I recently emailed my cousin in Toronto, Ontario regarding her thoughts on the Canadian health care system. I was pleased with the response that I got and that she actually discussed the question with some of her coworkers.

As the term suggests, coral bleaching is the whitening of living coral colonies, a phenomenon associated with anthropogenic changes in the animal's habitat which lead to the weakening of the colony's health and its eventual death. Let's take a look at what exactly is being bleached, what's causing the bleaching and why bleaching is so devastating to these animals and their ecosystem.

It's a process to be sure, but my husband and I are gradually withdrawing our support from corporate America. We do not wish to give financial support by way of our hard earned dollars to businesses that do not share our values: ethical conduct, respect and concern for the environment, and lack of greed.

Total US GDP is roughly $14 trillion dollars in total size. Because of this size it simply won't reverse on a dime -- especially considering the length and breadth of the current recession. Instead gradual change is how to measure progress. On several fronts this week we saw the news continue to signal that the worst of the recession is probably behind us.

One of the quotes I remember most from the Presidential primary last year was this, "We simply cannot replace Corporate Republicans with Corporate Democrats and expect any kind of real change". John Edwards told us that at a rally in Columbus, Kentucky. Now, no matter your view of him, and no matter how unwise his personal decisions have been this particular gem of wisdom continues to ring true. Nowhere is that better demonstrated than the "centrist" New Democrat and Blue Dog coalitions corporate reactions to the health care debate

If you want to understand President Obama's soul, read his books. But if you want to understand his beliefs, read John Rawls. The Harvard academic, who died in 2002, was the most important philosopher of liberalism in the twentieth century, mostly because, in so many ways, Rawls' ideas describe the world we live in.

Tonight is the celebration of yet another Jacked Up Bush Administration Policy: The DTV Transition. Millions of people, many in rural areas or poor or in vulnerable populations (elderly) are now left out and lack television reception. Its like 3% of the population has had television, still a key toward being informed and in some cases being safe, yanked out of their homes for no good reason.

So now we have the White House on board officially in favor of a strong public option to compete directly with the private insurance industry. While many of us understand that a single payer system would be the best option, it seems that the majority are making the decision to rally around a bona fide public option that would force the private insurance industry to clean up its act or say buh-bye.

The Federal Court in San Francisco has accepted that John Yoo can be called before the court to testify on the grounds that his memoranda justifying torture techniques using non-conventional interpretations of the law might make him complicit in the acts of torture and the abrogation of constitutional rights of detainees that followed. I think this is an extremely dangerous precedent.

Somewhere along the last century, a romantic notion of summer vacation became lodged in our national psyche. Summer vacation has come to be regarded by many as much a part of being a kid as eating candy and jumping rope. But the summer vacation rhapsodized about is largely a sentimental myth.

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