Chicago's a big city, but as police states go, it's small. Doesn't cover as much ground as Cuba, or Guatamala, or Saudi Arabia, or other places where those who are paid to protect the people are instead allowed to commit unspeakable crimes against them, all in the name of law and order. Like Mississippi and Alabama of past years.

Yep, I know there are some damned good Chicago cops, but even some of the good ones are too damned quiet about the atrocities of the bad ones.

My usual  complaint about this topic is that when a bad cop occasionally (and much too rarely) gets nailed, the usual punishment is not a well deserved prison sentence, but a monetary award for the victim taken out of the taxpayers' pockets. Continue...

As the Republican party swings further to the right, there's a risk that it will ultimately push America to the extreme left. That's not as impossible as it sounds. Please think this through with me.

Those who speak loudest for the Republican party now demonize anything and everything that suggests liberalism.

They do it believably, with such evangelical zeal that many grassroots Republicans enunciate the word "liberal" as though it were a synonym for traitor. Continue...

Several months ago I shared with readers the fact that I was using the Fisher-Wallace Transcranial Stimulator to combat a crippling episode of major depression. Even after a few days some positive changes were apparent. One can suggest a placebo effect, but I had enough confidence in my own scientific experience to rule that out.

I had agonized over the decision to reveal details of my own difficulties, but ultimately decided that I couldn't keep it to myself. Serious depressive disorders are costly to society, with a high fatality rate through physical illness, accidents, and suicide. If there was a powerful weapon available to combat them, well, it was my responsibility to make my own meager effort to tell the world. Continue...

This isn't an original. My friend Marlene Goodman sent it. It's too good not to share! Don't know who wrote it:

A journalist heard about a very old Jewish man who had been going to the Western Wall (of the ancient temple in Jerusalem) to pray, twice a day, every day, for a long, long time. So she went to check it out, and there he was, walking slowly up to the holy site.

She watched him pray and after about 45 minutes, when he turned to leave, using a cane and moving very slowly, she approached him. "Pardon me, sir, I'm Rebecca Smith from CNN. What's your name?"

"Morris Feinberg," he replied.

"Sir, how long have you been coming to pray at the Western Wall?"

"For about 60 years."

"Sixty years! That's amazing! What do you pray for?"

"I pray for peace between the Christians, Jews, and the Muslims.

"I pray for all the wars and all the hatred to stop.

"I pray for our children to grow up safely as responsible adults and to love their fellow man.

"I pray that politicians tell us the truth and put the interests of the people ahead of their own interests."

He stopped talking. She looked into his wistful face a moment, then asked: "How do you feel after doing this twice a day for 60 years?"

"Like I'm talking to a wall."

This isn't a blog promoting pornography, and if you believe that nudity is always pornographic, well, I pity you. This is about a courageous young Egyptian woman who posted nude pictures of herself, although in a predominantly Moslem society, even wearing a pair of modest shorts in public can get a woman arrested, beaten, even killed.

This is one salvo in Eliaa Elmahdy's war against the official gynophobia and other suppression of individual rights in her culture. Of course it's shocking. That's the idea.

So was the public burning of American flags during the Vietnam war. I didn't do it, but understood the message, which many politicians and pundits didn't. The vast majority of flag burners had no interest in destroying the United States. Their actions told society worldwide that many American citizens disapproved the actions of our government and detested the ongoing slaughter of innocents being perpetrated in our name. (If this ingrigues you at all, you might want to read my earlier post about a battery from Vietnam.)

Take a look for yourself: http://arebelsdiary.blogspot.com/?zx=438f964c204f2676

Frankly, I've seen women who looked a lot better in the nude than she does. But I've never seen one I admired more.

Jesus never said it. In fact, it doesn't come from anywhere in the Bible. The closest quote is from King Solomon, who said "He who spares the rod hates his son." And who knows what he meant by that. The "rod" a shepherd carried was to protect his sheep from wolves, not to beat the crap out of them.

And if you assume that Solomon really was advocating beating your kids because that's what some crackpot preacher told you, then I believe you should consider that dear old Shlomo (doesn't sound so great in Hebrew, does it?) came from one of the most dysfunctional families in history.

You've probably had the experience of grief at some time in your life. Someone very close to you is gone, and you feel empty, unable to take much pleasure in anything.

I'd wager you also know how it feels when everything has "gone wrong." Circumstances beyond your control caused you to miss an important meeting and you're concerned about your job. At the same time one of your children is in serious trouble at school. Your garden wall has collapsed into the neighbors' yard and they're mad as hell about it.

If you've had to recover from a major illness, you know what it's like to have no energy and no ambition. You're always tired. The littlest ordinary task seems overwhelming. It's hard to concentrate. You may even wish you could just go to sleep and not wake up.

Now, put all of those together, and multiply it by three or four. That's what major depression is like. Except when it's severe; for that you'd have to multiply by ten.

You can't just "pull yourself together" or just "snap out of it." Continue...

Let's talk about some complaints first, even though complaining is counter to my usual sweet and agreeable nature.

You know about Google maps and Mapquest. I rely on them both from time to time, and usually find them very helpful. But when you need them most is when you're trying to find someplace like my country home, which is out where God left his shoes in Southwest Michigan. Mapquest gives more or less accurate directions, but then on its map indicates that my house is about a half mile away from the actual location. What's actually there is a single-wide mobile home. So far as I know the people who live there are respectable, decent folks, but it's not the 10-room 2-story home I tell visitors to look for.

Google maps also puts my house a half mile away, in the opposite direction. In their infinite wisdom, the people who create these things decided to extend the "street" (actually a gravel road) on which I live several miles beyond the point where it actually dead ends. In their imagination, they run it over some neighboring land, and then, miraculously, up the middle of the river for some distance.

Supposely you can report mistakes to both of these services. Yep. You sure can. You can pray to the ghost of Elvis Presley too. Continue...

First, let's get one thing straight. There's no such thing as female circumcision. Excising the clitoris and labia of human females is genital mutilation, whose only purpose is to prevent enjoyment of sex. It is not an Islamic practice; it is a barbaric, gynophobic practice.

Male circumcision, on the other hand, is a requirement of two major religions, Judaism and Islam, and in the U.S. it is routinely performed on infants whose parents are neither Jewish nor Moslem. While many describe it as genital mutilation, and point to some risks, research shows that it also has some benefits. Continue...