(EDITOR’s NOTE: This was posted last night. We are leaving it on top of TMV until 12 noon EST today.) This is the last column of my life. The ugly sapping of my physical and mental strengths have overwhelmed me in my ordeal of fighting 4th stage lung cancer and colon cancer. The ravages of 30 years of diabetes has not helped. And the colon surgery has not been scheduled yet. A ultra-high dosage of radiation treatment on two lung tumors and the lymph glans ended Jan. 24. I return Feb. 22 for...

Today marks the centennial anniversary birthday of Ronald Reagan and the planned accolades are well deserved for he brought pride and spirit to a humiliated nation and changed the political direction and conversation of our politics. As a man, Reagan was charming, intelligent, driven and a wonderful teller of stories about Hollywood and his days as a radio sportscaster. Anyone who disliked him as a person would not be a friend of mine. I was prepared for the charm attack, accepting his omnipresent...

President Obama and U.S. intelligence agencies are being criticized for what appears being caught off guard by the populace revolts in Tunisia and Egypt and the copycat upheavals in Yemen and Jordan. All are U.S. allies. As for media and citizen journalists I would urge caution before issuing any verbal indictments since none is privy to classified intelligence reports and how the President and highest military and civilian leaders filter the information in the briefings and war room discussions. Sen....

At least the political blame game first chapter is closed in the investigations of accused Ft. Hood killer Maj. Nidal Hasan. Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins determined from their investigation that the FBI and Pentagon committed a “string of failures” knowing Hasan was communicating with an Islamist extremist, his peers describing him as a “ticking time bomb” and his Army superiors never disciplined or furloughed him. Excuse me, but we have read this before in published...

The Defense Department paid $285 billion in two years to about 100 contractors who were defrauding taxpayers between 2007 and 2009. About $15 billion was spent on contractors who at the time were either suspended or debarred for misusing taxpayer funds, according to its audit report released Wednesday. The report was required in the last defense budget and it’s response back to Congress included: “The (Defense) Department believes that existing remedies with respect to contractor wrongdoing...

You gotta love conservatives who for years railed against judicial activism as a form of legal tyranny by fiat. But on the very day a lower court federal judge ruled Obamacare unconstitutional, the skies are blue and no longer falling. Never mind a pet conservative political cause trumping a legal premise supported by a concept of the 10th Amendment and related articles of the U.S. Constitution. I haven’t seen such glee and celebration among Republicans since the night Ronald Reagan was elected...

My quest for people who know what they are talking about the Egyptian crises is partially fulfilled with this on-the-scene account by an American professor and journalist living in Cairo. This op-ed column in Monday’s Los Angeles Times was written by Scott MacLeod, a professor at the American University in Cairo and managing editor of the Cairo Review of Global Affairs. He was Time magazine’s Middle East correspondent from 1995 to 2010. It is one point of view of many, but a salient one...

The death toll has reached at least 73 persons in the political, economic and class struggle demonstrations in Egypt but what I see equally tragic was the looting of the world’s most documented artifacts in museums and pyramids. Egypt owns a history so long, deep and rich that in some perspective it makes ours appear puny. About nine members of a mob at the gates of the Egyptian Museum broke into the poorly secured treasure trove and vandalized a culture’s 2,000-year documented heritage...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows, deflecting questions whether the Obama Administration continues to support embattled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. She defended the Egyptian people’s right to democratic reforms, praised the nation’s military as a respected institution and said most other issues such as continued $1 to $3 billion annual military aid to the strategic Middle Eastern nation is not under discussion at this time. The Los Angeles...

The first episode of the new law TV series “Harry’s Law” I saw on NBC Saturday night was flooded with so many liberal causes I drowned. And, I’m a liberal. For an hour, one favorite progressive ideologue after another was piled on top of the other with so much corn fructose that my blood sugars elevated 100 points in that span, a record in that time slot. It was so much overkill that if my conservative lady friend had joined watching it with me she would have demanded a channel...

