Category Archives: commentary

Trump II

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The closer we get to the election, the clearer a picture we get of Donald Trump’s plans for a second term as President. It is enough to scare anyone who cares about the nation. And it has proven to be enough to get people who served in the first Trump administration to come forward and express their fears. As this is being written more than a dozen people who worked for Trump endorsed Trump’s longest serving chief of staff, Marine General John Kelly’s assessment that he is a “fascist” threat to the constitutional order.

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It’s Still the Economy, Stupid

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One thing the political polls agree on is the number one concern on the minds of voters. It’s the economy. It is ALWAYS the economy.

The problem, at least for Vice President Harris, is that what voters call the economy is not what economists call the economy. What voters mean when they say economy is prices as in, the price of a gallon of gasoline, the price of a bottle of milk, the price of a dozen eggs. Those prices are up. And as is usual, the incumbent gets the blame.

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BDS

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A group calling itself “Princeton Israel Apartheid Divest” (“PAID”) submitted a proposal to the university asking that it divest and dissociate from companies and holdings with ties to Israel. The Princeton’s Resources Committee asked members of the community for comments. An abridged version of my response follows.

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Two Giants

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Embed from Getty Images

We lost two giants of the entertainment world in the month of September, actors who I admired for decades. They each graced both stage and screen. And both filled their mantels with a large collection of awards.

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RIP WCBS Newsradio

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WCBS Newsradio Studio

A great radio station is dead, a victim of the ever-changing world of major media. WCBS Newsradio 880, a fixture in New York City for nearly six decades, has said farewell to its loyal listeners, me included. The shutdown on August 26, 2024, of the iconic all-news station marks the end of an era in local news broadcasting.

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Chicago and the DNC

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The 2024 Democratic National Convention is about to begin in my hometown. I am worried.

In the summer of 1968, I was between my junior and senior years in high school. After a string of the usual summer jobs, delivering clothes for the local tailor, bagging groceries at the local supermarket, this summer I had a “real” job. I was writing computer programs for the City of Chicago. It was a big secret in those days that if you ignored a parking ticket in Chicago, you would never hear from the city. That was because the city’s traffic court, which had a crew of one hundred patronage workers dutifully typing the data from each ticket and each mailed in payment onto computer punched cards, no one had written the programs to match the two card decks and print out notices threatening arrest to the scofflaws who hadn’t paid.

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Bob Newhart

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I was in grade school on the south side of Chicago when I began listening to the radio. It was AM in those days, and the format was Top Forty. There were two big stations in Chicago, WLS and WCFL. Since they both played the same music, they differentiated themselves by the personalities of their disc jockeys. One did a lot of comedic bits and spotlighted local comedians. And one of those was Bob Newhart.

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