Africatown News – By Joe Womack – On December 16, 2014 the Africatown Community attended a meeting hosted by The Yorktown Baptist Church to voice their opposition to local industries attempt to re-zone a section of Africatown just North of The Community Gardens from residential to industrial. More than 150 Africatown residents, supporters and friends…
By Bob Wells – I’m posting this on Christmas day and so I want to make it somewhat on topic, the problem is I’m not a Christian so I don’t celebrate Christmas. Beyond that, I despise the wanton waste and destruction that Christmas has become and I’ve been preaching against it for a long time.…
EDITOR’S NOTE: On Monday, Dec. 15 at 6 p.m. we will be talking with former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern about the US Senate’s report on torture. In 2006, McGovern returned his CIA medal to former House Intelligence Committee chair Pete Hoekstra, a Republican from Michigan – see the letter below explaining his reasons for doing…
Eschew Obfuscation – By Michael Douglass – I know this kind of deceitful seduction has been a part of American politics since our republic was born. But my mind is made up. Up until now, as cynical as I am, I bought into it. I hoped. I did. I’m guilty. But what I see now…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – MOBILE, Ala. – What if? What if we could figure out a way to bring American journalism back from the brink of death? Would it be possible to make American democracy work again for “the people?” Sitting here on the Gulf Coast riding out the winter of…
Education Matters – By Larry Lee – It looked innocent enough. Just another of the dozens of emails I get every day. Then I looked again and immediately did a double take. It was an email of an email. The first was from the Alabama State Director of the Alabama Federation for Children. He was…
Editor’s Note: Because we’re in the annual enrollment period for Obamacare I’m going to write about health care. I don’t pretend to understand most of this stuff, in fact, much of what I know I learned from a fellow blogger. For that reason I encourage you to go to her blog and read one of…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – MOBILE, Ala. — Where oh where is Jeb Bush and what is his position on the torture ordered by his brother? As the media across the world continues to cover the story about the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report just out on the Bush administration’s CIA torture program,…
Africatown News – By Joe Womack – The historical value of Africatown’s Hog Bayou was carved in stone long before the Oil Barons of the world discovered Africatown’s valuable wetlands. Africatown’s Hog Bayou will forever be known as the place in Mobile where the “African” slaves taught the “American” slaves how to feed themselves and…
Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – It’s incredible that, despite real progress in reducing climate-disrupting carbon emissions, the United States is still charging ahead with a “boom” in dirty fuels and extraction methods. It’s like swallowing aspirin as you beat your head against a wall. What gives? By now, it’s clear that the dirty…
By Bob Wells – This month I’m going to be doing posts on how our society got so addicted to stuff as evidenced in Black Friday and Christmas shopping in general. I’ll offer explanations and suggestions about what we can do about it including alternative ways to celebrate Christmas without the orgy of greed. This…
Eschew Obfuscation – By Michael Douglass – Virtually no one in America had ever witnessed such a horrific event live and free on television — until then. It was simultaneously more violent, more chaotic and more disturbing than maybe anything we’d ever seen. A handful of burly peace officers bearing down in concert on a…
By Bob Wells – As you might know I just went over to New Mexico for a week to spend time at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge at the Festival of the Cranes. Every November they hold a large Festival to celebrate the return of the Sandhill Cranes. It’s popular enough that photographers come…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – OAK MOUNTAIN, Ala. – My home town. That line from an old Andy Griffith episode keeps going through my mind this morning sitting in the campsite listening to the woodpeckers work. Passing through my hometown of Birmingham on the way to Mobile this week, I heard a…
By Robert Reich – This is the time of year when high school seniors apply to college, and when I get lots of mail about whether college is worth the cost. The answer is unequivocally yes, but with one big qualification. I’ll come to the qualification in a moment but first the financial case for…
Eschew Obfuscation – By Michael Douglass – It was all over before the shouting when county prosecutor Robert McCulloch opted to actually try the case before a secret grand jury as opposed to simply and traditionally allowing the matter to be tried in a public court of law. The fix was in from the start.…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – MARION, Va. – We made the drive down U.S. Highway 81 out of Maryland and into Virginia on Monday on our first migration south for the winter in the camper van, making it to a familiar spot along Hungry Mother Creek, one of those many babbling brooks…
By Bob Wells – Back in the summer of 2012 I was contacted by Michael Tubbs, a Professor at the University of Texas, about the possibility of being in a new documentary he was going to make about mobile living. He had started to do research on the topic and had come across my Website.…
By Bob Wells – I’ve just arrived back in Eherenberg, Arizona from my trip to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in central New Mexico. It was an amazingly wonderful trip that I liked so much I’m already planning to go again next year. I took four classes and they were all truly outstanding; I…
By Nicholas Sheppard – John Adams once described the vice-presidency as “The most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived.” In the 1930s, John Garner went one further, famously describing the office as being “not worth a bucket of warm piss”. Things have hardly gotten better since Garner’s time. Richard Nixon’s painfully wrought…
