All Atwitter in the Desert

There are few cultural shifts whose timbre and tone rumble down through the ages. But this whole social media movement has me wondering if we aren’t in the midst of a shift no one saw coming or has yet to define. I am in Las Vegas where the big brains of social media are gathering [...]

Goin’ Back to Texas

In the decades following the second World War, millions of people left the land in the south and went north to find better work in the auto factories and steel plants. The transition was profound for families, individuals, and our entire country’s culture. Ultimately, people adjusted and our economy thrived. But there [...]

Down by the River

“Borders everywhere attract violence, violence prompts fences, and eventually fences can mutate into walls. Then everyone pays attention because a wall turns a legal distinction into a visual slap in the face. We seem to love walls, but are embarrassed by them because they say something unpleasant about the neighbors — and us. They flow [...]

I Hope Rush Succeeds

Never envisioned myself writing a sentence like this but I hope Rush Limbaugh succeeds. Yep, I hope he spreads his vile as far and wide as he possibly can through his EIB (Extremely Ignorant Broadcast) network. Through his outreach, even more Americans will come to know the absurdity of Limbaugh’s politics and the conservatives he [...]

If Ya Don’t Have To, Then Don’t

“I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your [...]

The Great American Makeover

“America is the land where people find whatever they have lost.” – Gunter Grass

I vaguely recognized the nation President Obama was describing as he spoke to a joint session of congress. This was America, the one I have been reading and hearing about since I was a boy. I’ve never lived in the country the [...]

A-Rod and the Boys of Autumn

“You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.” ~Jim Bouton, Ball Four, 1970

The field is green but we are mostly gray. Still, every February as the big league pitchers and catchers [...]

Things I Don’t Get

Hypocrite: the man who murdered both his parents… pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.  ~Abraham Lincoln

When Rick Santelli made his CNBC rant about bailing out homeowners who were upside down on their mortgages and couldn’t make their monthly payments, I found myself, just for a moment, in agreement.  I [...]

Real Estate – Ten Years After

By Timothy C. Moore
Millions have been foreclosed upon. Many millions more are oxymoronically stuck in their homes with “negative equity.” Millions more will go negative in the coming months as house values continue to decline (I hate the word “plummet” because it’s so sickeningly headline-ish and potentially manipulative). Those with marginal remaining [...]

Bank Aid

The private planes flew almost elegantly into the airport in Pitkin County. Sleek and beautiful, the craft slipped through the sky above the Continental Divide and banked sharply to the east for their approach to Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley. Squawking wheels indicated the great captains of industry had arrived in the sanctuary [...]