Time to Think

Neither snow, nor rain, nor...wait a minute! by Hank Silverberg "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." That has been the unofficial motto of the United States Postal Service since it was chiseled  in stone over the 8th Avenue Post Office in New York City in 1914. That was, until Donald Trump came along.   The slogan actually comes from Herodotus, a Greek historian describing a group of mounted Persian messengers during a war between those two countries in 449 B.C.E.  (Courtesy of USPS) An even more descriptive motto appears on the old Post Office building at Massachusetts Avenue and East Capital Street in Washington, D.C. that now houses the Smithsonian's  National Postal Museum. It's called "The Letter," and the second stanza of the poem says it all:        "Carrier of News and Knowledge      Instrument of Trade and Industry   ...

Beware of Propaganda      By Hank Silverberg  It's out there, and if you are not careful you will become it's next victim.   There has been a lot of talk about "fake news" in the last three years, but propaganda can have a bigger impact. Political campaigns have used it for years, but this election cycle the propaganda being put out by the right wing, the GOP, the President's re-election campaign and foreign governments is much worse than usual. propaganda [ˌpräpəˈɡandə] NOUN information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. They are using terms like "Socialist," "Marxist" and "extremist" to describe a plethora of people who are no such thing. It's meant to confuse you and influence your vote based on disinformation. So I thought I would give you all a crash course in how to    decipher fact from fiction  (call it  "Political Science 101"...