VOICES

RantZ and RaveZ - As we arrive at 2022, I want to welcome back the readers of RantZ and RaveZ. 

COMMENTARY - Unless the Republicans and Democrats put the nation above their party and personal interests, our democracy will face the gravest danger in more than a hundred years.

THE DOCTOR IS IN - I'm as guilty as any of being garrulous, verbose, loquacious, etc. So, I'll try to keep things neat and sweet for our New Year: 

HISTORICAL ANALYSIS - When Oliver Stone first ambles through Dealey Plaza in Dallas in the opening frames his new documentary JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, I couldn’t help but think the man is a soldier.

COMMENTARY - The surveillance activities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Portland and other American cities earlier this year is reminiscent of FBI-CIA-NSA efforts to disrupt anti-Vietnam protest groups in the 1960s and 1970s. 

A VIEW FROM HERE - Surprise, surprise, surprise, Chuck Todd’s January 2, 2022 Meet the Press allowed a series of chinks in the Pelosi-Woker anti-White bashing which has fueled our lethal divisiveness. 

MISINFORMATION - Twitter has banned for good the personal account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene because the Georgia Republican—a longtime purveyor of anti-vaccine and other dangerous conspiracies—refused to stop spreading deadly disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic.

COMMENTARY - There is a force in the world that was never considered as a force in our human story until Mohandas Gandhi discovered it 116 years ago, the power of nonviolent resistance. 

COMMENTARY - In the days leading up to Christmas and as 2021 comes to an end, it has been all too easy to find news stories reporting on rising crime and tragedy, the most heart-wrenching being those stories being ones of lives lost with loved ones left to grieve over the holidays.

TECH JOBS - For a generation, California has seen more of its residents and companies head elsewhere, but has found a way to respond, at least in terms of wealth creation, by constant innovation.

UPPER TAX BRACKET - Elon Musk has had a field day trolling advocates for a fairer tax system on Twitter. They’ve been attacking him for not paying much at all in taxes over recent years.

COMMENTARY - Nils Melzer, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, is one of the very few establishment figures to denounce the judicial lynching of Julian Assange.

REVIEWING POLITICS 2021 - There’s no getting around it: 2021 has been a tough year. As with 2020, many of us are glad to see its back end. Do let the door hit you on the way out.

HOUSING CRISIS - The US Housing Market is going nuts over the last year. Inventories are near record lows while price appreciation is near record highs.

MEDIA WATCH - Legendary broadcaster and one-time Baptist preacher Bill Moyers says for the first time in his 85 years he fears for America.

COMMENTARY - The year 2021 started with high hopes, the coming victory over Covid, the coming inauguration of a Democratic president, and the banishment of a querulous one.

THE DOCTOR IS IN - Planet Earth is one of both biological and social evolution (to say nothing of chemical and physical evolution that is both manmade and non-manmade, but I digress).

ENVIRONMENT WATCH - Other than basic biological needs such as breathing and excreting, all we do is learned. We copy our parents. We are taught in school. We emulate our heroes and double-dare our friends. 

REFLECTIONS 2021 - There’s no getting around it: 2021 has been a tough year. As with 2020, many of us are glad to see its back end. Do let the door hit you on the way out.

REMEMBERING - In his absorbing profile of the writer Alex Haley (author of “Roots” and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”) in the New York Times Book Review, Michael Patrick Hearn made a familiar mistake.

VOICES - Some of my friends who were Californians and writers didn’t approve of Joan Didion’s essays about California, but they didn’t say so publicly.