"Blow up the bags of sham" – Jean Arp
On Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, John Oliver devoted his main segment to the United States Postal Service and its money problems. Central to Oliver’s story is the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which mandated that USPS pre-fund health benefits for future retirees. This obligation is unique to government agencies and businesses. Typically, we fund…
Because the White House is handling this pandemic chaotically or not at all, because Trump’s primary method of communication is the lie, because the administration has a segment of the media eager to promote its propaganda, because there is another segment of the media which engages in false equivalency, because we get over-reporting on “protests 
Over the last couple weeks, when talking to friends, one of us mentions “Groundhog Day,” a reference to the feeling of living the same day over and over. It’s an odd and frustrating feeling that invites complacency and dulls critical thinking. Events melt and words become “Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah….yadda yadda…blah blah. 
When I was a kid, my mom plopped a box of 45s in front of me and said, “Have at ‘em.†From then on, while other kids were out playing, I’d be in my room with that box, playing 45 after 45 on a junky record player, making stacks of the bad ones, the good…
Don’t call me a warrior. I served, but I’m not a goddamn warrior. Neither are all the loudmouths that your warrior talk is for. Yeah, I know the “warrior†stuff is for the Trump cult and not the janitors, nurses, doctors, orderlies, cashiers, stock clerks, drivers, and others who expose themselves every day to the…
On Monday, Donald Trump said that he was breaking up the band. One day later, the band was back together. The Coronavirus Task Force, Trump said, would continue but maybe with a different focus, different personnel, Trump didn’t know, but something different. Anyway, the important thing is that the Task Force was “popular.†Trump knows…
The poet Michael McClure died this week, due to complications from a stroke he suffered a couple years’ back. McClure was one of the early participants in San Francisco’s Beat scene. He not only wrote poetry, but organized some of the movement’s key events. His continued presence in the Bay Area’s literary scene was a…
Over the past month, some American conservatives have been pimping the Swedish model for fighting COVID-19. Unlike most of Europe, the Swedes have not instituted shelter-in-place orders or closed non-essential businesses. The government has issued a set of guidance on physical distancing and basic hygiene and, as far as directives are concerned, that is that….
First wave. We are in the first wave of the coronavirus, still climbing the crest. If things “go good†we might ride the crest in July, until then it is more bad. A new Center for Disease Control (CDC) document states that May will be crueler than April. From Talking Points Memo, The document says…
It has been 50 years since the Kent State Massacre. On May 4, 1970, twenty-eight National Guardsmen used up all of 13 seconds to file 67 rounds into a crowd of students, killing 4 and injuring 9, one of whom became paralyzed for life. Why did the students get mowed down? Well, some were protesting…