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She Would Have Turned 60 Today
I wrote this in 2010, but have not published it until today, February 28, 2020. I wrote the headline today, but I have not otherwise updated time references. Twenty-seven years ago, on October 16, 1983, a deeply troubled young woman let go of her last hold on life, and tumbled off the Golden Gate Bridge.…
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Dictionaries: A Modern-Day Morality Play
“If you don’t look up the words you don’t know, you don’t deserve the beauty of literature,” my teacher said. Four decades later I still feel the lash in her voice.
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Seeking More Muslim Heroes
Unlike the thugs who killed him, Merabet had assimilated into French society, while retaining his Muslim identity.
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Health Care Debate Involves First Principles: Capitalism vs. Command Economy
The battle cry of the left is that “health care should be a right, not a privilege.” This is brilliant framing — it sneakily implies that the right believes health care should be a privilege. The problem, of course, is that no health care system can provide every treatment for every person for every malady.
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I Stand With Israel
Spare me from listening to officials of the thugocracy-infested United Nations complaining that Israel’s assault against Hamas is “disproportionate.” Of course it is. It should be. When a sovereign nation gets goaded into war by terrorist attacks upon civilians, its goal should be to destroy the terrorist infrastructure and kill as many terrorists as possible.…
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Biden Was Right About Obama’s “Great Achievement”
I assert that “not screwing up Iraq” is a non-trivial achievement — and certainly a much better outcome than many of us feared before the election.
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In “Let’s Roll,” Neil Young Channels His Inner Neocon
This blog has a new theme song. As quasi-obsessive as I am about 9/11, I can’t understand how Neil Young’s “Let’s Roll” escaped my notice from November 2001, when he first released the single, until today. Thanks to Facebook friend Meg Marlowe for posting a YouTube link to the live version a few hours ago.…
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Darwinian Selection in the Maplewood BlogolopolisTM
Big cyber-news today in Maplewood, NJ, the place one blogger once called “the center of the blogging universe.” The New York Times abruptly shuttered The Local, its New Jersey experiment in hyperlocal blogging. I’ve chronicled the Maplewood BlogolopolisTM here, here, here and here. Instead of just shutting down, the NYT is passing its baton to…
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McCain’s Town Hall "Advantage"
Before the debate, we heard a lot about how good McCain is in a town hall format. There wasn’t much evidence of that last night. Time’s Swampland does a good job of explaining why: In the classic McCain town hall, differences of opinion are expressed, and McCain works to build a conversation, so that everyone…