Learn How to Shoot Back

Many of the same people who have spent the last year accusing Trump and his supporters of being fascists, staging protests and rallies, shining a spotlight on the problem of sexual assault, and donning headgear resembling genitalia are now calling on that same government to forcibly disarm the population. Think about that for a moment…

Trading Places

“What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.” –Henry George When Donald Trump can propose tariffs on imported steel, aluminum, washing machines, and solar-panels without being roundly booed off the stage, one has to wonder if reason has any…

The Tragicomedy of Russiagate

Let’s assume — purely for the sake of discussion since no evidence has been made public — that the Russians did it. Note, first, that the “it” looks like the product of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. I’m not going to do what Johnstone, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, and the late Robert Parry have done so well so many times, namely, catalog all the inane acts the Putin-guided Russian intel agencies are said to have committed in order to bring down America. (Start here.) Suffice it to say that if that’s the best Putin can come up with, we have little to worry about.

We Interrupt This Tragedy…

Killing the messenger will never grow old.  It is because there are far too many who are desperately seeking ways to shut out the tsunami of data.  I don’t know how many times I have heard the phrase, “Cartoon News Network” used because someone did not like the import of a story.  To be sure, CNN has done everything in its power to destroy its own credibility, but when a story contains a verifiable fact, CNN’s lack of credibility is incapable of changing that fact to “fake news.”

Don’t Blame the Guns, Blame the Schools

Today’s public schools already share many characteristics with prisons, yet the ‘answer’ some folks are proposing to the (statistically negligible) threat of school shootings is to make schools even more like prisons. Schools are an artificial environment that (much like a prison) forces kids to join gangs or cliques in order to avoid rejection and outsider status. Those who don’t fit in are subject to ridicule, abuse, and even brutality in some cases.