MAY WE LAUGH Dear Brave Souls: For family dinners at holiday season. May we laugh. May we return good to good. May we return good to not-so-hot. May we laugh. May we return kind to kind. May we return kind to cruel. May we laugh. May we return calm to calm. May we return calm to flagrant. May we laugh. May we stay long as we like. May we stay short if need be. May we laugh about how we all belong to a family...

Cardow, The Ottawa Citizen This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

If you’ve never heard it, today is the perfect time to listen to Stan Freberg’s classic take on Thanksgiving with his famous song “Take an Indian to Lunch.” And if you have heard it, you’ll want to hear it again. Click the arrow below: Pilgrim’s Progress (Take An Indian To Lunch) This is from Volume I of Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America (1961) which can...

Parker, Florida Today This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

A heartfelt “Happy Thanksgiving” from all of us here at TMV to you and yours, to the country and to the world. Thanksgiving is a special day when we pause and give thanks and also realize that all the turkeys aren’t in Washington. Image via shutterstock.com

The religious right was not always about abortion and gays.  It was originally all about desegregation, that’s what Falwell and Robertson were preaching against.  Opposition to desegregation was becoming increasingly politically incorrect.  This was when Francis Schaeffer made his appearance and convinced the religious right they should concentrate on the issue of abortion.  But the...

The following thoughts are ones I’ve posted about before but since I still think it is an important issue I am going to repost it about once a year in the hopes that someone in power will take it under consideration. While it is not a pleasant thought I do think that this is an important subject to be addressed given the world in which we now live. Under the terms of the 1947 act if there is no President or...

CLEARFIELD, Pa. — Here’s one more disturbing story related to the shocking Penn State child sexual abuse case: Victim #1, whose allegations about being molested by Jerry Sandusky led to legendary football coach and alleged enabler Joe Paterno’s firing, has left his high school after being bullied by classmates due to his role in Paterno’s dismissal. During the past 21 years when I reported from and...

Jennifer Fox a 19 year old Seattle woman had a miscarriage after she claims the police hit her in the stomach and gave her a shot of pepper spray. “I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in,” Fox recalled. “I was screaming, ‘I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.’” She claimed that police hit her in the stomach twice before pepper...

In his first TV ad of the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney inserts a voice clip of Obama mocking his 2008 presidential campaign opponent, John McCain, for not wanting to talk about the economy. What Obama said during an Oct. 16, 2008 speech at a Londonderry, N.H., campaign stop, was this: “Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we’re...

He has been gone now longer than he lived—-48 years to 46–and, in these days of Washington impotence, must seem unreal to generations of American born after his time. A few years after the assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy wistfully told me that her husband was being remembered too much for how he died rather than what he had lived for. She was right. It was too soon then for Americans to appreciate...

If you are of a certain age, the events of November 22, 1963 and the following days are deeply seared in your mind, but as yet another anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy comes and goes, those memories do not automatically our minds as they did in earlier years. Part of this, of course, is the passage of time, but it also is the fact that with the exception of Ronald Reagan, there has not been...

Today President Obama signed a bill giving tax credits to employers hiring veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.  A worthy cause and similar to efforts that I was part of during the Vietnam war.  Even those soldiers who are not physically injured are mentally injured and employers know this.  Vietnam was bad, Iraq was worse.  I was a member of the military during the Vietnam war and although I...

WASHINGTON — No, the sun didn’t rise in the west this morning. No, Republicans on the congressional supercommittee didn’t offer meaningful concessions on raising new tax revenue. And no, “both sides” are not equally responsible for the failure to compromise. As usual, the two parties began with vastly different ideas of what it means to negotiate. Democrats envisioned meeting...

ZELIENOPLE, Pa. –The virtual epidemic of bullying that has led to a host of tightening of state regulations, special programs in schools and numerous suicides by bullied students has now come front and center in the ongoing Penn State child sexual abuse story: Victim #1 has resigned from high school after being bullied by classmates and fired football coach Joe Paterno has issued a statement, ABC News...

The failure of the deficit reduction supercommittee — so fundamental that the panel could not even agree on what should be in play let alone why it failed — was foretold. It was a bi-partisan failure in every sense, although much of the blame goes to Republicans, five of six whom would not consider tax hikes for the wealthiest Americans and instead demanded tax cuts for them. In the end, the Democratic...

The juxtaposition on The New York Times homepage of a shocking story that the Census Bureau has found that 51 million Americans have incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line and the latest frothings from Little Ricky Santorum was in all likelihood unintentional, but made a big point. Two, in fact. Point One is that the number of new near poor in the U.S. as the lingering effects of the Bush...

It was one hundred years ago that the United States Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil company was too big and had to be broken up into smaller elements. The decision was based on the idea that Standard Oil controlled too much of the market and that it was not healthy for them to have such a monoply, especially in such a critical industry. Almost thirty years ago a settlement of a similar legal proceeding...

We Wouldn’t Be In This Mess In The First Place! This image is from a DU post dated Sun Nov-20-11 09:20 PM - Help Us ID Location, Protester and Photographer This meme — as a tweet and photo of an unidentified protester holding a sign — has been making the rounds of the interwebs. Wed 16 Nov : @estellevw “If only they enforced bank regulations like they do park rules, we wouldn’t be in...

As bad as the police brutality against the OWS demonstrators was it was not the scariest thing that happened last week.  The most disturbing thing has to be six of the would be Republican candidates for president pandering to the greatest threat to this nation – the Evangelical Christians or the American Taliban.  It happened at the Thanksgiving Family Forum. At a forum on moral values, which was held...

Some of us who were drawn and captivated by Obama’s soaring rhetoric and by his “incandescent” charisma during the 2008 presidential elections may feel somewhat disappointed by what we have seen in the past three years. The gentleman in this 6-minute video, Jake Lamar, tells us quietly, plainly and succinctly why he is not disappointed in President Obama and why he believes that Obama will be more like...

Child Rape Deserves the Ultimate Punishment by Michael Reagan Child rape is an unforgivable offense and should be severely punished. It should be a capital crime. Unfortunately and unwisely, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 struck down a Louisiana law that provided for the death penalty in cases of child rape. Part of the court’s rationale was that only a few states had such laws at the time, and they saw...

The NY Times Lede Blog shares a YouTube video that provides an alternative view of pepper spraying police at UC Davis. Based on this video, a second policeman participated in the pepper spray melee. I’ve read dozens of stories about the event, mostly from “real reporters” (aka mainstream media). I have not seen a reference to the Humboldt decision that pepper spraying nonviolent protesters...

Yesterday, four Republicans in the New Hampshire State House supported a hearing requested by a group of birthers who want President Obama officially removed from the state’s primary ballot. Of course, Birther attorney Orly Taitz is in the midst of it and had filed a complaint about Obama’s candidacy that, according to WND, was joined by several state lawmakers. Ortiz had submitted “evidence”...