General
A Puzzle…
Elon Musk’s charged ahead out to cut spending – then an odd thing happened. Trump put a billionaire friend of Musk’s, who flew in outer space twice on Musk’s SpaceX rockets, in charge of NASA. Musk’s friend’s mission: To land astronauts on Mars. It’s odd. Like watching two boys in high school parading, saying they’re…
Read MoreWhat’s Going On…
Pouring gas on fires, living off division, the news media’s full of melodrama – headlines like: Trump, Roberts on collision course. (Loved by some, loathed by others, no one gets people’s attention like Trump – to boost their ratings Fox, CNN, MSNBC are all full of Trump stories.) Here’s another: Trump allies out to make…
Read MoreA Mystery…
White-haired, old-school Democrat, Daniel dropped a newspaper on the table beside Dillon, sat down. Young, cocky, brash, Trump Republican, Dillon pointed at the newspaper headline, baited Daniel. ‘Trump’s right. We’re getting shafted. Tariffs put a stop to rip-offs.’ Leaning back I asked: ‘Hitting China with tariffs sounds fine – but what about Canada? They’ve been…
Read MoreEighth Graders – Not Grown-Ups
Striding onto stage, waving both arms, wearing a Wisconsin Green Bay Packers cheese hat, grinning, Elon Musk looked odd. Musk flew to Italy. Trump imposed reciprocal tariffs. Musk disagreed. On Fox News, the brain behind Trump’s tariffs Peter Navarro mocked Musk, added Musk buys batteries from China to build his Teslas. Musk shot back, called…
Read MoreWho’s After Publicity…
Trump railed about radical left judges taking away his power, usurping his presidency, fumed one judge – James Boasberg – tried to stop him deporting ‘murderers, drug lords, and rapists.’ Next demanded the Supreme Court step in and stop that foolishness – and called Boasberg ‘a grandstander looking for publicity.’ That last part didn’t ring…
Read MoreBad News for Us
Lips pursed, standing at the front of her elementary school classroom, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, conducting a drill my teacher told students to crouch beneath our desks – I crouched wondering how on earth a wooden desk was going to save me from a nuclear missile. Times changed. After the Cold War ended we…
Read MoreLess Melodrama…
Sitting down, leaning back, I turned on the news – Fox News played a video Trump posted saying we saved Greenland from the Nazi’s in World War II. Going down its own road CNN did a story saying tariffs mean prices go up on top of inflation. Out to help Trump, Breitbart News said egg…
Read MoreA Higher Price
Straight-faced, standing in the White House Trump’s spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt called tariffs a tax cut – Trumpsters cheered. Now a tariff can be a lot of things: A fee paid by a Canadian exporter, or by an American importer, or by a consumer standing in a shop – but one thing’s for sure: It’s not…
Read MoreBright Futures
Even though I had to put on a suit and tie, the evening was balm for my soul in these troubled times. It was the annual Scholarship Dinner of N.C. State University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, which honors scholarship recipients and donors. I’ve endowed a scholarship in political science/communications at the college, which…
Read MoreThe Price our Children Pay
The morning after Pearl Harbor, surrounded by men he grew up with, standing in a draft board, my grandfather volunteered for the army. Growing up I spent hours listening to stories about World War II. But, like most of my friends, I hardly ever told stories about the hard times Americans struggled through to stop…
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