Barack Obama started with majorities in both the House and Senate. Six years later the opposition holds both. Why did the president wait until he was in the overwhelming minority to push for higher taxes for the wealthy and lower taxes on the middle class? True, a few years back Democrats and Republicans kind of […]
Some Penn State football fans are acting as if they won the national championship. That’s the reaction I read in the quotes I’ve culled from news articles about the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) settlement of the lawsuit filed by Pennsylvania State Senator Jake Corman to overturn the heavy fines the NCAA placed on Penn […]
Read More… from NCAA doesn’t exonerate Joe Paterno, it cuts a business deal to end a lawsuit
This week both the New York Times and Nation magazine covered the continued ill will that the New York police department has been directing at New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio since His Honor joined most New Yorkers in questioning police tactics and procedures after the deaths of Akai Gurley and Eric Garner. The […]
Read More… from Contrast in coverage shows how mainstream media trivializes big issues
I’ve been suffering a slight case of cognitive dissonance lately, a disorientation that stems from residing in two worlds at once. One world is the TV show “The Wire.” I’ve been streaming and watching all the episodes from beginning to end and just completed the second season. I love the show, which is more about […]
Read More… from Warrior cops continue to destroy civil liberties and the lives of innocent people
I couldn’t help but notice the sudden outcrop of advice columns in the printed edition of The New York Times. The Times now has five weekly advice columns, one each for etiquette, job issues, ethics, real estate matters and consumer complaints, at least to my count. Who knows, maybe I’m missing one. These columns are […]
Sometimes you just know that either the reporter is lying or has been hornswoggled by the person she/he is quoting. Maybe it’s because everything seems so pat and happens in accordance with commonly held ideas including false ones. Or in the case of Andrew Marantz’s article titled “The Virologist” in The New Yorker, you smell […]
Read More… from New Yorker story tells anecdote that seems impossible on the surface
Numbers define the last day of the year for me. As the owner of a small business, I typically spend December 31 creating detailed balance sheets and sorting corporate income and expenses into various categories—kind of a dry run for doing our corporate taxes next month. I also start to organize the financial information we […]
Once again, Foreign Affairs is pretending to cover an issue extensively while presenting opinions running the gamut from y to z. I write “y to z” because the original expression is “running the gamut from a to z.” When you write or print out the alphabet, “a” is on the left and ”z” on the […]
No sane person would condone or try to justify the execution-style killings of two New York City police officers in broad daylight. It is a senseless act of terror by an emotionally disturbed individual. Not even a political or religious terrorist of the most violent sort could approve. The very fact that the assassin Ismaaiyl […]
Recent polls paint an unappetizing portrait of the United States and its citizens. If you believe these polls, we have a violent, gun-toting, intolerant and racist society ruled by lies. These polls are very disappointing for progressive Americans, as majorities or large pluralities support conservative positions. Funny thing is—in almost every case the rightwing position […]