We may wish that he would long be gone, but he’s hard to erase. The damage he has done to our national psyche is enormous. We elected a common real estate broker with a limited belief in democracy to be the leader of our land, and nothing will ever be the same again. He has impacted our institutions of governance in a way that should never be forgotten. If we are lucky, or at least peripherally vigilant, we won’t make the mistake of electing such a personage to be our President ever again. Already, I digress. He is not in this story at all, except for the long shadow that he has been able to ..read more

With the recent open distribution of ChatGPT, a new chatbot from OpenAI, all kinds of predictions as to the imminent death of the world as we know it have come forward and run rampant. This is the end of the college essay; The College Essay is Dead, the Atlantic. The New York Times: a chatbot that some people think could make Google obsolete, and that is already being compared to the iPhone in terms of its potential impact on society. And what do you know. AI is just getting started. The ChatGPT recently let loose to the world is still in training. Its more advanced replacement ..read more

We are now three Tuesday’s away from the first (perhaps only) midterm of the Biden Presidency, and things have certainly changed from last Fall when Republicans hailed their conquering hero in Virginia, now Governor Glenn Youngkin, as a harbinger of things to come; a Red Wave. However, a confluence of events has drastically altered the playing field for the two parties and Democrats now find themselves within striking distance of maintaining control of Congress. Last year I previewed the midterms here, and an update is necessary. Let’s start off checking in on a few predictions: “Another Glen ..read more

We all have blind spots; some of ours are greater than others. If you happen to be someone in the public eye, it’s more likely that other people will happen to see yours. Each of us needs one or several people who can help us identify our blind spots and warn us when they seem to be leading us into a danger zone. There may be no one in the world of politics who consistently gets duped more often than Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins. She seems to be about as well-intentioned as any Republican can be. She hopes for the best, so much so, that there are many times when she thinks that the ..read more

Can one person change the course of life for millions of others? Radically. We have Putin as our most conspicuous contemporary example. Just a few moments ago in our elastic present-day concept of time here at home, we had the hotel magnate, Trump, as our elected leader, influencing our daily lives like a twin Putin autocrat. Thanks to that very same hotelier, we now have Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett firmly ensconced on our Highest Court, pretending to be impartial, damaging lives left, right and center. So let me reframe the question. Can one person change the course of life for ..read more

Like many progressives, I would be delighted to have a Green New Deal as well as a host of other progressive programs that would immediately and directly help the American people. However, this is not going to happen anytime soon. Joe Manchin has shown that he can single-handedly prevent it now; he has in the past. His help from Republicans will grow exponentially if they reclaim one or both houses of Congress this coming November. All the same, political power in the United States is distributed in a way that gives Republicans far more influence than they are warranted. They hold half the se ..read more

More and more Democrats are expressing dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden. It was particularly evident on the weekend of July 9 – 10 when thousands of protesters gathered outside the White House to express their frustration that Biden was not doing more to protect abortion rights. The protesters seemed absolutely unaware of what Biden had done the day before through executive action to protect reproductive rights, as accurately described in “The Week:” President Biden on Friday signed an executive order aimed at protecting access to abortion and other reproductive health care services n ..read more

(* Entities and characters alluded to here are entirely fictional, and are here imagined for entertainment purposes only. Any resemblance to actual events or persons alive or dead is entirely coincidental.) In a flurry of activity, the US Taliban, once known as the Supreme Court of Our Lands, has announced another in of its nation-altering faith-based decisions. Rock and roll will no longer be tolerated. Rock and roll has been on shaky ground ever since Colonel Parker signed Elvis back in the mid-1950’s. For context, see Baz Luhrmann’s ELVIS, currently in cinemas. Elvis shook his hips and the ..read more

The history of the Republican Party over the past seventy years includes battles between the moderates within the party against the extremists to the right. During most of the second half of the 20th Century and some of the 21st Century, the moderates were able to seize the presidential nomination. But the far-right Donald Trump steamroller movement seems to have almost crushed the remaining elements of the moderates. In 1952, the Republican Party was divided between the moderates favoring General Dwight Eisenhower and the deeply conservative (though barely extremist) element favoring Sena ..read more

Age is a moveable number determined by our internal joie de vivre quotient, or so we are often told. According to this premise, we are just as old as we feel. Our true age may be 75 or 85, but we might still prefer to be 50 or 60 in our mind’s eye. The Internet is awash in pages that celebrate aging well. You can find the 35 Best Age Quotes, 14 of the Best Quotes About Aging, 70 Best Getting Older Quotes About Aging Gracefully and so on and so forth. Amazon has no end of books that want us to get the most out of our later years. Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potent ..read more