Just about everybody knows that many rural hospitals will close. There is much more. See this excerpt and then read the entire article. For decades, U.S. farm policy has been a bipartisan festival of ag-lobby pandering, shoveling enormous piles of cash to farmers through grants, heavily subsidized loans, even more heavily subsidized insurance, disaster aid and an…
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A Good Look at Early Warning Systems – Ed O’Rourke
See an excerpt from the NY Times article: Disaster preparedness is among the trickiest public services. Natural disasters happen regularly and everywhere, but they don’t happen predictably, which means being ready for them requires extra precautions: It requires a lot of people on duty even when nothing is going wrong, to ensure they will be…
Tragedy in the Hill Country – Ed O’Rourke
This is the e-mail that I sent to the two Texas senators and my congressman. Global warming has become personal. I was a camper in Kerr County in the summers, 1956, 1957 and 1958 at Texas Catholic Boys Camp (TECABOCA). In 1960, I returned to work in the kitchen. I had a happy childhood. My time at…
Ken Burns and the American Revolution – Ed O’Rourke
Ken Burns is making a film documentary about the American Revolution. Also, Amazon will release the book on November 11, 2025. See the book’s description here: “From a small spark kindled in America, a flame has arisen not to be extinguished.” —Thomas Paine In defeating the British Empire and giving birth to a new nation, the…
A Terrible Day in Our Country and the World – Ed O’Rourke
I am surprised that every church, synagogue, mosque and humanitarian organization in the country was not screaming about the Big Beautiful Bill that will harm millions. We have treatment centers for alcoholics, addicts and people with other infirmities. We need a Twelve Step Program and treatment center for our sociopaths especially the rich ones. See the…
The Big Beautiful Bill Receives Big Beautiful Brutal Satire – Ed O’Rourke
See this excerpt and then read the entire commentary: Which would you rather have, support for your grandfather’s retirement or the reassuring knowledge that, somewhere, ICE is kidnapping someone else’s grandfather and throwing him into a van? Would you rather have food for your child, or the sense that maybe you helped contribute to building…
Outstanding Commentary from Scott Remer and Alternet – Ed O’Rourke
Scott Remer’s commentary ‘’Fighting for Utopia in Tough Times’’ caught my attention in 2017. I made a hard copy. When I saw it this morning, I noticed that not much has changed. The commentary runs 8 pages. The Left must offer a vision worth fighting for, one that people genuinely believe it will carry out. We…
Alaskan State Legislators Comment on the Big, Beautiful Bill – Ed O’Rourke
It will be a humanitarian disaster. An excerpt from their statement: The likely impacts from the “Big, Beautiful Bill” are particularly ugly for our home state, Alaska: Nearly 40,000 Alaskans could lose health care coverage, thousands of families will go hungry through loss of benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and the…
The Humanitarian Declaration – Ed O’Rourke
I revised the War Abolition Encyclical and made a political statement that people in the Green Party, the Democratic Party and independents would like. Democrats attempt to limit DT’s damage and offer no vision. The vision that I offer here covers the waterfront. I show the add-ons from the war abolition encyclical here. The first one is…
Profiles in Cowardice – Ed O’Rourke
JFK wrote Profiles in Courage. He later noted that it was a short book with only one volume. The Onion offers their editorial with brutal satire. But what can I, one coward, do alone? you might ask. It’s true. As a solitary person, your fecklessness will make little impact. But if you join together with the most craven…