War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
Headline-writers at the New York Times found a verb this morning in the middle of the third graph of a story on the US Census Bureau and its new measure of gauging just how bad the epidemic of being poor: Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government…
As events go, 1981 had its share of weird and nefarious shit — Ronald Reagan was inaugurated president in January, was shot and wounded in March and recovered enough by July to nominate Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female Supreme Court justice; Pope John Paul II is shot in May; Charles and Diana marry…
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…
Seemingly, it appears the entire world is bat-shit crazy — the bubble of reality was never really real. Experts in confusion via The Big Picture: We just may be in the midst of the biggest bubble in history. The complacency that the accumulation of all the ills of the many and massive bubbles that have…
Yesterday, I put another $20 worth of gas in the old Jeep, the pump price still at $3.99 a gallon for regular — a fixture now at the local Union 76. Although those numbers have not moved here on California’s northern coast for at least two months, the overall gas/oil theater appears on some kind…
George Jr., always the consummate asshole: “I must say, I’m a little envious. “If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. “It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some…
In the middle of some horrific and nasty events this past week comes a piece of news that really, really sucks — the US has been working quietly behind the scenes to water down the international ban on cluster bombs. And it’s the 1 percent greed factor — from The Hill this week: Two prominent…
Paying any amount of attention to just the last 24 hours would give any normal person a near-heart attack at the wholesale foolishness. Right now, the US is the midst of two sex scandals — one is horrible beyond comprehension, though, way-familiar, and the other has evolved into nasty and much-creepy political football that creates…
“Simply, just did not happen.” — Herman Cain, yesterday (Illustration found here). Yes, indeed — just as simple as that. In a nutcase presser late Tuesday afternoon, Cain mouthed on and on about the simplicity of the whole nasty sexual harassment bullshit as being beyond a giant lie, re-blubbering what he’d blubbered on Jimmy Kimmel…