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A 16-year-old is avoiding all jail time for killing four people and injuring nine in a drunk-driving accident after his lawyer successfully argued the teen suffers from “affluenza.” Affluenza, you say? You aren’t familiar with that disease? Well, you should be. It is a deadly affliction spreading rapidly into the wealthy conclaves of gated communities … and sadly it strikes only the wealthy.

So a southern evangelical Christian star of a reality TV series about his backwoods family got his ass suspended from said television series (on A&E, in case you’re wondering) for quoting the bible and comparing homosexuality to bestiality and the like. I don’t know which part of that sentence that least surprises me. Maybe the A&E part. Not that the network suspended Phil Robertson, but that he was ever on there to begin with. Or maybe not.

Jack Kingston, the Republican representative from Georgia’s first district and esteemed member of the Republican theme team, has apparently decided that, if he wants to be a viable candidate for the United States Senate, he’s got to get himself some press coverage. Since he’s not a novice, we have to assume that targeting the children’s lunches is not an accident. According to Daniel Molloy, writing for the Atlanta Journal Constitution Kingston said: “On the Agriculture Committee we have jurisdiction over the school lunch…

Pope Francis’ recent encyclical is sending shock waves around the world. In addition to exhortations to the faithful, Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”) packs a scathing critique of “unbridled” capitalism and consumerism. Here’s the flavor of the Pope’s message:

Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills.

Nothing is as it seems in the land of the Cons. We’ve got to remember that. Sometimes it seems that, regardless of the issue, con men have to deceive, even if it means cutting off their own noses or, if they happen to be politicians, the noses of the constituents they expect to vote for them. If that makes no sense, it is still a fact in the twenty states where Governors, no doubt on the advice of their Representatives in Congress, are rejecting the extra dollars that would extend health care to people not earning enough to afford even subsidized insurance policies.

When in the life of a democratic nation it becomes clear that the government has parted ways with the governed and evinces no intention to reform, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that the governed, i.e. the People, should declare in terms both broad and narrow the causes that impel them toward a separation of their own.

We the People hold to be self-evident the same truths that were proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence of 1776, chief among them an inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and we remind the nation’s leaders…

“Where is the Love?” Kristof asks in his Thanksgiving column for the New York Times.  Thanksgiving is a euphemistic feast. I still haven’t found just the right term to describe cannibals bloodlessly and indirectly destroying and consuming their own kind. Some call it “sacrifice,” but that too is a euphemism. “Symbolic predation” doesn’t work because the injury and destruction are all too real.

Way back in 1988, I sat across from Strom Thurmond in his Capitol Hill office in Washington, D.C., and listened as he explained his opposition to federal anti-lynching laws and any other federal encroachment on states’ rights during his long career.

“I felt it was dangerous to shift it all to Washington,” the then-85-year-old U.S. senator and former Dixiecrat presidential candidate from South Carolina told me.  “Lynching was nothing but murder. All states had laws against murder. … I’ve never had any feelings against minorities.”

Many of us love a good conspiracy theory. Some of us, though, love them more than others. It’s no surprise liberals are more likely to buy into a conspiracy theory critical of the right, or conservatives are more likely to believe one critical of the left. The data supports exactly that, proving we often dare research the obvious. Here I’m going to discuss four specific conspiracy theories, two from each side of the political spectrum, and sketch what a national sample of over 5,000 U.S. adults tells us about who does, and does not, believe in them.

I join these three books because of their common unveiling of who-rules-for-whose-benefit, across cultures and time. Parenti shows an ancient example, the destruction of early Roman Democracy by oligarchic forces. Chomsky illustrates the continuation of plutocracy, or elite rule, in our time, despite and in opposition to the advances of Democracy. Roy provides confirmation that this struggle is international, in this case India.

Everything is indeed bigger in Texas, and now that slogan can also apply to moronic public displays of intimidation. The New York Times reported today on an armed protest outside a suburban restaurant this past weekend. From NYT: “A small meeting of a group seeking tougher gun laws was interrupted Saturday at a suburban Dallas restaurant when the woman who helped organize it saw something outside that startled her: at least two dozen men and women in the parking lot with shotguns, hunting rifles, AR-15s and AK-47s…

The green envelope in the photo is only one of 12 new forms necessary to qualify Texas voters (or make their vote “provisional” if they don’t have identical photo ID).

Yesterday I was an elections judge on the Northside suburbs of San Antonio (read: big houses). This was not a heavy voting day, since there were no candidates on the ballot, so the polls were visited primarily by the faithful. Still, it provided insights into what we can look forward to in the future.

Is being obnoxious catching? My email in-box is currently featuring messages with the following headings:

“Beat the snot out of them.“

and

“I’m here to kick some Tea Party ass.“

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders Vermont spoke this morning (10/18/13) at a union hall in Atlanta to an enthusiastic full house. The points he made in his talk and the town hall-like Q & A, though pretty wide-ranging, highlighted a couple items: extremist republican ideologues look around and realize, hell, we can’t ask people to vote for us so we can gut social security, medicare-medicade, veterans benefits, ship U.S. jobs to China and cut taxes for the wealthy.

