Politics

I just had one of those frustrating conversations with an acquaintance of mine who blew in here to ask if he could borrow my handtruck to help a mutual friend move. I had been trying to think of something to say in this space today, but I had left the TV on in the other room and he, noticing a story, started railing about "journalism today."

"Manti Teo," he said. "Who cares?" I said. "But don't you see that they are just filling time with the topic of the day?" he said. "Of course," I said. "That's what they do."

He told me that "the system is broken." Read more about Miscommunication

Here's three things that caught my eye this morning:

"We give up our rights one piece at a time."
CHARLIE HOUCK, a banker who attended a discussion held by Senator Joe Manchin III about gun laws in West Virginia. Read more about Speaking of Morning

With President Obama's Second Inaugural coming up tomorrow, it seems I should be waxing largely upon my nation's future when, instead, a piece in this morning's New York Times sends me back to the future of another nation entirely. Read more about A Question of Honor

Okay. That's a bit of a joke. I was looking up other possible interpretations for AGW and one was All Going Well.

Two others were, of course, Accelerated Global Warming and Anti Global Warming. Three very different meanings of one little acronym. Read more about All Going Well

So, we've talked ourselves off of the ledge and life may go on for a while, but we aren't out of the slough of geographical idiomatic despond as yet. There's still a ceiling overhead, and just like Alice, we really aren't certain what pill makes us larger and what pill makes us small.

There's another geographical feature that comes to my mind when I think about all of the issues facing us in 2013 and the journey that must be taken to deal with them somehow, someway. Read more about The Cut-Bank

It's been a while since I wrote my first column under this tab, a column in which I set out my interpretation of politics and who, in a democracy, are the actual politicians. "The place is run," I said, "by the people who show up." Read more about The Joy of Politics

Readers. I would love to have readers for Christmas. And since I don't have time today to write a new incredibly thoughtful column on Politics, I'm going to cheat and remind you of some I've written this past year. My Christmas present, should you choose to give me one, would be reading one or more of these (you can wait until Boxing Day, I will understand) and then letting me have it. Call me another of the daughters of Satan or that you recognize my brilliance. Either one or somewhere in the middle will do nicely. As long as you mean what you say. Read more about What I Want For Christmas

I've been reading Steven Pinker's - yes, still. It's in a pile of about five non-fiction books and a few magazines that I try to read a bit of every day - and yesterday it was all about why we care for others. Not from a moral point of view, but from an evolutionary point of view. What's in it for us? Read more about Survival of the Kindest

Ya know something? I am sick and tired of war. It seems that for the past century or more we have had nothing but war. War on this, war on that. It's been a long, ugly, stressful and, since WWII, mostly fruitless enterprise. Oh, people say we "won" the Cold War, but I'm not convinced we actually won anything. Mostly everyone, quite sensibly, got really sick and tired of the whole damned thing.

Nobody won Korea or Vietnam. And claims that we "won" Iraq or Afghanistan - well, see above for Cold War. Read more about No More War

Tax the Rich! I can see it now. Walmart clothed and shod Black Friday crowds brandishing torches and pitchforks as a top-hatted plutocrat, hundred dollar bills fluttering from his trouser pockets, clambers up the windmill, while flames leap higher and higher and Don Quixote couches his lance - oh, I'm getting all carried away again.

Sorry about that.

My point is that "Tax the Rich" has a threatening, punitive tone. "Make them pay" is a phrase that is most often followed by "for their crimes." As if being rich were a crime in itself. Read more about Tax the Rich!