War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
Just as 2012 gears up for the election high season, the fabled democracy touted by the US the last 200 years appears to have cracks in the voting booth — if Republicans can’t win on brains or sense, they’re trying to f*uck the country through guile. Voter ID laws — another brick in the lying…
Pornographic war creates sweet dreams: “I laughed as I heard a story,” said Ryan Endicott. “One of the platoons had strapped dead bodies from a gunfight on the hoods of their Humvees and then drove around the city for hours. . . . One (day) they brought in a car that had just been shot…
In the midst of a crazed, over-gorged news cycle of late – from weather to sluts — a continuing, most-nefarious news story popped up again this week in the announcement of a subdued settlement in just one legal aspect off what’s so-infamously now known as the BP Oil Disaster. Just as trial was to begin…
A small instance of a humongous and worsening situation: The decline in the chipmunk’s genetic diversity occurred in the relatively short span of 90 years, demonstrating the rapid threat changing climate can represent for a species, a UC Berkeley release said Sunday. The shift of the living due to a warming environment poses a danger…
Political lying as an art form: Take last Thursday’s Republican debate in South Carolina. Hundreds of G.O.P. voters applauded as Newt Gingrich blasted CNN’s John King for raising an accusation about marriage and sex in presidential politics. These same voters, I have no doubt, would have cheered Gingrich for doing just that in 1998 when…
Some of the righteous posturing: “…utterly deplorable…” — U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta “…wholly inconsistent with the high standards of conduct and warrior ethos that we have demonstrated throughout our history…” — Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos “…deplorable, reprehensible and unacceptable…” — White House spokesman Jay Carney “…absolutely inconsistent with American values…” — Secretary…
Tis the season for the big lie. Infamous fabricator Stephen Glass is now after a lawyer’s job — off ‘Shattered Glass‘ fame, he made up stories at the New Republic during the late 1990s and was fired, displaying a major-tendency to lie at the drop of a vowel. Adam Penenberg, who outed Glass as a…
Climate change ain’t for bullshitters. And no crap talk — President Obama’s video visit to the UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa, citing the late Nobel peace prize winner and Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai: “Here in Durban, we can carry on her work, to … grow our economies in a way that’s sustainable and…
Ralph Waldo Emerson, America’s greatest philosopher, visited Thoreau in jail. Emerson asked: “Henry, why are you here?” Thoreau replied: “Why are you not here?” — In protest of the Mexican War, 1846 In those crackdowns this week on the OWS, a deep, sinking feeling of nefarious, dark workings: Questions about the Department of Homeland Security’s…
Sometimes it’s nauseatingly obvious Republicans have abandoned normal and compassionate discourse and are just blubbering nonsense. On Monday, Republicans allowed health for children to be dipped in a money pie: The spending bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. The department’s proposed guidelines would…