Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
By scrapping former President George W. Bush’s European missile defense plan yesterday, President Obama finally gave his liberal supporters a foreign policy initiative they can cheer about. After all, to date, his initiatives have been distinguished by the fact that he was adopting all of Bush’s. Here, for example, is how I commented on their… Read more.
Former President Jimmy Carter is creating quite a media furor today with an interview during which he said that much of the vile, ignorant and hysterical opposition to President Obama’s initiatives (on display at town hall meetings all across America in August) is based on old-fashioned racism. Here, in part, is what he said: I think overwhelming… Read more.
No doubt you’ve seen a replay of the way rapper Kanye West bum rushed the stage during Sunday’s MTV Music Video Awards (MVAs), yanked the microphone from 19-year-old country singer Taylor Swift – who was delivering her thank-you speech after receiving the award for best female video, and shouted the following: Yo Taylor, I’m really… Read more.
Saturday’s semifinal match between Serena Williams and Kim Clijsters of Belgium was billed as little more than a tune-up for Serena’s berth into the championship final. Because everyone thought that the clock was about to strike midnight on Kim’s fairytale comeback – after taking two years off to have a baby. But after the first… Read more.
In an interview on 60 Minutes last night, President Obama lamented the coarsening of political debate and expressed forlorn hope that he can “bring civility back to Washington.” With all due respect Mr President, no you can’t. And nothing demonstrates this quite like the way a heretofore obscure Republican Congressman, Joe Wilson, is now being heralded… Read more.
I’m all for remembering (and even honoring) the victims of 9/11. (Although, I wonder why nobody seems to remember the victims of Oklahoma City or Pearl Harbor…?) But these annual memorials are becoming a little contrived, don’t you think? I can’t imagine they will continue (annually) after the 10th anniversary, do you? At which point it… Read more.
It’s doubtful that she’s had a sex change. And even if the test finds abnormalities in her chromosomal and hormonal makeup, this should not disqualify her gender identity … or her performance. [Gender-blending South African athlete pilloried at Worlds, TIJ, August 21, 2009] This, in part, was my take on the controversy that erupted at the World… Read more.
Given the growing pandemic of obesity, it behooves commercial airlines to establish industry-wide standards to determine whether, or under what circumstances, obese people should be barred from flying. What happened to Emery Orto last week is a case in point: Orto is a 6-ft, 350-lb man who was barred from flying a Southwest Airlines (return) flight… Read more.
Despite the fact that ragtag insurgents in Iran and Afghanistan have bedeviled US forces for almost a decade, Americans continue to boast that the US is the most powerful military power in the history of mankind. But if the vietnamization of these two wars is not enough to humble them, perhaps Iran’s role in aiding… Read more.
Earlier this summer, the World Health Organization (WHO) made quite a show of raising the worldwide swine flu pandemic alert to the highest phase; i.e., to phase 6 on a scale of 1 to 6: This particular H1N1 strain [swine flu] has not circulated previously in humans. I have conferred with leading influenza experts, virologists, and… Read more.
