Politics — Spinning Out of Control

“The two parties have combined against us to nullify our power by a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ of non-recognition, no matter how we vote … May God write us down as asses if ever again we are found putting our trust in either the Republican or the Democratic Parties.” ~~ W.E.B. DuBois (1922) In January, after the mid-term election blowout dumped the House of Representatives into the corporate lap, the Reverend Daniel P. Coughlin opened the 112th Congress with the standard prayer, asking... Read article

Hey, American People!

Whew. Nasty. That was one hell of a campaign season; one hell of an election. Democrats emerged, bruised and broken, yet their mindset seems to be — hey, we survived Bush, how bad can it be? Sadly, the grim truth they refuse to face is — we didn’t survive Bush… The radical right-wing, neo-conservative, religious-based, hate-empowered GOP once again owes the half-crazed ideologues in the Supreme Court a hearty thanks for plunging yet another dagger into the heart of democracy with itsCitizens United... Read article

The Choice is Ours

“History will repeat itself — only if we let it” ~ Mike Malloy Hardly a day goes by that we are not inundated with demands to attack Iran. Our media, our Congress — packs of neoconservatives — have been howling for war on Iran for years. And years. This reckless axis has been relentless in its orchestrated effort to manipulate and influence public opinion. And, if we are to believe the myriad of polls, it’s working. According to investigative journalist Gareth Porter, who wrote on... Read article

Keep The Change

Change is the process by which the future invades our lives ~ Alvin Toffler, “Future Shock” Each time it appears that Republicans can’t get any nastier, any more bereft of morality, they wrap themselves in the flag, grab their guns and Bibles, and manage once again to hit the bottom of the ethical barrel. A good example is Ben Smith’s recent startling revelation in Politico.com, which exposed the dirty tricks Republican National Committee (RNC) operatives were planning to play, not only on... Read article

Walk a Mile…

I know you need your sleep now, I know your life’s been hard. But many men are falling, where you promised to stand guard. ~ Leonard Cohen My friend Bernie says he’s suffering from Afghanistan information exhaustion. “During all those months that Obama was dragging his feet about escalating the war in Afghanistan, did you ever get the impression,” he asked, “that foxes were in the hen house, chickens were squawking and running around crazily, wolves were tearing the foxes to pieces, and... Read article

God Has Left The Building

If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.~~Thomas S. Szasz, The Second Sin Several months ago, CNN published the results of a couple of disturbing polls about Americans and their religious beliefs. The first found that more Americans are rejecting religion and thus, according to CNN, America is becoming “less Christian.” The second, a Pew survey of only 742 mostly white evangelical Protestants, revealed that more than six in 10 of them believe that torture is often... Read article

Charge of the Beckerheads

I didn’t know Van Jones. I didn’t know Van Jones was a friend of mine — at least not until the stench billowing from the Fox Hate Channel became so foul I was forced to take a closer look at this terrifying creature. No — not Jones, whom President Obama wisely had hired as Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality — but the sobbing, lying, deliriously insane Glenn Beck. According to Beck, who began his assault on Jones in a July 23 disjointed rant, wherein... Read article

We Have Given Our Blessing to Israel’s Crimes

If you keep on excusing, you eventually give your blessing to the slave camp, to cowardly force, to organized executioners, to the cynicism of great political monsters; you finally hand over your brothers. ~~ Albert Camus There is no subject more restricted nor more controlled in the United States than a critical discussion of Israel. Balanced argument is ignored while each word is parsed — and condemned. It’s strange that we are free to rant and rave and point out the war crimes of our own administration —... Read article

Seeds of Truth

I have learned over the past decade if I want to know what’s really going on in the United States, I have to cruise through the foreign media to see what’s creating a furor or causing a stink. So, while searching for the status of Spain’s on-again, off-again criminal proceedings against six Bush Administration war criminals, this headline in Der Spiegel caught my eye — “Frankenfood Ban is Neither Populism nor Panic-Mongering.” A closer look at the article revealed it wasn’t... Read article

It’s Time For The Madness To Stop

Sometimes it’s hard to come to grips with the truth — especially if that truth is about our own country, and is in direct opposition to everything we’ve been taught since childhood. Patriotism is in our genes, and through the years it has been a national conviction that, if our country needed us, serving in the military to protect our freedom was not only the right thing to do, but the only thing to do. We still believe that. We still leap to our feet at the first beat of a drum at a military parade,... Read article

Should We Fear Iran?

The Peter Principle Playoffs… We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men ~~ George Orwell So here we sit, our heads jerking back and forth so rapidly most of us are suffering severe whiplash. Will the US attack Iran? Will Israel attack Iran? Or will the two war-mongering bullies join forces and “bomb, bomb, bomb” that belligerent twit-nation into subservience? It’s a great game. A deadly game. The momentum to attack Iran has been building... Read article

Everybody Knows

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight was fixed. The poor stay poor, the rich get rich. That’s how it goes. Everybody knows. ~~Leonard Cohen The fate of millions was sealed the moment Dick Cheney selected himself as The Destroyer whose charge to keep for the next eight years would be — as Capitol Hill Blue’s Doug Thompson so succinctly described George W. Bush... Read article

Traffic Jam on the Highway to Hell

“When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.” ~~ Thomas Jefferson Each new year ushers in a myriad of “Top Ten” lists — 10 best things, 10 worst things, things we need to do, things we did but shouldn’t have — and this year, even a hilarious list of WTF? things popped up. I’ll admit I’m not... Read article

Culling The Herd

“Everything you can imagine is real“~~ Pablo Picasso In 1974, a year after orchestrating a mass terror bombing of Cambodia — after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his National Security Council completed “National Security Study Memo 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests.” This document, whose sharp edges are dulled by page after leaden page of how to reduce over-population in the Third World through... Read article

In the Kingdom of Fear

“You’re A Whole Different Person When You’re Scared” ~~ Warren Zevon, Hunter S. Thompson My friend Bernie says since Democrats won the Congress, George Bush reminds him of a cartoon where this destructive Texas jackrabbit was careening headlong down a path, his eyes riveted on a rabbit hole in the distance. A tortoise, sunning himself at the side of the path, looked behind the rabbit where a baying pack of dogs, in hot pursuit, was gaining on him. The tortoise smiled. The poor bunny was in a race... Read article

Gonzo Boogie — Easy as ABC

Speculation is swirling about who will replace Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — everyone from Utah’s Senator Orrin Hatch to former Solicitor General and Clinton stalker Theodore Olsen. Until last week, the name most bandied about was Secretary of Homeland Security and USA PATRIOT Act co-author Michael Chertoff. You’d think selecting Chertoff in light of the New Orleans debacle would be a stupid thing to do since Chertoff’s continued ideological mishandling of the Katrina disaster borders on the... Read article

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