Stuart Lyle Trump says, “China,” the World Jumps Trump and the GOP have decided that having failed to act effectively to stem the coronavirus pandemic, they can draw attention away from their failure by pointing the finger at China. After all, it is clear that this evil disease originated in China. Is it all that…
Dan Mason Do ya feel lucky punk? Ladieees and Gentlemen!!!” Gather ‘round the table and place your bets! Everybody gets a chance, everybody is REQUIRED to make a bet. The only bets accepted are your lives… or one of your family members (the older the better), or the life of a neighbor, an acquaintance, or…
Stuart Lyle In the era of information overload, it is essential to distinguish between what is misleadingly called “fake news,” and a downright lie. They sound related, but they are not synonymous. In fact, the relationship between the two is more complex, since calling valid reporting, i.e. “news,” fake is a lie itself. A lie…
Stuart Lyle Mainstream news media have worked hard, if unwittingly, to undermine one of the foundations of democracy: a free and critical free press. It may sound contradictory, but it is the press itself that has failed to grasp the White House strategy that is intended to make the news media redundant. While conscientiously laboring…
P.J. Sullivan Why do so many people vote against their own interests? Because they are misinformed. Why are they misinformed? Because they get their news—and their views—from the media: CLIMATE CHANGE. Hurricanes, wildfires, floods, droughts, heat waves are amply covered in the media, but as natural disasters, usually with no mention of the human activities…
Our European correspondent explores Trump Fatigue. Alex Dunn Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. Can you remember when many left-leaning observers considered that George W. Bush was the worst president in living memory? Every couple of months, the “misunderestimated” President would assault the English language and we would all chuckle? The War on Terror…
b. traven I’m ninety three now and Kurt Weill’s “September Song” can bring me to tears. Not just because it hearkens back to my lost youth, but also its poignancy of “loss” reverberates to my sadness over the loss of our country to greed and vicious mediocrity. My youth was spent in a war that…
Don Rose Sports, the flag and the national anthem are so interlinked that an old gag has it that the last two words of the “Star Spangled Banner” are “play ball.” Furthermore, ignoring the rituals associated with the anthem – singing, standing, saluting or placing hand over heart are viewed in many quarters as a…
b. traven With oil leading the way, the drop in world commodity prices has had a a politically destabilizing effect, particularly strongly on South America’s most politically progressive regimes, including Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, and Ecuador. Although oil is the most prominent of these commodities, falling mineral and agricultural products prices, like soybeans native to…
Dan White Christina Borjesson’s 2013 doc about TWA Flight 800, a really good movie, has journalists talking about black hole issues in journalism and how the Flight 800 story was one. No matter what any of these journalists did, none of their journalistic efforts yielded any light on that story—it was like all light got…
The Contrary Perspective 