All those people who are dissatisfied with Barack Obama’s policies but don’t know where else to turn will be pleased to hear that May 2 has been declared “Grumble About Obama Day”, a “day of deliberately ineffectual venting” where you can let off steam without actually doing anything about it.
So go to it, folks!
American exceptionalism is an article of faith in the US. A surefire applause line for a pandering politician is to take some fairly humdrum achievement and tack on the phrase “only in America”. Audiences seem to delight in thinking that achievements that are commonplace the world over are somehow only possible here because of the unique conditions in the US. [Read more…]
[Update: NPR got a lot of letters about this story which were quite interesting including one who said it was a “very biased and even hateful story clearly aimed aimed at those of us who love Jesus”.]
Starting yesterday, NPR is having a series of stories on people losing their faith. The first one is about a Methodist minister Teresa MacBain who realized that she was an atheist and came out at the American Atheist conference on March 26. [Read more…]
Those who have been agitating for attacking Iran have been repeatedly making the claim, faithfully repeated by the compliant media, that Iranian president Ahmadinejad said that he wanted to wipe Israel off the face of the map and that this proved that he was a crazy man and that if Iran ever obtained a nuclear weapon, he would use it against Israel. [Read more…]
Today is May Day, the international day of solidarity for workers, and I thought that in its honor I would coopt the famous slogan “Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains” for this post, although it has nothing to do with the labor movement.
Same sex marriage is not legal in the United Kingdom. According to Wikipedia, since 2005, they have had civil partnerships that supposedly provide the same rights and responsibilities of marriage but, as I discovered earlier, this is still not full equality since, for example, if such partners travel abroad they do not have the same rights as married couples. [Read more…]
I am a firm believer in the power of education. The mind is a powerful weapon in the fight for peace and justice and I believe it is a fundamental right of all children everywhere to get a good education. But it is a mistake to directly link this to incomes. [Read more…]
The continued existence of Guantanamo should be the eternal shame of president Obama and the Democratic party except of course that they are incapable of feeling any shame. Reneging on the promise to close it was bad enough, now you can add this to the rapidly growing list of things that Obama and his party gets away with that George W. Bush wouldn’t have. [Read more…]
There is an interesting development in North Carolina that is worth paying attention to. It is the only southern state that does not have a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage (although there are laws that prohibit it) but on May 8th, people will go to the polls to vote on whether to pass one that bans not only same sex marriage but anything that raises even the suspicion of equality for gay people, such as civil unions and domestic partnerships. [Read more…]
Although I listen to NPR regularly, I never forget that its reporters too are the products of the filtering process that ensures that only a limited range of opinions is even considered, and that they will not see some obvious hypocrisies even if they stare them in the face. While the best NPR reporters, such as Daniel Zwerdling (whose in-depth features are excellent), Nina Totenberg (legal affairs), and those who deal with internal matters and soft features are worth listening to, others who deal with national politics (Don Gonyea and Mara Liaison) and defense and foreign affairs (Tom Gjelten and Dina Temple Raston) might as well be considered outright propagandists rather than reporters, last two being especially atrocious. [Read more…]
Coming on the heels of the story about the TSA’s aggressive handling of a four-year old child, we now have an even worse case of an aggressive pat-down given to a seven-year old girl with cerebral palsy who uses crutches, resulting in the family missing their flight. Add to this the charges of stealing, and the TSA is well on its way to becoming the most hated agency of the government. [Read more…]