You may have heard the Occupy Wall Street protesters are being paid to camp out. I heard it; they’re being funded by a shifty billionaire and that’s why they’re demanding billionaires be taxed more. Seems likely. Also they’re all Communists and ACORN. And whatever you’ve been scared of before ”” probably that. Sharia Law, maybe?… Continue reading →

I spoke with a thirty-something mother of two residing in suburban New Jersey about the Occupy Wall Street movement. She was disgusted by their antics. “Our business failed, our house was foreclosed on, we lost everything and you don’t see us blaming someone else for it!” she exclaimed. “It’s about personal responsibility!” She lost everything… Continue reading →

Pirates, at least the traditional image we have in our minds  (the ones with the parrots on their shoulders and wooden legs from the 1700s), were in reality rapists, thieves and murderers. They were violent outlaws; terrorists of the Caribbean colonies. Some of them were hired as mercenaries called privateers, but they were still pirates… Continue reading →

I’m told the best thing about having a hearing aid is being able to turn it off; selectively, of course, around boring or annoying people. When someone wants to ask you for money. When you’d just like some quiet. There’s a switch. You have the power to tune voices out. Which is what the media… Continue reading →

The movement known as the tea party started in the mainstream media, on a national show. CNBC’s Rick Santelli, fired what cable news would later dub “the shot heard around the world” in 2009, when he lamented paying for the mortgages of the “losers” who couldn’t pay their bills. “President Obama, are you listening?” he… Continue reading →

I asked a reporter at Unnamed Major Metropolitan Newspaper, why they don’t cover suicides. Why is it that traditionally in the press there’s a veil of silence draped over taking your own life? He said it’s because they don’t want to encourage the behavior. The concern is if they report on it; others will copy…. Continue reading →

Yesterday, I was idling behind a seven-year-old Saturn sedan with an anti-Obama bumper sticker reading: “Because everyone deserves some of what you’ve worked hard for.” There’s a knee-jerk response to dismiss the driver as being some dupe naively parroting slogans not meaningful in his tax bracket. (You’d never see that sticker on a Rolls-Royce.) It’s… Continue reading →

It’s not easy denying evolution while championing Social Darwinism. The Republicans have a delicate two-step to perform: pro-some-Bible and pro-some-science. Despite a global scientific consensus on evolution, Republican politicians embrace a literal interpretation of the Bible when it comes to how we all got here. But their reading gets suddenly metaphorical when it comes to… Continue reading →

There was a 90 percent top marginal tax rate under President Dwight Eisenhower. Ronald Reagan raised taxes nearly every year he was in office and still managed to quadruple the national debt. Teddy Roosevelt was an anti-business trust-buster who snatched Yosemite away from private profits. Gerald Ford ended a long pointless war in Vietnam even… Continue reading →

The Moche lived in northern Peru from about 100-700 A.D. Their molded ceramics are still a highlight in the annals of human accomplishment. If you walk through a museum of pre-Columbian art, it’s easy to spot a Moche piece ”” the faces are so realistic you expect them to wink at you. Around 500 A.D.,… Continue reading →

The Iowa Straw Poll last weekend is to election season what Labor Day is to Fall; it’s official now ”” the season has begun! I don’t care about the “viability” of candidates. I am not a prognosticator. Well, if I were, I’d be a very bad one. I said former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty was… Continue reading →

Just imagine there was a giant swarm of super-super liberal freshmen in Congress. They had given the President a “shellacking,” secured a large number of seats in the House of Representatives and had been on the job for eight months. Just a bunch of lockstep liberals clogging up the Capitol. In that time, they’d done… Continue reading →

The difference between a documentary and a reality show is staging. A documentary tells a story about real life. The subjects are normally not paid, not actors and the story is non-fiction. It’s a quiet, illuminating and thoughtful genre (read: boring). Reality shows are like life, in that people on these programs do things people… Continue reading →

There have been occasional cases of polio (poliomyelitis) throughout human history. The Roman Emperor Claudius suffered from a disease as a child thought to be polio: muscle weakness, severe pain and paralysis. But it wasn’t until the summer of 1910 that it became an epidemic in the modern industrialized world. In fact for the next… Continue reading →