Could a Massive Climate Shift Really Happen? – The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – LURAY, Va. — It’s been so cold the past couple of days that I’ve felt like a character in the movie “The Day After Tomorrow.” I woke up just before dawn this morning and the iPhone weather said it…
By Robert Reich – The richest Americans hold more of the nation’s wealth than they have in almost a century. What do they spend it on? As you might expect, personal jets, giant yachts, works of art, and luxury penthouses. And also on politics. In fact, their political spending has been growing faster than their…
By Nicholas Sheppard – It’s a growing trend in the age of social media — quirky and awkward moments involving politicians and public figures that go viral, piercing the monotony of carefully scripted public appearances and exposing the best efforts of spin doctors and image-conscious, risk-averse politicians. We get a strange, silly buzz from quirky…
If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive. — Eleonora Duse By Bob Wells – Sometimes I get to…
Eschew Obfuscation – By Michael Douglass – So, we smoked a turd in hell with Satan himself while midterm fires raged all around us. We opted for that as opposed to showing up at the polls. A Michele Bachmann bathroom stall door closed, a Joni Ernst toilet overflowed and fecal chocolate logs made their way…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – THURMONT, Md. – The weather forecast is calling for a dusting of snow here in the woods north of Washington, D.C. Thursday night, which we might as well call the first act of winter after one of the most lovely falls in memory for the people of…
Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – What a difference a week makes. This morning we awoke to the news that President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry have negotiated a historic joint announcement on climate change and clean energy cooperation. Coming from the world’s two largest economies and two biggest carbon emitters, the new…
By Robert Reich – The President blames himself for the Democrat’s big losses Election Day. “We have not been successful in going out there and letting people know what it is that we’re trying to do and why this is the right direction,” he said Sunday. In other words, he didn’t sufficiently tout the Administration’s…
By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. – If you are an educated liberal, an urban progressive Democrat or just an independent American voter looking for candidates to make government work better in the U.S., you are probably severely disappointed at the outcome of the election on November 4, 2014, concerned about the next two years…
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” – John Steinbeck Eschew Obfuscation – By Michael Douglass – Gas is at three bucks a gallon. Unemployment is under 6 percent and the stock market is through the roof. Everything Republicans say they…
Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – I’m not going to lie, this week’s election was a blow. That’s exactly why we’re doubling down now, and I need to know you are too. Friends of Big Oil have taken control of the Senate, and they have a 100-day action plan that reads like Big Oil’s…
Thomas Jefferson As A Tactful Tactician – The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – MONTICELLO, Va. – In the introduction to one of the versions of The Writings of Thomas Jefferson available online at Project Gutenberg, former West Virginia Governor George W. Atkinson describes Jefferson as the quintessential tactful political tactician and statesman. “Thomas…
Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – Oil prices have dipped lately. In the short term, that’s probably good news (unless you’re an oil company or a petrostate). If we look at the big picture, though, it’s a lot less relevant. That’s because oil prices don’t reflect the true costs of extracting and burning oil…
By Robert Reich – Commenting on a recent student suicide at an Alaska high school, Alaska’s Republican Congressman Don Young said suicide didn’t exist in Alaska before “government largesse” gave residents an entitlement mentality. “When people had to work and had to provide and had to keep warm by putting participation in cutting wood and…
Eschew Obfuscation – By Michael Douglass – We are this close to the midterm elections and the goddamn GOP is about to close it hard on irrational fear. Isis and Ebola. Fear porn. How did we get here? Completely random elaborately imagined clusterfucks that would not survive the advent of oxygen or sunlight if applied.…
By Bob Wells – It’s been a big month for those of us who get our internet from cell providers so in this and the next post were going to talk about getting internet data from cell signals. In today’s post we’re going to talk about two big things that happened this month. It’s going…
Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – The fossil-fuel divestment movement has been on a roll lately to the tune of $50 billion, but one of its biggest successes happened last month: The world’s most profitable oil company squirmed. Exxon Mobil’s vice president of public and government affairs published a critique of divestment that concluded…
By Robert Reich – Imagine a system of college education supported by high and growing government spending on elite private universities that mainly educate children of the wealthy and upper-middle class, and low and declining government spending on public universities that educate large numbers of children from the working class and the poor. You can…
Eschew Obfuscation – By Michael Douglass – I still remember vinyl. The whole audio visual experience of riding my bike to the record store, buying a vinyl album, bringing it home, removing the shrink wrap, putting it on the turntable. I remember setting the needle down, reading the liner notes, the smell of polyvinyl chloride…
Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – California may be famous for its beaches, but what really defines the state’s geography are its many mountain ranges (and I’m not just saying that because the Sierra Club took its name from one of them). Last Friday, President Obama permanently protected one of those mountain ranges —…
