A little catch up on the world of politics-Pragmaticpundit style

Lots of things going on in the world these days. I couldn't make up my mind on what to write about these days. So I figured we'd try something new this week. Snapshots of the topics--in one paragraph or less. Here we go...



Palin/Letterman--Letterman's comments were childish and silly. They do demand an apology, since Letterman clearly did not understand that Willow Palin (14), not Bristol Palin (18) was with her mother at the time of the Yankee game. Palin should drop this issue, and spend more time worrying about getting her energy creds up to speed. Unfortunately, this isn't winning her any points with the independents. You have my sympathies. Time to earn our respect.



Justice Nominee Sotomayor--still waiting for something...anything that is a truly disqualifying factor to come out. She isn't a racist. She isn't even a liberal. Not even the firefighter case in Connecticut seems to be much of an issue in this debate. To use a horrible segue here, there's no smoke, no fire. Let's have our Senate Hearings, so we can finally see if this person is truly up to the challenge. So far, there's no real debate.



Obama in the Middle East--I have been truly amazed at the impact a speech in the Middle East on foreign policy can have. Has Obama's speech truly galvanized people enough to move the needle in a vote against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and rioting in the streets over the Iranian election? Could it be so? I don't see why not. After all, people seem to attribute the fall of the Soviet Empire to one Ronald Reagan speech in front of the Berlin Wall in the late 1980's. Let's see how this plays out. But it has to be encouraging to all on the side of democracy, and a more peaceful middle east.



Health Care--I am truly elated that this issue is finally getting the kind of debate it deserves. All of the talk shows had this as the centerpiece this morning. Sadly, it appears that trivialities like Single Payor are going to be debated, and could kill any real progress. If the left really wants it, they may only get it off the base of universal mandates, a la the Massachusetts model. If they get greedy and push for it now, they could end up losing the whole bill. Time to get real. Fight the fights that can be won. walking away with a better health plan than the one we have today is a victory, and you must build on the victories. Nothing in Washington moves faster than that.



GM--can we stick a fork in these guys already? Sorry, charlie. Let's break it up, sell of the parts, put up the for sale sign, and start getting ourselves back to the business of free enterprise. Yeah, it sucks. I'm not happy to have arrived at this point in my thinking. But GM's been dead since 2002, and it took this long to pull the plug. Time to get the hulking jalopy off the road, and get in some competition. Time for Government Motors to be put to bed.



Murder of Abortion doctors--This is truly abhorrent. To think that the only way to save the babies is to kill the doctors. And the sad thing is that it's working. Abortion clinics are being scared into shut down mode. I am not advocating abortions, but do we really want to go back to the days of back alley abortions? We can debate whether this is truly a state issue, or whether late term abortions should be overturned, or perhaps even discuss whether federal money should be put towards funding of abortion clinics. But this is not the way issues are debated in America. The moral majority advocates who believe in this should really look in the mirror and ask themselves what they are fighting for.



North Korea--an unstable dictatorship getting more unstable by the day. This could really be Obama's undoing. There are no good options here, and Kim Jong Il and his successor son seem intent on pushing a bad situation to the brink of disaster. What is the end game here?



Holocaust Murder--Like the abortion doctor murder, this is just a sad, tragic event. Sad because the people who were killed are (as usual) the innocent, who were in the wrong place and the wrong time. This white supremacist, holocaust denier has hopefully reminded us all that there is hate, misinformation, and radicals in this world who are ready to take a shot at destabilizing all we know here in America. And they don't all come from the Middle East.



Hopefully, I'll get more time to put more content up here in the upcoming weeks. I've been pleased with the slow down in job losses, but I am still concerned that we haven't seen a robust rehiring of people just yet. And the interest rates at the long end of the curve are really steepening out the overall 2-10 spread. Could result in stag-flation, or high-inflation. I'm sticking with gold, oil, and Swiss Francs. That and doing whatever I can to keep my job for one more paycheck, one more mortgage payment, one more savings contribution...