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I who am I? Born at the pinnacle of American prosperity to parents raised during the last great depression. I was the youngest child of the youngest children born almost between the generations and that in fact clouds and obscures who it is that I am really.
Given a front row seat for the generation of the 1960's I lived in Chicago in 1960. My father was a Democratic precinct captain, my mother an election judge. His father had been a Union organizer and had been beaten and jailed for his efforts. His first time in jail was for punching a Ku Klux Klansman during a parade in the 1930's. I never felt as if I was raised in a family of activists but seeing it print makes me think, yes. That is a part of who I am.
We find ourselves today living in a world treed by the hounds of madness, a complicit media covering contrite parties. Multilevel media, giving more access to communication yet stunting actual communication. More noise, less voice, more sound less music, more law less justice, more medicine less life.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 29, 2011 A Lower Order of Being
George Washington was born the son of a farmer and began a career as a surveyor. He fought for the British in the French and Indian wars and led an unsuccessful charge in pursuit of retreating Native Americans into a forest. George learned that day that you never follow Native Americans retreating into a forest.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 9, 2008 Let's Call It a Palinism
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."
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 12, 2011 Will You Walk to the Gulag?
How do you explain to small children about losing a home? How do you explain why daddy isn't come along? How do you explain why so many of their toys must be left behind? How do you explain why the new place is so small and isn't as nice as the old place? What does it mean when a generation of children grow up without a real home?
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 11, 2010 When Truth Gets in the Way
The U.S. Chamber wonders why they are being singled out for pretending to be something they are not; after all, politicians do it all the time. We've been down this road now several times. Enough, in fact, to know that the American public will be lucky if the proposed legislation won't emerge from Congress with a tax payer subsidy to assist in the lobbying.
(19 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 19, 2019 Dave's Razor
When the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964, they drew an audience of 73 million viewers. It was astounding and phenomenal, it was Sunday night and if you weren't watching Ed Sullivan you had two other television choices. Short of the second coming or Trump performing a nude ballet recital on the White House lawn, it will never be equaled.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 4, 2011 The Obama Deception
I spent a week with both "Stop the Machine" and Occupy D.C. in McPherson Park in Washington. I had a chance to get to know these people and I have listened to their stories, stories of unemployment. A 26 year old man named Kevin who lost his job and his home after his IT job was outsourced to India. I listened to a mother who lost her son in Afghanistan
SHARE Thursday, March 12, 2020 Corporal Bone Spurs
Four Score and seven years ago our for fathers, had great plans They we're gonna do stuff. The only thing we have to fear is no plans or great stuff! The markets were so heartened to see this act of Presidential leadership the futures markets tanked to the maximum and were shut off.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, April 1, 2011 I've heard Enough, I've had Enough
But the corporate invertebrate can be excused, this was a mere formality. A banal explanation to a dead eyed war weary nation why when it has no resources for its own people it can spend billions to protect "our interests" in Libya. There was another event going on in New York the other night, this one just for the insiders, for the schmoozers and users, those animals more equal than others.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 15, 2012 The New Poverty
The new poverty is subsidized with food stamps to the multitude which end up in the pockets of merchants. It creates a baseline economy, a brutal Dickensian society with a whiff of paternalism which says, "Feed them but don't actually attempt to improve their lot," merely subsidizing their poverty.
SHARE Tuesday, February 15, 2011 The Phony Phony
Capitalism's sole purpose is to make money. Why didn't AOL with their deep pockets and expertise build their own web site? Capitalism buys to either make their own or to eliminate from competition its rivals. AOL will maximize the advertising while minimizing the product until it is just another organ of the loyal opposition, the phony left, the phony center, the phony phony.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 25, 2010 Bad Santa
Yes, Christmas was so beloved by our ancestors in the Massachusetts Bay Colony that they passed a law against it, "anybody who is found observing [it], by abstinence from labor, feasting, or any other way." The law was later repealed after twenty five years
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, October 29, 2012 The Secret Bridge
So there was this old Civil War hospital for the insane, one night during a full January moon, the inmates all went crazy and rioted. They burned down the house and the footbridge after they had murdered the staff, but they was crazy see, and they didn't know the foot bridge was the only way off the ridge. The escaped lunatics wandered aimlessly in the woods, all night, until they froze to death.
(8 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 14, 2010 Cheech and Chong Don't Live here Anymore
One day, during one of our chats Hugh told me his wife Martha had been diagnosed with cancer and had to begin chemotherapy. As time progressed I could see the worry and anxiety grow across his face. The chemotherapy was killing his wife. He complained that he couldn't get her to eat and that she was wasting away. My conscience began to hurt me; I had something in the house that might help that woman to ease her suffering
(18 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 6, 2016 A Picture of Guernica
Of wars of nebulous and distant causes, smokey and imaginary. A war of resource conquest, no differently than Germany invaded Poland. The policy of we can, because nobody can stop us, is in force. Hillary Clinton, as a Senator, whole heartedly supported it. As Secretary of State, she encouraged it. As President, she'll instigate it. A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for authoritarian war.
SHARE Sunday, March 8, 2020 Handguns and Whiskey
The world holds its breath over the corona virus. The irony, as the orange ape plays on his tire swing. In retrospect, all the things he's done in this ham-handed presidency. The crimes, the mistakes, the foolishness, pettiness and mean spiritedness and in the end"it wasn't his fault. Just as blameless as a baby, but he will be remembered for this.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, January 24, 2014 Why Socialism?
The only goal of capitalism is to make a profit and if a few acorns of social improvement fall to the ground, well and good, as long as we don't remember that the roots of the tree are feeding on those pushed below ground. Can a little shade in exchange for their life's blood, be considered a fair exchange?
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, March 6, 2020 The Iranian Hikers Guide
During World War II my father was a flight engineer on a US Navy blimp. The Navy used blimps because they could carry radar and stay in the air for twenty-four hours. Because they carried radar, and radar was top secret my father had to get a top security clearance which he did. He knew that we'd broken the German Naval code. Their mission was not to attack the subs but to make sure they were where they were supposed to be
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, January 27, 2012 Alabama Bible Thumping Jesus Cult
The room was awash in subtle nervous tension, this was after all, a job interview. I was reminded of that, by the woman sitting next to me whose stomach kept growling loudly. The walls of this room were covered in environmental posters describing the project we would be canvassing for.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 14, 2020 Your Fault
Here is a challenge for you; I want you to think about something in a different way. The next time you see a homeless person begging for change on the side of the road with a cardboard sign. I want you to ask yourself, could I do that?
SHARE Thursday, June 2, 2011 Silent Season
In 1962 Rachel Carson published her book, "Silent Spring." It warned of a future without song birds because of the use of the pesticide DDT. The DDT caused a thinning of the bird's egg shells so the eggs would break and the birds could not reproduce.