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Preview Of Coming Distractions

As you probably already knew, the next six months of 2020 presidential campaigning are going to be ugly. I do not say this happily, but I do so based upon a lifetime of watching candidates run for election and reelection. Almost invariably, politicians return to what worked successfully in previous campaigns. Consider the most recent presidential election of 2016. When exit polls across the nation asked actual voters whether their opinion of the two candidates was favorable or unfavorable, their answers were Donald Trump 38% favorable and 60% unfavorable, and Hillary Clinton 43% ...

After COVID, Will We Want What We Wanted?

When Germany let smaller stores reopen, the expected didn’t happen. Officials thought that shoppers would burst out of their five-week lockdown and spend, spend, spend. They were wrong. As the manager of an espresso machine store in Berlin told the Financial Times, “No one really wants to go shopping right now.” Same story in the Atlanta suburbs. Georgia gave a green light for restaurants, hair salons, tattoo parlors and other close-and-personal services to open their doors before others. But that thus far has not lit up the local economy. Some places decided not to reopen as ...

Up For A New Cold War With China?

Is America, in lockdown, with 26 million unemployed and entering a new depression, up for a confrontation and Cold War with China? For that appears to be where the GOP wishes to lead us. According to Politico, a 57-page memo from Mitch McConnell’s senatorial committee instructs GOP candidates to blame the coronavirus pandemic on China, commit to stand up to China, end U.S. dependence on Chinese manufacturing and tell voters “my opponent is soft on China.” “China is not an ally, and they’re not just a rival — they are an adversary and the Chinese Communist Party is our ...

Testing: The Way Out Of This Trap

One of the less helpful aspects of our current quandary is the shrill argument between two closed-minded camps. One condemns those who wish to open up the economy as science-defying ghouls who care nothing for human life. The other depicts the stay-at-homes as economic saboteurs willing to destroy the national economy in the name of unobtainable safety. Neither reckons with the indispensable bridge — the testing problem. Whatever mayors, governors, or presidents might say, we cannot restart the economy as long as people are too frightened to resume working, shopping, and ...

‘The Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave’

When Francis Scott Key wrote the words “the land of the free and the home of the brave” in 1814, he did so in a poem called “The Defense of Fort McHenry.” The battle of Fort McHenry in Baltimore was a decisive one in which Americans truly demonstrated bravery and fought for freedom. This was the War of 1812, the origins of which are lost to history. The British government claimed that President James Madison had designs on the British king’s lands in Canada, and so it attacked the U.S. The Americans argued that the British government’s stated reason for its attack was a ...

How Could This Have Happened?

Years ago one of my kids’ teachers joined the FBI. I remember how the students, their parents and her fellow teachers talked about this. There was reverence, deep respect. For her as well as the agency. After all, the FBI was the crème de la crème of law enforcement. You had to be a quality person of the highest character to be selected by the FBI. I wonder how these folks would react these days to similar news. Now that we have learned about the sleaziness at the top of the FBI. (I also remember how, in my family’s Roman Catholic community, we revered those who chose the ...