Just back from presenting a Money, Politics & Democracy program in downstate Illinois and the same thing became obvious once again. My program is always well received, yet most of the people who turn out for events like mine are already believers. And while their attending gives me the opportunity to provide motivation for their… [read more]
Propaganda
Editorial note: Before anyone goes hyperbolic, imagining that this is a comparison of anyone today to the Nazis, get that it isn’t. The issue is propaganda, and you need to be clear about what that means to you. ——————————- I recently visited the Field Museum in Chicago to see the exhibit, “State of Deception: The… [read more]
The Right Way to Turn Left
My drivers-ed teacher taught the standard Illinois Rules Of the Road protocol and instilled solid habits in we fledgling motorists. She even gave each of us a one-time lesson in stick-shift driving. Because the school’s cars were all automatics, she graciously – perhaps foolishly – volunteered her Ford Thunderbird. If that car were around today,… [read more]
Hollering
Caution: Contains snark! Children, as well as adults who act like children, should proceed with caution. ——————————- When Wayne LaPierre became executive vice-president of the NRA he shed his bookish ways and made himself into the out-front, out-there, inflammatory voice of the gun manufacturers’ lobby. His misleading assertions and fabrications of “facts” and his only… [read more]
Imagine . . .
Conjuring the precise and slow voice, the deliberate and accurate words, the syllables sounding as though passed through a long, reedy pipe, comes the voice of of Carl Sagan . . . “Imagine, if you will, an alternate universe with billions and billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars. Around one of those stars… [read more]
This Is For You If You’re Unemployed
On January 20, 2009, the night of President Obama’s inauguration, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and others met for a late dinner at a posh DC restaurant. They weren’t there to eat. They were there to plot their strategy following the Obama mandate and it took them just minutes to decide how… [read more]
EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! (while you still can)
The Trans Pacific Partnership (“TPP”) has a name that sounds all friendly and cozy. Shockingly, it is exactly that – friendly and cozy, but only to the huge money power brokers. It is not nearly as friendly and cozy to you. In fact, you’re about to get knifed in the back. Here is a link… [read more]
A Little Self-Disclosure
I didn’t make a new year’s resolution. Not this year, nor any other year, with the exception of several years when I was young, heard about the practice and went along because that’s what I thought everyone did. Within hours of making each one, though, I could no longer identify what the resolution had been. … [read more]
Neighbors and Lives
Pope Francis was famously approached by a non-believer and told him, “We must meet one another doing good.” That is to say, what matters most is not a professed belief, but instead it is about how we live our lives. Those of a certain age and others who actually read their history book in high school… [read more]
The Meaning of Duck
Branding and marketing genius Bruce Terkel (pronounced “tur-KELL”) has a most interesting and insightful blog focused on – guess what? – branding and marketing. This one arrived amidst the turmoil, travail and truculence surrounding the harebrained, hateful and hurtful things said about gays and blacks by Phil Robertson, one of the pseudo-mountain men of the… [read more]
