It used to be, at least beginning around the second half of the twentieth century, that people ran for president after having paid their dues by spending some time in major elected office, such as governor or member of the US House and Senate. There were just two exceptions. Dwight Eisenhower was one but he was a special case. Jimmy Carter was the other, becoming president after serving just one term as governor of Georgia. [Read more…]
Sometimes people like me focus too much on what is wrong with the world. It is done with the best of intentions of trying to improve things but it can leave one depressed, with the sense that everyone and everything is in bad shape. I needed something to cheer me up and I found it. [Read more…]
Recently there emerged the weird story of 43-year old Brenda Heist, a Pennsylvania woman who one day in 2002 dropped off her two children in school and then disappeared. Her husband was initially suspected of her murder and lost his job as a result and was shunned by the community. But eventually he was not charged with anything and he and his children went on with their lives. Heist was later declared legally dead (in Pennsylvania it takes a minimum of seven years) and her husband remarried. [Read more…]
In the wake of the Boston bombing, there has been the usual speculations of motivation. What could drive young people to willfully harm innocent people? I have been harshly critical of media personalities and pundits who often fail to see the bigger picture and plaintively wail about how the US is attacked because of irrational hatred of our values, our freedom, or our lifestyle. [Read more…]
I was not in the US during the time of the hippie movement and my knowledge of the Christian hippies, sometimes referred to as the Jesus People, is almost entirely shaped by the dopey 1973 musical film Godspell, not the most reliable source. It transported Jesus and his followers into New York City and portrayed them as hippies dancing and singing all over the place. It had one good song Day by Day and nothing much else going for it. [Read more…]
As regular readers of this blog know, I am a huge fan of Orly Taitz, that devoted seeker of truth who has made it her life’s work to expose the fact that Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the US because he was born in Kenya and his father was not a US citizen. The former is disputed but Orly says that that is not necessary since the latter fact alone is sufficient to make him ineligible to be president. Constitutional lawyers dispute this but whom are you going to trust as a better judge of the constitution, some smarty-pants scholars or someone who is a triple threat, not merely a lawyer but also a dentist and a real estate agent? [Read more…]
There are some interesting developments in China. Andrew Stokols says that China’s LGBT community has made great strides in recent decades.
China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997, even before the U.S. removed all anti-sodomy laws in certain states. But today, there are no formal laws to prevent discrimination against LGBT Chinese, especially in the workplace. Since China’s ministry removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 2001, government policy and public opinion has also gradually shifted. Public health ministries have been targeting gay bars with public awareness campaigns advocating safe-sex and HIV-testing. But generally, LGBT Chinese now fall into an uncomfortably grey area: no longer directly harassed, but also ignored.
After writing yesterday about the reluctance of some to adopt the label of feminist even though they share the goals of the feminist movement for gender equality, I realized that I never call myself a feminist either and that this perhaps requires an explanation. [Read more…]
I recently read Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street by Neil Barofsky and it was a gripping read. His book is an insider’s account of how the financial crisis of 2008 was handled in Washington DC and it is not a pretty sight. [Read more…]
It seems laughable now but we should recall that when the Large Hadron Collider was being constructed, there were fears that the high-energy collisions it would enable would destroy the world by creating black holes or some such thing. Even I got questions about this possibility from people who are not normally paranoid. [Read more…]