“It’s very difficult, in geography as in morality, to understand the world without leaving your own house.” – Voltaire Sunday Reader – A Think Piece – By Glynn Wilson – KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Do you ever just take some time off to simply think? To dream? Experts in psychology say this is critical not only to…
Guest Column – By Robert Reich – Income and wealth are now more concentrated at the top than at any time over the last 80 years, and our unjust tax system is a big reason why. The tax code is rigged for the rich, enabling a handful of wealthy individuals to exert undue influence over…
The Big Picture -Â By Glynn Wilson -Â As the capitalist Easter Bunny works overtime to deliver massive amounts of sugary chocolate to stores across America in time for the weekend to celebrate the fertility of spring and the alleged death and resurrection of a prophet named Jesus, pollsters and pundits are wringing their hands…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Cue up the spinning wheel of bad news. Simply turn on the TV or crank up the internet. Just as we thought the hellscape of 2020 was behind us, a mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado replaces a mass shooting in Atlanta, Georgia, which supplants a border crisis…
An Update on the Legal Jeopardy of Steve Bannon and Donald Trump – Sunday Reader – By Glynn Wilson – Now that the nation is finally beginning to turn the corner on the coronavirus pandemic and on this first day of spring begin to reemerge from the economic downturn caused by it, there is a…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Spring forward and sleep late. I know I did. The iPhone clock said 10:30. The devil who shall not be named is no longer tweet storming an insurrection against American democracy from the White House. A new sheriff is in town. People are already…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – It was 56 years ago today (Sunday) that John Lewis led civil rights marchers north across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma to face Alabama State Troopers and Dallas County sheriffs deputies on the other side with billy clubs, cattle prods and tear gas. By putting their…
Guest Column – By House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer – Originally written for Roll Call – In 2018, House Democrats won the majority on a promise that we would refocus the chamber on delivering “For the People.” The centerpiece of that effort was HR 1, the For the People Act, comprehensive legislation to root…
Editor’s Note: This news comes with no personal regrets, since I didn’t know either of the deceased. But I knew Jack Neely some when writing for Metro Pulse myself, one of the most interesting alternative weeklies in the country in print and online in the late 20th century. It’s a sad day when anyone dies,…
Sunday Reader – By Glynn Wilson – KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The east-facing window in this humble abode was enshrouded in fog the first thing Sunday morning, not the famous smoke you sometimes see in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. Since it’s National Public Sleeping Day and the weather was not conducive to…
The Big Picture -Â By Glynn Wilson -Â GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK, Tenn. — Are you suffering from cabin fever from the COVID winter? Take a drive in nature in a park near you. When the forecast showed sunny weather and a high of 54 for Sunday, Feb. 21, I just had to get…
Hold Fast Reader Dear How to hold you reader dear: Regale you with comforting stories of barefoot summer mud puddles past? Excite you with salacious tales of sex scandals and conspiracies holding you aghast? Bore you with straight prose and fifth grade level blurbs of fair and balanced contrast? Or write the flame out of…
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms; And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Well, the Year of the Rat is over, and the Year of the Ox is here, as of Feb. 12, 2021, the Chinese lunar New Year’s Day. In America, the Rat King Donald Trump has been dethroned, but not banned from running for public office again, and…
Shelby Could Do the Right Thing and Swing the Impeachment Vote Against Trump – But He Won’t – Editor’s Note: In our continuing series showing how the press should be operating in America, as opposed to how it operates now and how it has failed in the 21st century, here is our take on the…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – So I’m sipping the second cup of coffee Tuesday morning, watching the sun come up over the Smokies, scouring the web looking for an expert to quote, when it finally dawns on me like an epiphany: I must be the nation’s top expert on the press and…
Guest Column – By James Rhodes – It is evident that some news readers are confused and baffled by the actions of many Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate, as their policy positions do not line-up with long standing Republican principles. I resided in Alabama when being a Republican was not only rare, but…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – You know, there was a time in this country when being openly batshit crazy and totally full of shit was something you at least tried to hide, especially if you harbored ambitions of holding public office. Not anymore. American politics, at least on the Republican side, really…
“Anything that gets the adrenalin moving like a 440 volt blast in a copper bathtub is good for the reflexes and keeps the veins free of cholesterol… but too many adrenaline rushes in any given time span has the same effect on the nervous system as too many electro-shock treatments are said to have on…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – The news has been churning for a solid a week and a half since 8,000 marauding militiamen and bleary-eyed neo-Nazi thugs marched from the National Mall to the Capitol steps and somehow, with a little help from Republicans and their racist friends in the Capitol Police, actually…
