Showing posts tagged politics
The top graph is apparently being circulated around the White House. The bottom is from MoveOn.org. View high resolution

The top graph is apparently being circulated around the White House. The bottom is from MoveOn.org.

speaking of taxes… here’s a good chart. View high resolution

speaking of taxes… here’s a good chart.

Slurpee Summit

This is kind of funny. Throughout the midterm election campaign, Obama made a joke about Republicans “standing, watching us, sippin’ on a slurpee” while Democrats did all the work for the country. He later joked in a press-conference about Republicans and Democrats meeting for a “Slurpee Summit,” saying “they’re delicious drinks.”

Now 7-Eleven is planning a new campaign, offering to cater a Slurpee Summit between key Democrats and Republicans at the White House, offering red, blue, and bipartisan purple slurpees.

They’re also slated to place a national ad campaign that shows how slurpees bring people together. 

Confessions of a Gay Soldier

I thought this article, written by an anonymous gay soldier, was pretty poignant. 

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There was a sense that ‘Oh Jesus will walk on water,’ and now you’re looking at it like ‘Look at that, he’s just treading water.’

Jon Stewart on Obama. On the O’Reilly Factor this week.

:<

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the United States has been at war for 47 of its 230 years, or 20 percent of its history
NYTimes

two interesting Democratic candidates for Senate

In South Carolina - Alvin Greene – an unemployed Army veteran with a felony obscentiy charge against him. He did no campaigning and won 59% of the votes. 

In Texas - Kesha Rogers – a woman who won 53% of the votes on an “Impeach Obama”  campaign. 

The American people expect your companies to have a technological response to this disaster on par with the Apollo Project, not Project Runway.

That’s Rep Edward Markey in the BP congressional hearing last week.

I’ve been fascinated by this oil spill and the lack of solutions to stop it. You can watch the recently released videos of oil and natural gas just spewing out of a big hole in a pipe on the ocean floor. An estimate of 200,000 gallons are leaking each day. And they don’t know how to stop it? It seems unfathomable, doesn’t it.

And meanwhile we have all involved parties blaming the other. The reason for the spill was an accident - a well blowout which caused an explosion. There is a “blowout preventer” that is supposed to clamp down and cut off spilling oil in the event of such an accident. BP’s internal documents show their blowout preventer was broken - there were at least four significant problems on a device that can have 260 possible failure spots. How is there no backup plan for a device with 260 possible failure spots? So now BP is blaming the manufacturer of the device, Cameron, and Cameron is likewise blaming BP. More props to Obama here - he was angry at this blame game, stating “I did not appreciate what I considered to be a ridiculous spectacle during the congressional hearings into this matter. You had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else.” Right on.

So how is it that there is no solution? BP’s plans to stop the leak have proven unsuccessful - a huge dome to cover the leak, a smaller top hat to capture escaping oil and siphon it to a ship, heavy chemicals to break up the oil. They’ve come up with a “junk shot” of golf balls or old tires, or a pipe inserted within the broken pipe to divert the oil backwards. They even have a suggestion box, and have received 60,000 calls and over 10,000 tips, 700 of which have moved on “to the next phase.” One of which was a project backed by Kevin Costner, who since 1989 has been funding a project led by his scientist brother to create a centrifuge that separates oil from water. BP just yesterday agreed to test six centrifuges. If you build it.. 

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For if we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line with our own, studies suggest that we become more polarized, more set in our ways. That will only reinforce and even deepen the political divides in this country.

But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and our beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

Now, this requires us to agree on a certain set of facts to debate from. That’s why we need a vibrant and thriving news business that is separate from opinion makers and talking heads. That’s why we need an educated citizenry that values hard evidence and not just assertion. As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously once said, “Everybody is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

Still, if you’re somebody who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in a while. If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website. It may make your blood boil; your mind may not be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship. It is essential for our democracy.

Obama’s commencement speech at University of Michigan

MackeyCare Begins

Remember MackeyCare, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s steps to improve healthcare, which he outlined in a WSJ op ed last summer? Well now it’s taking shape, as the company introduces a new approach to encourage its 51,000 employees to lead healthy lifestyles.

Whole Foods will offer up to a 10% discount (on top of the 20% discount employees are already given at the market) to employees who

  1. don’t smoke
  2. have low blood pressure below 110/70
  3. have low cholesterol below 150, and
  4. have a BMI less than 24

It’s a voluntary program, and those who sign on receive free health screenings.

I quite like the idea. Apparently, so does Safeway, Kellogg, Dell, J&J, who all do something pretty similar. But not everyone does, as demonstrated by the outlash from groups like NAAFA who call the program discriminatory and urge a boycott of the stores.