VOICES

THE DOCTOR IS IN - As a dermatologist, I understand first-hand Will Smith's outrage over Chris Rock's comments about "GI Jane 2" when referencing Will Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.

GUEST COMMENTARY - The rhetoric of a war on Russian oil and gas would be powerful and would expose congressmen and senators who dragged their feet to charges of aiding the enemy. 

GUEST COMMENTARY - I remember the sanctions era in Iraq very well. And when the former U.S. secretary of state said the death of 500,000 children in the country "was worth it," I remember that too.

OP ED - “I’m scared all the time, even in my sleep.” I will never forget the teary-eyed 8-year-old who told me that — one of the bravest young people I’ve ever met.

GUEST COMMENTARY - In recent weeks, leaders and commentators here and abroad have rightly framed Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine as a struggle between autocracy and democracy. 

HOUSING WATCH - A recent study shows that in cities where people spend more than 32 percent of their take-home pay on rent, a spike in homelessness will follow.

CONFIRMATION HEARING - It’s somewhere between comical and tragic watching the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

PANDEMIC ANALYSIS - Two years ago I was panicking, making hundreds of phone calls to postpone my wedding that was a few days away. It was March 2020.

OIL INDUSTRY - Long used to cheap gas at the pump, Americans are experiencing serious sticker shock these days.

GUEST COMMENTARY - Some readers may have seen the graphic showing oil company revenues since last year:

LETTER TO THE EDITOR - We are writing concerning Bob Gelfand’s article of March 21, 2022, entitled “LA City Goes Full-On Fascist in Neighborhood Council Forced Indoctrination Proposal” which contains gratuitous anti-Scientology bigotry.

MY THOUGHTS - I’ve finished watching all the new Hallmark movies…TV news is so depressing…the price of gas precludes joy rides…even Trader Joes is out of some of my favorite things.

GUEST COMMENTARY - Today’s US propaganda barrage seeks to demonize the Russians as thoroughly and completely as possible, which now ironically includes attacks on Russia’s oligarchy. 

GUEST COMMENTARY - As right-wing candidates around the country mold themselves after Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, we have a new template for Los Angeles politicians who proclaim their love for children while undermining public schools. 

GUEST COMMENTARY - As we lock horns with the cruel and out-of-touch Putin, once again we’re at a moment that too closely resembles the Cuban crisis of 1962.

GUEST COMMENTARY - For more than a decade, Vladimir Putin has sought to sow division and undermine American democracy.

IMMIGRATION WATCH - When Joe Biden ran against President Donald Trump in 2020, he promised to fight back against anti-immigrant policies, including those that punished “sanctuary cities” and that gave more local authorities power to act as an extra arm of federal immigration enforcement.

HOUSING WATCH - Unable to come up with real solutions for Los Angeles’ homelessness crisis, City Council Member Joe Buscaino is pushing forward a ballot measure that doesn’t address homelessness and merely rearranges the deck chairs on the Titanic.

SCOTUS - So now, as expected after decades of taking big bucks for her rightwing work on behalf of America's oligarchs, we learn that the wife of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Ginny Thomas, was in Trump's January 6th "rally" up to her eyeballs.

GUEST COMMENTARY - At the beginning of the Trump administration, I wrote several articles for CityWatchLA on the prospects for fascism in the U.S. 

COLD WAR II - Vladimir Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine is the most important geopolitical development since the end of the Cold War.