‘Just Say No’ to pharmaceutical drugs

An increasing number of shooting rampages are being committed by individuals who are under the influence of or withdrawing from prescription drugs that are known to cause mania, psychosis and even homicide in some patients. Colorado authorities confirmed James Holmes had received psychiatric care at the University of Colorado for undisclosed issues before donning combat […]

Worst.Halftime.Ever. [2016]

Somehow the pundits on social media hailed Beyoncé’s performance as a profound political statement. Seriously? I hate to break this to America, but Beyoncé Knowles awful half-time show at Stupor Bowl 2016 was embarrassing to watch. There’s no other way to put it. Beyoncé’s musical statement was merely a cynical way to promote herself and her […]

STUPOR BOWL

The Stupor Bowl is the American version of the Nazi party rallies from the 1930s. The first twenty minutes of the Stupor Bowl telecast this year was essentially a free commercial for the Pentagon; promoting war and militarism and a glorification of violence. We got to see lots of clean-cut American soldiers in uniforms smiling […]

Politically Challenged

Last week PoliTech, a non-partisan student political group at Texas Tech in Lubbock released a video, Politically Challenged. In the edited video host Courtney Plunk asks Tech students basic questions such as, “who is the vice president of the United States?” “From which country did America gain its independence?” and “Who won the Civil War?” […]

The Responsibility Of Intellectuals

Noam Chomsky’s The Responsibility Of Intellectuals is a stinging rebuke to the Main Stream Media’s (MSM) role in spreading disinformation and the “spin” that accompanies all information which threatens the status quo. The piece was written back in 1967 at the height of the US Cold War with the Soviet Union and on the cusp of […]

The Bill of Rights

Civil Rights and civil liberties: a discussion that begins and ends with the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was a noble, pyrrhic attempt to limit the “tyranny of the national government,” however it says nothing about limiting state’s rights. An individual state’s ability to ignore or refuse to legally implement federal laws is […]

Donald Trump: WTF?

Donald Trump not only gets more network TV time than the other Republicans: he gets more time than all the other Republicans and all of the Democrats combined. I have never seen the MSM show such rank political promotion before.  Poor, poor Bernie Sanders. The “liberal media” is a myth found only in the land of […]

Judicial Review

Judicial review is a key concept in policy making and in changing the meaning or intent of the Constitution. Although not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, it is implied throughout. Federalist Paper #78 discusses the need for Judicial Review and in it Publius stresses that the Judiciary is by far the weakest of the three […]

Narrative – Dialectic – Rhetoric

In this post I will compare and contrast the three modes of rhetorical thinking: narrative, dialectic and rhetoric. All three disciplines require us to reason in different ways. I will also briefly discuss symbols. Narratives are stories, traditions, legends which transmit the accepted, agreed upon norms in any given society. A social narrative transfers, maintains […]