Give my feet to the footloose Careless, fancy free Give my knees to the needy Don’t pull that stuff on me — John Prine, “Please Don’t Bury Me,” 1973 WC’s right knee is a train wreck. After an October 2021 MRI, the radiologist described WC’s right meniscus – the wad of cartilage that cushions the…
Some random neuron in WC’s aging brain fired off recently and the lyrics to the theme to The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp started running through WC’s head. WC can say with certainty that he hasn’t heard the tune in something like 60 years. WC can’t remember for five minutes where he left the…
What H. Rap Brown actually said, in his 1967 speech in Washington, D.C. was “Violence is a part of America’s culture. It is as American as cherry pie.” Brown was speaking to violence against African-Americans, and as the recent trial for the homicide of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia has demonstrated, not much has changed. Whether…
WC can’t complain. Since law school, it’s been an indoor job, out of the weather, with pretty good pay. WC has been lucky in many ways. Not everyone is so fortunate. America has an underclass, folks trapped in a cycle of misery. People who are trapped working two jobs, both mind-numbingly boring, and still barely…
Apple President Tim Cook is Steve Jobs’ hand-picked successor. There were some who doubted he had the skills, the talents, to continue Apple’s innovation and success. The number of doubters has declined as Cook has settled in to the task. And while the Apple Watch hasn’t worked the kind of explosive change that the Apple…
There’s a company in Italy whose business plan is selling computer network hacking tools. It calls itself “Hacking Team.” Generally it sells its malware to governments. Including a lot of pretty despicable governments. Countries like Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. But it makes sales to private companies,…
WC read the recent, excellent New York Times feature on the experience of U.S. soldiers in Iraq who encountered the moldering remainders of Saddam Hussein’s chemical warfare munitions. And it set WC to wondering: large-scale manufacture of chemical weapons involves very difficult chemical syntheses. Likely beyond the capabilities of Iraq and Iran, although WC’s readers will recall…
As fond as WC is of his country, he has few illusions left about its flaws. The jingoists who trumpet America’s “exceptionalism” have been a bit quieter lately, but still make annoying braying noises about how wonderful the United States is when, in some areas at least, that’s far from the truth. Take health care.…
We’re now one-sixth of the way through 2014. Through those first two months, there have been 6,381 incidents of firearm violence in the United States, resulting in 1,646 deaths and 2,726 injuries. If we straight line those appalling numbers out for the balance of the year, we can project 9,876 firearm deaths and 16,356 firearm…
WC has railed against the fervid jingoism of hyper-patriots like The Quitter, who claim the United States is “exceptional” and beyond criticism. But WC is equally offended by clods who can find nothing kinder to say about our country than “It sucks less.” . There’s a whole lot of room between claims of perfection and…
WC is deeply skeptical about the claim that the United States is “exceptional” in some magic way, and above reproach in all ways. The outrageously expensive cost of medical treatment would be one way in which the neocons claims of U.S. “exceptionalism” are only true in a bitterly ironic way. The International Federation of Health…
WC has argued for a long time that the United States betrayed its values and principles in its treatment of illegal detainees after 9/11. The conclusions are so clear that WC has been baffled by those who claim otherwise, or those who claim not to care. WC was appalled when both the Obama Administration and Congress…
National anthems are one of the very odd aspects of modern culture. America’s national anthem is a bad poem by lawyer and very amateur poet Francis Scott Key called “The Defence of Ft. McHenry,” written in 1814. Key gave the poem to his brother-in-law, Judge Joseph H. Nicholson, who saw that the words fit the popular…
WC will selflessly offer serious, substantive advice to the Republic Party. Why? Because it’s just too painful to watch. The poor thing needs help, if only to avoid having the Republican-led U.S. House drag the country into another recession. Everyone who has read a self-help book knows the process. The first step to problem-solving is…
Here’s the lead paragraph from a New York Times article yesterday: A federal judge in Manhattan refused on Wednesday to require the Justice Department to disclose a memorandum providing the legal justification for the targeted killing of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who died in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. Excuse me? “Died in a drone…
