We are now less than five months away from the elections and well into the political rah-rah season when people are expected to choose sides and where the goal becomes to help your candidate win. As a result, there will be an intense focus on increasingly marginal issues in order to create the illusion that the candidates differ widely and that it is therefore essential that the opposing candidate not be successful because dire consequences will ensue. [Read more…]

The public library in the Detroit suburb of Troy had a ballot levy in order to raise funds to continue its operation. Of course the Tea Party, with its mindless opposition to any and all taxes, whipped up a campaign against it because they are willing to close down even public libraries to keep a few extra bucks in their pockets. [Read more…]

Terrorist acts that indiscriminately kill civilians are vile but an even more despicable strategy is the one known as the ‘double tap’. This is where in the immediate aftermath of the first attack, a second attack is launched on those who rush to aid the injured, wreaking even greater death and destruction. [Read more…]

Sharon Broussard is a black columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer who on June 6 wrote on why blacks should support same sex marriage, pointing out that influential voices in the black community (which along with Catholics, evangelicals, and Mormons are the most opposed to it) had come around to the idea that this was an important civil rights issue. [Read more…]

The US media loves to commemorate anniversaries. But I have not heard of any plans to address the fact that this year marks the 50th anniversary of one of the worst atrocities of modern times: when John F. Kennedy began the bombing of Vietnam. [Read more…]

In the US we are constantly regaled with stories in the media of high-level people in al Qaeda being killed by drone strikes and how few civilians have been harmed. We are constantly reminded of how precise drones are. But of course, all that means is that there is a high probability that a drone hits the target that it was aiming at. It says nothing about whether the target was the right one to begin with, even if one concedes that the US government has the right to target and kill anyone it pleases. [Read more…]