127 Articles

Tuesday, November 17, 2009
2012, Agree to Agree
(1 comments) Much has been made of the Mayan calendar ending in 2012, the next Y2K. Anyone remember what happened on Y1K? Christians and just plain Joes gathered on hilltops with their arms raised and swaying in a religious rapture waiting for Jesus to come and save them.

Sunday, November 15, 2009
No Ordinary Utensil
(5 comments) I don't think that there is any spectacle quite so moving or so sad than to see someone's possessions stacked in the yard in front of what used to be their home. It is odd, not just our own connection with our belongings, but our belongings' connections to us as well.

Monday, November 9, 2009
The Great Disconnect
(1 comments) Most radical politics are born of fear, fed on ignorance, which then graduates to intolerance. But key to any radical political movement is the scapegoat. It can't be any other way. When you try to paint reality with simplistic reasons for all that is wrong with the world, you must then refill it with simplistic villains responsible for all of the world's evils.

Monday, November 9, 2009
The Weight of Visions
(6 comments) Soldiers in combat are, for all intents and purposes, insane. This sense of insanity is fostered by the military as a callous behind which the soldiers can exhibit a macho bravado.An emotional dam to hide away the lifetime of religious and societal teachings that are replaced by the warrior mentality. The warrior who kills today and prays and who will ask God almighty to spare his life so that he may kill again tomorrow.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Rogue Nation
But the allegations run even deeper than the CIA helping a war lord to move his product; it is claimed that the CIA were his partners. General Pao was still unhappy because even though he had his airline, he still had competition in the drug trade. Shackley used CIA assets to bomb and sabotage the competition until General Pao had obtained a monopoly in Laos in the heroin trade.

Saturday, October 31, 2009
There's Just No Reason To Cry
(1 comments) As we scrimmaged over healthcare all the summer long, right wing pundits came up with the term "death panels." I thought to myself, damn, that's fiendishly clever. I had this vision of a futuristic “Logan's Run” type of thing going on, or instead of a draft board having to go in front of the “Death Panel.”

Monday, October 26, 2009
Iran has enough of its own problems without needing to blame the West
It was the recent suicide bombing in Iran that made my mind wander back to this trap. It is as if many Americans believe that Iran exists in a vacuum. That Iran doesn't have other problems or rivalries besides the United States and Israel. They pretend that Iran's leaders stay up late at night planing devilment for the west without ever looking over their own shoulders.

Monday, October 26, 2009
Falling in Love with a Prostitiute
(8 comments) We've become a populace living in a semi-conscious state, unaware and clueless. Numb and emotionless, clinging to meaningless euphemisms and statistics. Reciting jingoistic slogans over a mother's tears. A "casualty" means that some American boy's head has been splattered on the ground for some god-damned political theory for the ignorant. Wasted in the name of corporate America, but we love our troops.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009
A Most Oppressed Minority
(5 comments) Problem is, when your party is against support for higher education and against expansion of Pell grants, those ideas aren't always popular on campus. So, what do conservative students do to fight their oppression? They whine, cry and bemoan their poor treatment; it's all because the big leftist bogeyman has it in for them.

Sunday, October 18, 2009
Whose War, What War?
(3 comments) The long delay has been seen by conservatives as an opportunity to call the President a weak, lazy, Nigerian-born Marxist, Communist, Socialist, hell bent on destroying America. When actually it has been a delay by the White House to make the President look thoughtful and contemplative before charging full bore into a continuation of the Bush/Cheney foreign policy.

Thursday, October 15, 2009
The Next Lost War
(4 comments) We are storming in without understanding what it is that we are breaking. We are eating a tiger, tail first. We haven't gotten to the part with meat and claws and teeth yet, and when we do it will be too late. “You break it, you own it.”

Monday, October 12, 2009
One Big Circle
(10 comments) You see, like me, I'm sure many of you thought that fears of global warming had come from world scientists and NASA. How wrong we are! This is all a front set up by Al Gore and fear mongers to rob you of your future!

Saturday, October 10, 2009
A Time of Shattering Realities
(5 comments) In Las Vegas there have been three murder-suicides in the past twelve days. These are acts of desperation that are happening in every city in America and yet it is treated as strictly local news.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Why the Coming Great Depression will be Worse Than the Last One
(1 comments) During the 1930's the country was almost 60% rural; times were bad but most still had food to eat. Even most people who lived in cities still had relatives back on the farm. When my father was twelve he was sent to live on his grandfather's dairy farm because his parents couldn't feed him. Times were hard and he never owned a new pair of shoes until he joined the Navy, but he always had food to eat.

Monday, October 5, 2009
Stuck on Stupid
(5 comments) If Sarah Palin had been trying to get the 2016 summer games for Alaska, would it have been wrong if she took the state Greyhound Bus to Denmark? No one would have complained until she announced that she would try again next year to bring the 2017 games to Alaska.

Friday, October 2, 2009
The Mean Country
(16 comments) I read a book about a woman who was a holocaust survivor. She described how she would drag out the dead bodies from the barracks in the morning so that she could have the corpse's clothing. She could then trade the clothing for extra food or necessities. She said something that has always stuck with me. “Many people gave up on life because this was a world where it was very easy to give up on life.

