Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
With all of the media attention focused these days on the menacing antics of North Korea’s Kim Jong-il and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it’s easy to forget that – not so long ago – Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez was the foreign leader who gave the United States the most political heartburn. For when he wasn’t talking about… Read more.
African leaders once personified unbridled despotism. Now they’re personifying the growing spectacle of leaders refusing to give up power after losing free and fair elections; hence their oxymoronic designation: democratic despots. This has led to an untenable new norm developing on the Continent where opposition leaders – who win clear and convincing elections – are… Read more.
As indicated in my original commentary, I thought Madoff might commit suicide to escape the public shame and legal consequences of his historic scheme. It turns out, however, that one of the fund managers who unwittingly feed victims to Maddoff was the first to do so. Specifically, Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchett, 65, lost $1.4… Read more.
One of the hallmarks of Western democracies is the right of citizens to take to the streets to protest government policies. Indeed, that Chinese citizens do not have this right is one of the principle reasons why China will never surpass the United States as the world’s most admired, respected, and envied country – even… Read more.
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I am still on sick leave, but I’m getting sicker watching far-left Democrats Carterize President Obama over the compromise he struck with Republicans yesterday to, effectively, extend Bush-era tax cuts for the rich in exchange for extending unemployment benefits for the poor. In fact, this has incited such mutinous rage among these folks that they seem… Read more.
The United States and South Korea wrapped up four days of “war games” in the Yellow Sea yesterday – in what can only be described as an accidental response to North Korea’s manic shelling of a fishing village and military base in the South on November 23. I dismiss it as accidental because these games were scheduled… Read more.
I don’t know who came up with the harebrained idea of turning Spider-Man into a Broadway musical. But for some reason – that must be equal parts egotistical and masochistic – Tony Award-winning director Julie Taymor of Lion King fame eventually teamed up with rock-n-roll übermenschen Bono and The Edge of U2 to stage it under the… Read more.
Because of the Thanksgiving break, many readers might consider last Tuesday’s finale on Dancing With The Stars (DWTS) ancient history. Nevertheless, my previous commentaries on the Palin effect, which made this show more about politics than dancing, compel me to offer this belated denouement: Such was the incomprehensible staying power of Bristol Palin on this season’s DWTS that even… Read more.
WikiLeaks publishing U.S. government secrets is taking on the oxymoronic spectacle of a 90-pound weakling kicking sand in the face of a muscle-bound bully. Yet it published another cache yesterday despite adamant U.S. protests. Instead of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan bemoaning their fecklessness, U.S. diplomats at more than 270 outposts around the world… Read more.
