Posted by XT on October 28th, 2009 in US News
The Campaign Courage Equality Program is launching a fundraising drive to help pay for marriage equality initiatives in Main, Michigan, and Washington.
Washington:
Who we are: Approve Referendum 71 is the campaign to preserve domestic partnerships in Washington State. By voting to approve, voters retain the domestic partnership laws that were passed during this year’s legislative session, [...]
Posted by XT on September 3rd, 2009 in US News
The LA Times has a vague, but ominous warning about the federal deficit. They write:
President Obama’s critics naturally want to blame the geyser of red ink on the grand ambitions of his administration, including the $787-billion stimulus package and expensive new health insurance subsidies. Longtime budget analysts, however, have seen this problem coming for [...]
Posted by XT on September 1st, 2009 in US News
From Richard Cohen’s column:
The questions of what constitutes torture and what to do with those who, maybe innocently, applied what we now define as torture have to be removed from the political sphere. They cannot be the subject of an ideological tug of war, both sides taking extreme and illogical positions — torture never works, [...]
Posted by XT on August 26th, 2009 in US News
If you’ve been around any sort of media, you’ve heard that Senator Edward Kennedy has died. This really isn’t a shock since he was diagnosed with brain cancer not long ago. He was the last of his dynastic familial generation.
I’m not into hero worship, so I can’t really say much about Ted Kennedy. [...]
Posted by XT on August 12th, 2009 in US News, World News
One of the more insulting commercials run by the Hillary Clinton campaign during the Democratic primary featured an anonymous phone ringing in what was supposed to be the Presidential residence. “When the phone rings at 2am…” the voice-over said ominously.
The idea was to tell everyone that Clinton was “ready to go on Day One” [...]
Posted by XT on August 1st, 2009 in US News
Music is as old as humanity. As long as humans have had voices, or been able to beat on a log, or jingle shells, or whatever, there has been music. And, as with all human endeavors, some have been better at doing it than others.
But there hasn’t been a “music business” [...]
Posted by XT on July 12th, 2009 in US News
Short of the universe of the Jabberwock, words have some set meaning. Sometimes they have one denoted meaning and another connotated meaning, but they have a meaning. So I have to take one of my favorite columnists, Gail Collins, to task for this badly worded turn:
We hardly need to point out that Ensign [...]
Posted by XT on June 24th, 2009 in US News
I have to say that I’m not really that interested in Mark Sanford and his Argentinian lover. Yes, I understand that politics and sex is always a wonderful story. Beyond that, there is the mysterious disappearance, the possibility of public funds being used for his trip, and the hypocrisy of Sanford’s past (calling [...]
Posted by XT on June 22nd, 2009 in US News
Call it the other side of the stupid Palin-Letterman fracas. Rusty DePass made a racist comment about Michelle Obama – and he has paid for it through the loss of his job and has become the public face of stupid racism. But DePass isn’t a public official. He was a private person [...]
Posted by XT on June 11th, 2009 in US News
David Letterman was an ass to joke about Sarah Palin’s daughter getting pregnant at a Yankees game. It isn’t about the family of politicians being off-limit, it’s just about having a total lack of taste. But Letterman was at least enough of a man to apologize and offer a spot for Palin to [...]