Carl Bloice

Let’s see if I got this right. The prime minister of an allied government disses the U.S. secretary of state, says he went over her head and got her boss, the President of the United States, to countermand her intention to vote for a resolution at the United Nations and gloats over the fact that…

Of all the outrageous statements coming out of the Bush Administration over the course of its eight year reign, perhaps the most odious came from the Secretary of State. It was the summer of 2006. Israel troops had entered Lebanon to wage war against the Lebanese Hezbollah movement and the Israeli Air Force was raining…

It’s probable that by the time this is read, officials in San Jose, Ca. will have eliminated athletic programs from all 11 of the city’s high schools. It might not seem like much to some, given the declining economic situation in the country and the kinds of budget cuts being made in other areas. But…

A couple of days before Thanksgiving one of my downstairs neighbors matter of factly told me he had lost his job. He’d been abruptly laid off by a local information technology startup company. “They let go so many people I don’t know how they are going to get the work done,” he said. My first…

It is hemorrhaging fast and no end to the blood-letting seems to be in sight. No question, something has to be done about the auto industry. But what? As usual, the preferred answer depends upon your vantage point. As usual, when courses of action are proposed on matters like this, the people being adversely affected…

Just a small group of brothers sitting around at my place watching the Oakland Raiders lose again. During a commercial break, the subject of the next week’s election came up. “Seriously, would you have ever thought, in your wildest imagination, that an African American could be elected President in your lifetime?” Around the room: no,…

Let’s say you retired from your job some time over the past ten years or so and when you did you had about as much as, or maybe a little less than, what Governor Palin spent on her campaign outfit in your 401k-retirement account. First thing you did was roll it into an IRA. Right…

As Halloween neared in 2006, the looming mortgage crisis was already apparent and now two years later the horror of it all hasn’t gone away. It keeps getting worse. We’ve spent the last few months talking about the possibility that two million people might lose their homes by early next year. Now it turns out…