Would you like to know how many people have visited this page? Or how reputable the author is? Simply
sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too.
I have 11 fans: Become a Fan. You'll get emails whenever I post articles on OpEd News
An "Old Army Vet" and liberal, qua liberal, with a passion for open inquiry in a neverending quest for truth unpoisoned by religious superstitions. Per Voltaire: "He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity."
(95 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 14, 2010 The Texas Board of Education: America's Taliban.
Who are these educational experts, deciding what will be in the textbooks that more than half of America's school children learn from? The list is composed of clowns. But, if clowns are supposed to be funny, this group is Freddy Krugerish terrifying.
(83 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 6, 2010 Refusing The Call; Will selfish Seniors hand over the USA's future to China?
Based on the treasure we're stealing from our youth during those final months and days, the evidence suggests very few believe as much as they say they do. Deuteronomy 30:19 commands us to "choose life." It doesn't say to throw every last buck into the sewer, trying to avoid what's going to be the conclusion anyway.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 13, 2009 Merry Christmas-- Ho, Ho, Ho What the Hell
And that is why we have to plan on being in Afghanistan for the next 15 years; on the kid's and grandkids' credit cards. And about the cost, 'Doan worry 'bout it.'
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 6, 2008 ANYone who would vote for Sarah Palin is not an American
Sarah Palin is a citizen of the United States of America, but she is no "American."
The United States of America is a place on a map of the world. America, on the other hand, is an ideal that, since before the days of the pharaohs, humankind has been striving after.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 20, 2009 "The horror, the horror" -- Health Insurance CEOs Testify in Congress
The coldly calculating dollars-above-all-else reactions and responses by the industry CEOs to the plight of the witness-victims of inexplicable, amoral industry policies vividly recalls, "The horror, the horror."
(9 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 15, 2010 You can thank a liberal for your freedom
There are "Angels in America". They're called liberals, and conservatives owe them a salute, and a debt of gratitude that can never be paid.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, March 27, 2009 Why folks love television 'reality shows,' sitcoms and police dramas:
ay: "What event dominated the 1940s?"
Respondent: Long, l-o-n-g pause, then, "Roswell."
Jay: "The alien spacecraft landing in Roswell, - that was what the 40's were famous for?"
Respondent: A very slow . . . "Yeah."
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 12, 2009 No, you're the liar Joe Wilson, and HR 3200 Sec 246
What follows is first the link to the LOC, Library of Congress, report of the House bill 3200, "America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 with special attention to Section 246 which plainly (except for Republicans) states what the availability of federal subsidies or funds or access to the revised health care would be to illegal aliens.
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 16, 2008 America: the home of the cowardly, not the "brave."
How readily we are willing to trade liberty for a temporary security. And, once again, to cop the words of Mr. Franklin, we are clearly deserving of neither.
(13 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 29, 2009 About SEX, it's about time we grew up.
This most recent brouhaha over a young and unmarried JFK is nothing more than the most recent, sick, attempt by sick conservatives to force a façade that is an abject lie on every historical and physiological fact.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 14, 2011 Paul Newman explains the Republican Party.
"What we've got hee-ah is "fail-yah to com-municate.'" That infamous line from Paul Newman's 1967 movie, Cool Hand Luke, has so many applications, especially when the follow-up line is "Some men you just can't reach."
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 26, 2009 Bobby - we barely knew ye.
Oh Bobby - we barely knew ye. But we do now. Thanks for the introduction. And for reminding the country, as if any reminding was at all necessary, why the GOP was kicked out of the House, the Senate, and the Oval Office. But tell you what, I think we're pretty well satisfied, and won't be needing anything more from you, at least in the foreseeable future.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 10, 2010 The Mother Lode in the Upper Big Branch Mine
Massey's Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine tragedy brings the core question conservatives ask us to ignore front and center: What role has government to play in the regulation of a society's otherwise private affairs?
(14 comments) SHARE Friday, December 4, 2009 The clock anvil and the lie that business creates jobs
Ever since David Stockman sold the ruse to Ronald Reagan, the American fish has been swallowing the lie that businesses create jobs hook, line, sinker and worm. It's time to shove an entire bottle of Ipecac syrup down our collective throats.
(10 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 8, 2010 Conservatives and conservatism's book burning madness
Conservatives are frightened little people whose base fears require they place in subjugation all who they fear might pose some threat to their senses of order . . . as if one could ever hold back the tides of change and progress, regardless whatever might could be summoned to the task.
(117 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 30, 2010 A few things have just got to be said.
There exists no record that even one illegal alien ever took a job that belonged to an American. You can be the registered owner of your car. You can hold title to your house. No one owns a job.
(10 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 6, 2009 The Real National Debt
The problem of how to pay for the tax cuts or the war spending was never the slightest concern of the Republicans and conservative Democrats who voted for them.
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, October 19, 2009 Obama, Harry Reid, and Machiavelli
Bi-partisanship and comity are laudable goals, if, and only if, they can be reconciled with the overriding objective. In and of themselves, they will result in the chaotic ravages predicted by Machiavelli, the products of the “excess of tenderness.â€
(19 comments) SHARE Monday, April 5, 2010 Calling it like it is: Ugly, dumb, and TREASONOUS
These folks, one and all, are just as much terrorists, and just as much a threat to civil society and to democracy's fabric as any threat we might envision from beyond our shores.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 19, 2009 What Was Not Noted
The messages in the two cited videos was manifestly clear: Just get rid of all those dirty illegal aliens (whose melanin-saturated epidermis tinges them brown-skinned), and their dirty little offspring (whose melanin-saturated epidermis tinges them brown-skinned), and our (the right kind of Americans) problems will vanish like fog in the afternoon sun.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 9, 2010 All is "Lost"
It was an "Oh no, Mr. Bill" sort of moment. ""Lost,' not going to be on? My life is over; not worth living."
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 11, 2007 GOP Presidential debaters & The Wizard of OZ
Why the younger generation doesn't hold their parents and grandparents in utter contempt escapes me. We have borrowed heavily, as in HEAVILY!!!, from China, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Great Britain, and Mexico, and it's the kids who will come behind us who will be forced to somehow pay the horribly obscene tab for their parents' and grandparents' irresponsible profligacy.
(8 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 25, 2010 On Reaching about for my Chief Joseph Moment
I am a better person, a superior human being than any Republican voter. A Republican voter is unworthy of being in my presence.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 18, 2008 Who are we, what have we permitted ourselves to become?
Think for just a moment about the implications of having a democratic republic that is literally, not figuratively, filled to the brim with ignoramuses, ignoramuses who actually decide who will govern, or who just don't care who does.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, May 18, 2009 President Obama Speaks at Notre Dame - Video
Below is the link that will take you to a video of the speech. It's 31 minutes and a few seconds. You decide about what you see and hear. And THAT is the point entirely: You watch, You listen, You decide! Just do not permit anyone else on this earth to do your thinking for you! That would be, after all, really stupid.
SHARE Saturday, February 27, 2010 Wisconsin's conservative Paul Ryan eats organic
The interview question put to the Republican congressman was what he thought of Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign. The Republican's reply said much, much more about where he and his GOP colleagues are coming from than anything he could possibly have intended. His reply: "I eat organic."
(10 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 26, 2011 What Ed Schultz said grieves me deeply.
When Ed Schultz called Laura Ingraham a "right-wing slut," he concomitantly insulted all women, and that bothers me deeply.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, October 13, 2008 Johnstown, PA McCain-Palin rally, view it and weep for America
View the above YouTube video. No, really - VIEW IT! Next, understand a truth: this is typical, not atypical, behavior, intellect (and I use that term quite against its definition), and attitudes. Visit YouTube.com, then in the search insert McCain-Palin rallies.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 22, 2010 The 'CRITICAL' difference between private and public in public services
They're there to make money and any way they can cut corners means they make more money." "In the public sector, the security of the prison is job one," he added. "This kind of security breach, that would just be a serious, major breakdown. That's not always the case with private companies.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, September 1, 2008 Conservatives vs Liberals
So, just what the hell are so vaunted about "conservative values," and thereby conservatives, that they should be accorded much attention?
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 29, 2008 And the Democratic ticket is . . .
However this is "political science," it's not nerdy stuff, it's common sense calculations: 10 + 9 + 5 + 5 is more than 27, or 20, or 21.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 7, 2009 Define OK. We're not - and it's unlikely we will be.
In all human history, no human or group of same has ever faced what currently confronts any or all of us. The only thing we know for certain is that the tired old Republican notions our relatives, friends (??? word choice) and associates supported, the ones that put us here, sure as shootin' will not lead us anywhere but to drowning in the muck.
SHARE Tuesday, November 17, 2009 The earwig and soldier suicide
If we stand idly by, saying nothing to anyone lest we dampen the holiday spirits of those around us, we will be the ones inserting the earwig into their ears. Whatever violence a returning combat veteran may visit upon anyone, possibly including one of us or one of our kids or one of our parents, will be of our own doing. We will have no one to blame but ourselves.
SHARE Saturday, August 30, 2008 The ONLY ones who will vote for John McCain
For those women (and men) who supported Senator Hillary Clinton, and who now say they're going to vote for John McCain . . . Either your only devotion was a consequence of her genetalia . . .
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 30, 2008 My Sarah Palin mother of all nightmares!
It's 2010 and President John McCain is now 74. He has just suffered a fatal heart attack. And the beautiful mayor of Wasilla, Alaska strolls into the Oval Office, to advise the nation of the most recent sports scores.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 4, 2011 The question is: Are you completely nuts? Are we?
Here's a rude fact of life that's sure to upset: Not all opinions are equal. It's why we consult those members of our society who have demonstrated and met certain standards of proficiency in the given subject matter. Or . . . at least why we should consult those members of our society who have demonstrated and met certain standards of proficiency in the given subject matter.
SHARE Monday, October 13, 2008 The Reno Gazette Journal goes white, very white.
Essentially what McCain and Palin are, is the white answer to the raised fist, black power salute in the 60s, and the benign "who me?" forsaking of responsibility for the products of the anger it loosed: Detroit, Newark, Watts . . . raging infernos.
SHARE Tuesday, September 23, 2008 The quarter behind the ear magic trick, and bailouts.
I remember the poor-man's magic trick of pulling a quarter from behind the little kid's ear.That's how I felt a couple days ago when George Bush and the federal financial honchos - Paulson of Treasury and Bernanke of the Fed - suddenly came up with anywhere from half a trillion dollars to multiples of the stuff, to rescue a private financial scheme that had flipped like a dead fish onto the world stage.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, November 6, 2009 If you won't discuss this, may God help us all
Here is the link to a Keith Obermann “Countdown†segment. View it. View it! VIEW IT! What it shows is the entire Republican congressional delegation, gathered on the front steps of the capitol, calling for an overthrow of the government.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 4, 2009 Getting' it straight: Baucus and friends have got to go.
If a government healthcare option is not a genuine component of healthcare reform, there will be no reform that will be worth anything. American industry is at stake! American jobs are at stake! Furthermore, the health of every American is at stake!
