US Foreign Policy

A More Perfect Union

Thursday, February 9th, 2023

It shouldn’t surprise you that some reporters, talk show hosts and columnists are lazy.  They find a meme and then plug in a detail.   The meme today is the phrase “Washington is broken.” This phrase allows the speaker to avoid taking responsibility for a judgment or prediction.  It opens the door to the related meme, […]

Straw Man

Thursday, October 13th, 2022

Boxers and soldiers often train fighting dummies.  It is easy to understand why.  Dummies don’t fight back.  Eventually, however, a good fighters needs to train against another human as an opponent if they want to win a real fight. Debates work similarly with words.  Some debaters only fight straw men; others, preferring a challenge, argue […]

What Was Old Is New Again

Thursday, February 24th, 2022

I will never forget my childhood trip to Berlin.  My dad was stationed in Bamberg, Germany, and my parents wanted their children to see as much as possible.  The trip to Berlin was different than others. The trip started with a night train.  On most trips, we traveled in our huge red, Plymouth station wagon.  […]

I’m Not Scared of Words

Tuesday, October 12th, 2021

Every time we turn around Fox News and the rest of the professional conservatives cry like babies about scary socialism.  It doesn’t take much education to know they haven’t a clue what socialism is.  They simply want to scare and paralyze American. In the early 1900’s apartment and factory fires killed thousands.  As a society […]

Cruelty is a Feature, Not an Accident

Thursday, September 16th, 2021

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 ignited the rise of Big Government Conservatism.  Just a few months before, George W. Bush had won a razor thin election by presenting himself as a compassionate conservative.  Within days of the September attacks his mask fell off. Bush started to channel the blood lust rising in conservative circles.  I […]

Donald Trump’s High Crimes

Wednesday, September 25th, 2019

I am old enough to remember that politics stops at the waters edge. Now, conservatives are defending foreign participation in American Democracy. “The actions of the Trump presidency revealed dishonorable facts of betrayal of his oath of office and betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections,” the speaker of […]

Honoring My Dad and the Fallen

Monday, May 27th, 2019

Memorial Day always makes me think of my dad-Yves “Buster” Melancon.  He served for twenty-seven years in the United States Army and went to Vietnam twice.  As a Combat Engineer, Dad wasn’t directly engaged in the fighting, but he did travel throughout the war zone.  I always wonder how my life would have been different […]

“Israeli settlements, explained in 8 minutes” Vox

Tuesday, September 20th, 2016

“How do we move forward? in Syria”

Monday, November 16th, 2015

“Strangely today you are touting that Obama has been wanting to go to war when mostly he has said that he is going to get us out of it. How about we move on and not just continue the political spin? “   Actually, what I have said is President Obama has continued to wage […]

Crony Capitalism and the 1%

Thursday, October 20th, 2011

We can easily see the speck in our neighbor’s eye.  Why can’t we see the 1% in our own?  “Formed with a $10 million endowment from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies gathered captains of industry in a small circle — with the president’s son Gamal Mubarak at the […]