The public has been struggling with excessive gas prices at the pump, but the whole time the oil companies have been piling up huge profits at the pulbic’s expense. Record profits have been posted by the oil industry, but now ExxonMobil (XOM) has announced a record shattering corporate profit record. According to USA Today (TM) the company has just announced third quarter earnings • Net income up 75% to $9.92 billion. That is the most a U.S. company has earned…
I knew Rush Limbaugh was an utter hypocrite after his repeated demand that white drug abusers be put in prison because they too often get away with illegal drug use while all the while he was a closet drug abuser. But, it’s clear he is also a school yard bully who advances his position not by rational argument, but by unseemly mocking of the physical disability of the seriously ill who disagree with him. His shocking behavior regarding Michael J….
Al Gore was in Seattle the day for a politcal rally. As he has elsewhere, he compared the skeptics of global warming to the conspiracy theorists who believe the U.S. actually faked the 1969 moon landing. He said "15 percent of the population believe the Moon landing was actually staged in a movie lot in Arizona" and there are still members in the Flat Earth Society who believe the earth is really flat. What is significant is the adminstrations claim…
FRAMING THE ISSUES UC Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff has written articles and published books on the significance of using language to frame issues and in particular how the Republicans and right wing conservatives have employed this technique to conceal their true intent. Frank Luntz wrote the play book for the Republicans on framing has developed many of the popular Republican framing of issues. For example, the Republican frame for "trial lawyer" is "frivolous lawsuits" that run up the cost…
The Seattle PI of October 24th had two articles about money. The first was an Associated Press report about the record earnings of the oil industry. It reported that five of the largest energy companies are expected to report combined 3rd quarter earnings of "…more then $30 billion dollars…" This industry has been allowed a free hand in price gouging of the American public. This country’s continued dependence on fossil fuel is the source of much of our nation’s problems,…
Father Hung T. Nguyen is a Vietnamese born pastor at a small Catholic church in my home town of Gig Harbor, Washington (population 6400 people) He is an excellent communicator. I’ve noted the things that make him a good speaker. He clearly takes time preparing. He has excellent timing, does not speak too quickly, uses voice inflection and gestures with congruence with an open stance. He speaks simply in words everyone understands with examples and stories. The content of his…
Surveys about how people feel regarding the poor, the homeless and the disadvantaged report not merely a lack of sympathetic concern, but resentment toward them. Perhaps it is the result of the political attitude of this administration and Congress that poroduces this attitude or perhaps this adminstration merely reflects the attitude of the voters. However, political support for the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and poor by this Congress is unhealthy and unAmerican. The red and blue…
In the classic 1949 movie The Third Man staring Joseph Cotton and Orsen Wells, Wells says to Cotton "In Italy under the Borgias, they had warefare, terror, murder, bloodshed – but, they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock" Struggle can be beneficial as the oft quoted statement of Friedrich Nietzsche "what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger" says.
Someone sent me an e-mail of a talk by Navy Captain Dan Ouimette given in Pensacola in 2003 entitled "America Needs to Wake Up" Captain Ouimette argues that America has failed to respond with sufficient retaliatory force to terrorist attacks starting in 1979 when the American Embassy in Tehran was targeted as well as the attacks which followed to the present time. He argues America has been under "constant attack" since then because of our lack of enough military response….
Garrison Keillor is a masterful story teller as well as a wise commentator on America and it’s politics. For a link to A Prairie Home Companion website: http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/
