I liked him when he was Clinton’s labor secretary, because of his labor-friendly policies and defense of working-class people, with whom I’ve identified since my youth. Reich (bio here), a Dartmouth and Oxford-educated Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law School graduate, has been a professor at [...]
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The Hunter Biden laptop trail
The purported Hunter Biden laptop, and at least some of the salacious material on it, apparently are authentic, Mother Jones says (in a story here). But the Chinese connection alleged by Trump backers is fake. “The effort to publicize compromising emails, images, and videos from the device in[...]
How Trump changed America’s nuclear strategy
America’s 14 Trident subs, 8 operating in the Pacific out of Bangor, Washington, and 6 in the Atlantic, are now armed with some low-yield “tactical” warheads. This warhead, dubbed the W76-2, has about one-third to one-half the explosive power of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. De[...]
Why Trump deserved to lose
“The Trump administration engaged in ‘deliberate efforts’ to undermine the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic for political purposes, a congressional report released [on] Friday,” December 17, 2021, says (read story here). While the report was put out by a House subcom[...]
China’s jet fighter incursions into Taiwan airspace keep escalating
“China sent 38 warplanes into the skies around Taiwan on Friday, the highest number of Chinese military aircraft to breach the island’s Air Defense Identification Zone in a single day since Taipei began publicly reporting such activities last year,” CNN reported on Friday night, Oc[...]
August 14th, 2021 - 8:26 pm § in Biden, Foreign Affairs
Assessing Biden’s decision to give up Afghanistan
Let’s start with the country itself. Afghanistan isn’t a nation; it’s a place, a chunk of real estate, that’s home to some 28 tribes. The largest of these is the Pashtuns, about 40% of the population, who occupy a large area that straddles the fuzzy border between Afghanistan[...]
August 1st, 2021 - 12:55 pm § in Foreign Affairs, Misc.
Will we have to pay hackers for peace?
Hackers are sophisticated criminal gangs, often based in Russia or Iran, who lock computer systems and demand ransom payments to unlock them. They’ve “targeted schools, hospitals, councils, airports, government bodies, oil pipelines, universities, nuclear contractors, insurance companies[...]
Attention seeker
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) stirred up a hornet’s nest on Friday by comparing mask mandates to Stars of David (photo, left) and alluding to Nazi gas chambers (read story here). There’s nothing original or creative about this; rightwing pastors and other anti-maskers have used this[...]
May 12th, 2021 - 11:35 pm § in Donald Trump, Politics
Just because they’re retired generals and admirals doesn’t mean they have any brains
“A group of more than 120 retired military officers have written President Joe Biden to tell him his election was less than legitimate – while questioning his mental acuity,” the U.K.-based tabloid Daily Mail reported on Wednesday, May 12, 2021. Read their story here, and Huffington P[...]
February 16th, 2021 - 6:34 pm § in Environment
What makes the Texas power blackout unique, and why it won’t happen elsewhere
Big chunks of Texas are without power in the wake of an epic snow and ice storm gripping much of the United States. The immediate cause for the grid’s failure is freezing temperatures, but this happens every winter in northern states (and Scandanavia), and they don’t lose power to the en[...]