Friday, October 2, 2009
Dude, I Want My Party Back!
(6 comments) All politicians make promises on which they do not deliver; it is the nature of the beast. Sometimes they can't deliver. Sometimes the personal cost is too high to deliver. But as we roll towards Barack Obama's first year in office I find a disturbing trend. He addresses issues with strong pronouncements, then they go into committee meetings and negotiations and what emerges is as weak as chicken soup.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009
The Last Republican
(3 comments) The message sent from Washington was loud and clear, we are the government and we have no interest in your wellbeing whatsoever. They did everything from declaring ketchup a vegetable so as to cheat hungry children out of a decent school lunch to opening up old growth forests to commercial logging at prices that didn't even cover the cost of the government-built roads.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009
The Lost Children
(1 comments) The political spectrum has bent so far to the right you have Republican House and Senate members surviving only in their safe districts. Then you have the Blue Dogs who, when compared with Democrats of forty years ago, are in fact moderate Republicans. They live in political limbo. Neither fish nor fowl, they accept their committee chairmanships and mute what ought to be a Democratic majority.

Monday, September 14, 2009
The Godzilla Amendment
As the money poured into the I Love Godzilla Fan Club, the lizard was quick to buy into the political leadership and start his own political action committee (Zilpac). He used his burgeoning power along with automotive interests to defund mass transit projects, because giant rubber-suited lizards just hate mass transit.

Saturday, September 12, 2009
What?
(1 comments) Americans are saving more because they are, in point of fact, terrified, and after listening to Mr. Geithner, their reasoning appears sound. We are in a depression and if we all save our money the depression only grows worse. Then the boss man lays off more workers and the fear is multiplied to the next level. I guess the Treasury plan is for us all to go back into the stock market and invest.

Thursday, September 10, 2009
The Real Reason Van Jones was Fired
(9 comments) Ordinarily you ignore the asshole remark and you apologize, saying that you misunderstood the full intent of the petition, and everyone goes back to work. So for Mr. Jones to get fired so quickly and so stealthily it becomes obvious that there is more to the picture than meets the eye.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The Silence of the Wolves
(3 comments) I read the following line in an article about the new unemployment numbers: “At the same time, the report did underscore that the economy is on the mend and pulling out of the deepest recession since the 1930s.” Except that there was no recession in the 1930s; there was a full-blown depression. And rather than ignoring it or putting flowers over it the administration of that time responded to it.

Monday, August 31, 2009
Losing Touch with a Good Friend
(3 comments) A mindless task on a hot summer day or an interminable trip would become a paradise where my mind could roam free from distractions. Free to go where it will with no limits placed upon it, until the phone rings. “Are you almost home? Do you want chicken or hamburgers for supper tonight?”

Sunday, August 23, 2009
Who Are These Democrats?
(2 comments) It is as if Obama began the health care debate with a first down on the fifty yard line and has been angling for field position to kick a field goal ever since.

Thursday, August 20, 2009
Do I Trust the President?
(3 comments) In politics nothing is said to the public by accident. It is true that people do mis-speak and misinterpret policy, but when the person who mis-speaks is the author of the policy then, as the expression goes, "Houston, we've got a problem."-

Monday, August 10, 2009
Raising Baby Bubba
(1 comments) These little minds are a fertile playground. Children run wild with imagination, but whether they are raised by me or by wolves like Romulus and Remus, there is still rule one. We are your parents, we are in charge and you will do as you are told or else.

Saturday, August 8, 2009
Video Killed the Radio Star
Before the invention of the remote control, parents opted for the slave labor approach. “Go turn the sound up! Get up and move the antenna! A little to the left, there, let go! Go turn the sound down!” Child labor laws were completely ignored, even when it became obvious that the future of the children was in doubt. Would parents bother to bring children into the world if they could be replaced with a remote control?

Saturday, August 8, 2009
At My Nose
It is important, however, that we view these new rabble rousers like we would the first dry leaf of fall. They are a sign of what is coming down the road and a sign of how serious the Republican party and their clients, the healthcare industry, are about derailing all of this.

Friday, August 7, 2009
How Far Must Johnny March?
I guess Afghanistan reminds me a lot of Vietnam by the way that it grinds on and on with no end in site, without even any metrics as to what would constitute victory. There is a ruling clique ensconced in the capital with a president who struts in robes and sashes while his crooked family members loot the treasury.

Saturday, August 1, 2009
The Gate Keepers of Death
(7 comments) “I’m old, damn it; how the hell do you think I am?” But I didn’t let him rain on my parade any. He was at least mobile and lucid, as inside, down long corridors, were the rooms of the deteriorating elderly.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Pigs on the Wing
(4 comments) Ah, that things weren't so, then I wouldn't have to crack my head open to try and make you see what I see; not to harvest pity nor to draw attention to myself, for I'm trying to draw attention to you. These stories are about you. I am three feet ahead of you in a dark cave holding the flashlight, so please understand that when I say, "Look out," it is not for me as much as it is for you.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Not Discouraged, Abandoned
I am one of those workers, but I do not consider myself a discouraged worker as much as an abandoned worker. I have four resumes, depending on what type of job I'm applying for. I check the want ads every day and apply for anything that I'm even remotely qualified to handle. What is discouraging is what is available out there to apply for. Do you speak Pashto? Neither do I,

Sunday, July 26, 2009
Coming Soon, to a Life Near You
(1 comments) It is like we are living in two parallel universes, the people in one and the government in the other. Hillary Clinton goes to India and tells its leaders Americans don't want protectionism. And then is blasted to bits by comments from the readers of Democratic Underground.

