New Yorkers living in and who once resided in the Metropolitan Area know Donald Trump too well. For worse, he’s one of us. However, the farther west and south one travels, the short-fingered vulgarian somehow morphs into a worthy figure.
What better demonstrates the concept of “two Americas”? Continue reading Strength Through Fear
The management company operating the co-op complex where I reside installed surveillance cameras inside what had been the residents’ private purviews. The courtyards. There, we have access to pools and barbecues.
While this address has always had cameras eyeballing our parking lot, whatever occurred on the patios remained unseen. Unseen, yes, though not unremarked upon. Continue reading Social Surveillance
September may start a long-lasting hellish stretch for tens of thousands of Las Vegas area residents. Particularly renters, and to lesser extents homeowners carrying mortgages. Continue reading Dry Deluge
Congratulations to all those who’ve graduated from American service academies commissioned as second lieutenants or ensigns. Americans are thankful you’ve chosen to be professional military leaders who’ll command forces defending these shores.
While the above is the preferred job description, their profession encompasses the less savory demands of our modern capitalist republic. These United States no longer face adversaries which threaten its being. Therefore, any taking up defense of this super state is a misstatement.
Not since the Roaring Twenties have our armed forces been so intricately bound with corporate interests. Even during Vietnam there had been some pretense of halting the nefarious spread of nationalism mistaken as communism. It was just right place, right time luck that DuPont and Bell Helicopter reaped fantastic profits. What had once been a straight-forward picket of sovereignty is now far more protection and expansion of the super state’s great overseas mercantile concerns. Continue reading Heirs to Death
“Silly season” is an Anglophile conceit. Across the Atlantic, it’s Brit shorthand for that carefree time of year when news seldom rises above trivial and the frivolous assumes gravity.
Were that the American version of the silly season consisted of the same confections.
Instead the menace and insipient violence always lurking beneath the surface of ordinary life here frequently shatters summers’ otherwise lightness. Hawks devour our larks. Vultures then pick over what scraps remain on the bones.
Our silly season has the likelihood of going overboard this this year. Continue reading Under the Stateside Sun
Now and then news from Quarropas, once my New York home, wends its way West and gives me pause to consider the arc of our world. Is it by design? Are there patterns in its seeming randomness? One beyond the ken of us simple mortals?
Two years ago, the notable event among locals which received widespread coverage was Eddie having stabbed Mike to death then in, oh, let’s say, remorse, or recognition of his heinous act, Eddie blowing himself up. As much as nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, who the hell could’ve foreseen real-life ending Grand-Guignol playing out in sleepy Quarropas?
This latest incident is bloodless, though pleasantly mortifying. Continue reading Girl Clash
An observer writes: Here’s another instance of Second Amendment lunacy. In Brunswick Stew, one of America’s less dynamic states, a high court approved bearing weapons in establishments least likely to require their use. Rationally arrived at as the decision seems upon laymen’s ears, it simply further burdens law enforcement by heaping more unnecessary risk on the public.
In case any violence threatened, citizens of Brunswick Stew may now flash arms and quell incipient menaces in churches, children’s nursery schools, and of course libraries.
Churches, nursery schools and libraries. Man, that is one tough neighborhood. Continue reading Buford