Climbing up the hill in 80-degree heat and impressive humidity today, I couldn’t help but think how today felt like this time 49 years ago. Most of you won’t remember it, but that was a time when the air was electric with news about Richard Nixon, and doubt whether he would be president of the United States much longer.
It’s a little mortifying to learn that the Temptations’ hit song, “Ball of Confusion” was a hit 53 years ago. The worrying part is how long ago it was released. And how it came a half century too early.
Never the sharpest brick in the pile, and never having been accused of honesty, Joe “Bugout” Biden has not aged well.
All really that can be said of him now is that the ravages of time have cast doubt whether his latest falsehood is deliberate or an artifact of senile dementia. The effect is the same: his one hard and fast rule is never, ever to tell the truth. Dishonesty is the one area where he and Donald Trump are real competitors and both deserve to win.
I look at it every year and every year it looks a little different from how it looked the year before.
A number of years ago, after having one — in a secular, not religious context — it hit me that the best working definition of an “epiphany” is the instant when the obvious is recognized.
Many is the time I’ve cooked up a high-concept proposal to get an editor to let me do something I wanted to do anyway. I would not accuse Amy Gibas of this, but something in me kind of hopes that her masters degree research proposal had something to do with a desire to have fun with balloons. About which she was nothing if not passionate.
The Boys are back and ready to discuss New Year’s resolutions; the growing crisis around the last two presidents and confidential papers; the death of Pope Benedict and some insights from the Minor Prophets.
The one important takeaway from yesterday’s election is that it’s unlikely that the current investigations into Donald Trump’s misdeeds will result in his indictment. Why would Democrat-controlled attorneys general go after their party’s most potent weapon?
You’ll occasionally run into someone who believes that it couldn’t be clearer: everything we’re experiencing was foreseen in the Book of Revelation. I’m not here to argue that, nor am I anyone’s idea of a Biblical scholar, but I think what we’re experiencing today is better illustrated not by the last book in the Bible but by the first.
After seven months of horrifying war, the last few weeks have been inspiring as the Ukrainian Army, with the help of western weapons and local courage that no weapons could provide, have reclaimed swaths of occupied land. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is not one to give in, though, and his speech today makes that point, if anyone was in doubt.