Sunday, July 26, 2009
GM's Free Ride
It's a free ride, Clyde, whipped cream seat and a cherry headrest on the banana split boat. A gravy train with biscuit wheels, just sign the papers and have security remove the old codgers from out in front of the building. Just another 50,000 pensioners thrown onto the scrap heap, left to fend for themselves so that corporations can breathe the free air of Mexico and China.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Moon Men
(1 comments) On July 20th when man first walked on the moon there was a surrealism felt worldwide, like something out of a science fiction movie as whole nations and their peoples surrounded TV sets and watched as Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon. The world heaped praise on the United States for the greatest technological achievement of mankind. And unless you were there and watched it you can't really understand the world before it

Saturday, July 18, 2009
Saving Tinkerbell
(5 comments) charlatans who strut the days in matinees of palisades and serpentine splendor that remains to remind us that all the world is a stage, but the play is all of fiction. Their names may change as fast as the facts, but never forget they run in packs, and sleep better knowing that their money's safely in the banks. So don't try to phone, don't try to call, don't you ring the doorbell and wait on the lawn, for they don't know you

Saturday, July 11, 2009
Fixing the Leak
(4 comments) So, in actuality this is not about trade at all. You trade goods, but you exploit people. Mexico's economy has been built on the backs of the people's hard labor. Foreign-owned factories have surged from just 79 to almost a thousand. The goods are imported into Mexico under free trade agreements then assembled and shipped directly into the United States. This is only possible by keeping wages low in Mexico,

Sunday, June 28, 2009
The Ghosts of Detroit
(1 comments) For the most part they have been forgotten; they are just empty, vacant memories like the empty, dilapidated homes which line her once proud streets. It was a land once ruled over by giants, captains of industry and labor and political thought.

Sunday, June 28, 2009
The Ghosts of Detroit (part 2)
Billy Durant announced to the world that he was founding a new car company and its models would be designed by one of the foremost auto racers in the world, Louis Chevrolet...It is policies that have put us where we are. The brains the hands and the spirit which changed the world are still there waiting to be tapped again.

Thursday, June 25, 2009
The Ghosts of Detroit
(1 comments) For the most part they have been forgotten; they are just empty, vacant memories like the empty, dilapidated homes which line her once proud streets. It was a land once ruled over by giants, captains of industry and labor and political thought.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Endless War, Empty Goals
The headlines could be from 2003, 2004, 2006 or 2008, and nothing changes. "Rescuers Search Iraq Blast Site" "US Base Attacked in Afghanistan" "US to improve Afghan Training." If this were World War Two, the Yalta conference would have been two years ago and President Truman would be planning to meet in San Francisco soon to establish the UN.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Cooking in a Coffee Pot
(2 comments) The one thing to remember about the homeless is that they never have a day off. They are homeless every day; it's easy to forget and difficult to understand, but the homeless face the world without a buttress. They are toe-to-toe with the heat and the humidity, the rain, the mud, and the bugs.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Killing for Fun and Profit
(1 comments) Only in America could not thinking clearly and being suspicious and hostile be considered a symptom! Using that logic you could drug most of the society. But were this just a case of selling sugar pills to Granny and Boom Pa it could be forgiven. America's shelves are full of medicines and pseudo medicines and treatments and supplements that at best might help a little, and at worst might deplete your wallet. But Zyprexa kills

Monday, June 15, 2009
Where Have All the Democrats Gone?
(3 comments) The concept of no man is above the law in the United States is as dead as religious freedom in Nazi Germany. The executive branch is above the law, and the intelligence branch is above the law per our new President, the Democrat. Without legal constraints upon them what is left of democracy but to don the purple and put on circuses for the people?

Saturday, June 13, 2009
Come to California to See Your Future
(1 comments) If you were to see this play enacted in a theater, you wouldn't believe it. California faces a budget deficit of $26.8 billion dollars in the 2010 state budget, draconian cuts, and, perhaps portends what's to come in the rest of America.

Sunday, June 7, 2009
Why I Hate Microsoft
(12 comments) I have always wondered what it would be like to spend the evening with Bill Gates. Never having known a billionaire before and being known for bad haircuts myself I thought that it might be interesting.

Thursday, June 4, 2009
The Coming Struggle, Why Your Guns Won't Save You
(5 comments) This lunatic mentality believes that somehow the government is afraid of you because you own a pump shotgun and a revolver. Maybe you own a lot of guns and have them buried in a secret location, waiting for the uprising, but no matter how many guns you have they'll always have more.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Close to the Edge, A Country Without Pity
(2 comments) Your government doesn't care a whit about you! Ask Gov. Schwarzenegger if these things matter as he attempts to end public health care in California. Your government rejoices at the Chrysler and GM bankruptcy; Wall Street soars on news that another thirty thousand union auto workers will soon become unemployed and one hundred and fifty thousand dealership employees will also get the ax.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009
More of the Same Game
Obama ran for office promising change! He was going to change the way the government does business. He was going turn us away from neocon zealotry and given his first shot he appoints a candidate closer to Alito and Souter than anyone now on the court. Where is our champion? Where is an appointment that will turn the courts back towards the direction of Thurgood Marshall?

