A Dollar a Sop (or Don’t Run the Hobos out of the Woods until You Run the Crooks out of Washington)

By Mickey Walker - 07.12.15

Whenever it floods for weeks on end and Texas’ rivers spill out of their banks for the first time in 100 years, I try to think of other times and seasons when record cold and ice storms play havoc with humanity on and near the Gulf Coast of Texas.  It helps to get your mind off the reality at hand, e.g. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita of 2005.  Not to mention the sweltering heat of this time in the year right before the 4th of July.  Thinking of cold weather helps you forget the Great Floods of 2015 when the Brazos, the Trinity, the San Jacinto Rivers of South Texas flooded damn near everything and everybody downstream.  Bad times and misery makes for colorful conversation so it would appear by the news and all the press these times of stress bring.  It makes for great songs that sing of the misery of man, and we delight in this art form and call it ‘Blues.’

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When the Backlash is Bigger Than the Breakthroughs

By Loren Adams - 07.12.15

Now that Obama supporters are through patting themselves on the back, they should consider the backlash. Any conscious person can see it coming. The Supremes ruled 6-3 for Obamacare. Party! The next day they ruled 5-4 for marriage equality. Illuminate the White House in rainbow colors!

Unfortunately, administration insiders are acutely oblivious. As children, chess apparently was not their game. Predicting the other side’s next moves – whether they’re Republicans are Russians – is completely off their radar.

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UNITED STATES/CUBAN RELATIONS:THE ROAD AHEAD

By Harry Targ - 07.12.15

And yet Americans are more ignorant of the nature of the Cuban Revolution and U.S.-Cuban relations than are the people of almost any other country in the world. Except for those few Americans with access to a handful of liberal and radical publications the people of this country have been subjected to an unrelieved campaign of distortion, or outright slander of Fidel Castro and the revolution he leads. The determined hostility of American leaders to the Cuban Revolution, the implementation of a system of economic harassment, and the threat of military intervention, not only endanger the Cuban Revolution, but increase the tempo of the cold war at home and abroad (Editors, “The Cuban Revolution: The New Crisis in Cold War Ideology,” Studies on the Left, Volume 1, Number, 1960, 1).

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NSA reform debate is a total sham.

By Iris Vander Pluym on 07.12.15

AP reporters recently did some very good investigative reporting, and The Washington Post published the story:

FBI behind mysterious surveillance aircraft over US cities

By JACK GILLUM, EILEEN SULLIVAN and ERIC TUCKER
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology – all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned.

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“The Charleston Massacre, the Confederate Battle Flag, and the Coming Second Civil War”

By STEVEN JONAS MD, MPH  - June 25, 2015

The Charleston Massacre means many things.  Most importantly it means that the Doctrine of White Supremacy that drove the Institution of Slavery, and drove what became the Confederate States of America to secession from the Union, is still alive and quite well, in the citizenry at large.  (The seemingly increasing succession of white cop/black victim murders of course has been raising the poisonous topic in the public consciousness in the past year or two; see my column “Ferguson Worked as Intended.”)  But now here it is, writ large, in the person of a violent, young, openly and proudly defiant, white supremacist.  Interestingly enough, Roof not only reflects the sentiments of the native US white supremacy movement, but of its international relatives as well.  (The Southern Poverty Law Center is a very important source of information of right-wing hate/potential terror organizations in the United States.)

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DSM Shocker - Impositional Religiosity Declared a Mental Disorder (Satire)

By Donald B. Ardell - 07.12.15

Preface

Some may ask: Why mix religion and wellness? Objections might include assumptions and preferences that hold religion to be personal, or sacrosanct, that some might be offended, that everyone is entitled to believe what she likes and so on. The list of possible objections to addressing, questioning, challenging or opposing faith-based positions is nearly without end. None is considered reasonable or wise by your kindly Well Infidel of political junkie persuasion. 

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