War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
A clear, quiet early morning here on California’s northern coast, and compared to the remarkable heat-wave blasting the eastern part of the country this week, the weather around these local parts is near-envious. The environment can change quick, though, as I was outside a minute ago on a smoke break and it’s getting a bit…
In the wake of last weekend’s big NATO Afghan pow-wow, the war in Afghanistan has to be considered finished, kaput, wiping-hands-clean, get-the-shit-out-of-Dodge over with and a debacle for history scholars. Except for the Afghan people: Aleema, a sad-eyed girl in ragged clothes, is one of the 447,547 “internally displaced persons†who have fled their homes,…
As if on cue late yesterday afternoon, a thick, moist portion of coastal fog descended upon my little stretch of northern California coastline and eliminated any view of the rare annular solar eclipse which swiped across these parts on its course from Asia. In the quick descending fog, which filled a sunlight sky in a…
Mitt Romney waxing eloquent Friday at Otterbein University in Ohio: “The impact of gathering facts, gathering information, learning about the reality behind the words, has proven to me, in the business sector, that facts are more important than words and that results are more important than words,” he said. “So as you look at the…
Early yesterday, we had a couple of power outages — pretty rare up here — and the last one occurred while working on this blog, and no post. First time during the weekdays for more than 18 months straight — hey, not bad. And man — when one is so used to light 24/7 dark…
Raining hard this morning in the pre-dawn hours on California’s northern coast, upchucking a similar blistering shower of news gasping for air already. In the old but about time category, George Zimmerman has been nailed with a second-degree murder charge and is right now in jail awaiting to see if there’s going to be bail…
Iran not unplugged: Oil prices on Friday briefly spiked to the highest level in three weeks following a report that Iranian oil exports dropped significantly this month. … Benchmark U.S. crude rose by $1.52 to finish at $106.87 per barrel in New York. Earlier, prices jumped by $2.95 per barrel in 13 minutes to $108.25,…
The vaulted Michigan primary is this Tuesday and the ugly, nasty waters of the GOP will be muddled even further if Mitt Romney loses — the man’s biggest rival, bonehead Rick Santorum, blubbered to voters this weekend to pop the event “on its ear” by choosing him and not Romney when they go to the…
Last night, long-time CBS correspondent Bob Schieffer waxed hot on modern US politics: This is just another sign of the incivility and really the vulgarity of modern American campaigns. These campaigns have gotten so ugly and so nasty, that they’re now tarnishing the whole system. I think it also underlines the coarseness of our culture…
Using Osama bin Laden as a kind of verbal bookends, President Obama jumped on reality with a touch of a man-up pose in his state-of-the-union speech last night, calling on the US to “restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of…