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, December 17, 2007 Which is better: happy yet ignorant, or aware and angry?
What has been going on in the Christian movement and in the Republican Party all the way back to Nixon, and what has been their gathering intensity pisses the hell out of me. Neither have anything to do with American democracy or what Jesus taught, and everything to do with hypocritical dissembling and power grabbing. And god I'm pissed! You becha: I am so pissed!
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, August 29, 2008 ALERT: A McCain Ad Beyond Rove's Conjuring
John McCain is airing a new ad entitled "Tiny," which he "approved" and that is airing in a number of battleground states. Via this ad, the Arizona senator has shown himself to be a total sleaze ball who makes Karl Rove worthy of beatification.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 14, 2008 The critical differences between conservatives and liberals
C-SPAN was running a video of the Family Research Council's (FMR) gathering that featured born-again actor Stephen Baldwin as its marquee speaker. Baldwin was on a Christian soldier march, battling the evil of liberalism generally, and liberals and Hollywood in particular.
SHARE Saturday, February 28, 2009 The third one is a charm, but not one a democracy wants to hang 'round its neck.
If this third one is the charm, and Rupert Murdock has his way and is all we'll have left, however I'll speak for no one but myself, the first two won't matter at all. You can call this land America, or anything you like, but 'America' will be yesterday's news.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, July 28, 2008 What's happened to America?
You can call a thing anything you want, but it won't be AMERICA. You see, Americans live in America, and Americans just don't behave the cowardly, sycophantic, servile way I've seen most in this land behaving these past seven years.
(14 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 6, 2010 How damned stupid do you have to be, to be a conservative voter?
How many of the family members who are now without one of their family members remain so inclined to vote for less government, smaller government, not quite so intrusive government? This isn't to suggest any really were, but if any were . . . how about it today?
(25 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 1, 2009 California, Maine, Same-Sex Marriage Laws and Getting Stoned Shariah Style.
What they are, are zealots, small, frightened little zealots to be sure, but zealots just the same; exactly of the same mind set as the Shiriah-enforcing Taliban in Afghanistan who stoned a young rape victim or the Aztecs who ripped a yet-beating heart from the chest of the human sacrifice.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 24, 2010 Have we all gone nuts
Mr. Jones! George Bush was president. Hank Paulson was his Treasury Secretary. And when the country's financial roof collapsed in 2008, Mr. Paulson penned a 3-page bill that was in effect naught but an extortion note, "Hand me all your cash in unmarked 20's; $850 BILLION!
SHARE Saturday, January 16, 2010 The Joke's Not Funny, Especially if You Laugh.
The reference to a not at all joke, and not laughing, springs from who the Robinson's are, or rather what they screamed to the heavens they believed.
SHARE Monday, November 3, 2008 Jimmy Dobson's "Focus on the Family" vomits a most despicable message.
Jesus of Nazareth opined that it is not what a man puts into his mouth, but it is that which spews from it, that defiles him. In "A Letter from 2012 in Obama's America," a 16-page pdf document accessed via the direct link below, that we find solid evidence the gentle soul was right on.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 21, 2009 A "FACT" is an f-Bomb 4-Letter Word to the GOP When it Comes to Healthcare.
Industry and association dollars flowed like a swollen Mississippi following a spring thaw to shut it down. It was going to be too expensive, too cumbersome, too complicated, and it would be the very end of medicine and medical care in America, we were assured, ominously.
(9 comments) SHARE Monday, June 15, 2009 The Media is the Murderer. How zealots are promolgating hatred.
The following example is intended to be as disturbingly repugnant as possible, to make a highly legitimate point about media influence and how right-wing commentators know exactly what they're doing.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 21, 2009 The GOP's Limbo Rock and How ‘Low' Can We Go?
In an accent she'd never completely been able to overcome, 'Of course . . . I didn't agree with everything the Nazis did.'
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 3, 2008 BREAKING NEWS: Palin took millions in earmarks as mayor and governor.
The story, sadly, does not end here. Just this year, Governor Palin's office forwarded to Ted Stevens' office a 70-page memo detailing needs for more than $200 million in earmarked funds.
(8 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 31, 2009 The questions asked concerning Afghanistan are all wrong.
It was those who might take offense at my language that I wanted most to offend. We're talking about horrendous death and mutilation of human beings — and some complain because they're disturbed by rough words???
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 10, 2009 The call to arms on healthcare reform
Conservatives and Republicans have raised a hue and cry - every bit of it shamelessly misleading - against government's involvement.
(8 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 12, 2009 Health Insurers' Bottom Line Defines 'Medical Necessity'
Regardless that the neurosurgeon, before proceeding with surgery, wanted some assurance of better-than-even odds that the cardio system was sufficiently healthy to accept the stress of surgery, INSURANCE WOULD NOT cover a cardio workup exam! Checking to see whether the patient's heart could weather the storm of an approved surgery wasn't on the computerized "approved" list.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 11, 2010 America's tenth decile, the "sitting around guys."
Without knowing it, a business model decision that weighs costs with benefits is the Fortune 500 type of decision every young, urban core, gang-banger made, as do all prospective members to the gang.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 31, 2011 This is a test, but oh it is such an important one
It matters . . . a great deal, a very great deal, that you scroll over the comments made by U.S. Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, to highlight them, then hit the Ctrl-C on your keyboard, to paste them into a document that can be easily and immediately referenced.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 28, 2009 Addendum to Bobby - We Hardly Knew Ye piece
I have stared into the impenetrable murky brown that passes for water in Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne, and I'd take swigs from both before I'd swallow what Bobby was decanting.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 15, 2009 You want 'what' in Afghanistan?
40,000 additional troops will not accomplish the task. Using Jones' (and General Petraeus') own 1 - 32 insurgent warfare troop-strength calculations, the ratio of boots on the ground to a host population, the Afghanistan campaign is gonna require 640,000 marines and soldiers.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 29, 2010 An important speech by Sen Franken to Constitutionalist Soc, PLEASE listen
In his Al Franken manner, tersely outlines what has gone wrong, how justice is being -- as it has been -- hijacked by conservatives to serve ill ends. Franken's points are made with his typical droll, sometimes sarcastic humor. But the points are made.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 3, 2010 Friday Night Smackdown - A Sign of the Times
"If a family today cannot afford . . . how much health care insurance will they be able to buy with a $5,000 tax credit that comes into play during the next tax filing year, and after they've spent $15,000 the previous year for health insurance?"
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 14, 2010 My first run-ins with the damning illogic of the Right
NOTICE: Rough sledding ahead. The effort is to be as honest as I can be, which for many may be a ride to tough to handle; language and verbal images employed accordingly.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 12, 2010 Justice Itself on Trial
The California federal district court in San Francisco is scheduled to hear Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the case challenging the constitutionality of the voter-passed amendment to the state's constitution that outlawed same-sex marriage.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, November 13, 2009 As morally cherry-picky as it wants to be
Eventually the objective observer and the most ardent parishioner will both be forced to ask, “Just who the hell are these people?†And, “Why are they here?â€
SHARE Sunday, May 24, 2009 Don't be juked!
When it works as it's intended, boy, does the tackler look incredibly stupid. Good tacklers don't get fooled frequently, great tacklers rarely, if ever, do.
All this noise from and about Dick Cheney: it's the Right juking folks!
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 7, 2011 Have you ever had a bronchial infection?
Have you ever had a bronchial infection? A severe recession can be like that: requiring a heavy dose of government intervention. The "Great Recession" we experienced in the last years of the Bush administration required, but did not get from either the Bush or the Obama administrations, an adequately heavy dose of government intervention in the form of federal economic stimulus. What we got was too weak and too brief.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, June 27, 2008 It's TIME: Kick ass, take names and no prisoners.
Mr./Madam Representative/Senator: I just finished two chores - I just went grocery shopping and I put gas in my car. And I've got to tell you, "mad" doesn't even begin to describe how I feel. In fact, storming the Bastille rage doesn't even come close. Neither does "thirsting for blood." Are you following me so far?
(10 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 5, 2010 While you were looking elsewhere, your church and the corporations were setting you up
This past April, a highly conservative federal appeals court ruled against the Federal Communications Commission's right and authority to regulate Internet rates and practices. (Retrace to the beginning of the preceding sentence, and ponder as you proceed how your relatives' and neighbors' Republican leanings and votes will, not may, cost you money and the freedom to use the Internet!
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 2, 2009 What I Want, but am not Going to Get for Christmas
All seven items on my wish list are attainable. And most are both readily and easily so. We can do this, every one of us. What I don't understand is why we're not even trying.
(11 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 3, 2010 The "spill" . . . We've none but our friends to blame
Absent voter support of the conservative tenets that have culminated in the wholly avoidable disasters we've witnessed, it is probable none would have occurred.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 6, 2008 Love at first sight: Voltaire's postulate, and what's love got to do with the rest of it.
Why the State of Kentucky feels it necessary to have its own Office of Homeland Security stretches my imagination. My first guess is that few "terrorists" know much more about Kentucky than that it is somewhere where chickens get fried . . . poorly.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 29, 2009 Harry Reid has Declared War on the Democratic Base
At the same time as his staff was releasing the news of his abominable betrayal, his office was emailing me for a contribution.
SHARE Thursday, March 26, 2009 "Through the Looking Glass" Republicans and How They View Labor.
It is a naivety that travels immediately the route to manifest stupidity for anyone to suggest that management, of itself and unencumbered of the least legal peril, will concern itself with worker welfare.
SHARE Saturday, November 21, 2009 Rosaries, Rostrums, and the God's Awful Truth
Looking over the course of history, all the way to today, I don't think we can . . . handle the truth. At least insofar as the truth tends to impale many of our most sacred and endearing beliefs we can't.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, June 2, 2008 The Sex Patrol and Truth
Trying to get a teenager to focus on abstinence is very akin to telling someone stranded on the desert not to focus on water. Not only is it counter to every law of nature, it's insidious in the way it can instill seriously unhealthy precepts concerning sex.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 20, 2009 The rot of the "free-market'
When Thomas Jefferson wrote in his March 17, 1814 letter to Horatio Spatford that "Merchants have no country, the mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains," he was being honest and ominously prescient.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 22, 2009 Health care reform, and the Gary Gilmore options
In July of 1976, Gary Gilmore serially robbed and murdered two men in Utah. Following his capture and murder conviction, Gilmore was sentenced to death. Utah, being the progressive state it is, permitted the convicted fellow to choose between being executed by hanging or the firing squad. Gilmore chose the latter.
SHARE Friday, November 14, 2008 We have come a long way, Baby; but we have a long way yet to go
The November 4 election provoked me to recall that old Virginia Slims ad, for indeed, as a country, we had "come a long way." Prop 8 reminds us we still have a long, long way to go.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 27, 2008 Why I think Obama lost the debate: Lines I wanted to hear, but didn't.
