It seems like a long time since January, 2009 when Barack Obama was inaugurated after a campaign of promising that he would be a combination of Abraham Lincoln and FDR to where we are today. A large percentage of the population's disappointment has been palpable.  With the exception of… Read full post »

 This is a visualization of what the world wide web looks like at a particular point in time.  The box might represent the places on the net that you frequent.  Since the internet is always changing, connections and social/information networks are being created and modified fr… Read full post »

On September 21st, Hillary Clinton signed a finding that the MEK, Muhajadin E-Khalil, or Peoples Muhadejin of Iran was in the process of  no longer being considered a terrorist group.   You should know that MEK was only taken off of the US' terrorist list after years of… Read full post »

I have to admit to have always having a certain point of view, and that is -- I am an American imperialist. I always have been because I realize exactly how privileged we all are in comparison to perhaps 90% of the rest of the world.  Americans live in… Read full post »

May Day has come and gone, and in many respects, the Occupy protests this month were just pale imitations of what occurred in November.  And supporters of the movement appear to have put a happy face on  a diminished presence.  There are a number of factors that account… Read full post »

 FOREIGN

I live in Mexico, so I don't get to experience the cacaphony and barrage of media extravaganza and spectacle that is the US mass media. It's my observation that for the most part, Americans are insular people, unaware of their greater global surroundings.  Many Ameri… Read full post »

I started out on my journey to the long lost cave paintings of San Borjita, but I didn't have the foggiest idea of how much trouble I'd actually be getting into.

When your truck has its second flat tire in the middle of the desert, and you wander for a… Read full post »

A sick game of financial sadism is currently being played in Europe.  The European Central Bank, IMF, and World Bank are the tormentors, and Greece is their victim.  With the way things have proceeded, you'd think that the banksters want Greece murdered, but they don't have the heart to do… Read full post »

Not really.  It's hard to do a live blog from Ecotopia.  But I've done the drill, so I know what's going down.  Here's a short chronology so far:

SUNDAY, 6PM

I'm listening to Ian Masters Background Briefing on the podcast, and he's in a conversation with the famous Tom Hayden. They're&… Read full post »

Oh, the perils of being a middle manager!  I've tried to avoid being a middle manager all my life, and now I am one.  I'm now a regional coordinator for Move On, and my life is suddenly consumed.

Saturday's work began on the phone before it morphed into a two hour… Read full post »

When the future history of Saudi Arabia is written, perhaps a significant chapter will start with the date of March 11, 2011.  That is the date that  Facebook and Twitter users have called for demonstrations in the capital city of Riyadh and other places to demand changes in the governmenta… Read full post »

Who would have thought that a government grant from the W Administration  would have such legs and inspire Tunisia, Egypt, Madison, and Libya?  But it did.  In 2002 the US Institute for Peace funded a 189 page book by a 30 year US Army veteran for the Albert Einstein Institute. &n… Read full post »

The Guardian newspaper of London reported today that Vice President Omar Suleiman threatened that an enormous Egyptian protest march on the Presidential Palace on Friday could lead to a military coup if the protesters don't accept Suleiman's terms for a timetable on transitioning the government.

The… Read full post »

For some time I've suffered from a case of writer's block, not the usual kind where you're just afraid to commit anything to paper or electrons.  No, I'm a political commentator, and my job as I see it is to give you the unvarnished truth from my perspective.  And in the… Read full post »

The late summer and fall of 2010 certainly seems to be a ripe time for various forms of psychopathology. We've all just come off of the Glenn Beck "I Have a Scheme" rally in DC, and immediately we're subjected to the outright wackiness of the so-called Rev. Terry Jones and his… Read full post »

Up until now, Glenn Beck has been something of a mystery to me.  How is that this guy can be a multimillionaire with millions of faithful fans?  He has best sellers, and you can eat lunch with him for only $50,000. And yet, has he ever made even the tiniest scintilla… Read full post »

It's certainly been a bad week for the Obama administration what with the very premature firing of Shirley Sherrod  because of Andrew Brietbart's slimy cut and paste job, and this is but one of many incidents where President Obama appears to be speaking softly and carrying a little stick. How ma… Read full post »

I know this is a radical solution (so it's totally impossible to actually do in the USA), but in an ideal world -- all drugs should be legalized regardless of how dangerous they are to the individual.

The qualifier to this is regulation and licensing.  Look, we're facing a revenue crisis… Read full post »

I watched President Obama's speech last night, and I got more than my fair sample of people who didn't think he did a good job. In sampling the critics, these are what I feel are good reasons and bad reasons for giving the Prez the raspberries. In order of acceptability they… Read full post »

The last week has been filled with historic developments in the world economy, but it's easy to lose their significance when one is bombarded by the 100 ring circus of 21st Century capitalism.  When you're dealing with the world stock and bond markets, or the political machinations of Washington… Read full post »

I have to be a libertarian because I'm in pain. old new lefty is very old tonight.  It's two hours before dawn, and they're nearly at the end of the cockfight, which by now is very Roman, and not very pretty. 

In many respects Mexico is a Third World government,… Read full post »

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross entered social science history and obtained fame when she conclusively identified the five stages of experiencing a slow death. Old new lefty has gone through his own slow death experience lately by attempting to make contact with Teabaggers, and is here to report on the five st… Read full post »

I've been working very hard lately.  There's a lot of digging to do in my garden, and the growing season is pretty short before the heat waves set in.  I'm in a place I call Ejido Wonderful, not because it really is, but because it's not in the United States.  On… Read full post »

We've seen the first 60-40 procedural vote setting up passage of some kind of health care legislation through the Senate, possibly by Christmas day. For most readers of Open Salon as well as myself, the whole process has been a vast, deep disappointment.  And we can truthfully say that we've see… Read full post »

When old new lefty gets as rabid as this, euthanasia is probably the only way out.  Other options include either getting a rabies shot, or getting a life and just forgetting about the racist, know nothing, anti-health care crowd in the pocket of the corporate interests. For weeks, I've been watc… Read full post »