War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
Writing society: I remember when it was kind of cool to be a blogger. You’d walk around with a swagger in your step, a twinkle in your eye. Now it’s just humiliating. Blogging has become like mahjong or needlepoint or clipping coupons out of Walgreens circulars: something old folks do while waiting to croak. (Illustration…
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…
Friday morning shocker: President Obama has has won the Nobel Peace Prize — “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.†And the Nobel Committee added: “He has created a new international climate.” (Illustration found here). This will indeed piss-way-off the GOP and all wingnuts as the award comes much, much early…
“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.†— Oscar Wilde (Illustration found here). The so-called Republican Party — the GOP — has descended into nothing more than bullshit, and the hard part is that a certain segment of US society takes these assholes for serious,…
Announced quietly last week was the death of Jody Powell, 65, press secretary to Jimmy Carter, ‘A leader for a change,’ whose presidency inadvertently was the last apparently in Americana’s more sane and serene view of itself as an entity of ideal. On the cover of the Rolling Stone (left), at the height of glory…
Last summer, I had some sort of political epiphany as candidate Barack Obama near-nonchalantly shot/tossed a basketball in front of a crowd of US troops in Afghanistan — Too cool for school. One can watch the event here. From a Washington Post/ABC News poll released yesterday: Among all Americans, 49 percent now express confidence that Obama…
One of the most-alarming aspects of climate/weather change/global warming is the science — the most current report is always worse than the previous one and sometimes the figures are amazing. Just a couple of examples can be found here and here. If this trend continues, and most-likely it will, the very-near-future will assure there will cease…
On Tuesday, President Obama held a town-hall meeting on health-care reform at Portsmouth High School in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and after some opening remarks, he fielded questions from the audience. The second person called was a sixth-grader with an intelligent and observant query: All right. Let’s — this young lady right here. All right, this…
The earth is indeed melting away. Â (Illustration found here). Clouds, those wispy, sometimes dark and ominoness floating forms we all take for granted as part of our natural environment whenever we look up — when clouds move into together and won’t let the sun shine in, everyone gets a little bit sad. Now start…
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,…