A new report in STAT details the financial support that hospitals and medical centers are receiving from FEMA. That’s the federal agency tasked with dealing with ordinary stuff like tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes and massive fires. You know, the once-in-a-century stuff we now experience several times a year. The Rs assure us that there is no… [read more]
Human Being 101
You might reasonably wonder why Neil Steinberg recently wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times that he found a frightening comparison of sociopath and mass murderer John Wayne Gacy and sociopath and democracy murderer* Donald Trump (my descriptor). Trump has gotten away with so much because he has appealed to long simmering American anger and because he… [read more]
The Woe Factor
I wring hands. You wring hands. He, she and it wring hands. Woe is us. There’s plenty of worrisome stuff over which to obsess and bad stuff is in our faces constantly. That’s part of why so many Americans don’t watch or read the news any more. They’ve dropped out of the cycle of woe,… [read more]
Guest Essay: Elections Have Consequences
Boyhood pal, smart person and activist Frank Levy cares about justice, fairness, inclusiveness, freedom, rights and more. Come to think of it, he’s a lot like you in that way. That’s why I asked his permission to share his recent FB post about what we must do to make sure all those good things we… [read more]
Campaigning
Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy died in 2009, leaving a vacant Senate seat, which triggered a special election in Massachusetts for someone to serve out his term. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley became the Democratic nominee to face Republican Scott Brown. He had respectable credentials but – and I say this without snark – he won… [read more]
Any Representative Democracy . . .
. . . should be representative of the people. Ours isn’t. Well north of 80% of us want far greater regulation of guns than we got with the recent milquetoast bill. And even that weenie bill required accumulating hundreds of thousands of murdered people to sufficiently motivate legislators captured by the gun industry to find… [read more]
Fun In Far-Right Lunacy
How ’bout a Little Murder? Right wing crazies continue to be out in force in North Carolina, a state that joyously stole voting rights from tens of thousands of its citizens. That’s a state that does precision, targeted gerrymandering to deliver the majority of Congressional seats to White Republicans, even though they garner only a… [read more]
The Big One
Religion has been the driving force or the excuse for more death, misery and suffering than any other cause in all of recorded history. I refuse to do the research necessary to numerically substantiate that claim. If it’s important to you, do your own research. If my claim isn’t exactly right, it’s close enough to… [read more]
I Admit It – Plus Abusing My TV
I have bashed Trump supporters. (Parenthetical: Isn’t that backward? Aren’t our elected officials supposed to support us?) I’ve called them names. I’ve accused. I’ve assumed and projected. And I stand by all of that for the violent crazies. But for millions of them who voted for Trump I’ve been wrong because I’ve largely missed the… [read more]
Killing Bubba, a Thought Experiment & Key Moments
Malcolm Nance is warning us yet again and his message couldn’t be clearer. He spelled it out in an online session with the Washington Post – watch it here. He worked in intelligence for many years and is a terrorism expert. Now he’s laying out plainly what you likely know and what you probably try… [read more]
