Thank You, Jon Stewart

I’ve been a devoted but critical fan of Jon Stewart. For all the laughs, I thought he pulled more punches than he landed, particularly when he’d exchange softball pleasantries with agents of evil like John Yoo and Mike Huckabee. I scratched my head over the “Rally to Restore Sanity” he and Stephen Colbert put on in Washington DC a couple of years […]

Making Time Fly

A couple of casual observations to start the weekend. ——————– Lately, Rachel Maddow has been asking why Congress isn’t debating President Obama’s military campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. It’s surely odd that Congress, which interferes with or tries to block everything else the President does, is allowing him free rein to conduct the […]

Friday Bag ‘o Tribalism

Watching NBC and MSNBC reports on the Charlie Hebdo terror killings in Paris, I see very few depictions of the magazine’s cartoons. In print and web-based media, though, the cartoons … even the really offensive ones … are everywhere. You’d have to be a cloistered monk not to have seen them, which makes me wonder why our TV […]

Friday Bag o’ Regrets

Can I say I regret what’s going on with Bill Cosby without everyone interpreting it to mean I regret what’s happening to Bill Cosby? What’s in it for the women coming forward with their accusations? At this late date they must know Bill Cosby isn’t going to be prosecuted. They must know there’s no chance of suing him successfully; any evidence […]

Tuesday Bag o’ Gotcha

What magazine would not have published such a fascinating story? And what is a working journalist, who sells stories for a living, supposed to do when the forces of self-righteousness on social media rise against him? Quit writing and get a job at Burger King?

Local Color

Donna and I wake up around six. Our bed is situated so that the first thing we see is the sun coming up through the sliding glass patio door in our bedroom wall. I jumped out of bed a few mornings ago, put on a bathrobe, and went out through the patio door to take photos. […]

Doggie Drive-Thru

But first, another visit to the dermatologist: seven new freeze blisters on my face plus a bloody spot below my eye where he cut out a divot to send for a biopsy. It’ll likely turn out to be a basal cell skin cancer and have to be cut out. More stitches, another scar. This will be number six. So […]

Strategery

Over the span of my life, Islam has been a consistently destructive force. Sure, religious fanatics in other parts of the world have started wars, but for pure hate-driven evil nothing tops the Muslims. Islam turns much of its destructive force inward against fellow Muslims; still, it has plenty left over to direct against Israel, and with the 9/11 terror attacks in the USA and subsequent […]