Links to Coverage of the July 17, 2014 Malaysia Airlines Catastrophe in Ukraine

Below are links to various sources of coverage of today's aircraft disaster in Ukraine:

CNN Coverage   NBC Coverage  BBC Coverage  CBS Coverage ABC Coverage

New York Times Coverage  The Guardian Coverage Time Coverage

More from The Guardian Le Monde Coverage

From New Year's Day Through the World Cup Final, Here's a Chronicle of 2014

Linked below is a running chronicle of calendar year 2014.  One the day of this post, it covers January 1, 2014 through July 13, 2013. In the coming days, I will update the record of this year as events dictate.

I will be using this record of 2014 in the high school courses that I teach.

A Chronicle of 2014

Marijuana Sales for Recreational Use Now Legal in the State of Washington

State of Washington

July 8, 2014 will be remembered as a milestone date stemming from the results of Election Day, November 6, 2012.

One the same day that the American electorate awarded President Barack Obama with a second term, voters in the state of Washington approved a referendum allowing for the legal sales of recreational marijuana for the northwestern state.

Nearly two years later---Tuesday, July 8, 2014---legal recreational marijuana sales began in Washington.

AP: Legal Marijuana Sales for Recreational Use Begin in State of Washington

Seattle Times: November 6, 2012 Article on Voter Approval of the Marijuana Referendum

Seattle Times: Post Sales Legal in Washington, July 8, 2014

Seattle Times: Seattle Has its First Legal Recreational Weed Sales

Salon Writers: Pessimism on the Week of the 2014 Fourth of July

Salon's Jim Sleeper: The United States Crumbling Apart

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir: Lincoln, Obama, and is our Nation Failing?

Salon's Paul Rosenberg: The Religious Right and Neo-Confederates

Pew Research: U.S. Census Bureau Data Indicate that, Among Babies Born in the Year Ending in Mid-2013, Non-Hispanic Whites Exceeded Minorities by Only 3,000 or so

The Pew Research Center article is linked below.

Pew Research: Minority Babies a Near Majority in the Year Ending in Mid-2013

"But minorities are not yet the majority of any age group, even babies, in the bureau’s new estimates. Among the nation’s 3.9 million children younger than age 1 in 2013, there were about 3,000 more non-Hispanic whites than minorities—essentially equal shares."

---D'Vera Cohn, Pew Research Center, June 26, 2014

Wall Street Journal: An Expanding American Generational Racial-Ethnic Demographic Divide

The Wall Street Journal article is linked below.

Wall Street Journal: American Youth Increasingly More Diverse than Elderly

Al-Jazeera: American Fertility Decline Continued into 2013; Non-Hispanic Whites Experienced Natural Decline for 2nd Consecutive Year

The Al-Jazeera article is linked below.

Natural Decrease for U.S. Non-Hispanic Whites for 2nd Consecutive Year

"For the second year in a row, deaths of non-Hispanic whites outnumbered births from July 1, 2012, to July 1, 2013, according to population estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau."

---Haya El Nasser, Al-Jazeera, June 26, 2014

USA Today: One-Year Asian Population Increase Fueled by Immigration Into U.S.

The USA Today article is linked below.

USA Today: Asians Outpacing Hispanics in U.S. Net Migration Last Year

CBS News and New York Times Poll: 75% of Americans Say the Iraq War was not Worth it

Iraq

A CBS News article reporting on the poll results is linked below.

CBS News: Three-Fourths of the American Public Says Iraq War not Worth it

"Just 18 percent of Americans think the result of the war in Iraq was worth the loss of American lives and other costs of attacking Iraq, the lowest percentage ever recorded in CBS News Polls."

---CBS News, June 23, 2014

Pew Research: U.S. Born Workers Now a Majority of American Hispanic Labor Force

The Pew Research Center article and report is linked below.

Immigrants Now a Minority of U.S. Hispanic Labor Force

"For the first time in nearly two decades, immigrants do not account for the majority of Hispanic workers in the United States. Meanwhile, most of the job gains made by Hispanics during the economic recovery from the Great Recession of 2007-09 have gone to U.S.-born workers, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data."

---Rakesh Kochhar, Pew Research Center

Slate's Jamelle Bouie: Don't Listen to Bill Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz about Iraq

Iraq

Jamelle Bouie's column at Slate is linked below.

Don't Listen to Kristol and Wolfowitz

Salon's Paul Rosenberg: The Blame for the Iraq Mess Falls on George W. Bush

Iraq

Paul Rosenberg's Salon column is linked below.

Paul Rosenberg: Yes, Bush is to Blame

U.S. Department of Labor: 217,000 American Jobs Created in May 2014

Job creation in the United States seems to be fairly robust for the time being.

