Today’s question: How do you pronounce “Curses!” in Texan? Two syllables or three? Whatever. Some stove-piped hatters in an industry group nominally identified with Texas will curse out loud at some good tidings I now share: Electric cars are catching up with gasoline-powered cars in price. Demand is soaring. Indeed, with federal tax credits and…
DetailsLet’s check out the outrage on Fox News this week. What is it? “Woke” candy morsels? Death panels for natural gas stoves? Cheeseburgers snatched from the mouths of babes? So, what? No outrage: a tidal wave of death from maniacs bearing military-style weapons. No outrage: a planet reeling from drought, sea-level rise and extreme weather…
DetailsFive hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes. How do you measure, measure a year? How does a party on the outs measure a blown opportunity? Let’s just say that for Republicans there’s always next year. This year, in their second chance to rebut President Biden’s State of the Union, they bet that Americans wanted to…
DetailsLooking back, it all seems so long ago – another era entirely, an epoch committed to dusty catacombs and flaking Sanskrit. Surely it couldn’t be just two years since the end of Pharaoh’s reign. We sang songs about his departure. We celebrated his exile to his gold-plated compound. But King Trumptankhamun — “King Trump” of…
DetailsUntil that televised perp walk, enough with George Santos. When this country elected a serial fabulist (“I’m self-funding my own campaign”) to its highest office, it made manifest that lying is a coin of conquest. Enough about a little congressman and his little lies. Something bigger is dead ahead. We are approaching a moment with “catastrophe” written…
DetailsAs brilliant and visionary as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was, he would acknowledge that everything he said about social justice was self-evident. Self-evident, like “all men are created equal.” On equality, however, King took pains to assert other truths that we shouldn’t need a visionary to notice, like: “It’s a cruel jest to tell…
DetailsTwo headlines last week pretty much summed up how the world works – to the world’s detriment. The first: a report in the journal Science that Exxon-Mobile’s own scientists were “remarkably accurate” in predicting global warming as far back as the 1970s, and of course played it down. The second: that Sen. Joe Manchin’s top…
DetailsDoug Ducey is gone. Well, not exactly gone. Just not governor of Arizona anymore. Unfortunately, he didn’t take his playthings with him. Instead, those toys remain to despoil pristine borderlands. In teenage terms, this is called “soiling the nest” before parting. In toddler terms, it’s simply called a hissy fit. Ducey left behind an ungodly sculpture…
DetailsWhen Russia rolled tanks into Ukraine, Donald Trump called Vladimir Putin a “genius” and “very savvy.” Turns out, not very. If you like scrap metal, the tanks are now an impressive pile. The army is starving, frost-bitten and in disarray. The tragedy of Ukraine far transcends its own toll of death and devastation. It also includes callow…
DetailsIt’s going to be all right. My margarine tells me so. It’s more than margarine. It’s Vicks VapoRub and oat milk. And more. As we enter a new year, a few things have got me thinking mankind and our planet aren’t doomed. Indeed, better things are ahead. Why? Well, first, my margarine. I’m a toast…
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