One can’t paint recent job figures as anything but dismal. However, anyone who says the economy is grim across the board isn’t paying attention. “Board” is an apropos word. Boards — as in “chairmen of the” — have been doing spectacularly of late. In the last year, annualized corporate profits rose 42 percent. In…
So, the space race took off, and the United States stayed behind. John Kennedy had great ambitions for it and for us, but as 50-year-old tapes now reveal, he was concerned that budget hardliners would shoot it down. And so they did, and the Soviets draped the heavens in red. …
The bumper sticker plants a kisser right on certain ideologues' chrome. “Explain how you can be pro-war and pro-life.” Yes. How to be flag-pin proud when “shock and awe” kills and terrorizes Iraqis young and old, then chain one’s self to laboratory doors to prevent the disturbance of…
In the news business, advance obituaries are written even for public figures in the best of health. Because you never know. So, those who gleefully predicted Barack Obama’s early demise last November can still hold onto their frantic tomes. Because you never know. However, what happened in the Pakistani night a few…
Amid the endless flotsam — the thin lubricant that to the Internet is what plasma is to corpuscles — you will find on YouTube a stunning commentary by Isao Hashimoto, one without so much as a word. In time-lapse across a darkened map of the world, the Japanese artist shows every nuclear blast…
This is what passes for good government in a seriously retrograde moment in the 21st century. Texas Gov. Rick Perry the other day declared a three-day period of prayer to bring rain. And not just for that, but (clear throat) for the “the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and…
Donald Trump leads other Republicans by 9 points in a new Public Policy Polling presidential survey. That tells us this much: Democrats, you haven’t had as bad a year as you think. If Trump is the Republicans’ offering to lead us, Walter Mondale at last may be able to surrender that traveling trophy…
Oh, lord, deliver our school children from the Bush brothers. Their dad was famously described by Ann Richards as “born on third base, and thinks he’s a triple.” That was a might harsh. But let’s face it. For George W. to have stepped forward as the answer to public…
It was Idi Amin who once said, “In any country there must be people who have to die.” He was making himself that allowance in reference to sundry uprisings, mass graves and his own political survival. Barbaric? Well, sure. His form of leadership brings to mind the sacrifice of 10-year-old Nubia Barahona.…
When the almost all-black Texas Western team shocked an all-white Kentucky squad in the 1966 NCAA men’s basketball championship, the announcers did not report, “A stunning victory for the negroes.” No, they remarked on a stunning team feat. When Emily Neimann hit her fifth of five majestic three-pointers to…