Opinion

The last time a Clinton tried to get into the White House, his campaign motto was "It's the economy, stupid!"

If you engage with peace organizations, you will very quickly be told repeatedly that nobody gives a damn about distant mass murder, and that consequently a smart organizer will talk to them about something local, such as the local impact of the financial burden of war, or perhaps the militarization of the police, or local recruitment, or local environmental damage from military bases, etc., but mostly the financial cost.

The reasoning behind all such thinking is that people are often busy, overworked, overstressed, concerned with their day-to-day struggles, etc., and so, while some of them might occasionally also take a mild interest in the affairs of others in distant corners of the globe, virtually everyone can be appealed to using local community concerns and, in particular, economic concerns related to their own needs and greed.

The evidence that this line of thinking misses something includes the following:

ormer Bill Clinton cabinet member Perry perceives a danger that none of this year’s presidential wannabes have paid much if any attention to. The most recent candidate to make nuclear arms a central issue was Congressman Dennis Kucinich in 2008. President Obama has played both sides of the nuclear dilemma: rounding up and securing nuclear materials around the world, but also modernizing and miniaturizing American nuclear weapons to make them more “usable.” These days, no one in leadership – or aspiring to leadership – seems committed to actually making the world any safer from nuclear catastrophe.

As I watched “unity” take hold of the Democratic Party this week, the believer in me wanted to be imbibe it — bottoms up.

Michelle Obama ignited the crowd. “That is the story of this country,” she said. “The story that has brought me to the stage tonight. The story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, who kept on striving, and hoping, and doing what needed to be done.”

And the Big Party opened its arms.

“So that today, I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.”

Slaves?

According to supporters of Hillary Clinton, anything other than a vote for her is "a vote for Trump," and according to supporters of Donald Trump, anything other than a vote for Trump is "a vote for Hillary." Whether you declare that you will vote for Jill Stein, vote for Gary Johnson, write in LeBron James, swear off elections, move to Canada, commit suicide, or take a job for a corporate media outlet that frowns on participation in democracy, no matter what it is you do, it's "a vote" for the undesired candidate. (Sorry to go morbid with that corporate media option!)

What is the appropriate reply to this?

Several years ago, I had a conversation with Robert Loss, Blind Engineers singer and principal songwriter, about the Bruce Springsteen song “The River.” If you don't know it, the gist of that song is the angst of a young man who gets his girlfriend pregnant just out of high school, gets married and is having difficulty finding work. What’s with this guy, I said – he’s just 20 years ago and just because his marriage is on the rocks he’s acting like his whole life is over. Sure, said Robert, but what you are missing is that at this point in the character’s life he thinks it is.

Loss’ songwriting reflects this attitude. As someone who uses his music to tell stories, he takes characters at face value and presents them without judgment. It is left for the listener to decide whether a character is a principled hero, an unreasonable dreamer or just a miserable son of a bitch.

What a tired retread this umpteenth rip-off of the brand Gene Roddenberry pioneered 50 years ago with 1966’s Star Trek TV series, is, directed and produced by the cinematic art form’s most overrated, overpaid colossal no-talents. To see how many televised and motion picture permutations - perhaps mutations is a better word? - there have been of this sci fi TV classic, starting with a 1979 big screen adaptation and including 1982’s The Wrath of Khan and 1984’s The Search for Spock, see:    

www.imdb.com/find?q=Star%20Trek&s=tt&ref_=fn_al_tt_mr.

Whenever I think of Richard Nixon, a wave of pity washes over me. Has there ever been a mainstream politician in America who was so hated, so reviled, so disrespected as Nixon? (I’m sure my esteemed editor would say that Nixon deserved every last brickbat thrown at him.) Like Shaft, Nixon was a complicated man–charming and cold, clever and calculating, craven and crafty. Dead for more than twenty years–he died a month before Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the widow of his late rival, John F. Kennedy, in the same hospital in which she was treated–he would have been 102 years old on January 19. The former president is still a fascinating study.

The classified 28 Pages of the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 report have finally been made public, although in redacted form. It took fourteen years for the public to see this document, which was classified by the Bush Administration.

Who knew? Before there was Fox-TV’s Empire, there was John Dolphin (Broadway veteran Stu James),who from 1948-1958 was an African American impresario and entrepreneur who pioneered “Race music” at a critical time when Rock ‘n’ Roll was being born. AsRecorded in Hollywood splendidly dramatizes through music, dance, dialogueand more, this trailblazer presided over his show biz domain from the record shop Dolphin’s of Hollywood. However, as this bioplay quickly reveals in Act I, the emporium from whence Dolphin ruled his mini-empire was not located on then-lily white Hollywood Blvd., where not- so-angelic Angeleno realtors literally refused to rent a space out to him, even when offered rent in advance in hard cold cash.

The Movement for Black Lives has called for a national day of action on Thursday, July 21 to take a stand against oppression and violence against black people. In Columbus a march is planned for 6 p.m. from the Ohio Statehouse to the Columbus Division of Police a few blocks away.

“In the wake of the national outcry over the police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, we’ve seen black folks and allies put their bodies on the line to fight for a world where black lives matter,” said Tynan Krakoff, a lead organizer with the Columbus chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), a group of white people organizing white people to fight against racial injustice.