If you don't triumph when you could have, when you should have, when it's essential that you do, then you have lost. Don't try to ferret out excuses and explanations from the woof and weave of some cheap cloth of a fabric. Be honest. And being honest here, Senator Obama lost.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 11, 2009 A Veterans Day Preamble
How many children have you seen with a missing arm or leg or arms or legs or with a face so badly scarred by some fire that was set ablaze by a mortar round or an incendiary grenade? So badly scarred that it's highly likely they will go their entire lives not knowing one moment of happiness or freedom from pain?
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 24, 2008 Propositions against same-sex marriage: Is it blind faith, or blind hate, or are the two indistinguishable?
Claims of reliance on biblical edict will have validity only once they also assert it is completely okay for a parent to burn his child alive, because God said so, or for daughters to get their father drunk, in order to have sex with him, or for a daughter to be stoned to death . . . Any holdings otherwise betray the stark truth: It's all just blind fear and hatred.
(8 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 18, 2011 What we have to fear isn't just fear
This friend of a friend of a friend is not a "bad" man. And that is the problem today, the one we need to be terrified of. It's not badness, necessarily. It's much more serious: it's profoundly stupid ignorance.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, January 4, 2010 The devil votes Red
"This is craziness," said Representative John Linder, a Georgia Republican who is the ranking minority member of a House panel on welfare policy. "We're at risk of creating an entire class of people, a subset of people, just comfortable getting by living off the government. You don't improve the economy by paying people to sit around and not work. You improve the economy by lowering taxes."
SHARE Sunday, October 26, 2008 McCain, Palin, and their Republican supporters: the most un-American of Hearts of Darkness.
Most of us have been thrilled, exhilarated on the amusement park ride through the pitch black House of Horrors, where some ghoul or something ghoulish popped from around the blind bend. Let's, and not for the fun of it, ratchet up the thrill and the exhilaration, oh, say 1,000 times.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, October 30, 2009 The comics, balloon boy and as ignorant as we want to be.
America gets its daily dose of dumb, which is what Americans really want: the comics; lots of pictures, little to read or try to understand. The stations save a ton of dough, which is what they're truly all about. And no one is the wiser, or sadder, or poorer.
SHARE Sunday, September 21, 2008 You are who you hang with, and 700 billion reasons to say NO!
Each of us has a right to choose with whom we associate. $700,000,000,000 (on the low end) and the schools and the healthcare and everything else we may no longer be able to do much about seems as good a reason as any to not associate with someone.
SHARE Friday, February 26, 2010 Largemouth bass have swallowed the bait, hook, line, sinker, & boat.
One of their characteristics is a mean disposition, among other fish they're not the dumbest. But they're still just plain, tiny-brained, stupid fish, and like Republican voters, conservatives (no discernable difference, any longer), and the tea baggers, they're known to swallow just about anything. They prey on anything that's smaller and dumber than they are, including plastic worms.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 3, 2009 A Fib: This is personal, almost.
Upon review of the scroll, the physician in attendance asked whether I had a history of irregular heart-rate problems. "Nope."
"Well, you do now."
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The Angler Fish and AIG Bonuses
Those who want Obama to fail, and all their ilk, are the angler fish, with all those glistening teeth. The public rage against the bonuses is to these folks nothing different from the glowing end of the fish's dorsal spine. And if they have the opportunity, they will seize it, if we permit ourselves to be tempted by the swaying bait they're dangling.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, January 22, 2010 Dear Dr. Franklin, I've sad news to impart.
What you and all of the attendees to that convention in 1787 feared, the potential of money and its aggregation in a few hands to corrupt every inclination and perception of a democratic republic, has at last come to pass.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 5, 2009 Girding for the Healthcare Fight: Are you Ready?
It was his second reason that, as someone who is rapidly approaching Medicare age, was a dump truck unloading its tons of bricks on me. "I can't name a single doctor in the region who wants to take Medicare patients.
SHARE Thursday, January 10, 2008 Steve the Palm Springs mail carrier and the price paid
1st Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside listened last week as an Army prosecutor outlined the criminal case against her in a preliminary hearing. The charges: attempting suicide and endangering the life of another soldier while serving in Iraq.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 9, 2011 Worse than December 7, 1941
They have now come for the Trade Unionists. They, including everyone who votes for them, have declared war upon us all! We either stand up . . . or we lay down with the pigs, to also eat their slop.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 16, 2008 Which road, the high road, or the low road?
Some are worried about color, or religion? What's any of that got to do with it? I want quality, and don't give a damn what hue or shade or religion comes with the package.
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 9, 2011 Guess who . . . we've become
The sorrow. Just who the hell are we? What have we become? The sorrow . . . and the shame.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 7, 2010 How wealthy we must be, to toss our kids into the pit
". . . the U.S., once the world's leader in percentage of young people with college degrees, has fallen to 12th among 36 developed nations."
SHARE Sunday, February 7, 2010 The 14% solution, and all that jazz.
Democrats working with Republicans suggests some computerized confection of one of the funniest (to me) Seinfeld episodes with Dancing with the Stars. Either because Elaine does not know the steps, or because she refuses to follow the script is exactly what the Republicans have been doing, ever since the Obama inaugural.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 19, 2008 An American Story about a genuine American
Below is a photograph of an American soldier from Manahawkin, New Jersey. Tell me please, what is his ethnic genealogy? Is there some of the Hawaiian Islands in his background? Perhaps a surfer? Or, maybe he's got some Sicilian in his blood. He's a pretty good looking fellow; deep dark brown eyes, great facial features.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 7, 2008 The Neanderthal might be gone, but his intellect survives undisturbed
If you, as a black person, have some personal aversion to homosexuality is wholly irrelevant to your endorsement of another's civil rights. That it might make you feel icky, to even think about, is all the more reason you should have fought the ballot initiative, not supported it.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 2, 2008 I woke up this morning with hope in my heart . . . Dashed!
Now that the years have passed, more of John McCain has come to light, and I find myself having to ponder whether I should thank Mr. Rove for his service to his country.
(13 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 3, 2009 The List of the Damned . . .
Lastly, if you know someone who either belongs to or endorses any of the above, a morally decent inquiry might follow along the lines, "Why, how can you?"
SHARE Wednesday, November 19, 2008 You going to Home Depot? Are you totally nuts?
It's your decision, whether to continue shopping at HD, where, unless you're a hard-dried Republican, while your money certainly is, you are personally completely unwelcome. And personally, I think a person would have to be completely STUPID to ever again enter that kind of environment.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 1, 2010 The gift
Every Republican ad airing in the state is an effort to outdo his or her challenger on the basis by being "the true conservative," and not some "liberal," with "liberal" being employed as the most tawdry epithet in the English language.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 3, 2009 If you're human, you want a more humane Court
It's just impossible to balance a boulder with a pebble. We just cannot back down on this one. We just cannot give an inch.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 24, 2009 Remembering Freedom Fries
"Home of the brave:" what a crock of the most foul bovine excreta. Check it out. It's all been such a tawdry demonstration of phony hypocrisy and the most shameful yellow-bellied, dirt-licking cowardice. Americans are not brave. Americans are gutless punks. Yeah you, do you feel lucky, do ya?
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 9, 2008 With all my heart, I hope this will be my last political word.
For Republicans, in 2004 and 2006 and 2008, being an "American" was being patriotic, and being patriotic was agreeing with whatever the administration and the GOP demanded you agree with. It had been one hell of a long 13 years in the very bowels of hell. Today, AMERICA IS BACK!
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 13, 2010 I want to know, just what the hell have we become?
On July 4, 1776, 56 men signed their name to a document that was in effect an indictment of treason against the Crown, and that would have led directly to their being hanged or shot, had their bold and brave effort failed. I am embarrassed and ashamed of who we have too much become.
SHARE Saturday, May 28, 2011 In Memoriam to Memorial Day
I no longer stand when the National Anthem is played. It is an abject lie. We are not the "home of the brave." Fewer than three percent of Americans bear the burden of defending on the ground any part of the ground we walk upon. And virtually none care to draw a cent from their personal accounts to help pay the tab.
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 21, 2010 Telling the facts isn't always the same as telling the truth.
However this may seem as though it's about Shirley Sherrod, until a few days ago, the National Director for Rural Development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and how she happened to be fired from that post, this is actually about us, and the way we use facts and how we respond to stories that include them. The watchword is "beware."
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 11, 2010 Dipping into the Whackoe-mole Sauce
Ya can't use your seed corn to make tortillas this afternoon and expect to have corn on the cob next year. Or, more technically, though not much more, you cannot spend the same dollar twice.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 28, 2009 BREAKING NEWS: Republicans can't buy a good news break
After you've read the following story, I think it would be helpful if you recalled to mind the words of that gospel spiritual, "Old-time Religion," replacing the first few words with "Gimme them Right-wing values, gimme them Right-wing values . . ."
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 8, 2011 What sort of relationship are you looking for?
When it comes to those we hire with our votes, we shouldn't be pondering whether he or she would make a wonderful neighbor, perhaps someone we'd like to socialize with, become fast buddies with. Can that person do the "job," will he or she represent our best interests?
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 6, 2010 I found out why we're neck deep in doo-doo
In addition to the report of one person in the Detroit area perishing from hyperthermia, I learned that the Free Press stories that on July 5 garnered the most readership were, from No. 10 to the champion Numero Uno:
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, August 13, 2010 I'm looking for a word
why the presumption the model is somehow by necessity, in every instance, that which ought to prevail? What should we call those who are blind to the all too obvious evidence there is no validity to the presumption the private, for-profit model is by necessity, in every instance superior to what the government can do?
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 11, 2009 The Lie of Silence
A "redistribution of wealth"? We've most assuredly had that. As a justice-minded and equity-minded American, I've had it way past 'here.'
Redistribution of wealth? You're damned right! But this time let's make it on the side of justice and equity.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 12, 2010 We can get in the game, or get run over.
For those American parents who take more interest in and feel greater pride in their kid's athletic achievements than in their scholarship: You are the tragedy! Rather, you are a tragedy in the making for your children. Football is wonderful amusement. The bottom line, however, is that it is absolutely irrelevant to playing the game of life; the scrimmage to earning a living.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 24, 2008 What's "truth" got to do with it?
You have the direct links that source this post. You have the direct links to videos that source this post. You have a direct book and page reference to the source of some of my comments. What you're missing is any link to anything that might provide evidence there is more than a mote of GOP integrity to be found anywhere.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 15, 2011 Our first responsibility is to accept it
That ringing in our ears isn't tinnitus; it's our consciences reminding us of a moral fact: Even if the matter of culpability has been diluted by millions of others who also cast the ballots, we must share the blame, when there's blame that ought to be borne.
SHARE Tuesday, February 24, 2009 The Smoking Gun
If 20-mule-team trains of surveys through the Death Valley of ignorance couldn't quite get their grotesque cargo to the depot of public outcry, certainly the one that AOL published Sunday, the 22d, must. Hopefully.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, March 9, 2009 I miss the Republican Party
It's not only the party that has lost in the exchange, it's the United States of America. I miss the Republican Party.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, September 24, 2010 On choosing friends, lovers and associates
How else can it be read than that those voting GOP in 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008 supported those heinous, absolutely shameful policies? How else can it be read than that those so voting in those elections felt: "Screw the uniformed fools who stepped forward to serve the country"? And how else can it be read than that those who retained friendships with those who so voted did not also agree with those sentiments?
