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If you’re concerned about fossil fuels and climate change, consider an energy source that, according to its backers, will make everyday living “comfortable and healthier.” What is this miraculous substance? Oil. Huh? Yes, that filthy scourge of our planet and health, is being ballyhooed as our globe’s energy and environmental salvation! By whom? Of…
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When a fox attacks a hen house, is it uncivil for the hens to raise a ruckus? Two Supreme Court justices say it is. Elevating collegiality above social justice, right-wing extremist Amy Coney Barrett and progressive jurist Sonia Sotomayor have jointly been hailing America’s top Court as a model of genteel political discourse, claiming that the six …
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Too many American newspapers have shut down or shriveled to irrelevance, but, luckily, we still have such bastions of local journalism as the Chicago Chronicle and New York News Daily. But wait… those aren’t real newspapers, aren’t local, and aren’t even American. They are Russian fake-news outlets, created in recent weeks by Putin’s propagandists …
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Poor Katie Britt, the Republican senator from Alabama. She was set up by her party’s operatives to do the GOP’s televised response to Joe Biden’s State-of-the-Union speech. Sadly, her moment in the national limelight was widely panned, even by Republicans, for her presentation was overwrought and – well, cringey. But the visuals pale to insignifica…
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In my view, the greatest of America’s “Founding Fathers” was not Washington or Jefferson – nor, technically, he wasn’t even an American. Rather, he was a British immigrant and itinerate agitator for real democracy, enlightenment, and universal human rights. Upgrade your subscription He was Thomas Paine, a prolific, profound, persuasive, and widely …
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Well, well, well – look who’s waking up and raring to go: Mr. and Ms. WOKE! We so-called “woke” people have been the target of far-right politicos and front groups that are frantically trying to ban us and our ideas from America’s political discourse. In the past few years, such thuggish gubernatorial demagogues as Ron DeSantis have perverted the p…
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Although the sun is an essential life force, we need to protect ourselves from its relentless glare. Sunglasses? Check. Beach umbrella? Check. Tinted car windows? Check. A huge, multi-trillion-dollar parasol floating in outer space to reduce global warming? Uh… huh? Upgrade your subscription Ready or not, here come the corporate hucksters and techn…
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In 1863, humorist Artemus Ward wrote a satire on hucksterism, making up a tale of Abe Lincoln being asked to endorse a piece of quackery about spiritualism. Not wanting to offend, the Lincoln character slyly offers non-committal praise: “Well for people who like that kind of thing, I think that is just about the kind of thing they’d like.” Upgrade …
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“Corporate crises consultants” (yes, there are such creatures) have patented a formula allowing their wrongdoing clients to champion reform while simultaneously killing it. A classic case is now unfolding around last year’s derailment of a 2-mile-long Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, Ohio. The community’s air, soil, water, and peop…
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“Step right up, folks, and bite into the wondrous future of meat!” Cheap meat! Ethical meat! Animal meat you love – beef, chicken, pork, fish, etc. – all produced without animals! It’s the miracle of “meatless meat” – a viscous mass derived from “fetal bovine serum,” then grown not on ranches, but in huge vats in corporate factories. Science marche…
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Here’s our Big Word of the day: Extraterritoriality. It expresses a sketchy legal theory asserting that rulers in one state have a right to enforce their laws in another state. The most prominent use of it was in the infamous Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, requiring officials in Northern anti-slave states to capture and return escaped slaves to their …
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I no longer receive my local newspaper, the Austin-American Statesman. Oh, the paper still comes, but it’s just paper, minus the news part – news that our community once counted on to keep up with local government doings, corporate shenanigans, citizen actions, and other critical features of our city’s democratic life. What happened? Wall Street pr…
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I’m unable to comprehend the continuum of raw hatred and systematic barbarism that the Israeli government and Hamas terrorists are perpetrating, so I haven’t felt I could add anything to the strong voices worldwide pleading (in plain words): STOP IT! But saying nothing achieves nothing—so I realized I can at least add my voice to the urgent humanit…
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Bruce King, former governor of New Mexico, often baffled people with his convoluted use of words. Like the time he vetoed a loan shark bill he’d previously agreed to sign. “But, Governor,” squealed the lenders’ lobbyists, “we had your commitment!” Unfazed, King said, “Now boys, we all know that a commitment is not a promise.” In this case, King’s l…
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Please be my Valentine! That is not only a warm, sweet, sometimes romantic sentiment people express in mid-February on a frilly, red card. It’s also the name of a third-century saint who literally lost his head, a ninth-century pope whose reign lasted only 40 days, three Roman emperors, a very good Mexican hot sauce… and a tiny town in Texas. That …
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Perhaps you heard about the recent surge of invasive foreigners into Eagle Pass, Texas – the Rio Grande border town that finds itself at the hot center of the US-Mexico immigration crisis. Only, this “invasion” (as Donald Trump’s MAGA crowd likes to call it) was not by Latin Americans, but by Anglos descending on Eagle Pass from the North! Indeed, …
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This plot line could have come from one of Charles Dickens’ novels about upper-class depravity: “Miserly governors refuse to provide gruel for poverty-stricken ragamuffins.” Unfortunately, this is not a novel, but modern-day reality taking place in 15 states, where rightwing officeholders have scorned a federal program to provide food this summer f…
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