Tag Archives: congress

Death and Taxes 2014: US Federal Budget Infographic

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I received an email today from the good folks over at Visual.ly. One of the charts they sent, really an infographic, is one depicting the United States Federal Budget as proposed by President Obama. There has been a good bit of controversy on the 2014 budget. Not just because of the content of the budget but because of how late it was.

Obama presented his first budget on May 11, 2009, a month and two days longer than President George W. Bush’s budget was released during his first year in office. However, every year after that his budget was delivered in February, just like George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton. This year, on the other hand, Obama was two months late. Not the end of the world but this was the latest submission by an incumbent president as far as I could go back, 1923. Continue reading →

Senators Call to End Driving Ban for Saudi Women

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As someone who has spent a decent amount of time in Saudi Arabia and has met many people that this would affect, I’m totally behind it. That being said, I’m not sure we will see anything like this happen within the next decade.

The argument for women not having the right to drive stem from theories like:

  • If they start driving, they’ll start cheating on their husbands
  • After they cheat on their husbands, they will get divorces
  • Driving is too hard for women’s mental capacities to handle
  • Women don’t need to drive

Saudi Arabia is a beautiful, mostly really friendly and misunderstood country. But as with most countries, minority rights always seem to fall to the back burner.

Check out the article from Autoblog:

14 female U.S. senators call on Saudi Arabia to lift female driving ban.

According to Bloomberg, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been gently pushing the Saudi government to lift the ban, and has now been joined by a group of fourteen female American senators in supporting Saudi Women for Driving and their cause. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California) is leading the charge from her position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, calling for women’s rights to be honored in a U.S. ally that has proven nothing if not resistant to change.

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