General Discussion

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By Linn Washington, Jr.

Even in politics, where alarming perversions too often parade as acceptable standards, it is pretty astounding for a politician to assert that inadvertent error is the reason for his failure to report receipt of gifts and other free items valued at $160,050 over a five-year period.

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

By Dave Lindorff

While I periodically have written commentaries dissecting and pillorying news articles in the New York Times to expose their bias, hypocrisy half-truths and lies, I generally ignore their editorials since these are overtly opinions of the management, and one expects them to display the elitist and neo-liberal perspective of the paper’s publisher and senior editors.

 This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

By Dave Lindorff

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[Note for TomDispatch Readers: TD is taking this weekend off. Next post: Tuesday, August 16th. Tom]

By Dave Lindorff

What if the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services were to report that $6.5 billion in spending by that federal agency was unaccounted for and untraceable? You can imagine the headlines, right? What if it was $65 billion? The headlines would be as big as for the first moon landing or for troops landing on Omaha Beach in World War II.

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The Greatest Show on Earth 
How Billions of Words, Tweets, Insults, and Polls Blot Out Reality in Campaign 2016 
By Tom Engelhardt

By John Grant

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[Note for TomDispatch Readers: TD is taking this weekend off. Next post: Tuesday, August 9th.  Tom]

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By Ron Ridenour

(This is the first of seven articles on the reality of Scandinavia’s “socialism”)

I first met Denmark’s last truly Social Democratic Prime Minister, Anker Joergensen, in his state office, unannounced, in late 1980.

Grethe and I had just been married. We had met the year before in Los Angeles where I had been a “participatory journalist”, and activist for social/racial/gender equality and against the Vietnam War. I wanted to start a new life with Grethe in her peaceful, social democratic land.

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But it’s not just the world that has lost peace.

I lost my peace.

By Dave Lindorff

 This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

 This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

By Linn Washington, Jr.

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[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Even TD knows when it’s beat. Thursday is clearly a media day reserved for pure Trumpery. There’s no point in fighting it, so this site is taking it off. The next post will be on Sunday, July 24th. Tom]

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By Dave Lindorff

            President Barack Obama made an eloquent plea for sanity and peace following the latest deadly assault on police officers -- this time a gunman with an assault rifle shooting and killing three cops in Baton Rouge and wounding another three, one critically injured.

If asked to identify the world’s superpowers today, most people would name the United States, Russia, and China.  Although many citizens of these countries maintain that this status is based on the superiority of their national way of life, the reality is that it rests upon their nations’ enormous capacity for violence.

Certainly none has a peaceful past.  The United States, Russia, and China have a long history of expansion at the expense of neighboring countries and territories, often through military conquest.  Those nations on their borders today, including some that have wrenched themselves free from their imperial control, continue to fear and distrust them.  Just ask Latin Americans, East Europeans, or Asians what they think of their powerful neighbors.

By John Grant

Someone's crying, Lord, kumbaya

- From the Gullah song meaning, Lord, come by here and help us

One of the many interesting details to be learned by understanding human psychology is how a person's unconscious fear works in a myriad of ways to make them believe that they bear no responsibility for a particular problem.

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