Tag Archives: history

As far as you and I, antics in a court room would not have been acceptable. Trump is begging for a jail cell. Begging so he can claim to be a martyr for his beliefs. No feeding of the chimps no matter how much they jump up and down and toss excrement at you. It has to be frustrating to him that no one will react, January 26, 2024, Letters from an American, Prof. Heather Cox-Richardson This afternoon a jury of nine Americans deliberated for less...

Kind of hard to keep track of this these days. In 1968, I left for the Corps, Boot Camp and then over to Fort Monmouth to be trained as a Crypto Tech. I was sent back to California and the to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina. Back and forth out of Cuba. Times are changing; but not fast enough for people who have been subjugated to a lifetime of discrimination. Can’t be many of those left who marched in this Memphis strike and then experienced the...

January 17, 2023, Letters from an American, Prof, Heather Cox Richardson Texas attorney general Ken Paxton responded this evening to the federal government’s demand that state troops give U.S. Border Patrol agents access to Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas, the site where three migrants died last week as they tried to cross the Rio Grande.  Aarón Torres and Joseph Morton of The Dallas Morning News reported that Paxton’s letter acknowledged that...

In 1980 I had a long argument with an unfortunate guy who didn’t just say “let’s agree to disagree” which sometimes works. He was arguing that the US should build B-1s, then the weapon of the future. I argued that the US should rely on Tomahawk missiles (launched from B-52s) which I asserted were the weapon of the future. It is now what was in 1980 the future and guess what weapon was used yesterday (hint it wasn’t a B-1 bomber). I love to say...

Decades ago, I read a column by Andrew Young, the former Atlanta Mayor and UN representative, in which he wrote that you should never trust anyone who says they aren’t racist. You should say I’m working on my racism.Recently, the former South Carolina governor and current GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley omitted to mention that slavery was a cause of the Civil War (it was *the* cause–see the Cornerstone Document, as just one exhibit). Now,...

For MLK Day: Blacks are faring better during the post-pandemic Boom than at almost any time in the previous 50+ years  – by New Deal democrat On this MLK Jr. national holiday, let’s take a look at how Blacks are faring in the current economy. And the answer is, pretty good! The unemployment rate for Blacks in December was the 2nd lowest ever in 50+ years of history, at 5.2%. The lowest was last April at 4.8%: The Black unemployment...

I’m reading Homelands: A personal history of Europe by Timothy Garton Ash. The book is organized by decades, and the decade of 1980-89 was a historically significant one for Central Europe. By the end of the decade, the “communist” dictatorships in Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia had collapsed.Real history resists simplification, but to simplify, the seemingly permanent division of communist East and capitalist West succumbed to the...

Our current economic model, premised on profits and returns, consumption, and growth — on greed, has proven to be problematic for the environment, society, and governance.*   Over time, humans have inflicted grave damage to the land, forests, rivers, streams, and atmosphere. Some of this was in the interest of survival. A lot more was done in the interest of greed. Of late, we have done especially grave damage to the atmosphere by burning...

and we have no one to blame but ourselves. J. P. Jefferson suggested this opinion piece on December 19, 2023. I just ran across J. P. Jefferson’s recommendation again or for the first time, sigh. I just do not remember. I was able to sign into this WSJ Kevin Williamson piece even though I do not have a paid subscription. Sometimes and when you create a logon, they let you have so many freebies per month. Hoping you will subscribe to their...

My friend Gunter grew up in the German Democratic Republic (“East Germany”). He eventually established himself as a professor at the Genetics Institute at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenburg, He first came to my attention through a series of papers he published in the early 1980s that I read as a postdoc. Then, in the summer of 1986, I got to attend a meeting on the Molecular and Developmental Biology of Drosophila, sponsored by the European...