Category Archives: Politics

Good News in 2020

When you focus too much on the bad you lose sight of the good. And there was actually quite a lot of good stuff that happened in 2020. While these things may not have been as headline-grabbing as bad news, it’s worth taking a few moments to acknowledge that even in 2020 there was plenty of good going on. Here is a list of 42 good things that happened in 2020.

Let reason win

About a year into the Trump presidency, the level of anger and hatred in the United States was starting to get to me. I wanted to promote the idea of people talking respectfully to each other about issues instead of jumping straight to hatred and yelling.

Voting For Everyone’s Benefit

When voting, the calculation everyone seems to make is: “Will this make my life better?” I think that’s a problem. Yes, I want my vote to make my life better. But I also want it to make your life better, and his, and her’s, and their’s. Sometimes to make everyone’s life better, it means that it won’t be… Read More »

Divisive politics

In late 2017 I got an email from a Democratic organization venting about the just-passed tax bill that ended with: “We want to give you this anti-Republican bumper sticker!” I think this is a bad approach. I don’t want to perpetuate the us-and-them bullshit that is US politics right now, and I think things like this bumper sticker… Read More »

On Kaepernick’s Kneeling

In 2016 and 2017, there was an uproar over a black football player, Colin Kaepernick, quietly kneeling on the field during the national anthem rather than standing with the rest of his team. He was protesting the repeated killing of black men by police in America, and this lead to many months of heated arguing among Americans. All of… Read More »

Who Supported Trump?

Immediately after the 2016 presidential election, I took off for a 10-day trip, first to Los Angeles, and then to Salt Lake City for an international tradeshow on Supercomputing. Wherever I went, almost every taxi driver, theater-goer, restaurant worker, and fellow tradeshow exhibitor and attendee I talked to mentioned the election results. Since this tradeshow of more than 11 thousand attendees included people from… Read More »

Why I love the ACA

Whenever someone talks about wanting to disband the ACA (which some call ObamaCare), it sets my teeth on edge. Like many other Americans, if it wasn’t for the ACA, I am literally uninsurable unless I go through my own corporation because of pre-existing conditions. Getting insured this way unfairly increases my costs, and frankly this isn’t an option… Read More »