It turns out that about 6 million people have signed up for lower-cost health insurance under either the health care exchanges or are eligible for the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, the latter being designed to take care of those who earned too little to be eligible for the former. That is undoubtedly good news. [Read more…]
There has been quite a bit of attention paid to a recent Pew poll that revealed that belief in evolution has dropped sharply from 54% in 2009 to 43% today among those who identify themselves as Republicans, while belief among the overall population has remained the same at about 60%. [Read more…]
Both the Guardian and the New York Times have editorially called for clemency for Edward Snowden. The NYT did not, unlike the Guardian, call for the full pardon that Snowden deserves. That was a bridge too far for a solidly establishment US newspaper. But the NYT call is particularly significant because it has an unsavory reputation of being overly solicitous of US government interests. [Read more…]
Glenn Greenwald gave the keynote address via Skype at the 30th Chaos Communications Congress (30C3) on December 27, 2013 in Hamburg. It is a great speech. His talk begins around the 5:00 minute mark and ends at the 46:00 minute mark followed by a Q&A. (Here is a transcript of just the talk.) It is well worth watching and/or reading the whole thing (including the Q&A). [Read more…]
I know that it is customary to do so on the first of January but why get stuck with tradition? Besides which, yesterday was rather chaotic at home with my daughter and son-in-law’s flight back to California being cancelled and the replacement one being repeatedly delayed, all due to the bad weather in this part of the country. In addition, we had a plumbing emergency that required a lot of messing around so I decided to give blogging a miss.
So after a frazzled start to the new year, now things are back to (almost) normal, so Baxter the Wonder Dog and I wish all of this blog’s readers all the best for 2014.
What do I wish for in 2014? I hope to see the end of drone murders by the Obama administration, the addition of many people who have access to affordable health insurance, worldwide outrage at the global spying network by the US and UK that lead to real reforms, Edward Snowden finding a permanent home safe from the vindictive and lawless US government, more whistleblowers being inspired by him to reveal government wrongdoing, more principled judges reining in government excesses, a hike in the minimum wage to at least $15 per hour, a rise in the maximum tax rate to somewhere around 75%, elimination of the cap on income taxed for Social Security, defeats of religious extremists and their associated racists, sexist, and homophobic agendas, and a rise in secular thinking all over the globe.
I realize that this is a far more modest list than peace on Earth but I thought that I would try to be at least faintly realistic. There are many more things I wish for but these are enough for the moment.