Saturday, May 30, 2009
The Next Wave
(2 comments) They are trying to pick the winner of the Kentucky Derby without understanding that what they are looking at is a sawhorse. This is not your father's recession, this is the twilight zone. Business will not just gradually improve until we'll all forget these difficult times. We are watching the deconstruction of our economy.

Friday, May 29, 2009
One Hundred Days
(1 comments) At a time of falling wages and struggling families it would seem a tiny ray of hope for workers that somehow they could turn the tide. Just the threat of employees being able to organize would prompt employers to treat their workers better or face the consequences. But in one hundred days that hope is as dead as the turkeys at a Sarah Palin photo op.

Saturday, May 23, 2009
Where Do We Go When All Hope Is Gone?
(13 comments) The Democrats in Congress whined for two years about all that they would do if only they were in the majority. So, now there they are, and what do we get? We get lame excuses, futile half measures, and right-wing rhetoric balled up as centrist humanitarianism. Under the Republicans, banks and big business got all their needs promptly attended to. What is different now?

Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The Future Without A Future
(2 comments) Remember when they told us free trade would bring jobs? Well it did, it brought jobs to Japan and South Korea and even tiny Taiwan who is, officially at least, at odds with Beijing. When it comes to import partners, the US lags behind an island slightly smaller than Maryland and Delaware.

Friday, May 8, 2009
The Trickle Up Theory
(3 comments) The Obama administration might long be remembered as the administration that saved the banks but lost everything else, to have saved the ship's wheel but lost the ship. Mired in the plutocracy and unable to rise above insider politics, they serve only those that feed them.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Stray Cats
(12 comments) I watch the sun go down reluctantly. This world offers little, and I have little to offer in return. I have lost everything, so as the birds sing at daylight's demise, I hear no music. The world has lost its music for me. It is just an endless grind with a police siren in the distance.

Saturday, May 2, 2009
From Haymarket to Ludlow from Harlen to Matewan from Mother Jones to You
(5 comments) So what does May Day mean to you? Probably nothing, maybe you've got a job, maybe a real good one and you're only concerned with your own look out. So you don't want me jostling your bed cause you sleep good at night. I used to sleep good at night too. Then by the moonlight I began to wonder why it is that there is always money to help big business and never enough money to help the workers?

Thursday, April 30, 2009
A Death in the Family
(3 comments) So, as we talk about the demise of America's big three automobile companies, let us remember that when they depart from us we will see their like no more. During the last ten years they have spent their profits on new factories in China and Russia, India and South Korea. They intend on being with us, just not on employing us.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Another Earth Day
(2 comments) Poison pet food, toxic baby formula, sweat shops, child labor, forced labor, falling living standards and environmental degradation, the thread of greed runs through it all. It makes Earth Day like world prostitute day; we celebrate them today but go back to screwing them tomorrow. The problems are addressed but never resolved.

Thursday, April 16, 2009
Dispatches From the Front
That is America after all, kill or be killed. Ride on someone's back or let them ride on your back. Dignity is an option only available on the luxury models. Because I was self-employed and because I tried for too long to kick start the business, I have no unemployment benefits. I paid in for 27 years and when I need them I get bubkis! There is no aide. There is no government program; there is nothing.

Saturday, March 14, 2009
It All Gets Real
(3 comments) Are Americans just more criminally bent? Or is it a collective madness brought on by a society that talks one way and acts another.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009
No Nation Can Long Endure Half Bankrupt
(2 comments) Mr. Obama's change so far has been to the right of Bill Clinton, "The Centrist." I wrote about the 6,500 American families losing their homes to foreclosure each day, and I got this as a response: "Houses are overvalued. Their prices must decline." Many people like this just don't know any better, after being raised in the Reagan revolution, but how is that response any different than George W. Bush's response to Katrina?

Saturday, February 28, 2009
Being Woody Guthrie
(1 comments) Today we have so many celebrities who take on social causes; it is almost a given that they will each have some charity or cause that they support. That is good, I suppose, but still there is a clear distinction between being socially conscious and being Woody Guthrie.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tomorrow a New World Begins
(2 comments) Now this same media and these same Republicans say that it's wrong to try and assist the people because "They," the people, were irresponsible! One company, A.I.G. (American Insurance Group), has already received $150 billion in taxpayer aid and today will ask the US taxpayer for an undetermined amount to cover a $60 billion loss in the fourth quarter of last year. But, you? You get five hundred bucks and Republican sneers.

Friday, February 20, 2009
Breaking Bad is Breaking Ground
(2 comments) Walter White has been given a death sentence; all his life he has worked and struggled to find the American dream, and now it comes to this. Stage three lung cancer with a prognosis of two years to live. His insurance from his job as a high school chemistry teacher will help, but he has a wife and children to think of, as well.

