I don’t know about you, but when I woke up to discover that we’re having a refugee problem with Australia, it made my brain hurt for a bit. I mean, I know they’ve got this cane toad problem, and some of the most poisonous nasty creatures on earth live there — I mean, spiders and snakes, sure, but a snail? A deadly stinging tree? Gina Rinehart, for God’s sake?! — but that’s no reason to flee the country. Or maybe it is; I don’t know. I’ve never met the woman. (more…)
Warning: Not for the sensitive. Stop reading right now if you’re not a jaded cynic; there’s no shame in it.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware of the chaos caused by the recent seven-country immigration ban. Of particular interest to those pillars of rectitude, the unbiased press, was a picture of a five-year-old in handcuffs. Which, while indeed horrific, was only one of many stories told about the events (more…)
“I Hate This Place”
-Spider Jerusalem
“All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy… One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives.
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable…”
-H.L. Mencken, “The Smart Set” (more…)
While the White House and a couple of Senators are loudly Trump-eting about the alleged Russian involvement in an email hack, we’re missing out on a major news story: The civil war in Syria is all over bar the shouting. (And inevitable reprisals.)
Don’t mistake me: The email thing is important. I believe it will drive our news for much of the next year, and the results could be extremely impressive. But Aleppo is huge, and (more…)
Every time something horrific happens, every op-ed writer in America puts out their thoughts on it: why it happened, how it could have been prevented, the senselessness of it all. And what’s sad is, a lot of people are getting sick of it, ignoring it, moving on. We see so very much that’s horrible and we just can’t face one more thing in a litany of more things. And the last thing we need is some self-important armchair political hack telling us who did what wrong and who’s at fault.
So why am I, yet another self-important windbag, writing anything? Why do you need another helping of empty wind from someone else who doesn’t matter? Why do we need any of them yapping at us when what we really want to do is grieve in peace or fix the damn problem already and get on with the business of living but this time in safety?
Good questions. Here’s the answer: (more…)
Some of my olde– uh… more experienced readers may remember when gasoline first topped one dollar a gallon at the pumps. If you’re finding it tough to put a date to the event, here’s some hints: Jimmy Carter was President, there were hostages in Iran (which was about to be at war with Iraq), and America was in the grip of an energy crisis. (more…)
Bombings in Egypt and Lebanon. Shootings in Paris and California. Terror attack after terror attack after terror attack.
Folks, we’re in the situation we’re in because people are ignorant and easily deluded. I refer both to terrorists, exploited and manipulated into committing their ghastly acts, and to you the reader. In order to oppose this, (more…)
The New York Daily News is renowned for attention-grabbing headlines. “Anything to sell a paper” could be their motto (and some say it is). Today, they’ll be printing “God Isn’t Fixing This” on the front page as a slap at the Republican presidential candidates. (more…)
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
– Albert Einstein
A friend and I were discussing this tonight, and we saw it in different ways.
“Science is science, religion is religion. They are NOT mutually dependent,” he said. As he continued, I had to admit I saw the justice in what he was saying. The two are quite distinct, two very different ways of seeing the world, for science applies logic to perception and measures the universe, seeking facts, finding and testing rules; whereas religion seems to apply its own rules to the universe, forcing everything that exists to fit into the laws and commandments and rituals of the faith. (more…)
(NOTE: This article has been revised again; the pros and cons listed have been kept up to date, even though the intro is vintage campaign.)
Major media outlets are full of reactions to recent announcements that the President will be asking to increase the ceiling on Syrian refugee acceptance for next year. Unsurprisingly, the stories are largely focused on the reaction to the announcement; contention drives the media profit mill, and so it would be unusual to see any other form of response from them.
Since it’s the height of the upcoming Presidential election cycle, it’s also not surprising that every hopeful candidate has (more…)
The Not Fake News 
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