. ‘I knew you wouldn’t ask me about the first part.’