This isn’t your father’s Earth Day. The celebration of all things “green” turns 49 on Monday, and it’s starting to show the inevitable signs of age. That might be a good thing. With the passage of the years comes a preference for results over rhetoric. A good way to celebrate the planet’s magnificent fauna and flora is simply to keep it clean.
Straightaway in the morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council, and bound Jesus, and carried him away, and delivered Him to Pilate.
China, the ancient "Middle Kingdom," continues to be one of the greater ironies of our fiercely shattered times, when the unexpected is often the barely believable. For decades, the United States recognized the Republic of China, sited on an island off the coast of China, and threatened by the vastly larger government in Beijing, as the actual ruling government of the world's most populous country.
The histrionics over the fate of the Korean Peninsula are about a roller coaster ride with no brakes. A new round begins Thursday with the arrival in Washington of President Moon Jae-in of South Korea. Despite the drama, a rekindling of attention toward the on-again, off-again dialogue between the United States and North Korea over denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is more than welcome. Without the efforts of the central players, the nuclear threat posed by the North will keep the sword borrowed from Damocles hanging over the entire Pacific Rim.
Bubbles are fragile things in politics, and the Beto bubble has already burst.
Surprises by definition are sudden, but the stuff of surprises can creep up slowly from behind. That's what has happened with the gradual escalation of gasoline prices, which are once more pinching wallets and making them cry. Washington officialdom in its genius has chosen this time to start working up support for an increase in the federal gasoline tax. With Americans already paying more to keep their cars on the road, if there is ever a good time to raise that tax, it's not now.
Politics is a lot like fishing. Getting the best catch requires the right bait. Democratic candidates for the 2020 election have been trolling for popular support with easy promises of some version of socialized medicine. Observing their enthusiasm success, President Trump baited his hook with the health care promises he couldn't deliver in 2017.
The president gave his cable-TV hosts and the Twitterati a chuckle this week when he said, in a sort of Pocahontas moment, that his father, Fred Trump, was born in Germany. Mr. Trump the elder was, in fact, born in the Bronx. But there was actually more consequential news about Germany this week.
Six months have elapsed since Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi newspaper columnist and blogger, went missing. He is widely believed to have been murdered by agents working for someone high inside the Saudi government who found his criticism of the Riyadh regime and the royal family intolerable. Without a body — his body is thought to have been dismembered and the body parts scattered around Istanbul — it's hard to say.
Joe Biden has led the polls of Democratic primary voters for a while now. But like all leaders in these early polls, he's a bit of a paper tiger, benefiting from name recognition, and even the fact that he is not running for anything. At least not yet; there are, or were, rumors of a late April announcement.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong," observed H.L. Mencken, the sage of Baltimore who was the most popular social critic of the previous century. Sadly, Mencken isn't around to address the scourge of the 21st century, the obstinate refusal of Democrats to admit that there is an obvious problem, complex or otherwise. The liberals who call themselves "progressives" pretend not to notice the relentless stream of humanity trying to force their way across America's southern border.
The U.S. Army is increasing the deployment of active forces overseas, with up to 10,000 troops, many of them National Guard units together comprising the equivalent of a division headquarters and several brigades. They will be moved abroad soon.
It wasn't supposed to go down this way. When Democrats who said they wanted a congressional resolution calling for a global fight against global warming, were forced to declare their allegiance to the cause, they ran for the tall grass.
The "Green New Deal" is a nutty scheme to completely "decarbonize" the U.S. economy over a decade to rebuild or replace every single building in the United States to make them energy efficient, to declare war on U.S. agriculture (cows belch too much), and, for good measure "provide all people of the United States with high-quality health care; affordable, safe, and adequate housing; economic security and access to clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, guarantee a "job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States."
The Russian collusion powder keg burned through its extra-long fuse, and exploded with the sound and fury of a pop gun. President Trump's political and media enemies who have anticipated a republic-shaking blast, with fingers in their ears, are left blinking in disbelief.
Let the quibbling begin, but 675 days after Robert Mueller's 19 lawyers began issuing 2,800 subpoenas and posing questions to 500 witnesses, Mr. Mueller has concluded that there was no Trump collusion with the Russians to cook the 2016 presidential election.
