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Joined: 2009-08-30
Columns on STR: 15
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Writer, singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The Greenhouse School. His website is at danielpwelch.com.

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Columns by Daniel Patrick Welch

No Change for Me: I Want Bills
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Daniel Patrick Welch 2008-01-06 17:00
In the run up to this year's political circus, the buzzwords of hope and change are being bandied about like the cheap currency they are. Divested of any real meaning by their repetition and cynical misapplication, they quickly become the empty slogans that make "election" season all the more depressing.
Oldthinkers Unbellyfeel Bushsoc
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Daniel Patrick Welch 2007-02-01 17:00
It strikes me how little of Georg Bush's bullshit I can actually stomach as time goes on. It's a little bit like THC, which builds up in the bloodstream so that it takes less and less exposure to achieve the narcotic effect. Or more like the Monty Python sketch, where the funniest joke imaginable was translated only one word at a time into German to be used as a secret weapon against the Nazis....
The Left's Unwarranted Giddiness Over Election Gains
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Daniel Patrick Welch 2006-11-12 17:00
Giddy as Mikado schoolgirls, Democrats and their allies on the left are positively gushing over their election gains of November 7. In the US' two-party duopoly, voters are restricted to shifting power from one side to the other to voice their dissatisfaction with government. And, to be fair, voters did their part, kicking out congressmen, senators and governors from coast to coast.
Nothing to Lose
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Daniel Patrick Welch 2005-11-06 17:00
Senator Harry Reid, the minority leader of the upper chamber of the U.S. Government, infuriated the Bush administration and its Republican cronies on Tuesday by forcing the body into closed session. The move is allowed under a little used rule that permits any member to demand that the session be closed, ostensibly to facilitate the discussion of secret or sensitive information. Why now? Why this?
Arma-geddon Sick of You
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Daniel Patrick Welch 2004-11-08 17:00
Bush's Sword of Damocles is poised above the people and city of Fallujah , ready to wreak the pent-up wrath his addled brain thinks his tainted election victory permits. This is the bizarre world-in-a-bubble in which most Americans reside. With a chorus of Onward, Christian Soldiers and a vapid, cheerleading press, the crusade continues unabated, as the world's revulsion continues to grow. True,...
It"s the Policies, Stupid
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Daniel Patrick Welch 2004-11-02 17:00
As Americans gather to exercise their god-given right to pick the leader of the free world, that world huddles anxiously in the far-flung corners of the planet to see what comes next. This has all been posited as good news for John Kerry, who is poised today to take control of the massive house of cards left behind by one of the most criminal organizations since the Nixon White House. But even...
Phantom of the Opera
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Daniel Patrick Welch 2004-10-05 16:00
There comes a time in every horror story where the true face of evil must make itself known. In fact, in every narrative, the revelation of the Man Behind the Curtain is a poignant moment. In Oz, the wizard is finally shown to be a tired old man in the corner manipulating machinery to create the impression of power. When Zod and his cohorts leveled the White House in Superman II, he saw through...
Happy Independence Day, Daddy
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Daniel Patrick Welch 2004-07-02 16:00
[to the tune of "America the Beautiful" in honor of the US "handover" of Iraq--to George's dad's oil buddies!] Oh beautiful for "sovereignty" Where we pull all the strings Our armies back our chosen spy Just see what freedom brings! America, America Impose its will on thee 'til all concede or else they'll bleed for all...
Good for Business, Bad for the People
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Daniel Patrick Welch 2004-06-27 16:00
It's funny. I'd seen all this stuff before--I mean it isn't as if there was anything really new here for anyone who's been paying attention for the past few years. And yet, I cried. Maybe it's the deprogramming of having at least some of what we've seen replayed with any decent focus for One Brief Shining Moment, beyond the self-imposed straitjacket of a docile and dangerously inept US press....
A Sorry Bunch: No Apology Necessary--Off to the Hague!
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Daniel Patrick Welch 2004-05-12 00:00
As we watch the horror unfolding before our eyes like a giant time-delayed broadcast, a deeper horror should also be setting in. The entire discussion surrounding the "revelations" of mistreatment of Iraqis by the US (does bombing water purification plants count as mistreatment?) has taken on a sickening, surreal turn. I feel like we are watching "things fall apart," as Chinua Achebe once wrote....
When Good Men Don"t Do Nothing
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Daniel Patrick Welch 2004-03-29 16:00
Perhaps, after all these years, Edmund Burke may have got it wrong: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is not, as the wise Englishman once opined, for good men to do nothing. Sometimes men blunder into evil by the sheer force of their own cowardice. Evil was done in Massachusetts this week, and it was as unnecessary as it was pointless. From the first, we need to tease apart the lie...
Love, American Style
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Daniel Patrick Welch 2003-11-18 17:00
Can the Brits feel the love yet? Exporting democracy, it turns out, means more than just showing unfortunate non-westerners the joys of having someone else write a decent constitution for them. We have now advanced to the point where we can tell even the land of the Magna Carta just where they went wrong. Apparently, they are so inept at running their own country that George Bush and his coterie...
Still Crazy
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Daniel Patrick Welch 2003-07-29 16:00
After all these years, it still amazes how Americans can remain so disconnected from the world events in which we play so central a role. I use the term "world events" loosely, since the US today seems to have lost even its historically tenuous connections with the reality of the rest of the world. We continue to call our baseball championships the World Series, oblivious to how quaint and naive...
Don't Mess With Texas
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Daniel Patrick Welch 2003-04-09 16:00
Teach them a lesson they'll never forget. So goes the thinking in Texas-on-the-Potomac. And what a lesson it has been! They'll never mess with us again, nosirree Bob! As this childish thinking worms its way around the neocon braintrust, now giddy with "success" of their own definition (like toppling the Taliban?), it is instructive what lessons might be drawn by more rational--albeit scared to...
Fair Warning
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Daniel Patrick Welch 2003-03-17 17:00
As college Freshmen, my roommates liked to climb up to the roof of our dorm to throw water balloons at the band, who assembled just outside loudly, early and provocatively every Saturday morning during football season. One weekend the powers-that-be had had enough, and an adviser crept in to scrawl a semi-conspiratorial note and posted it on the door leading up to the roof: FROSH NOT ALLOWED ON...