Looking back at 2022, at what did and did not happen, really tells us what was important, hindsight and all that. Things that Did Not Happen in 2022 Joe Biden did not explain why the U.S. is at war in Ukraine. Any nuclear war. Regime change in Russia. Ukraine winning the war. The Russians running […]

“What stands out for visitors?” I asked our guide during a Honolulu Chinatown tour with my out-of-town guests. “Always the same, the homeless. Even Mainlanders from big cities like San Francisco and New York are surprised how many we have here. I’m waiting to see how the Japanese and Korean guests respond when they start […]

  Coming home to New York City after over a year away is like performing cunnilingus on an electrical socket. You’re shocked, and the socket doesn’t feel a thing. I was driven by that same curiosity that makes you slow down passing a wreck on the highway. I’d read the stories of zombie homeless armies in […]

Fulfilling family obligations in 2022 means long haul flights of dozens of hours. By hours, I mean because everything already has been on Netflix each in-air hour is longer than others, say those that pass during on-beach massage sessions. The only thing that makes in-air time tolerable is Inflight Fight Club. The first rule of […]

  It is hard escape the images from the Ukraine but easy not to think about them. The bodies themselves are the only truth; for there but for the grace of them goes us. Were they Russian separatists, Ukrainian heroes, people on the way home from work, people far from home or abandoned by even […]

Fairfax County, Virginia is ground zero for wokeness. It is 65 percent white and votes solidly Democratic. The median income is over $124k. I used to live there; it was common to hear white people brag about having black friends (but at work you know, not the kind that come over to the house) and […]

Joe “Vote Panderer” Biden dropped a little Christmas present in the punchbowl late December. He extended the “pause” on student loan payments until May 1. Biden remains under pressure to cancel the debt. The debt has been a Democratic White Whale forever, and what happens next in May will not be the last of this, […]

I took a friend of a friend and his wife on a tour of Chinatown the other day. She arrived double-masked and immediately asked if I was vaccinated (I am.) She didn’t say much or eat anything, her husband was the one clearly interested in new foods. The wife, maybe 28 or so, then had […]

It is important to stop every once in awhile and sum up where things are, to lay down some breadcrumbs to refer back to when someone asks “How did we end up here?” In many ways, the story is the same story. The message of 9/11 was give up freedom for safety, trust the government, […]

  Covid caused a very odd thing: the working poor got a raise. Via stimulus checks, federally-funded jumps in unemployment payments, and looser state-based unemployment qualifications (specifically including gig workers and independent contractors who weren’t before eligible for regular unemployment benefits) they all of a sudden had money that may still not have been much […]

Who is making the cascading series of bad decisions about tourism and why are they determined to damage the Number 2 industry in Hawaii? With over a year’s pause to review things like sustainability and overuse why are we only now having such conversations even as we drift from problem to problem? Tourism is a […]

We are being held hostage to a number. Hawaii is the last and only state with COVID entry requirements. Hawaii is the last and only state with broad COVID rules for fully vaccinated people. Hawaii is the last state and only state with emergency powers still granted its governor. Our economy is dependent on a […]

  We don’t have to ask what happens when Democrats mess with the economy. We have Hawaii, frozen in COVID fear, a wonderful laboratory with the “what” as clear as a petri dish full of bacteria. It stinks. A case study in Democrats and the Economy.   Hawaii exists in distinct state-lets, enclaves, socio-economic islets, […]

  Black men are systemically shot and killed in New York City and no one seems to care because the triggers aren’t pulled by cops. If you say discussing this is a distraction from racism, you do it from atop a lot of graves. And how can anyone say that doesn’t matter?   Begin by […]

  I have seen the future. It looks a lot like Hawaii. What I saw there (absent the beautiful beaches, confused tourists, and incredible nature) was a glimpse of the future for much of America. COVID paved the way for internal travel restrictions — Americans moving around inside their own country — never before thought […]

Twitterless, Donald Trump will soon disappear into obscurity or some commentator job, basically about the same. It will be for the fullness of history to judge his term, but it is certain the summation will be it was four years of lies and barely Constitutional actions that have forever dented America’s democracy. Lies and actions […]

I learned the facts of life from a drunk uncle. He was not an American, and worked in international construction in Asia, mostly Japan and Hong Kong. We were lost in cheap booze at a wedding and he started asking me about how things worked in America. I had just started working for the State […]

With Elderly Caucasian Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate, November 3 will be less about the Rise of Progressive politics than the noise of the last four years would have you believe. But while the media shine of AOC and her kind winds down, progressive thought will find at least a petri dish to fester […]

  If you get to the end of this and think all it’s doing is defending Trump, you’ve missed the point. For the first time in months there is no front page COVID story. The replacement is the police killing in Minneapolis and chaos everywhere else. But the repurposing is familiar: blame Trump for the […]

  The COVID-19 virus turned us into a nation of Momo’s.   Momo is my old rescue dog. She has BB-like pellets embedded under her skin. She jumps at noises and shivers uncontrollably when I pull my belt from my pants at night. She didn’t have to tell me that story but she did. She […]

  The talk in New York is about when to return to normal. But that misses the point; normal never really left, it just changed clothes. We traded economic disparity expressed through poverty for economic disparity expressed through viral death. The real problem isn’t when we’ll return to normal, it is that we will.   […]

  I’m not worried about the guy coughing next to me. I’m worried about the ones who seem to be looking for Jim Jones.   Jim Jones was the charismatic founder of the cult-like People’s Temple. Through fear-based control, Jones took his followers’ money and ran their lives. He isolated them in Guyana, where Jones […]

  “Um, is it Colonel Vindman in the Russian Tea room with the coronavirus?” “Very funny. Now everyone settle down. Welcome back to Propaganda and the Death of Media 101 in case you’re in the wrong class, and its, um, March 15, 2024. Now we were discussing the role of propaganda and the media in […]

  The chaos of the primaries, the lack of a clear party vision in the last debate — are Democrats a progressive party, a party of moderates, a plaything for billionaires or just people sniping each other for virtue points? It is time for concern. Politics is always about the biggest story you tell and […]

  New York, America’s richest city and Ground Zero in how economic inequality is reshaping every day of our lives.   NYC is home to 70 billionaires, more than any other American city. One apartment building alone, 740 Park Avenue, is home to the highest concentration of billionaires in the United States. Yet living among […]

Under pressure to fill the blank space about how she would pay for Medicare for All, Elizabeth Warren released a plan built on empty assumptions and fulfilled by unrealistic revenue expectations. It’s bad to the point where it raises questions about whether she is a serious candidate, and that begs the question of what the […]

  I went looking for trouble in Berlin. Traveling in Germany as an American I was left with one thought: why can’t we live this way? Of course modern Germans have their problems, but it seems wherever you go it is clean, safe, organized. They pay taxes, sure, but receive nearly free healthcare, college, and […]

  Too many Americans think immigration is about arguing over head scarfs. Many simplistically demand or oppose the diversity migrants bring. But they’re all using the wrong words, maybe because the right word – heimat — is in German.   The Marzahn neighborhood is way out of town, near the end of the S-Bahn train […]

    NOTE: I’ve been re-running this article every time over the last three years a temporary downturn on Wall Street causes progressive idiots to celebrate. The last run was in January 2019, but here we go again.     Dear People Wishing for Stock Market Trouble:   Stock market trouble will not make Trump […]

  Economic inequality could be the signature issue for Democrats, one that speaks to purple voters, progressives, and maybe even some current Trump supporters. But the Dems do not seem to understand this. They need to decide if they are running as a party of governance, or just one of protest. On economics, an issue […]