Yearly Archives: 2006

Cut and Rumsfeld

11/9/2006 – 10:06 am

First and most important – thank you. Thank you to all the citizens who voted Tuesday to begin to take our country back from those who would turn America into a totalitarian state. I not only had the pleasure of voting at the electric company in my Burlington neighborhood in the morning but later watched […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)

The Other Condition

11/2/2006 – 9:44 am

We now know a Congressional bill’s name often has little to do with its content. Often, there’s an inverse relationship between a bill’s name and its intended effect. The Patriot Act and the Help America Vote Act are two recent examples. Fraudulent as those bills were, at least their passage attracted some attention and well-read […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (1)

The Luxury of Vietnam

10/26/2006 – 8:42 am

“Iraqi Prime Minister Lambastes U.S.,” read the headline in Wednesday afternoon’s online edition of the Washington Post. Nouri al-Maliki was “lashing out” at U.S. policymakers for suggesting they might be working on a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Mr. Maliki said such timetables were the product of stateside Republican electioneering and had nothing to […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)

The Lies We Tell Ourselves

10/19/2006 – 11:15 am

The seventh and deciding game of the National League Championship Series is tonight. It’s hard for me not to be a baseball fan at this time of year, but my enthusiasm throughout the summer is not as sharp as it once was and the reason is steroids. Baseball players (and other athletes) have been using […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Global Warming | Tagged | Comments (0)

Still Falling

10/12/2006 – 12:48 pm

I began writing these commentaries 10 years and one week ago. These were originally audio files posted at soapbox.org and after five years morphed into what you see today, but that’s another story. I wasn’t going to note the passing of the decade, as I generally find anniversary journalism unedifying, but I started reading through […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)

The Big Schlep (Glossary Included)

10/5/2006 – 10:19 am

Monday was Yom Kippur, the annual Jewish day of repentance. A Jewish friend once told me, “Catholics are lucky. You can go to confession and get absolved of your sins any time you want. Jews only get the chance once a year. It’s a big schlep.” (Schlep: verb, to carry, lug – Yiddish.) I responded […]

By floegel | Posted in Catholicism, Commentary | Comments (0)

The Road to Hell

9/28/2006 – 11:25 am

People often speak of the pavement on the road to hell, rarely about the traffic. These days, that particular avenue is gridlocked with American cars. Big, stupid, gas-guzzling American cars. Global warming, a terrestrial version of hell 150 years in the making, is sore upon us. Here in the nation that contributes more to global […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Economy, Energy, Global Warming, Oil | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)