Raise taxes on the rich?

This meme has been making the rounds, in various forms, online.  It’s almost credible. Yes, taxes were so high in the ’50s and ’60s that many reasonable people thought them to be confiscatory.  Yes, America built the interstate highway system — but used eminent domain to do so.  Would you be crowing about this accomplishment if it was your…
Read more

Guess that tune!

Okay folks, let’s see who listened to the radio in the ’70s.  This tune I hadn’t heard in 40 years, but I never forgot it: indeed, I hum it to myself at times and have to wonder why.  Give it a listen here: Guess this tune!

Trump and the Republicans

Donald Trump is going to be the nominee of the Republican Party in this year, 2016.  This is so beyond belief that I’m sure years later as I read this entry, I will feel an enormous sense of relief that this nonsense is over. What has it meant, really, that a dimwit like Trump has a shot…
Read more

The New Arab Wars: a review

This book, by Marc Lynch, is worth reading if you are looking, as I was, for a book that puts the whole post-Arab Spring thing into perspective. If any part of the world is misunderstood by Americans, surely it is the Middle East. It’s a very complex part of the world, made infinitely more complex…
Read more

The future of elections

We have the extraordinary good fortune of living in the greatest period in human history. Most Americans would blithely dismiss that statement even without seeing it as untrue.  It’s like being healthy: you just wake up and do your thing.  Nobody but a survivor of a near-death experience thinks about waking up and thanking the universe for…
Read more