FEMA Trailers: Death Capsules for the Poor

Since the name of this blog has the word “toxic” in it, it only seems natural that I’d be interested in poisons. (Good example of mental poisoning here). And since I live in Alabama, one of the states hit hard by Hurricane Katrina, it makes sense that I’d be particularly concerned by ongoing and still-unfolding [...]

Read Full Post »

Number of the Day: 963, 000, 000

With the steep increase in food prices in 2008, the number of chronically malnourished has reached a staggering 963 million, mostly in the world’s poorest countries. (Source: here)
Sure, the sounds depressing, but then again, according to insiders, the neo-cons never existed. So that’s a positive development, right?

Read Full Post »

Tactics

I’m leaving the country today for a week. I’m off to the UAE, to a conference in Dubai, and then making a quick stop in Qatar before coming back to the US in time to herald the end of the Bush Years. Listening to his press conference today, I was reminded of just how awful [...]

Read Full Post »

American Image in the Global Eye

Since our nation is getting a gold star and standing ovation from every other nation in the world for electing Obama, we don’t have to worry about our global image anymore, right? Well, that assumes that we ever did to begin with. Hell, part of what makes this country such a grand and noble adventure [...]

Read Full Post »

Bush, Dan Rather and the Missing Years

I’ve always kind of liked Dan Rather. Sure, I might be a sucker for those Texas journalists. Willie Morris and Bill Moyers come to mind. But Rather, even with those awful, awful sayings, still seemed like a solid reporter, with a legit history of hard-hitting journalism. I respect the fact that he was never one [...]

Read Full Post »

The Department of Transportation: A Primer

So America’s Savior, the president elect, has announced that he is appointing another Illinois buddy to a position. This one? It’s every CSPAN viewer’s favorite! Ray LaHood, come on down! You’re now in charge of the DoT!
LaHood is a Republican (he famously presided over Bill Clinton’s impeachment vote), continuing the recent tradition of appointing someone [...]

Read Full Post »

It’s Called Taking Responsibility

Look, I’m not the one to usually wave the “personal responsibility” flag. Usually, I’m on the destroy “reform the structures” side of that conversation, viewing (Bill Cosby aside) the “personal responsibility” crowd as victim-blaming bootstraps capitalists. However, when I saw the news this morning that Shivraj Patil has resigned, it got me to reflecting on [...]

Read Full Post »

Iraq War: Where Are They Now?

The Iraq war has somewhat faded from public view as the economy has melted down into a bubbling gooey puddle of rancid liquid. However, it wasn’t that long ago that the deaths of tens of thousands of humans and expenditure of trillions of dollars was an actual issue. Obama was against it from the beginning. [...]

Read Full Post »

Ding, ding, ding!

There’s an episode of The Simpsons where Marge is trying to teach the kids about the value of money. She is trying to convince them to do yard work and offers to pay them for the chores. It goes something like this:
Marge: (after finding out that the kids bailed on their yard work) I see…no [...]

Read Full Post »

Sometimes the Rules Don’t Apply

In law school, we learned a lot of rules (the rule against perpetuities). Also at home (no ball in the house), at play (infield fly rule), and, obviously at “regular” school. Also in Bible school (yes, I went). In fact, Bible school and church had lots and lots of rules. Deuteronomy 14 outlines some of [...]

Read Full Post »