Gadfly

A one-way ticket to Tombstone USA

March 8th, 2017

Is it really high noon all over the country?

The inconvenient truth of unintended consequences has struck again. The National Rifle Association, under the leadership of top-gun Wayne LaPierre, once described by New York newspapers as “the craziest man on earth,” has been pushing for every kind of gun-carrying scheme, with or without permits, with or without any kind of firearm training, whether the carrier is completely nuts or not, and whether the firearm is concealed, open, or…

Republican cop-out: ‘Well, I’m not a scientist’

March 1st, 2017

Onward, science soldiers, marching off to war -- to fight ‘alternative’ facts

After just a month of the reign of King Donald the First, about 1,800 of our top scientists registered their frustration with the unscientific mess in the White House and Congress by publicly protesting the administration’s actions in Boston’s historic Copley Square on Sunday, February 18.

Most of the protesters were members attending the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of…

That old time religion isn’t good enough for anybody

February 22nd, 2017

North Dakota bigotry, a national one-week strike, and plutocratic plundering

First, a rant about the Republican North Dakota Legislature. There’s no doubt there are about 70,000 North Dakotans you consider to be second-class citizens. They are your gay brothers and sisters, your aunts and uncles, your neighbors, your co-workers and your bosses, your sons and daughters, your nurses and rehab therapists, and the people sitting next to you in the pews of your church.

Because they are…

Sycophants, plutocrats, and pitchforks

February 15th, 2017

The game is rigged

Last year 25 American hedge fund managers, whose income tax rate is about half of what their secretaries pay, made enough billions to fully pay the salaries of over 450,000 teachers.

Thirsty and hungry at Super Bowl 51 this year? A glass of beer was $12 and a hot dog $8, a soda and a few pretzels were only $17, a bottle of water sold for $6, and a parking spot three blocks away charged $50. Want to watch the game from a stadium seat? Seats averaged $6,250.

The research…

Bye-bye, Miami—Greenland is melting

February 8th, 2017

Congress diddles while the Earth wobbles

The first real study of the changes in the earth’s climate took place at Camp Century in Greenland, in 1960, which was supposedly built by the United States to test Arctic construction methods and carry out “other research.” Scientists from the engineering school of Toronto’s York University drilled the first ice core samples in order to study the earth’s climate.

Have you ever heard of Camp Century? It’s a big deal. It had a mobile…

I’ve Always Lived In A Great Country

February 1st, 2017

Dear Mr. President:

I was born in 1932 during the Great Depression on 180 acres of sand and rocks near Little Falls, Minnesota. I played Anti-Over and Pump-Pump-Pull-Away with my 20 schoolmates from surrounding farms in a little country school for eight years. I thought I was living in a great country.

My four older brothers and sisters and I milked 20 cows before breakfast and milked the same 20 before supper. We read books by kerosene lamp. We warmed and cooked by a wood-coal stove in…

Here comes Trumpistan

January 25th, 2017

How to make America a third-world country again

A national columnist asked the question, “Did we really elect Donald Trump to be president of the United States?” Even with all the investigations pertaining to Russian intervention, voter repression, Wikileaks exposure of Democratic Party e-mails and the FBI director’s letters to Congress about Hillary’s private server and e-mails. We probably will never know.

In the 2000 presidential election the five Republican appointees on the…

Weeping and wailing about wealth

January 18th, 2017

A most unpopular Bible verse

I have been listening to religious sermons for almost 78 years since I passed to my “age of reason” at seven, so I have “analyzed” about 4,000 sermons give or take, 20 years worth delivered by Roman Catholic priests and 58 years by Lutheran ministers. I think I have a sharp ear for the turn of a phrase or a potent verse.

I swear on a stack of King James’s I had never heard James 5:1-6; this eye-and-ear catching bible verse about the subject of…

Gender myths and beliefs

January 11th, 2017

Sex chromosomes XX and XY just don’t cut it anymore

In my last column of December, I wrote that the January 2017 special issue of National Geographic would be totally devoted to the issue of gender around the world. I have received my copy, so I have spent hours marking up the 152 pages that have explored the science of homosexuality and its effect on social systems in civilized and not-so-civilized areas of the world.

I think this effort is the most important document published in at…

From Lucy to Ellen

December 21st, 2016

What kinds of freedom do you want with your religion?

Here we go again. The Telescope Media Group in St. Cloud, Minn. wants to get into the wedding photography business—but does not want to video, film, or photograph same-sex weddings.

In other words, they want to have the religious freedom to discriminate against their fellow human beings. They claim they are Bible-believing Christians who do not want to be forced “to produce a conception of marriage that directly contradicts their…

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