Partisan Free Politics

In a previous post "Sicko = Excellent Propaganda Film", I described my impressions of health care, by relating the story of what happened, when I broke my back almost two years ago. By coincidence, I am still uninsured and recently found myself going to the hospital. (disclaimer: I'm loaded up on painkillers right now, I take no responsibility for grammar or coherence)... So this past Thursday I found myself (like most Thursdays this sumer) playing softball on the mall, within sight of many a national monument. It was the top of the second, my team, the Muckrackers, was already behind by three runs. I stepped up - prophetically told someone that their smoking was going to cause me ...

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In ancient Greece, newspapers, radio and television provided the foundation necessary for Democracy to be born, thrive and flourish. In his most famous televised State of the Union address, Pericles said, “We… regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless, but as a useless character”. 2,639 years later, those words enunciated first on Ancient Greek C-Span, still resonate in their grainy black and white footage. That same mass media model: Connected Socrates, Plato and Aristotle with the education and audience necessary for them to further transform the lives of thousands of Greeks from decadent ...

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The New York Times is on a trend-reporting spree again, which means that over the next couple of days you will all read articles in "lesser" magazines and newspapers all echoing the original article. This time, my beloved NYT has decided to talk about obscenely wealthy people, using what is surely the catch phrase of the month, "The New Gilded Age." The first article appeared on July 15 (it might be TimeSelected by now, irony of ironies; google it or email me if you can't read it) and it profiled several billionaires whom the author thought were representatives of this throwback era, particularly because of their disdain for regulation and their philanthropy. According to the article, "Only twice before over the ...

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Well I began kicking this post around a few weeks ago, but was never able to come to terms with myself on what sort of point it was I wanted to make. The world of sports has had some pretty shaking stories bubble up in recent days, but none has quite struck me in the same way as the story of Michael Vick, aka Ookie. Rather than dig into the legal morass of this admittedly disgusting indictment, or bask in the luster of perhaps the best pure athlete in the NFL, I would like to focus this post on the reactions of an uninformed public. If you haven't yet read the preliminary indictment you can access it here: ...

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I know I usually focus my posts on highlighting abuses of power from, and the overreaching nature of the Federal Government, but this time I am going to switch it up a little, and take a pot shot a little closer to home. One of my major summer projects this year has been to landscape my mom's yard, and in the process find places for the fifty or so different trees, shrubs, and perennials that I have accrued over the last seven or eight years.  One of the final touches left in the transformation is the removal of an old, unsightly, gnarled pine tree that my mom has complained about for years.   Now I knew that many cities in Oregon have regulations over such tree ...

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