News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 2125 - 2149 of 3191
We’re all so fixated on what’s happening right now in Washington — where Team Trump, shocked by its own victory, is scrambling to form a government with predictable incompetence — that it’s easy to ignore what’s happening in the states beyond the Beltway. That’s where the Democrats are getting their butts kicked in ways not seen since the 1920s. When the dust settles, they’ll control a mere 30 of the 98 partisan state legislative chambers. Their incessant losses at the grassroots level have put the Republicans ful...
For years, enforcement advocates have urged Congress to complete a wall along the shared U.S.-Mexico border. And for an equal number of years, the immigration lobby has asserted that it can’t be done, and insisted that no wall would stop illegal immigration. The popular argument is that a 20-foot high wall would only increase the sales of 21-foot high ladders. But since President-elect Donald Trump promised to build “a big, beautiful powerful wall” and made that pledge the cornerstone of his immigration enforcement platf...
The liberal media has been in a frenzy all week. It thinks Donald Trump and his transition team are taking too long to announce his cabinet picks and other appointees. Let me check my calendar. Yep. It’s been less than 10 days since Trump shocked the world — and sickened the liberal media — by humiliating Hillary Clinton. And already the media are working as hard as they can to make Trump look like he doesn’t know what he’s doing — before he doesn’t even do anything. I understand the liberal media’s pain. I understand they fe...
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” — H.L. Mencken My most recent one-to-one conversation with Hillary Clinton took place in October 1991, and I’ve been laughing at myself ever since. It was an epochal day in Arkansas life. Only that morning, the Arkansas Gazette — the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi, and one of the best — had ceased publication. Many friends had lost their livelihoods. We ran into the Clintons at a barbecue outside War Memoria...
I tried the holiday self-improved-shopper route this year, but it’s not even Thanksgiving yet and I’ve already managed to ruin Christmas. In my defense, though, I had help. I simply set things in motion, and they snowballed into ruination. In fact, the thing that I set into motion was my mom, the strongest force of nature known to mankind, a thing that cannot be controlled or contained, so I don’t know how I expected a positive outcome. And yes, for the record, I am saying that my mom stole Christmas. In a normal Chris...
I like to believe we are writing our story, a few words each day. I like to believe it is our love story. I like to believe we don’t have to choose sides, that there are no sides. No right. No wrong. No left. No right. Just we pilgrims, searching for our path, aching to love, sometimes lost along the way. I like to believe we are one huge dysfunctional family, a human soup, each scrap of humanity adding to the flavor, never losing character. A huge spicy, yummy soup, a perfect blend. “You is sooo-o naïve,” one friend tells...
When people are generally passionate about things, they sometimes exceed the bounds of reason. Donald Trump won the electoral vote in the dark hours of Wednesday morning, and the clocks stopped. This was followed by the Amazon River evaporating into the mists of the Brazilian jungle, Mount Aetna erupting and swallowing half of Sicily, the polar ice caps melting, and every resident of South Philadelphia finding a parking space within less than five minutes. A miracle, I tell you. Of course, it wasn’t a miracle to those who h...
My wife is crying. It is four days after the election and my wife is still crying. After four days she was finally able to explain to me why she was so upset. She is terrified that the election of Donald Trump means that all she has worked for, all her closest friends have worked for, cared about, and fought for to reduce intolerance and promote dignity and equality will be erased with the stroke of a pen. I met my spouse while working at a university in Nashville, Tennessee. She grew up in rural Tennessee about 40 miles nort...
Well. That happened. Donald J. Trump didn’t just perplex the pundits, pollsters and his own progeny with a stunning electoral pummeling of Hillary Clinton, he pelted them with showbiz shock and awe. It was a wake-up call that surely rolled Beethoven, who was deaf and is now dead. It was the new shot heard round the world. Planet-wide, liberals are slashing wrists and bashing brains and gnashing teeth and curled in a fetal position begging for their blue banky. The city of San Francisco is working through the five stages of g...
NEW YORK — As election evening began in Midtown Manhattan, people who wanted Donald Trump to win — loyal Republicans who risked the scorn of conservative critics to work hard on Trump’s behalf — were not only not sure he would win, they were actively trying to imagine the best-case scenario for his defeat. About 4:30 in the afternoon, I ran into a well-connected Republican operative on Sixth Avenue. She thought Florida didn’t look good — Trump would have to make up too many votes to counter a heavy Hispanic turnout. Bu...
Soon, the holiday travel season will start. What a depressing thought. I remember reading a story a few years ago about an airline that lost a woman’s cat in transit. They looked for that cat for 12 days before it finally turned up — alive and well, but hungry. That was probably 11 1/2 days longer than they would have looked for a missing passenger. Sometimes I wonder what is worse, the airlines or the passengers. On almost every flight I’ve taken the last few holidays, some couple will show up at the very last minute and h...
Thank you to all the voters who participated Nov. 8 and voted to approve the library’s two-mill levy. We here at the library — staff, Friends of the Library, foundation, executive board and all of our wonderful volunteers — appreciate the powerful support from the community. Havre-Hill County Library is your library, and we will continue to work hard and make improvements. The library is funded primarily by tax revenue from the city and the county, which is one reason why we are so dedicated to providing the best services we...