For geo-politically challenged Americans hoping for the next paycheck and seeing no further than our ocean’s shorelines, I have a message: Cairo (Egypt, not Ohio) is on fire. You may have seen it live on TV. Keep watching. What’s happening in Egypt and a few, for now, other Middle Eastern nations, could come back and bite you on the butt where you stash your wallet. It’s that oil thing, you know. Also Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. It’s happened already with Hezbollah taking...

I suppressed a surge of panic upon reading Republican freshman Tea Party Sen. Rand Paul introduced a bill that would eliminate the Housing Urban Development agency. HUD’s Section 8 housing rental assistance voucher program subsidizes about 75% of rental costs for 2.1 million Americans, mostly seniors, with incomes under $13,000, according to the agency’s website. I’m one of those Americans. In terms of what the end of the rental voucher program means, I can only attest to my personal...

Like mosquitoes in a swampy summer heat, the birthers will not go away. You gotta read this update by World Net Daily. People can judge for themselves whether the birther movement is a wing-nut group whose chief propagandist is WND and read into it that the drive is based on resentment that Barack Obama is our first black president and cast aspersions that he is constitutionally unqualified. That would be unfair and inaccurate, if Democratic Obama supporters and progressives actually accept that...

As a resident of Temecula, Calif., I am ashamed of the ignorant and uniformed protesters who dealt venom based on fear conjured in their own twisted minds. The lone, sane, argument is, indeed, traffic congestion. Hopefully, this development will play out and someday all will learn the truth. (Courtesy Reuters file photo)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to a technical glitch this was up on TMV with the wrong byline for a few minutes. There are some sporadic technical issues now occurring. We regret the error. Last Sunday I wrote a column from Pro Publica investigative writers that JP Morgan was earning millions of dollars processing food stamps for about half the nation’s states which outsourced the service to cut costs. I duly reported my opinion that the concept of Wall Street, in this case, reaping profits from...

I can describe President Obama’s State of the Union speech in three words. Just do it. I can describe Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s rebuttal in one word. Huh? And, Mr. President, what’s this 1960′s Sputnik moment? Nice try for the metaphoric oratory to goose our nation’s return to excellence. To my ears, the Soviet space shuttle orbit played second fiddle to Obama’s most significant line of the night which tapped educational excellence: We need to teach...

EDITOR’s NOTE: TMV uses “newspaper standards” in its post with occasional exceptions if running an embed of a C-SPAN or cable excerpt. Since words are the subject of this post, we are running this post as is. (WARNING — This story contains adult language and is not intended for children.) Or, should I say immature children under 80 years of age. We see the warning at the beginning of many so-called adult shows on television. I am unclear whether in today’s culture it...

JP Morgan is earning millions of dollars processing food stamps and other benefits for the poor because the states find it cheaper to outsource the service. We’re not talking nickels and dimes. The Wall Street titan, the largest of the processors, receives a stipend for each transaction. There are 43 million people on the federal food stamp program. In at least eight states, consumer inquiries and complaints are outsourced by JP Morgan to call centers in India. This practice makes me cringe....

Since Keith Olbermann was the subject of at least a handful of columns I have posted on TMV, I feel compelled to add my two cents on his departure from MSNBC’s Countdown show. Good luck and good night. It was a nightly sign off – he proudly parroted the great Edward R. Murrow during the heyday of television journalism at CBS. Keith Olbermann was not even in the same ballpark as Murrow or Cronkite or Sevareid nor any of other early gods pioneering television broadcasts. Rather, Olbermann...

EDITOR’s NOTE: Due to a technical Glitch, this was up on TMV with the wrong byline for about one minute. We regret the error. Prostitution may be the oldest profession but racial and religious intolerance doing business in America are fellow bed partners. All three seem to merge this past week into a national pissing contest. We see it in the power-grubbing Congressmen and the shrill battle cries of sanctimonious liberals to tone down the political rhetoric. Conservatives counter with decibels...