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A House Divided                                    #354 By Hank Silverberg  Commentary  "A house divided against itself, cannot stand. " Those words from a famous Abraham Lincoln speech of 1858 came to mind this week as I watched and listened to the reactions to the assassination of conservative political activist, Charlie Kirk. I didn't know Mr. Kirk, though we had exchanged an occasional post on X from time to time over the last few years. And let me say clearly we did not agree on pretty much every political issue you can think of. But political violence in the United States, though not new by any means, is deplorable and unacceptable.    What strikes me most about the reaction to Kirk's assassination was the rampant and rapid spread of misinformation on the internet about the motive for his murder, even after the suspected killer was found and taken into custody.  Consp...
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The Health of Nations                                                                   #353 By Hank Silverberg  Commentary  My wife and I got our annual flu shots this week. We wanted Covid-19 booster shots as well, but we were told this year, when the booster shot is in short supply, you have to be over 65 and get a prescription from your doctor. We plan to follow up on that. We both had mild cases of Covid during the pandemic, mild only because we had gotten the vaccine. Otherwise we might have been included in the 1.2 million people in the United States who died from Covid.  (Iron Lung machine used for Polio victims before the vaccine) Having written this, I am deeply troubled by the trend right now to ignore science and medical research that have proven the effectiveness of vaccines. This a...
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Doubt                                                  #352 By Hank Silverberg  Commentary Do I get another Covid-19 booster or not? Should school districts be working harder to convince all parents to get their children vaccinated to prevent measles? Is any advice from the Centers for Disease Control good advice anymore?  Frankly, there is no way of knowing, because the agency has been stripped of the scientists and doctors who do know the answers to those questions, and their research has been eviscerated.  The Trump administration has set back medical care in this county at least 50 years, maybe more.  Vital research on cancer, which had been conducted at some of our premier universities, has been stopped or slowed down because the federal funding was eliminated. Why? Because the folks in the administration think admitting minorities, more w...
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                                                                                                                            #351 Trumpism At Its Worst  By Hank Silverberg   " The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished and the downtrodden have been."  Those words from President Trump, who went on: "Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness , nothing about the Future."    That came on Trump's Truth Social post the day after he ordered an internal review of the Smithsonian Institution's exhibits. He called the museums "Woke."  I read those words and I ...
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Huddled Masses                                #350 By Hank Silverberg  "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Emma Lazarus  Commentary Those words, written in 1883, adorn the base of the Stature of Liberty in New York harbor and have been a symbol of the United States for over a century and a half.  Millions of immigrants received that welcome with joy as they landed with nothing, but went on to build solid, productive lives in America.      There have been periods in our history where the contributions of immigrants to the strength of our nation have been ignored, ridiculed or excluded, and it appears we are headed that way again.  Up until 1882, there were no immigration laws in the United States. Thousands...
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Okay, MAGA. Why?                  #349 By Hank Silverberg                              Commentary I am flummoxed. I just don't get it, and I probably never will. But I would like to sit down with a MAGA and have a rational conversation on what's going on in America and why they like it.  There have been times in the past where our government has turned on immigrants, even though immigrants helped build this country. Anti-Semitism crops up its ugly head time and again even as American Jews succeed and are notable participants in the American way of life. And even as Israel, the only functioning democracy and our ally in the Middle East, continues to be attacked by the hostile countries in the region.   Racism has always been under the surface in many places in America since before there was a United States, even as people of color, from Powhattan to Barac...
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