JJG Journal

In another display of bipartisanship our glorious US Senate has approved a FISA bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecom companies that illegally and profitably provided private customer data to the US government during the last couple of years. See this report by Glenn Greenwald for more details on this issue.

Our government needs to have the means available to protect its citizens from foreign and domestic threats. No one denies this point. But the circumvention of checks...Continue Reading »

Mrs. Clinton’s senior campaign staff will be going without pay this month, due to fundraising problems. Meanwhile Barack Obama seems to be doing ok. His latest fundraising numbers can be found here. As already predicted, the duration of the campaign which certainly surprised Mrs. Clinton will be detrimental to her ability to compete financially, given that Hillary Clinton’s...Continue Reading »

It turns out that Hillary Clinton "loaned" her Presidential campaign $5 million from her own private funds to be able to compete with Barack Obama. Reportedly the Clintons are considering making further "loans" of up to $20 million to Hillary’s campaign to stay competitive in the Democratic primary contest. Fundraising is turning into a problem for Hillary, as most of her donors are wealthy and her donor base is small, compared to that of Barack Obama. Given that there is an upper limit for individual contributions of US$2500 or so and that many of Hillary’s contributors...Continue Reading »

There was a chance (let’s call it hope, in my case) that Barack Obama would score a decisive victory in yesterday’s Presidential Primary Elections. That did not happen. Neither did the opposite. The remaining state primary contests favor Barack Obama. Thus I expect that he will pick up some more delegates along the way, adding to his existing lead in so-called pledged delegates. These exclude the so-called Super-Delegates (mostly Democratic party big-wigs). The TOTAL delegate count at this point favors Hillary Clinton, due to her advantage in the Super-Delegate count. But these Super...Continue Reading »

What do you think is the most important thing that we’ve learned by studying nature? Is it that matter is composed of identical, indivisible subunits called atoms? Is it Plate Tectonics? Or maybe the insignificance of earth in the incomprehensibly vast cosmos?

In my book it is Evolution. The fact that every living thing on this planet evolved from microbial life is far and away the most influential concept that we’ve learned so far. This fact is so surprising that a majority of us still can not accept it. You don’t hear many people doubting the correctness of atomic...Continue Reading »

Today is the day of the Democratic and Republican primary elections. Although I favor Barack Obama’s nomination on the Democratic side, a sense of realism tells me that Hillary Clinton will probably win a majority of votes when averaged over the 20 or so states that hold primaries and caucuses today. It will be interesting to see how things will turn out in California, where until recently Mrs. Clinton enjoyed a large double-digit lead that has shrunk to almost nil in the last couple of days. Exciting times.