I’m watching an online meeting/protest about the possible war with Ukraine. There are dozens of speakers, of various races, including Margaret Flowers, David Swanson., Bruce Cagnon, and Gerry Condon. “This is a United States government provocation.  Every Russian troop is within Russia’s borders. The U.S. has its troops in dozens of countries. We need to…

According to the Guttmacher Institute, forty-four states prohibit abortion after some point in pregnancy. California, New York, and Washington prohibit abortion after fetal viability.  Massachusetts prohibits abortion after twenty-four weeks. As the Guttmacher Institute says (ibid), “The current U.S. Supreme Court standard holds that states may prohibit abortion after fetal viability as long as there…

A trio of informative, well-written articles has piqued my interest in the future of Bellevue and, specifically, in the questions of who will control the process and who will benefit. None of the articles significantly addressed the role of Kemper Freeman. In addition to addressing his role, this essay discusses further desiderata for making Bellevue…

As things stand, there is a good chance that Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives in 2022, thanks in large part to gerrymandering and to changes in election laws in Republican states. One recent poll suggests that up to 2/3rds of Republican voters believe that the 2020 election was stolen, and about…

CNN is reporting that Washington State Senator Dough Ericksen has died, apparently from covid-19. Ericksen caught covid-19 on a trip to El Salvador, where he was unable to get treatment. This is sad but also ironic, since Ericksen had strongly denounced Gov. Inslee’s covid-19 mandates and restrictions. As of Dec. 19, 2021, his webpage https://dougericksen.src.wastateleg.org/news/…

Ezra Klein in the New York Times wrote an article reviewing the work of political consultant and pollster David Shor, who said that the Democrats need to tone down their support for minority (black) rights if they want to win back white voters, whose motivations may or not be based on racism.  Klein writes: All…

We should have super-daylight standard time every morning and super-daylight savings time every evening. In other words, set the clock forwards two hours every afternoon, so that the sun sets later, and set it backwards two hours early every morning so that the sun rises at a reasonable hour. Plus we’d have a four hour…

This is a difficult and necessary discourse about abortion rights. It may piss some people off. Democrats have lost election after election and many other issues over the single wedge issue of abortion. And now the Supreme Court has a solid conservative majority, so Roe vs. Wade is likely to be overturned. I completely agree…

Amanda’s Ripley’s The Smartest Kids in the World is a call for rigor and equity in K-12 education. Ripley follows U.S. exchange students as they visit schools in Finland, South Korea, and Poland — three countries whose students score significantly higher than U.S. students on the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) test, especially in…