Friday, February 20, 2009
The Howling Days of Madness
(7 comments) I really don't know what to make of our new President. I voted for him, but what other choice was there, really? Obama is very smart, but of course next to George Bush, Elmer Fudd comes across as Steven Hawking. Obama is so smart I never would have tried to sell him weed in high school; he's scary smart.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Adventures in Job Hunting
Experience is both your friend and your enemy. If you send out your resume with lines like, "Twenty-two years management experience" to prospective employers they see a fat bald guy, wheezing, trying to get up the stairs, just waiting to have a heart attack ninety days after being hired. You are a torpedo headed straight for their healthcare plan; in other words, orgetfay ouryay experienceway.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Charlotte's Economy (A Fable)
(1 comments) "You're that little spider?" "That's offensive, Wilbur, we prefer to be called Arachnid-Americans." "I'm sorry, I don't get out of my stall much so I not up on these things." "I understand that, Wilbur. Little pigs such as yourself don't get to see much of the world. But we Arachnid-Americans, we have seen much and we're your friends and we want to help you."

Saturday, February 14, 2009
Why Eric Cantor Hates You
(1 comments) Cantor sees the world a little differently than most Americans; his world belongs to the wealthy, and the middle class and poor are seen as an impediment to his world. You are the garbage to be swept off the street; he will gladly support prisons to incarcerate you, but not colleges to educate you.

Saturday, February 7, 2009
I'll Wait For You
(1 comments) I admit openly to being cynical, but why shouldn't I be? I've seen my industry devastated with the associated plant closings and suicides. I started two businesses myself;I've shuttered them both and because of that when I see a vacant storefront I don't just see an empty building, I see a devastated dream.

Friday, February 6, 2009
One Way or the Other
(7 comments) They drink the best whiskey and turn the heat all the way up. They come in in the morning when they choose and leave when they get tired. Both sides are playing politics while millions suffer, men, women and children, who through no fault of their own find their jobs gone and their futures dimmed.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009
The Evil Dr. Phil
Our own nocturnal Dr. Phil is a Nosferatu, hiding in the shadows and working for the darker powers with an agenda of helping the few at the expense of the many. Perhaps it is not bricks that we need to combat him but wooden stakes, and failing that perhaps the morning sunshine to prevent him from returning to his dark resting place.

Monday, February 2, 2009
I Come to Bury, Not to Praise
(9 comments) Blagojevich's guilt or innocence is really unimportant; it doesn't matter because this is a political assassination. Whether it is done with a gun or a knife is unimportant; all that matters is that it was done and done publicly. The Governor was arrested in his home at six thirty in the morning, less than three weeks after Barack Obama, a Senator from Illinois and from Chicago, won election as President of the United States

Sunday, February 1, 2009
The War on Sense
(5 comments) It is a shocking statistic and one that should spur us to action. In 2006, 4,800 Americans lost their lives in the search for illicit pleasure. Most were young people under the age of 35 and there were thousands of others who were injured, some permanently in pursuit of kicks and cheap thrills.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Long Shadows
So lost and out of touch are these Ba'thist dead enders that they fail to realize that a New Deal sounds like a pretty good idea to millions of struggling Americans. But Obama's stimulus program is not another New Deal, it is merely patching the old tire and trying to get the wagon out of the ditch so we can go down the same old road again.

Sunday, January 25, 2009
Economics the Hard Way
(1 comments) My father used to lament the poor mathematical performance of his children, "They struggle to get a C in math, yet they always know to the penny how much allowance they are due." It was true enough and goes straight to the heart of the problem with numbers. We have a fundamental disconnect with the numbers that don't affect us directly.

Monday, January 19, 2009
Message in a Bottle
(4 comments) I'm too angry to sleep, too weary to hope. I'm too old for optimism and too young to stop fighting. I'd hit someone if only I knew who; I'd march if only I knew where to go. I support the new President and think that he will bring a new vitality to the nation, but my age and anger tells me that vitality is a show business term. That trickle down never reaches us, and political spin is just so much wind passed into our faces.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
The Verdict
The last Bush press conference was a doozy, riddled with angst, anger and unrequited appreciation. You could read it in his eyes, "Why don't they love me?" Suddenly he was the teenage boy again, called in front of his domineering father and trying to explain away all those things that couldn't be explained away.

Saturday, January 10, 2009
Connecting the Dots
(2 comments) It seems I can't even watch TV news anymore, it just makes me too angry, the cluelessness of the government. I voted for change, not a slight alteration but for change. I sit here in this tiny berg of Powder Springs and I ask myself, "Why is it that I can see these things and these highly-paid experts and analysts don't?"

Saturday, January 10, 2009
What the Gupta Are They Thinking?
(2 comments) What kind of Gupta is this? We all make mistakes; it is, after all, normal to make mistakes. The Obama administration made a mistake in picking megachurch, megabuck, megabigot, religious leader Rick Warren to speak at the inaugural ceremonies.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Money Owes No Allegiance
(1 comments) Money owes no allegiance; the imaginary jobless rate stands at 6.7% while the real number is closer to 10% now and headed towards 15%. The capitalists look at total US debt, like investors in GM stock, and ask, "Is this a viable entity?" The Fed lends to banks who then look at the American public saying, "Invest in them? Are you crazy? Those people are in the tank and we're not going in after them."

