Health Warning

Posted by: Steve Belasco
Published on September 26th, 2009 @ 04:06:56 pm , using 1143 words
Category: Commentary

Autumn is here running as it does from mid-September to mid-December. It is a lovely season offering in many places the best weather and in others the colorful and passionate death throes of leaves. It is also, however, the flu season - that time of year… more »
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For Peter Marin (Poem by Jim Willems)

Posted by: Bill Pearlman
Published on September 23rd, 2009 @ 04:45:35 pm , using 127 words
Category: Commentary

thinking back to the rhythm of these years it seems the pages no longer captures poems that must be pressed against the world to insist on my right to be making but, rather, quieter now, inward the poem is a gesture of civility myself with mys… more »
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Tea Anyone?

Posted by: Steve Belasco
Published on September 21st, 2009 @ 04:16:27 pm , using 719 words
Category: Commentary

Back in the heyday of apartheid my friend Karl Beck said that the Afrikaaners (those white South Africans of Dutch origin who thought up apartheid) would all wake up some day and just go crazy. Mobs of them would appear on the streets mumbling and drooli… more »
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"1967: A Memoir" by Bill Pearlman

Posted by: Stace Johnson
Published on September 18th, 2009 @ 03:47:15 pm , using 3249 words
Category: Fiction/Memoir

It underwent so much sheer speculative wonder, it never settled into established history. It was our treasure, our folly, our unregenerative space-out. 1967. Files of breakdowns, overdoses, splendors. It was a shining day. Nobody could have predicted h… more »
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Not Just Black and White

Posted by: Bill Pearlman
Published on September 18th, 2009 @ 02:42:22 pm , using 430 words
Category: Commentary, Repetitions

Racism is only one of many factors driving the backlash against the president in town hall meetings and in demonstrations on Capitol Hill. Obama has been right to discount it, because a white president would feel some scorching heat, too. Just hours befo… more »
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Finding the RIGHT Voice

Posted by: Steve Belasco
Published on September 15th, 2009 @ 07:37:55 am , using 438 words
Category: Commentary

A lot of us have been struggling to find the right voice with which to discuss issues in the healthcare reform circus. And while rational, thoughtful analysis is fine and dandy, there is nothing quite like aggressive paranoia laced with ignorance and fei… more »
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Alan Firestone, M.D., on Health Care Reform

Posted by: Stace Johnson
Published on September 14th, 2009 @ 11:54:47 am , using 356 words
Category: Commentary, Interviews

(Posted on behalf of Bill Pearlman. -- Stace) I don't have answers for the health care reform crisis. I can only speak to things that I see as problems. People are afraid that if the government steps in with a public option that the government will b… more »
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From "Boy, Oh, Boy"

Posted by: Bill Pearlman
Published on September 13th, 2009 @ 09:03:52 am , using 478 words
Category: Commentary, Repetitions

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would in… more »
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For Jim Willems

Posted by: Bill Pearlman
Published on September 12th, 2009 @ 03:16:30 pm , using 171 words
Category: Commentary

               For Jim Willems, 65 And you, riding the currents you thought you'd be under, lifted, by the whitest of water into the deep pool where in the cool darkness sacrets are harbored -- oh, is it not true, all li… more »
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Fucci's Transmogrification (Poem by Neil Nelson)

Posted by: Bill Pearlman
Published on September 12th, 2009 @ 09:26:37 am , using 116 words
Category: Poetry, Commentary

   Fucci’s Transmogrification      I have seen him when in blood & rage he swamDante, Inf. XXIV, 129                                                                                                                                            … more »
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Shine On Revisited

Posted by: Steve Belasco
Published on September 11th, 2009 @ 10:57:08 am , using 828 words
Category: Commentary

I read Bill Dodd’s take on Obama’s speech. And I thought I had a mildly dark vision of the political scene. Perhaps a different lens will help, a softer ear. Ah, yes, here’s one. Now, let’s see. The President’s speech was advertised as a clarification, a… more »
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Shine On

