Gadfly

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…

Deportation might be one answer

December 14th, 2016

Firearms kill one and wound two Minnesotans every day

When 23-year-old law clerk Chase Passauer was killed in April of 2016 in the St. Paul law office of North Star Criminal Defense, someone finally kept track of how much his death cost.

The eight bullets fired into his body cost about $3.00, but the crime committed by an ex-felon who should not have had a firearm in the first place ended up costing society about $7 million. That sum included the costs of the investigation,…

A long way to go

December 7th, 2016

Things to consider

In this age of the disappearing middle-class and the greatest income inequality in our history, I see the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is sponsoring a fund drive called KeepThem Ruby, to repair and preserve Minnesota’s own Judy Garland’s leather, sequined, and glass-beaded slippers from that epic “The Wizard of Oz.” Holy Toto, they think it will take $300,000 to fix the 80-year-old shoes, so donors will receive tote bags by a Tony…

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