I came across this passage last night while reading Tim Weiner’s book, One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon. The next paragraph is verbatim (page 68). “We tried every operational approach in the book, and committed our most experienced field operatives to the effort to get inside the government in Hanoi,” CIA …
I am thinking about writing an absolutely chilling Halloween story called THE CHOSEN. It is an only barely dramatized version of what happened to my friends, but thankfully not my immediate family, as RIGHT WING & RUSSIAN BOTS began to scour the internet for victims. Throughout 2016 I watched as these BOTS zeroed in on …
I think I may have figured out how Americans of Indigenous Eurasian ancestry, such as myself, have confused the Jewish God Jesus with all our lost but only half forgotten Gods of War. This has something I have wanted to say for quite a while, but this has reached a boiling point. And traveling to …
I tread very carefully here, but I have been getting…how can I say this? I have been getting interesting feedback from my conservative friends and acquaintances about what happened in Vegas. I am not throwing anyone under the bus here (Charlottesville & Nice has loaded that saying with unnecessary imagery). What I am driving at …
OK I will say this, to put Las Vegas and the firepower we all heard echo in a historical perspective: As the automatic crack of a machine gun fire rang into my ears at a handful of rounds per second, I asked myself with little practical knowledge of American arms, if that was the sound …
Do you think our military might be dangerously overextended if we can’t ‘invade’ Puerto Rico and help what is inevitably going to be our 51st State? The National Guard should not be in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is a sign of Imperial stupidity. Folly in every sense. Sun Tzu would have some interesting things today …
I’m sure that an editor or two – and possibly a few peeps – might be curious as to my thoughts on Hugh Hefner’s passing. And so, on a borrowed laptop while on vacation, here goes: One has to be of a certain age, startlingly enough, to realize the influence of Hefner’s Playboy magazine in …
[Ed. Note – The author first penned these words on August 24, 2013] It’s so mindblowingly remarkable how our American society survives by avoiding realities. The middle class, the poor… will give another dollar for a problem to go away for another week. “Mister, we don’t want any trouble.” “Here, take it, it’s all I …
One of the most glaringly stupid ideas I have encountered is the assumption that if the society collapses the ability to shoot a gun will be key to survival. It’s not. The real race will be to go after the libraries. When the light goes out the only way to turn them back on physically …
Great Politico podcast on the current catastrophe in Venezuela, which has flown under the radar a bit with all of the other international noise going on. You know things are bad when, as a journalist, you get picked up by the secret police and regard the situation with relief. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/07/democracy-die-venezuela-implosion-hannah-dreier-215467 – Chuck Strom
49 years ago today, we lost Bobby Kennedy. In my forthcoming book, I discuss that the Yippies were considering not protesting at the Chicago Convention if Kennedy was the presidential candidate – just days before he was shot, he met with SDS to discuss having the anti-War protests occurring in Chicago with his blessing. Then …
Tom Ricks was on Fresh Air this week. (The podcast may be heard below.) I’ve always enjoyed his interviews, but this portion of it, when the subject of Fox News came up, made me sit up and take notice: GROSS: You must be wondering what’s going to happen at Fox News now, especially after the …
There’s no one like adult conservatives (such as there are) for eviscerating Republicans as they plumb the depths of imbecility. Today’s column in The Atlantic from David Frum, a former speechwriter for Dubya, is exemplary in this regard. His analysis of the Republicans’ failure on Obamacare is instructive in a couple of ways: on the …
Written and Produced by Maggie Gottlieb and Julie Pearson and featuring (amongst other talented performers) Kyle Glenn Johnson, a longtime friend of East Portland Blog, this is the latest from Cursed Champagne Productions: Comedy with teeth…
Last Sunday, writers and activists gathered at Writers Resist, an event held in over 100 venues in cities across the nation to commiserate and find ways to respond to the unthinkable turn of events from last November 8. In Portland, about 600 people came to the Aladdin Theater to see Cheryl Strayed and other local …
There have been two surreal moments that stand apart from my average life. First, while a senior at North Park College (Chicago, IL) I was a passenger in a car with my brother, Paul Johnson, Lowell Berggren (the driver), and his girlfriend, Sharon Greenwood. We were driving to Minneapolis in a snowstorm after dusk the …
