If a politician complains about “special interests”, they are complaining about you, and how you probably won’t go along with giving all of your money to the politician and his buddies. Pesky special interests!
Watch out if a politician says he wants to create law that “sends a message” or does something “for the children”. You [...]
Despite a terrific overabundance of food in the world, not only do we still have famine and malnutrition, the price of food has actually increased dramatically. The monetization of American food aid may not have been a primary cause of the problem, but it has been a contributing factor.
The fuel price increases of the last [...]
Did anyone else hear the choir of angels? Jeff Blackburn won a court case today in Amarillo, resulting in the acquittal of a man found smoking reefer on his front porch and subsequently arrested. The jury found that the man’s medical necessity overrode any legal constraints against the man. It took 11 minutes for [...]
Erstwhile presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich slapped back his critics by winning the 5-way primary for his Senate House seat by 50%. He faced some stiff, well-funded opposition this year that forced his early escape from the presidential circus. His focus on his home seat saved him. [source]
I still think Elizabeth would have been a hawt [...]
I went to my precinct caucus, and for the first time ever worried that I might not get to go to the county convention. Usually about 6 people show up, sometimes as many as 10, and our precinct has nearly 30 delegate chairs to fill. Today, hundreds showed up and waited and waited and waited [...]
Dear ,
Thank you for suggesting that we drive a little out of our way — to Ruiz Library — to vote, rather than going over to the closer facility at the nearby grocery mega store. Here is a picture of the line of people waiting to vote there.
We walked right up to our voting [...]
It seems inappropriate for me to blog my armchair ideas about homeless people, because I don’t know anything about homeless people. I’ve always lived and worked in enclosed structures with utilities, and I rarely consider abandoning it all to sleep under a bridge. It’s not a particular area of study or volunteerism for me, so [...]
Does anyone else remember during the run-up to war in Iraq when calmer voices cautioned that a worst-case scenario would be having Turkey invade northern Iraq in order to crush the nascent Kurdish state?
It’s happening now, and we’ve been asking nicely for the Turks to stop.
Sara Robinson brings out some old-school research, from 1962, regarding the nature of revolution. Caltech sociologist James Davies published an article that year in American Sociological Review that identified the key elements that sparked revolutions in the 17th and 18th centuries. The seven points Davies identified from the French, American, and Russian revolutions, as Robinson [...]
There have been a number of unexplained, rage killings over the last month. While I may have my reasons to expect this, I have had little to say about it. Everything about each situation is disturbing and upsetting in its own way: taken as a group, it’s truly overwhelming.
An interesting essay on Alternet explores the [...]