Tea Baggers and Minutemen and other members of the America’s defense against surly busboys and kindly abuelitas have got their britches in a bunch because some nitwit San Diego housewife who thinks she’s Orianna Fallaci wrote in one of those fake online newspapers that Texas has been invaded and is being taken over Mexirican drug gangbanger goat-vampires.

Wikileaks releases 91,737 US military files documenting all aspects of the Afghan war and occupation. From new information about allies to detailed info on unreported civilian killings and Special Ops assassination teams, the release is unprecedented and shows how very futile this continuing war really is.

There are many, many people working to either save the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem or trying to get the images and message out about it. We all know that we cannot rely on our own government, MSM or British Petroleum to tell us the truth. The powerful cannot overcome the good. Right now it just seems that way. With photographers like Nick Zantop and Jerry Moran_Native New Orleans Photography and organizations like the American Birding Association and On Wings of Care willing to take risks and get dirty there is hope for the gulf and us.

Not everyone will get to be a millionaire investing in the stock market. A stable retirement includes Social Security, but you won’t get it if you don’t insist that it be left alone.

I am a lifelong sports fan. I learned the language of Baseball probably before I could even walk and the language of Basketball soon thereafter. I’m fluent in American Football and can make myself understood in Hockey. I also have varying degrees of fluency in a number of the “minor” sports here in the US, such as Bowling (though I’m not as fluent in speaking Candlepin or Duckpin as I am in the more conventional Tenpin most of us are familiar with.

In their book Gaming the World, Andrei Markovits and Lars Rensmann use the languages of sports to offer a unique perspective on globalization. This is not a book that will be used to settle arguments on sports performances at the neighborhood pub. However, I can see it being used as the foundation of a Sociology class on Sports in Society, as part of a Cultural Anthropology class, or as part of an elective Political Science course work. (in all cases with some necessary supplemental information)

I think you can point to a couple things that Al Franken said in his closing keynote to get a feel for the mood here at the event, which was quite a bit less gloomy than, say, the America’s Future Now conference last month. Franken said bluntly that we don’t have enough progressives in Congress to get the agenda we want, and a fair reading of the situation would prove him right. We can advance an issue or two, and create some litmus tests, but ultimately we’re at the beginning of a long road. The other thing Franken said (and I had a chance to talk with him one-on-one, so I’ll be writing about that in the future) was that the Supreme Court is taking away citizen’s rights one 5-4 decision at a time. That’s a key point, that the crisis of governance in the 21st century extends to the roadblock in the courts.

Tony Hayward will exit BP, possibly as soon as this week. Reports of his likely exit package show him leaving the company while retaining wealth beyond the dreams of the average person. If so, Hayward will become the embodiment of the concept of moral hazard.

On Friday, Tom Tancredo wrote an op-ed in the Washington Times in which he called for the President’s impeachment. This created a minor kerfuffle, but I don’t know why. Republicans in Congress have been comparing Obama to Hitler since before he was inaugurated.

Conservatives hate John Maynard Keynes because he lacks proper deference towards massive accumulations of capital and the owners of that capital.

When our sideshow news cablists, the White House, the NAACP and others began their carnival barking outside Andrew Breitbart’s tent once again – this time echoing Brietbart’s slander of Shirley Sherrod – the predictable puerility followed. The White House apologized and blamed the media culture, Fox News denied its role, pundits claimed the high ground [...]