Almost 50 years ago, I was transfixed as a NASA astronaut climbed down a ladder and pressed his boot into the grainy surface of the moon. A week ago, I sat transfixed as NASA guided a vehicle to a soft landing in Elysium Planitia, a “flat, boring equatorial plain” on a planet 300 million miles…
Everyone has something to contribute and everyone contributes more than their share. So many people talked about stepping outside their comfort zone, going one step further, trying something for the first time – and feeling exhilarated by it.
I remember Nixon’s “enemies list” – a list of people and organizations that Nixon considered to be major political opponents. So I expect the new president – being far more paranoid and more sensitive to any criticism – to have an enemies list as well. And it would, of course, include anyone who is effective…
The current combative format and style of these so-called “debates” is exactly Trump’s wheelhouse. If that style continues into the general election, whoever is running against Trump will get crushed.
If you consider that an election is just marketing, then you would do what a marketer would do — look at who is gaining market share and copy what they are doing. Why? Because you are going after the same market, the same population of consumers. So, if McDonald’s introduces Filet-o-Fish with huge success, Burger…
We are now being tested, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. What progress we have won seems to be slipping away, not by the natural forces of time and change, but by the sinister forces of greed and wealth and power and deceit. Like our predecessors whose radical ideas have gone before, we must persist.
Into this world came this song. It certainly wasn’t on the radio, but I had bought the album – my second Dylan album – and listened to it, late at night, in the living room, on the hi-fi console, with my headphones on, in stereo.
When I first heard it, it was just “the next track” on the album. But halfway through, I stopped and moved the needle back to the beginning. I listened. Then played it again. And again. And again.
I learned, in 5 minutes, about poverty. Farming. South Dakota. Pain. Helplessness. Desperation. Terror. Loss.
Because Republicans have such a long history of “voter-phobia”, they were particularly susceptible to claims of “voter fraud”. Since that claim has been popular among Republican spokespeople for decades, Republican voters were easy pickings in 2020.
This chaos, this havoc, this loss of reliability and stability proves the foregone conclusion: that government doesn’t work, cannot work. So chaos, incompetence, corruption, havoc all play into driving this message. So all of this havoc, all of this chaos, all of this pain may be “proving” that government isn’t needed at all. This has all been part of a well-crafted plan, then?
“The West Wing”, Season 3, Episode 12: “100,000 Airplanes” (January 16, 2002) SCENE: The team is gathered in the Oval Office. President Bartlett has told them that he wants to include something in his State of the Union speech to say that we will cure cancer. His advisers explain, one by one, why he can’t…
