I don’t agree with Congressman Dennis Kucinich on everything, but after a while, I find that I agree with him on more and more things, such as his sentiment that generals who publicly advocated certain military policies viz Afghanistan should be fired [as an aside, note the tenor of the comments, and one can, I suppose, get a flavor for who reads “The Hill,” or at least, who read that particular post.] Kucinich went much farther than I did, of course, in calling for a complete American pullout from Afghanistan (which, unlike a pullout from Iraq, which is essential), I...

On this, the final Festivus Eve of this decade… one is just never quite sure what to call the first decade of the new century/millenium… from 2000 to 2009… obviously, the decade (“the aughties”? the “2000’s?” the zero’s?) has a personal significance to each of us… Still, on a macro-scale, I find it difficult to argue with Juan Cole’s assessment that it was basically “The Bush Decade,” and as such, it sucked. Bush himself was more of a stand-in for the aspirations of the already rich and powerful to suck up whatever means of production and wealth they didn’t already...

So you didn’t think you’d see me back here, did you now? Well, here I am, in an obvious demonstration that with “health care” reform safely through the Senate, global warming safely on track to be flooding my home town of New York City well before the time I’m Daddy’s age, and other stuff, Daddy is simply out of ideas… it is clear that once again, only a cool picture of some teeny-bopper superstar remains the only hope for traffic on this blog. Hence, even though it’s a school night… it’s time for… Vox…Parvi… Populiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!! Yes… we’re baaaaaacccckkkk!!!! And up...

The “climate deal.” “Too little too late”… much ado about not much… Well… those of us who had little hope for anything constructuve out of the Copenhagen summit… weren’t disappointed. We got a rather vague “agreement” with no numbers, no oversight… and I’m not quite sure what. Perhaps “details” will follow. Not particularly good news for humanity, of course, especially those of us who live close to sea level.

Krugman suggests, simply, “pass the bill.” This, of course, is the flawed “health care reform” bill. I will just say that the Senate bill, if anything gets passed, can be reconciled with the inconsistent House bill, and then a bill, by no means good but better than the crap that is left in the Senate bill, can be rammed through via the 51-votes-needed reconciliation process, if the President and the majority leadership have the cojones to do things the way Bush and the Republicans did for years. And, as Krugman notes, the bill can be improved in years to come…...

It seems that any meeting of human beings to engage in anything constructive will quickly be highjacked by the jocks, cheerleaders, kewl-kidz and the assorted others whose daddies bought them shiny new Beemers… while the rest of us have to cower in the corner, waiting for the approval of the “important people.” We just saw that happen with “health care reform.” And similarly, it seems, the Copenhagen global climate change summit seems to be going… nowhere. For those, like me, who believe in pursuing lost causes (out of boredom if nothing else) our friends at Avaaz.Org have a massive world-wide...

All hail “GTMO North”… a prison in Thomson, IL (recently acquired by the federal government from the President’s home state of Illinois) will serve as the home gulag-away-from-home gulag for an as yet unknown number of prisoners now illegally detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Candace hasn’t told me if either or both of her clients might be moved there, as it would doubtless shorten her commute from Chicago, though it would otherwise mean little or nothing to the prisoners themselves, or to anyone else watching whether this country complies with its own laws under its “Constitutional Law Professor Senior Lecturer”...

A sense of humor is now an essential piece of survival equipment, and headlines like this continue to make me wonder if The Onion hasn’t gone on a massive acquisition binge of every other news organization on the planet. Since, if one is handsome and glib enough, and gets elected President while not being named “Bush” or “Clinton,” he now gets a “peace prize” for escalating a war (and more importantly– far more importantly– for failing to a God damned thing to end the pointless carnage in Iraq), I’m wondering how we can adequately honor the other two elements of...

The Grey Lady gives us this handy-dandy superficial overview of the Copenhagen U.N. climate meeting. There are “disagreements” between “poor nations,” “rich nations” and “newly industrializing nations” about the rather modest lifestyle changes needed (hint: drive smaller cars) in the first world to prevent an irreversible civilization-destroying climate change (hint: as ocean levels rise an almost certain 10 to 20 feet in the next 30-50 years, large parts of the world, such as most of New York City, for example, will be uninhabitably underwater). As is the custom of reporting these days, we are told things are “complicated.” I don’t...