Spider-Man: Home Is Where the Heart Is

Paul, Bart and I are just back from Spider-Man: No Way Home.

You know, good superhero stories are larger-than-life, breathless romantic sagas about rescue, betrayal, good and evil, love and hate, self-sacrifice and the joy and freedom of effective action. Operatic, really, yet with wit and style.

These melodramas are about ethical choices, because that’s what immense power must always necessarily boil down to. Even the refusal to exercise power can have dire consequences for others.

And above all else, these stories should have heart. They should not be nihilistic, because if even superheroes can’t win, what chance is there for the rest of us?

And this film has all that. It’s the complete culmination of 20 years of Spider-Man movies, satisfying on every single level. The people who grew up with these films will be particularly entranced, I suspect.

Why Is Fox's Fascism Forgiven?

You can measure just how bad the latest exposure of Republican corruption is by observing the length of time it takes Fox News to come up with lies to justify it. Their extended silence always speaks volumes.

A Mensch in Space

“Compassion does not just happen. Pity does, but compassion is not pity. It's not a feeling. Compassion is a viewpoint, a way of life, a perspective, a habit that becomes a discipline — and more than anything else, compassion is a choice we make that love is more important than comfort or convenience.”

— Glennon Doyle Melton

Fox News Trips Over its Own Forked Tongue

For some odd reason, Fox News hosts pleaded with Trump to stop "tourists" from going to the White House.

How Banks Feast on American College Students

Because this nation cozies up to ignorance and no longer values education, college students have become nothing but a cash cow to be milked dry by our predatory financial sector.

Students do not deserve to be enslaved to Wall Street greed for life because they had the temerity to want an education. 

I graduated from state university in 1977 with a student loan debt of slightly less than $500. Of course, that was when we all agreed that it was useful — in fact, even imperative — for members of an advanced, civilized society to have easy access to higher education. That was before we decided to chuck all that and just let greedy banks make a lifelong meal out of American students. 

As for paying for loan forgiveness, take it all out of the Pentagon's worthless, obscene budget.

The Cowardly Lyin' of the 'Both Siders'

Say your candidate is caught lying relentlessly, and reversing and re-reversing his positions on every major issue. If you reply, with blithe, self-serving cynicism, that “both sides lie,” then you are A) giving the worst candidate a complete pass for his dishonesty and B ) awarding the office to the most accomplished con artist, thereby turning a vice into a virtue and deliberately establishing the practice of handing power over to the most corrupt candidate BECAUSE he is the most corrupt. You could hardly imagine a more effective recipe

for national disaster.

The Elephant Is Hiding in the Tree

As Garry Kasparov wrote: "The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth."