Wednesday, January 27, 2010
I’ve been reading arguments in favor of the Supreme Court decision removing restrictions on political speech by corporations. Some of these arguments come from people or groups I trust, so I was curious to see if they could change my mind about the decision.
First, I should explain that I am not against the Supreme Court [...]
Thursday, August 13, 2009
A company in Salt Lake City has announced a new battery that can store enough energy to run your house, and is cheap enough (projected cost $2,000) and has a long enough life (10 years) to make it practical and profitable.
The new battery would make it economical for homes to generate and store their own [...]
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
People who are fighting for health care reform should learn a lesson from their opponents and become less reality based. To help this, I modestly propose ten talking points that show how health care reform can appeal to everyone, including conservatives, insurance companies, and even the media:
Health care reform will immensely help the conservative cause [...]
Senator Bernie Sanders makes the excellent point. The Republicans try to scare us that socialized medicine will be terrible, but the truth is that we already have socialized medicine in this country — it is run by the Veterans Administration. If any politician tried to get rid of the VA health benefits, they would quickly [...]
The next time a pundit claims that a public option will put private health insurance companies out of business and lead to socialized health care, I hope someone asks them how UPS, Fedex, and hundreds of other smaller delivery companies are still in business, despite having to compete with the US Post Office.
This is actually [...]
Instead of a “healthy” debate, the arguments against health care reform are becoming more and more bizarre. I’ve already talked about the fact that even though most people are in favor of single-payer health insurance, our representatives are so owned by the insurance companies (who are paying off politicians with the money they have been [...]
Personally, I think the sex life of anyone — including elected officials — is their own damn business, but you can’t help but shake your head at the behavior of people like Governor Mark Sanford and you may even enjoy watching him squirm. After all, he preached morality to others while sinning himself. He publicly [...]
There are too many “facts” being thrown around in the healthcare debate, and not enough information for me to figure out which ones are true. This is made worse by “facts” that I know are false. For example, I keep hearing opponents of health care reform claim that if health insurance was provided by the [...]
A while ago, the Republicans noticed that calling an opponent a “liberal” didn’t quite have the sting it once did, so they decided to simply replace the word “liberal” with the word “socialist”. Seriously.
Unfortunately, I don’t think any of them bothered to look up what socialism means. This led to ironic situations where people like [...]
Robert Reich reports that the big pharmaceutical and health insurance companies are gaining ground in their effort to kill the public option in the health care reform bill that is being worked on in Washington.
In other words, we’re about to get the same health care reform we got during the Carter administration, when pharma and [...]
Identity Politics is a difficult issue, because (if you’ll pardon the pun) it is not just black and white. The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has raised issues of identity politics and discrimination, which one would hope would lead to a public discussion of these issues (the same way that Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary [...]
Just after meeting one-on-one with nominee Sonia Sotomayor, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jeff Sessions, announced that he would like to delay the Supreme Court confirmation hearings until September.
Some have theorized that conservatives want the delay because the recent murder of abortion doctor George Tiller will make it difficult for them to [...]
