Why I Didn’t and Won’t Vote For Trump

I would not trust him to run my business, pay me if I painted his house, be faithful to me in marriage, give me medical advice, or be respectful of my disability. He is not immoral—someone who makes bad moral choices. He is amoral—a person outside the system of morality. He is a pagan who lives for what happens in his own lifespan. He used the Word of God as a political prop. He is a moral idiot, not a stable genius.

The Silk Roads; learning words and expressions

Finishing up the Peter Frankopan epic, The Silk Roads. Especially distressing is the 21st century coverage of the Levant and surrounding neighborhood. The lessons of history are that no one except scholars and autodidacts studies history. You get the occasional Churchill, but for the most part leaders are muddlers who play checkers on a chessboard.

I'm adding "the Levant" to the list of words and expressions that I have had to make an extra effort to learn and glue to the old hippocampus. Other words that I have made an effort to learn over the course of life include palimpsest, quotidian, phlegmatic, mote. I also had had a hard time defining "irony" until I heard a character in a movie define it. "Laconic" was hard until I read it as applied to Coolidge. Sanguine: I can remember the second definition about bloodiness, but I often have to relearn the first definition. Reading William F. Buckley's newspaper column and Gore Vidal's novels and essays improved my sesquipedalian ambitions. 

WGN America News Nation—3 hours of Straight News Every Night

The Nexstar Media Group, owner of WGN Radio in Chicago—and the largest owner of US TV stations—is launching News Nation tonight, September 1, on cable, satellite, streaming, and app (including audio news updates from WGN Radio). The website slogans with “NO BIAS AT ANYTIME” and “It inspires you to think, not how to think.” Rob Nelson, formerly of WABC-TV weekend morning news, is one of the co-anchors. Many questions: Will this be 1010 WINS with pictures? Could ratings success spark a centrist trend that could spill over to talk radio? Will there be enough audience at 8 pm for info over opinion? They can draw from both extremes who have their fill of Rachel or Sean for the evening or from folks who form opinions from facts (as opposed to crafting facts from opinions). It’s a crazy concept, like CNN in 1980.