you have rumblings here about a fairness doctrine and problematic hate crime bills.

from rush limbaugh’s mouth to manju’s ear.. to sepia’s comment box. is there any right wing tripe that is too far fetched for manju to put lipstick on?

this could be interesting since obama’s constitutional scholar, and has kept his views close to the vest. students say he often debated from either side of the issue. my hope is that he’ll split the difference and surprise people by going beyond the typical lef-right dichotomy, ie appoint someone who’ll recognize gay rights but put a halt to leftist restrictions on religion, speech, etc.

Yes, to me, one of the best things about an Obama victory is that I hope to be able to sleep calmly for the next 4 (and hopefully years that policy will be driven by the real worries and dangers of what is, not the poisonous manufactured fantasies, fearmongering, paranoia, and dogwhistles of what might be, be they welfare queens in gold plated cadillacs, specters of socialism raised by upping tax cuts on the wealthiest, untrammeled spending on interplanetary defense, ticking timebombs in times square allowing any and all perversions of due process, wars being fought on fall pretexts and lies, and so on and so forth.

He is the brown Mitt Romney who happens to be left-leaning. Or like the leftist Jindal: Some young, brown guy who changes if it’s politically expedient.

6 · hello said

i’m really really bored about india going on about outsourcing. they can’t build their whole future on these call centre type places

True. Even though that industry earns India a lot of dollars and forms a sizeable chunk of skilled worker pool that prob. come to US it would be better that India concentrates on other avenues of growth and development equally and the rest of the world also looks at other ( (positive and negative) issues in India.

The issue is not whether jobs will go to India or anywhere else.Globalization is a reality and is here to stay.Progressives should rather embrace it.In this day and age when boundaries are being eliminated,no job is a birthright of any one.Jobs like anything else,belongs to peolpe who work hard to earn it.

i agree with you to some extent. despite my general support for HRC’s, the process needs an overhaul badly. currently the bar is too low for what needs to be taken to court. for example, a guy who used to smoke pot (for medical reasons) outside a bar used the HRC to take the barowner to court. the owner had asked him to move away from the entrance because other patrons had complained. the potsmoker lost but he created a huge nuisance for the owner who ended up shellign out 20k of his own money in the defence (whereas the HRC defended the smoker for free). that said – i am willing to pay for a broken system if it helps one guy get a fair hearing, rather than not have a system at all. we are a prodigiously wealthy country despite the popular lament of not having the latest ipod for all.

could you explain the canadian angle?

hate crime laws being used by unelected councils, Canada’s human rights commissions, to prosecute people for criticizing islam, among other ideologies. see marc stein and ezra levant cases. often the tribunals are secret so it not only violates the principle of free-speech, but also due process.

could you explain the canadian angle?

p.s. today’s toronto star has an article by rosie dimanno saying that BO would be a red tory in canada cos we’re SO loonie lefti. made me smile.