I am full of early morning, tucked beneath my comforter, stretching my legs, my brain filling its daily bucket of anxieties sufficient for another day’s wrestlings. These several days I’ve laid siege to my citadel of habit, rising in winter’s early morning coldness to meditate in dark stillness. It’s not easy. Plagued by inertia, I prefer my cocoon to elbowing out of bed and sitting … Continue reading Cultivating Stillness
Evil is very real and as we know from the Paris mayhem, universal. ISIS, of course, is its mirror image. This week, Kurdish Peshmerga troops, retaking the city of Sinjar in northern Iraq, discovered two mass graves just outside the city. One contained the bodies of 78 elderly women shot by ISIS; the other, some 60 men, women and children, presumably Yazidis, executed when ISIS … Continue reading Paris Bombings, Public Response, and the New Tribalism
Growing older may not be a disease, but like many diseases, it’s progressive. Not only do we diminish in physical capacity, but in mental acuteness as well, resulting in a lower threshold in processing information. Aging needn’t be feared per se, however, since scores of elderly enjoy a quality of life many young people can only envy. Take last night’s Democratic debate. Hillary Clinton, who … Continue reading The Elephant Factor in Last Night’s Debate
It’s sufficiently dismaying that the Supreme Court via its Hobby Lobby decision has further defined corporate entities as people, and thus with inherent individual rights. Not only do corporations have unlimited spending rights when it comes to elections, but with the Hobby Lobby ruling, for-profit corporations can now refuse to observe government mandates under the ACA to provide birth control coverage in health coverage for … Continue reading When Religion Strays too Far: The Hobby Lobby Aftermath
You can see from the above photo the challenge our president faces in convincing, of all people, our meteorologists, that climate change isn’t simply cyclic, but ongoing, posing devastating consequences for America, with no region spared. Further, we humans are its driving force. The National Climate Assessment came out yesterday, only to be immediately dismissed as “alarmist” by–imagine my surprise–Mitch McConnell (R-Ky). Guess he must … Continue reading Convincing meteorologists that climate change is real
We just celebrated Earth Day on April 22, an annual fête of huge importance for those of us wanting to increase the public’s awareness of the challenge of climate change, and our substantial human contribution to it, and ways we might fight it. It’s an important time for us in another way, too, as this yearly outpouring of Green advocacy transcending borders buoys up our … Continue reading Climate Change: Can we win the fight?
In a recent interview with Fox’s Chris Wallace, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said Crimea can be written off as a Ukrainian entity, with the possibility of still further Russian intervention in Ukraine until Putin gets a government to his liking. I’ve always respected Gates, one of the best defense secretaries ever. The problem with Putin is that escalating our threats just won’t work. … Continue reading Putin: Better Think Again!
What we’re seeing in Ukraine we’ve seen before; namely, Russia’s incursion into Georgia in 2008 when that government attempted to wrest back its secessionist breakaway territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. We did nothing then. We will do little now, simply because we lack leverage. The Crimea itself, now fully occupied by Russian troops, poses a strategic necessity for Russia that goes back 240 years. … Continue reading Sequel to Russian Incursion: Ukraine’s Likely Fate
Last week, Ukrainian protestors in Kiev’s Maidan (its central square) were mowed down by security forces of the hated Yanukovych regime. Undeterred, they advanced into the fusillade. What is life without freedom? I’ve been thinking a lot about Ukraine, no doubt heightened by media coverage of the continuing unrest in that nation of 46 million. But it’s more than the headlines. When I was a … Continue reading Russia Likely to Intervene in Ukraine
Despite President Obama’s spirited pledge to reduce the growing gap between rich and poor, his administration has been covertly involved in negotiating a Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement whose potential fallout would only exacerbate, not lessen, the economic divide, consolidating what is essentially an oligarchy of Wall Street interests. You may be unfamiliar with the TPP, as it’s not played up in the media, unless … Continue reading Trans Pacific Partnership: Corporate Mayhem Alive and Well
