The great foreign policy initiative unleashed by the Obama administration, the one that is supposed to earn our new president a place on Mount Rushmore, is a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian question. This issue has bedeviled American presidents starting with Jimmy Carter and continuing through Bill Clinton, with interregnums marked by Republicans in the White House. Reagan never pushed the issue, … [Read More]

Have you heard the great news? The recession is over! It’s true; I saw it on TV. Why fret about growing unemployment lines when banks are paying big-time bonuses again? Proof of the turn was apparently revealed by the 2nd quarter GDP figures that showed that the economy declined by only 1%. After four consecutive quarters of negative GDP, the green … [Read More]

News Flash—Blacks Like Malt Liquor! Black Entertainment Television (BET) refers to me as “a White blogger.” But they got my name wrong. It goes back to this blog post from July 7, 2009, where I commented on Detroit councilwoman JoAnn Watson, who referred to the Billy Dee Williams Colt 45 malt liquor billboards, which are located in the city of Detroit, … [Read More]

When it comes to conspiracy theorists, whether it be those who question the official report on the assassination of JFK, those who wonder whether the Apollo moon landing actually happened or even those who believe the U.S. was behind 9/11, I’m much more comfortable with Americans who believe their leaders are always up to no good than those who show eternal … [Read More]

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, who is wired into the cabinet of “Bibi” Netanyahu, warns that if Iran’s nuclear program is not aborted by December, Israel will strike to obliterate it. Defense Secretary Gates’s mission to Israel this week, says Bolton, to relay Obama’s red light, was listened to attentively, but will not be decisive. Israel will decide. One trusts Gates … [Read More]

ON BOARD S/Y BUSHIDO—Here are some rules of the ocean: always establish the direction of the wind before undoing your flies at sea; never go to sea without more books than days you plan to be afloat; keep in mind that new romances on board last on average less than a week. For now, let’s stick to books, as I have … [Read More]

Barack Obama, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and the African-American Master Class Countless pundits have debated whether the Henry Louis Gates Jr. brouhaha is about race or class. In truth, Barack Obama’s maladroit but heartfelt interjection of his own prejudices into the controversy stemmed from a quite precise intersection of race with class. Obama spoke out in defense of Gates’s tantrum because … [Read More]

Last week on NPR, a professor in the Sloan School of Management at MIT explained that what is really at stake in the health-care bill is the U.S. government’s ability to borrow. In other words, the bill is about cutting health-care costs, not about providing hard-pressed Americans with health care. The professor said that if we didn’t get health-care costs under … [Read More]

The Internet’s Free Encyclopedia Hates Me. The first thing I noticed about my Wikipedia page, when someone directed my attention to it, was that they got my name wrong, there in the very first line! Not the spelling—they at least managed to get that right—but the pronunciation. Their rendering in the International Phonetic Alphabet is / ˈdɑrbɨʃər /  That includes two … [Read More]

I’ve never been a big fan of Sarah Palin not because I ever thought she was exceptionally bad but because she never struck me as exceptional, period. By 2008, George W. Bush’s Republican Party had wrecked the Right and that Palin became famous by spending four months parroting the same, discredited agenda for John McCain didn’t exactly make her a credible … [Read More]