The Worship of Sports in America

OK, it’s once again March, and once again I find my favorite television news programs preempted by the college basketball games of “March Madness.” Personally, I find madness to be the most appropriate of titles for the way in which Americans are gripped by the infatuation with sports. I admit it—I simply don’t see, nor do I understand our collective obsession with using balls to score points between 2 opposing teams of hyper-masculine jocks. ...

Read More

Open Thread: Another American Addiction

A few weeks back, I was listening to one of National Public Radio’s (NPR) programs where they focus on a noteworthy current publication. The particular airing of this daily program featured author Michael Moss talking about his new book, “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.” Obviously, with both an inquiring mind and a title like that, I was compelled to turn up my car’s radio and listen to the interview with the author. As a vegetarian,...

Read More

Unemployment News…The Good, The Bad, and Reality!

Let’s start with the good news first. Wall Street analysts and jobs forecasters were (pleasantly) surprised by the government’s official job’s report released yesterday, which indicated that the American economy created an estimated 236,000 jobs last month. These numbers were a surprise to analysts because “they expected hiring to downshift in early 2013 because of ongoing U.S. budget disputes, the onset of higher tax rates and the looming threat...

Read More

Open Thread: How The Middle-Class Got Screwed (Video)

The problem with sharing ideas in America--especially as they pertain to sociopolitics and/or economics--is that no matter how sound, rational, valid, or proof-driven the idea is, we have become so ideologically and politically fractured as a nation that any explanation is usually assailed by someone with a particular ideological bias by which they view the world through.  I see this on a daily basis from both the ideological left and the...

Read More

The Sequester Cuts...Be Careful What You Ask For!

As of midnight, two points became more or less salient; sequestration is here, and Americans seem to be expendable pawns in the game of politics between the Republicans and Democrats in Washington. Hardly any surprise if you haven’t been in a come for the last 20 years or so. Because of the legislative impasse between the White House and the both parties in Congress, the much-vilified automatic across-the-board spending cuts—compiled back in...

Read More