In an otherwise unremarkable article about what everyone who is paying any attention has seen, and remarked upon, The Washington Post repeats a claim that seems more and more suspicious to me. Higher deductibles are a tool to reduce unnecessary health-care use, because people are more likely to think twice about seeing a doctor or…
Author: CBD
Yogi Berra: 1925-2015
I have nothing new to say about Laurence Peter Berra. I never met him, have no relationship with The NY Yankees other than being a fan, and never even saw him play, although my grandfather took me to a Mets game when Berra was managing in the early 1970s, so I have some connection! But…
Am I Becoming A Populist?
Not really….or at least not in the historical sense, but this definition is oddly pleasing in a time in which our political representatives conspicuously, publicly, arrogantly reject the desires of those who elected them. Populist:a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people As a callow youth I sneered at the populist…
End The Strife Over The Temple Mount: Move The Mosque And Dome
The First Temple, or “Soloman’s Temple” was built, obviously, during the time of King Soloman, about 950 BCE. It was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, during the destruction of the city by Nebuchadnezzar. The Second Temple was built soon afterward, and stood for 600 years until it was destroyed by the Romans in…
Trump Is Obama with A Different Agenda
Some of what I have heard from Donald Trump is viscerally pleasing. His immigration reform and border control policies are exactly what I want to hear from a candidate. Well…actually….just some of it, if I ignore the really stupid parts like making Mexico pay for the wall, and creating a minimum wage for H1B visa…
Dear Peter Jackson; I Hate You. A Short Review Of “The Hobbit.”
My first memory of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books was during an interminable cross-country trip when I was 10 or 11. We followed the signs to Wall Drug Store (as, I am confident, did much of America), but it was not quite as exciting as I had anticipated in my fervid imagination. As a consolation prize, my…
(Sort of) Happy New Year!
This evening begins the Days of Awe, or the ten days between the start of Rosh Hashanah and the end of Yom Kippur. For an interesting take on it, take a look at The Lid’s explanation. I am not particularly religious, identifying myself as a cultural Jew who is woefully lax in his religious observance….
The Lesson Has Been Unlearned
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war. 14 years later America has lost whatever martial spirit we had in the aftermath of the…
The Language Of David Brock: Orwell Would Be Proud
Jay Guevara beat me to the punch….his post below mocks David Brock and his ridiculous contention that the NY Times is a “megaphone for conservative propaganda.” But Brock does the Devil’s work here by contorting language beyond all rational understanding. His goal is clear: make any criticism of Hillary Clinton a conservative plot — an…
I Love Sports, But I am Learning To Hate Athletes
About a dozen years ago a local book store had Mike Lupica in to sell a few copies of his new book and answer some questions. I asked him whether he despaired for the future of professional sports because of the increasingly unpleasant personal behavior of the typical professional athlete. He was upbeat and sanguine,…