IMPORTANT READS

ANALYSIS--“It was the wrong speech, at the wrong time, to the wrong audience,” Swedish foreign Minister Margot Wallström expressed about what global and U.S. audiences helplessly had to endure during President Donald Trump’s September 19, 2017 address to the United Nations General Assembly. President Trump acted like a bully, but unaware that he showed up at the wrong playground.

GUEST WORDS-“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” This single, sinister question, asked over a sepulchral-sounding musical score, was rhetorical; for after a dramatic pause and a malevolent cackle, the narrator smugly informed the audience: “The Shadow knows.” 

PERSPECTIVE-The current controversy over whether to dismantle statues of some prominent Confederate figures is a battle over whom we admire and consider as heroes. It is also a battle over who has power to shape how we view our history. 

AT LENGTH-I have a long standing, if not ingrained interest in free speech. This fundamental right is essential to the very enterprise of running a newspaper. One might call it enlightened self-interest.

HUDDLED MASSES NO LONGER WELCOME--We do not need President Trump to tell us that he can make America great again. America is already great. The problem is that we are squandering our greatness by pursuing foreign and domestic policies that debase our moral authority and the values that made America great in the first place. 

TRUMP WATCH--Now that Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt, I) has introduced his long anticipated single payer Medicare For All Act in the Senate Wednesday, which has 15 co-sponsors in the Senate, a record level of support. 

THE POOR STAY POOR-We all want to live in a country where all it takes is hard work and some talent for anyone to succeed. We tell ourselves that we do. We even see examples of people who “came from nothing” and ended up rich and famous. 

THE COHEN COLUMN--About 40 years ago (are we dating ourselves here?) there was a margarine commercial on TV with the tag line, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

GUEST WORDS--Once again, Hillary Clinton is offering some opinions, and, once again, she is being told to keep quiet. This is a familiar pattern for us, no less for her, so perhaps it shouldn't be so surprising to see it recur. 

But I'd like to push back a bit on this one.

PERSPECTIVE-Equifax suffered one of the most significant data breaches ever, exposing confidential information stored within its network. What’s more, three executives sold a fair slice of their personal shares in the company after the event was discovered and before it was communicated to authorities and the public. Oh, and the sales were not part of a 10b5-1 arrangement through the SEC. The purpose of this arrangement is to minimize the risk of insider training by scheduling sales in advance. 

TRUMP WATCH--Last column, we affirmed our certainty that Donald Trump is going down.  Either Mueller will indict or he won't. And we believe he will. It's not our political problem.

ALT-RIGHT APPROPRIATION-Nazis love Taylor Swift. She is thin, blonde, pale, and rich. She doesn't talk politics much, which might be just a savvy marketing decision, but it also enables wild speculation about her views on Donald Trump, feminism, and whether black lives matter. 

SO, NOW WHAT’S ON THE TABLE?--Calls for restraint and diplomacy emerged on Sunday after North Korea claimed to have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb capable being placed on an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

LABOR WARS--Continuing his war on workers, President Donald Trump on Thursday announced he was slashing the scheduled pay raises for federal workers.

THE COHEN COLUMN--When Trump told America that his tax returns were perpetually under audit as an excuse not to let us see them, unlike every other modern presidential candidate, we easily presumed he was lying about that, just like he lies about everything else.

LIFE OBSERVED--The systematic dumbing down of American public education over the last 40 years – seen in places like the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and their non-functioning equivalents throughout LA County -- is having a profoundly negative effect on the ability of people to act intelligently and understand how to survive as we face an ever-increasing number of ecological disasters. Case in point, Hurricane Harvey. 

As Hurricane Harvey churned toward the Texas Gulf Coast last week, meteorologists, climate scientists and lay weather nerds on Twitter marveled at the crisp, detailed images of the storm sent to earth by a brand-new satellite. The nation’s first Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, (GOES-16), had been launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida 11 days after the November election, and has since transmitted high-resolution pictures of smoke from Canadian wildfires, of the August 21 North American eclipse and of a major fog event that spread out over the Midwest and Eastern U.S. 

LABOR DAY VISIONS--As we approach Labor Day, I'd like you to meet the Neurodiversity Workforce Brigade. The Brigade employs tens of thousands of adults with neurological conditions that often are impediments to mainstream employment, primarily autism, severe ADHD and other serious learning and mental health conditions.

PERSPECTIVE--Republicans: this guy is YOUR fault. You own him. I know, I know: fake news. Russia is fake news. Climate Change is fake news. Charlottesville is fake news… let’s face it: anything Republicans and Trump supporters don’t like is fake news. 

THE COHEN COLUMN--Trump's precipitous pardon of outlaw sheriff Joe Arpaio was such an outrageous blast that it pushed news of one of the biggest hurricanes this decade into a small corner of the cable TV screen.

GUEST WORDS--Editor’s note: A Berkeley, Calif., rally organized by a right-wing group turned violent Sunday after arrival of a group that carried an anarchist banner.