If Barack Obama had been the Democratic president who said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” Republicans would call it capitulation. “Obama surrenders to America’s enemies!” Commentators on Fox News would opine it’s actually an Islamic saying he picked up in a madrassa in Indonesia. “The prophet Mohammed talked about fear,… Continue reading →

It’s hard to get excited about the Winter Olympics. Watching elite athletes do elite sports is not on the same level of human drama that plays out at the Summer Games. Face it, you have to be pretty well off to even discover an aptitude for skiing. The winter games are mostly watching privileged people… Continue reading →

Freedom is under attack! In the largest city of our giant country””the liberty to drink over 16 ounces of sugar syrup is in the crosshairs of the gubmint. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed (and will most likely implement) the nation’s first prohibition on over-sized soda at public venues. Now the AstroTurf outrage over… Continue reading →

We can all stop pretending continued Republican anger about the Affordable Care Act is news. Some figured a Supreme Court ruling would settle things. And since the GOP said it was unconstitutional with the same fervor as people who’ve read the Constitution””it was easy to assume a decision from the nine justices in the highest… Continue reading →

Nothing says leadership more than bravely standing up against a concern that’s not actually a problem. We’ve had a one-sided battle with Sharia Law in the U.S. No one is fighting for replacing U.S. law with an Islamic moral code, but nonetheless Republicans are heroically fighting against it. Same with aborted fetuses in commercial food… Continue reading →

Mitt Romney’s off-the-cuff comments are starting to seem like Barack Obama’s bowling: Not good. Kind of spectacularly bad. Kitsch on a kind day. Romney keeps on rolling gutter balls in front of the cameras: “The trees are the right height.” “I like being able to fire people.” “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” “I’m… Continue reading →

You can’t run government like a business anymore than you can run business like a government. GOP presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney, burned corporations to the ground then made millions selling off the charcoal. This private sector experience is being touted as his qualification to be president. This expertise of bankaneering””corporate raiding””is so sexy to Republicans… Continue reading →

If you ask the typical hyper-political gun owner (and I have ” at Thanksgiving dinner), why it’s important to own a gun, they’ll bark about the Constitution. Yes, the Second Amendment: “The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed!” This of course is the slogan the National Rifle Association… Continue reading →

The future is always a dystopia and the past is always better than this mess we live in right now. That’s if literature has any ability to tell us about ourselves. Stories about the future: Forewarning. Stories about the good ol’ days: Heartening. Somewhere in our collective unconscious we believe there was a golden era… Continue reading →

We’re a species that has gotten around; we’ve wandered, pioneered and migrated to every corner of the world. The spear tip of technology is how we can get somewhere else: the wheel, the sailboat, the rocket. In short: we’re movers. We are now as mobile as we’ve ever been as a culture. Our phones are… Continue reading →

Republicans didn’t set out to have a war on women; they wanted a war on religion. Their intention was to march two Republican-created boogiemen into a battle that would make the War on Christmas cringe: ObamaCare and ObamaIsAMuslim. The Affordable Care Act stipulates birth control be included in insurance coverage instead of forcing women to… Continue reading →

Calling ObamaCare “socialized medicine” truly lowers the standards on what could be considered socialized medicine. It’s like calling paved roads “government overreach”; a stop light a “government takeover of your commute”; or a neighborhood with speed bumps “a road to communism.” The law is really some regulations to help consumers buy private insurance coupled with… Continue reading →