We have an untreated disease that is killing 30,000 Americans each year. Today that untreated disease killed 20 young elementary school students in Connecticut. And 8 adults. WC has no words to describe the horror and the sorrow. Or the anger. We call ourselves “exceptional,” but we cannot even have an adult conversation about the existence…
The “war on drugs” has made the United States the country on the planet with the most citizens in prison. Our prison population is through the roof, as WC has shown in earlier blog posts. It’s also costing the federal government and incredible amount of money. That’s $8.5 billion dollars in 2012. That number can…
Islamophobia, in a single subject, captures the worst and the best of the United States. There is no question that hate crimes against Islams are at epidemic levels. That domestic terrorism in Wisconsin – ironically against Sikhs, not Islams – is only the most recent horrific example. With the exception of bloggers like Glenn Greenwald…
There were 535 deaths in air crashes in 2009 according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s report. Air transportation is closely regulated. Pilots are licensed and carefully examined. Aircraft are regulated and inspected. It’s not perfect, but the death rate is 0.05 passengers per billion miles flown. There were 32,885 deaths in the U.S. from automobile accidents…
It’s unsurprising that E. L. Doctorow, one of the best writers in the English language, could write a much better essay than WC on the absurdity of any claim by the U.S. to being exceptional. But his four phase analysis of recent history and its blight on everything the U.S. claims to stand for is…
WC recently read the Central Intelligence Agency Inspector General’s Special Review of Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities dated May 7, 2004. The fact that it is heavily redacted – sometimes entire pages at a time – doesn’t stop it from being a whitewash of the years of torture performed by the United States. It is…
WC offers serious props to Spencer Ackerman, at Wired, whose Danger Room has taken a long, hard look at the United States’ use of torture in its so-called war on terror. And unflinchingly looked into the possible war crimes committed by the U.S. during the Bush administration. WC is no expert in the area of…
Q: Why does New Jersey have all the Superfund sites and California have all the lawyers? A: New Jersey got to choose first. The State Integrity Investigation describes itself as “a $1.5 million public collaboration designed to expose practices that undermine trust in state capitols — and spotlight the states that are doing things right.”…
It’s a cherished belief: Americans who work hard can succeed and reach a higher point on the economic ladder than their parents. Anyone can be a Ben Franklin or a Henry Ford and rise from abject poverty to the very highest economic success. It’s a big part of America being “exceptional.” “Only in America, land…
The German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel has weighed in on the Republican presidential candidates and it isn’t pretty. They lie, deceive, scuffle and speak every manner of idiocy. And they expose a political, economic, geographic and historical ignorance compared to which George W. Bush sounds like a scholar. Even the party’s boosters are horrified by…
Back in undergraduate school, shortly after the end of the Dark Ages, WC was made to read William E. Leuchtenburg’s The Perils of Prosperity, an economic and political history of 1914-1932. As a simple, accessible summary of the period from the U.S. entry into World War I to the start of the Great Depression, WC…
William Domhoff’s essay on Power in America, “Wealth, Income and Power” back in 2005 (updated October 2011) helped start the current discussion of wealth distribution in the United Sates. It’s a critical starting point. That focus on the analysis of distribution of wealth has been brought to Congress now. For example, Roll Call, the Capitol Hill…
WC has criticized President Obama from time to time because no president of the United States is ever above criticism. If you examine his actual record, as opposed to the mischaracterizations, lies, distortions, hyperbole and – frankly – racism from the right, it’s a pretty remarkable set of achievements in very difficult times. The truth…
Just when you think American culture has sunk as low as it can go, something comes along to demonstrate there is no longer any lower limit to what our culture will put on display. It’s all in limbo: “How low can you go?” Readers will forgive WC for thinking this was a headline from The…
When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school It’s a wonder I can think at all But my lack of education hasn’t hurt me none I can read the writing on the wall Paul Simon, “Kodachrome,” There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (1973) There are probably as many interpretations of Simon’s song…
Wickersham's Conscience 
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