Not everybody has signed on to the jihad against opioid drugs. There are dissenters, and I am one, although I’m absolutely on board with making those who lie about opioids pay for the resulting harm.

We among the lucky — or unlucky — few who are allowed to contemplate the end of our lives spend a great deal of that limited time contemplating the beginning, remembering with varying degrees of accuracy, telling stories.

How do I know that? How can I speak for anybody but myself?

That’s a fair objection. In the last couple of years, I’ve sat through nursing home hospice with two elderly relatives as cancer took them away slowly and, forty years or so ago, with two of my generation in home hospice. Likewise, cancer.

That makes a sample of five, me…

It was December 18, 1865, when the 13th Amendment — which banned most slavery in all of the nation became part of the U.S. Constitution.

Lincoln, the film, was realistic enough to show that a lot of what was done to get it passed was not pretty. Ratification was even worse. The ratification of the 13th Amendment, the 14th Amendment (promising equal protection of the law), and the 15th Amendment (guaranteeing the right to vote) or legislation of equal import was made to be a condition of readmission to the Union.

This demand was extra-constitutional and, from the time Chief Justice Marshall arrogated the power to strike down acts of Congress in Marbury v. Madison, extra-constitutional had been synonymous in the minds of many people…

President Biden’s Memorial Day speech was a full-throated defense of democracy. Was it merely a string of safe applause lines? Didn’t the voters just reject the cheap patriotism of bone spurs on one side and an American flag lapel pin on the other?

I rise to dissent from the view that the battle’s over. If our current situation is victory for democracy, I should hope to never taste defeat.

Poor old Karl Marx. His name got attached to so much nonsense. Yet, he is one of those rare thinkers who left his mark on so many disciplines that it’s hard to earn an advanced degree even now without encountering his work — though seldom in the original because his writing was a hard slog. Marx left tracks in political science, economics, sociology, philosophy, literature and most other arts.

He died a stateless person…

Today marks a century from a wrong that some of us would like to excavate from the memory hole, but the R word often impedes even a frank discussion.

A discussion about whether there was law in Oklahoma after it ceased being Indian Territory in 1907?

Considering the facts on the ground, it might be fruitful to examine whether the white supremacists in our times running with the Adolf Hitler fan club is coincidence or just because the neo-Nazis agree on white supremacy but nothing more?

What will the discussion cost us in reputation? Will it cost us money? What could we tell the kiddies after all these years of lying silence?

R word? Racism?

Even scarier. Reparations.

A hundred years makes a lot of distance but I grew…

I am about to spew forth a river of loosely-connected thoughts that have little to do with current events or each other.

I have decided that if I’m not going to make money with my writing, I am at least going to enjoy it. Godwin’s law, for those who need a refresher, instructs us as follows:

As an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or Nazis approaches 1.

Mike Godwin, the law maker, has been forced by current events to recognize the size of Hitler’s fan club and to admit that when people do harm and cite Hitler as the reason, it might be a good idea to call them out in the terms they have…

I first noticed what was going on during the debate over Obamacare, but it could be I’m just slow. The leader of the Republican Party in the senate had stated plainly the very top of his agenda was “making Barack Obama a one term president.”

Taking him at his word would have saved me a lot of grief, but it was the kind of grief that comes with playing pundit. Errors come with the territory. You don’t have to admit your errors, although I do as a matter of commitment to being right as often as possible.

I take little solace in being only one of many who could not believe that such a high-placed player in a two-party system would lead his party off the field when there was so much governing to be done. …

We are the blind men and all of human knowledge is the elephant. The Covid 19 virus might be a tiny parasite the elephant hopes to find and kill.

Viruses are not “living” as we understand life, but a virus can still be “killed” in the sense of being rendered unable to do harm to human beings. The purpose of viruses appears to be making copies of themselves. You have heard that viruses have DNA profiles, you say? Well, you can claim they “have DNA” and that would be a true statement, but it’s truer to say they are DNA lurking inside a protective sheath of protein. Stripping away that protection disables or kills.

The important thing for human beings defending against viruses is that some of the awful…

This article is inspired by Why do you need to get started investing?, an article by Marcus Tan, published on May 9, 2021 in Age of Awareness.

First some thoughts about money, relationships, and why you ought to pay attention to lining up some passive income. That is, an income that continues when you quit working.

You may go forward into the future or you may allow the waves to rake you over razor-sharp reefs and leave you unable to do anything for your family but bleed on them.

If you start your life journey alone, as I did, you will find it easier to bond with another human being if it’s obvious that you are able to take care of yourself. …