Anxiety grips leaderless America in wake of events

January 8, 2020

George W. Bush and Barack Obama both had Gen. Qassem Soleimani in their gunsights. Neither ordered the trigger pulled because of the enormous risks involved in killing one of Iran’s top leaders. In listing the possible responses to recent Iranian provocations, U.S. military commanders told President Donald Trump that doing this would be the most dangerous. Trump did it on Friday. Iran predictably returned fire with dire threats to U.S. interests. Trump then tweeted in big capital letters that he would retaliate against the retaliation by bombing Iran’s cultural sites, among other ...

Add Iran’s leadership to ash heap of history

January 7, 2020

Addressing the British Parliament in 1982, President Ronald Reagan outlined a plan for placing the Soviet Union and Marxism-Leninism on the “ash heap of history.” It is an objective President Trump might pursue against the mullahs in Iran, who are subsidizing terrorism in the Middle East and threatening to export it elsewhere. The latest military and verbal volleys between the United States and Iran started when a branch of the Hezbollah terrorist group (called “militants” by some reporters), attacked the American Embassy in Baghdad. Unlike the 2012 terrorist assaults in ...

Apathy appears to have faded

January 7, 2020

Then-candidate Donald Trump told a mostly white rally crowd in Michigan in 2016 that “at the end of four years, I guarantee you that I will get over 95% of the African American vote.” How’s that working out? Alas, he has a lot of ground to make up. Yet, he hardly could have sounded more determined at the November “Black Voices for Trump” rally he convened in Atlanta. “We’re going to campaign for every last African American vote in 2020.” Right. The man is nothing if not a salesman. His job-approval ratings among black Americans have bobbed up and down during his term, ...

This is ‘The Year of Reading Women’

January 6, 2020

I’m here to say goodbye to Stephen King. Not that he’s going anywhere. Indeed, I imagine he’s at his desk even now, devising a fiendish fate for some schmuck unlucky enough to be a character in a Stephen King novel. But whatever that fate may be, I will know nothing about it — not this year, at least. I will be similarly ignorant of whatever legal potboiler John Grisham has in the pipeline or whatever magisterial new history David McCullough publishes next. The acclaimed new novels by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Colson Whitehead? They will also have to wait until 2021. This, you see, ...

Turn over new leaf in 2020: Let’s go vegan

January 6, 2020

Happy Veganuary, everyone! Veganuary, for the uninitiated, is the month when people around the world pledge to go vegan in order to help stop animal suffering, protect the planet and improve their health. More than a quarter-million people in 190 countries pledged to go vegan in January 2019. According to the U.S. Veganuary program director, 46% of people signed up for health reasons, 34% cited concerns about cruelty to animals and 12% were motivated by climate change. It doesn’t really matter which reason means the most to you as long as you actually go — and stay — vegan. ...

51-49 vote will ensure fair trial

January 3, 2020

Virtually all experts and observers envision a near-certain acquittal of President Donald Trump by the U. S. Senate after the House passage of two articles of impeachment Dec. 18th. The Constitution requires a vote of two-thirds of the Senate to convict and remove a president — or 67 votes. However damning and culpable Trump’s actions in withholding critical aid to Ukraine against Russian aggression to force an investigation of a political rival, very few believe that 20 Republican senators will join 45 Democrats and two independents likely to vote for conviction. But the larger, ...