A billionaire is interfering now with German elections. It apparently wasn’t enough to spend $250,000,000 to help elect Trump. There’s a ray of hope here. If we accept the premise that the Western democracies are caught in a vortex of anti-incumbancy, then Trump and everything he stands for will become like kryptonite to Superman in about two…
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If you were born after 1980, you probably don’t know what freedom we had without cell phones, nor do you know a world in which your mother and father, brother, best friends, and cousins would call — without warning! — at all times of the day, requiring you to sit down for a while as…
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My miserable excuse for an esophagus hosted a tumor the size of a good cigar, terminating in the upper part. The metastasis was in the lymph nodes. I had this big one on my neck that stood out like a misplaced voicebox. Originally I was told surgery was out of the question (although one highly-regarded…
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Heather Cox Richardson makes observations on Obama’s recent speech at his foundation’s Democracy Forum. You can read it here. And you can read my reaction below. There is the pluralism and there’s chaos. We are closer to chaos than to pluralism. James Madison lived in a time when the issues of the day revolved around trade and agriculture. Some…
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We like to think we can get some other person to pay our bills, but that’s what our parents thought, too. Eventually, we have to pay our bills. The longer we wait, the more catastrophic the cost.
Ah, yes. The Republicans would have you believe that “Russiagate” was all about how the Justice Department had been “weaponized” against their god, Donald Trump. In fact, Trump DID ask for help, and he DID receive it — publicly. Can anyone forget how he asked — at a debate, no less! — that Russia help him find…
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There were dynamics to this election that I never saw before. The things Musk et al hammered home every day touched on a raw nerve, and I can’t quite define what I mean by that…but I’ll try.It’s this: not just demonizing illegal immigrants, but demonizing those who don’t call them “illegal immigrants.” There’s a certain…
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Today, the malcontents who work in my school took a step I should have easily anticipated: they voted to begin using a reading series, Journeys, beginning in September 2017 in P – 6. I’ve worked at this school for 20 years, and have seen many bright hopes come and go in reading, in writing (oh,…
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Whoever thought to limit February to only 28 days was a great humanitarian. Better were it 10. Two years ago, my brother died. February 21, 2015: the most dismal date in my life. Two days before that, the water main under our front yard froze. Our pipes burst. This year, people near and dear to me have moved far…
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Yep, it was a good song by Leo Kottke (which you can see performed here) but it’s generally true in human affairs. By now, it feels like Trump has been Occupant of the White House for months, but it’s only been weeks. The lies he and his representatives have spewed before the public have been…
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