“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.” ~André Gide Gide’s observation came to mind in the context of Al Gore’s latest hypocrisy. The man who pontificated endlessly about the hazards of global warming and the need for the world to act responsibly in terms of the environmental impact of fossil fuels is now just another hypocrite! Gore was a visionary when it came to his early warnings about global warming and climate change. He was way ahead of the times. Sadly, like many other public figures there is a huge chasm between his convictions and sermonizing and what he…

Some thoughts regarding the recent presidential election: The saying “If you’re not a liberal when you’re 20, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative when you’re 40, you have no head” is widely and wrongly ascribed to Winston Churchill. In actual fact, the phrase originated with Francois Guisot, a French statesman who was born in the 18th century, who said: “Not to be a republican at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.” It was later revived by French Premier Georges Clemenceau who said: “Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart;…

Part of my regular TV viewing is a show that airs on weekdays called “Morning Joe”. It focuses mainly on political events but also has a hodge podge of other issues. It is hosted by Joe Scarborough, a former Republican Congressman from Florida and Mika Brezinski, the daughter of Zbigniew Brezinski, the former National Security Advisor to President Carter. Scarborough represents what may be referred to as a moderately conservative view – although some Republicans consider him to be a RINO ie a “Republican in Name Only” – and Brezinski is an uninhibited and unreserved liberal. Scarborough will accord credit to Obama at times and is critical of the “crazy…

Senator Everett Dirksen, the highly regarded former Republican senator from Illinois, is supposed to have said during a speech arguing for restraints in spending: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money”. If Dirksen were alive today he would say the same thing but it would no longer be talk of billions as much as trillions. We have a budget that is out of control – just about everyone agrees on this – but that is where the agreement ceases. How to fix the problem is one that neither party can find common ground. Yesterday, I heard former Senator Alan Simpson – a Republican…

The heading for this post is a well-known saying about how numbers can bolster a weak argument depending on how they are interpreted. Add to the mix the use of anecdotal information that can be cited to bolster a point of view and we get to a couple of issues that I have been involved in several cyber-exchanges. Someone sent an email providing the chart below showing the income distribution in the US by religion. It shows that Hindus and Jews earn substantially more than do people of other faiths. The survey was conducted by Pew Research – a reputable polling organization – and I have no doubt that it…

I voted for Barack Obama in the presidential election – a vote that was predicated on the policy positions he enunciated as well as his charisma and his life history. The criticisms leveled at him by Republicans that he lacked the experience with a resume that was just too thin to be president had merit but after the disastrous presidency of George W Bush and a Republican controlled Congress that went along with all of W’s hare-brained ideas, I felt that anything would be better than what we had gone through for the prior eight years. It was a point of view that gathered additional reinforcement after John McCain selected…

When Sarah Palin was selected by John McCain as his running mate, I was intrigued by the choice. On a personal level, I felt that her decision to give birth to a baby with full knowledge that he had Down’s Syndrome, was an act of grace and courage – and I admired her for it. I still do so. But I became quickly disillusioned as to her preparedness to be president if the circumstances ever warranted it. As I watched the Sarah Palin appearance on Oprah and other shows it felt, as Yogi Berra would say, “like deja vu all over again”! On the one hand, I am able to…

The print media in the US is facing the greatest financial crisis since its inception – essentially caused by the internet which has changed the way entire generations get their news. But I am getting ahead of myself ……………… When I was about twelve years old while living in Mombasa (Kenya), my father got on my case about the fact that I did not read the newspaper and was therefore ill-informed about what was going on it the world. He pestered me to a point where I started to read the paper reluctantly and with some resentment. Interestingly, over time I developed a genuine fascination with current affairs and politics…

Let me start by saying that I voted for Barack Obama but I feel the Nobel Peace prize award to President Obama was premature. He has not done enough during his nine months in office to justify the award. Sure, he has proclaimed some noble goals and has made a concerted attempt to integrate the US into the world community after the eight years under Bush when the attitude was “my way or the highway” – to use an American expression. But what is unseemly to the point of being totally bizarre is the spectacle of right-wing wackos in the US condemning the award to an AMERICAN president! This comes…

It was Euripedes who said: “Those whom the Gods seek to destroy they first make mad.” It is a quotation that seems appropo as one sees the far right-wing in the US getting increasingly unhinged. Having lived in the US for almost 38 years, I have never come across a time when things were as polarized as they are today. Even during the sixties and early seventies when the country was undergoing massive social and political upheavals as a result of the civil rights movement and the war in Vietnam culminating in the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, there seemed to be a greater semblance…

There is a controversy in the US about where Barack Obama was born ie was he born in the US or in Kenya. If it were the latter, under the constitution, Obama would be precluded from the presidency. Obama has provided a birth certificate establishing his birth place as being Hawaii but it has not satisfied his detractors. The term used to denote the people who are challenging Obama’s legitimacy as president, because he was allegedly born outside the US, is “birthers”. There is also a group among the “birthers” who claim that even if Obama was born in the US he is not eligible to be president under the…

“I want my country back” is the sometimes plaintive, occasionally frustrated and frequently angry cry of a fringe section of the Republican party. I never fully understood what these people meant until I read a couple of Patrick Buchanan’s columns Pat Buchanan has decidedly right wing views but he is one a handful of conservative columnists I enjoying reading. Although Buchanan is very conservative on many issues he sometimes blazes his own path eg he was outspoken in his opposition to the war in Iraq which he felt was a war being waged by the neo-cons for their own reasons. He is also critical of Israel’s expansionist policies in Palestine…

To quote the inimitable Yogi Berra: “It feels like deja-vu all over again”! When Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, uttered the infamous phrase – “greed is good” – during the 1987 movie, “Wall Street”, shown in the above video clip, he went on to say: “Greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but also that malfunctioning corporation called the USA” The “malfunctioning corporation”, as Gekko referred to the US, has had its economy and that of many other countries just about brought to its knees because of greed and imprudent risk taking by real-life Gekkos’. The Gekko character was based on a composite of real…