SHARE Friday, January 22, 2010 The American dream and ethos on the edge.
It's one thing to be frustrated and angry. It's another altogether to be stupid. The voters in Mass. demonstrated their mass stupidity on the 19th.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 11, 2010 One Way or Another, We're All in That Hurt Locker.
Essentially what it is they're saying is "I got mine, (insert the expletive of your choosing) you." Whether they actually have "it," or just think they do, that's the sentiment.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, September 15, 2008 She's a BIMBO -- Nah, not who you think.
Nah . . . I wasn't referring to Sarah Palin. She's not a bimbo, and any Democrat who dismisses her along those lines does so at his or her and America's peril. Sarah Palin is smart! She's smart, and quick, the way a good boxer is: thinking, plotting, reactive; when to feint, when to jab, and how often, and when to toss that haymaker.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, September 10, 2010 What a foul stew we're concocting
"It's hard to overstate how destructive the economic ideas offered earlier this week by John Boehner. He proposes two things: large tax cuts for the wealthy that would increase the budget deficit while doing little to support the economy, and sharp spending cuts that would depress the economy while doing little to improve budget prospects. Fewer jobs and bigger deficits -- the perfect combination.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, June 27, 2008 We're one cowboy away from the end of cvilized life on earth.
The police are unable to contain the violence and are themselves victims of the same crisis as the rest of the population. Civilian rule dissolves and Martial Law is declared under provisions approved under the Patriot Act. Regular U.S. Army and Marine troops patrol the streets. The federal government apparatus is moved to an unknown but secure location. The United States descends into chaos . . .
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 19, 2009 P. T. Barnum and Pogo, and how we got into this mess
It isn't necessary that one be Nostradamus prescient, or even especially bright, to utter the kind of forecast I did. All that is necessary is that one not be completely daft. Then again, ol' PT and Pogo were so right on, weren't they?
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 10, 2009 Let's get some truth into these discussions.
What I wanted to hit on: The neo-Nazi Far Right's preemptive barrage asserting that any and all who are even the least left of them somehow want to burn the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and press by reintroducing the Fairness Doctrine.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 21, 2009 About Detroit, first comes envy . . .
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much higher consideration." - Abraham Lincoln; First Annual Message to Congress, December, 1861.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 27, 2009 'Stand by me' - the Abu Ghraib bad apples
There are so many despicable, dark corners of the tawdry Bush presidency, none less tawdry than the torture theater that has found new release life and is playing across the land. The unasked and unanswered question that comes to my mind is how can it, how could they, get any more unseemly? Well, they managed.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 17, 2009 Turn stepping out on the Democrats into a march
It may prove to be somewhat of a case that appears to be cutting off our noses, but the progressive electorate needs to presume to some core principles and the courage to stand behind them, just exactly as the Democrat in the White House and those Democrats in the House and Senate are not.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 15, 2010 Bet you don't know: the cost of a gallon of gas in your area
'm fully prepared to wager that you don't know, not even if you just returned from filling your tank this morning. Currently I'm in the Sacramento area where the per gallon prices range from $2.97.9 to above $3.15.9.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Christmas in America
Who are those least akin to the teachings of Jesus? Liberals who insist all Americans should have health care as a right, or the conservatives whose demonstrated first allegiance is to free market capitalism's profits?
(10 comments) SHARE Monday, January 18, 2010 Whether from the Right, the Left, or the middle . . . Wrong is Wrong.
A lot of angry noise is coming in torrents from the Left about Obama summoning ex-President George W. Bush, to work with Bush's immediate predecessor in the office, Bill Clinton, on behalf of raising funds for the Haiti earthquake victims. The angry sentiments from the Left are both misplaced and reprehensibly misplaced.
(9 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 22, 2009 A fate far worse than death
If anyone pretending to any particle of honor and love for this country encounters another who is attempting to defend the abuse of those we have taken and hold prisoner, there is incumbent upon that person the obligation to vociferously slap the offender down. At least for the two reasons I provided, and for as many others as one can summon, Americans just don't do that!
SHARE Wednesday, February 10, 2010 It's a noose, not a bow-tie.
It's the federal judiciary, most particularly . . . no, quintessentially, it's all about THE SUPREME COURT. It, and it alone, decides EVERYTHING that will matter to the corporatist.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 13, 2008 THE gravest question ever put to any candidate is answered most dangerously
If Russia invaded or in any other manner attacked either Georgia or the Ukraine, we would be called upon to defend them every bit as much as if Russia attacked the US itself. Gibson then asked whether she was prepared for that. The governor didn't flinch. "Perhaps so."
SHARE Monday, January 18, 2010 The Big Red Fiscal Lie of Red States
The "liberal" states have been taking a lot of guff from folks who love telling the rest of us how wave-the-flag proud they are of their conservative values. It's way past time for the citizens of the donor states to tell these scofflaws to just shut the hell up; keep sucking, as that's the deal that's not going to change, but please . . . shut the hell up.
SHARE Thursday, April 30, 2009 A Republican (inadvertently) spills the beans on the GOP
However the first two "values" she claims the GOP stands for and extols have been shown by a surfeit of manifested evidence to be naught but a huckster's marketing flimflam, it's her enunciation of the presumed latter value that "spills the beans."
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 18, 2010 Senator McConnell -- Ernie Kovacs' Percy Dovetonsils lives
For a few years now I've had this recurring bout of deja vu: Where, just where have I seen Senate Minority Leader, Kentucky US Senator Mitch McConnell before?
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, March 30, 2009 The Cliff's Notes GOP Budget Alternative
Seriously, read the document. Not, read the document seriously, because that's just not something a human is capable of doing. But do read it. It's so brief and so bereft of anything that might by even the most delusional ideologue be construed as detail that you can manage the task in less time than it takes to read the directions on a can of Campbell's tomato soup.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 8, 2009 Scraps from the floor you won't find tasty.
From the first breath of life to the last, and all of them during the interim, things ARE going to change big-time and the initial costs are going to be even bigger. Everyone has an absolute moral obligation to educate themselves on the topic. Everyone also have a moral obligation to enter the fray.
SHARE Friday, October 3, 2008 Schadenfreude, Zeitgeist and a sizzling Triumph TR8
We need to cut the nonsense about Palin and talking points, and get to the real task, that of concentrating our energies, pointing out to all who she really is beneath the veneer, and how neither we nor the world just cannot afford it, the risk of Palin heading to the repair shop when things go awry.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 20, 2009 The sides of the "heads we win – tails you lose" coin.
Under government auspices, there's a representative or senator who depends on the votes - the good will, if you will - his or her constituents to remain in office. The representative and senator loses a constituent, if you die. The insurance company saves money.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 12, 2008 A Senate Hearing exchange that says it all, and that needs to be shared.
"Let me ask you another question, a moral question: you propose over 700 billion dollars in tax breaks for the wealthiest three-tenths of one-percent at the same time as you want to eliminate the low-income weatherization assistance program. What's the moral justification for that?"
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 27, 2009 My letter to Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee exec
The letter implored me to contribute what I could afford. Money was needed to help the Party retain control of the Senate in the 2010 elections. Except for my personal address etc., what follows is my snail-mail response to Poersch.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 10, 2009 Nearly two in the morning folks, final call.
At least 80% of all Americans are but a single medical calamity removed from total economic ruin! My personal story of illness, credit card maximization, and bankruptcy. It's past time for health care reform!
For all who are suffering Dick Cheney levels of delusion, who contend they are happy with the coverage they have right now, I want to disabuse them: They have ZERO coverage.
SHARE Tuesday, October 7, 2008 McCain, Palin don't care: One-third of America's homeless are veterans
If you visit the senate.gov votes cast by John McCain, and if you listen to his orations, how "They just want to return with victory," it is manifestly and most disgustingly evident the Arizonan doesn't give the first damn about those who have volunteered to defend this nation.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 4, 2009 Prisoners of War: The Homeless in Seattle, and Savanna, and San Diego, and . . .
You want to “fight them over there†as opposed to “here� Then you go. Know this, however, if you do: “You†will never, ever return. Someone with your name may make it back. But “you†won't. Until that day — be very grateful you can pay the tab . . . and respectfully shut the hell up!
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 26, 2009 Relative to health care reform, let's pretend we're Columbo
Ask your neighbor (or anyone else), "What is THE function of a health insurance company?" (I would be draw-dropping surprised if any got the answer to that question correct. Don't believe me? Try it, as an experiment.)
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 20, 2009 Can you yell OUTRAGEOUS?
Now that you have the Senators' names, I'm going to repeat what they said was the reason they eliminated a "government option," but I'm going to repeat it in huge bold font.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, May 2, 2008 Scalia was right, 60 Minutes Stahl wasn't, re 4th Amendment & torture
Justice Scalia was 100% correct: the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits "cruel and unusual PUNISHMENT," and torture, unless employed as "punishment," by definition is not covered by that amendment.
Here's how Stahl should have raised the issue.
SHARE Thursday, April 10, 2008 Reverend Jim Jones, Senator John McCain: same song, different choir.
"We're winning in Iraq." Seems I recall Reverend Jim Jones sang somewhat the same sort of song, and thousands believed. They didn't open their eyes and ears. They didn't ask any hard questions, of either Reverend Jim, or of themselves. They didn't have to. They believed, and their belief was sufficient.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 30, 2008 I pull the sheets on Wash Post claim Palin pick makes McCain a maverick
Sarah Palin will never be the target of one of McCain's tirades because she will never confront the Arizona Senator. She'll be the sort of compliant, sweet young thing that John McCain has his entire life sought to have by his side.
Maverick has absolutely nothing to do with it.
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 26, 2009 It Matters.
Last evening, PBS ran a program, Petro-Apocalypse. The world is running out of oil. And by every indication, according to every engineer and scientist, it really does not and will not matter where we drill, or how deeply we drill, or how much we drill.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 18, 2007 Essential Questions & Points to Ponder
Rather a mess, no?
Yes it is, and it's absolutely, unequivocally a Republican/GOP deregulate everything/monitor nothing (What, you thought the sub-prime fiasco would be consequence free?), dive-head-first into the shallow pool of "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" policies of trillion-dollar preemptive wars.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 5, 2008 A Message of Love, and a Challenge, to My Sons
A torch has been passed to a new generation: yours.
To grasp it, however you must stretch your arms and seize it. Please, please, please . . . do not let the chance pass you by.
SHARE Friday, September 4, 2009 Republicans, insanity and my world -- It's just a crazy place.
"Hi! My name is Frederick Hans Grüber, and I've been appointed to your local Death Panel. About your grandmother: Let's see, just how old is she? Hmmm, 82, eh? And that ‘plug' she's connected to . . . We're going to have to pull it.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 15, 2009 Afghanistan Troop Increase: The Costs not Calculated
After making the most eloquent and grandiose of rah-rah speeches to “honor our heroes,†to save what in Washington-speak amounts to loose change Bush and the Republicans kicked veterans out of the VA medical system.* (See end of article)
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 24, 2010 Don't let Republican games turn into Republican gains!
