Paul Ryan’s budget has solicited a lot of adjectives. From ”sweet sounding,” (a Democratic Congress member referring to its lure) to “bold, “honest,” (American Thinker), “brave” (a CNNOpinion writer), “wise,” “refreshing.” (Reaso… Read full post »

The President and the Speaker of the House at the State of the Union

In a time when truth is associated with consistency, it's easy to be consistent if your only position is to always blame others. If everybody else is wrong, then you must be right. Republicans stumbled on… Read full post »

Zane and Tex Bonnet; Nevada, 1979.

The idea of a safety net programs is a strange tale of a long ago American government, now out of fashion. Strong political forces and bad arguments are aligned against the poor. Strong political and private forces are after social security and its enormous… Read full post »

The idea of a safety net or programs for the poor is a strange tale of a long ago American government, now out of fashion. Strong political forces and bad arguments are aligned against the poor. Unorganized, they are easy political target… Read full post »

(Writer's note: this post provides multi-faceted background on Zimbabwe, whose President, Robert Mugabe, was assessed in the July 2007 final cable of the American ambassador. The post contains the full content of the cable. But is the post multi-faceted background or just meandering summary… Read full post »

California Pea Pickers, 1938.

Every policy maker and politician has a story about the economy. The crosstalk of all these stories can be confusing. Sometimes on the same day, are contrasting arguments and articles about the dangers of inflation, deflation, debt, stimulus, deficits, and comp/… Read full post »

Factories and Houses, 1942.

  Nobel laureate Paul Krugman says in his New York Times column today that the pending political crisis could deepen if the government makes the wrong policy decisions. He forecasts castrophic damage to families and workers and believes the appropriate analogy… Read full post »

Duluth, MN, 1871. Library of Congress

“No taxation without representation;” the cry of the founding fathers now stands on its head. Now the governing representatives simply proclaim, “no taxes.” The caveat in the fine print seems to be “except for the middle clas… Read full post »

     In a $14 trillion economy, still the world’s largest, just a few days after Ford announced record profits of $1.69 billion for the quarter, and even after Bank of America posted $3.1 billion in profits in Q2 2010, one would think the idea of scary convers
… Read full post »

Good riddance! Juan Williams, a journalist formerly with the Washington Post, who authored the companion book to the PBS special, "Eyes on the Prize," and who was frequently seen on Fox News and heard on NPR was fired as a news analyst by NPR. Juan was arrogant and out of touch.… Read full post »

History and America are filled with single minded women in hot pursuit of making a mark in the rites of politics and taking the reins of power in epochal times, the archetypes of the era's innocent and evil, loopy and guile. Cleopatra whose soft spoken wiles betrayed a laser focus on co-opting… Read full post »

South Carolina! Nothing could be finer than the politics of the first state to secede from the Union even before Lincoln formally took office. SC provided the nation with two of its first four chief executives, Presidents of the Continental Congress Henry Middleton and Henry Laurens. Laurens was one… Read full post »

David Brooks recent New York Times column praises the emergence of Republican governor budget slashers, lauding their "deft" managing skills, corporation experience, and tough stances with state legislatures. Below are my revised remarks that appears as a comment (# 2) on his post (htt… Read full post »

One of the problems with deciphering Barack Obama and his administration's behavior is that any model or insight runs into cross currents generated by Republicans and those who seem to be naturally cynic.

It is obvious from the appearances and messages of the Administration that it is hesitant… Read full post »

Haley Barbour is a skilled insider within the GOP, one of the few remaining officials who established the GOP as the political party of the South. Winning matters deeply to him as does his legacy and Republican control of the South. The South is a region with the world's 5th largest… Read full post »

So far, Obama and his advisors have jettisoned the serious political tasks of setting an economic policy that will stimulate job growth. Like the dispatches of Union generals during the Civil War, they seem more interested in establishing intermediate points where victory can be declared, decisions d… Read full post »

It is no different today than when the masses thought the world was flat. The deep seated views of what is "truth" is based often on how frequently something--anything--is repeated and how many others embrace it. And if the illogic resonates, the half measures are held as canons. Those that suggest… Read full post »

Marx would either laugh or be terribly preplexed by what has been wrought from his dialectic. With all his bluster, Glenn Beck has gone to the National Mall and now stood Marx on his head.

The American debate on race, and by default civil rights, has developed a double moral, behaviorial… Read full post »

This blog begins with a musical interlude; sampled lyrics from "Send in the Clowns:"
Isn't it bliss?
Don't you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can't move. . .
Don't you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want.
Sorry, my dear. . .
Maybe next year.

All of the denial… Read full post »

A double feature today.

(I) As ad agencies know, one of the best selling tools is fear. Fear is set in the future, with unforeseen consequences, always ending in apocalyptic circumstances--in the case of the drilling moratorium, dispossessed families, starving children, a collapsed economy, empty… Read full post »

Thinking about Langston today.

Langston Hughes was a poet who traveled the world. He who once motored by bus from Russia through Tajikistan to Turkmenistan to Tashkent and Samarkand and then to China; all of this after the film company he signed on with went broke and left him stranded outside… Read full post »

Fact checking in the internet age has become a “you decide” process. The dialectics of the web has created clusters of information bubbles. In these bubbles, false claims go unrefuted. If you “disagree,” you can click elsewhere. If it sounds good or feels good, it must be true… Read full post »