For all their other faults, Republicans’ worst mistake often tends to be their timing. Bushes pere et fil started their wars too early for their electoral purposes, but since the winner lost and the loser won, the wrong lessons were learned. Who can forget Bush crowing about the “capital” he had earned by stealing Ohio in [...]
It is getting harder and harder to believe that September, 11, 2001 was, well, almost NINE YEARS AGO. To hear our politicians speak, you’d think it was last week. We’ve grown accustomed to onerous waits and pointless hoop-jumping in airports, endless and expanding wars all over the globe, militarized policing, the mainstreaming of torture, and [...]
It’s difficult to pinpoint when the Right figured out that lying was the path to victory, but in the years since Watergate, it’s become not just an expedient stalling tactic for difficult situations, but a way of life. Lying was still considered somewhat distasteful back then, as was the case when, inundated with a wave [...]
Each day lately that I look around at the news pouring forth, I see less to write about, since the miasma of unreality that obscures every discussion makes any comment seem both untimely and unnecessary. Great matters of past and future, war and peace, and everything else, are decided from above and merely served up [...]
I’m not entirely sure why, but the rash of earthquakes in the Pacific of late seem portentous to me; the Ring of Fire seems to be moving out of its recent quiescent phase into something a little more, well, unsettled. And, since I live here, I find this a little nerve-wracking. Growing up, I learned [...]
As I’ve noted before, one of the neatest things about righty discourse is the way it so perfectly packages every fear and hatred, albeit haphazardly, into a baroquely nefarious conspiracy that, lo and behold, turns out to be diabolically connected. To normal people, it might seem a little on the insane side for Glenn Beck [...]
I took a serious look at the world’s future when I attended a masters degree course on the future in Hawaii in 1973 for a public administration degree. My classmates were mostly Vietnam veterans who went off when our professor entered with his long hair, unkempt beard, Hawaiian shirt, Bermudas and sandals. I suspected many [...]
William Saletan who writes the Human Nature column for Slate said in a prescient article in NYT’s Sunday Book Review You: The Updated Owner’s Manual, “The most powerful revolutions of our age aren’t happening in Washington, the Muslim world or the global economy. They’re happening in science and technology. At a pace our ancestors couldn’t [...]
Update: Accuweather reports that the humidity has dropped into the twenties, but it’s now an infernal 103 degrees. Whew. I guess things dry up when you’re in a danged kiln….. Update II: It’s after 9:30 pm, and it’s “down” to 94, but with humidity up to 34%… six of one, and all. If I couldn’t make [...]
“If given the opportunity to write a letter to the President — a letter in which illness and impending death served a larger agenda– what would I say to him?” This question was answered by a wonderful man who is in a hospice with perhaps days to live. His friend Paul Loeb posted Robert Ellis [...]