Monday, January 5, 2009
The CIA Wouldn't Lie to Us, Would They?
(1 comments) I guess that all depends on who they're talking to; they lie to suit their purpose and tell the truth when it fits their needs. If you were to ask a government official, "Are UFO's real?" they would smile a paternalistic smile and maybe even roll their eyes a little and say, "No Virginia, UFO's aren't real."

Saturday, January 3, 2009
God is With Us
(4 comments) Tom Lehrer, one of the first satirical, political song writers, once penned a song entitled "National Brotherhood Week." The song went, "Oh, the black folks hate the white folks and the white folks hate the black folks and the Indians hate the Mexicans and everybody hates the Jews." Funny, because it is was so true.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Look At All Those New Cars
(12 comments) The Christmas rituals are over; we've eaten the pumpkin pie and listened to Aunt Martha's annual stories of her health problems, all in the face of incompetent and unfeeling physicians. While I was with my wife's relatives they pulled out their home movies and we watched as the family jumped from holiday to holiday in three-minute, Super 8 vignettes.

Sunday, December 21, 2008
Ford's Legacy
Deep Throat is dead. The man who brought down a President by leaking information which otherwise would never have seen the light of day is gone. His passing should be remembered because he was the Paul Revere of his generation. He held up the light of truth in the steeple as he risked his career, his family, and if caught he might have been sentenced to more hard time than all the Watergate conspirators combined.

Thursday, December 18, 2008
Welcome to Our World (Satire)
Welcome, good evening, one and all, find a seat and make yourself comfortable. Take your shoes off and stay a while; a little business first, for those of you with cars there is no valet parking. Feel free to ask to ask questions of your neighbors. Those of you who lost your retirement in the Enron scandal please raise your hands so that the newcomers can find you.

Thursday, December 18, 2008
Scorched Earth
(1 comments) There comes a point, as the car careens out of control down the icy highway, when we are no longer the driver but just the person holding onto the wheel. We try to do what's right but the situation changes from instant to instant and it appears that our actions have little effect.

Sunday, December 14, 2008
What FDR Gave Us
(2 comments) Both of my parents lived through the Great Depression. My father was born in 1920, and my mother was born in 1926. My father was raised in a small industrial town, my mother in inner city Chicago. Those of you familiar with Chicago's waterfront might be surprised to learn that children once played in the empty shell of what now is the Museum of Science and Industry.

Sunday, December 14, 2008
Down to Zero
(8 comments) The technocrats declare that being against outsourcing is like being against the weather. That outsourcing is somehow a force of nature, and therefore all resistance is futile. The beliefs of the bellicose, the rantings of the complacent, and the bluster of those secretly afraid, afraid that you will discover their secret, the secret that they have guarded so closely,

Thursday, December 11, 2008
Thinking Outside the Box
(3 comments) "A man who doesn't read the newspaper every day is uninformed, a man that does is misinformed." (Mark Twain)

Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The Monster Factory
(3 comments) "True, they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers.

Saturday, December 6, 2008
In the Shadow of an Apocalypse
(10 comments) The media has coined a new term, "The great recession." The media loves terms like that, terms they can use to encapsulate ideas. It allows them to rationalize and generalize, and in this case, minimize. To call this the great recession is as insulting as calling a train wreck a boo boo. It ignores the pain and suffering that millions of Americans are going through with a vulgar, sugar-coated euphemism.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Dead Babies Can Take Care of Themselves
(2 comments) When is enough, enough? Sometimes reading news stories can be unsettling and then sometimes it can just make you damn angry. Here in America we live with a multi level media colossus that spews out garbage on every level, they too also lie who just ignore the truth. We are all familiar with Fox news 24 hour running propaganda network but they have to get these stories from some where, they can't make them all up.

Sunday, November 30, 2008
A Parellel Universe
(2 comments) The scientists toil in their laboratories and build billion-dollar super colliders under the Earth's crust looking for the secrets of the universe. The heirs of Einstein tell us with confidence that other universes exist, other dimensions where our rules and means of existence simply do not apply. It's fun to think about such things as a mental exercise, as cranial gymnastics,

Sunday, November 23, 2008
Five Million
The now famous or infamous Bill Ayers recently quoted Jerry Garcia, "What a long, strange trip it's been." Indeed, I'll second that. Barack Obama's victory speech in Chicago's Grant Park held many memories for me. I grew up in Chicago and up until now my most vivid memories of the park had been of the Democratic National Convention in 1968.

Thursday, November 20, 2008
Will You Go Quietly?
(3 comments) Can we cut the crap here? Can we look dispassionately at the issue before us? This is a class struggle; it has always been a class struggle and it is always going to be a class struggle. We can cloak the issue of globalization in the mantle of altruism, that this is good for all concerned, but that is just not so. Globalism is good for the investment class and the ownership class and the banking class.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Its Only America Bleeding
(1 comments) To what do I owe the pleasure of this company? What is owed to me and to what account do I owe by the nature of my birth? Solemn allegiance and my blood poured out on foreign fields for the honor and glory of brass buttons and medal-resplendent generals?

