The Reagan Legacy Today we are going to see the new Dennis Quaid movie called Reagan. It chronicles the life and times of the 40th president of the United States. After the difficult transitional years with Jimmy Carter in the presidency, when so very little got done in what was, admittedly, a difficult moment in American history, it was not at all surprising that America wanted something different. It always does. I remember those times…
Future v. Past We are rolling up to the big presidential debate on Tuesday night. I have never thought that this debate would happen. In fact, I have $10 riding on the notion that there would be no debate because Trump would no-show. At this point I think the odds of that outcome have fallen to below 50%, but I wouldn’t throw away my bet ticket just yet. I have been watching what the various…
A Labor of Love Today is Labor Day, which has been a national holiday since 1894. Even though it falls 2-3 weeks before the formal calendar transition from summer to fall, America always considers it the end of summer and the start of “back-to-school” season. It’s one of these times when everyone seems focused on their business before the holidays kick in at the end of November. Strangely enough, the hardest working folks in my…
Catching a Break It has been a very warm week here on the hilltop. Notice that I am saying warm and not hot. Because it has been dry, the warmth of the day has felt good and not bad or oppressive. Nonetheless, when I stopped by to see our friends Faraj and Yasuko yesterday, two people who seem always on the go and usually outside in the garden, they were hunkered in the house with…
The Art of Disparagement When you disparage someone, you are making false and injurious statements about something. Usually it refers to comments made about a business or product rather than a person directly. Directing such false and injurious comments against a person is called defamation and most often takes the form of libel (written or visual) or slander (spoken or audible). All of this specificity is intended to get to the bottom of the comments…
Multi-Billion Dollar Democracy I see that the Harris/Walz team is touting that they have raised $540 million from donors (mostly small donors) in the last month or so (basically, since Harris announced). That seems like a lot of money to me, so I looked it up and was surprised with what I found. On a website called USA Facts, a not-for-profit, nonpartisan civic initiative that seeks to make government data easy for all to access,…
The Way We Were The 1973 film by that name starring Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand was impactful to me for many reasons. To begin with, the author of the script and the book on which the movie is based, Arthur Laurents, was a Cornell University graduate who was a contemporary of my mother. He was born about 10 months after my mother, so he was probably not Class of 1937, but he wrote his…
American Dynasties There are certain families that have done everything they can to place themselves at the center of American life. It almost seems that they can’t help themselves. In the early days of the Republic, the gold-standard name was Washington and yet our first president and father of our country did everything to distance himself from being viewed as a king. He voluntarily left office after two terms and never did anything to try…
Hope Is Making a Comeback They say that the best political campaigns are those that appeal to change for the future. While people are generally fearful of change, they also want it because it gives them something to look forward to and few of us are ever totally content with the status quo. Normal modeling would suggest that there should be 20% of the population that likes what it has and is more worried about…
DNC Denouement Today starts two gatherings of great interest to many Americans. In Flushing Meadow we have the start of the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament, and in Chicago we have the start of the four days of the Democratic National Convention. I first went to the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament in 1977, the last year it was played at The West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills. That was a small, but grand venue with…