VOICES

HISTORY REPEATS - I am standing atop a 100-foot-high temple mound, the largest known earthwork in the Americas built by prehistoric peoples.

GUEST COMMENTARY - Another week, another scandal, but the latest — the August 8 FBI “raid” on former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida — looks set for a run of a month or more.

GUEST COMMENTARY - Recent episodes of purposeful and accidental truth-telling brought to my mind the latest verbal lapse by George W. Bush, the president who hustled this country into war in Afghanistan and Iraq after the 9/11 attacks.

THE DOCTOR IS IN - Maybe Congress thinks we're just stupid, and maybe we simply ARE just as stupid as they think we are.

HOUSING CRISIS - Recently an op-ed appeared in the neoliberal, Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle that proclaimed, “Yimbyism is as progressive as it gets.”

ACCORDING TO LIZ - One day after a Proud Boys Trump supporter tried to break into an FBI building in Ohio and died after fleeing and shooting at the police pursuing him, the Republican messaging was… you can’t trust the FBI. 

ACCORDING TO LIZ - “Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes, disrespects sacred cows or other such entities. 

ACCORDING TO LIZ - Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema were not able to tank the Inflation Reduction Act which the Senate passed last weekend, but they sure haven’t helped reduce inflation.

PRICE OF EDUCATION - The White House says President Joe Biden will decide by the end of August whether to extend the pandemic-era pause on student loan repayment — and how much, if any, student debt to cancel.

THE VIEW FROM HERE - Similar to how we call all tissues, Kleenex, and all acetylsalicylic acid Aspirin, we tend to call all short-term rental agencies Airbnb. 

GUEST COMMENTARY - I find nothing strange in Joe Biden, at 79 (going on 80), being the oldest president in our history and possibly planning to run again in 2024.

IMMIGRATION REFORM - The American public overwhelmingly supports legal immigration, with deep divisions on whether this path is “easy”.

RUSSIA UKRAINE WAR - The war in Ukraine must end urgently. The longer it continues, the greater the ghastly consequences will be and more challenging the obstacles to peacemaking.

THE VIEW FROM HERE - The most important element in human survival is our brains’ Neuroplasticity. Group Rights, however, kills brain cells, thereby making us dumber and less able to solve problems.

ACCORDING TO LIZ - People are hanging on tenterhooks over what Kyrsten Sinema might extract from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 in order for Democrats to successfully move the bill through the Senate.

GUEST COMMENTARY - Generally when Kansas makes the national news it’s not for a reason left-leaning Kansans are proud of.

PERSONAL CHOICE - I want to talk about Kansas.

THE VIEW FROM HERE - Julius Caesar was stabbed to death on the Ides of March in the year 44 B.C.E.  Less well known is that  the Ides of March was the date when Romans were to settle up their debts.

GUEST COMMENTARY - During the past few months, I have been watching the January 6^th Select Committee Hearings. 

GUN LEGISLATION - You may find this shocking, but a little over a decade ago I spent a weekend learning how to shoot a handgun — under the auspices of the NRA.