Opinion

War is fairly well known for killing, injuring, traumatizing, destroying, and rendering homeless. It's somewhat well known for diverting massive resources from urgent needs, preventing global cooperation on pressing emergencies, damaging the environment, eroding civil liberties, justifying government secrecy, corroding culture, fueling bigotry, weakening the rule of law, and risking nuclear apocalypse. In a few corners it's known for being counterproductive on its own terms, endangering those it claims to protect.

I sometimes think we fail to properly appreciate another ill effect of war, namely what it does to people's ability to think straight. For example, here are some opinions I've heard in recent days:

Russia cannot be at fault because NATO started it.

NATO cannot be at fault because Russia has an awful government.

To suggest that more than one entity could be blameworthy on the same planet requires claiming that they are each exactly equally at fault.

Nonviolent noncooperation with invasions and occupations has proven itself very powerful but people shouldn't actually try it.

Take Action. From Amnesty International: Take Action for Human Rights. End Apartheid Against Palestinians by the Government of Israel. Take action: Send your letter directly to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett now. 

The combined promotions of what is effectively a nondebate over critical race theory and the 1620, 1776, and 1836 “projects” of alternative, anti-factual, and literally white-washed American history lead to rants and screeds from attention-seeking, wannabe presidential candidates and other Republican politicians. Unsurprisingly, they begin by echoing the “former guy.” (See Donald J.

The combined promotions of what is effectively a nondebate over critical race theory and the 1620, 1776, and 1836 “projects” of alternative, anti-factual, and literally white-washed American history lead to rants and screeds from attention-seeking, wannabe presidential candidates and other Republican politicians. Unsurprisingly, they begin by echoing the “former guy.” (See Donald J.

Only threat, pain and inflicted hell preserve peace, right?

Get the bad guy! Russia: bad. If it invades Ukraine, such a “voluntary war of aggression,” according to David Leonhardt of the New York Times, “would be a sign that Putin believed that Pax Americana was over and that the U.S., the European Union and their allies had become too weak to exact painful consequences.”

One can frequently disagree with government policies without necessarily regarding them with disgust, but the Joe Biden Administration has turned that corner, first with its senseless promotion of a new Cold War that could turn hot with Russia and, more recently, with its actions undertaken to undermine and punish Afghanistan. The fact that the White House wraps itself in the sanctimonious, self-righteous twaddle that is so much the hallmark of the political left is bad enough, but when the government goes out of its way to harm and even kill people around the world in pursuit of an elusive global dominance it is time for the American people to rise up and say “Stop!”

Evictions in Franklin County were a huge problem before the pandemic, and because the cost of rent is rising by the month in Central Ohio, the entire community is facing an affordable housing crisis – a crisis high-end apartment developers obviously couldn’t care less about.

In 2021 the US Census Bureau reported one in three Ohio renters have little or no confidence in their ability to pay next month’s rent.

Yet also in 2021, there were 15,185 evictions in Franklin County compared to 18,219 in 2019. The numbers are down significantly, even with the pandemic and landlords renting thin-walled three-bedroom apartments for $1,400 a month,

Indeed, many local longtime owners of 1,500 to 2,000-square foot homes are paying hundreds less for their mortgage than local renters of newer apartments, and certainly another canary in the coal mine regarding affordable housing in Columbus and its suburbs.

But here’s the good news regarding affordable housing and homelessness, says Carlie J. Boos, executive director for the Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio.

And the reason why evictions were 3,000 less in 2021 compared to 2019.

Assassins, with music/lyrics by the legendary Stephen Sondheim, book by John Weidman, based on a concept by Charles Gilbert Jr., is a bold choice for the venerable East West Players to reopen with after having been shuttered due to the you-know-what for almost two years. Staged with a loose revue format, Assassins is about most of the men and women who successfully or unsuccessfully attempted to kill a sitting US president.

The über-assassin highly esteemed by the other trigger-happy members of this (as depicted) kooky club of ludicrous if deadly misfits is the granddaddy of them all, John Wilkes Booth (Trance Thompson), who literally shot Pres. Lincoln in 1865 while he was sitting (in a box seat at Ford’s Theatre watching Our American Cousin). In chronological order when they committed their crimes (although the freewheeling musical isn’t sequential per se), the other title characters are:

Chairwoman Walters:

The rump (as in Trump) of the unDemocratic Party of Ohio acted anti-democratically in endorsing Tim Ryan for U.S. Senate with no input from the party membership.

You underscore your contradictory, hypocritical, and anti-democratic actions by not endorsing candidates among the party faithful in the Governors and State Supreme Court races, and only in the Morgan Harper vs. Tim Ryan primary contest. This accompanies your underpublicized decision to conduct joint-fund-raising with Ryan and not Harper, with no voice for the Party “faithful,” for whom you have no respect.

No reason, principles, fairness, or respect for the Party or any others stops a small unelected cabal from acting against a black, female, progressive, young candidate who is more intelligent, better informed, and more articulate than your "old boy" choice of Tim Ryan.

There are a number of things that have to be said first. They have to be said because virtually no U.S. television viewer knows or is likely ever to know them. They have to be said because if I’m going to suggest any flaws in the actions of the Russian government, I have to establish at least the possibility of doubt that I’m bought and owned by NATO or the Pentagon. Here are those things:

Ukraine has in common with Yemen, Iran, Taiwan, Korea, Syria, and every other global hotspot, a central role by the U.S. military.

The U.S. globally dominates weapons sales, base building, military alliance building, dictator-arming, coup-facilitating, and war launching.

Russia’s military costs 8% what the U.S. military does.

The U.S.-driven expansion of NATO and militarization of Eastern Europe is at the root of the crisis.

The new U.S. bases in Slovakia, tank sales to Poland, and giant weapons sales to Ukraine and throughout Eastern Europe are not incidental here.