The American populace is split, nearly right down the middle, on critical issues: abortion, capital punishment, gun control, mandated health care, immigration, national debt, education, social support programs–the list goes on, and on, and on.

In his 1996 book Moral Politics, George Lakoff describes how different views of family structure and morality underlie this split. He claims the idea of a strong, authoritative father underlies conservative views whereas the concept of empathetic, nurturing parents underlies liberal views…

Sociopaths make the Kool-Aid. The Crazies are the ones who drink it. Sociopathy and craziness have this in common: they are both forms of human “brokenness.”

Sociopaths are broken in their not being connected with the rest of humanity by bonds of empathy. They serve only themselves, using and exploiting others, caring nothing about the consequences for others or the greater good.

Whether I was subject to the zeitgeist of debt ceiling brinkmanship or pickles for supper, I had a bad night. I dreamed that Ted Cruz was running for president with Sarah Palin for VP. There are doubtless worse combinations, like Russ Limbaugh and the Donald (what a power struggle that would be, which would be Vice?). My nightmare made me sit up and tremble.

Having seen cultural changes from moon-in-June to hip hop heavy rotation slam rap…

They are the true believers. They believe that they, and ONLY they, know what’s best for this country. They know beyond a shadow of a doubt that anyone who thinks otherwise is anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-right. This is why, when they hold protests, you’ll see signs about taking back “our country”. It’s why so many of them call for the impeachment of the president at every opportunity (or not) — they, and ONLY they, know what is constitutional and what is not. The president, not.

Everybody knows: the polls show a huge drop in the poll numbers for Republicans. What that means is that millions of people are in the process of changing their image of the Republican Party. For the worse. Maybe much worse.

But people have short memories. The image of the Republicans recklessly taking hostages over the shutdown and the threat of default…

We all have one, it seems, a sister or brother-in-law who isn’t quite on the same political track. I found myself in a shouting match with mine in my Mom’s kitchen, to her consternation. It was in the Reagan 80s and we were discussing U.S. Central American policy. The term “gun-boat diplomacy” came up, him admitting that maybe in the distant past it happened but today… no. As sort of a crescendo to a rising-to-maximum rude volume he triumphantly shouted, in italics, bold, with exclamation points and in my face, “Open your eyes!!!”

Good for you for standing your ground. I hope you’ve noticed how useful, for the overall political picture, it has been for you to hold firm and leave this Republican Party exposed as the reckless, anti-democratic, warlike force it has become.

Helping the American people see clearly the nature of the force that’s taken over that Party is and remains Job One, because none of the other important tasks that confront us as a nation can be tackled successfully so long as they retain the power to prevent good things from being accomplished.

As the government shutdown drags on and America creeps ever closer to yet another economic catastrophe, it is important to clarify a few things about the sole focus of House Republicans’ full-scale obstruction. Most realize that the government shutdown is a direct result of a desperate effort to stop the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, but it is worth explaining exactly what it is that extremist Republicans are trying to stop.

I’ve had enough. Really. Enough. I’ve tried so hard not to write about this shutdown thing, not to even think about it. But it’s not working. Every day, it’s some new idiocy. The latest, Florida Republican Congressman Dennis Ross, telling us the GOP can’t back down now because of “pride.”

Extortion is a Congressional staple. It’s what members have been using for decades to insure incumbency. What’s new is that the tactic is being exposed to public view because the executive is not going along and because the recently arrived Tea Party are novice players.

At what point will the rank-and-file of the Republican Party determine that the extreme right wing of their party is about to take their party down? The “don’t compromise at any price” GOP element seems intent to getting their way, no matter what, though this may seriously harm any effort by the mainstream Republican Party to move toward the center on any issue. It may blow the Republicans out of the water in the next election.

In the last post, I came out of the closet. I’m an Occupier. For most of the past two years of my affiliation with Occupy Harrisonburg (#OHB), I’ve participated in its small but vibrant Economics Working Group (EWG). I’ve never before had any interest in economics, nor have I any expertise. So what drew me in? It’s simple, really. For much of my professional life, I’ve taught introductory calculus to college students, and in Calc I, we learn a basic principle that apparently no politician (OK, Elizabeth Warren excepted) or mainstream economist understands.

As we creep ever closer to the day that 48,600,000 uninsured Americans have been waiting so long for… October first. The day the national insurance exchanges will open. The day that Teapuglicans have fought so tirelessly to prevent. It is time we were reminded of just how ruthlessly stupid our state leaders are. Perhaps, that isn’t fair. Maybe they are not stupid, just uninformed. Or perhaps, they are betting we are.