African Safari Trip of A Lifetime

The most amazing thing I learned on my first safari trip in South Africa is that elephants have the most incredible, very long black eyelashes. Second, lions could not care less about nearby trucks and people, nor lights at night. Third, though giraffes seem to walk slow and gracefully, their legs are so long that they cover long distances very quickly. When it comes to the political world, I was dismayed to learn that the illiteracy rate among South Africans exceeds 70 percent, 60 percent of school teachers lack a college... Read article

Limbaugh’s New Racism

For some years, several times a week while driving to go shopping and do errands, I have listened to Rush Limbaugh on the radio.  Pretty much all the time I have become angered because every few sentences I realized that with his total sincerity and conviction he was stating absolutely incorrect things.  Add to endless wrong information complete lapses in logic, causing me to be bewildered that Limbaugh has reached such success.  My only explanation is that he appeals to a very large number of ignorant and unintelligent... Read article

Technology Servitude

Everywhere I look outside my home I see people busy on their high tech devices, while driving, while walking, while shopping, while in groups of friends, while in restaurants, while waiting in doctor offices and hospitals, while sitting in toilets – everywhere.  While connected electronically, they are inattentive to and disconnected in physical reality. People have been steadily manipulated to become technology addicted.  Technology is the opiate of the masses. This results in technology servitude.  I am referring... Read article

Gun Patriotism or Hypocrisy?

Puzzling me for a long time is the inconsistency between two claims by gun and Second Amendment supporters.  One is that what they worship is critically needed to defend themselves against a government that they would view as oppressive and unacceptable.  The other is their belief that the US government has already become awful, stealing their liberties. Why then, I keep asking myself, have we not seen a violent uprising among the untold millions of Americans owning guns to take back their government?  Why do we... Read article

Lies and Liars Lost

My cynicism about the stupidity of the American public would have increased exponentially if Mitt Romney would have been elected president. In over 50 years of voting and 25 years of working professionally in the world of politics and public policy I had never seen such outrageous and persistent lies, distortions and intellectual insults from a presidential candidate. Please note that I was not an Obama supporter; I proudly voted for the Libertarian candidate. Repeatedly, Romney sold his soul to first get the Republican... Read article

Fire Congress, Vote Out Incumbents

For politicians to do what is right, first citizens must do what is right. Of all the many, many stupid things that most Americans do, nothing is more insane than the ritual every two years of reelecting incumbent members of Congress.  Countless opinion polls find that the public has incredibly low levels of positive regard for Congress.  Just one in 10 Americans approves of the job Congress is doing, according to a Gallup poll released a few weeks ago, tying the branch’s lowest approval rating in 38 years. Yet... Read article

Numbing Numbers Explain US Frog Revolution

Believing in the classic American Dream that hard work will deliver prosperity is like believing that buying super lottery tickets is a smart way to become wealthy.  Both are delusional beliefs because both are bets on incredible long shots that will disappoint nearly everyone who believes this garbage.  The American Dream has been destroyed by a revolution from the top. Americans have been watching authentic bottom-up revolutions in other countries but remain oblivious to a very different kind of revolution by elites... Read article

Losing Constitutional Competition

Among Americans there remains strong pride about the US Constitution, even though there is widespread support for creating reform amendments to it.  Globally, however, what should surprise Americans is a significant loss of respect for it.  Other nations, especially those creating new democracies, see better constitutions elsewhere.  This is not opinion.  It is fact.  And it is important to understand this historic shift. A new university study sends a disturbing message to all Americans that want to hang on... Read article

Romney, Severely Awful

There are many, many reasons to have low regard for Mitt Romney.  All but the totally delusional correctly see him as disingenuous, dishonest, devious and devoid of an authentic set of core beliefs.  He is a shill for corporate and rich elites.  He is the phony smiling, perfect hair poster jerk for the proverbial one percent.  But I now clearly see that there is another, more important reason to feel like vomiting at the thought of President Romney. As almost everyone knows by now, Romney has been a senior, influential... Read article

No Matter Who Wins, Americans Lose

Why am I so sick of all the media attention to the Republican presidential primaries and all the blabbering about President Obama’s advantages and disadvantages for the coming election?  I just cannot get excited.  My answer may also be yours: No matter who wins, our nation loses. Come election night I would be overjoyed to see Obama lose and equally overjoyed to see the Republican candidate, whoever it is, also lose.  I cannot see how either Romney or Gingrich or even Ron Paul could possibly offer what is truly... Read article

Cruise Ship Vacation Wisdom

I have taken a number of cruise ship vacations. The last one was about a year and half ago. I learned a lot about cruise ships and what factors should go into decisions about selecting a specific cruise ship that I want to share with you. By now, of course, you have heard and seen a lot about the disaster of the Carnival Line’s Costa Concordia off the Italian shore where a number of people died and thousands went through an awful time trying to escape and survive the heavily tilted and partially submerged modern, huge... Read article

Don’t Mute Newt

The trick to maintaining the US delusional democracy is feeding the illusion for citizens that voting and elections really matter.  But when both major parties are owned by rich and corporate elites it matters less than most people think whether Republicans or Democrats win and control Congress or the White House.  Their seeming differences are a clever distraction that keeps fooling and manipulating Americans.  With the help of the mainstream media, making entertainment out of political races, Americans are deceived... Read article

Occupy Movement: Next Step Convergence

There is a growing convergence of thinking about where the US Occupy movement should go as a next step to turning its values, concerns and commitments into changing what most Americans see as broken government under control of corporate interests.  When it comes to political and social movements, history shows us that they usually fail not because they disappear, but rather because they become marginalized, unimportant despite a core group of committed people and groups. They lose popular appeal and support or never expand... Read article

Occupy Revolution

History tells us that it is nearly impossible to know in real time whether some kind of national, grassroots public protest ends up being the beginning of a true revolution against a ruling government system.  This is true for the earliest beginnings of the revolt against the British that produced the successful American Revolution and the creation of the US.  The British at the time surely thought that they could retain power and control.  More recently, the revolts in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya certainly could... Read article

Jobless and Clueless

When Americans who are the most victimized by our cruel economy still believe in something that is demonstrably no longer true, they are deeply delusional.  They desperately want to believe in something once great about American society.  The reality is that upward economic mobility has been destroyed, replaced by widely observable downward mobility.  Some of the mostly younger jobless that have embraced the Occupy Wall Street and related Occupy efforts know the truth. Consider the results of a new survey of unemployed... Read article

Numbers Justify Occupy Movement

Feeling angry about being betrayed by a corrupt government owned by rich and corporate elites has driven the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Emphasizing how the top one percent has prospered incredibly while the bottom 99 percent have been screwed royally is supported by countless data.  New data show this is a global phenomenon and that even in the worst of economic times the wealthiest make out like the bandits they are, and there are a lot more of them than one percent. Globally, millionaires and billionaires now control... Read article

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