How do Republicans propose setting the fiscal house more to order? By gutting Social Security, Medicare, and by adding a 2 percent sales tax that the least among us pay on food, not by closing a single loop hole the wealthy and the corporations enjoy.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 2, 2009 "Tough Deary, you knew what you were getting yourself into."
Whether it's a long-term romantic relationship, a marriage, becoming a parent for the first time, or enlisting in the armed forces . . . no one, but no one has any idea what he or she is getting him- or herself into.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 2, 2009 We need these laws, and we need them NOW!
If you get sick . . . or if your child falls ill, . . . and you and/or your child die as a consequence, part of the premature passing from this veil will be directly traceable to a most cruel and egregious and myopic social policy that gave such disparate leverage to employers!
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 7, 2008 Can America be saved . . . from itself?
By every standard and measurement, for at least the past three decades, America has been seized in mass cognitive dissonance; the conflict in the individual when presented facts tend to contradict deeply held beliefs.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, July 24, 2009 Buying a car from Randy
Here's what the Republicans are trying to do, which has not one thing to do with amending the health care system. First of all, there was South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint letting it slip that the real objective was to kill any health reform measure, to make of their dastardly deed President Obama's "Waterloo."
SHARE Thursday, May 14, 2009 Outing a Healthcare Reform Subterfuge.
Fade back to Romney. Do not forget the ploy. Fade to GOP pollster, Frank Lutz. This week he counseled Republicans, "You're not going to get what you want, but you can kill what they're trying to do." Now, show a split-screen shot of Romney and Lutz.
(8 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 23, 2008 Barack Obama's speech and context. It's ALL context.
It did not matter that Dearborn was the home of Ford Motor Company, or that the world's largest assembly plant, the Ford Rouge, was within the city's limits. Orville L Hubbard, its mayor from 1942 to 1978, successfully ran on the promise to "Keep Dearborn white." If you were from one of Detroit's all-white communities, just pay the fare at the gate. If on the other hand you were black, "Sorry, residents only."
SHARE Thursday, February 14, 2008 A calls to arms, a call for help.
On the floor of the Senate today will be debate over Indian health care, what this nation promised, and sealed those promises with ratified treaties, to the many Native American nations whose land we took. Whether by dint of a legal obligation, or to live to Christian standrads, we must heed the call. Folks are dying for our answer.
SHARE Thursday, March 5, 2009 It's Slumdog Governor and Mark, the magic, dancing pachyderm
Why must these facts-baby-facts be put in a secure corner of our minds, for safe keeping? Think Reagan. It's oh so possible we'll see either Jindal, or Sanford, or both again, sans the facts of course.
SHARE Tuesday, September 9, 2008 Did you see it?
The "it" I'm asking about was the CBS Sunday interview program, Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer. If you missed the interview, if that's what any honest journalist can dare call the serving up of not soft balls, but slow-pitch whiffle-balls, here's your chance
SHARE Thursday, May 27, 2010 Breathing Republican fumes
The Republican argument against raising the cap hinges on the incomprehensible proposal that by insisting a company bear full liability for damages it causes, it will squeeze out of the drilling business smaller companies that would not be able to pay for the damages they caused.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 16, 2008 The Bush administration's banking treacheries.
Is the Bush administration intentionally propping up teetering banks so they'll fall on the next president's watch, staving off for now the $8 TRILLION credit cave-in.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, January 18, 2008 Rebutting those who oppose Bastille storming
A few readers responded to my rant on the present state of our GOP corporations first, last and always federal judiciary. Recall I opined on the absolute necessity to elect a Democrat to the Oval Office this November. Some of the respondents matched my decibel level with their own vociferous rebuttal.
Now it's my turn again . . .
SHARE Tuesday, March 31, 2009 Buffalo Springfield, making a cake and fixing an economy
Somethin's happenin' here. What it is ain't exactly clear. But one thing we do know: It is all a piece of cake. And we, and the administration, and all our legislators, better damn well understand that.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 17, 2009 Through Sara Palin, Billy Mays lives
What got me was not anything Ms. Winfrey asked, nor anything Palin said, but the ga-ga looks on the faces of Winfrey's audience. I couldn't determine whether it was that of a “When Harry Met Sallyâ€sexual orgasm or . . ..
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 8, 2008 The low-down on McCain's low-down voting record
"You don't have to steal votes if you can prevent them from ever being cast. And so far, the Republicans have eliminated six million registered Democrats from the lists of those eligible and previously registered to vote in November's election."
SHARE Friday, March 20, 2009 This Ain't Jeopardy Folks
We must not ever remain quiet while in the presence of others who have been swayed by the exhortations from the far-Right. In the words of President Obama, "You know, you have some responsibility too."
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, November 30, 2009 As to Afghanistan, this Thanksgiving it was ‘Thanks, but No Thanks.'
If you want to go to Bazaar, that's the route.
The arguments concerning Afghanistan — for US military actions and against them — are much like that. Though the question about the road to and ‘why' either never gets asked, or the rationales are just as weak as the presumption there could ever be a reason I'd head out in December to reach Bazaar.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 19, 2008 Obama is getting creamed.
Let me put this in the form of an analogy of a foot race between the two contestants. Both weigh the same, however one of them, John McCain, is burdened by carrying a couple hundred pounds of extra baggage. If the best Obama can do, under these circumstances, is to be a little bit ahead it is completely impossible to suppose the race is close.
SHARE Friday, August 15, 2008 McCain in hip-deep in Georgian lobbyists pocket
This morning, Washington Post reported that Senator John McCain's top foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann of Orion Strategies (a two-man lobbying firm that included Scheunemann and Mike Mitchell) had signed a $200,000 contract to provide strategic advice and lobbying support to the Republic of Georgia.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 14, 2009 It's time to take names.
Facilitating a vibrant middle class is essential to civil society. Deny enough someones the legitimate perception they might be able to secure a place and a stake in civil society and you guarantee that incivility, lawlessness will run like a plague over the land.
(8 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 5, 2008 Who we're up against: Steve, my mail carrier.
I affirm the following is as true a transcript of a conversation I had this morning with Steve, my local Palm Springs, California USPS mail carrier.
SHARE Thursday, September 25, 2008 McCain goes even lower.
About John McCain: Whenever you think he couldn't possibly get lower, dirtier, more foul, you find he must think he's drilling, baby, drilling for a new low. John McCain has made George Bush appear as an alter boy when it comes to truthfulness, honor, and anything that's the least humanly decent; a task I'd have heretofore considered beyond mortal means.
SHARE Friday, December 4, 2009 Today, December 1: A day for tears.
How much? How many? How long? Why?!!! And keep this fact tucked beneath the pillow: Add 30,000 forces to the mix and the total will then sum to more than what the Soviets had.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 28, 2008 Call off the dogs for a sec. It's time to take a breath.
I am fatigued to nausea by folks who presume that as they have a case of bad gas, society would benefit by a whiff of it; bad gas, in most every case, being an opinion that has nothing behind it, other than the fact of its flatulent existence.
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 1, 2010 I need some help here. Actually, we all do.
"Opponents say that it could prevent smaller American companies from drilling offshore at all due to concerns about the cost of an accident."
Let's pretend for a moment that we're all adults here.
SHARE Sunday, June 8, 2008 John McCain: way too much déjà vu all over again
We and the world want to know that the U.S. president is an honest and decent person, not prone to confecting spurious renditions of a fact or set of facts, or a total fiction, out of some possible or deluded quest on behalf of personal or political gain, or salvation. What does the evidence offer about McCain?
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 17, 2008 It's all tied together.
The GOP and American business have never given the first damn about anyone who wasn't part of their wealthy base. Whether on the job or off, a worker becomes injured, falls terribly ill, or dies, or suffers some other of life's fickle maladies . . . "Hmmph, who can we get to replace him?"
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, January 14, 2008 I'm not ready to play nice"
As was Howard Beale, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Nor am I going to hide behind the skirts of "progressive" because a number of folks have gotten the better part of a population to perceive "liberal" in ways that would sicken George Orwell.
SHARE Saturday, September 22, 2007 Roll Call of the Cowed and the Sameful-Shameful
For President Bushmaster - a bushmaster is a highly venomous snake, extraordinarily dangerous to humans, that inhabits the Southern tropics (See, I can match 'em bam-for-BAM!) - to suggest it was "disgusting" is so like a hog calling a wallowing pig filthy.
SHARE Wednesday, June 4, 2008 Your outrageous fuel prices and John McCain
Relative to the field of economics and John McCain, I am here going to rip the skin off the Arizona senator for the way in which he has attempted to compensate his acknowledged deficiency in this vital area with counsel from those who shouldn't be trusted with a key to the outhouse.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 30, 2008 America's Future: the Greatest Iraq Causalty
Ponder the fact that the War in Iraq, with its price tag nearing or surpassing $2 trillion is so sapping the common weal that the Dodd-Hagel scheme may be naught but a pipedream, and our inability to actually do what we must do to retain competitiveness in the global economy could very well send our sons and daughters and grandkids down the economic drainpipe.
SHARE Tuesday, August 12, 2008 McCain takes Michigan, and all that jazz.
In Michigan, and in the other Rust-belt states like it, and in the South, while few will openly confess to racial bigotry, they fish the muddied waters of their souls for explanations - "I just don't trust Obama," or, "He doesn't have the 'experience,'" though they just can't seem to define that term with anything approaching precision - why they will not support the Illinois senator and why they do support John McCain.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 8, 2009 With apologies to Clara Peller, "Where's the Leader?"
But administration errors have not been near so damning as how it has quite willingly allowed itself to be the cellmate punk to the GOP's gang of Bubbas. When an effete and completely nerdy Mitch McConnel and a wholly disgusting Eric Cantor can have their way with you, it's unlikely you're going to get your way on much of anything.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 27, 2007 Who I'm for and why!
Casting a ballot is not about making some statement, it's about which philosophy is going to run the government and thereby affect the lives of us all. Voting for a candidate who has no real chance of winning is naively foolhardy.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, July 27, 2009 A call to arms: It is deja vu all over again: Our Galileo 'You Are There' Moment
As I listen in on the health care debates that are consuming the political players and journalists and nearby associates, a kaleidoscope montage seems swirling.
Gotta stay with me here. A la the late, great Bette Davis, "Fasten your seatbelts, this is going to be bumpy ride."
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 23, 2007 Pack of Dogs
PLEASE . . . somehow, somewhere retain the record of this vote against America's best. Several are up for reelection in 2008, and they're going to try to squirrel out from under this vote. Let's not permit them to evade the proof of where their hypocritical heart was when it counted most.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 25, 2008 This may be your last chance.
On September 14, last year, Senator McCain called for members of MoveOn.org to be "kicked out of the country." Never has a more un-American sentiment been issued; equally un-American, yes, more un-American, no.