Who was the biggest loser in this election? The media. Even though millions of Americans believe it was actually American citizens who lost the most in this election, it’s really the national media that lost credibility. Reporters whose names were revealed by Wikileaks might as well change their occupations to “pundit,” “columnist” or “propagandist” because they will never again be known as unbiased reporters. Wikileaks proved through leaked emails what conservatives have known and liberals have denied for decades: our...
They still don’t get what the Trump win was all about. All those people protesting and calling their fellow citizens racists, sexists and xenophobes don’t have a clue why Hillary really lost. “It’s a bit silly to protest nearly 60 million Americans who exercised their constitutional right by voting for a candidate the protesters opposed. The fact is, there are dozens of sound reasons why millions voted for Trump.” “You raise a fair point. It’s very difficult for either party to hold the White House for more than two term...
It’s all over. So why are people still arguing about something Donald Trump said three weeks ago? Why are protestors milling around the streets of our cities holding up misspelled signs and promising revolution? The argument ended early Wednesday morning when the votes were counted. Trump won. It was shocking, amazing, impressive, historic — all that and more. The billionaire with no ideology except egoism, the ex-Democrat no one thought had a chance, turned everything upside down and made fools, losers or incompetents out...
So, the most frequent refrain since Election Day is that “no one saw this coming.” Not the pollsters, not the media, not the Democrats’ machine. We might also note that the Cleveland Indians didn’t see what was coming after the rain delay in Game Seven. But unlike the Indians, we saw plenty, and we saw it early on. More than a year before the election we saw how a reality-TV star could dominate a debate stage and, with total disregard for truth, slice and dice 16 other candidates. We saw the power of controlling the message...
The average adult takes 15 to 20 breaths a minute — more than 20,000 per day, according to the American Lung Association. Healthy lungs are important to deliver clean air to our bodies’ organs and tissues, which convert oxygen into fuel to support vital body functions. When a smoker lights up, it affects not only the health of the lungs, but also the body structures that depend on the lungs for oxygen. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable disease and death, claiming the lives of more than 440,000 adults in America eac...
He starts with several large advantages: the fervent support of white, working-class voters and the Republican control of Congress. In his victory speech, he struck generous themes of unity, vowing “to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all of Americans.” But Trump is going to learn very quickly that being president is far tougher than running for president. Even with his allies controlling Capitol Hill, he’s going to face enormous obstacles that will make his job extremely difficult from Day 1. Start...
On July 17, 2012, while on patrol with his team in Afghanistan, Bo Reichenbach of Lockwood, who is now a retired Navy SEAL from Team Two, stepped on a 20 pound IED buried in a field. He lost both legs above the knee leaving him a double amputee. The loss of his legs did not stop Bo or slow his determination to excel in life proven by the fact that he is currently goalie for the US National Sled Hockey Team and will be going to South Korea in 2018 to play hockey for the U.S. in the Paralympics. Bo also coaches his son...
When people tell me that Donald Trump’s election as the nation’s 45th president shocked them, I reply that they must not be paying attention to what goes on around them. The nation is a mess — the economy is in the doldrums, most of the few available jobs are part-time and low-paying, the infrastructure is crumbling, the massive $20 trillion national debt is getting bigger, the $531 billion trade deficit is poised to go higher — and these are merely the most glaring problems that have festered under President Obama. And sin...
The campaign is done. The votes are counted. And America is waking up from one of the strangest, angriest and most divisive presidential campaigns in recent memory. So I’ll be the first to say it: Congratulations, President-elect Trump. For the good of the nation, I hope you succeed. We don’t agree on much. OK, we don’t agree on anything at all. But that’s politics. It’s a competition of ideas. And Tuesday night, a majority of Americans decided they liked yours better. The blue-collar billionaire shtick worked — even with t...
I did a terrible thing. A generally cheerful friend was in obvious pain. Be it emotional, physical, grief, imaginary — doesn’t matter. Pain is pain. Pain twists one’s guts and simply must be passed through. I hugged my friend, opened my mouth and out rolled a blah, blah, blah, blah, useless platitude. I cringed while speaking the words. But once out, there was no cramming the words back where they originated. I hate myself for that. I know better. When I’m hurting I want someone, anyone, to fold me into their arms. I want a h...
As the national political melodrama drew near its end, a sometime email correspondent in Texas worried about my safety. An uxorious older gentleman with a love of horses and a weakness for conspiracy theories, he was always puzzled and often angered by my apostasy. “Being down there in Arkansas,” he warned, “you may not like the way Trump’s supporters respond if they’ve been reading your columns.” I answered that while I’ve been making my views clear for decades, “I’ve never even had anybody speak to me rudely about it.” The...
I have said throughout this presidential campaign that it doesn’t matter much which candidate wins. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are authoritarians and neither can be expected to roll back the leviathan state that destroys our civil liberties at home while destroying our economy and security with endless wars overseas. Candidates do not matter all that much, despite what the media would have us believe. Ideas do matter, however. And regardless of which of these candidates is elected, the battle of ideas now b...
In her job as a community college biology teacher, my wife encounters many older students who have decided to reinvent themselves following widowhood, divorce or downsizing. Their commitment to ongoing education is admirable — but it’s also VOLUNTARY. That may change. According to the Washington Post, a debate is currently raging in Nordic countries over whether to institute mandatory adult education. If such a scheme catches on in Scandinavia, don’t doubt that it will spread to America. Judges, policymakers and hipst...