Barron’s (Barrons.com) is a weekly newspaper devoted solely to stocks and the financial markets. My Dad passes along old issues to me. The October 17th edition contains a four page article that is based on responses Barron’s received from its “Big Money” poll about the 2017 financial market outlook and upcoming election. The article does …
I twice voted for Barack Obama for President of the United States of America. Now that he has less than six months left in his job as President, and since I have been rightly critical of his predecessor (and Obama’s successor will likely be worse than Obama), I feel compelled to present some of his …
The Chicago Tribune has printed a four-part series on a subject I wrote about last year: https://www.eastportlandblog.com/2015/09/22/the-pope-pig-manure-and-minnesota-water-quality-by-mark-erickson/ Here’s one Tribune article regarding pig polluters: http://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/launch.aspx?pbid=3e7227b1-e3b7-4fac-aa07-5f943e58b4c5 As I read the article that landed on my doorstep today I recall the book The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which exposed the production and sale of meat and the …
President Barack Obama has spent the last few days in Cuba as part of his effort to normalize relations with the island that has endured a 50 year embargo. The Chicago Tribune reported that Obama advocated for “human rights, including freedom of speech and assembly and religion” during the trip to which President Raul Castro …
I’ve enjoyed David Axelrod’s podcasts of late. His most recent interview with Mark Leibovich of the New York Times is pretty insightful. Axe seems to be pretty good at getting his subjects to relax and open up, and he asks good questions. One of the more interesting exchanges was about Hillary Clinton’s limitations as a …
I just watched Mavis! on HBO – this documentary is so good, it even caused me to have warm feelings towards Jeff Tweedy! There’s great vintage clips and commentary from Chuck D & Dylan, plus a warm moment with Levon Helm not long before he passed. – Pat Thomas is the author of Listen, Whitey! …
On Christmas Eve, before eating the roast beast, my family reads the Nativity story found in Luke. Verses 1-2: “At that time Emporer Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the Roman Empire. When the first census took place, Quirinius was the governor of Syria.” Matthew 2 explains King Herod felt threatened that his …
One more time. Films that purport to show Planned Parenthood selling baby parts are deceptively edited fraud. They spin the truth into lies. If you believe these videos, as Republicans in Congress apparently did, you’re a dunce. Planned Parenthood is not selling baby parts. They are allowed by law to let mothers donate fetal tissue, …
“16 shots, 14 months. 16 shots, 14 months. 16 shots, 14 months.” I attended a protest rally on Black Friday that was easily attended by more than 5,000 people. The protest closed down Chicago’s “Mag Mile”, which is the high-end downtown shopping mecca. We congregated at the majestic Chicago Tribune building and proceeded north. Why …
In the wake of the recent bombings and killings in Paris, I offer this. But first, I must step back. Shortly after 9/11, I opined in a pre-Twitter universe to a creation similar to Twitter, something called “xnpc”, that the United States had stoked hostility by imposing sanctions and a killing machine upon Iraq. People …
Nixon’s attorney John Dean calls today’s tea party, specifically the U.S. House Freedom Caucus, “near treasonous” and says their actions might be unconstitutional with “criminal implications.” Robert Scheer has a new podcast on KCRW. In it, he talks to Dean, former White House Counsel under Richard Nixon, who served during the Watergate scandal. In the …
Below is a list of worthy anti-colonial (#anticolo) movies—perhaps the best ever made. A cursory Google search has not uncovered a single list of the best anticolo flicks of all time. The aggregated minds of East Portland Blog have come together to generate a list and potentially be the first website to broach this subject. …
Pope Francis has landed at Andrews Air Force Base for his first visit to the United States. There’s a lot of speculation about what he might say, especially when he addresses Congress Thursday morning in light of first visiting Cuba. I am hopeful that he will discuss American capitalism’s flaws, a theme he has hit …
Last night while watching neutral Al-Jazeera TV, I saw a clip about the US Army having committed $500 million to train Syrians to fight ISIL. The clip was a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing chaired by Senator John McCain. General Austin testified about the program that strove to train 15,000 Syrians to fight. General Austin …