Another culture war skirmish: Dissident rightwing Catholic school baseball team won’t play team with female 2nd base

While we watch the battle of how the battle over gay marriage affects the election (a battle, of course), real life marches on.  And in Arizona, that means another manifestation of right-wing craziness. This week, a Phoenix high school baseball team refused to play an opponent with a girl starting at 2nd base and so […]

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President’s support for gay marriage is great, but the battle isn’t over yet

Civil rights activists and those who believe in the separation of church and state have reason to rejoice at President Obama’s decision to come out of the closet and support gay marriage. But that one deed does not give gays the right to marry. It will still require a great deal of effort at the […]

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Soft drink advertisers want us to think that “smaller” means “small” and “fewer” means “few”

Four large manufacturers of processed beverages—The Coca Cola Company, the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, Pepsico and SunnyD—have joined forces to fight a common enemy: those small-minded people who worry that Americans are taking in way too many calories through the consumption of the sugar- and chemical-loaded concoctions. Their weapons of choice are the typical rhetorical […]

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Yahoo! poll suggests what’s really wrong with American politics—not many people really care enough to get informed

You would guess that most senior citizens and those approaching retirement will have heard of Wisconsin Republican Congressional Representative Paul Ryan. After all, he is the architect of the budget that proposes to radically gut Medicare and Social Security. And wouldn’t you think that most single mothers would have heard of Ryan, who after all […]

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Both Obama and Republicans play misdirection games with the anniversary of bin Laden’s killing

Both President Obama and the Republicans are playing misdirection games on the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden, using pseudo-issues to keep our minds off what should be our central concerns as we contemplate the capture and then illegal assassination of the symbol of anti-American terrorism. Obama was happy to get into a […]

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Business writer spins fantasy about the Walmart workplace and expects us to swallow it

What a coincidence. On the day after the Walmart Mexican bribery scandal broke across the globe, a story praising Walmart as an employer appeared as one of the 65 articles with photos that rotate in the box which serves as visual focus of the Yahoo! home page The supposedly autobiographical story spun by Travis Okulski, a […]

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Dumb-ALEC remark applies more to ALEC than to its opponents

If there were an annual “pot calling the kettle black” award, the early frontrunner would have to be Kaitlyn Buss, Director of Communications for the American Legislative Exchange Council, known more by its acronym, ALEC. Her comment came in a National Public Radio (NPR) report on Common Cause filing a complaint to the Internal Revue […]

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The ideology of consumerism has been around for decades, but it seems to be getting worse

Spring cleaning this year engendered a trip back in time, as I sifted through stacks of obituaries, old articles, papers, letters and photos. Nowadays when something in the media strikes my imagination or ignites my ire, I simply whip off a blog entry. But for years I would cut out the article, jot down some […]

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Has extensive coverage of comment about Ann Romney made her a symbol for women?

The news media insists on extending the flap about Hillary Rosen’s comment that Ann Romney can’t understand the economy and the struggles of most women because Ann has ”never worked a day in her life.” On National Public Radio this morning, Cokie Roberts said that Rosen handed the Romney campaign a gift. It’s this kind […]

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Whether Ann Romney understands plight of average woman depends on if she has cook or personal assistant

The news media immediately jumped on Democratic factotum Hillary Rosen when she accused Ann Romney, wife of the presumed Republican presidential nominee, of being unqualified to speak about the economy and the struggles of most women because Ann has ”never worked a day in her life.” Many have taken the remark to be a slur […]

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