Daily Archives: November 3, 2014


Election in Massachusetts November 4, 2014

I hope I don’t need to remind you that there is a statewide election in Massachusetts November 4, 2014.

Polling Hours: 7am until 8pm

Find out where to vote.

2014 Statewide Ballot Questions.


Office Endorsement
Governor Martha Coakley
Lieutenant Governor Steve Kerrigan
Attorney General Maura Healey
Treasurer Deb Goldberg
State Senate Anne Gobi

Question Suggested Vote
#1 Eliminating Gas Tax Indexing No
#2 Expanding the Beverage Container Deposit Law Yes
#3 Expanding Prohibitions on Gaming Yes
#4 Earned Sick Time for Employees Yes

If I could, I’d drive you to the polling stations and hold your hand while you voted. How much simpler than this can it get?


Islamic State Born of Deteriorating Economic Conditions in Iraq

The Real News Network has the interview Islamic State Born of Deteriorating Economic Conditions in Iraq.

Poverty and inequality created by the plunder of Iraq’s wealth by elites and multinational corporations after the US occupation of Iraq a great recruiting tool for ISIS says Sabah Alnasseri, Professor at York University’s Department of Political Science.



In the main stream media we hear about how the youth around the world are being recruited to fight in places like Iraq on the side of ISIS. I have yet to read a serious discussion of what it is that attracts people to join. This video starts to fill in what is missing in the understanding that I have.

I’ll have to confess that I have not been keeping up-to-date with The Real News Network as much as I have in the past, so I probably have missed a lot of the explanation here that I have been missing elsewhere.

It is sad to contemplate how much damage the Bush administration did by deciding to force American style government onto another country in the name of Neocon ideology. The Bush administration had a firm view on what they thought was wrong with Iraq, but they had no clue about what was right.

I say “American style government”, but that is not completely true. For thirty or forty years or more, the Neocons have been destroying what has worked in America and transforming it to their liking. If they didn’t have a US Constitution and traditions that restrained them here, they might have done to the US in the same amount of time they were able to do it in Iraq.