War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
After months of bad health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, sister to JFK and Ted Kennedy, died early this morning at age 88. Shriver was a major champion for the mentally handicapped, founding the Special Olympics in 1968 — the first event, however, was in her own backyard in 1962. From the New York Times obit: “When the…
This morning the jobs report is better than expected even as AIG posts a second-quarter profit, the media continues to ignore the GOP reality behind the healthcare townhall disruptions and a DOS attack on Twitter, FaceBook and Google leaves techno-life flustered, the news of five US GIs killed in Afghanistan the past couple of days has gone almost un-reported.…
Bill Clinton hasn’t ever meant much to me, other than being a greasy political animal with bad taste, thus seemingly just an inadvertent knuckle-head. (Illustration found here). This past week, however, the old bubba-boy seemed to have pulled off a neat turn-of-the-hand, if the appearance is true, by bringing two US journalists home after they’d been…
Just a reminder, 64 years ago today Hiroshima was tagged. And Frida Berrigan at tomdispatch has a view this week on the Hiroshima legacy in today’s world: Keep in mind as well that the bombs which annihilated two Japanese cities and ended so many lives 64 years ago this week were puny when compared to today’s typical…
Although I’ve been working on some other projects the past few days, this came up last weekend and is such a glaring example of how this country in reality will never recover from the last eight years, and since I’d seen no comment about it anywhere in any blogs or news commentaries, I just have…
Via ClimateProgress this morning: We show that increases in temperature cause annual mean area burned in the western United States to increase by 54% by the 2050s relative to the present-day … with the forests of the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains experiencing the greatest increases of 78% and 175% respectively. Increased area burned results in…
Despite tough tours in Iraq, an even-more persistent and deadly situation: But he says he never encountered an enemy as tenacious as what he saw immediately after arriving at this outpost in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. In his first days here in late June, he fought through three ambushes, each lasting as long as the most…
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…
An example of why this so-called ‘War on Terror’ is such a complete, abysmal failure. Sen. James Webb, Democrat from Virginia, has called for an investigation into the details surrounding an attack on a US outpost in eastern Afghanistan last year, which left nine soldiers dead, and offers past Army lies as an incentive. “The manner…
There are old war correspondents and bold war correspondents but no old, bold war correspondents… –Â Joseph L. Galloway In an age of seemingly perpetual war all over the globe, those reporting from the front are dying at an alarming rate. From Agence France-Presse: Fifty-nine journalists have been killed around the world so far this…