A liberal’s long journey away from Barack Obama and the Democratic party   By Michael Pellegrini About seven and a half years ago following the 2008 elections, I wrote a blog post titled America: Disgraced then reborn.     I absolutely gushed about how happy I was at the election of Barack Obama. I was dead certain he would right all the wrongs caused by eight years of George Bush, and particularly, that he would make good on his pledge to end all our wars. To me, implicit in that promise was ending the phony war on terror. A “war” that was nothing…

From a Muslim perspective, this whole “war on terror” has to look a whole lot like a “war on Muslims.” We’ve invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. Innocent civilian deaths in the Iraq war – and that’s just innocent civilian deaths by themselves – run overall between an estimated 110,000 to over 600,000 lives. Can there be many people over there who haven’t lost a friend or relative to the Iraq war? Life under Saddam Hussein was actually pretty pleasant for a majority of Iraqis. He was a secular Muslim. The Shia Muslim minority was terribly oppressed. But the Sunni majority had…

The thing that disturbs me the most about this methanol/LNG mess is not the methanol or LNG per se.   Rather it’s that these issues bring home the hard, cold fact that while we were sleeping, there’s been a coup.   Our city’s been taken over by hostile forces. Tacoma and the United States are both well on their way to becoming oligarchies. When people talk about the country becoming an oligarchy on the national level, it’s hard to grasp.   We still have our homes and jobs, the same programs are on TV. We’re going on a vacation to…

This current presidential election will be perhaps the single most important event the United States has faced in a hundred or more years.  Never before has there been such a wide range and disparity between the different candidates.  Never before has there been so much at stake. This is where we decide if we’re a representative democracy or an oligarchy. What has our country come to? The answer is that there have been some very fundamental, mostly gradual changes in   recent years that brought us to where we are now. The biggest single, most disastrous event was the advent…

It’s 1984 in 2013 – Welcome to Oceania! “…Americans have learned that the National Security Agency has been spying on Americans without judicial approval. We learned about this not from the Administration, but from the New York Times and USA Today. Every time a revelation came out, President Bush refused to answer questions from Congress… Americans fought a Revolution in part over the right to be free from unreasonable searches – to ensure that our government couldn’t come knocking in the middle of the night for no reason. We need to find a way forward to make sure that we…

I was surprised when I saw that the AFL-CIO was backing SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act sponsored by the RIAA and MPAA.  I was able to find out the name of the AFL-CIO official, Paul Almeida,  testifying for the bill, and I sent him and email.  Below follows that exchange. To: Paul Almeida From: Michael Pellegrini Subject: Sorry to see an AFL-CIO officer shilling for likes of the RIAA… Sir: I am an ILWU member. I’ve been involved in the union movement for over 30 years, working as an International Organizer, as a Business Rep, and have held elective…

There are some things you just never expect to see. Shrimp ice cream. World peace. An openly gay republican president. Or, workers in the United States facing the loss of their collective bargaining rights. “The right to bargain collectively is at the bottom of social justice for the worker, as well as the sensible conduct of business affairs. The denial or observance of this right means the difference between despotism and democracy.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in an address to the Senate, May 8, 1937. These rights have been a mainstay of US labor law for nearly 80 years, first coming…

One of the most asinine initiatives in Washington state this election has got to be 1082 – the initiative to privatize the state worker’s compensation system. The primary sponsor is the Building Industry Association of Washington – Dino Rossi’s erstwhile masters – and the large insurance companies. (Rossi is pictured at the right, with his head up his ass, as usual). So far, the BIAW has spent a reported $500, 000 on its Yes-1082 campaign – a staggering sum of money. But it’s nothing compared to what they potentially can make if 1082 passes. Here’s a detailed look. It’s all…

Spokane, WA (AP) – Perennial candidate for big business, Dino Rossi (R – Spokane), seen at right with his head up his ass, as usual, is off and running again, this time for the US Senate. Foiled in his two recent attempts to claim the governorship of Washington state, Rossi decided to attempt to capture Patty Murray’s (D – Seattle) Senate seat this time. “That bitch is going down!” Rossi was heard to have said last week, following a press conference. “All those homo liberals in Seattle are gonna eat their words. They stole the last governor’s election, now we’re…