The touchy subject of the triumphant return of Moqtada al-Sadr, a radical anti-American Mullah, to Iraq from his four year sojourn in Iran was handled differently in headlines:

The New York Times had a positive spin: Iraqi Cleric Embraces State in Comeback Speech

If, as seems reasonable, you read everything posted under this name and carefully consider all the biases expressed here, you would know how much Rachel Maddow has contributed to what gets regurgitated every week. Hers is the most significant broadcast there is, and the sanity she projects in this land of crazy may be all that keeps us from just running outside and screaming into the night.

 Rick Perlstein  writes a brief and enlightening history of the conservative battle to destroy  liberals in First Principles: The Role of Government,  part of the winter issue of Democracy Journal.  The republicans have used the power of media for many  more years than I had imagined and the paranoia that fuels the fight seems to have been around even longer.  (N.B. I’m taking just a few snippets from Perlstein’s article here, but I hi

                               (by permission, Anthony Freda, www.anthonyfreda.com)  Thanks, Anthony.  Easy to sell war to us, isn't it?

The next time some jackass contends that the American Civil War had nothing to do with slavery; show him this:

“When you are in Washington, remember what the voters back home want – less government and more freedom”[1]

(Jim DeMint, welcoming tea-party backed victors in the 2010 mid-term elections)

This is no ordinary day in American politics. This is the day power officially shifted in the House of Representatives from Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats to John Boehner’s Republicans. This is the day the inmates retook the asylum.

BACHMAN AND PALIN DISCUSSING STUFF

....at the big banks, hedge funds and Wall Street. Homeowners, non-profits, and religious institutions overdue taxes are being sold as tax liens by state and local governments, and bundled by big banks like Bank of America, and hedge funds like Fortress Investment Group.

There is a lot of back and forth on the blogs these days about what should or should or be done about the economy, jobs, the financial industry and what not. Some pointing to the president others to congress but most to each other. The problem with all of this is that most of the arguments are based on a premise that assumes a few fundamental myths but ignores some basic facts.

It was observed in passing yesterday, and probably not just here, that as a day of reckoning, today---New Year's Day---is a bit scary and never painless. The Jewish version of the new year adds the little "book of life contest"---who gets to be in it, and, ummmm, who not, but the secular version, with its resolutions and such, could drive a person to drink, which explains a few things. At least it is not the occasion a decade ago when we all had to consider how we managed to waste a whole millennium.

Sometimes after writing a long, rather ponderous piece like my last one, I like to follow it with a shorter and lighter version of more or less the same thing. This is some sort of a parallel text that grows out of its predecessor.

We are at the end of the first decade of a new millennia, something that doesn't happen every day. I've chosen two images to describe the decade we are leaving behind us. I imagine most people who wished to portray these years, would use the Twin Towers in flames, the idea being that "everything changed" when Al Qaida busted up New York. I don't think so. I think that "everything changed" when people began to see that even by running faster they weren't getting anywhere.

The first picture at the top of this piece is of Bernie Madoff, disguised as an Obama poster. By this I don't wish to insinuate that Obama is a crook like Madoff, I am more interested in illustrating disillusionment.

              A NON SMILER

Maricopa County, Arizona is so messed up right now; it is difficult to find a starting point from which any intelligent discussion could ensue.

Officials in different departments of the state are at each others’ throats.