Dec 8 2013 - 7:15pm
Just when you didn't think anything else could go wrong for President Obama's signature domestic piece of legislation, Obamacare got a taste of "friendly fire" this week.
Yes, the President can't blame the press, the bureacracy, uninterested young people, or even the Republicans this time.
In fact, when it comes to enrolling one's staff into the Obamacare system, Republican House Speaker John Boehner does better by the President than even one very visible leader in Obama's own Democratic Party. Read more
Dec 9 2013 - 11:50pm
“And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.” -- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Authenticity is one of the most important qualities to teach young people. To be truly who you are, to be comfortable in your own skin and to walk your talk, is essential to not just personal happiness but is also requisite for building a better, more just and humane world. Unfortunately, teaching authenticity is challenging in a society that is dominated by hypocrisy. Politicians manipulate, deceive and outright lie with such regularity it is almost amazing when one does not do so. Celebrities demonstrate to children and youth that it is acceptable to say one thing and do the complete opposite Below is a short list of recent hypocrisy by leaders and celebrities.
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Dec 8 2013 - 4:47pm
In October, the US Congress passed a continuing resolution, which among other things, enabled the federal government to again raise its debt limit. Much of the media immediately praised the action, as the shut-down “crisis” was finally over, and the government re-opened for business. However, little attention was given to the real crisis, a much deeper problem that is being disregarded within the beltway of our nation’s capital—a true catastrophe that is also being utterly ignored by our own state’s oblivious federal representatives. Read more
Dec 6 2013 - 1:27pm
Google may have been, unil now, the Obama of hip internet monopolies. No matter how many nations the President bombs, people still put Obama peace-sign stickers on their cars. No matter how many radical rightwing initiatives Google funds, people still think it's a "progressive corporation" -- How could it not be? It's making progress!
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Dec 5 2013 - 2:42pm
Full appreciation is due to Jamaica’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, A J Nicholson, for taking the initiative to invite Trinidad and Tobago’s Foreign Minister Winston Dookeran for talks over travel and trade issues that had reached boiling point between the two Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries. Equally, Dookeran deserves credit for the level-headed, unassuming and sympathetic manner in which he treated the discussions with members of the Jamaica government and the private sector.
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Dec 2 2013 - 4:16pm
I have just completed reading Mr. John LaForge's indictment of the American
American armed forces and any president who assesses them in any positive manner. (Link:
http://www.huntingtonnews.net/77601). Frankly, I share many of his criticisms of the inexcusable actions he describes.
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Dec 2 2013 - 12:14pm
By Laura Finley & Joseph Schroer
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) youth are among the most vulnerable to bullying and harassment, both in and out of schools. The Gay Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) conducts a biennial National School Climate Survey in which they measure how frequently bullying of LGBT students occurs in schools and the responses to it. The 2011 survey includes responses from 8,584 students between the ages of 13 and 20. Students were from all 50 states and the District of Columbia and from 3,224 unique school districts. Results indicated that eight out of 10 LGBT students (81.9 percent) experienced harassment at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation, three-fifths (63.5 percent) felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation and nearly a third (29.8 percent) skipped a day of school in the past month because of safety concerns.
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Nov 28 2013 - 10:16am
Relations between Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago are becoming increasingly difficult. This deterioration in relations between two of the most influential countries in the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) does not serve the interests of either country or the Community as a whole. Read more
Nov 27 2013 - 6:32pm
In response to regular reports of atrocities by US soldiers, drone controllers, pilots and interrogators, the White House routinely tries to help. Every president promises to honor our armed forces and says ours is the finest military of all, etc. At last year’s Veterans’ Day ceremony, president fill-in-the-blank boasted, “America is and always will be the greatest nation on Earth.” This Nov. 11th, Mr. Obama said that since 9/11 the US is “defining one of the greatest generations of military service this country has ever produced,” and, of course,“[W]e have the best-led, best-trained, best-equipped military in the world.”
