About thirty percent of US citizens love Donald Trump, mostly true-believing conservatives, evangelicals, etc. Continue reading
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Author Archives: Richard John Stapleton
A transactional analysis of truth
Individuals A and B had known one another for over fifty years, at one time being best friends. Continue reading
One more time: ‘Payroll taxes’ are not taxes!
Anybody should have known the Trumpies significantly lowering federal income taxes for elite rich civilians would increase the budget deficit, as would significantly increasing military expenditures for poor soldiers, sailors, and airmen, and their staff, and their fat cat civilian corporate suppliers. Continue reading
Br’er Trump burrowed in his White House briar patch
What connection does Donald Trump have with Br’er Rabbit in Joel Harris’s Uncle Remus folktale about a rabbit that tricked a fox into throwing him in a briar patch? Continue reading
A football game ain’t no war, Big Daddy
Burl Ives, playing Big Daddy, told Paul Newman, playing his son Brick Pollitt, “Life ain’t no football game, boy” in the movie adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which I saw in 1958. Continue reading
Racist Games in a venomous culture
Some US white supremacists according to Facebook posts are finding out with DNA tests they have some African genes, and some African Americans are finding out with DNA tests they have European genes. I think this is a good thing, showing how people from around Earth are genetically related. Maybe everyone ought to take a DNA test to combat racism and morbid narcissism. Continue reading
Let’s you and them fight
Donald Trump may be the most accomplished Game-playing president in US history. Continue reading
Why healthcare should be managed as a natural monopoly
In industries in which there is inelastic demand, in industries in which people have to buy a product or service regardless of prices charged, free competition does not work in the best interest of customers. Prices charged are not inexorably driven down by competition to an optimum level for all stakeholders, to the lowest prices that fairly compensate all factors of production in the industry, including a rational return for the owners of capital. Continue reading
Conservatives and liberals vs. freethinkers
I have read several posts on the Internet lately written by people averring we are heading for another civil war in the United States, this one between conservatives and liberals. It appears violence or the threat of violence between these groups is escalating in the US. The recent clash between conservative and liberal students on the campus at Berkeley, in which students came to blows using their fists, is a case in point. Continue reading
The smartest person in the room: Stories about fact, fiction, good, and evil
Part One
Several times in recent weeks I have been lured into clicking on Internet posts purporting to show the IQs of US presidents, including the president-elect now waiting to take over. Continue reading
Why does Obama want the TPP ratified?
When Obama first ran for president in 2007 he told us he was out to improve the plight of we the people, not the corporations and the elite rich. Continue reading
On waking up and realizing your senior class in high school is now running the United States
With millions of others, I listened to and saw the speeches Monday night at the Demo convention on TV. Continue reading
Round and round it goes, why and how all US voters should and can learn something about Jill Stein, MD
A lot of water has gone under the bridge lately. Great Britain voted to withdraw from the European Union. Bernie Sanders conceded that Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary and endorsed her for president. The US stock market has regained most of its losses. The world situation remains largely unchanged, fraught with conflicts and problems, insecurities, and uncertainties. Continue reading
Should Hillary have the leading role?
Hillary Clinton is a wonderful leader, so some memes tell us on Facebook and some pundits tell us in mainstream media. Continue reading
A dispatch from red state Georgia on empirical and spiritual issues
Attended Sunday services at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Statesboro, Georgia. The speaker reviewed The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt. The book sets up a dichotomy between WEIRD people and not-WEIRD people. WEIRD people identify with Western values, are relatively well educated and are relatively independent, rational and democratic. Not-WEIRD people identify less with Western values, are less educated, and relatively put a higher value on tradition, community, hierarchy, authority, loyalty and patriotism. Continue reading
Hillary or Bush III?
There are thousands of US citizens who could do a better job as president than either one of these two, but they can never have a chance because of not being related to previous presidents, or other types of politicians or public figures giving them recognition, connections and inside information. Continue reading
Lies, lies and damned lies: The new Republican House of Representatives is insane and character disordered
I just read the following in the Statesboro (Georgia) Herald in its issue of January 7, 2014, in an article containing 36 column inches, about half a page, extolling the wonderful pageantry of the Republican takeover in Washington, with the largest majority in 60 years. Continue reading
When the cat’s away the mice will . . .
