Time to Think

Exhaustion                                                                                            #283                                        By Hank Silverberg Each week as Friday approaches, I start thinking "what am I going to write about in my blog on Sunday?" I have usually put aside some interesting news stories like the two below that I don't think most people have heard about, so I can include them here. But the main theme for the lead-in  just escapes me  sometimes . I won't call it writer's block, because it's not. Maybe I should just call it "Exhaustion." I'm tired of writing about Donald Trump and all his nonsense, especially when we are going to hear more about it everyday for the next six months, and maybe beyond besides his current trial is just more sleaze, and I am really sick of that.  I could write you about the injury jinx that has hit my favorite team, the Red Sox, but if you are not a baseball fan, you don't care. 

Free Speech    By Hank Silverberg                          #282                "The right to extend your fist ends just before my nose."   -- attributed to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes   I have watched the anti-Israel protests that have been going on across this country with very mixed emotions. As a Jew, I fully support Israel as a Jewish state, and the need for Israel to continue to defend itself against Hamas, Iran or anyone else who threatens its existence.   But as an America I also understand the right of anyone in this country to protest what has become a brutal war.  Protest is an American way of life. As a form of free speech, it is AS important as the right to vote, the right to trial by jury, the right to own property or the right to be free from government intrusion into our private lives.        But there is something eerie in many of the pro-Palestinian protests underway on American college campuses and elsewhere. They have the look and feel of a

Debate Over The Debate                #281 By Hank Silverberg Biden vs. Trump. The 2024 campaign is going to be a repeat of 2020. The only real suspense left is who Donald Trump will pick as his running mate for vice-president.  The next six months is going to be interesting and  torturous at the same time. Biden will campaign from the White House with an occasional foray out into the country to promote projects with which he has had some success, like the massive Build Back America infrastructure bill. And he will push for a bill to make the right to an abortion the law of the land.  But at the same time, he will have to deal with a widening war in the Middle East and a hostile do-nothing Republican-led House that wants to help Trump by blocking anything Biden wants. That, of course, includes help for Ukraine, which continues its desperate struggle to survive under the assault of expansionist Russia.   Trump will campaign as a victim. We're all out to get him after all, in his vie

 Elusive Truth                                                                                      #280 By Hank Silverberg It is only April, but the 2024 presidential election campaign is fully engaged. There are ads for both Trump and Biden on TV. At every political stop by either candidate there is talk of swing states and Electoral College votes. As I wrote last week, the looming presence of a third party candidate (RFK, Jr.) has both Democrats and Republicans nervous.  But are the voters fully engaged? Probably not. Most people are thinking about a family vacation this summer, preparing for their kid to go to college in the fall, what grass seed to use to fill in the bald spots on the lawn, just trying to make ends meet or dealing with the crazy weather we have had this past month all across the country. Sure, the pollsters (see below) and the political junkies are already all in on the 2024 race, but the rest of the population may be a bit behind.  And that's what concerns m