No serious observer of US politics thinks that Fox News is anything but a highly partisan propaganda operation that serves as the mouthpiece of the oligarchy. But they usually try to maintain a façade of being a news organization. [Read more…]
Anyone who has a dog as a pet knows to avoid getting close to them when they are wet because they have a remarkable ability to shake themselves in such a way that the water flies off and drenches everything nearby. The interesting questions are why they do that and how they do that. [Read more…]
While a lot of the media focus in the run-up to the elections has been on domestic US politics, we should not ignore the fact that the government of Israel has been dropping hints of imminent war with Iran. As Stephen Walt says, Israel has raised the stakes by saying that they not only will they not let Iran develop nuclear weapons or the capability of making them, they will not even tolerate the Iranians having the theoretical capacity of doing so at some unspecified time down the road, a much lower threshold. [Read more…]
Stephen Colbert rips into a new reality show called Stars Earn Stripes.
The Colbert Report
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(This clip appeared on August 14, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan has generated much discussion of whether it will help energize the base of the Republican party and thus help them get more votes.
Cartoonist and essayist Ted Rall, no fan of Barack Obama, says that there is another aspect that is not being looked at as closely. [Read more…]
You would think that after what seems like non-stop revelations of Catholic priests abusing children, parents would not let their children be alone with a priest. And yet, when the priest of a parish in Oregon told the parents of a 12-year old boy that he would like to take their son on a trip to the mountains, they not only agreed but let the boy spend the night in the priest’s house. [Read more…]
In an extraordinary raising of the stakes, the British government actually threatened to forcibly enter the Ecuadoran embassy and take Julian Assange by force. The embassy has reacted with outrage. I expect to see other South American nations enter the fray soon to try and defuse the situation. [Read more…]
I have a simple rule about news items about celebrity gossip. I tend to ignore those things that concern people that I am too much of an old fogey to be aware of, let alone care about. So I will read something if it is about a truly famous actor or someone not so famous but who is of my generation (i.e., old). But if the header of a news item refers to people like minor celebrities like Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, and the like, I tend to skip over it and the story usually disappears fairly quickly. I save lot of time this way. [Read more…]
I enjoy playing the board game Scrabble, starting with my family when I was a child and playing with my own daughters when they were young. And now that they are grown and have moved away, I am still able to play with them thanks to the app Words With Friends. [Read more…]
Where does our sense of justice, fair play, and morality come from? Is it acquired as a part of our culture or are the basic instincts innate? [Read more…]