Sitting in my car in 1963 in front of my newspaper office at Wolfforth, Texas listening to Walter Cronkite tell us John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, I was shocked and dumbfounded. Continue reading
A nation of Monday morning quarterbacks
A recent poll purported to have found 57 or so percent of US voters would now vote for Mitt Romney if they had the chance, whereas only 26 or so percent would vote for Barack Obama. Assuming these percentages are representative of the actual percentages among the population, so what? Who cares whether voters would now vote for Romney or Obama. Such percentages tell you little or nothing about the relevant underlying issue: how well Obama has performed and how well Romney would have performed had he been elected. Continue reading
On how reality happens
This article is an epiphany stimulated by Michael Adzema’s Funny God Facebook Post, January 14, 2014. Continue reading
Benefits and dangers of organizations and groups
Human affairs aboard Spaceship Earth have always been screwed up, and there has never been enough food and other necessities to go around. Unfairness has ever abounded. Homo sapiens form and join organizations and groups to increase their chances of getting their needs met, a right guaranteed by the US Constitution. Continue reading
So much for economic fairness and progress
Here is a well reasoned and said article, “The Doctrine of Fairness: It is Time,” and my reaction: One can build the case the Great Depression of the 1930s proved unfettered capitalism does not work for long under normal conditions. Continue reading
An eloquent speech about the State of the Union Address
Kshama Sawant, recently elected to the city council of Seattle, Washington in my opinion knows how to say what needs to be said about our current state of economic affairs in the US. She also knows how to win a political race in Seattle, and let’s hope many others can follow her lead throughout the US. Continue reading
Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a bad idea
H. Ross Perot, the independent candidate for US president in 1992, said if NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, were passed you would hear a “giant sucking sound” as jobs left the US for Mexico. Continue reading
The CBS whitewash of the JFK assassination
Saturday night, I saw Bob Schieffer of CBS News, playing the role of senior uncle of US culture with tears in his eyes, tell us how much it affected him to see John F. Kennedy’s little boy “in his little boy suit” salute his father at his funeral. The CBS program also featured cameo shots of the likes of Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Jim Lehrer of PBS making pronouncements. Continue reading
The Affordable Care Act—no gain without pain
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, aka the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as “Obamacare” in derisive, scurrilous tones, is a complex piece of legislation having significant consequences for millions of people. Continue reading
November 22, 1963—the day America started dying
For the first time in decades I bought a copy of the National Enquirer at the grocery checkout today to read an article claiming to know the actual second shooter of John F. Kennedy, based on what they say is credible evidence proving it was a conspiracy of the CIA, the Mafia and right-wing Cubans in Florida. Continue reading
Moving farther west to escape problems at home is no longer an option
Probably most Earthlings think of Americans as US citizens, but anyone living on an American continent, North, Central or South, is an American; and there is a major difference between Americans descended from Americans living in America before 1492 and Americans descended from Americans originating in Europe and Africa, or from anywhere else on Earth, America being the melting pot of Earth. Continue reading
Have Republicans no shame or sense of shame?
On page 1 of Sunday’s Statesboro (GA) Herald for all the world to see is the start of a 30 column-inch article headlined, “Report: Ga. should avoid tax proposal: Sen. Jack Hill takes cautious approach to trading income tax for higher sales tax,” by Jason Wermers. Continue reading
Is northwest Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma in another Dust Bowl?
I just finished reading “Dust Bowl Blues,” by Sasha Abramsky, in The Nation magazine; the most depressing article I have read in some time. Continue reading
My evolution in the Deep South of the United States
No one can change the evolutionary cause-effect chains that produced him or her, but it is possible to reduce some of their negative consequences. Of significance are the cause-effect chains producing family scripts, the personalities of family members, and family stories, some of which are told from one generation to another. Continue reading
Disappointing football games and a loser’s lamentation
Posted on September 30, 2020 by Richard John Stapleton
It’s Saturday, September 26, 2020, 8:22 pm EST and I just watched the Texas Tech University/University of Texas football game on TV, channel 10, Fox Sports, played at Lubbock, Texas. Continue reading →