Obama's 2012 budget proposal

Wah quick post. This is very interesting and news that everybody should see: Obama's 2012 budget proposal!

The total proposal is worth $3.7 trillion. A big portion of that money is being put into research for clean energy and the budgets of many national research institutions are going to be dramatically increased. Crazy stuff! This will definitely benefit the future generations as this type of research is exactly what we need right now.

What I'm personally looking forward to is the huge increase in the amount given to education. This completely differs from what the Republicans in the House of Representatives were proposing for the continuation of 2011. There will be big boosts to NSF amongst other grants. Great for all sorts of collegiate students.

I feel as though Obama is taking a very good measure with these changes in pushing for a more research and education based budget... It's not passed yet so only one can speculate on the differences. We must note that the federal debt is as big as ever and I'm not sure if this budget is going to help it. Obama's vision is good, but how will it all pan out?

Source

Federal spending cuts financial aid

Fun stuff. Federal spending has never been a favorite topic of mine. Lots of politicians are single minded in doing what they can to get paid more or re-elected. It's an unfortunate truth in a capitalistic world where the corporations secretly deal in the background.

As many people know, the United States has a sizable debt piled on due to the recent wars we've fought. The House Republicans want to cut back on spending right now and have drafted up a spending bill for the remainder of 2011. What's the kicker? They are cutting down on the Pell Grant that provides financial aid to students such as myself and grants towards science research by 15%.

Such a cut would lower the amount of aid that the most needy people could get by nearly 850$. This would cause over 1.5 million students to be ineligible for this form of financial aid! I feel this is a terrible idea for a place to have spending cuts. Education is one of the most important parts of our society today. In order to preserve the future of our country, we need to keep the citizens educated and give them the necessary skills to tackle problems.

Surely if we spend billions of dollars fighting a downhill war, there must be some way to cover the few millions of dollars that would be saved by cutting such an important bill right?

Source

Also, for kicks, here's Representative Anthony Weiner (New York 9th district) calling out the Republicans for violating their own rules. I guess not all Democrats are spineless eh?

Mubarak steps down

An amazing update from Egypt, President Mubarak has stepped down and passed power over to the military council! This is an incredible result after three whole weeks of protests from the Egyptian people. The revolutionary fervor has kept going and the Egyptian people got what they wanted.

But the road won't be easy from here on out. It's much more simple to find a common enemy and kick them out and its far harder to establish order after doing so. Hopefully other countries will help facilitate this process and actually make a democratic state that the Egyptian people can be proud of.

Some people might think that the military having power right now is a bad idea. However, in Egypt, the military is one of the most respected institutions. The common belief is that the military will always serve the people. During the protests the army had to come in to stop the police who were at times attacking the protestors under Mubarak's orders.

The excitement coming from the protestors as soon as they heard the announcement was amazing. Here is a video:



Let's just hope that Egypt can have a peaceful transition from here on out.

George W. Bush

Rant rant rant. Squabble squabble squabble. Uproar roar roar. Did you guys hear what happened to good old G.W. when he was supposed to go give a talk in Switzerland? A good amount of protest and political movement happened to try to force him to not come or to put him in jail if he does.

Why? Waterboarding of course! This form of torture that has been recognized by nearly all of the countries in the world was used on many occasions by the former president. He defended his actions in his memoirs and continues to say that this form of interrogation helped to protect the U.S.

The people in Switzerland did not want the former president to come into the country. They said that any other person that has openly admitted to torture would have been locked up and put on trial in the neutral country. George Bush did not want to be slammed into jail so he canceled his trip.

Now this brings up a good question. Does a former president deserve some sort of immunity from his actions taken while acting as head of state? Maybe so. The U.S. at the time did not officially recognize waterboarding as torture (Obama has changed that however) so technically what he did was OK in the U.S. However, the U.S. has taken part in the Geneva treaty to not torture any political prisoner. This is the notion that the people of Switzerland are trying to grill Bush on.

It's probably a good idea for Bush to lay low for longer. Ever wonder where he disappeared off to right after he left office?

Source

Egypt protests

Compiled video of the protests in Egypt. I honestly hope somebody steps up and makes sure the protestors get their voices heard...

China blocks Egypt

Okay now this is getting out of hand. China has now blocked content that contain the word Egypt due to the protests going on. I guess they don't want their own citizens to take an example?

--
China has blocked the word "Egypt'' from the country's wildly popular Twitter-like service, while coverage of the political turmoil has been tightly restricted in state media.

China's ruling Communist Party is sensitive to any potential source of social unrest.

A search for "Egypt'' on the Sina microblogging service brings up a message saying, "According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results are not shown".

The service has more than 50 million users.

News on the Egypt protests has been limited to a few paragraphs and photos buried inside major news websites, but China Central Television had a report on its midday broadcast.

China's foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment Saturday on the events in Egypt.
--
Source

Technology

People these days take technology for granted. We always expect to be able to turn on our laptops and check the web for updates (to this blog right?) without fail. But the event in Egypt has got me thinking of what can go wrong. A government can just decide on a whim to take away an entire country's internet is just plain ridiculous! I honestly hope more people look and realize how atrocious this is but also how dependent we are on technology to survive.

Also, I'm just going to hate it when my paper runs out of batteries.

Response to Egypt's internet shutdown

I would feel exactly the same! But in all seriousness, this is a big deal.

Egypt shuts down internet

Anybody else hear about this...? Seems outright ridiculous:

Source