NBC News: 217,000 Jobs Created in May 2014

The 2012 Presidential Election and State Population Densities

Last summer, I examined the relationship between state population densities and the outcome of the 2012 Presidential Election.  The blog post is linked below.

State Population Densities and the 2012 Presidential Election

Obamacare Sign-Ups Reach 8 Million

President Barack Obama

On Thursday, April 17, 2014, President Barack Obama announced that there are 8 million sign-ups for purchasing health insurance via healthcare exchanges.

WhiteHouse.gov: 8 Million ACA Sign-Ups Via Exchanges

WhiteHouse.gov: ACA Stats

The New Republic: Obamacare Sign-Ups Reach the 8 Million Milestone

ACASignups.net: Obamacare Attains 8 Million Sign-Ups Via Exchanges

Washington Post: Obama Announces 8 Million ACA Sign-Ups

White House: Obamacare Sign-Ups Reach 7 Million Benchmark

President Barack Obama

CNN coverage is linked below.

Obamacare Sign-Ups HIt 7 Million

Washington Post: 7.04 Million

"The White House announced Tuesday that more than 7 million Americans have signed up for health plans under the Affordable Care Act, marking a sharp turnaround for a federal campaign to sell the nation on new health insurance from disastrous beginnings six months ago."

----Washington Post, April 1, 2014

The New Republic's Anne Applebaum: The Cautionary Lessons From History Regarding Revolutions that, in Part, Played Out in the Streets

Anne Applebaum's article at The New Republic is linked below.

Lessons About Revolutionary Fervor in the Streets

"Yet a successful street revolution, like any revolution, is never guaranteed to leave anything positive in its aftermath—or anything at all. In the West, we often now associate protests with progress, or at least we assume that big crowds—the March on Washington, Paris in 1968—are the benign face of social change. But street revolutions are not always progressive, positive, or even important. Some replace a corrupt tyranny with violence and a political vacuum, which is what happened in Libya. Ukraine’s own Orange Revolution of 2004–2005 produced a new group of leaders who turned out to be just as incompetent as their predecessors. Crowds can be bullying, they can become violent, and they can give rise to extremists: Think Tehran 1979, or indeed Petrograd 1917."

---Anne Applebaum, The New Republic 

The New Republic's Paul Berman: To Understand Putin's Actions in 2014, Look to the Logic Behind Soviet Military Actions in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968

Vladimir Putin

Paul Berman's article at The New Republic is linked below.

Soviet Actions in 1956 and 1968 Shed light on Putin's Approach to Ukraine in 2014

"It is always said of Putin that he is a czar, operating on nineteenth-century principles. Or he is a Russian enigma. And he is not a Kremlin general secretary from Soviet times. Even so, he is a Kremlin general secretary. He has invaded Ukraine on the basis of the same logic that led Nikita Khrushchev to invade Hungary in 1956 and that led Leonid Brezhnev to invade Czechoslovakia in 1968. It is the logic of counterrevolution, and it is not inscrutable."

---Paul Berman, The New Republic

NBC News: 21 Percent of Americans Say that Religion Not Particularly Important to Them

The NBC News article is linked below.

NBC News: For a Growing American Demographic, Religion Not Important

"One in five Americans say religion does not play an important role in their lives, a new NBC/WSJ journal poll shows – the highest percentage since the poll began asking participants about their focus on faith in 1997.

Twenty one percent of respondents said that religion is 'not that important' to their lives, compared to 16 percent who said the same in 1999. In 1997, 14 percent of Americans said religion did not play an important role in their lives.

The poll showed that these less religious Americans are more likely to be men, have an income over $75,000, to live in the Northeast or West and to be under the age of 35."

---Carrie Dann, NBC News, March 12, 2014

CNN's David Frum: The Nuanced Liberalism of Millennials

David Frum's CNN column is linked below.

David Frum: Today's Youngest Voters are Trending Liberal

"The generation born since 1981 is the age group most likely to vote Democratic. The eldest of them are in their 30s now, and they continue to be much more liberal than previous-age cohorts at the same point in their lives. A big new survey by the Pew Research Center seeks to understand why. Its report carries political warnings for conservatives -- and some larger warnings for us all.

The warning for conservatives is: Millennial attachment to the Democratic Party is not a phase. Millennials are far less likely to be religiously affiliated than their elders. They are more likely to have children outside marriage (47% of their children are born outside marriage, compared with only 35% of Generation X children in 1996). They are poorer than their predecessor generations at the same point in their life cycles."

---David Frum, CNN, March 11, 2014