(Political Ramblings from a Little Left of Center)
I want to plug an eight-episode podcast that just concluded this week, available on your platform of choice. “Ultra” is an absolutely fascinating, exceptionally well-researched, deep dive into an all-but-forgotten and, unfortunately, all-too-true chapter in American history. There’s that oft-repeated aphorism whose original form was likely “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to…
I’d set aside this afternoon to gleefully sit in front of my TV with my laptop to follow the launch and first flight phases of Artemis I. Alas, the launch was scrubbed yet again due to a fuel leak. You’d think I’d learn. Given my new-found time, I started reviewing numerous in-progress blog posts on…
My last post prompted several readers to note (and I’m paraphrasing here) that they were surprised to read something from me that wasn’t accompanied by a large black cloud. Damn. While I readily admit that my Scotch glass is often half-empty, I hate being predictable. To demonstrate that I haven’t always been the curmudgeon that…
Today is the one-year anniversary of Parenthetical Politics. I wondered at the start if the frequency of my blog posts would have an exceptionally long wavelength. However, with 66 posts over the past year, I averaged well over one post a week. Not bad for a hobby that mostly serves as my online pressure release…
Understatement of the Year: “He’s a different kind of a guy but they say I’m a different kind of a guy, too.” – Donald Trump on Boris Johnson Today, Boris Johnson was elected as the new leader of the Tory party and will thus become Britain’s next Prime Minister. Johnson is a right-wing anti-intellectual who…
After blissfully avoiding the news on a recent vacation with friends, my impatiently awaiting newsfeed scanned like a notebook of failed B-movie plotlines. At least 1964’s “Seven Days in May” had a great cast. The 2019 version? Not so much. Within a very brief timespan: Trump explicitly sided with a North Korean dictator, calling a…
As an eager nation awaited his learned opinion, Trump finally weighed in on the Kentucky Derby controversy: The Kentucky Derby decision was not a good one. It was a rough & tumble race on a wet and sloppy track, actually, a beautiful thing to watch. Only in these days of political correctness could such an…
Just giving a shout-out to an excellent podcast: The West Wing Weekly. For those of you who pine for the return of President Josiah Bartlet, this may be the next best thing. (For those of you who don’t know who Jed Bartlet is, I have no clue why you’re reading my blog.) Each weekly podcast…
With sincere apologies to William Blake and to a well-remembered English teacher whose passion for “The Tyger” was contagious. [Edit: And to several readers who thought this posting was weird: Yeah. It is.] Donald Donald, breeding blight, In the House that once was White, What indifferent shrug or sigh, Could frame thy imbecility? In what…
I generally find political labels to be rather pointless and I don’t consider myself to be a member of any political party. I also acknowledge that any political positioning on any scale is largely a matter of perspective. That said, I have indeed self-identified as “a little left of center” within this blog. While I…