Posts tagged “us policy”
Three years after first hearing Obama promise universal healthcare in Oakland, I watched him deliver on that promise. Not perfect, not fully universal, but the biggest healthcare reform in a generation. The optimism I felt that day in 2007 was justified.
Corporations aren't people. They don't breathe, they don't care about our health or happiness, and they serve no interests but their own. The Supreme Court's decision to grant them free speech rights in political advertising is a threat to democracy itself. We need to reverse this, now.
Six months in, and the gay community is understandably frustrated with Obama. The DOMA brief was genuinely troubling, but his Stonewall speech clarified his position: DADT and DOMA are on the list, just not at the top. Fix the economy and healthcare first. Then our turn.
The US healthcare system is broken and inefficient, but the "Americans have no healthcare" argument is oversimplified. The US spends more on healthcare as a percentage of GDP than almost any other nation, and extensive programs cover the elderly, poor, and veterans. The reality is more nuanced than the critics suggest.
Federally funded abstinence-only sex ed is teaching kids that touching genitals causes pregnancy and half of gay teens have HIV. My tax dollars are funding medieval gender roles dressed up as science. I am furious. You should be too.
I support the Iraq war but still oppose Bush for plenty of other reasons: drilling in wildlife preserves, tax cuts for the rich while exploding the deficit, the PATRIOT Act's police-state overreach, blurring church and state on gay rights and abortion. Also, he's just a big dumb clumsy Texan.
Living outside the US, I rely on friends like Ed to remind me how absurd American domestic security theater has gotten. Nationwide terror levels, duct tape against chemical weapons, and delivery guys worrying about terrorism in suburban Michigan. You can't make this stuff up.
Son of Star Wars has a fun new flaw: intercepted missiles don't just disappear, they land *somewhere* untracked between launch site and target. Could be your backyard in middle America. Or Europe. Nice.
