Editor’s Note: Happy (Fiscal) New Year! At midnight, some of us will time-travel to FY 2020. Bureaucrats, bag-men and contractors across The Swamp and celebrate the arrival of new truckloads of taxpayer cash arriving in the capital and will have a sip of bubbly before going back for each other’s throats. Could be an interesting […]

I had a commanding officer who used to regularly quote Vice Admiral Buckeley, his favorite one being: “I’ve seen clean ships that couldn’t fight, but I’ve never seen a dirty one that could.” Bulkeley, who commanded Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3 in the Philippines at the start of WWII, would go on to have 11 […]

Henry Ford famously noted that: “History is bunk.” Hmmm… On 14 September Houthis rebels (from Yemen), a de facto proxy force of the government of Iran, attacked the largest single oil refinery complex in the world – the Abqaiq complex in eastern Saudi Arabia, about 40 miles southwest of Dhahran. The specifics are still not […]

If saving the world involved killing all the elephants, would we do it? Or, what if a cure for leukemia was developed but it somehow required killing every dog and cat on the planet? While you ponder that, consider this: How much methane does a head of cattle produce? That is important because it’s going […]

I think one of the more entertaining productions of the last decade or so has to be “Downton Abbey,” which follows the lives and fortunes of a fictitious British Earl, his family and their household over a decade and a half, from just prior to World War I to shortly before the Great Depression. The […]

There’s a lot of talk about Hong Kong. As I write this the protests continue. And as I write this people are debating what if anything the US (and President Trump) should do about the PRC’s actions. It has generated commentary that US actions could lead to a military confrontation with Beijing. Hmmm… A few […]

Everyone is worried, concerned that society is tearing itself apart, split by social and cultural differences that appear impossible to bridge. What’s the real problem? And is there, if not a ready solution, a path ahead that might bring us to some solution? Beginning in the late 1800s political free-thinkers and academicians sought to change […]

As I drove across East Texas I found myself in need of a change of pace and turned on the radio and listened to a talk “show.” The discussion pinged around on several different subjects but kept circling back to the rift between the major political factions and what must be done to bring them […]

Some – amazing – friends of mine and I were in the small town of Mesilla, New Mexico last week killing a few hours; in one little store a young woman told us about the pottery they were selling, all of which had been made by Navajo Indians from around the state. As she talked […]

You know the story, or part of it: born amid poverty and violence in a third world nation, shuffled to a refugee camp in another country, then emigration to the United States, a home for the family, school, college education, elected office, then elected to Congress and national prominence. Then, there’s this: Born in third […]