Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Julian Assange must feel like he’s in Heaven. Which, of course, is ironic considering he’s actually in the first circle of Hell (aka Dante’s Limbo). You’d never know it from his TV interviews, but he has been hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June 2012. That’s when he fled there to avoid… Read more.
America has a new pharmaceutical villain. Her name is Heather Bresch. As the chief executive of Mylan, the owner of the severe allergy treatment EpiPen, Ms. Bresch is at the center of the latest public outrage over high drug prices, excoriated for overseeing a fourfold price increase on EpiPen while taking a huge pay raise.… Read more.
No doubt you’ve heard Donald Trump accusing the Clinton Foundation of a pay-for-play scheme, in which foreign donors pay cash in exchange for favors from the U.S. government. Never mind that, for as much as foreign donors paid, Trump has presented no evidence they ever played as alleged. Yet the media have bitten on his… Read more.
A boy, covered in blood and in obvious shock, became the “image of the war” in Syria last week. It “sent shock waves around the world,” evoking conscience-stricken calls for the international community to “act now” to prevent a recurrence. The media abandoned all pretense of objectivity as it validated this reaction. On Monday’s edition of… Read more.
To be honest, folks, I am pooped. Watching (or staring at) TV as much as I have over the past two weeks is probably not good for my health … to say nothing of my already failing eyesight. Never mind the irony inherent in the cause for this being my addictive interest in watching the… Read more.
Triathlon I refer you to Day 13 for introductory comments on this very challenging event – complete with the observation that seeing the vistas along this course in Rio was almost as interesting as watching the athletes compete. Still, I enjoyed watching the Women’s Triathlon far more than the men’s; and it had nothing to do… Read more.
Track and Field With all due respect to the other events that played out today, the relays were the only ones of note. In the Women’s 4x100m Relay, Team USA recovered from near disaster in the preliminaries. It stemmed from Allyson Felix dropping the baton as she attempted to pass it after the second leg.… Read more.
I interrupt my Olympics-only commentary to chime in on this irresistible news. The artist group INDECLINE placed statutes of Donald J. Trump on public display all over the country yesterday; naturally, because Trump personifies Western civilization in decline. But the NYC Parks Department found the nude, anatomically correct statue too obscene for public view. It features… Read more.
Track and Field In Gymnastics, the winner of the All-Around is considered the best athlete in the sport; in Swimming that title goes to the winner of the Individual Medley. In this sense, the winner of the Decathlon for men and Heptathlon for women is considered the best athlete in Track and Field. (“London Olympics:… Read more.
After his less than stellar performances, USA swimmer Ryan Lochte found a way to upstage the marquee athletes at these Games, namely Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt. Two of the U.S. Olympics swimmers who were with Ryan Lochte when he was apparently ‘robbed’ in Rio have been hauled off a plane and prevented from leaving Brazil by the… Read more.
