Mike Derrick (D), Elise Stefanik (R), Matt Funiciello (G) All three say they want to “bring back jobs to the North Country.” What a load of nonsense.  It’s not nonsense that we need more employment opportunities in northern New York, but it is nonsense to say we’re getting them back.  It’s akin to saying, “Make America Great Again.”  When was…
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The Republican Party is the shame of the Western world.  Not only have they nominated Donald Trump to be their candidate for President, but they have jettisoned any claim they had to the mantle of fiscal conservatism. America is somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 trillion in debt.  That’s $43,000 per man, woman, and child in the…
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Normally, I think Republicans are less honest and less intelligent than Democrats. I know; that’s wrong and prejudicial. Nobody has a monopoly on truth-telling and intelligence. Ah, but then comes 2016. Trump vs. Clinton. I say it now, fully cognizant of what I say: If you vote for Trump, you are an idiot. You have either a brain tumor…
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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!

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…
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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…
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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…
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Okay, allow me a little hyperbole. He’s not an abstraction. Bernie Sanders probably has a higher IQ than my cat, or me, for that matter. It’s just that he is gifted by nature with the appearance of a crazy professor, but he’s not been given a concomitant dose of professorial sense.  Here is his stance…
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Yep, you probably didn’t hear it here first: Ben Carson is nuts.  But this isn’t your web site, it’s MINE, and I can say what I want.  So there.  Ben Carson is nuts. He scares the shit out of me.  That slow delivery.  That oh-so-sure cadence.  You hear it and think, “Where have I heard that before? …
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Cuba has been nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for its work in fighting Ebola in Africa along with its outstanding health care solidarity work around the world.  And with good reason! When most countries including our own stood aside as the epidemic raged in West Africa, Cuba without hesitation rushed to the side of…
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