Nicholas Kristof (Did Putin Try to Steal an American Election?) correctly cautions against viewing the apparent Trump-Putin political alliance in terms of cold war conspiracy. Trump is not some “Siberian Candidate,” a deep cover agent for Moscow. It’s worse than that. Trump’s is not an ideological or moral commitment to a foreign adversary. His willingness…
I only bother to look once in a great while. So it happened only this evening that I noticed the “whybother.com” domain next door had fallen into the hands of some breed of Adventists, evidently the kind of Christians convinced that atheists are doomed to plunge into the depths of despair, their lives meaningless, teeth-gritting…
Go vote for Margarita, Ela and “The Critter” at the New York Time’s Lens project “A Moment in Time“! Rotate the planet to look around. We’re in the California “stack,” closest to the top in the “Community” sort. It’s more fun to hunt through and see the range of pictures people thought representative of “a…
It seemed appropriate to pay attention. A full moon lights this New Year’s Eve, by necessity, a blue moon. At fifty-two, I have the time and relative lack of commitments to pause a moment, or two, or more than several and pay attention. They happen, or so I am told, about every nineteen years or…
Since when did we as a nation, as concerned citizens, as parents lose the capacity to judge babies having babies, to condemn teenagers having unprotected sex?
What will it do to every American mother’s and father’s ability to discourage their children from having sex before marriage and to insist, failing that, upon proper precautions not just against pregnancy but against deadly sexually transmitted diseases if we rollover to a wave of Republican permissiveness and install the bad example of Bristol and Levi in the White House?
Is it fair to Palin to hold her responsible for her daughter’s mistakes?
Certainly not. It is horribly unfair.
But since when has the national interest become secondary to fairness to politicians?
Far Right Republican Family Values apparently include not only knowingly choosing to have a Down’s Syndrome child when one already has a full family of four, but also the fine example of parenting displayed when one has a 16 year old teenage daughter (now 17) — the daughter of a state governor, no less —…
Let us consider the assumed symmetries: Obama’s inexperience =~ Palin’s inexperience Biden’s experience (6 terms in Senate; worst vices: likes to talk too much and has sense of humor) =~ McCain’s experience (4 terms in Senate, worst vices: violent temper and see-no-evil, hear-no-evil relation to lobbyist buddies — poster-child for enlightening & ennobling effects of…
“I’m going to start inquiring about your own personal agenda, whether your positions and your scoffing tone might not be viewed as little more than cover in lieu of a defense of the indefensible. In truth, I don’t presume much worse than that you hold a good many of your opinions and views primarily, consciously…
They turn off the water you know, as if it was some gigantic spigot. At night and in the off season, when the tourists are not around to admire and be awestruck, they turn it off. Well, not off completely although perhaps that is possible and has actually happened, at least once naturally due to…