Following their alleged success in getting Donald J. Trump elected president of the United States, the Russians are said to be using their tried-and-untrue gimmicks to interfere in America’s next presidential election and, possibly, another chilling system.
WASHINGTON — During his 2016 bid, Donald Trump would sometimes pause from bashing elites and the media to speak with awe about a phone call he had with a Very Important Journalist.
Be sure to vote
President Donald Trump deals in superlatives — particularly when he’s bragging about what a wonderful job he’s doing and how America is towering over other countries around the world.
No big deal
Industrial policy that uses tariffs and subsidies to pick economic winners is once again in vogue among intellectuals. The rationale is to prevent China from “dominating” the global market with its subsidies while boosting American jobs and manufacturing.
We need to heal
Coming two days before the painful anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, Sept. 9, was categorized by some political devotees as a major eruption in Donald Trump’s efforts to claim a second four-year term.
Americans love celebrations ... Fourth of July, Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Day, birthdays.
WASHINGTON — Washington’s NFL team, until recently known as the Redskins, is seeking a less insensitive name, and one appropriate for the nation’s capital. The name should be: the Continuing Resolutions.
More recreation, please
What do presidential candidates George H.W. Bush, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Ross Perot, Al Gore, George W. Bush, John Kerry, Barack Obama, John McCain and Mitt Romney all have in common? On the biggest night each of their political careers, when they — live and on national tel…
Louis DeJoy, who positioned himself as a top Republican power broker in North Carolina, ultimately became head of the U.S. Postal Service. He is now being investigated.
Foreign aid
WASHINGTON — Schadenfreude, the pleasure derived from others’ suffering, is rarely more welcome than when seated next to a journalist in this small town. Dinner parties are so crowded with people who delight in a scrap of gossip or perfectly awful news, why Alice Roosevelt Longworth herself …
"Help Woodsy spread the word, never be a dirty bird. No matter where you go, you can let some people know to Give a Hoot, Don’t Pollute, never be a dirty bird. In the city or in the woods, help keep America looking good.”
In defense of Trump
"I’m more anti-China than you!”
"You can say whatever you want before Jan. 1 of an election year, because almost no one will remember.” — Tom Quinn, then campaign manager for ex-Gov. Jerry Brown, 1978
In matters of race and other social phenomena, there is a tendency to believe that what is seen today has always been. For black people, the socioeconomic progress achieved during my lifetime, which started in 1936, exceeded anyone’s wildest dreams. In 1936, most black people lived in gross …
Hold my beer
America is being crippled by the anti-American throes of misinformation being vomited by foreign and domestic sources.
Most cases in which cars kill pedestrians surely reflect negligence: drivers who were too busy talking on their cellphones or thinking about their golf games to notice the senior citizen crossing the street in front of them. A handful are acts of murder, like when a man killed a woman by plo…
Which is it?
Here are some of the contemporary headlines related to the underpinnings that are caving in among America’s highly vaunted educational systems:
On Friday, six months after Governor Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency and began issuing shutdown orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court takes up a threshold question: Were the governor’s commands lawful?
Take a shot
We knew it was coming but now it’s official — Halloween has been canceled. OK, maybe not canceled, but it might as well be.
As the saying goes, “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” This advice applies to the hole Congress leapt into by bailing out the airline industry back in March through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act.
Bad faith
In spite of dealing with more than 2,000 proposed laws, California lawmakers finished their 2020 session on Aug. 31, with uneasy feelings of falling flat.
• Please limit your letters to 300 words and to one per week.
Stars and Stripes forever? Maybe not.
Mail-in ballots for the congressional election are dropped off at a drive-through polling location in San Diego, Calif., October 22, 2018 (Mike Blake/Reuters).
Never before in California’s long experience with power blackouts have systematic, preplanned outages been as short as the 20-minute to 30-minute electric shutdowns inflicted on about 3 million homes and businesses around the state in mid-August.
This newspaper, and many others, periodically warn readers to beware of scams that scarf up your money and give you nothing in return.
Mascot talk
On the eve of its national convention this week, the Republican Party decided not to adopt a new platform for 2020. In so doing, it ended an unbroken tradition dating back to 1856, when the first Republican convention committed itself to opposing slavery, supporting the admission of Kansas a…
The media obsess about Trump/Biden, but another candidate will be on every state ballot: Libertarian Party nominee Jo Jorgensen.
The response to our “Have Your Say” question last week was astounding. This week, we asked whether people thought the federal government should send out a second stimulus check. The response wasn’t nearly as great — we had a total of 25 calls. Unfortunately, eight of those calls were hang ups.
President Donald Trump seems to be running so utterly against himself now that it’s almost unnecessary for Joe Biden to do much, which partly explains his many (helpful) months in his bunker.
All the wrong answers
Reacting to the shooting of a Black man by a white Kenosha, Wisconsin, cop, a tearful Doc Rivers, the Black NBA Los Angeles Clippers Coach, held a post-game press conference.
Charles Manson is dead and buried in a location known only to very few, the secrecy intended to prevent that site from becoming a shrine for cult followers who still pore over every move made by the mass murder mastermind and his “family” during their heyday in the late 1960s.
What’s the difference?
The absence of in-person election briefings by National Intelligence deals a mighty blow to the Congressional information search.
For the most part, America under Donald Trump’s leadership has offered an object lesson in how not to handle a pandemic. Delay and denial deprived us of any chance of containing the Coronavirus’s early spread; impatience and further denial led to a huge second wave of infections.
The Democrats’ convention has traditionally given a bounce to the party’s presidential candidate.
Foreign policy
WASHINGTON — As long as the Trumps were hijacking the White House for their convention finale, they may as well have built a golden escalator from the Truman Balcony to the South Lawn.
September is here and that means autumn will be here soon. Some of us can’t wait for the season to change and we’re already getting ready for “spooky” season and seeking out everything pumpkin spice.
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