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…
The Birkenstock Dream This evening we are watching a movie we know that we have seen before, but which is less than fully memorable to us since so much of it is subtitled. It is the 2022 film called The Swimmers, and it is a real story about two Syrian girls that are trained Olympic swimmers. It tells the harrowing tale of their escape from war-torn Damascus, leaving their family behind for the time being,…
The Big Lie You have to hand it to Donald Trump, he has a habit of always aspiring to be at the top of whatever hill he chooses to climb. Of course, the more accurate way to characterize that would be to say that he always aspires to declare that he is at the top of whatever hill he chooses to say he has climbed. I’m sure the subtlety of what I’m differentiating there is…