MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell gets deserved kudos for nailing a Republican Congressman who opposes healthcare reform for the obvious unspoken reason: the Republicans do NOT want to give Obama any major victories that promise continued popularity with ordinary voters and taxpayers. In their wildest dreams the Republicans cannot imagine people...

Will there be enough swine flu vaccine?

Currently we ration health care in the U.S. based on job status, wealth, even race. I think swine flue vaccines should be auto-rationed based on a cultural divide that is unmitigated by modern science and seen clearly in today's headlines.

Regarding swine...

Less than six months after Dick Cheney lost his power position in Washington D.C., federal scientists have re-gained their freedom of speech. Today a report by more than thirty tops federal researchers spells out just how bad global warming will get in the U.S. It isn't pretty.

An average temperature...

"The old-fashioned concepts of 'debt' and 'property,' or 'liabilities' and 'assets,' are not fairly applicable to the facts of the case--except, of course, in the way of technical legal distinction. The old-fashioned law and legal presumptions, and the new-fashioned facts and usages are parting company, at this point ...."

This year, every major center of wealth or resources will make huge money decisions. There are gigantic government bail-outs in place or being argued over from Beijing to Washington D.C. How the money's spent matters not just because the "stimulus" might work or fail. Not just because of jobs, mortgages...

The Wall Streeters -- utterly unable to assess risk or control their own greed and cupidity -- have turned America into a socialist state, with the federal government now owning the largest two mortgage companies, an insurance giant and mounds of phony debt piled up by the madcap MBAs in...

You must pity the next president of these United States. He faces depression, and depression, and the economic slump which may very well be a depression. You can't tell because the "official" numbers are all rigged now to look much better than they really are. Does anybody believe inflation has...

Ask a thousand Americans what's special about Tuesday, April 22, and here's what you'd get:

It means I survived another Monday at work 43%
Pennsylvania Primary 38%
Income Tax Deadline 7%
Earth Day 2%
My Mother(Father's) Birthday/Anniversary 1%
Tiger Woods' Birthday 1%
Don't Know...

You and I are economic and political Lilliputians. Even as NGO members, consumers and voters--nothing gives us enough power to nudge American government or business toward the commonwealth. That's an old-fashioned word, long out of fashion. But there's a commonwealth and it matters. It's what politicians sense if they promise...

You think invading two Muslim countries has made the U.S. a tad unpopular?

Well, be prepared, because America's about to become a much more hated place than ever. And it won't take a single bombing, no napalm, nor even a division of Marines. All we gotta do is keep...

The newest terrorist plots are coming from the board rooms of financial corporations and the
staff meetings of the SEC and Federal Reserve. Those un-elected federal money brokers now hold center stage. Following years of specious preaching from evangelicals of the corporatist
faith, the Reagan and Clinton presidencies...

It's time for Americans, myself, included to go on a twelve-step program. For spending.

I think one old Reagan-omic myth has been forever shattered. The one that claimed de-regulation leads to better and healthier corporations and that resulting wealth would trickle down like honey to sweeten everybody's personal pot. Not...

Everywhere you look, there's another take on the U.S. relationship with China. To me it recalls
one of the strongest images in English culture. Sherlock Holmes and Professor James Moriarty, the arch-villain, locked in a mutual death grip as they go together over Reichenbach Falls. Don't take this...

Next year California takes a major step forward for the environment. A new California regulation
takes effect January 1, 2009. As far as I can tell our beloved E.P.A. has not the jurisdiction to interdict. This is the federal agency that quashed California and other states' attempt toreduce auto...

Congratulations, America. We just finished last in another survey. No. this isn't about most
athletes on steroids, dumbest celebrity blondes, or even greatest personal or government debt. This survey is about your health and mine.

Compared to 18 other industrialized nations, the U.S. finishes dead last in preventive health

Oil in troubled waters. Death to the polar bears?

The Cheney Regime is expected to ramp up its efforts to pillage American resources and the environment. And today they took a grand step in that direction. It was announced that on February 6, the Feds will offer up undersea...

1) De-annex Texas. I've suffered two Texas presidents. A slew of Asian land wars for what? Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, possibly Iran. I'm old enough to remember the 1960s cant about stopping North Vietnam because communism was marching across Asia. Dominoes were falling. So they tried to get...

There are many reasons to watch the current move in California to enact universal health care. The State's Assembly passed a bill that would create a California system very similar to the one now in place in Massachussetts. While California cannot claim firstness, it does have the claim on bigness...

Mattoon, Illinois, has just become the single most important spot on the globe for Big Coal. There a consortium of mining companies and electric utility companies are putting American tax dollars to work. Building a commercial coal-burning plant that is to have the latest in clean tech. To remain almost...

It's a clear double victory for the White House and its oil/auto allies. Perhaps their biggest win since U.S. soldiers occupied the Iraqi oil fields.

In the morning the President signs a new energy law giving the auto industry another twelve years to catch up with China. Then in the...