Gadfly

A Choice: Chateaubriand or Road-Kill Possum

May 9th, 2018

A Swift Solution for Poverty
In response to a column I had written about economic inequality in the United States, a reader emailed me about her experiences. After growing up on a farm near a small Minnesota town, she began cleaning homes for upper-class doctors, politicians, and bankers in the state. She saw wealth in homes, cars, and furnishings that surprised her. But she was absolutely appalled that the owners knew nothing about how other people in a lower economic level lived. In…

Of Nuclear Buttons And Slippery Screwdrivers

May 2nd, 2018

So we have reached the stage where we have Little Rocket Man and the dotard Emperor Donald posing their fingers just slightly above nuclear buttons. To give you some solace, ‘tis said the Pentagon chiefs have removed the nuclear codes from the briefcase carried by a guy who follows our Great Leader. We can only hope the briefcase is empty. Emperor Donald fired the government’s top nuclear expert in the first week of his administration. When we look at just two of our Great Leaders…

Some things are for the birds

April 25th, 2018

Maybe We Should Quote "The Raven" More
The January National Geographic magazine has a remarkable article about the 10,000 species of birds that live around and above us, and it prompted me to recall some of the species I have observed in my lifetime. As a five-year-old farm boy and the youngest of five kids, it was my responsibility to feed the chickens, ducks, and geese we raised for eggs and table. I remember holding the heads and bodies of birds on a wooden block as my mother brought…

What Is The Christian Thing To Do?

April 18th, 2018

Does That Old-Time Religion Signal The End Of Rational Thought?
An incident about gender identity in the Maryland Legislature last week magnified a microcosm of what we are going through in the United States about religion in the Age of Trump. Republican Senator Bryan W. Simonaire of Anne Arundel Countyl, the father of seven children who had strongly opposed same-sex marriage laws, stood up in the Senate chamber and spoke passionately for a law that would allow conversion therapy in…

Are We Losing Einsteins and Carvers?

April 11th, 2018

Don’t We Give A Damn About Education Anymore?
The Donald has been going on a tweet-firing rampage lately, evidently changing his status from king to emperor. Some kings must have approval from their courts and courtiers, but emperors have absolute rule over everybody. So here we have our Emperor-Great Leader, one of the few leaders in the world who is totally ignorant of government, of our and world history, of all scientific fields, of philosophy, of psychology, art, literature,…

Enough To Make You Puke

April 4th, 2018

The NRA Gun Lobby And Republicans Pick Guns Over Kids
After the record-setting “March For Our Lives” protest on March 24, the $5 million-a-year National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre stayed in his bunker and remained tight-lipped, but his trolls dropped their AR-15s, climbed out of their militia foxholes, and put some of the most deplorable crap I have ever heard on the airwaves. One NRA troll said: “Today’s protests aren’t spontaneous. Gun-hating billionaires and…

A tiny island and a huge country

March 28th, 2018

The beginning and end of two similar societies

A thousand years ago, Polynesians paddled across the Pacific to find new islands to settle. They landed on a tiny, lush, uninhabited island and called it “Te Pito O Te Henua” which means “the navel of the world.”

And over 500 years ago, three ships loaded with Spaniards crossed the Atlantic and landed on a huge inhabited land mass.

Generations passed on the “the navel,” which later was called Rapa Nui, building a culture known for…

A broken and bewildered country

March 21st, 2018

Why is our life expectancy dropping?
We don’t grow bananas in this country but we are rapidly becoming a banana republic. Because of prescription and illegal drug deaths, a firearms death rate 25 times any other developed country, a high suicide rate, and a health care system for the privileged that ignores half of our population, our life expectancy rate is dropping for the second year in a row. We led the world in life expectancy in the 1960s but now are about 15th.

Our military…

What military-style rifles do to human bodies

March 14th, 2018

Bones exploding, organs disintegrating
Let’s get real for a few minutes. Several trauma surgeons, most with Iraq and Afghanistan war experiences, collaborated for a New York Times article, “Wounds from Military-Style Rifles? ‘A Ghastly Thing To See’.”

Rifles with muzzle velocities over 3,000 feet per second explode bones and disintegrate organs. They have the X-rays to prove it. A Sandy Hook first grader was hit by 11 rounds from a Bushmaster. The doctor conducting the autopsy…

Freedom and gun control

March 7th, 2018

When will the NRA gun cult and the gun lobby culture inherit the wind?
It took National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre eight days to crawl out of his cult’s foxhole to answer the murder of 14 high school students and three teachers and the wounding of 14 others in six minutes at Parkland, Florida.

I have listened to Wayne’s rants numerous times, but his appearance before the right-wing nuts at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was different. He was foaming at…

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