Douglas Whaley

[Click To Enlarge] My husband observed the other day that it looks like Ben Carson is always stoned when he speaks.   That made me laugh because it’s true.   Ben’s soft, measured delivery is perfectly consistent with having just had a couple of deep tokes from a banger joint, and then struggling for coherence as he expresses deep thoughts.   It would also explain some of those messy musings.  Witness his take on the total absence of homeless people:  “Nobody is starving on the streets.  We’ve always taken care of them.  We take care of our own; we always have.  It is not the government’s responsibility.”  You see?  In Ben’s world there are no starving people, so government shouldn’t create a problem where, by golly, none exists. Or his take on homosexuality, which he says must be “chosen behavior” since men go into prison straight but come out gay.  And on gay marriage, which he conflates with bestiality...

Yes, they did, and I assume they threw it away.  That Monday was, just like today, the Monday before Thanksgiving, the November 23 rd of 2009.  I was dying of an enlarged heart, and had had atrial fibullation for over a decade, sometimes wondering if the irregularity of my heartbeat would cause me to collapse in front of my law school class. I was of course hoping not, but, you have to admit, it would be a hell of an exit.  However on that Monday I was still up and breathing after ten months on the transplant list, and happily sitting at my computer at 10:30 in the morning when the phone rang.  The pleasant female voice on the other end calmly said, “Mr. Whaley, we have a heart for you.” Now, readers, that was the most startling sentence I’ve ever heard in my life, and my old heart started thumping in my chest as if it weren’t going to wait for the transplant, but escape immediately, say through the throat.  The doctors had said that I wasn’t...

Five years ago Senator Bernie Sanders (I, Vt.) made an amazing speech on the Senate floor outlining how the rich have taken over the country and are ruining it for everyone else.  I thought it was a major wakeup call and so I recorded it and showed it to my friends.  It can be found on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU2P6OAbevw .   The speech will be familiar to those who have been listening to his current speeches as a candidate for the Democratic nomination, except since then things have gotten worse due to the Supreme Court’s outrageous Citizens United decision, which struck down limitations on how much the rich can spend on buying elections.  I endorse fully all of Senator Sanders’s remarks on the financial disparity existing in this country and how important it is to do something about it immediately.  With things as they are Congress is bought and paid for by the rich, and the current deadlock there will continue until this is no...