Posted by: Bill Dodd
Published on September 10th, 2009 @ 07:27:20 pm , using 358 words
Category: Commentary

  Shine On   Anyone who got anything out of that "major" message from Pres. Obama last evening is a better empiricist examiner than me. And didn’t I hear some rather vague extension of well-being to all those employed by the healthcare industry,… more »
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Rep Wilson's Outburst at Health Care Speech

Posted by: Bill Pearlman
Published on September 10th, 2009 @ 08:19:10 am , using 192 words
Category: Commentary

Rep Joe Wilson(R-SC) yelled out at Obama's joint session of congress health care speech, 'you lie!' when Obama said illegal immigrants would not be covered in his plan. Wilson issued an apology and then called Rahm Emanuel to personally apologize to the… more »
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Obama Fights Back

Posted by: Bill Pearlman
Published on September 9th, 2009 @ 07:46:07 pm , using 198 words
Category: Commentary, Repetitions

Invoking the memory of Edward M. Kennedy's lifelong commitment to the quest for universal coverage, he sought to persuade progressives that it would be a catastrophic mistake to lose a chance to achieve a central liberal purpose first voiced by Theodore… more »
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And Back on Planet Earth...

Posted by: Bill Pearlman
Published on September 9th, 2009 @ 10:11:35 am , using 376 words
Category: Commentary

I lived in Louisiana in the early 70s. One of the neighbors invited me over for a drink at some point and made it clear to me that blacks don't belong in the white world. We had some black academics over for dinner on one occasion. They came to our house… more »
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Rant Time

Posted by: Steve Belasco
Published on September 8th, 2009 @ 11:03:51 pm , using 838 words
Category: Commentary

Each time I think it can’t get any more ridiculous it gets more ridiculous. And I would have the fleeting thought that some folks are placed on earth just for my amusement simply confirmed if were not for the influence these clowns are exerting. I am afr… more »
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BO's Wars and the New Afghanistan Strategy

Posted by: Steve Belasco
Published on September 7th, 2009 @ 07:55:23 am , using 927 words
Category: Commentary

The new Afghanistan “strategy” is not really about Afghanistan at all. It is a holding pattern. BO, as Red likes to call him, is spending his political capital elsewhere. He spent a fair amount on bailouts. He’s spending a lot more on health care. We’ll… more »
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Moyers directly to the American People on Health Reform

Posted by: Bill Pearlman
Published on September 6th, 2009 @ 10:58:10 am , using 639 words
Category: Commentary

This from Bill Moyers who has been in full voice throughout the health care reform debaate. I think having voices heard on this subject has been one of the great moments in recent US history. You hear so much raw emotion, disinformation, rage that it can… more »
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BO'S WARS

Posted by: Bill Dodd
Published on September 5th, 2009 @ 12:00:16 pm , using 185 words
Category: Commentary

BO’S IRAQS’   Never to be outdone by Simple George—W as we know and love him—BO will have two, at least: the Iran & Pakistan Wars. & you thought, thot, we were there fighting a hopeless war against an irremedial state in Afghanistan, mayb… more »
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Government-Run and It Works!

Posted by: Bill Pearlman
Published on September 3rd, 2009 @ 11:20:14 am , using 503 words
Category: Commentary, Repetitions

  Nicholas Kristof in today's NY Times reminds us of health programs that actually work. He argues that we have government-run fire departments, police, education, libraries, postal service. etc. Why so many people keep parroting the failure of governm… more »
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US Out of Afghanistan!

Posted by: Bill Pearlman
Published on September 1st, 2009 @ 03:46:23 pm , using 351 words
Category: Commentary

Even though violence exploded across Iraq after, and partly because of, three elections, Afghanistan's recent elections were called "crucial." To what? They came, they went, they altered no fundamentals, all of which militate against American "success,"… more »
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