Anthony Samad: Every author in Los Angeles knew there was no greater advocate for reading than Dr. Nehemiah. Whenever she met you, she asked you, “What’s the last book you read?” Or, “What you working on? I know you’re writing!”
America’s Cheesiest Charttoppers Redux
July 31, 2010 By
Michael Sigman: Strong candidates for Part 2 included such stomach-churning charttoppers as Barry Manilow’s I Write the Songs (no, you don’t, not even this one, which was penned by Beach Boy Bruce Johnston), Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman (no, you’re not) and Starship’s We Built This City on Rock and Roll (no, you most definitely did not).
Toxic Oil Sludge Is Good as Gold for Republicans
July 31, 2010 By
Jerry Drucker: The gloomy, ghastly, glutted, gutted Gulf will not be able to supply many millions of Americans with food, or clean and healthy resort beach fronts, or Gulf businesses, perhaps for decades. What’s the solution to this mega problem?
Macondo Wellhead Flyover: Damage Control at The Source
July 31, 2010 By
Georgianne Nienaber: New Orleans film producer Bess Carrick wanted to see what the Gulf of Mexico looked like in the 48 miles between the tip of the Mississippi Delta and the blown Macondo wellhead for a series she is producing called The Barataria Chronicles.
Sugar Ray Robinson Cared for His Opponents in the Ring
July 31, 2010 By
Sherwood Ross: From his earliest amateur bouts on, Sugar Ray’s opponents didn’t know what hit them. Robinson won 69 of his 85 amateur bouts by knockouts, 40 of them in the first round, and never lost a fight.
Sex, Intersex, and the Making of “Normal”
July 30, 2010 By
Elizabeth Reis: Physicians are and have long been influenced by our larger social anxieties, especially concerning marriage and sexual desire. Medical management is fundamentally a cultural, not simply a scientific, endeavor.
Fox News: The Lynchmob’s Ticket Agent
July 30, 2010 By
David Love: The media-manufactured spectacle that is and was the Shirley Sherrod incident tells us all we need to know about Andrew Brietbart, Fox “News” and the dangers of extremist hack media – unregulated, irresponsible and unethical – run amok.
Failing the Test: One Question, No Answer at High School #9
July 30, 2010 By
Scott Folsom: he meeting was chaired pretty darn well by acting PTSA President Judi Bell. There was histrionics and name calling but no furniture or fruit was tossed and the angry multitudes did not resort to barricades School Police were not called.
Lame Duck Governor Fabricates Hoped-For Legacy
July 30, 2010 By
Boy’s Suicide: Avoidable Tragedy?
July 30, 2010 By
Ron Wolff: Los Angeles County Supervisors have been aware for years that several of their largest departments — Juvenile Probation and Children and Family Services among them — are dysfunctional. They claim to care — but the problems persist. There is one thing a leader does in urgent times — take urgent action!
Countdown to Zero: Nuclear Disarmament for Dummies
July 30, 2010 By
Ed Rampell: Zero is also original in terms of its own, new material, which includes interviews with a number of establishment figures and others, such as: the outed CIA operative Valerie Plame
Lessons of the UNITE HERE-SEIU Deal
July 29, 2010 By
Randy Shaw: The SEIU-UNITE HERE conflict also shows the peril of veteran labor leaders quietly deferring to destructive decisions by top union officials, a lesson that was supposed to have been learned from activists’ experience with Cesar Chavez and the UFW in the 1970’s.
Main Effect of the WikiLeaks Documents Is Political
July 29, 2010 By
Ivan Eland: So the only thing the WikiLeaks documents reveal is how persistent the post-9/11 war and nation-building fever continues to be among the foreign policy elite—even in the face of the dismal results on the ground for almost a decade and a majority opinion in America that the war is not worth fighting.
BP’s Final Lesson
July 29, 2010 By
Robert Reich: If BP emerges from this debacle fatter and happier than anyone imagined a few months ago, whatever happened to the idea of corporate accountability? Does this mean any giant corporation can wreak havoc and then get back to business as usual?
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Right Wing Lies
Tom Degan: This situation is not going to end anytime soon, I’m sorry to tell you. FOX Noise is not going anywhere, and an outright ban on half-witted extremists from the internet would be positively un-American.