Sunday, November 16, 2008
Too Poor for Bankruptcy
We, as a country, seem to have little problem saving the wealthy from the clutches of poverty. We'll bail out banks and insurance companies, mortgage funds. The formerly big three automakers will meet with the new administration this week to arrange a further multi-billion-dollar bailout.

Sunday, November 9, 2008
Let's Call It a Palinism
(2 comments) Watching the demise of the big three automakers and the attempts to save them I cannot help but listen to the pundits. "It is the large retirement structure that is sinking them and making them noncompetitive in a world market." Gee, but that has a familiar ring to it. "They took those loans knowing that they wouldn't be able to pay for them."

Saturday, November 1, 2008
A Single Lifetime
(2 comments) Surviving to over age 50 is no major accomplishment, in and of itself. It's only a chance to see things and experience things, and sadly, most of it for the worse. As a child, playing in the sun was not seen as a danger; the polar ice caps weren't melting, or at least we didn't know about it yet. Gasoline was .29 cents a gallon and seat belts were a novelty only required in the front seat.

Thursday, October 23, 2008
Letting The Market Place Work
They tell us that we must let the marketplace work, we must never allow the heavy hand of government to impinge on our freedoms. While the rest of the industrial world has national healthcare, we in America have our freedom. Our freedom and forty-seven million people without healthcare.

Monday, October 20, 2008
The Great Divide
(1 comments) I had to attend class on Saturday, a poll workers class on provisional voting held at the government center over in Marietta. Marietta, Georgia is a very old and historic city. The Yankees once occupied her, and during World War II her Bell Bomber Plant churned out thousands of aircraft for the war effort.

Friday, October 17, 2008
You Think I'm Rich, Don't You?
(3 comments) Poor Joe the plumber, plucked from obscurity and thrust into the national limelight, his life has now become an open book. After all, all he did was ask a question about tax policy. Little did he know the McCain campaign and Fox News would seize upon him and try to make him an icon.

Sunday, October 12, 2008
Gone with the Wind
(3 comments) As we sat around the dinner table celebrating a family birthday, the conversation turned to the stock market. My in-laws are retired and in their seventies; they, for the most part, just shook their heads. Then my mother-in-law, with a nervous certainty, remarked, "It'll come back, you wait and see." My first impulse was to remind her of some of the events that have already transpired to the contrary, but her tone quieted me.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008
The Shot Heard Round the World
(4 comments) When 90-year-old Addie Polk put the gun to her chest and pulled the trigger she was seeking an escape from foreclosure. The first shot failed to do the job so the elderly widow pulled the trigger a second time as Sheriff's deputies waited on the porch to serve her with an eviction notice. She was rescued by her neighbor, Robert Dillion, who grabbed a ladder and climbed in a back window.

Sunday, October 5, 2008
The Terminator Cries Uncle
Yes, Governor Arnold cries for his Uncle to save him! He warns Treasury Secretary Paulson in his best Austrian accent, "You must help us, ve are close to running out of cash to fund day-to-day government operations and we are unable to access routine, short-term loans."

Wednesday, October 1, 2008
The World You'll Come to Know
(5 comments) I was talking to my son yesterday about the economy and politics in general. He's twenty-three, self-employed, and ambitious. Even as a child he was ambitious. "Dad," he'd say, "can I borrow the lawnmower?" Then he'd come back at sundown with $150.00. He never cared for cartoons, video games, or school but his one weakness was the Three Stooges

Monday, September 29, 2008
A Piss Snow cone
(1 comments) How can I put this politely? For years I have been warned, "Dave, you're too negative!" Well, I can't help it; I've tried to change but it's no use. So let me describe the revised, sanitized, scrutinized, super-sized bailout bill as optimistically as I can. How about half a hammer? Or nothing for something? Or my favorite, a piss snow cone.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Betting Against America
(3 comments) There is an apex, an apogee, a point of no return, a point when many will throw up their hands. It is indeed difficult to ask for blind faith as a Bush administration appointee, and even more faith is required to believe a Bush appointee.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Same As It Ever Was
Be afraid, be very afraid, the angel of economic calamity has visited disaster upon us and hovers over us still. The proposed trillion-dollar bailout is just that, a bail out, it does nothing to fix the hole in the boat. In 2007 when the so-called "credit crisis/ mortgage crisis" began, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates and flooded the decks with cash and the situation was stabilized for six weeks.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Communist Obama Waffles
(1 comments) We've all heard the expression " bringing a knife to a gun fight." A mismatch and a fundamental underestimation of the situation. We lament the loss of civil politics in favor of emotion-based attack politics, where truth becomes a useless appendage, almost an appendix in the body politic.

Saturday, September 13, 2008
Fractured Fairy Tales
(1 comments) Once upon a time, that's how fairy tales begin, isn't it? Don't we all want to believe? Our personal relationships and our family relationships are all based on telling the truth, aren't they? I had a cousin with emotional troubles who was incapable of telling the truth. If she was twenty minutes late she couldn't just say, "Sorry, I overslept."

Thursday, September 11, 2008
Remebering February 27
The day after Adolph Hitler became Chancellor of Germany his deputy and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary, "In conference with the Fuehrer we lay down the line for the fight against the red terror. For the moment we shall abstain from direct counter measures. The Bolshevik attempt at revolution must first burst into flame. At the proper moment we shall strike."

