Here’s the good news.
Number of Uninsured Americans Near Historic Low
Just 11.3 percent of Americans were uninsured in the second quarter …
But that progress has come at great cost. Sen. Tom Harkin, one of the co-authors of the Affordable Care Act, now thinks Democrats may have been better off not passing it at all and holding out for a better bill.
It’s a mixed legacy.
Net Neutrality is far, far better for you and me than the alternatives.
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I was an early fan of Barack Obama. He gave me … HOPE.
His Presidency has been deeply disappointing to me.
Neil Macdonald, CBC News:
Six years after he assumed power, nearly 120 of his promises remain unfulfilled, according to the Pulitzer-prize-winning website Politifact. For example, he promised to “hold accountable” the financial firms whose criminal negligence — let’s dispense with euphemisms — nearly destroyed the economy in 2008.
Obama’s attorney-general eventually decided not to charge a single Wall Street executive, fearing the “collateral consequences” might be too hard on shareholders and office workers who might lose their jobs if a corporate collapse resulted.
Obama also promised a foreclosure prevention fund to protect homeowners threatened by Wall Street’s behaviour, and a law allowing judges to modify people’s mortgages as the vultures descended. Never happened.
Obama has not enacted protections for striking workers, or made it easier to unionize, or required employers to provide at least seven days of paid sick leave per year, all of which he promised.
He has not raised the federal minimum wage. …
CBC – ANALYSIS – How Barack Obama’s presidency has come undone
Nice guy. Could have. Should have done better.
He should have done the opposite of GW Bush, not continued as a weaker version of the same.
He’ll be a far, far better exPresident.
Upsides?
Obamacare was a slight improvement to an extremely expensive and inefficient Health Care system.
He did bring down the deficit GW Bush left him.
He did manage to pull most troops out of the Middle East … and dodged the Red Line bluff in Syria. But the current military adventures in the region will turn out to be a huge mistake.
USA should QUIT the Middle East completely aside from working with Nuclear powers Pakistan and Israel.
Still, he should have gone stronger to the left. Instead, history will judge him a weak Republican.
Are U.S. taxpayers getting good value for that expenditure?
NO. The USA should QUIT the Middle East.
The U.S. gets only around 10% of its net oil and natural gas from the region.
David Vine:
With the launch of a new US-led war in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State (IS), the United States has engaged in aggressive military action in at least 13 countries in the Greater Middle East since 1980. In that time, every American president has invaded, occupied, bombed, or gone to war in at least one country in the region. …
As in prior military operations in the Greater Middle East, US forces fighting IS have been aided by access to and the use of an unprecedented collection of military bases. …
In the Persian Gulf alone, the US has major bases in every country save Iran. …
Members of Congress spend billions of dollars on base construction and maintenance every year in the region, but ask few questions about where the money is going, why there are so many bases, and what role they really serve. By one estimate, the United States has spent $10 trillion protecting Persian Gulf oil supplies over the past four decades. …
On their own, the existence of these bases has helped generate radicalism and anti-American sentiment. …
Mother Jones – America Still Has Hundreds of Military Bases Worldwide. Have They Made Us Any Safer?
David Vine, associate professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia.
The USA has about an $18 trillion dollar debt. Canada, by comparison, will run a surplus budget this year,
Obama is saying the right things. But so often his right words do not translate into right action.
Let’s wait and see.
President Obama … urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to take up the strongest possible rules to protect net neutrality, the principle that says Internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all internet traffic equally.
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In 1820 the vast majority of people lived in extreme poverty and only a tiny elite enjoyed higher standards of living.
Economic growth over the last 200 years completely transformed our world and poverty fell continuously over the whole 2 last centuries. This is even more remarkable when we consider that the population increased 7-fold over the same time (which in itself is a consequence of increasing living standards and decreasing mortality – especially of infants and children – around the world). …
Even in 1981 more than 50% of the world population lived in absolute poverty – this is now down to about 20%. This is still a large number of people but the change is happening incredibly fast and for our present world the data tells us that poverty is now falling more quickly than ever before in world history. The first of the Millenium Development Goals set by the UN was to halve the population living in absolute poverty between 1990 and 2015. Rapid economic growth meant that this goal – arguably the most important – was achieved (5 years ahead of time) in 2010.
If you like that good news, click over to their home page for even more positive data. The world is improving in many ways.
It’s as if you can’t trust a President / Commander in Chief. 😦
Though he never directly used the term “domino theory“, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower put the theory into words during an April 7, 1954 news conference, when referring to communism in Indochina:
Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the “falling domino” principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.
Introducing the domino theory, that if Vietnam fell to communism, the rest of Southeast Asia would soon follow. Press conference, April 7, 1954.
Today Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Canada? are NOT Communist.
Eisenhower was wrong.
… Hanoi will be the fastest growing city in the world in term of GDP growth from 2008 to 2025 …
On February 2013 Dubai-based property developer Global Sphere announced a mega-project to build about 70 residential towers in Hanoi in an area dubbed the Hanoi Wall Street. The first phase, valued at $10 billion, is expected to be finished by 2020. …
The USA could not win in Vietnam. Nor can they win in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, …
George Santayana – The Life of Reason
When you hear a leader call for armed intervention, follow the money. Who’s going to profit in the proposed military action?
Highly recommended. The plot of the Daemon (book series) is brilliant. And important.
Picking up a few months after the end of Daemon (2009), Suarez continues his popular technothriller and SF saga.
The computer program Daemon has taken over the Internet, and millions have joined its virtual world. Now the effect is spilling into the real world as Daemon assumes control of financial institutions, and the program’s real-life converts flock to small towns to re-create a sustainable lifestyle amid the agribusiness monoculture of the Midwest. …
It would make a great movie. But nothing is in the works yet.
Though Germany is a fiscally conservative nation, they’ve decided to invest in students. Education is the future.
All German universities will be free of tuition starting 2014.
More equal access to all citizens. The rich are less advantaged than in the past.
How does the tax burden compare with the most expensive nation?
Germany – 39.90%
USA – 22.70%
These tax rates apply to single people with no children, on an average salary for their country.
Rick McCharles 