BY WILLIAM C. HENRY With all the controversy surrounding “entitlements” reverberating throughout the body politic lately, perhaps the time has come for a battle-hardened, been-there-done-that, professional bullshit detector like myself to weigh in on the subject and hopefully help explode the meritocracy myths the American Right has been relying on to protect the legacies of the wealthy and bolster the anti-social welfare, pro-greed and self-interest free will belief system they have cleaved to for over a century. First things first: 1) My comments are intended to correlate with the 2nd Merriam-Webster definition of “entitlement,” namely: a government program providing benefits to members of a specified group; also: funds supporting […]

BY WILLIAM C. HENRY No long term care of the elderly and infirm (Medicare doesn’t cover it), but TRILLION$ for the butchery and burial of our bravest. God forbid we should sacrifice a weapons system or two, or a war here or there, to provide security and peace of mind to our senior citizens. Once again the Obama administration is left searching for veracity and missing vertebrae. Apparently the fact that the CLASS (Community Living Assistance Services and Supports) program was predicted to become non-self-sustaining after its tenth year was sufficient cause for the Obama administration to fold its tent and signal a semi-provisional surrender. […]

BY WILLIAM C. HENRY I’ve got two words for Occupy Wall Street (and Occupy Everywhere Else for that matter): ELECT ELIZABETH! As in Elizabeth Warren for those few (hopefully) of you who may not already be aware of who she is and what she represents. Looking for a purpose, someone or something to rally around, some kind of game-changing action to take? Here’s a suggestion: Get out of the parks and start hitting the bricks to help Elizabeth Warren Occupy a U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts! And, when you’re finished with that, spend the next four years making it possible for her to […]

BY WILLIAM C. HENRY If you’re tired of reading rants (mine included) decrying our shameful experiments in nation building and capitalism cloning perhaps better known as Iraq and Afghanistan, you might want to exit now. I’ve raged on the subject(s) so many times I really can’t recall just how often it’s been. One thing I can promise those of you who persevere is that I’ll never stop doing so as long as I have the mental and physical capacity to speak, hold a pen, or pound a key pad. The issue is just too important. Brave American men and women are […]

BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Don’t you just love it when the opposition party shows its true colors in public? The other day, during a publicized Republican presidential wannabes debate, when a gay active serviceman asked Rick Santorum how he would handle an individual such as himself (vis-a-vis repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell), many in the audience booed the soldier. Let me repeat that: They BOOED him! That’s right, they actually booed an active-duty American serviceman who is putting his LIFE on the line for those very same assholes day after day in Iraq! Of course, the fact that a […]

BY WILLIAM C. HENRY We are going to learn a great deal about ourselves as Americans, and as human beings, between now and November 7th, 2012. We’re going to find out what our REAL underlying values are; about our humanity, our ethics, our true morals. We’re going to expose our collective intelligence, our ability to reason, our ability to analyze, our ability to interpret. We’re most likely going to reveal whether, as a nation, we believe in basic science or the bible-tells-us-so. We’re most definitely going to learn a great deal about our capacity for tolerance, understanding and compassion; and […]

BY WILLIAM C. HENRY One of the biggest gripes I’ve had lately (like for the past three years) with this administration is its seeming total lack of an offense — the foresightful OR the reactive variety. As a matter of fact, at times it’s been enough to make this card-carrying progressive wonder just who’s side they’re on. Now, I know that a damn good defense can, and more often than not, does, win football games but unfortunately for us Democrats, history continues to prove that even an outstanding defense seldom if EVER wins in the political arena. To put it […]

BY WILLIAM C. HENRY I just finished reading an excellent New York Times article by the Democrat governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer. In it he pretty much tells it like it is regarding how and why his state has managed to weather the biggest, most heinous financial fraud ever perpetrated on the American people better than most. I confess I haven’t researched all his assertions, but I damn well salute his attitude and incisiveness. It got me thinking about our federal junkyard dog, the GAO (Government Accountability Office), and to what extent it was performing its mandate. At first glance it would appear that […]

BY WILLIAM C. Henry Remember that nondescript swath of Syrian desert that Dubya decided to remake into Arlington National East? Well, S U R P R I S E, we’re forty-six-thousand-American-troops-strong still there! And assuming you haven’t been paying much attention lately, I’m sorry to have to report that that cesspool-in-the-sand is still swallowing up American dead and dismembered at a rate of more than a score a month–and never mind that Iraqis themselves are being blown up by the scores EVERY DAY! It’s the dirty little debacle that just won’t go away. And, by all that’s right and just, its memory never will. THIRTY-SEVEN THOUSAND […]

BY WILLIAM C. HENRY I don’t know about you, folks, but I’m flat out fed up with hearing about “what needs to be done” to turn the country around. Who DOESN’T know what it is that we have to do something about? I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with the “blame game”– from BOTH sides. I’m sick and tired of being preached to by the weak-kneed and the well-heeled in Congress. There isn’t a cupful of courage or compassion between them. But most of all, I’ve about had it with my PRESIDENT! Where is he hiding? Is he on […]

BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Time for a pop quiz. What do Miller v. United States (1973) and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) and have in common? Give up? They’re both landmark U.S.Supreme Court decisions involving obscenity. Whereas the former was a determination regarding obscenity per se, the latter was just patently obscene. In the former, a divided Court set forth ground rules under which the individual states could essentially determine for themselves what constituted obscenity and what did not. In the latter, four right-wingers and a semi-swinger decided that there was nothing whatsoever obscene about corporations dumping truckloads of their filthy lucre into “independent” […]

BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Well, congratulations to the filthy richest 1% of Americans and their right wing Republican representation in Congress. And, much as it pains me to say it, if you didn’t phone, email or otherwise convey your feelings on the matter to your own Washington reps, you’ve gotten exactly what you deserve. Never before have those representing such a money-gluttonous immoral minority so thoroughly sodomized a moral majority of the working class. Never in the history of the Republic has the majority had to suffer such cowardly leadership on an issue so critical to their and the nation’s […]