One can only live in fear if one listens to Republicans and watches their campaign ads. Republicans consistently decouple gun control from crime. Criminality is a real problem, but Willie Horton is not waiting around every corner. I have lived in Philadelphia for over 16 years and have not been...
Mass
At the turn of the century, horse racing was the number one sport in America. By the time Babe Ruth overtook Seabiscuit amidst the Great Depression, baseball had become America’s pastime. There are various iterations of what symbols mean the most to America, but the one I am most familiar...
The nobility commended to war is romanticized as a brave and patriotic encounter when reviewing history. Familiar to Americans, the American Revolution and World War II come to mind as noble causes. America is far from alone in the foggy-headedness of war. Michigan and Ohio once raised militias over the...
This is the sixth set of notes for a reading group on Marx’s Capital, and includes a Volume I refresher for further reading of Volume II. There are links to earlier posts and texts that may be useful. Marx is probably too taken with a kind of scientism by proposing...
Nothing is more sacred to right-wing Christian conservatives than their guns. You could tell most conservatives that Jesus was crucified in gold lamé Hammer pants and sang like a Big Mouth Billy Bass the entire time he hung on the cross, and they wouldn’t be nearly as offended as if you casually...
Paraphrasing Pvt. Sam Watkins, 1st Tennessee, Co. H. ‘America has no north, no south, no east, no west,’ those words could apply to the pandemic. Watkins was lamenting brother against brother killing each other in the American Civil War. All of America is watching the unvaccinated kill each other and...
[Governor] “If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?” CNN debate moderator Bernard Shaw asked that question of then-presidential candidate Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988. The viewers wanted the visceral response but instead received a thoughtful and principled one, one that...
When I was a boy and strayed way, way past the rules of behavior set by my great-grandmother, she would say, “ enough is enough, and too much (sic) stinks.” Well, we reached that point in Afghanistan on Sunday. From the time then-National Security Director Zbigniew Brzezinski convinced then-President Carter,...
From that moment in November of 1969, when former President Richard Nixon asked for a “silent majority” to support his ‘Vietnamization’ effort, utilizing the peace with honor strategy; America’s shotgun wedding to the GOP marriage of silent loyalty and moral obedience was consummated. Between the Nixon and Reagan administrations, Republicans...
Republicans swing the word freedom over the heads of their voters like the Sword of Damocles. It has become a meaningless mantra, cutting away real freedoms like affordable housing, healthcare, pay equity, and a clean environment. Freedom for a majority of Republicans has translated into the freedom to kill their...
Reminiscent of the unfounded fears spread around by conservatives about the Affordable Care Act and “death panels,” President Biden’s call for a door-to-door educational program about the coronavirus vaccine sent the GOP and conservatives into a paranoid tizzy. Republican members of Congress, fake news stations, and right-wing bloggers went into...
More conflict, more shootings, and over micro-aggressions. DECATUR, Ga. (NEXSTAR) – A triple shooting at a Georgia grocery store Monday afternoon started with a dispute over a mask and left a cashier dead and both the suspect and a deputy wounded, authorities say. The suspect, 30-year-old Victor Lee Tucker, Jr.,...
Critical Race Practice. Organizers have canceled plans for an afternoon of speeches and performances commemorating the centennial on Monday of the Tulsa massacre. This reminds us that the early 1920s was a mass othering of America that includes events like the Wall Street bombing of 1920, whose death toll was exceeded in the Tulsa...
If there are epitaphs for the US involvement in Afghanistan, it will resemble the problem of a modern military against a historically unconquerable country built on tribal differences. The winner will be Pakistan and the loser the people of Afghanistan. In a remarkable and previously unreported incident in early December, top...
MFP is neologisms that get sticky. Cheugy is the latest, being a term that Generation Z calls Millennials, perhaps it’s the revival of more postmodernism. Generation Z consumer-brand attacks on Millennials consumption habits may be all that Gheugy is about. Proud Boys and their golf polos may be Cheugy, if only...
The Republican members of the House of Representatives convened their star chamber this morning and ousted the most conservative member of their caucus. GOP House conference chair Liz Cheney is under fire for breaking one of their sacred tenets—not embracing duplicity and hypocrisy. The vote was held in secret because...
The sky is falling, because 22 metric tons before re-entry might still have some mass remaining. An inch is as good as a mile. BEIJING — China’s government defended its handling of a rocket booster that burned up over the Indian Ocean and said Monday it was unfairly being held to...
Now firstly it is important to define Internationalism since commonly it is divided into three different major categories. 1] Hegemonic Internationalism example: Globalization [Colonization]. Main player: USA. 2] Liberal Internationalism example: United Nations. Main player: Everyone else. 3] Revolutionary Internationalism example: Communism. Main player: China. Now there are many subcategories,...
President Joe Biden set a new goal of having 70% of adult American vaccinated for Covid (with at least one dose) by the Fourth of July. About 56.4% of adults in the US were vaccinated with a dose as of yesterday. The pace of vaccinations has slowed dramatically with only...
President Joe Biden’s original goal of 100 million Covid vaccinations in 100 days was exceeded last month leading him to call for 200 million in 100 days. Today is the day we reach that goal, eight days early. This is Biden’s second huge win after the passage of the Covid...
Very little is known about rainfall in Antarctica; precipitation falls as snow on the bitter cold ice-covered continent. But during the austral summer of 2013-2014, an Adélie penguin colony near Dumont d’Urville station on coastal Adélie Land experienced “unusual and dramatic rainfall event that occurred on January 1, 2014, and that was...
