Concluding his final meeting with world leaders at the G8 summit, U.S. President George W. Bush pumped his fist into the air and boldly announced, “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.” Probably thinking he was being amusing, Bush got no props from the other world leaders who stood by with looks of shock on their […]

It is a well known myth that while fires destroyed the great city of Rome, the emporer Nero sat on his rooftop playing his lyre and watching the flames engulf the heart of his empire. Whether true or not, the image persists and the popular saying “Nero fiddled while Rome burned” is readily applied to […]

(photo from freegan.info, courtesy of falcophoto.com)  They eat from dumpsters. The shun regular employment. They live in abandoned dwellings. You might think of them as “bums.” They prefer to be known as Freegans. And their ranks may well be growing.  Dubbed “strategies for a sustainable life beyond capitalism,” the Freegans may well be on to […]

Neo-conservatives and the Bush Administration like to paint the 1994 Agreed Framework deal on North Korea’s nuclear program as a failure of Bill Clinton’s foreign policy efforts. They point out that North Korea continued to manufacture plutonium after agreeing not to, and that their breach of the agreement amounts to Bill Clinton having let the North […]

Can I get a “No Shit Sherlock” from the group? A recent AP-Yahoo poll shows that consumers don’t have a rosy outlook for their financial futures any time soon. Because of high gas prices. From cancelled vacations to finding new jobs, people are struggling to cope with the high price of fuel. And they don’t […]

Boy oh boy, George W. Bush must be doing the happy dance in the Oval Office this morning as newspapers and media outlets are all chanting the same verse: personal incomes in May rose to the highest levels in 33 years!  What? I thought we were in some kind of recession. And rising gas prices […]

Some things are repeated so often that they become accepted as truth, despite the fact that there is little reality attached to them. In politics, one of these “truths” is that Democrats will always raise taxes and Republicans will always try to reduce taxes. But how true is this really? And maybe more importantly, what […]

On paper, public transportation is a fantastic idea. You can move more people with less vehicles. You can move more people with less energy. You can keep less vehicles on the road, causing a decrease in emissions and pollution. And you can offer low cost transit to people who can’t afford personal vehicles. Boiled down […]

Despite the ravings of American televangelists, most religious Americans dispute the idea that the only way to eternal life after death is through Jesus. This will be news to the Pat Robertson’s of the airwaves… According to a survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, fully 70% of Americans who have […]

Conservatives have a mantra- the market is king. They feel that any government regulation of business activity is too much, and further, that if a consumer is too “stupid” to understand all the fine print legalese then too bad, so sad. To make money is the ultimate goal, regardless of who you throw under the […]