ArcaMax

Exciting news, people: Utopia is on the rise!

Space Commander Elon Musk has announced that His Magnificence (i.e., him) intends to construct his very own private town on 3,500 acres of farmland near his new Tesla plant southeast of Austin, Texas. More than a town, Musk explains that he will create utopia in Texas, promising an "...Read more

Not so long ago, book burnings were considered a festive group activity by assorted right-wing zealots. Today, though, burning seems so old-fashioned and, well... crude.

Yet, the concept is burning hotter than ever among a gaggle of testosterone-driven Republican leaders eager to show voters that they will go to extremes to incinerate ...Read more

Many of today's right-wing governors and state legislators have a problem. By constantly pushing an extremist ideological agenda of nonsense about nutty conspiracy theories -- while imposing autocratic laws to ban everything from voting to library books -- they've become widely ridiculed as some combo of kooky, clownish and embarrassingly ...Read more

Stuff happens, right?

I mean, who could've thought that in these modern times of digital monitoring of everything, something as massive as a freight train could become a toxic fireball rolling undetected and unslowed into an Ohio town? But a Norfolk Southern train did just that, derailing in East Palestine and contaminating the air, water, land...Read more

No one needs another outrage to worry about, but here's one that could literally be your last worry: Our hospitals are killing us.

Not that the staffers are going room to room snuffing out patients, of course, but hospital owners and top executives are nonetheless killing thousands of ill Americans entrusted to their care. They are doing so ...Read more

There are industries that occasionally do something rotten. And there are industries -- like Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Tobacco -- that persistently do rotten things.

Then there is the nursing home industry, where rottenness has become a core business principle. The end-of-life "experience" can be rotten enough on its own, with an assortment ...Read more

People are baffled by the surreal saga of George Santos, the bizarre Republican congress critter who is a bottomless sinkhole of lies. How could he think that he, a highly visible public figure, could get away with such blatant fabrications?

Perhaps he thought he was a corporation.

After all, these multibillion-dollar brand-name outfits ...Read more

An old political saying notes that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. However, given the proliferation of today's goofball culture wars and fanatical right-wing phobias, that truism should be updated to say: Evil swarms when power-hungry leaders unleash the crazies.

Which brings us to the U.S. ...Read more

I don't usually cover hard-luck sob stories, but this one... well, it is so deeply touching you might have such an emotional response it will make you cry. Or, like me, want to throw up.

It's not about one family hitting the skids, but about some workers who toiled all last year in the caverns of New York City, only to find at year's end that ...Read more

Growing up, I learned a lot of valuable lessons from the example set by my Ol' Texas Daddy: a strong commitment to the Common Good, a healthy work ethic and a lively sense of humor. But there's one thing about him I've rejected: his determination to have a perfect yard of thick, verdant, St. Augustine grass.

Lord, how he worked at it: laying ...Read more

Question: How many legs does a dog have if you count the tail as a leg? Answer: Four -- calling the tail a leg doesn't make it one.

Likewise, calling a small group of partisan lawyers a "supreme" court doesn't make it one. There's nothing supreme about the six-pack of far-right-wing political activists who are presently soiling our people's ...Read more

Excuse me for using explicit language here, but it seems to me that today's most vulgar expression of right-wing extremist dogma is its unhealthy obsession with banning books. It's a political perversion that, ironically, its participants usually rationalize by claiming they are "battling vulgarity."

And, boy, are they hot to trot! Of course, ...Read more

The craziest political word of the year is "woke," as in "Don't be woke!" It's a command barked by far-right-wing fomenters of a hokey culture war and their political toadies.

Their intent is to demonize and shut up schoolteachers, preachers, librarians, historians, musicians, students, websites, business executives and any sensible human who ...Read more