Archive for News and Media – Page 2

Why Can’t I Embrace Biden?

It looks like the post-pandemic economy is on its way to a soft landing. Inflation is cooling. Unemployment is at historic lows. The cost of prescription drugs is lower. NATO is stronger. The Infrastructure Bill is creating jobs. Crumbling roads, bridges and rail lines are being repaired.

So why can’t I be enthusiastic about Joe Biden. He’s the architect of these positive changes, and I applaud them. Why can’t I embrace the persona? Why does it feel like he’s stalled out? With these accomplishments, how is it that he finds himself in a dead heat with a disgraced, twice-impeached, thrice-indicted, grifting criminal in the 2024 race for the presidency? It’s a mystery. read more

An Odd Couple of a Different Order…

They are very different but shared a common goal–fomenting the collapse of the modern social order. Both were noted for their intelligence. Both were Harvard educated. One became a hermit. The other sought the limelight. One was a mathematics genius. The other a presidential advisor.

Both were convicted of federal crimes. Both went to prison. One for murder. The other for money laundering, conspiracy and a scheme to defraud. One is dead. The other is still threatening.

Ted Kaczynski died in prison last week. A reported suicide (without details). Steve Bannon is alive and well on an estate in Oro Valley, AZ. read more

The NRA is a Terrorist Organization…

In justifying his opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, Justice Samuel Alito wrote,

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”

“Until the latter part of the 20th century,” he writes, “there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Zero. None.” read more

Update: 46,000 and Counting…

Al-Jezeera  reported this an hour ago (February 19). That’s where the death count in southeast Turkey and the northwest corner of Syria stands today. Two weeks ago, a 7.8  earthquake devastated the area, opening cracks in the earth, taking down buildings and crushing everything below. It looks like 9/11 x 10 with rescue and recovery made even more difficult by a civil war, lack of access, blocked border crossings, snow, and freezing temperatures. Every day the death toll increases, but rescue teams are still uncovering live victims from beneath the piles of rebar and blocks of concrete left in the quake’s aftermath. One million living in UN-supplied tents on the Turkish side. Aid blocked to the Syrian side. read more

America: Listen to Your Poets…

I have not so much emulated the birds that musically sing,

I have abandoned myself to flights, broad circles.

The hawk, the seagull, have far more possess’d me than the canary or mockingbird.

I have not felt to warble and trill however sweetly,

I have felt to soar in freedom and in the fullness of power, joy, volition.

Walt Whitman, Old Age Echoes from Leaves of Grass

At end of each year the winter solstice and family birthdays remind me we’re at the end of something and the beginning of something else – a convergence of old and new – things to celebrate and things to ponder. Time to review the passing year and reset for the what’s coming. read more