If you don’t think Washington is in the maws of a Fiscal Doomsday Machine, think again. And the place to start is with the 30-year CBO projections, expressed as the dollar increase from the current $29 trillion level of publicly held US Treasury debt. If Washington does nothing…
When I saw Brian Wilson and his band at Jones Beach Theater, at what proved to be one of The Beach Boys leader’s last shows, he barely made a sound except to sing the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” the Phil Spector-produced pop masterpiece that inspired and obsessed him…
I was on R.B. Ham’s “Beyond the Pale” podcast recently, when I said that it looked like Donald Trump was giving us another of his ingenious head fakes, and was pulling back from Iran. Literally at that moment, R.B. put the breaking news up on the screen. It…
One of the things ignored about the outbreak of war between Iran, Israel and the United States is that it brought the great religions into conflict. The prior wars in the region have been mostly Israel against one of the Muslim countries or the United States against one…
Whatever happened to the Donald Trump and Elon Musk visit to Fort Knox? You’ll recall the buzz from earlier this year. Trump and Musk loudly announced they were going to visit the U.S. bullion depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky to make sure the U.S. gold was actually…
When the warden doesn’t like the way the Paul Newman character talks to him, he beats him, then proceeds to project his own weakness and insecurity in the famous ‘failure to communicate” speech. Cool Hand Luke is a 1967 anthem to the resistance of prisoners to the moral inferiors who…
French authorities detained 12 suspects after 145 people reported being pricked with syringes during Fête de la Musique — France’s annual World Music Day celebration. For perspective on how dramatically the festival has changed in three decades, compare the atmosphere of the 1994 event to the chaos seen this past…
Washington has wasted the first quarter of the 21st century fighting wars for Israel, the consequence being the destruction of the Arab world. Yesterday on Coffee and a Mike I agreed with Mike Farris that Trump had gone over to the dark side and was continuing America’s war-fighting for…
In the 2004 film Troy, Brad Pitt plays a very pretty and very deadly Achilles. In Homer’s telling of the Trojan war, it started because the Trojan prince Paris stole the wife (Helen) of the Spartan king Menelaus. In reality, the war was probably fought for control of marine…
Journalist Ken Klippenstein has drawn attention to an overlooked remark made by State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce last month saying that the United States is “the greatest country on earth, next to Israel.” “The pride of being able to be here and do work that facilitates making things…
