Time to Think

  1917?                                                                                                                   #240 By Hank Silverberg  For a few hours this past week, I started searching the web and some of my history textbooks looking for details on the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. That was the last time anyone inside Russia challenged one of its totalitarian rulers. It came in the midst of World War One when Russia was losing badly, and its economy was falling apart.  The Russians withdrew from the war and spent the next five years with factions fighting each other. The end result was the Soviet Union, Stalin's mass murder purges, his pact with Hitler where they got betrayed, S...

Paying Attention to The Details                  #239 By Hank Silverberg  A great deal is being written right now about the 2024 presidential election that is   just under 18 months away. We have already seen too much of the candidates and heard a number of them talk about what they will do if we just give them our vote.   (Read the fine print ) But not much has been written about the details of their proposals. That's why a story in the New Republic magazine caught my eye this week. It tells a nasty tale of just what the GOP is planning for an America in which they rule.  You can read the gruesome details in the article that I have linked below, but here are some of the highlights--or rather lowlights, of the GOP plans.  Before you go and scream, "fake news!" or "propaganda!" please note this is actually written down by the "Republican Study Committee," which is made up by three-quarters of the House Republicans...

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes                    #238                   By Hank Silverberg                                        It is purely coincidental that smoke from the climate change affected Canadian forest fires covered much of the northeast and central states this past week--the same week where former President Donald J. Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury.  Trump's criminal case will now put a hazy cloud over much of the 2024 presidential race as he tries to campaign for another term while on trial for, among other things, sections of the Espionage Act.  First, let's remember, the indictment (a charging document) was issued by a Grand Jury composed of ordinary citizens who live in a state, Florida, that Trump carried by 4 points in 2020. Those jurors thought there is...