I was listening to an Apple representative explain this: Apple and partners launch first-ever $200 million Restore Fund to accelerate natural solutions to climate change Investment builds on the company’s forestry and responsible packaging innovations to deliver new financial and climate returns. The partnership aims to unlock the potential of...
Minnesota law enforcement, at its based level exhibits some intersectional issues often represented in fictional culture products like Fargo. Their police forces haven’t learned very much since the death of George Floyd. So many examples of bad faith below:
[Edit: Response to some comments below] Some of the comments have pointed out that the gun pictured is only an AK-47 knockoff, or some other kind of gun that doesn’t shoot as many bullets or as fast as the real thing. That misses the point: This person was carrying a...
It looks like New York City just had a narrow escape: 18-year-old from Ohio arrested with AK-47 in Times Square subway station, police say (CNN)An 18-year-old from Ohio is facing weapons charges after officers patrolling a Times Square subway station on Friday found him with an AK-47 and a loaded...
Do we really have the will to prosecute Trump for anything? Or will he escape yet again because he’ll try to bargain his way out of an indictment because he holds something, something national security secret. This is probably how Kushner guaranteed his safety after leaving the Trump regime. For...
Americans over the age of 65 years are now 80% vaccinated with at least one jab of a Covid vaccine. That is according to numbers released for yesterday by the CDC. The percentage for all adults is 48.3% having received at least one shot, and 37.9% of everyone in the US...
Structural change needs to happen, because in community policing, community should precede policing. The paramilitary trend should not be seen as a burgeoning conflict between armed militias, one more official than the other. We need a de-escalation whose goal is the diametric opposite of the 1/6 insurrection. The problem isn't...
As much as I would like to take credit for the fitting title of this piece, I cannot. I heard it for the first time yesterday afternoon (April 8th) on the Randi Rhodes radio broadcast. A caller from Philadelphia used the two-word descriptor, and I found it apropos to the...
Here’s some big news today out of Pennsylvania: .@JohnFetterman announces he raised $3.9 million in the first quarter for his Pennsylvania U.S. Senate run, through 140,000 contributions. A big haul of 💰 at an early stage. — Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) April 1, 2021 Lt. Gov. John Fetterman said he raised...
Many times during his reign, Trump could have saved his presidency by taking moderate positions and co-opting the Democrats. He felt, however that he should obey his benefactors like a beta, whether it was the evangelicals and Russia, or Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, and Mike Flynn. Even in the pandemic,...
Getting a personalized greeting from Donald John Trump is about on par with gnawing on Trump Steaks™ gristle or being spirited away to a Florida fen by a mass of Trump-branded bedbugs. It’s not for me, but hey, surely someone will bite. He may even get more than Barry Williams, TV’s...
Like Martin Luther objecting to Pope Leo X selling indulgences to raise money for a variety of excesses, the environmental costs of carbon markets far exceed the benefits. Austerity would have denied us Renaissance art which is less at risk in an age of non-fungible tokens. Today the consequences for the planet...
Ted Cruz continued his “Hey, look! I’m not in Cancun!” tour yesterday, traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border in search of a thatch of reeds that in no way made him look like a serial killer floating freshly harvested bodies down the river on jerry-rigged rafts comprised of peat bog residue and...
Apparently John (no relation) Kennedy (R-LA) may endorse those sober drivers who run over demonstrators in Oklahoma, because a guy who “went to Oxford” should know something about logical fallacies. x Hours after America's second mass shooting in a week, Sen. John Kennedy downplays the gun problem by noting that...
As many here know I am a Democratic Socialist and a long time Bernie supporter. I listened to Biden today and was impressed as he sounded like a democrat of old, i.e. what present day republicans would term as a screaming raving socialist. I was happy with my vote for...
I wanted to make sure you all saw this: Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet on Wednesday called on the Senate to act in the wake of a mass shooting at a supermarket in his state, asserting in an impassioned speech from the chamber floor that his colleagues have a moral obligation to a generation...
Concealability had nothing to do with Monday’s massacre in Boulder, Colorado, but the details tell us more about the marketability of semi-automatic firearms using high-capacity magazines. Discussing open-carry regulation may have been rendered irrelevant with the death of the police officer although some details will be important: was he carrying his “patrol rifle” and...
We remain weary about the callow stupidity of the GOP/GQP but we must not patronize or condescend about how superfluous their grievances have been and continue to be. Now that we know more about Trump’s sexual practices, fascist fantasizing seems altogether rote and boring, but certainly redolent of a banality...
I’m not in a jovial mood today. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed … because my bed is still in America. If it straddled the U.S.-Canada border, I might have had a puncher’s chance—but no. I had to wake up here—in the land of the mask-free, gun-obsessed asshole....
There is supposed to be another presser at 1030am ET in Boulder. The shooter was injured. The details will simply get worse. At least three people were shot in the street presumably as the shooter entered the store. The location is south of the university campus and the central city in...
Still early and a far too familiar pattern has been repeated today in Boulder, Colorado. 10 are dead including one first responding police officer. More information has yet to be revealed much like the shootings in Atlanta. If only Republicans were as concerned about checking the backgrounds of people who...
So much thick-headed media activity this past week. OTOH Chuck Todd panders to the center again, or perhaps it's the college drop-out demographic. x A @MeetThePress fail today: talking about anti-Asian violence and racism – without any Asians on the panel. I can’t imagine MTP having a discussion about anti-Black...
Lost relevance continues with more of the same Trump delusions up-chucking soon, signaled by the latest Big Lie interview with Fox News, likely leading to more revisionism. Unfortunately Trump’s memoirs would be regurgitating the propaganda with little insight or reflection. His Secret Service detail would be useful witnesses as a 1/6...