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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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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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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“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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Turkish Election

By Conn Hallinan - June 11, 2015

Among the many things behind the storm that staggered Turkey’s ruling party in last week’s elections, a disastrous foreign policy looms large. But a major factor behind the fall of the previously invincible Justice and Development Party (AKP) of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a grassroots revolt against rising poverty, growing inequality and the AKP’s war on trade unions.

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GLOBAL WARMING: Reaping the Whirlwind after Unheeded Warnings

By Michael Faulkner - 07.12.15

On the 28th June The Observer, carried a report from Brussels by its Political Editor, Toby Helm under the bold headline The migrant crisis, Islamist terrorism, Grexit and Brexit: a perfect storm of crises blows apart European unity. This list simply embraced the events of the preceding few days that had claimed attention in Europe – the “Four Crises Facing the EU”. Such is the volatility of the times we are living through that when this article reaches its readers in about twelve days from now any comments on the European crises may be quite out of date, though each of them is very important and deserves detailed consideration.

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