Gay marriage loses in Maine

The recall vote on gay marriage won yesterday in Maine (53% voted for the repeal with 83% counted). This is a little discouraging but somewhat expected: polls were showing it would be close. And there is the usual line in the article:
It is currently legal in five states, but only by virtue of politicians or judges.
The [...]

Global Warming

Hmm, it seems there is more out about global warming and the data still says the Earth is getting warmer. First, via here, a study finds the same basic ‘hockey stick’ graph using different methods. Being a math guy, I love this:
The sheer amount of computation, however, is daunting, involving heavy matrix algebra. Initial values [...]

State ideology and a poem

Via Kevin Drum, Boris Shor has put up a graph that:
has performed some analysis (jointly with Nolan McCarty) on the ideological positions of state legislators. The estimates are based on state legislative voting, which might make you wonder how you could possibly compare legislators in one state with those in another. The trick is that [...]

Another study shows why we need national healthcare

A new study in the American Journal of Public Health  (the NY Times has an older version here) has found (this study uses data, it seems, through 2000–the bold is in the Boston Globe post):
After accounting for age, education, income, and other factors, the researchers found that people without private insurance had a 40 percent [...]

More healthcare stuff

This postby Steve Benen shows why liberals and progressives are so upset at the prospect of losing the public option in the healthcare bill:
I continue to think these are not exactly effective negotiating techniques. Republicans say, “We want explicit language in the bill that would restrict coverage for illegal immigrants.” The White House responds, “You [...]

Krauthammer concerned

Charles Krauthammer is doing a bit of concern trolling in his column today:
(1) Forget the public option. Whatever the merits, and they are few, it is political poison.  …
(2) Jettison any reference to end-of-life counseling. People see (correctly) such Medicare-paid advice as subtle encouragement to voluntarily refuse treatment. …
(3) Soft-pedal the idea of government committees [...]

Ted Kennedy

I’m a day late, but I wanted to salute one of the great men–Ted Kennedy. My take is very much like the one given here:
I realized that the real lesson, for me, anyway, of Ted Kennedy’s life wasn’t about his achievements as a public figure, after all. Instead, it was about how he conducted himself [...]

LaRouche: an entertaining crazy

I remember back in the 1980 election watching 30 minute specials put on by Lyndon LaRouche. They were entertaining in short intervals, he would swing from some coherent point to a crazy point. The crazy point usually involved the Queen of England, Kissinger, or Rockefeller (who were leaders in the international drug trade–it seems that [...]

Rep. Broun says ‘I’m an idiot’

Ok, he didn’t actually say that. He wrote:
Obama has created a new $2 billion federal bureaucracy — a national health care rationing board — that will decide if the medical care you need is “cost efficient.”
And if these federal bureaucrats decide that your treatment is not “Government Approved,” then your doctor will be ordered to [...]

Aloisi, Patrick against Grabauskas

The spat between Massachusetts Transportation Secretary James A. Aloisi and, now ex, MBTA chief Grabauskas that resulted in Grabauskas being forced out has been entertaining. I’m not really sure what I think of Grabauskas–I do think the T is a bit better now than when he started, but I haven’t really looked at all the details.
The [...]

Republicans want uninsured to die

Ok, I don’t really believe my headline. It’s just hard not to get angry and frustrated when the other side makes ludicrous claims (see here for example). And this isn’t fringe elements, the Republican candidate for VP claims that the legislation includes death panels that would not have allowed her baby to be born (and then [...]

End of life conversation=euthanasia?

As usual, there’s a lot of crazy talk from some rightwingers about healthcare (via Pandagon). One of the craziest is that the new healthcare plans will lead to euthanasia of the elderly. This would be a joke except it’s being pushed by people in Congress–here’s a statement from Reps Boehner and McCotter:
Section 1233 of the House-drafted legislation [...]

What is priority?

It seems that stimulus funds for highways are not being assigned according to the way they’re supposed to be:
The rules required that states give priority to counties considered “economically distressed.’’ Yet less than half the federal highway money announced so far is directed toward those high-unemployment, low-income areas, according to an Associated Press analysis of [...]

No more card check in EFCA

I’m a little slow to get to it, but it seems that the card check part of the Employee Free Choice Act will be dropped. It was always going to be a tough sell, because of the propaganda of businesses saying that unions would intimidate workers without a secret ballot.
The revised bill still has several good [...]

Senator DeMint a bit confused

Last night Senator DeMint at the National Press Club:
 Part of what we’re trying to do in “Saving Freedom” is just show that where we are, we’re about where Germany was before World War II where they became a social democracy. You still had votes but the votes were just power grabs like you see in [...]

Gay marriage news

There are three developments in gay marriage:

A law recognizing same sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions went into effect yesterday in Washington DC. It passed the DC council in May, but the US Congress had 30 days to rule on it and have not. DC does not allow same sex marriages.
Same sex marriage foes in [...]

Iran and Neo-Cons

I mostly defended my PhD dissertation yesterday, so I should now have a bit more time to post (I have to finish writing the dissertation and give a final next Tuesday, so I still don’t have much time).
And the big story is in Iran, where it seems obvious that the election was rigged and it’s [...]

Ok, now NH will allow gay marriage

The New Hampshire legislature first passed a gay marriage bill back on April 30, but then there were a few bumps. Anyway, a gay marriage bill has now been passed by the legislature and signed by the governor.
I will again link to the Union Leader, because they again have links to the text of the [...]

No gay marriage in California, for now

The California Supreme Court has upheld the referendum that approved a ban on same sex marriage (it does allow those already married to stay married). Their decision rested on what can be decided by referendum:
“After comparing this initiative measure to the many other constitutional changes that have been reviewed and evaluated in numerous prior decisions [...]

NH to have gay marriage

NH governor Lynch says he will sign a revised gay marriage bill if new language is added:
I. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a religious organization, association, or society, or any individual who is managed, directed, or supervised by or in conjunction with a religious organization, association or society, or any nonprofit institution or organization operated, [...]