The controversy surrounding Edward Snowden's series of revelations about NSA snooping into America's internet and telephone has been surprisingly muted, although admittedly both criticism and defense of the government's surveillance programs of its citizens has crossed ideology and party line… Read full post »

I had no idea that my last blog would go so far. I tracked key words through the New Yorker, Washington Post, CNN, and into scuttlebutt about the internal workings of the White House.  Obviously, I'm not the only person who's perhaps changed the narrative in the White House lately.  Jon… Read full post »

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 »

Very few people openly advocate this in Washington, DC because it's important to pay at least lip service to the old document in our late Brezhnev period of empire.  Massive levels of government spying on all of us must be justified because after all -- we are engaged in… Read full post »

The Israeli airstrikes near Damascus and Aleppo may have far reaching consequences . I hope that I am wrong.

The relationship between Israel and the United States can been seen as a sexual metaphor. After all, thanks in good part to AIPAC, America has been in bed with Israel… Read full post »

The outrages des jour are the conspiracy theories. They're taking your assualt rifles. 9/11. black helicopters. death panels. black flag...

When I hear people spout this kind of crap, my reptile brain tells me that I want to shake them. But I also have a cerebral cortex.  With every post I… Read full post »

Perhaps you saw the kerfuffle that Steven Colbert covered recently with the kid from Amherst who pulled the pants down off of establishment economists Reinhart & Rogoff. The reason why debunking the findings of these economists was so important was that their scholarship was used… Read full post »

An exiled Chechnyan nationalist living in London was quoted as saying that  "the bombing of the Boston Marathon was a gift to Vladimir Putin."

 Ian Masters  had a recent interview with Gordon Hahn of the CSIS, who was also a Fulbright Scholar at St. Petersburg State… Read full post »

The Tsarnaev brothers have been brought down. One is dead, and the other is in custody. I'm a grateful as anyone in the USA to know that Dzokhar Tsaraev will be eventually brought to trial. And I hope that he spends the rest of his life in… Read full post »

Thank God, old new lefty is here to do the heavy lifting for you.  Didn't graduate from Oxford? No problem. I have done the reading. If you get drunk enough for an extended enough time in a bar, you will eventually find yourself getting onto this topic. … Read full post »

"Some people will rob you with a six gun. Others will rob you with a fountain pen."  Woody Guthrie 

Perhaps the biggest news this week was President Obama's proposal to use chained CPI as a basis for calculating Social Security and Medicare payments.Yes, Barack Obama is the… Read full post »

Admiral John Poindexter testifying before the Senate hearing on Iran-Contra.  Poindexter is the father of Total Information Awareness, a government program that would monitor all internet, financial, telephone, and other  electronic or other footprints of anyone with a con… Read full post »

When you have absolutely nothing to say, there is silence.  You're uncomfortable with the person you're with, and he/she's uncomfortable with you.  You wish you were somewhere else, but maybe you can't go. Maybe the person you're so uncomfortable with is a co-worker or a member of your fami… Read full post »

I 'm hotter than a smoking pistol at 2AM.  What a day.  First I got onto an internet radio talk show for the second part of a discussion on how bankers control everything. But I have several problems.  First, you could probably get a better interview out of your… Read full post »

 Gar Alperowitz, AMERICA BEYOND CAPITALISM: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy

Jane McAlevey and Bob Ostertag, RAISING EXPECTATIONS (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement 

 This post should be titled How To Make Real Change Happ… Read full post »

I was reading a  book on the decline of ancient empires (The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph A. Tainter) I discovered the only good section on page 67 and 68. He cites a couple of distinguished scholars and their findings on the rise and decline of Chinese dynasties

It's entitled… 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 »

 This monument is known as the Georgia Guidestones, installed in 1980.  Located in Elbert County, Georgia -- an unknown businessman commissioned the installation of this monument in English and 9 other languages as well as four ancient languages.  Its message is meant for many… Read full post »

A lot of time has passed since Karl Rove made the declaration that he was fielding a political action committee to take on Tea Party Republicans who did not strictly hew to the new GOP line of kinder, friendlier, white supremacy.

Some people like Howard Fineman of the Washington Post have… Read full post »

I was winding up looking at the blood oranges and the corn just coming up in my garden, and I decided  to go inside to make more political trouble in Oregon.  Thanks to the internet, you can do that these days.

The first thing I did was to… Read full post »

Admit it.  Hugo Chavez is almost toast.  It's only a matter of time before he resides in that old Bolivarian pantheon in the sky.  And the press is doing a fairly good job of reporting on what can be gleaned from the secret meetings that Chavez's family… Read full post »

 Actually things have been going quite swimmingly in Ejido Wonderful.  Not only was everything in better shape than it's been in years when I got here, but I managed to put my garden in early.  Believe it or not, I actually have corn growing -- although I… Read full post »

Coming back to Open Salon is like walking through a school you once attended that's burned down.  You know where the rooms are that you used to frequent, and there's no one there except for ghosts.  You might pick up some book or other item that hasn't burned and look at… Read full post »

You have to admire some of the conservatives on Open Salon. Not only do they faithfully parrot the party line, but they do such a wonderful job of embellishing what passes for reality in their neck of the woods.

Take Benghazi, for example. This scandal was manufactured… Read full post »

2011 was a bleak year for the left all over America.  The Tea Party had gotten 60 new members of Congress elected nationally, and Citizens United was the law of the land.  The power of big money was seen everywhere and liberals and leftists of all varieties were… Read full post »