In a 1930s comic strip, Popeye the Sailor argued heatedly with Bluto, his enormous nemesis. “Let’s you and him fight,” Wimpy urged Popeye.  That’s the first known use of the phrase. Like Wimpy, the national media goads opposing sides into a fight, because a good dispute attracts viewers or readers. Of course, bitter divisiveness exists […]

On Saturday morning April 14, over 100 precision-guided munitions, most if not all, cruise missiles fired from surface and subsurface naval vessels, tactical attack planes and a pair of B-1 long-range strategic bombers, took out three target sets in Syria to include one chemical weapons production facility in Damascus and storage sites along with a […]

My brother Matt died of AIDS 26 years ago today, passing away in his bed in my parents’ home in Houston. It was a benighted time for people with AIDS. There were no antiretrovirals then. There was nothing much you could do for an AIDS patient but hold his hand. And many people still thought […]

The news that President Donald Trump authorized the U.S. military to strike a Syrian chemical manufacturing facility is hardly surprising. Even without the potential incentive to distract the news media from Robert Mueller’s investigation and the next phase of James Comey’s “Buy My Book!” tour, almost any president would want to strike at Bashar al-Assad […]

I learned of Lee Cheney’s passing in a card that arrived in my mailbox earlier this month. He died in the small community just outside Albany, New York, where he and his wife Pat had been residing for the past decade or so. The Cheneys were my first Maine neighbors. I thoroughly enjoyed residing on […]

Syrian civilians were reportedly gassed in April 2017, killing 80, and again April 2018, killing 70. President Trump responded to the first with 60 Tomahawk missiles on one location and to the second bombing three separate locations said to have been development or storage sites. In neither are we indisputably certain that Assad did the […]

Only two women were both wife to a president and mother to a president. One was Abigail Adams, who died 200 years ago, Oct. 28, 1818; the other was Barbara Bush, who died last week, April 17, 2018. Mrs. Bush was 92 years old.    Barbara Bush will be remembered as simple and unpretentious, especially following […]

Last week the unthinkable has been taking place. Not nuclear devastation, but rather the precise opposite. North Korea has announced that they are considering denuclearization without conditions, such as withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea, that were previously a persistent barrier to any potential talks. South Korea and North Korea have even re-established the hotline between the two […]

Editor, I want to thank the hundreds of people and their pooches who came to Gooch’s Beach on Sunday, April 22, 2018, at noon to honor our dear friend Barbara Bush.   We read a few quotes, told funny stories of our encounters with Mrs. Bush both on the beach and in various locations throughout […]

Last week, the U.S. got news of an impending national disaster, a situation that could have “serious negative consequences for the budget and the nation.” The warning came from the Congressional Budget Office, a rare, nonpartisan federal agency.  Almost nobody paid attention. The threat comes from ever-increasing deficits and an exploding national debt.  It is […]