Coach Henry Harutunian receiving the Legacy Award in his US fencing team jacket from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. Flanking him are Selena Kaing, chair of the US Fencing Foundation Board of Trustees, and Wei-Tai Kwok, co-president of the Yale Fencing Association and captain of the Yale 1984-85 men’s varsity fencing team. As friends, […]
Body of an Iranian protester, murdered in the hospital by regime gunmen. Note IV line to hand and bullet wound to forehead. Trump might have prevented this. Courtesy X (Twitter) Those familiar with this blog might recall that I have long considered Donald Trump — Benedict Donald as I now think of him (with Benedict […]
Today the world awoke to a breathtaking new reality. The Iranian regime’s efforts to develop and deploy the nuclear-tipped missile capability to “wipe Israel off the map” in a second, atomic Holocaust — and to threaten the U.S.1 — has finally and almost certainly been crushed. Israel’s non-stop (since June 13) attacks on the […]
Trump’s official portrait — a glowering MAGGOT Since I last wrote about Ukraine two weeks ago, Trump has turned bad into worse. In my mind, he’s turned MAGA into MAGGOT. On Feb. 28, he and JD Vance1 attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in a way that — almost — makes me […]
Over the past week or so, Donald Trump and key members of his administration have made clear that the U.S. is abandoning its support of Ukraine and switching sides. President Trump is throwing America’s weight in favor of Russia and its war criminal president, Vladimir Putin, the brutal invader of Ukraine. Here are the key […]
Musk-ox — not sure if this one’s named Elon The whirlwind generated by Donald Trump and Elon Musk threatens not only to tear chunks of the U.S. government to shreds, some of its first gusts — directed at USAID (the U.S. Agency for International Development) — will almost certainly end the lives of an untold […]
With Super Tuesday having all but ensured that Donald Trump and Joe Biden will receive their parties’ nominations for November’s presidential election — a huge disappointment for many, if not most, voters — Shakespeare’s famous line in Romeo and Juliet, “a plague on both your houses,” is all I can think to say. Rather than […]
Pro-Gaza demonstration at Columbia University, New York City A great deal of water has spilled over the dam since I wrote about Israel’s existential struggle against Hamas following the latter’s blood-curdling attack on October 7. Because it is a truism that silence in the face of developments you dislike amounts to complicity, today I refuse […]
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (left) and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer flank Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in U.S. Capitol Readers of my blog and those who follow me on social media (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter/X), know that I regularly post two things: (1) daily generally humorous items (except Sundays) related to language or writing and […]
Wagner Group tank on the streets of Rostov-on-Don (SIBERIA painted on front — read into it what you will) Thanks to my background in Soviet/Russian affairs, I’ve been following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with enormous interest — and great sympathy for the victims of this brutal, unprovoked aggression. The lightning-fast events of the past two […]
