Politics at the pro level is broken. Turn on your television if you don’t believe me. Or answer your phone. Or check your mailbox. Tens of millions of dollars are being spent in Alaska for nothing but attack ads and telephone surveys. Given that newspapers are nearly extinct, how does the average voter sort through the damning allegations of one…
My all-boys high school offered an after-school activity called “computer club.” The guys who joined were mostly pasty-faced, squishy fellows who wore pocket protectors to keep pens from staining their white button-downs. If you saw them approach a cute girl at a school dance, she would look sidewards and say, “Um, I have to get a drink of water.” These…
One year into the Trump administration, it’s obvious that the Chaos Theory of Government isn’t working and that the president either is an idiot when it comes to governance, Putin’s stooge, or both. For Putin, it doesn’t matter which. He and his henchmen oligarchs gain every inch of ground that America loses. “Look at the insanity of America. That’s what…
It’s ironic that the Haines Borough is carrying a million-dollar deficit because it just so happens that the Jackass in the White House owes our town at least half that much up front. We should have our tourism department send him a bill. Back in February, the Jackass started flapping his jaws about “making Canada the 51st state.” Ostensibly, this…
The Jackass in the White House continues to break the law, destroy democratic norms, erode the nation’s proudest institutions and traditions and violate all semblance of civic decency because we – the citizens — allow him to. When he’s not skewering the First Amendment to silence critics, shredding habeus corpus by throwing nonwhite citizens in jail without cause, or blatantly…
Little league baseball doesn’t cast a long shadow over this town. Summer is too short and the game requires landscaping, an art yet to arrive in the North. A regulation pitcher’s mound and a grass infield are luxuries our tiny ballplayers only dream about. They play on gravel, a Field of Screams where a hot grounder reaches critical velocity on…
After pedaling a bicycle from Netherlands to Germany to Denmark to Sweden to France to Belgium and back to Holland again without ever having to stop at a customs station, it struck me as absurd on my return through Canada that I’d have to stop at U.S. Customs. The U.S. and Canada are both former colonies of Britain. We are…
“The idea that what you can’t name has power over you is a common theme with roots in various beliefs and folklore. The core concept is that naming something allows for understanding, control, and even ownership over it.” AI Suicide has vexed society and the medical community since forever. But a 37 percent increase in suicide rates between 2000 and 2018 –…
“At around noon on 14 April, 2025, America ceased to have a law-abiding government.” — Edward Luce, Financial Times (London), April 16, 2025 Mom was working on a jigsaw puzzle of the U.S. Capitol and turned to me: “Tom, do you know what makes our country great?” I was about 10 years old and under the education of nuns, so…
Many bright, well-meaning people are trying to figure out Donald Trump’s plan. They’re debating the efficacy of tariffs and deportations and saber-rattling and giant cuts to funding and agencies, such as the National Weather Service. They’re wondering if the tariff statements were just an elaborate stock-market scheme. They’re looking into Trump’s philosophy and method and the logic of it all,…