by Gary | Jan 13, 2019 |
A recent visit to St. Petersburg stimulated my recollections of the six or so encounters I’ve had with the evil empire and its minions over the years. Yes, I know, a few visits over 30 years does not an expert make, but it does allow me to have an opinion. I previously shared my observations of one early encounter in a blog titled “The People I Think I Know” in August, 2011. It didn’t involve my own personal interaction with something Russian, it described an encounter of Margaret Thatcher’s (then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) which she related to me at an engagement party for her son Mark. To get to the point, she...
by Gary | May 8, 2018 |
I recently had the good fortune to be out of town when some 80,000 worthies joined one another in Dallas in singing a paean to the gun, the pistol, the long rifle, the six shooter, the single-shot-pump-action-semi-automatic-automatic-shotgun with a few Bowie knives thrown in. Yes, the NRA had their annual convention in Dallas. Politicians were falling all over themselves to pay homage to that never-runs-dry fountain of political power…filthy lucre. They were all there. The Governor, both Texas Senators, assorted Congressmen, county and city officials, and wannabes too numerous to count. And yes, the Veep and The Trumpster his-own-self were there. Now,...
by Gary | May 12, 2017 |
Let me start by saying I am not a Vietnam Veteran, nor am I an historian or political scientist… but I am a veteran of the Vietnam era who was never shot at, nor did I ever shoot at anyone. I served in the U.S. Army from February of 1966 to March of 1969, an span that history suggests was at the height of the war and a time in which public sentiment turned against the war. I should also say that I’m pretty sure I would not be where I am today except for the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War is my war. The war of my generation. The war that killed and maimed, and psychologically damaged hundreds of thousands of men of my age. The war that became...
by Gary | Feb 14, 2017 |
I can safely predict that you will be more than sick and tired of originalism / textualism / strict constructionism / original intent / original meaning and judicial activism by the time that Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, has been dispatched – or not – as the newest member of the Court for Life. Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to persuade you one way or the other with respect to Mr. Gorsuch. And it may come as some surprise to those of you who have rightly identified me as a left leaning, progressive Democrat of the rascal, yeller dog variety, that I believe the prez should be given quite a wide latitude...
by Gary | Dec 6, 2016 |
For those of you who have allowed your subscription to the American Journal of Psychiatry to lapse or, like me, who engaged in some light napping during Psych 101, let me remind you. NPD is the working abbreviation for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The “to a T” part you will have to figure out on your own. NPD has been getting some play on the net lately, in fact, a friend of a friend just sent me an interesting piece applying NPD to a current political celebrity. I, of course, would never do that. Consider this, then, just an intellectual inquiry to an interesting, long ignored subject. First let me deal with the etymology of the term...
by Gary | Nov 6, 2016 |
I’m sure that the last thing any of you, discerning readers, want is more, any more, about the presidential election, or Hillary or the Trumpster. And yes, I know that I promised that my last posting on him would be my last. But like most politicians, I lied. I cannot help myself. I recently read an interesting piece by a reporter for that reportedly liberal rag, The New York Times, wherein he posed a question to himself. It went something like this, “Will I be able to explain to my kids that I did all that I could to make sure Trump did not become president?” For those like me who are aghast at even the remote possibility of Trump as the...