SHARE Wednesday, October 28, 2009 Rush Limbaugh's Notions and the Terrorism of the Minority Report
To compose conclusions about someone else's motivations, thoughts and likely behaviors that are based exclusively on one's own predispositions, prejudices, fears and bigotries, and not a whit on any actual evidence may be the most abhorrently dangerous of all human endeavors.
SHARE Sunday, August 2, 2009 The marriage counseling visit, Republicans, and It ain't deja vu.
Have you ever had that feeling, that sense that what you're witnessing just sort of reminds you of something? Not an exact mirror image, but . . . just . . . something, sort of.
I've been experiencing that for a while, when I hear Republicans talking about . . . Now, it's talking about anything.
SHARE Friday, March 20, 2009 A Most Important Social Critique
It's all over and we ought to throw all caution to the wind and have one great last block party. Bring the chips, bring the beer and the booze and the weed, and we'll call every tomorrow off.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 3, 2009 Stay Out of the Red States, if You Want to be Healthy.
Is it just coincidence, bad luck, that with but one exception, that of West Virginia, every one of the bottom 10 US states for both health and education are both politically very conservative and the bastion of the Bible-belt?
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, August 29, 2008 Why I'm a Democrat
I am a bleeding heart liberal. But I've known more bleeding heart liberals who have bled for their country than I have the stalwart, loud and boasting GOP patriots who were all too willing to be a patriot, so long as it was far from harm's way and cost them nothing.
SHARE Saturday, September 29, 2007 Three truths and a fib.
George W Bush and the right-wing (Why not 'wrong' instead of 'right'?), neocon, fascistically leaning, US Constitution-crapping-all-over Republicans. Delusion: they're wrapped in it like moth pupae that fed on garment fabric before so encasing themselves against the bitterness of life and truth outside.
SHARE Saturday, February 14, 2009 It may be sometime this summer when the fat lady sings.
Ponder the growing tsunami of whites whose jobs, whose homes, whose cars, whose hopes have been stolen from them. Add a number of weeks of 95-degree days, 90-degree nights, 80 to 90% humidity, to no perceived avenue of escape from the heat, the humidity and the rot of hopelessness, then add 80-proof alcohol and a spark.
SHARE Friday, March 12, 2010 GOP Loves Talk about "Frivolous Law Suits" Relative to "Tort Reform."
The highly consequent fact that pillories the Republican argument absolutely is that California's limiting malpractice legislation hasn't stemmed at all the soaring rise of medical costs in the state, nor the unconscionable escalation of health insurance premiums!
SHARE Saturday, July 26, 2008 John McCain and that 'Judgment' thing.
Judgment matters! Both good judgment . . . and most particularly poor judgment. It's time we examine the evidence for which kind John McCain manifests most frequently.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 12, 2008 The terrible lie of "Drill, drill, drill."
In an interview yesterday, and on the floor of the House today, I gathered from Representatives Peter DeFazio (Oregon's 4th District) and David Wu (Oregon's 1st District), respectively, some startling facts.
(10 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 13, 2008 About Ronald Reagan, I'm not ready to make nice.
Some say I owe a contributor an aopolgy for suggesting that the comment that "Ronald Reagan was our most beloved president" was evidence of a miserable level of ignorance. But how can I apologize, when I feel that whomever paints Ronald Reagan as anything other than a calamity has a moral obligation to seek forgiveness from the world for overlooking his "high crimes and misdemeanors"?
SHARE Tuesday, September 9, 2008 Remind me, hockey mom is ready for what?
This was no gaffe. This was an exhibition of ignorance that is dispersed in Econ 102; second semester economics; perhaps even Econ 101.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 3, 2008 Your scary family -- in sharp focus.
"Why do you like Sara Palin?" GOP pollster Frank Luntz asked Wendy Brown. "Because she's spunky, full of energy," Wendy replied.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 28, 2008 A conversation with a ghost.
Clint Eastwood, as Bill Munny in his 1992 Oscar-winning The Unforgiven, correctly comments, "It's a hellova thing, killin' a man. Take away all he's got, and all he's ever gonna have."
SHARE Tuesday, April 28, 2009 Arlen Specter: Elegy for the Republican Party
It was all as if Specter hung up the sign, "Will the last thinking Republican please turn out the lights." That's a tragedy for all of us. While no one needs a party consumed by arrogance and ambition and corruption and just plain ugliness, a country very much does need a counterweight, to act as a governing balance, to prevent the majority's inertia from spinning out of orbit.
(8 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 16, 2008 Five little words that say all that needs to be said.
With just five words, James Melcher, one of the New York based hedge fund CEOs, ripped the toga from the deregulate everything/monitor nothing/free market capitalistic Reaganomics rules emperor yesterday, March 14th.
"If the Fed hadn't acted, that could have triggered a very widespread panic and potentially a collapse of the financial system."
SHARE Sunday, March 8, 2009 A Texas judge definitely earns the epithet BITCH.
"We can't give new trials to everyone who establishes, after conviction, that they might be innocent. We would have no finality in the criminal justice system, and finality is important."
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 3, 2008 The saddest song I ever heard
More than 4,000 good, decent, brave, very patriotic American military dead way before their time. Perhaps at least 100,000 American military scarred physically and emotionally and psychologically, and more than $2 trillion, maybe as much, when all is said and done, as $5 trillion poured into the sand so that what Iraq becomes after all of this is a country run by a 2-star dictator.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 5, 2008 The Sunday Funnies: I admit it -- I just don't get it.
"Oil and coal? Of course, it's a fungible commodity and they don't flag, ya know, the molecules, where it's going and where it's not. But in the sense of the Congress today, they know that there are very, very hungry domestic markets that need oil first."
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 8, 2008 Why Steve the mail carrier frightens me
And the melodious refrain from Big Yellow Taxi keeps coming back, "you don't know what you got 'til it's gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, May 15, 2009 Beware the Bogeyman!
This slight-of-hand canard would be worthy of David Blaine. (For those unfamiliar with the street magician, let me offer this YouTube link treat.
The false choice tactic advanced by Packwood is typical of today's Republican Party.
SHARE Friday, October 3, 2008 Do not call to send in the clowns, they're here!
If I thought the past seven years, eight months and almost two weeks were more depressing than I could ever have theretofore conjured, the past several days proved I had no clue how truly dour my spirits could become. The American public, contrary completely to what candidates for higher political office propound, is composed almost entirely of clowns.
SHARE Friday, March 19, 2010 Really, view this Columbus-Dispatch vid of your friends
Do not pass this one by. Turn your volume up, at least so you can hear the comments coming from the Republican crowd. Your "friends," your neighbors. Actually view the 2-minute video from the Columbus-Dispatch newspaper; especially at the 1-minute mark.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 8, 2008 When can McCain misstatements be called lies?
When you do check, and when you find the "truth" of what McCain claims is somewhere else, you're left with no option but to seriously ask whether the candidate just doesn't realize that what he's saying is not factual, or whether he just doesn't care, or whether he's so hungry for the job he will say anything to land the job.
SHARE Thursday, February 14, 2008 Time for the Democratic House & Senate to show some relevance.
Other than perhaps the veneer of civility, what's the difference between the Bush admin and MS13, the Bloods, the Crips, the Hells Angels and Sonny Barger, and . . . Is it all really BS? Is it all just a charade? Doing the right thing and law are irrelevant if you carry a Bible under your arm and talk the talk. Power is all that really matters. Is that it?
Yeah, acording to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. No difference.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, October 31, 2008 Burned out over being burned up . . . almost, but not quite.
I find I'm increasingly empathizing with Diogenes. While he stalked the paths of Greece in search of an honest man, my quest has been for an intelligent and informed American. It's been a long eight years, and I'm burned out.
SHARE Wednesday, April 22, 2009 Pac-Man and American standards of economic morality
Would you bet YOUR life savings insuring the person with cancer. Insurance is a business, not a charity, and is no different than you, in that regard. It's also why a federal single-payer system is the only one that makes business sense.
SHARE Saturday, September 8, 2007 In the Guise of Fred Thompson, Ronald Reagan Rides Again
Word is out that Fred Thompson, late of NBC's "Law & Order" television series, has entered the GOP race for the presidential nomination on the premise of donning the Reagan mantle.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, June 16, 2008 The fury of a veteran scorned.
By McCain's scorning of those who now serve, in scorning those who have most recently served, I too feel deeply scorned. That explains why I feel as I do, but it does nothing to explain why John McCain feels as he does.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 12, 2008 From John McCain's pen to your burning eyes!
I have had the honor to share my five decades of service to America with many great men and women. Most inspiring of all was Ronald Reagan. Today, I am as sure as I was when I first entered public life as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution that the principles of the Republican Party are always in the best interests of the American people.
(9 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 20, 2008 So you think we need to drill off the California coast.
If the situation truly is deemed so dire that we're willing to piss down God's throat, which despoiling His Pacific coastline surely amounts to, then be prepared to accept that equally drastic measures will also be demanded.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 14, 2008 The US Constitution: Something else that befuddles McCain.
As to the "safety and security of this nation" being the "first obligation," Senator McCain could not be more wrong.Not only are the essential tests of "rebellion or invasion" not present, the only oath he has sworn to is to "[to the best of his ability] preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." The CONSTITUTION senator! The CONSTITUTION; protecting IT, another thing that just befuddles him.
SHARE Thursday, September 25, 2008 An appraiser weighs in. The 'nut' in all the mess: "Fair Market Value."
The "mess" is the collection of junk the finance industry took as collateral backing the paper that entitled the top tiers to rake in fortunes that would have made Midas blush. No one knows what that junk is worth, and anyone trying to tell you that he or she has even a whiff of a "smells-like" guess is doing two things: lying to you, and expecting you, as the chump, will believe the lie.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, January 14, 2008 "What does it all mean, Daddy?" "That we're not very smart son."
I recommend America repeat Ronal Reagan's assignment; "Better today than in 2000?" To help, with attribution, I've included a few pieces of 2000 - 2007 price comparison data
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 10, 2008 Karl's story. Yours. Mine. Everyone pays when we send a man to do our killing.
For whatever reason, my parents were out of the house and both my sisters were in their upstairs bedroom. How it happened that I nudged Sandra aside, or how I coaxed her into our finished basement . . . Nearly five decades later, it's all a blur. I wanted to . . . what? I had a vague notion. But I was young; thirteen, maybe fourteen. I had no experience.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 6, 2007 The SCHIP Veto The TRUTH Revealed -- At Last
I don't have any: associates, friends or relatives who are Republicans, who voted for George Bush or for any Republican. When my Tampa Bay partner's step-daughter got married 18 months ago in Atlanta I refused to attend. The family was staunchly GOP. Consider my position extreme. (I don't even own any red-colored apparel!)
I'm damned angry!
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 24, 2008 The shame of it, and of all of us who let the story lie fallow.
Yesterday, Vice-president Cheney said, "It's a fact..." He was speaking on behalf of an expansion of the FISA laws concerning warrantless eavesdropping on our communications. Except by dint of intentional ignroance or evil, who can now believe anything a Bush official says.
