ISB BLOG

Expect the worst from Trump and you’ll never be surprised. The world teeters, burns, floods, shakes. Europe. Japan. Venezuela. The American West. Nepal. A new word enters my lexicon: pyrocumulonimbus or “fire cloud.” It has been a long summer. Iran, Gaza, the West...

If not Congress or a federal agency, who’s providing oversight of all this money, and making sure it’s spent properly? Old Balls & Strikes John Roberts, the forever-young choirboy, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a judicial partisan of the first order, lifted...

To laugh or to weep, that is the question Whenever I see polls showing Donald Trump’s approval rating hovering in the mid-30s, I ask myself, how can it be that high? With the help of many corrupt, craven, calculating, callous and criminal enablers, Trump has done to...

When the rule of law no longer applies, every citizen is vulnerable. David Hearn is every one of us, a citizen, subject to the same laws. But think of what citizen David Hearn is being forced to endure. Indicted by a Washington D.C. grand jury for allegedly damaging...

Expect more of the same from the Trump GOP Even the most dimwitted Democrats should have enough savvy to hang Trump’s dismal economy around the necks of their GOP opponents. How hard can it be to frame the two major issues facing voters: a punishing economy and...

Compared to what we face, Sisyphus had it easy. What do Todd Blanche’s floundering nomination to become US Attorney General and Mitch McConnell’s six week absence from the US Senate have in common? In a word, corruption: of norms, laws, decency, and any sense of duty...

What happened to so much winning? Donald Trump and his incompetent minions have trapped themselves and our country in a losing war in the Middle East. Trump and Pete “High-T” Hegseth thought attacking Iran and toppling its theocratic government would follow their...

"...don't stare too long into an endless black hole; turn your face to the light, as weak as the glimmer may be." Ece Temelkuran, Nation of Strangers I’m guilty of not following the excellent advice I read in Nation of Strangers by Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran. Of...

We should have no illusions about what Trump is doing. “It tended to inflate the ego of most planters beyond all reason; they became arrogant, strutting, quarrelsome kinglets; they issued commands; they made laws; they shouted their orders; they expected deference and...

"Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage, and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them." Abraham Lincoln, 1858 I find myself distracted and unable to focus on one thing for any length of time, a consequence of living in Donald Trump’s reality TV...