Community First: Developing a path to palliative care
Technology permeates all areas of life and is inescapable. For older folks — including this writer — technology makes life incredibly easy, just as it frustrates and bewilders along the way!
Iran’s regime is already a big loser at the World Cup
There is a long tradition of authoritarian states using soccer’s World Cup to distract attention — domestic and foreign alike — from their tyranny. The Islamic Republic milked buckets of self-serving propaganda out of the national team’s participation in the quadrennial competition, never more than in 1998 when Iran beat the “Great Satan” in Lyon, France.
Now we need political heroics
Our news screens were erupting with breaking news of yet another mass shooting. But this time the news that began with a barrage of bullets also became something special — a tale of battlefield heroics on the homefront of a nightspot in Colorado Springs.
Cheap oil talks louder than justice in Biden’s diplomacy with Saudi Arabia
When President Joe Biden screws up, he deserves to be called out just like any other American president.
Will Biden run again? Should he?
President Joe Biden has been in an upbeat mood since the Democrats’ best first-term midterm showing in 60 years – and no wonder.
TSA faces ethical limits in use of AI
Artificial intelligence has become a disruptive force in society. Terms such as machine learning, deep learning and neural networks have become commonplace among mainstream media, eliciting visions of innovation that has the potential to change our lives.
Billionaires like Musk, Bankman-Fried didn’t save the world. They wrecked it.
After growing up amid upper-middle-class affluence in Silicon Valley as the children of two Stanford Law School professors, as a super-smart kid who got into MIT to study physics, Sam Bankman-Fried decided in those teen years that he wanted to save the world in the worst way.
a tough year for sick kids
The “triple threat” is real. Thanks to the combined impact of COVID-19, the flu and RSV among children, hospitals are pitching tents outside their emergency rooms. Wait times can be as long as 36 hours, forcing kids to get treated in hallways or sent back home. In some rural areas, young patients have been airlifted to major cities. There’s always a degree of bad luck when it comes to the spread of respiratory illness. But precautions against this latest episode — what’s been called the “worst pediatric-care crisis in decades” — went unheeded. It’s time for a better emergency playbook.
Pelosi’s historic tenure should be the template for Democrats’ new leaders
There are a few political figures today more maligned by conservatives than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, mostly because she has been so effective. From her guidance of the Affordable Care Act through Congress more than a decade ago to her steady hand through the tumultuous Trump era, she built a legacy that history will treat far better than it will her detractors.
The House GOP needs to put its priorities in the right place
In the midterms, Republicans who focused on inflation, crime and other concrete problems made gains. Those who slung the slop of Trumpite invective and conspiracy theories, insisting the 2020 election was stolen, overwhelmingly remained stuck in the muck.
America’s return to the moon could spur science and renewed national purpose
NASA’s Artemis program is edging toward a return to the moon — this time to stay — with its successful launch this week of an uncrewed rocket. Some Americans looking at the Earth-bound problems all around us might reasonably ask: Why? The answer is not just about the scientific discovery that a permanent presence on the moon promises but also the much-needed sense of national purpose it could recapture.
What Congress must accomplish: Some must-dos in the waning days of the 117th session
Democrats will control the Senate and, it seems, Republicans, the House in the 118th Congress starting on Jan. 3, but the current 117th session still has some important business remaining. Even as Election Day vote counting continues on the last few House contests, the lame ducks in Washington must finish their work.
Nancy Pelosi has been a trailblazer. The US is better for her leadership
In the debased discourse of American politics, it’s easy to characterize as “distinguished” the career of any long-serving public official. But the adjective is no exaggeration when applied to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who announced Thursday that she will not seek a leadership role in the Congress that convenes in January.
Irwin: ’Overwhelmed with gratitude’
Many of my cousins did not have the opportunity to attend college, though they are making sure their children do. When I am with them, some are in awe of my job. Being the chancellor of a university is a big deal in their minds. In these encounters I lead with humility, as my cousin who is a butcher and store owner is every bit as essential to his community as I am to mine.
Pelosi is right, Dems need to ‘move boldly into the future’
Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s decision to step away from her leadership role with Democrats in the U.S. House is an enormous opportunity for all Americans to reflect on the past, and plan for the future.
‘Boring’ won in the midterms. That’s good news for better government.
As he stumped for reelection in a yellow school bus, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers reminded voters that four years after he’d pledged to “fix the damn roads,” the state had paved and patched more than 5,000 miles of roads after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into transportation projects.
$44 billion can buy Twitter, but it can’t buy respect
Twitter has always been a weird place, but things have gotten more feral the last couple of weeks thanks to the service’s off-putting new owner, Elon Musk. A role model in the worst way, his trolling and despotic workplace practices have set the tone for a grass-roots insurrection inside the internet’s so-called town square.
Trump is back, and he’s loaded with liabilities, but don’t count him out 2024
Casting America as a basket case of decay and economic disaster, former President Donald Trump declared his candidacy for the 2024 presidential race on Tuesday.
Election fraud lies got voted down last week. That’s a big win for democracy
It could be that America has finally inoculated itself against this dangerous virus. No, not the coronavirus — but election disinformation. An encouraging trend in last week’s midterms was that the predictable lies and conspiracy theories slung around by Donald Trump and his acolytes apparently weren’t able to get a foothold outside the right-wing base the way they did in 2020.
Blame’s on Biden for student loan mess
It may be a bit late in the game, but the Biden administration could benefit by creating a new Cabinet position: The Secretary of Thinking Things Through.