Tuesday, September 9, 2008
The Last Hurrah
There is a cancer in our economy and it is spreading rapidly. The administration's standard policy is to at first ignore it, then to deny it, then blame the victims for it, and then to claim that intervention won't be necessary just before it intervenes.

Sunday, September 7, 2008
McCain: Maverick, Mad Man or Sad Clown
(4 comments) McCain, Palin, old man, empty suit, young demagogue, blind ambition, it becomes easy enough to focus on the foreground and ignore the background. Was Sarah Palin a good choice made by McCain? The better question to ask would be, who picked Sarah Palin in the first place?

Thursday, August 21, 2008
The Happy Happy Joy Club
Being the youngest of three children I grew up cynical, it was only natural. After being used and manipulated a number of times by my siblings, I learned to read the fine print. "Mom says we can have some cookies if you go get them." "David! What are you doing in that cookie jar? You know better than that! You know that you have to ask first! Now get out of there!" "But, Mom?" "Don't but mom me, get out of there!"

Monday, August 18, 2008
His Time is Short
"I am the Obergruppen Fuehrer for the state of Kalifornia! You will do what I say, ya? We must not be held back by this economy! There is only one course to follow! We must make an example of state workers! We will shoot a thousand a day until the economy gives in and turns around.!" "Sir you can't shoot state workers!" "Then fire them! Fire them all, the temporary workers, the interns, fire them all!"

Monday, August 4, 2008
All In the "McCain" Family
(1 comments) "Boy da way Glenn Miller played," "Songs I've heard on my I-pod today" "Gee, those S&L's were great" "Those were the days!" "Didn't need no welfare state!" "Enron contributions pulled the weight." "Gee my Exxon stock did great!" "Those were the days!" "And you knew who Jews were then!" "Girls was girls and Larry Craig just friends" "Mr. we could use a man like W in there again (piano trill) Me!

Friday, August 1, 2008
Leased, Last, Lost
Chrysler announced the other day that they would discontinue their automotive lease program. When I first heard this I assumed that it was to due to credit-related issues and Chrysler being under new management. Then I heard that Ford and GM are mulling over the same idea, and it has nothing to do with credit.

Monday, July 28, 2008
It's All your Fault
(3 comments) It is easy to be angry these days; it could be said that to be an American these days is to be angry. If you're not angry, maybe you need to stop watching American Idol, put down your cell phone, and look out your car window for a minute as you drive on your $4.00 a gallon gas. I have seen things that I thought I would never see.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Calamity John
(2 comments) Oh boy, they're really mad now! First, in May, John McCain and the RNC challenge Barack Obama to go to Iraq to see for himself the facts on the ground. The RNC installs a clock on their website; "Obama has done shockingly little to educate himself firsthand about the war in Iraq. Instead, he displays an arrogant certainty gained on the campaign trail. ... Obama's failure to visit Iraq, listen and learn firsthand

Friday, July 11, 2008
The Seething
People generally are passive and understanding, but as the pressure builds the passivity evaporates and what is left behind is a crystallized seething. A feeling that says, "I'm being screwed and I'm tired of it and you hide and watch what happens to the next person that tries it." President Bush made a You Tube appearance where he waved to onlookers as he stepped off Air Force One and they just stared back at him.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008
When Money Goes Out the Door, Love Flies Out the Window
(2 comments) How do you explain it? Without need or justification Barack Obama has begun the Democratic death spiral. Like a moth to a flame or a lemming to the cliff, the presumptive Democratic nominee has started moving toward the center. Like Charlie Brown, running at full steam towards Lucy with the football, unburdening himself of his principles along the way to build up speed.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008
"As GM Goes, So Goes the Nation"
(6 comments) "As GM Goes, So Goes the Nation." Such was the conventional wisdom in the 1960's when GM churned out Chevelles, Camaros, Cutlasses, Catalinas, and Cadillacs by the millions. Maybe the saying "runs like a Cadillac" will outlive the company; maybe "As GM Goes, So Goes the Nation" has never been truer. GM's future is bleak, analysts predict that GM may soon go broke as new car sales stumble.

Saturday, July 5, 2008
Independence Day
(2 comments) There is nothing new under the sun, the murder of Caesar or the shots in Dallas. Conspiracies demand either victims or adherents. You're either with us or agin us, sound familiar? We must all hang together or certainly we shall all hang separately. Ah, but that's the point entirely! To hang you separately!

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Tomatoes Are Like Motorcycles
Across the vast wasteland of the American dreamscape there is one who dare not show his face. Considered meaner than the lowest child molester and kicker of small dogs, this is one who would pee in swimming pools just for spite. Republicans revile him while Democrats look at the floor and slowly shake their heads with unadulterated disgust. A virulent strain of villain who would dare propose protectionism.

Monday, June 30, 2008
The World They've Always Wanted
(1 comments) There is seeing and then there is sight; the things which we have seen help us to bring our sight into sharper focus. As a child I was of the generation whose fathers had fought in the Second World War. It became almost natural, as an adolescent, to ask, "What did you do in the war?" My father was a Navy pilot and one of his best friends was a sergeant in an infantry platoon.