War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
Home is not the castle so trumped years ago — now it’s nothing more than a file in the immoral portfolio of US banking’s financial system. A system that’s so skewed you can’t tell the front door from the back. McClatchy has another story on that ugly, nasty piece of shit called Goldman Sachs. Goldman…
Beware of feel-good economic news… (Illustration found here). Even as the US stock markets post some high gains, even as the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, which has risen over the past six sessions, also finished Monday at its highest level in a year, and even as those infamous banks appear to slowing on losses…
A few short years ago, anyone who discussed subjects like “peak oil” were considered a crank (not to be confused with, for instance, ‘Will my car crank without fuel?’) or a nutcase or just a plain worry-wart-conspiratorial fruitcake (not to be confused with a Dick Cheney), but nowadays there’s enough evidence from authentic sources to…
Today one year ago, Hank Paulson and his boys ignited TARP — Troubled Asset Relief Program — the $700 billion bank bullshit bailout that has done nothing to relieve the economic woes of US peoples. An example of fighting symptoms and not the cause of disease: “If you get a very expensive treatment that saves your…
Naomi Klein talked with Michael Moore on his new documentary, “Capitalism: A Love Story.” The interview in The Nation online examines the lust-for-dollars. Says Moore: “Well, people want to believe that it’s not the economic system that’s at the core of all this. You know, it’s just a few bad eggs. But the fact of the matter…
As the economy tanks, the more wealthy of us are also going down the drain, albeit in slower, easier fashion. From the New York Times yesterday: But economists say — and data is beginning to show — that a significant change may in fact be under way. The rich, as a group, are no longer…
A fiscal reflection of the age. From CNN: Research presented this weekend reinforced previous findings that 90 percent of paper money circulating in U.S. cities contains traces of cocaine. “When I was a young kid, my mom told me the dirtiest thing in the world is money,” said the researcher, Yuegang Zuo, professor of chemistry…
Still more grim news, but today’s particular sack of shit is more ethics and morals than anything else. Three stories that reflect our times — strange/bad and getting worse — and how lopsided situations have become as if a giant screw is being tightened down. The first item concerns a near-invisible US horror — coal ash dump-ponds,…
Just as I get my Jeep Commache finally running right and back on the road — a near-two-year traumatic odyssey — fuel prices at the pump are starting to go up again, rising 20 cents in less than a month. Here in northern California, we’re now paying $3.25 a gallon, well above the national upwardly-mobile US…
In 1956, there were less than 170 million US peoples, unemployment was at less than 5 percent, a first-class postage stamp cost less than a nickel. And Dinah Shore was hawking the Chevy brand. In the illustration at left (found here), she is seen with her national, prime-time TV pitch-line, “See the USA in Your Chevrolet,” in…