Healthcare, Prisons, Racism, Ageism, Politics, LGBTQ
Every Christmas season a large electric star visible for miles is illuminated on a mountainside overlooking Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to commemorate the time the holy family of Christianity took refuge in a manger on the night of Christ’s birth. This past Christmas, this city of 71,000 — whose principal landmark is the rusting remains of the [...]
More than a century ago, the preeminent black leader of his time made a prophecy that has come to pass. When blacks had little hope, Booker T. Washington stood alone in predicting that one day a black man would be president of the United States. Almost all Americans at the time would have considered this [...]
Here is some great news that should be no surprise to anyone really paying attention — after the Proposition 8 kerfluffle, this was inevitable: A federal court ruling was just issued that is based upon the notion — one held by decent and intelligent people all along — that the un-American, anti-equality, anti-LGBT Defense of [...]
Friday’s job report is likely to be awful. January’s job losses could easily top half a million. We’re deep into the most vicious of economic cycles: Consumers are slashing their spending because they’re perilously in debt and worried about keeping their jobs. But as a result, businesses are facing shrinking sales of goods and services, [...]
Abraham Lincoln, The Great Emancipator, has been much on our minds recently as Barack Obama moved into the White House. Exactly 200 years after Lincoln’s birth, Obama’s presidency is one fulfillment of the work Lincoln started. Lincoln shares his birthday with Charles Darwin, the other Great Emancipator of the 19th century. Though in different ways, [...]
Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said last October that the taxpayers shouldn’t fret about putting $250 billion in the nation’s banks: “This is an investment, not an expenditure, and there is no reason to expect this program will cost taxpayers anything.” But a draft report from the Congressional Oversight Panel for the TARP says Paulson [...]
Obama and Lincoln, okay; but “Obama, Sandburg, and Lincoln”? Lincoln scholar, poet, and folk singer Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) is seldom mentioned anymore, but that’s unfortunate. A half century ago he was, in the words of his friend Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson, “the one living man whose work and whose life epitomize the American dream.” During [...]
I know that it’s typical in the ad agency business for creative types to be about 14 years old but the trend seems to be slipping onto the client side, as well. Take the current commercial for the 2009 Lincoln Continental. Apparently, no one on either the agency side or at the client is old [...]
Every Friday the LA Progressive features a comment that was particularly noteworthy. This week we are featuring a comment submitted by Judith Traverso in response to Guy Geltner‘s “From After Guantánamo: The Crisis of U.S. Prisons and Lessons from the Medieval Past.” Judith writes: Thank you, Dr. Geltner, for your very interesting article on prisons [...]
A friend who lost his job in a newspaper washout some time ago said it made him feel alone and isolated in the city. He was describing the intense feelings of rejection that accompany sudden unemployment. He was talking about the loneliness that an outcast feels. I know that feeling. I became like him on [...]
Last week, after six ballots, the Republican Party elected its first African American party chair in the history of the party, former Maryland Lt. Governor, Michael Steele. This new “lovefest” with black America is almost too much to handle. First, a black president — now a black Republican Party Chair. We just don’t know what [...]
Anyone following attempts to hold George W. Bush and gang accountable knows about Vince Bugliosi’s best-selling book, which has finally just been mailed to all district prosecutors. Everything you can do to make a prosecution of Bush for murder happen is posted here. I just watched a still incomplete version of the forthcoming film of [...]
When you stop to think about it, people measure how well their lives are going not by their absolute state of being but by their situation relative to their expectations. For example, a poor person in a developing country may be ecstatic about getting a pair of shoes for the first time; in contrast, a [...]
The other shoe is about to be dropped. The California Supreme Court announced on February 3 that it would hear oral arguments March 5 over the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the November 2008 election ballot constitutional amendment which removed the right of same-sex couples to legally marry in California. And then the clock will begin [...]
After a publicity junket promoting the HBO documentary The Trials of Ted Haggard, which landed him on Oprah and Larry King Live, fallen evangelical star Haggard has risen from public obscurity to tell us he’s not gay. He’s “heterosexual with issues.” And the issues Haggard is referring to are his “sexual thoughts about men, but [...]
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