SHARE Monday, April 14, 2008 Senator Obama, lie to me. I can't handle the truth.
I'm discouraged that when an aspirant to the presidency of my country speaks with me honestly, when he speaks to me out of respect for what I may be feeling, and when he's mocked, ridiculed, chided for that honesty, more and more and more I'm convinced that Colonel Jessep was exactly right: we can't handle the truth!
Bring on the clowns. They're what we seem to want.
SHARE Sunday, September 30, 2007 The Assault on You by the Private Equity Firms
We are the fish in the barrel. The states have levied fines and have attempted criminal prosecutions, and families have tried to sue, but the entities have been so labyrinth-like structured that there's no one accountable and no way to pinpoint financial responsibility.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, September 28, 2007 Defense of America Begins with an Urgent Call to Arms
Neither truth nor legitimacy has ever been the GOP's objective; seizing and holding onto power, by any means necessary, is all that has ever mattered.
SHARE Monday, February 4, 2008 A plea for sanity and for conscience
The far-right wing of the GOP - not a small, nor quiet, nor cautious, nor ineffectual element of the Republican Party - has for some time been feverishly stoking the embers of xenophobia, and the radiating heat and hatred are palpable. If we don't extinguish it, we'll all get burned badly.
SHARE Wednesday, January 16, 2008 Life & Health INsurance Companies are just soooo DIRTY!
K-Street is gonna fight like hell, and they've got the Milky Way galaxy big-bucks to kick up a ton of obscuring dust. The questions I propose all of us consider are which candidates and which political party seem most on record for their readiness to engage the enemy?
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 3, 2008 Oh God, when will it end?
The story in today's (July 3) paper illustrating the Bush administration's involvement in ANOTHER "Oh Lord, how many have there been now?" too dirty to even want to want to touch scandal sent my mind immediately to that hog slop episode.
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 21, 2008 Why are so willing to join a parade headed over a cliff?
Preliminary Warning: The following is open inquiry into a subject that only those with the adequate courage to be open minded and intellectually honest should consider reading. If you lack what it takes, do not go there.
SHARE Tuesday, January 22, 2008 It's a bad scene no matter how you look at it.
Retraining, as the pundits and politicians like to propound, simply may be an illusionary fantasy for the chronically unemployed 50-plus worker. So where does that leave us as a country, as a society?
SHARE Thursday, March 20, 2008 See the shining city crumble. And there's not a cent to fix it.
Present this to those you know who just cannot see either the cost of what McCain is insisting on, or what the hell we're - as in you and me - going to do when all the costs hit us so in the face we can no longer ignore them, yet may not be able to cover the margin when the margin call is made. And you know that margin call will be made.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 3, 2009 Mirror, mirror . . .
Concerning torture, for everyone who voted in 2004 for George W. Bush, the stain of their personal participation and guilt remains unblotted and indelible. What they knew of - or should have - they approved.
SHARE Sunday, September 9, 2007 In Vino (and hasty words spoken) Veritas
Mr. Romney's incautious betrayal of his deepest held regards for what our men and women are enduring was so beyond deprecating blasphemy to the point there exist no words to describe them!
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, March 28, 2008 The hard-Right's latest push-poll survey.
On the Godfather's advice to keep my friends close, but my enemies closer, I subscribe to the GOP's far right Internet rag, Human Events (HumanEventsOnline.com). For elucidation purposes only, I cannot recommend too highly the free subscription. You've really got to see what they're saying, and what they're up to. The news would shock few, however it is extraordinarily informative.
SHARE Saturday, September 20, 2008 Oh what a bloody mess . . .
Whether on the right or left, many, many of us are every bit as responsible.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 26, 2008 If you are a woman, or know one, you need to know what the GOP did to you yesterday.
If you are an employment age female, or will become one, or know one, and give the first damn about her, this story may be more important to you than any other you will learn of this year. Its facts may certainly have greater impact on your personal life than just about anything else.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 10, 2008 So just what the hell are you so damned afraid of?
The only answer I can concoct is, it's tragic ignorance and an absence of skills needed in today's world. The only answer I can summon is, they looked in the mirror and found that, vis-à-vis today's economic requirements, they do not have what it takes; they're inferior to the task at hand, and putting down others based on race, ethnicity or whatever is the only means available to them, to not feel inferior.
SHARE Tuesday, August 19, 2008 For John McCain: It's just one more audience, one more lie.
Last evening, during the sit-down at the Saddleback Church, at the 15.33 minute mark, repeated this story: "I was standing outside my cell, and he [the 'gun guard'] came walking up, and with his sandal in the dirt yard he drew a cross..."
SHARE Friday, July 11, 2008 John McCain: a serious question of "character."
Just what exactly are those who support McCain on the basis of some ostensible strong moral character asking the rest of us to not see, and to forget? The facts of his conduct? The facts of his contradictory statements? Or the definition of the word?
(13 comments) SHARE Friday, July 4, 2008 Today is the Fourth. Stand up. For at least once in your life STAND UP!
Today is the Fourth of July, the day when proud men, angry men facing a hangman's noose, stood up and stood their ground, to tell the king of the most powerful nation on earth, "Go to hell, you S.O.B. - take your best shot, we're not backing down." Who among us today will stand and with the courage to affix their legitimate name to the cry, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any longer!"?
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 20, 2008 Senator McCain, I have a few questions I'd like answered.
Today, as the country and the entire world wait anxiously - like a woman in a long labor - for the Bush-Cheney cabal to finally, finally at lonnnng last, come to an end, Senator John McCain has grabbed their "victory" and "honor" in Iraq baton and Charlton Heston-like repeatedly announced how that victory and honor will not be removed "from his cold, dead hands."
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 23, 2008 Why Detroit is sinking: Peddlin' papers and everything else that's unimportant.
What I found completely answers why the Great Lake State is in the condition it's in. I kid you not, in 100% copied fidelity (Even the horrible grammar is included "as is") and in descending order, the following 10 stories composed what Michiganders were most worked up about this morning.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, June 2, 2008 a matter of principle
I began feeling merely embarrassed. Then it turned to anger. But before I tell you why, I need to make a confession.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, June 9, 2008 A Little History You Need to Know
By the high price paid, Americans had an inalienable right to demand from the hard lesson of Vietnam, "Never again!"
But we didn't learn anything from it, and every drop of blood shed and every dollar spent was one of each that we might just as well have jammed into a honey-bucket and dumped in the furrows of a rice paddy.
SHARE Sunday, June 1, 2008 Scott McClellan and YOU!
My take on criticizing Mr. McClellan is a paint brush with coarse bristles that slathers the majority of the oh-so self-righteous Americans with a rather toxic tincture of blame.
SHARE Friday, July 18, 2008 McCain, me, and the Little Engine that Could
By the speech Senator McCain delivered at the NAACP convention this week in Cincinnati one might be fooled into believing John McCain marched hand in hand with Martin Luther King, and that no minority ever had a more out-front, stalwart ally than him.
SHARE Wednesday, July 2, 2008 Souvenirs of War
You could hold him, and the cascade of his tears couldn't be dammed. That was because he had been damned - sentenced - by the endless recon searches for what others in starched white shirts and silk ties in Washington claimed was there, claimed had to be rooted out . . . for freedom to take hold.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 17, 2008 Fourth of July Fireworks, Obama, and Gold Hat
As to reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, my mind cannot conceive a more thoroughly detestable or un-American behavior.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, September 10, 2007 A Page from German History
The Korean War Marine and I, a 1964 to June '67 Army vet, were the only ex-military among the 75 or so standing on the northwest corner of the Reno-Tahoe Convention Center's parking lot. We were there to offer some counter to the message being delivered by President Bush to the American Legion's 10,000 members within the convention center.
SHARE Thursday, January 10, 2008 A Cloud of Smoke and a mighty "Hi-Yo Vote 'Delete'"
With pain, even today, I recall the struggle to get through the billowing black clouds of smoke that curled ubiquitously heavenwards, staining gray the sky above. But I fought on, coughing, tears cascading down my cheeks; just a few blocks more and I'll have made it to the CVS pharmacy and the eye drops . . . oh those precious eye drops.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, May 5, 2008 I rage at all the Barbara Cornetts of the Earth
Ms. Barbara Barnett's extraordinarily bigoted reply to my post was to me as terrifying as terrifying can get. It was terrifying because it reflects an attitude that - however most of us would prefer to pretend it is limited to a small fringe - is pervasive throughout America; it is not particularly uncommon.
And I say: We are better than that.
SHARE Wednesday, March 5, 2008 An important read for everyone who feels a conscience counts
Please read the following editorial on the urgent need to live up to the promises this country made to the men and women when it decided to send them into harms' way. Relative to "supporting the troops," the piece outlines the sorry path of intentional deceit and cynical disregard for basic morality that has been part and parcel of the Bushmaster administration.
SHARE Friday, May 2, 2008 Father forgive me, for I have sinned
That I have not the excuse of neither sleep depreivation nor dodging bullits in Bosnia, while jumping down the throat of others for their failure to own and understand the Constitution only adds to my sin.
SHARE Monday, September 22, 2008 When the world goes completely nuts.
What Paulson wants from Congress this week is a "clean bill" that will give to him, and to whoever will be the next Treasury Secretary in a matter of a few months, sweeping power to administer $700,000,000,000 in taxpayer money (small, non-sequential unmarked bills preferred) . . . and maybe more, "we'll let you know later; no burdensome oversight, please."
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 18, 2008 It's been a bad seven years for accounting.
I can count the plagues that assaulted the pharaoh: water to blood, frogs, gnats, flies, stricken livestock, pestilence, hail, locusts, darkness, and the deaths of all first-born. The plagues of the Bush/GOP years are beyond counting. And other than to sham pretense and show, none have been for a good purpose.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 25, 2007 The Most Important Film of OUr Day: In the Valley of Elah
The irreconcilable moral is extended as, as individual servicemen and women and as a country we are truly in peril of losing our soul. We therefore very much need to decide whether that is something we want to - or can - endure.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 29, 2007 The Down and Dirty on the Down and Dirty
Show me a beer that will make me irresistible to an icon of my sexual target. Or do the same with an oven cleaner, or how your political agenda eliminates the toxins of anxiety, and I'll buy it.
SHARE Sunday, May 25, 2008 Truth & Logic also tortured by Bush Admin
One serious consequence of the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation techniques" practice is that all charges against Mohammad al-Qahtani, the alleged "20th hijacker," have been forced to have been dropped.
SHARE Wednesday, March 26, 2008 On having reached a terrible benchmark
March 23d, was the day the Department of Defense acknowledged the death of the 4,000th American military to have perished in a war that was promulgated on the boldest and most absurd fictions, and that was facilitated by a Congress and an American populace that permitted themselves to be so easily duped by repetitions of the most outrageous of nonsense.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 24, 2008 I want to know: Do we still have the fight in us?
What the expenditure of billions and billions of educational dollars bought for The Greatest Generation was an escape from poverty and a successful leap into the middle-class they never would have been able to make otherwise. So what's different now?
SHARE Tuesday, May 20, 2008 KISS, or Courage, which will YOU choose?
