Republican candidates have decided to use the recent setbacks against ISIS as a winning issue in the 2016 election, and it seems to be working.

Right-wing articles are very entertaining. Did you know that we won the Iraq War?
I didn't.
At least Bush won Iraq before Obama lost Iraq.
I've discovered from reading right-wing sources that Iraq was perfectly fine until President Obummer fouled it up.

This evening's music features Piedmont bluesman Pink Anderson.

Do we live in a democracy? Most of you are probably aware of the Princeton study that concluded that we are closer to oligarchy than democracy.

Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens

I wrote this up in late July last year after a veteran and his wife stopped by our Peace vigil. I mentioned it in a post this weekend and it seem to garner some interest to read more. I did make one mistake this weekend when I said the man had three tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. I had that backwards as you will read in the narrative below. I had previously posted this to a Google group we had for organizing this site, so it may seem familiar to some of you.

I love Jon Stewart, but he's guilty of being both six months late to realizing the contradictions of our foreign policy, and for dramatically oversimplifying it.