Obama's cynicism is that he will do anything he thinks it takes, even violating the constitution.

 My cynicism is that I will probably vote for Obama as the better of the alternatives. Read full post »

First of all, I am not using the word "moral" in its narrow vitiated sense, in which it seems to mostly refer to sexual behavior.  I'm using it in the wider, older sense, in which it is connected to "morale," because having a moral sense gives one's life more sanity, health,… Read full post »

I read a passionate and eloquent article about the soldier who killed sixteen people, including children, in Afghanistan.  It was by a marine, and it made me wish there were more such marines, and fewer like the killer.

 In all the recruiting ads, the marines are noble and can do no… Read full post »

When I was growing up, there was a story about two men in a knife fight. After a sally, one says to the other, “Never touched me.”

“Shake your head and say that,” his opponent replies.

If you're more aligned with what they call “progessives” nowadays—Repub… Read full post »

Sorry about the title. Couldn't resist. But I can make it work, honest.

The right-wingers always shoot themselves in the foot. They ALWAYS go too far. Which is why, historically, they keep losing. They get a little bit of power, they get at least a… Read full post »

OCCUPY THE ARMY

Our society has several problems, right?

Problem One: We have a group of intelligent, well-educated young people who suddenly find themselves with no career whatsoever:  They either have no job or find themselves at five in the morning towing monumental dollies laden with gro… Read full post »

Nowadays the chatterati make a lot of noise about the “battle”between science and religion. You would think all scientists were necessarily atheists, that the choice was either-or:  You can have science, or you can have faith.

I suspect that in the early going, religion was science/… Read full post »

There've been a lot of glaring headlines lately to the effect that "NASA says ETIs will either eat us or destroy us to keep us from ruining the galaxy the way we have ruined Earth."

 The stories under the headlines have given rise to a torrent of comments, most of which… Read full post »

         In the early seventies, I worked as a route-man for a bread company in Texas.  For a couple of companies, actually.  The manager I first worked for had hired me when I was down and out (as a favor to my preacher father, I’m pretty sure)/… Read full post »

Andrew Sullivan has a new piece in the Atlantic explaining what a success Obama has been and how all us snide and angry leftwingers are misjudging him.

 Put it this way.  I hope you're right, Andrew.  I hope Obama is playing the long game, and we will soon see his true… Read full post »

as a third-party ticket?  They'd have my vote.  Let them fight it out over who would be potus and who would be veep.  I don't care.  I just want someone I can vote for in good conscience, and there's nobody running in either party I have any respect for any more.… Read full post »

Or Howard Dean or Bernie Sanders or Hilary Clinton.  I'm getting old and am limited by low income and severe arthritis and stenosis, but surely there are some angry young Turks out there who can start such a movement.

 Right, they probably wouldn't win.  By all odds, our next president… Read full post »

Or Howard Dean or Bernie Sanders or Hilary Clinton.  I'm getting old and am limited by low income and severe arthritis and stenosis, but surely there are some angry young Turks out there who can start such a movement.

 Right, they probably wouldn't win.  By all odds, our next president… Read full post »

Gary Johnson.  I lived in Santa Fe while he was governor of New Mexico, and he struck me as an honest man.  He talked plain sense about how idiotic the so-called War on Drugs was as governor, and unlike almost every other politician, his stance has not changed… Read full post »

Gary Johnson.  I lived in Santa Fe while he was governor of New Mexico, and he struck me as an honest man.  He talked plain sense about how idiotic the so-called War on Drugs was as governor, and unlike almost every other politician, his stance has not changed since, although his… Read full post »

The tea party has just about reached the apogee of its influence, as many of us knew it would.  There's only so far a minority of frothing idiots can push things.

 It's not wise for a stupid person to make smart people angry.  If you just annoy smart people, they will… Read full post »

That's the title of my new novel.  I call it a novel because it's fiction and about the length of a short novel.

It's styled in imitation of those handbooks of writings from the early Japanese zen masters though, a collection of pieces and fragments (which I nevertheless mean to imply… Read full post »

For quite some time now I've been telling the story of how I could no longer stand to live in Missississippi after the assassination of JFK, horrified by walking the campus of the Southern Baptist (and therefore supposedly Christian) college I attended, and hearing the shouts of laughter and approval… Read full post »

It took a couple of days, but I have figured out what the right-wing apologists remind me of, those who are so busy claiming that their murderous rhetoric had no connection to the killings in Tucson.

 (Just incidentally, I would like to see them quote some example of equivalent rhetoric on… Read full post »

I find myself once more countering something I consider a virulent and dishonest email.  It may be argued that there is no point, but I am a patient man, and my reaction to writing that I think is malignant and untrue is to search for what is true, and, as clearly… Read full post »

Here's the opening sentence of Laura Miller's discussion of why Freedom is among her five choices for best fiction of 2010:

"After the dust cleared -- once the cover stories had run, the concerns had been raised and the h8rs had finished their howling -- what remained were the hours we… Read full post »

I wasn't planning to be a writer.  I was sixteen, a junior in high school, and I wasn't planning much of anything.  What happened was Shakespeare blew my mind, in the play Julius Caesar.  I was expecting to be bored by incomprehensible and fancified old crud.  I liked science.&nbs… Read full post »

Well, okay, that's hyperbole.  No doubt several other states could make good claims.  But we gotta be in the top five, don't you think?

I mean, I hate it that the eminently sensible prop 19 didn't pass, and that prop 26 sneaked through under false colors, but still.  Whitman and Fiorin… Read full post »

Watched NCIS last night.  Plot involved a macho female marine bomb defuser.  At one point she was called on to defuse a bomb supposedly planted by "protestors."  (No info provided on what they were protesting.)

 I protested the wars in Viet Nam and Iraq (both of them), and though… Read full post »