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Nov 27 2013 - 12:24pm
Gratitude is quite a unique emotion. Many experiences in this life can make us feel happy or even deep joy. But gratitude combines joy with the humility of knowing that you had absolutely nothing to do with the joy you are experiencing.
You didn't earn it, so gratitude is akin to experiencing God's grace. In short, you can't take credit for it, even though you are the beneficiary of it.
That is what Thanksgiving, celebrated across the country tomorrow, is all about: being thankfully, humbly happy. Read more
Nov 25 2013 - 9:49pm
Disagreement is an essential component of a healthy relationship, a healthy workplace, and a healthy democracy. Much research documents the dangers of surrounding ourselves with so-called “yes men” who always concur. Workplace echo chambers stifle innovation and reify bad policy decisions. Disagreement stimulates creative thinking and prompts innovation.
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Nov 21 2013 - 12:32pm
What a difference a year makes! Just one year following the end of the second of two U.S. Senate contests between Joe Manchin and John Raese, Raese appears prophetic across the board.
The Greer Industries CEO had run on a platform challenging Obamacare, the Obama Administration's EPA's anti-coal regulations, and the general tax and spend approach to fixing the national economy.
Raese warned us on all three counts--and even he might be surprised at just how the country and especially West Virginia continue to suffer under the "leadership" of President Obama. Read more
Nov 21 2013 - 11:51am
Seemingly concerned about offending the principles of “non-interference in the internal affairs of States” and the “sovereignty” of States, the ten Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries that are members of the 53-nation Commonwealth have not spoken out in condemnation of the government of Sri Lanka which the UN Secretary-General’s Expert Panel said is guilty of war crimes, particularly the systematic killing of as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians including women and children in 2009.
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Nov 21 2013 - 12:25am
A diverse array of organizations today launched a campaign to enact major cuts in wasteful military spending, as part of the December 13 federal budget resolution. The groups include peace, human service, economic and environmental justice organizations, food sovereignty and green energy groups, and grassroots community organizations. They are calling for long overdue reductions in military spending in order to meet dire needs at home and reinvest in our future.
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Nov 19 2013 - 2:23pm
The US Army School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia is a notorious training operation for Latin American officers and soldiers. It’s associated with some of the worst dictatorships and human rights violators in the hemisphere. For over 20 years, the grassroots School of Americas Watch (SOA Watch) has grown into one of the most dynamic, multi-generational, cross-continental movements against militarism in the Americas (SOAW.org/November).
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Nov 19 2013 - 12:54pm
A West Virginia newspaper publisher used to note that "all the stars have to line up" for a Republican to win in West Virginia. For the past three generations since FDR's presidency, that certainly was true.
A statewide or Congressional Republican candidate could win only if a Democratic incumbent was particularly damaged goods, whether from a scandal or gross incompetence.
My, how times have changed. The voters here have twice voted overwhelmingly against the Democratic Party's leader, President Barack Obama, for a combination of his anti-coal environmental policies and his now-botched health care reform plan. Read more
Nov 19 2013 - 12:03pm
Through the work of the eco-philosopher Thomas Berry and his protégés, a new way of looking at the universe and our human place in it has been established. While still not “mainstream,” this new story has given hope not only to hundreds of thousands of environmental activists around the world, but as well to thoughtful people in many fields, including economics, theology, education, politics, and science.
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Nov 17 2013 - 1:16pm
By Tom H. Hastings and Erin E. Niemela
Tough talk, some about nukes, to the world by the US and Iran has taken many turns over the past three decades, with Iran most recently signing a good faith agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to allow inspectors broad access to its nuclear facilities. Signaling change, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani halted expansion of Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity since his election three months ago, according to U.N. inspection reports. What has always been available are conflict management methods unexamined by our decision-makers.
