Jim Hightower PHOTO BY LARRY D. MOORE Meet Scott Walker, corporate whore and lousy gambler (with taxpayer money, of course). The Wisconsin governor says he should be America’s next president because he’s a proven budget whacker who, by golly, has dressed down teachers, slashed funding for higher education, busted unions and gone after welfare recipients. […]
New York Times
Posted inArts & Culture
Comedic concert
Blue Man Group is a wildly popular stage act consisting of three guys who paint themselves blue and perform a theatrical show that combines comedy, music and multimedia. If you’ve never seen Blue Man Group, they take the stage in Springfield, Sept. 5-6, at Sangamon Auditorium UIS. The New York Times touted the group’s concert […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Where there’s a will there’s a way
Tickets are still available for the rescheduled Willie Nelson concert taking place on Tuesday night, Aug. 12, at Sangamon Auditorium, UIS. We’re ecstatic Willie’s back in town. The incomparable Nelson continues to create as if there’s a fountain of youth inside his soul. Who else can boast a successful 60-year career with almost 300 albums, […]
Posted inOpinion
The militarization of ‘Officer Friendly’
Let’s check our weaponry: 93,000 machine guns – check! – 533 planes and helicopters – check! 180,000 magazine cartridges – check! 44,000 night-vision goggles – check! 432 mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles – check! OK, let’s roll! Only, this is not the U.S. military getting ready to head into battle in a foreign land. It’s our local […]
Posted inOpinion
Employment Policies Institute flimflam
In L. Frank Baum’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the wizard turns out to be a big phony – just an eccentric old guy sitting behind a curtain, using his booming voice to spew nonsense in a vain effort to fool people. But now, a century after Baum’s fictional Oz, a real-life incarnation of […]
Posted inOpinion
Can Wall Street buy redemption?
Goldman Sachs churns out enormous profits from its high-rolling, casino investment schemes, while also churning out fat paychecks for its top executives. They literally sack up the gold, even as their speculative gambles have wreaked havoc on our real economy. But, finally recognizing that their public approval rating has sunk lower than mad-cow disease, Goldman’s […]
Posted inOpinion
The ‘helping hands’ helping themselves
The word “help” is so uplifting, conveying our best humanitarian values. How odd, then, to see it used in this New York Times headline: “Banks’ Lobbyists Help in Drafting Financial Bills.” I’ll bet they did! We all know how altruistic, beneficent and kindhearted Wall Street lobbyists are – when it comes to helping themselves, that […]
Posted inFood & Drink
The goodness of granola
It used to be “the lumpy woolen sweater of the food world” according to an article in the New York Times last February. It’s true that for those of us who can remember the 1960s and 70s, it can still have a vague whiff of counterculture. And it’s still regarded as inherently healthy, although these […]
Posted inOpinion
‘The Dow’ versus ‘The Doug’
“It’s a sign,” exclaims a February Associated Press story – a sign that our economy is “healing.” “It signals that things are getting back to normal,” added a delighted market analyst. And a March 4 New York Times report heralded it as “a golden age.” The “it” they’re hailing is the Dow, that mystical force […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Next to godliness
Peter Sellars, renowned opera, theater and film director whose opera Hercules opened in Chicago to rave reviews, speaks to the Dominican Institute for the Arts, a group of artists from the United States, England, Argentina and South Africa, whose annual meeting is in Springfield this year. The DIA invites you to join them for two […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Life directives
If you relished Don Piper’s New York Times multimillion-bestseller, 90 Minutes in Heaven, and its sequel, Heaven Is Real, based on his taste of death in 1989 from a car accident, you’ll want to be at Barnes and Noble March 12. The author will sign copies of his newest book, Getting to Heaven: Departing Instructions […]