Nonetheless, I find that oh so many members of the electorate feel compelled to reduce them to the trivial and even to the profane.
(7 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 15, 2008 The time to charge the Bastille is drawing near.
C'mon, dammit . . . Now this is really pissing me off! Yesterday, the Republican Supreme Court of non-activist judges ruled along straight party lines in Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta, 06-43 that corporations can rob you and all investors blind, they can engage securities fraud, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 13, 2008 We're DOOMED!
There are a number of pretty heavy steps that all earth's habitants need to take RIGHT NOW, since yesterday, which would have been more advantageous to our chances of survival, is a few decades too late.
SHARE Saturday, October 10, 2009 Weighing in on the Wait over Afghanistan
The point here is that, if the proposed action is so critical, so essential to the country that it requires one American's life and limb to be put at risk, it's critical enough that everyone bears somewhat an equal risk and burden. No one's life is more important than anyone else's.
SHARE Tuesday, January 22, 2008 Sorry, it's NOT just Bush & Cheney. Not by a long vote.
Saying now everything was the fault of Bush and Cheney is at once wholly inaccurate, and extraordinarily dangerous. It lets all those who went along for the ride off the hook, to wax once again a W mixed metaphor. NO! NO! NO! Don't do it. At least never forget a Bush 41 aphorism: "Wouldn't be prudent."
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 5, 2008 On Rob Kall's Raking Rage
Thing is: Rob was 100% right. Perhaps he was beseeching, begging, pleading, cajoling you to do one of three things: lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. But standing still in these times that demand we march is the very antithesis of patriotic. If you're too timid or too lazy . . .
SHARE Monday, March 31, 2008 "Badges? I don't got to show you no stinkin' badges!"
Yesterday morning I opened an email from Human Events; more than one hits my inbox every day. As a reminder, HE is the GOP's far-Right rag. Here's what I found: "Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and a handful of her far-left cronies in Congress are plotting to put amnesty for 12-20 million illegal aliens back on the table!"
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 18, 2008 Lapel pins and lipstick on a pig
But there I was. Dumb, when all I wanted to do was to finish my beer and the cigarette I'd lit. Fourth wasn't too bad a spot. Short-timer PFC Hendrix had point; the worst position of all. And Short-timer Hendrix was a walking, shaking bad luck charm.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 12, 2008 Hopefully, the last word for all who suffer under the delusion Ronald Reagan was not a disaster!
Mike Williams (BulldogMW), in a 2-10-2008 response to my "Debra Craig . . . Get a grip on reality, Reagan was a disaster!" blog issued two remarks, one, a silly suggestion, and the other an extraordinarily important question, that I'm going to answer. The first will be terse, the latter rather extended, and everything is documented via web sites, et al.
SHARE Saturday, May 17, 2008 Only by "Squandering Opportunity" can it be said "We're Winning."
And John McCain claims "We're winning." And I scream at the top of my lungs in my empty room: "How is that Sir? Our butt is being kicked on every front that counts, we're staring into the black abyss that we're throwing the younger generation into, and "We are winning"? Exactly what sort of prize is it that we are winning? By what god-awful, stench-laden, buried deep in the septic tank standard are you defining "winning" sir?
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 19, 2008 Being a skeptic is essential to a democracy
Peruse the email, then catch my critique. But you don't have to wait for the critique. All of us received gratis the most incredible gift: an intellect that facilitates critical thinking. All we have to do is use it. Unfortunately, as was the case with the email I received this morning, far too few of us do.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 19, 2007 It's not just oil! Not by a long shot, and it's Worse!
Whatever you do, do not think on the logic, do not argue, even if it's you or your daughter that's gonna get tossed; the greater good demands it. The High Priest has said so.
So what's so different today?
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, April 18, 2008 A VISIT TO THE ELITE SIDE OF THE ROOM
You've been seeing Dr. Hubs for several years, and, if there has been any noticeable change in your condition, it has gotten worse.
You can almost hear Death knocking on the door. In fact, Death is knocking on the door. Knock, knock, knock.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, May 9, 2008 You missed the point.
The first and foremost prerequisite to hatred is fear. Psychologically, it is utterly impossible to hate what one does not first fear. Thus, the first task, it seems to me, for the one who finds the merest mote of hatred infesting his or her heart is to take a good, long look in the mirror, and ask what it is about the object of their hate that frightens them so.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 10, 2008 And example of the same old same old we need to cauterize
The unfettered free market works miraculously, and when it doesn't, don't blame its most ideologically passionate adherents, those most enjoying life at the most rarified reaches of the food chain, find a scapegoat, preferably among those least able to defend themselves! And when you do blame someone, don't let facts and the application of objective analysis prove an obstacle to the end result that's being sought.
SHARE Saturday, December 29, 2007 This Time Can We Think About the Next Time?
"When you see a little girl in pretty clothes that someone dressed her in, and she's smushed on the road with her legs cut off, you don't think, 'Well, you know, there were Fedayeen nearby and this is collateral damage. They're just civilians."
SHARE Saturday, April 5, 2008 Questions I want to put to John McCain.
I can see I've gotten you all upset again. I didn't mean to. Hey! Wait a minute. With all due respect, please leave my mother and my sexual proclivities out of this. Please. Calm down a little. This is the last question. There you go. Easy. That's a good senator. How do you plan to pay for your expedition in Iraq, until we can come home victorious, with honor?
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 29, 2008 How close are we to the streets? The Supreme Court just made that day closer.
There's only one reason anyone or any people adhere to fair elections within a democratic umbrella for determining who will govern: The alternative risks bloody upheaval, and as John Bradford observed while observing a condemned prisoner being carted to the scaffold, "There but for the grace of God goes John Bradford."
SHARE Sunday, February 17, 2008 Econ 202, and why understanding it is critical to your health
Ignorance and stupidity do more to promote and enable governmental abuse of power than perhaps anything else. Over history, more governments have failed from within than have perished because of external assault.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 22, 2008 Iraq vets testify in 10-minute video; an absolute MUST SEE
But as this video clearly demonstrates, what we are doing to both the Iraqis and our soldiers is without redemption. Reading about it, or suspecting it are not enough. You must see and hear what these veterans have to say!
SHARE Monday, September 24, 2007 THE HORRIBLE SMELL OF PUTRESCENCE
"Are we gonna continue to invest American blood & treasure at the same rate we're doing now? FOR WHAT? The president said 'let's buy time.' BUY TIME? FOR WHAT? "That's the core issue in Iraq." -- Sen Chuck Hagel
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 3, 2008 Look, I've no reason to care about a kid who hid in a bathtub
This morning (May 3), Good Morning America featured a lengthy interview with a mother who hid with her child in a bath tub during one of the Arkansas tornadoes. GMA asked the youngster how she felt, "Were you frightened?"
C'mon . . . can you spell "stupid interview"?
SHARE Monday, July 6, 2009 What is the Fourth Anyway?
Clench that fist, thrust it into the air and damn it! claim your right, as an American - Let the moneyed interests and the politicos know that for healthcare, for education, for equal treatment regardless of anything, and for so much more that all of us and our progeny have an undivided and indivisible interest in, we're "Mad as hell, and we're not going to take it any longer!"
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 23, 2007 Merry Christmas -- Whatever
Merry Christmas, except the one I enjoyed in 1968 was so much merrier, not just for me, but for almost everyone in America.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 7, 2009 Hey Barry! Let's get this clear, as between us.
President Obama recently called for the progressive groups and individuals pushing for a "single-payer" plan, or at least a "public option" to cease applying pressure to those Democratic senators who have either come out firmly against any such inclusion, or are on the fence about it.
SHARE Wednesday, September 12, 2007 The Crandall Canyon Mine and Iraq
The authorities at the Crandall mine held that enough had been lost and enough had been spent. But my question concerning an Iraq that has neither a prospect nor a plan in the offing, how much more blood and how much more of our treasure will it take to sate your gluttonous, fragile pride?
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, December 14, 2007 THE DANGER OF GOP PUSH FOR MEDIA CONSOLIDATION
KBR - Kellogg Brown Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - had over-billed the defense department $100 million. No one was in disagreement over that plain and simple fact. But what Michigan's Senator Carl Levin wanted to know from the Pentagon witness was why no one in the administration had asked for a return of the money?
SHARE Monday, December 24, 2007 So Hoover would have jailed me, huh?
A dictator and a tyrant are dictators and tyrants, regardless of the country in which they dwell; exactly as are all in the Bush administration who would suspend for a second any provision that keeps us from their clawing talons reach.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 2, 2007 Another Soldier's View of Peter Pace
Once a person dons the apparel of the United States, and once that person has been awarded authority over others, whatever positions he or she may have been raised with, whatever positions they believe, become 100% irrelevant. Choose. Change your heart. Keep your damned mouth shut. Or quit. That's it. No other options available.
SHARE Wednesday, January 16, 2008 This ain't MBA material.
Then there are the tax cuts; needed you'll hear, to spur economic development. Look, this ain't MBA material. No CEO has ever authorized plant expansion or new construction based on what's in the tax code.
SHARE Friday, February 1, 2008 What I failed to tell you that you had a right to know
Defendant Goodyear did not argue that Ms. Ledbetter had been paid less than other employees doing the same or similar work, or that she was paid less solely because of her gender. Rather, their argument, upheld by the Court, was that the statutory 180-day filing period in which Plaintiff should have filed for redress had expired.
SHARE Wednesday, February 13, 2008 I tried, and I tried, and I tried, but the site wouldn't let me.
Throwing out an opinion sans confirmable backup information is stupid, and being stupid is a personal choice no one is obligated to make. That's what I'd tell my sons, and a position I heartily endorse for everyone. The world and this country have paid a tragically dear price in blood and treasure because folks were either too timid to crack eggs or too lazy to think for themselves.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, June 27, 2008 Jefferson might have preffered the Crown to today's Americans
Those who are so frightened their life may be imperiled - the shrinking, shrieking, cowardly ninnies who cry out "The terrorists are coming, the terrorists are coming, protect me! - that they are willing to surrender the first path to the first mote of their freedom are NOT Americans.
SHARE Saturday, June 21, 2008 A far-Right ad to pillory
I liken it to a whispering campaign that does not state, but implies via "pivotal questions [that] come to mind" that - YOU may be a child molester.
SHARE Thursday, February 7, 2008 Healthcare reform . . . An important distinction.
The current healthcare scheme in America - reliance on private insurance - is a dysfunctional failure at best, if, and only if, the business model wherein cost/benefits are the guiding arbiters that define its efficacy. For both gross and per capita, the United States spends not just a little more than any other country's system, we spend twice as much; again, even on a per capita basis.
SHARE Thursday, March 13, 2008 Root Rot and the American Electorate
Think of it this way: A don has this enforcing Gumba, who he knows full well is an out-of-control Gumba. George Bush and his underling henchmen is the Gumba, and all the Republicans in the House and Senate and all who voted for them compose the aggregated Don. Absence of their don, the Gumbas would never have been able to wrought all the rotting they did, or are yet set to.