The common stock of Facebook, the social-networking Web site,  was sold to the public for the first time  five days ago at $38  per share. Today the stock ended the trading day at $32 per share, down 16 percent from the initial public offering price. Anyone who bought $5,000 worth of… Read full post »

The most widely known person in the world is Keith Richards. Everybody recognizes his name and knows exactly who he is.

I now find myself at a difficult juncture. As a journalist,  I was taught that when you introduce a person’s name in an article, you must provide adequate identification… Read full post »

At a press conference today, President Obama was confronted by a reporter for Fox News, who asked him about an accusation leveled by a man who was his neighbor during his childhood in Hawaii. The reporter, Shepard Greeley, said the former neighbor, a man now in his seventies,  had alleged that… Read full post »

Today I received a personal message from what appears to be a new member of Open Salon, who goes by the name Joy Andrew.  The message is sort of a mash note, but unfortunately the sender seems to know little about spelling, grammar or punctuation. Her writing is poor even for… Read full post »

At last, this week, I visited my 50^th state. If you glance at the photo to the left of this blog, you will see that it took quite a long time – nearly three quarters of a century.

The funny thing is, I visited my 47^th state – Hawaii… Read full post »

I had intended to write something in honor of my first anniversary on Open Salon, but I have let a little more than a week slip by, mainly because I was on the road, and writing a blog is even tougher than texting when one is driving. I hope that no… Read full post »

A couple of weeks ago I reported here that the Obama Healthcare Act expands a woman’s abortion rights by allowing so-called post-birth abortions. Women not only will be allowed to abort unborn children in the womb, but also children who are born alive. The rule applies not only to newborn babie… Read full post »

The first definition of “bimbo” in my dictionary indicates that the term can be applied to a member of  either sex. The word means “a foolish, stupid or inept person.”  However, as we all know, the term usually is applied to “an attractive  but stupid youn/… Read full post »

Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate this year, has a fortune in the neighborhood of $200 million. He earned most of it as a successful venture capitalist, but evidently he has never been hard up for money. His father was an automobile executive and later the governor of Mic… Read full post »

My name is Bo Obama, the presidential dog, who until recently has lived at the White House. I am making this statement from what you might call a safe kennel. I don’t want the presidential family, especially the president himself, to know where I am just now. I am under guard… Read full post »

Dear Ann Romney,

I know that a lot of strangers (some of them pretty strange indeed) have been getting on your case lately, and that you have been receiving advice, welcome and not so welcome, from all sides. However, I cannot help chiming in. I want to explain to you why you… Read full post »

Welcome to the War onWomen, Hilary Beth Rosen. 

Hilary, shown in the photo above, is a publicist who was hired to help soften the image of the Democratic National Committee, whose chair, Debbie Wasserman Test -- I mean Schultz -- was considered too abrasive. 

Hilary, interviewed on… Read full post »

I haven’t read the Obama Healthcare act, but I’ve heard rumors that it vastly broadens the rights of women to abortions. You may wonder what further abortion rights women need. It was determined thirty-nine years ago, in the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, that women -- who had been l… Read full post »

Maybe you had  better put your protest hoody in mothballs. It turns out that the National Broadcasting Co., which aired the tape of the Zimmerman 911 call from the confrontation with Trayvon Martin, edited it in a way that distorted its meaning, making it seem that Zimmerman was being racist, wh… Read full post »

If you have never visited Winslow, Arizona, you still probably have heard of it. It makes a famous cameo appearance in the great Eagles song “Take it Easy”:

Well, I'm a standing on a corner
in Winslow, Arizona
and such a fine sight to see
It's… Read full post »

Last July I posted an essay here in which I reminisced about an unheralded visit that two friends and I paid, late one summer evening during our teen years, to a goddess. She was everything that a teenaged boy could want. She was lovely beyond describing, superbly well-bred, gracious and graceful,… Read full post »

Out there in the real world, nobody is talking about anything but gasoline prices these days. With prices of $4 to $5 per gallon common at just about every pump in the United States, American motorists are in shock. Turn on any news broadcast on any radio or TV station and… Read full post »

Yesterday I posted an article intended as a useful guide for voters who want to throw out of office the senators who voted for Obamacare in 2010. There are 22 such senators whose terms expire this year, but only 16 of them are running again. I identified each of those senators… Read full post »

Ever since Obamacare was passed two years ago, opinion polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans oppose it, and want it repealed. At the moment, that is a practical impossibility. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to repeal it, but the Senate, with its Democrat… Read full post »

President Obama, who previously distinguished himself as the first President to apologize to other nations for the behavior of the United States, came out with a  new set of apologies today. Obama promised that he eventually intends to apologize to all 195 or so nations in the world, but that th… Read full post »

Rick Santorum’s decisive victories over Mitt Romney in three Republican presidential primaries yesterday have thrown the struggle for the GOP nomination into chaos. All three of the states where the ballots were cast -- Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri -- are expected to be battleground states… Read full post »

How many times have you heard it said that multi-billionaire Warren Buffett’s secretary pays a higher percentage of her income in taxes than Buffett does? Are you getting tired of it yet?

It was Buffett himself who brought the subject up, although lately he has gotten testy, and when the… Read full post »

The day after the Iowa Republican caucuses, one of my Facebook friends, a woman in her mid-forties, sent out a message deploring the fact that Rick Santorum had performed so well. At the time it appeared that he had finished second to Mitt Romney in what was basically a dead heat,… Read full post »

TRANSCRIPT OF A MEETING IN THE OVAL OFFICE BETWEEN PRESIDENT OBAMA AND THE FOUR MARINES WHO ARE ACCUSED OF URINATING ON THE CORPSES OF TALIBAN FIGHTERS:

Obama: I have asked your immediate superiors to send you here because, as your commander-in-chief, I want you to understand how serious I consider y… Read full post »

My mother contracted an incurable illness at age forty-four, and died at age forty-five. I was a teenager then, and it had scarcely occurred to me that my parents, or anyone else close to me, would even die, let alone die young. Naturally I worried from then on that I too… Read full post »