Kennedy Gone Mad I just watched a YouTube video of a debunking of an interview by Joe Rogan of RFK Jr.. It was a great reminder of what I respect and don’t respect in human thinking. It has long been a head-scratcher for me when you hear MAGA people denigrate liberals for being over-educated elitists. I was raised to believe that education was not just a good thing, it was a necessary thing and a…
Babbitt Today we went to the La Jolla Playhouse to see another play on our season subscription. The Playhouse put the play on in its largest theater, presumably because the starring role was held by Matthew Broderick, the actor that brought us first War Games and then, his most famous role in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Since his fame in the 80’s, Broderick has done some other notable work like in Mel Brooks’ The Producers,…
Ignoring Reality Last night I watched the third Republican Debate. The issues in any of these debates revolve around a combination of social policies, global defense policies and economic policies. Everyone in politics is pretty clear that social and defense policies can stir people up, but nothing gets them more riled up than economic policies. It is fair to say that Republicans have always (at lest since WWII, which is the timeframe I can at…
Portend It’s a good day in America today. Any day when Americans come to their senses and vote for what they want and believe will make their country a place better suited to the life they want, is a good day. Yesterday was an off-off year election which had no federal elections, but which had many telltale state and local elections that serve to test the temperature of the populace open critical issues and political…
Trump on Stage Today’s news cycle has been dominated by the civil trial in New York City of Donald Trump and the Trump Organization. Today was the day when the prosecution called Trump to the stand, having already heard from his co-defendants Don Jr. and Eric last week and before the court hears from his daughter Ivanka. It was quite a shit show from the sound of it. I say the sound of it because…
The Family Jewels Among all the other issues we face these days, there remains one underlying issue that always manages to bubble up when the going gets tough. This may be just my own sensibilities, but it has to do with guns. Just to review the facts, there are supposedly 393 million privately owned guns in America. There are about 260 million adults (people over 18 years old), so that would seem like 1.5 guns…
Getting Crazier We all know that American politics has been pretty crazy for about eight years now. Yes, that coincides with Donald Trump coming onto the scene of the American political landscape in a serious (I have a really hard time using that word to describe anything Donald Trump does) way. It does strike me that we are in the beginning of the eventual end to that reign of terror now that we are seeing…
I’m So Confused In the last ten days we have all been inundated with more and more breaking news about the war in Israel and Gaza. I didn’t think anything, even the war in Ukraine, could displace the Trump legal drama unfolding in New York City, Atlanta, Washington D.C. and everywhere in between, but this Mideast crisis has done just that. Everything else in the news cycle is taking a way back seat. While there…
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod In 1889, poet Eugene Field, “the poet of childhood” and a man of letters wrote the poem, Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. Field was from a somewhat storied family in Missouri as his father, an attorney, famously represented Dred Scott in his failed attempt to litigate for his and his immediate family’s freedom in 1857. This led to the infamous Dred Scott Decision wherein the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that he was…
The Bestselling of America I just saw this week’s New York Times listing of the top Bestsellers in the non-fiction category in America. The top four books on the list were all pretty much newcomers with three having only one week on the list and the fourth having been on for only its second week. I’m not sure whether that’s normal or unusual, but what does strike me about the top four books is that…