Ok, I admit it, I just plain made up the part in my title about BP quaking in their boots. Probably quaking with laughter is more likely, though I can't actually document that either. Just call it an educated guess—or perhaps the subliminal effect of champagne glasses clinking in the distance.… Read full post »

Rachel Maddow tonight discussed reports that BP's application to the US government for a drilling permit basically said there was a zero percent chance of a spill having any effect on the land 48 miles away. If you have the time to watch the story (13:43), it's worth a listen to… Read full post »

Upon reflecting a bit on the implications of my post from yesterday, I want to clarify that I can no longer realistically say I aspire to be a Republican even if the party were cleaned up as it needs to be.

The Republicans have in too many ways shown that… Read full post »

It's interesting how certain quotes find a new life in events that follow later, and with them, I suppose, the people that spoke them. Today quotes4all.net was featuring a quote by the late Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which might as well have been made yesterday… Read full post »

President Obama says his administration is “doing everything we can” about the BP oil problem.

I doubt it.

There are simply more of “us,” the folks out here in the world, than there are of “them,” the folks in his administration, the ones he probably means by &ld… Read full post »

I hear Obama is planning some stronger regulations on oil drilling. I want some stronger regulations, too. I wonder if his list of is the same as mine. His is probably more polished. Mine is just a list of discussion points at this point, and needs more thought. But let's just… Read full post »

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens will resign from the Supreme Court either this year or next. The Washington Post quotes Stevens as saying, “I can tell you that I love the job, and deciding whether to leave it is a very difficult decision. But I want to make it… Read full post »

People have asked about how to create hyperlinks here at Open Salon. (A hyperlink is a clickable region of text.) This is a quick tutorial just for that and nothing else.

There are, sadly, about a half dozen different input contexts that you might need to do this in and… Read full post »

Nick Leshi wrote a post recently asking, Are professional critics becoming extinct? The question is not new. Others have asked it. But it's something I've been meaning to write about.

But first let me back up and remark on another movie-related issue: Previews. It's bothered me for quite some time… Read full post »

Sandra Stephens wrote an oddly titled post, Strange Bedfellows: Me and Rush Limbaugh In Costa Rica, that I find to be at once completely unsurprising and yet also totally shocking, if it's possible to feel two such apparent opposites at the same time.

At the risk of stealing some… Read full post »

This is a book review done as part of a collaborative project with FingerLakesWanderer, who is reviewing the same book.  Read this, then read hers (or vice versa)!

I first learned to program in 1975. It was a course in FORTRAN taught at my high school. I'd tell you that/… Read full post »

Everyone is talking about Joe Stack. He left a web site full of thoughts.

But right now I'm more interested in the fact that his web site became quickly unavailable, and I'm wondering why. Perhaps it's unimportant. This might just be a conspiracy theory. But I think it warrants at… Read full post »

Salon is a brand. When Chris Matthews introduces “Joan Walsh of Salon.com,” everyone knows what that means. It means politics. Progressive politics, to be certain, but politics nonetheless. If “Salon” meant recipes or travelogues or stories of life traumas, she would not have… Read full post »

WellPoint Inc., owner of Anthem Blue Cross, earned $2.7 billion in the last quarter of 2009, despite what what the LA Times calls “a recent softening in enrollments and revenue from premiums.” Not to mention spending almost ten million to lobby against health reform and another te… Read full post »

I hereby propose a $1.00 flat tax on dying. 

I'd even waive it for people who die without means to pay.

Call it The Death Tax. That would be its official name.

Then when Republicans start ranting about how the “death tax” is too high, rational people could say… Read full post »

What goes up must go down. The baby boom brought us a burst of babies. Statistics will now bring us a burst of deaths. An inverse baby boom. A cadaver boom, I guess.

That much is only slightly new. People get born, age, and die. And it's the burden of… Read full post »

In the text of the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, I noticed a reference to a case called Bellotti, which was quoted for the following strange claim:

What happened with the earthquake in Haiti is horrible. And yet, I and others are worried that Climate Change will lead to much worse.

If temperature rises even just a small number of degrees, the effects on the world will be severe, to include possible extinction. On top of that,… Read full post »

Passion is running high in politics these days. It’s important to keep it in check. I wrote email to Keith Olbermann today. I thought I would share it here. It touches on matters we all need to keep in mind.

The recent Supreme Court ruling eliminating campaign spending limits for corporations is a disaster for Democracy. It will have horrible effects.

I'm preparing a post on the matter, but it's not ready yet. Meanwhile, though, here's some background reading, posts I've written in the past, that m… Read full post »

Some part of the problem of separating marriage from civil union is probably that people are used to the name “marriage,” and they just want “the good name.”

Marriages are something many have written about and written movies about, civil unions are not. So the struggle is to… Read full post »

For Democrats there's a big storm ongoing in Massachusetts. But it has some silver linings.

Stop Fussing about The Filibuster

All too much attention has been paid to trying to get a veto-proof vote in the Senate. Fear of filibuster never used to stop Senators from conducting votes in the… Read full post »

From time to time I have tuned in to and enjoyed The Ed Show with Ed Schultz. I don’t think I will any longer.

It appears he said this on the radio. But that doesn't matter. It matters to me that he said it. And yes, I know that… Read full post »

The privacy right is nowhere enumerated explicitly, yet is generally accepted as a critical right. In the constitutions of some states and of other nations, it exists explicitly. But for the US as a whole, it exists only implicitly.

The importance of privacy is evident in the First, Third,… Read full post »