There has rightfully been considerable outrage over this week’s revelations that the Federal government has been sucking up information on virtually every aspect of our lives, email, telephones calls, pictures, credit card and banking transactions, and so on. Unfortunately almost all of this discussion is taking place without a useful —>> read more –>>

Reading this op ed leaves one with the notion that these changes have arisen through some immutable forces of nature.
He fails to mention that in parallel with the individual being more and more alone in the world, big corporations and governments are becoming ever more well integrated, feeding at each others’ troughs. —>> read more –>>

John le Carré, author of many beloved spy novels, e.g., Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy, wrote this piece critiquing the then upcoming War on Iraq in January 2003. Besides pointing out the very strong connections between big oil and the Bushes, many other elements of the critique continue to be applicable —>> read more –>>

Why waste endless words on this topic?

I stumbled on this video, “The Drug War Is a Failure” by the Gregory Brothers via the New York Times.
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I have noted here several times earlier about America’s longest war – the War on Drugs. Here is a graphic that displays the complete failure of our policies: ((source: http://m.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/10/chart-says-war-drugs-isnt-working/57913/ – this graphic came to my attemtion via the Colbert Report http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/425397/april-11-2013/america-s-pot-astrophe ))  

The other day I stumbled on this Tom Lehrer song, “Send in the Marines”. This is as good a summary of American foreign policy as there is, though to update the lyrics for the Obama version just substitute “drones” for “Marines”. Here is a YouTube video performance, perhaps from the —>> read more –>>

 On March 19, 2003 George Bush, Dick Cheney and the cabal surrounding them launched their war of Shock and Awe on Iraq. The stated purpose was “to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people.” ((http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030322.html)) This war —>> read more –>>

WE DO NOT HAVE THE BEST HEALTH CARE IN THE WORLD – IN FACT WE ARE NOT EVEN REALLY COMPETITIVE WITH OUR PEERS IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD

“The United States was number 1 in terms of health care spending per capita but ranked 39th for infant mortality, 43rd for adult female mortality, 42nd for adult male mortality, and 36th for life expectancy.” —>> read more –>>

For 99% of Americans the last forty years have been a period of income stagnation. As this chart from Mother Jones displays, virtually all of the productivity gains of the last forty years have ended up the hands of the super-rich. A new report from the National Employment Law Project, —>> read more –>>

In recent years a standard bit of political rhetoric in the US has included references to “the job creators”. This most usually  flows along the lines of higher taxes on the wealthy will injure the job creators. Or, government regulation is crushing the job creators. The presumption of course is that the —>> read more –>>