passions

President Obama has decided to take up immigration, so we all need to keep an eye on Lou:

While acknowledging that the recession makes the political battle more difficult, President Barack Obama plans to begin addressing America's immigration system this year, including looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

Obama will frame the new effort — likely to rouse passions on all sides of the highly divisive issue — as "policy reform that controls immigration and makes it an orderly system," said the official, Cecilia Munoz, deputy assistant to the president and director of intergovernmental affairs in the White House.

Obama plans to speak publicly about the issue in May, administration officials said, and over the summer he will convene working groups, including lawmakers from both parties and a range of immigration organizations, to begin discussing possible legislation for as early as this fall.

There could be something hidden in doing this right now – the fact that immigration is a much more divisive issue on the right than on the left. Let the debate go on for a few months, really heating up, and then all those Democrats running in the midterms will get some great ammo from the Republicans that can’t help but sound like racists.

I first started this blog almost 14 months ago. I was not one of the political bloggers that came from a site like Daily Kos or MyDD, instead I just went out and did it.

I have always had a deep passion for politics, and that was one of my motivations to jump into the world of blogging. I have also taken a great interest in the weather, which should be obvious - I mean what other blog offers current weather conditions, forecasts and weather maps. When these two passions collided, IntoxiNation was born.

One of my first posts was regarding a bill sponsored by Rick Santorum, S.B. 786, which attacks the National Weather Service. This bill is meant to remove all the free data the National Weather Service has available via their website. Santorum's argument is that "the NWS should focus on Hurricanes". Of course they also focus on other issues like tornadoes, floods and forest fires.

The actual motivation behind this bill lies in one of Santorum's contributors. Joel Myers, the President of AccuWeather is a Santorum contributor and a major contributor to the Republican Party as a whole. He has donated close to $50,000 to Republican's and Republican PACS.

This bill is so absurd that it doesn't even deserve debate in this do nothing session of Congress. Santorum feels the NWS should only focus on actual hurricanes, yet as anyone with a little intelligence knows, you must forecast the good weather to know when the bad weather is coming. Further, constant forecast models add to the accuracy of future forecasts and also help decrease the time needed to issue life saving warnings. This was evident last year when Katrina hit and it was the NWS that was sounding the alarms. The President and other's were the ones who chose to ignore those warnings.

Could the end of the romance be near? Are we looking at two broken hearts when we look into the eyes of our President and British Prime Minister Tony Blair? The two close friends that once stood side by side as they took on an endeavor to free the world of a tyrant don't seem as close anymore.

Yes it is a very sad ending to a once happy relationship. Tony Blair, Bush's key ally in the war in Iraq just don't seem as happy with his friend anymore. In a joint news conference this week, the two leaders seemed a little more than discontent with one another. But why? Why are these two men who fought tooth and nail to rid the world of Saddam now on what some would call the end of the honeymoon?

Well I think the answer lies in what are two of Tony Blair's biggest platforms - global warming and Africa. These are two issues that our President has been, well less than supportive on. While President Bush agreed to forgive Africa's debt this week, that is far less then pledging financial aide to the poverty stricken continent. Couple that with the less than aggressive push for the 15 billion dollar aids relief package our President vowed in his 2003 state of the union and address and it proves George is not as forthcoming on helping Africa as Tony is .

We also saw a report released this week that a White House official edited reports on the petroleum industries effects towards global warming, in an effort to downplay it. Of course the White House has spun this and said it is common practice for people to review these reports and make notes, but Tony Blair is an avid activist in the fight on global warming and this could not sit well with him. Seems our President is still holding true to his other love, the oil industry, while ignoring that passions of his partner and friend.