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Nov 15 2013 - 4:42pm
They kind of snickered….no, they actually scoffed when I suggested a few years and wrote that we should get a Constitutional amendment that would permit the retention of a consortium of executive search firms to find good candidates for the presidency of the United States so that we as the selection committee could vote without regard to political party. After all, isn’t that the logical course taken by major corporations in need of a CEO? Aren’t we a major corporation?
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Nov 15 2013 - 1:32pm
Germany had planned to buy a fleet of "Euro Hawk" killer drones -- perhaps in an effort to bring the European Union up to speed with certain other Nobel Peace laureates. Read more
Nov 14 2013 - 9:48am
In a commentary on the statement by St Lucia Prime Minister Dr Kenny Anthony that there is a grave economic crisis gnawing away at Caribbean countries and “governments are busy looking inward rather than pursuing a Caribbean solution”, I drew attention to several possible areas of practical action that governments of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) could take immediately Read more
Nov 13 2013 - 5:17pm
The same week in which a Washington Post columnist claimed that interracial marriage makes people gag, a USA Today columnist has proposed using the U.S. military to aid those suffering in the Philippines -- as a backdoor means of getting the U.S. military back into a larger occupation of the Philippines.
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Nov 12 2013 - 11:29am
President Obama's surrogates have been stating incessantly that the millions of people who have lost their individual health insurance plans due to Obamacare really ought to be grateful. After all, they maintain, these plans were substandard anyway. "Trash plans" they call them.
Beyond the arrogance of the federal government telling you that the health insurance policy you could afford is "trash"--with the negative suggestion about the individual who has bought it--a supreme irony is present that the pro-Obama folks are missing by the country mile, namely:
What about many of the policies Obamacare offers to replace the old "trash policies"? Are they much better? Read more
Nov 11 2013 - 9:36pm
I am writing and raging. Raging because I am tired, oh so tired, of my activism being repressed or limited by bureaucratic minutia and ridiculous protocol. I am even more upset at the ways bureaucracy stifles my students who, because they are informed and outraged, want to act and are told they can’t, or can only under certain conditions…blah, blah, blah.
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Nov 11 2013 - 12:51pm
Some 47 million Americans live in poverty, and a key reason is the decline of the minimum wage.
First established under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the nationwide minimum wage was designed to lift millions of American workers out of poverty and to stimulate the economy. Unfortunately, however, it was not indexed to inflation, and big businesses -- hostile from the start -- fought, often successfully, to prevent congressional action to raise it. As a result, over the past forty years, the purchasing power of the minimum wage has fallen sharply. If Congress had kept the minimum wage in pace with inflation over this period, it would today be $10.74. But, in fact, it is $7.25 -- about two-thirds of its previous purchasing power. Read more
Nov 10 2013 - 11:24pm
Updated 4 weeks ago
This week our nation celebrates Veterans Day. It is a special and sacred day for Americans, where we take a moment out of our busy lives to say thank you to the men and women who have served our country in times of peace and war, and sacrificed much so that we all may enjoy freedom.
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Nov 10 2013 - 10:56pm
INTRODUCTION
When we were little kids, we had fathers, brothers, or uncles who walked ahead of us in the snow. We gingerly placed our feet into their much larger prints, hoping to follow in the footsteps of the people whom we adored. Read more
Nov 7 2013 - 5:16pm
Major banks should thank Congress for replacing them at the bottom of the list the American public least trusts and respects. But it seems whatever they continue to do, most can’t seem to get it right.
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Nov 7 2013 - 10:37am
St Lucia’s Prime Minister Dr Kenny Anthony says that there is a grave economic crisis gnawing away at Caribbean countries and “governments are busy looking inward -- each busy with their own agenda rather than pursuing a Caribbean solution to the economic crisis”. Not for the first time Dr Anthony has dared to tred where many other Caribbean leaders have shied away Read more
Nov 5 2013 - 11:26pm
Beginning Nov. 1, food stamp cutbacks mean $36 per month less for a family of four.
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