Computer voting is driven by the media circulation/ratings obsession

Why do we even have voting machines?

Word that Hart eSlate voting machines in Texas, which are also commonly used in states like Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Pennsylvania, many of them jurisdictions with tight races this election year, are switching party-line votes form one party to the other with disturbing frequency, beg the question that rarely gets asked:  Why do we need …

Business as usual:

US INF pullout will delight arms industry as it threatens to reignite Cold War

President Trump has been tearing up treaties since taking office, from halting negotiations on the TPP to NAFTA, but his latest threat to pull out of the nuclear deal, negotiated by President Reagan in the 80s, may be the biggest mistake of his disastrous presidency. Meanwhile, while Trump and his National Security Advisor, the neoconservative …

What about those White House 'kill lists'?

When It Comes to Having Leaders Who Murder the US is a Pace Setter

The brutal murder of sometime Washington Post visiting columnist Jamal Khashoogi, apparently on orders from Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader Prince  Mohammed bin Salman, has many American journalists and columnists in high dudgeon. How, they ask, can the US be allied to a country run by such a blood-thirsty leader? How can the US ally …

Different strokes for different folks

US ‘Outrage’ over Slaying of US Residents Depends on the Nation Responsible

The US media are in high dudgeon over the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi living in the US in self-imposed exile who among other things had been writing articles critical of the current Saudi royal leadership, and especially Saudi Defense Minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Certainly outrage is justified. It …

It’s not all bad as 'boofer' Brett sullies the whole institution

Kavanaugh on the High Court will be a Source of Ridicule

  It looks like Brett “I like beer” Kavanaugh will soon be the ninth member of the Supreme Court. The FBI has turned in a submissive fig leaf of a report on its cursory, rushed and presidentially circumscribed “investigation” into the claims of sexual abuse leveled against him by several women who assert that he …

Battle of the ages

Priciest US Weapon, the F-35, Just Attacked One of World’s Most Primitive Fighters, the Taliban

Why did the US military have a vertical-take-off F-35B launched from an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean make an attack on a Taliban position in Afghanistan? Let’s say one thing from the get-go:  It was not because it was the right weapons system for the job. Nobody’s mentioning several things about this Pentagon-touted first-ever …

Letter from Oxford:

UK’s NHS Offers Yank Visitor with Sudden Heart Problem Surprisingly Good and Affordable Care

What really struck me about the contrast between Britain’s National Health System and what we have here in the US was not how I was treated during a surprise five-day stay at an NHS hospital in Oxford, where I was sent last summer after suddenly becoming acutely short of breath — though my treatment was …

A confirmation hearing is a job interview, not a trial

Candidates for Appointment to Government Posts or Judgeships Don’t Have a ‘Presumption of Innocence’

Whatever your view of Brett Kavanaugh, let’s get one thing clear:  While he’s hoping to become the ninth justice of the US Supreme Court, he is not on trial. He is facing a confirmation hearing by the Judicial Committee of the US Senate. Republican backers of this clearly flawed and truth-challenged candidate are insisting indignantly, …

Book Review

Ron Ridenour’s ‘Pentagon on Alert: The Russian Peace Threat’

In the preface to his remarkable three-volume History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky, writing in 1930 about earth-shaking events in which he was a key actor, explains his view of writing history. He cites reactionary French historian Louis Madelin, who wrote that “…the historian ought to stand upon the wall of a threatened city, …