Part 1: A Little Revolution Can be Good Franklin Delano Roosevelt is often credited with having “saved Capitalism in America”. Indeed, FDR even described himself as “the greatest friend the profit system ever had.” This is an obvious truth when taken in the historical context. When FDR took office, the…
For almost 2 years, the Democrats have pushed a narrative purporting that Russians, operating at the direct orders of Vladimir Putin, have been working to subvert American Democracy and install a puppet in power in the form of Donald Trump. First, it was the Russian Hacking hoax_—_the idea that the…
Neoliberalism is the idea that the Market is the Mother of all Things. The tenets of Neoliberalism are as follows: 1.”Market-based” solutions are the most stable and are inherently more sustainable than “top down” publicly funded programmes that rely on the “arbitrary” redistribution of wealth and resources. 2. The Market…
Some important take-aways from the UK election that you might not hear in the MSM: Firstly, we should consider that this was a proxy election for the US in many ways, in which the two sides of the Democratic Civil War were going at each other: Barack Obama openly supported…
I had a revelation today about the on-going debates between Hillary and Bernie supporters in the wake of the 2016 Election. Bernie has given interviews in which he rails against what he calls the “Liberal Elites” —the establishment faction of the Democratic Party—who are focused on identity politics of gender…
In the late fall of 1990 a friend and I made a cross country trip from Connecticut to California. We decided to travel via the Southern route, which took us through Arkansas, where Bill Clinton was halfway through serving his second term as Governor. We overnighted in a town outside…
After much deliberation, I have decided to write-in Bernie for President, or else vote for Jill Stein the Green Party candidate. I will NOT vote for Hillary Clinton, and many people freak out, telling me that this is a vote for Trump. I tell them that if the price for…
As a “EuroYankee”, I feel I should weigh in heavily on the so-called Brexit. I was not surprised at the Leave vote. The Brits have been complaining about the EU for years – and the EU had had to bend over backwards to accommodate them. Yes, Ok, they could eschew…
Like many progressives who support Bernie Sanders, I have been amazed by the capacity for Clinton supporters to defend her even in the face of overwhelming and damning evidence of her faults. During the course of the Primary campaign, much of Clinton’s history, her past deeds and positions have come…
Ok – snap quiz – who are these two gentlemen pictured on the right? Hint: One was King George V of England and the other was Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. You may be forgiven if you cannot tell which one is which – they were, after all, first cousins.…
I took a train today from Barcelona to Madrid. The journey was 640 km, or roughly the same distance as from Boston Mass. to Washington DC. It took 2 hours and 30 minutes. No shit. Moreover, I did not have to go through all the security, the tra-la-la that surrounds…
There seems to be a troubling trend in many areas of public discourse that aims to paint Islam as somehow different from other religions in its brutality, barbarism and militarism. This is simply wrong. Islam until recently was a relatively peaceful religion, and governments based on Islamic Law were relatively…
So now we find out that the Texas hospital that hosted the first Ebola case diagnosed in the USA was woefully ill-equipped to handle the disease. The fact that the Liberian man who showed up at the hospital was (a) black and (b) without insurance led to his being sent…
Ray Rice, the NFL football player who is now being persecuted for beating a woman unconscious in an Atlantic City Casino elevator, probably thought he was going to get away with it. The security video that first propelled him into the spotlight was shot from outside the elevator and showed…
I have been watching trends in the US for some time. Macro-trends, if you will. And in Ferguson I see the confluence of three trends: on one hand, poverty and income inequality, on the other hand, militarised police with armoured vehicles and heavy weapons, all coming together under a patina…
In “Bowling for Columbine“, Michael Moore made the case that the number of guns and the availability of guns is not causal in the number of gun deaths, There are plenty of examples where a country has as many if not more guns per capita than the US (e.g., Canada)…
One of the first things that one notices in Barcelona is the public cleaning and care-taking of the city. Throughout the city, throughout the day and night, an army of cleaners, clad in green and yellow hi-visibility uniforms, patrol the streets, sidewalks, parks and other public spaces, sweeping and washing…
Maybe I have watched too many Frank Capra movies, but I think everyone in that 99% sees themselves as Jimmy Stuart or Gary Cooper struggling against some Lionel Barrymore character. Maybe things have become that desperate. Maybe there will be a movement, maybe people will come together, and maybe America will change direction.
