Stephen L. Carter

 

"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? ²⁹For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him,… Read full post »

 

Barack Obama is one of three American Presidents who received the Nobel Prize for Peace.

In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt received the Nobel Prize for Peace “for his successful mediation to end the Russo-Japanese… Read full post »

They are Joes without natural human affection (callous and/… Read full post »

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Joseph Wright Alsop (1910-1989)

“Never trust the teller; trust the tale,” D. H. Lawrence

JOE’S TALE

In 1957, Joseph Alsop on his first and only visit to Moscow was caught by the KGB in a “compromising situation” with another man, in which photos were taken and i… Read full post »

Why is Barack Obama laughing so heartedly?  And why is Warren Harding smiling so deceitfully?

David Pietrusza

David Pietrusza in 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents (2007) that the inside joke both Presidents share is that &ldquo… Read full post »

 

In a Guest Opinion in The Daily Iowan (10/16/09) John Hannah writes “In order to save Iran, cripple it,” which urges a preemptive war on Iran’s nuclear aspirations.  Hannah served as national-security ad/… Read full post »

Herman Melville

There is a coal-black Angel

            With a thick Afric lip,

And he dwells (like the hunted and harried)

            In a swamp where the green frogs dip.

But… Read full post »

President Obama in the Rose Garden

While listening to The Obama Scorecard on WBUR and NPR’s - ON POINT hosted Tom Ashbrook; I discovered that neither the Political Left nor Right seems to be satisfied with President Obama’s first nine and a half months in office. <http://… Read full post »

Last week was the beginning of Intellectual Freedom Week at the Iowa City Public Library (ICPL).  It was kicked off on the previous Friday night by a showing of Karsten Kjaer’s Bloody Cartoons (c2008).  ICPL Online Catalog summarizes the documentary as follows. … Read full post »

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 TIANAMEN SQUARE 1989

KENT STATE 1970

JACKSON STATE MAY 1970

WHY INDEED?

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PFC Steven Green

On March 12, 2006, the Al-Mahmudiyah Killings occurred in a house to the southwest of Yusufiyah, a village to the west of the town of Al- Mahmudiyah which is south of Baghdad, Iraq.  Five United States Army soldiers of the 502nd Infantry Regiment w/… Read full post »

 President George W. Bush at the 2006 State of the Union Address

The kafuffle over Republican Congressman’s Joe Wilsons outburst at President Barack Obama’s speech before a Joint Session of Congress on September 9, 2009 brought to mind another disturbing event having t… Read full post »

DRED SCOTT v. SANDFORD (1857)

The Dred Scott Decision 1857 was a decision by the United States Supreme Court that ruled that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants—whether or not they were slaves—were… Read full post »

TERROR DOMESTICA

9/11 has cast a pall on me

            Because I am the

Universal Soldier

            The proverbial Sojourner

Embroiled and inscribed in an eter… Read full post »

 “Let the young children alone, and stop hindering them from coming to me, for the kingdom of the heavens belongs to such-like one.”                        … Read full post »

James Baldwin

   &… Read full post »

 Muhammad Ali and Enturage in Ireland

Muhammad Ali has gone home to Ireland to retrace the steps of his great-grandfather who imigrated to the United States in the 1860s.  Long past his prime, the heavy weight champ still displayed the charm that has made him a favorite throug… Read full post »

Never trust them and their slogans of War as Peace

They are Imps escaped from Sheol that have studied

            How to look and act humane--

They smile

They Duplicate

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George Friedman’s The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21^st Century (2009) is a blogger’s delight in that it is a mixture of the real and the surreal.  Although it purports to be nonfiction, in reality it is a pastiche of George Lucas’ Star Wars Trilogy (1980+);… Read full post »

Currently, veterans filing for PTSD claims have to provide documented evidence of a combat situation that may have triggered the disorder. Those soldiers who are considered "non-combat" soldiers must also "corroborate" a situation that would have caused the PTSD.     … Read full post »

I have often listened to the BBC and NPR interviews with Jewish Settlers living on the West Bank Occupied Territories in Israel-Palestine say that “God gave us this land,” and use the Bible as proof.  However, Ezra, Chapter Eight through Nehemiah Chapter One adds… Read full post »