With the recent announcement that Disney will be bringing The Voices Of Liberty to Disneyland in California I thought I’d post a couple videos of these truly amazing performers. Enjoy

I admit it. I’ve been having a lot of trouble understanding this family values thing. I knew it had something to do with gun ownership and undermining environmental regulations, of course. But its larger meaning had alluded me until this past week, when the family value-loving House of Representatives finally made the term’s meaning crystal clear to us all. To fund government subsidies for student...

A look at the scandal from a rather unique point of view.

The Pitman Painters by Lee Hall is inspired by William Feaver’s book concerning the Ashington group. In 1934, a small group of working class men gathered at the Ashington, England YMCA hall to be taught art appreciation by Robert Lyon from Durham University. The class was sponsored by the union run Worker’s Education Association (WEA) and was comprised mostly of miners. The Pitman Painters tells...

To further reinforce my comments yesterday on the lack of corporate ethics and the failure of the feds to go after the execs who gamed the system is an article in today’s LA Times. It reports that Lehman Brothers awarded $700 million to top executives just before it went bankrupt. It’s further evidence that financial company executives did everything me first where money was concerned, with little...

Two front page articles in the New York Times earlier this week reminded me of just how pervasive the lack of ethics has become in the corporate world, where making money is the only thing that counts. Perhaps the same level of corruption has always been there but is reaching public awareness more frequently now. One of the articles was about the way Walmart’s business in Mexico had been able to expand rapidly...

LET’S MAKE U.S. ELECTIONS INTO EBAY AUCTIONS It is a complete waste of time and brain power to propose, discuss, advocate or pursue any public policy changes that will not meet with the approval of the nation’s 1% oligarchy. History shows that the current powers-that-be prefer complete inaction in the public sphere so that the corrupt crony cartels can work their endless crimes against 99% of humanity...

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio is crafting his own version of “the Dream Act.” He is conferring with Hispanic groups normally associated with the Democrats such as Gaby Pacheco, a vocal Dream Act activist, and even La Raza. Oh, I know, heaven forbid we sit down with those we disagree and hammer out compromises, but sometimes that is the way things get done. The truth that so many in the GOP refuse to see is...

Former Liberian leader Charles Taylor has been found guilty of war crimes by an international court. This is the first such conviction since the trials following World War 2. The conviction stems from his involvement in a civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone, a war in which as many as 50 thousand people died and many more were injured and abused. The trial, which took place in the Netherlands, began in 2007...

Now that we’ve all (hopefully) sent our returns in to the government the question in the back of our minds is how long to save those tax records. Of course there is nothing wrong with saving documents for as long as you want, but I thought I’d offer a little primer. The main reason you would intend to save records is, of course, on the very slight chance that the government might come and ask us some questions,...

A fun article at Atlantic that takes a look back at Presidential pet scandals.

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com It sounds as if the Supreme Court is poised to throw a big chunk of red meat to partisans of both parties: it is looking at the legality of the Arizona immigration law which some consider draconian and increasingly seems poised to uphold it: Supreme Court justices on Wednesday appeared highly doubtful of the Obama administration’s objections to a controversial immigration law in Arizona. The...

Last week in an article entitled The Big Game, I decried the skewed funding by state and local governments that favored athletics over academics. I focused particularly on Texas, where there was inordinate spending on high school athletic facilities and coaches while funding for teachers and academics was being reduced. College coaches were also receiving outlandish sums compared to faculty members, while student...

It has been very difficult to wade back into the many endlessly repetitive and totally dysfunctional national discourses that dominate the 24/7 info-entertainment news cycle in the U.S. I’ve been preoccupied with personal and family matters for the past month. My TMV postings have greatly diminished from my extensive 2009, 2010 and even early 2011 outputs. In 2012 it’s been no more than a trickle and...

UPDATE II: It is not clear from subsequent reports on the Blackhawk helicopter crash last Thursday in Helmand province, Afghanistan, whether the four crew members killed were medics or crew in a helicopter flying along a medevac helicopter on a mission to pick up Afghan policemen wounded in a bombing. Regardless, the helicopter was a “fallen angel” in aviation parlance and the four crewmembers were all...

Mr. B. You’re back again. Nothing bad on the digestive front, I hope. No. Selig. I actually came by to talk with you about something important. To get your advice. Can we sit down and chat? Sit down, sir? This is a washroom. The only places where we could… Point taken. We can chat standing. Do you know what a political action committee is, Selig? A PAC? Yes sir. They’re things that promote...

photo by Pete Souza WASHINGTON – Politico nailed the headline in the most important political article of the day Monday, penned by Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Martin. Team Obama has finally realized that talking about Mitt Romney as not having a “core” is a loser. Anyone who has looked at his life, which I have, knows this is well off the mark. Romney has a deep, foundational core, which...

“Oh, Muslims, know that our Empire is at war with the mortal enemies of Islam . . . the governments of Moscow, Britain and France. The Commander of the faithful summons you to the Jihad” Is the above a quote from Al Qaeda ? Iran ? Syria ? Nope…. it’s a quote from the Sultan of the Ottaman Empire…… in 1914…. at the start of WW1 Boy things sure have changed since then……...

I have made it a point not to get involved in the back-and-forth over the February 26 shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in Sanford, Fla. I have done so because, just as the author of what might have been one of the more objective pieces written on this tragedy, I also “[a]m not sure what happened the night [Zimmerman] confronted Trayvon Martin,...

Whether the Affordable Care Act (ACA), now before the Supreme Court, will survive in its current form is in some doubt, with the individual mandate particularly in danger of being overturned. Though Congress has the power to regulate interstate commercial activity, opponents of the law believe it can not impose a tax or fee on inactivity, such as the failure of citizens to purchase health insurance. The individual...