Who knew healthcare could be so hard?” President Trump once asked. The fact is, if it weren’t hard, there’d be a workable solution by now. It’s sad that our national health care discussion, along with everything else, quickly dissolves into a partisan morass, and that, in their opposition to Obama’s overreach, Republicans have not offered any […]
Continue readingThis past summer, I was at a wedding reception talking to a guy who was terrified about the trade deficit. “Did you KNOW,” he said, speaking in capital letters, “that the TRADE DEFICIT last year was 700 BILLION DOLLARS?!!” (That’s him verbatim. You could absolutely hear the extra exclamation points after the question mark.) I […]
Continue readingHow did gay marriage go from one of the most hotly contested issues in history to a fait accompli that is in no danger of being repealed? What happened is that virtually everyone conceded the point that people are being denied a basic civil right by not being allowed to marry someone of the same […]
Continue readingYears ago, I stumbled on this little “Funny or Die” sketch that truly made me despair for the possibility of mutual understanding across the ideological divide. You can watch it if you want, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Black NRA from Sarah Silverman I watched this and kept wondering what the joke was. If you […]
Continue readingCharles Darwin himself provided a standard for whether or not his theory could adequately explain the origins of life. “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications,” he said, “my theory would absolutely break down.” In Darwin’s age, nothing was known […]
Continue readingCould some atheist out there explain, when you profess to acknowledge no divine authority, why the Theory of Evolution is sacrosanct? Anyone? Maybe one of these guys?The late, great Christopher Hitchens once wrote an article about his book tour in support of “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.” In it, he tossed in this […]
Continue readingThe doctrine of Creatio Ex Nihilo, or Creation Out of Nothing, is central to much of the Christian world. As I understand it, the idea is that there was nothing in the universe, or even no universe itself. There was only God. And at one point, God decided He wanted there to be Something instead […]
Continue readingThis is a follow-up to yesterday’s post with a comic book twist. I remember an interview with comics writer/artist John Byrne in the late 1980s in which he described his revamp of the Superman character for DC Comics. He said the one of the things that mystified him as a kid was that everybody was […]
Continue readingNot long ago, I read the novel Interred With Their Bones, a murder mystery that focuses on what has come t o be known as the Shakespeare Authorship Question. It’s a serviceable thriller, made even better by a fictional visit to the Utah Shakespearean Festival, an event the author describes in detail – and gets the […]
Continue readingEvery new mass shooting brings with it renewed calls for stricter gun control laws, and it’s easy to see why. It would be wonderful if there were a law on the books that could prevent the tragic, senseless loss of lives that has become all too commonplace. In practical terms, it’s hard to imagine what […]
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