BY HANK REICHMAN A little less than a year ago, in the wake of the 2016 election, I posted to this blog “A Playlist for the Trump Presidency,” a collection of 30 songs/videos of political relevance. It generated considerable traffic. In February I followed up with “Another Trump Playlist,” with 40 songs/videos, but that post…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Dear Mr. President: Reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following your support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville. The false equivalences you push cannot stand. The Administrations refusal to quickly and unequivocally condemn the cancer of hatred only further…
BY HANK REICHMAN I usually try to limit my posts to this blog to topics more or less directly related to higher education. However, given the many questions swirling around President Trump’s relations with Russia and Vladimir Putin and the importance to higher education of how Trump’s presidency develops, I thought I would share some…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the text of an open letter to Cleveland Clinic Director Delos “Toby” Cosgrove, who happens to be a Trump adviser, signed by over 1,500 (and counting) medical students, faculty and related personnel. Dear Dr. Cosgrove, On January 27th, 2017, President Trump signed an executive order indefinitely banning Syrian…
BY MARTIN KICH The following are excerpts from an item published by Politico and written by Shane Goldmacher and Matthew Nussbaum. The article describes Donald Trump’s first “official” speech as President, delivered at CIA headquarters. The tone of the piece is remarkably unsparing, especially for Politico: Standing on hallowed ground at the Langley headquarters, in…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., the great punk band Green Day released an official music video of their song, “We Live in Troubled Times,” from their current album, Revolution Radio. “Today we celebrate love and compassion more than ever,” lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong said in a statement that…
BY JOHN K. WILSON CNN is reporting some very important news about talk show host Monica Crowley, Trump’s pick as senior director of strategic communications for the National Security Council: she is a plagiarist. And this is not your garden-variety, “oops I copied a few things accidentally” excuse kind of plagiarism. This is massive, systematic, intentional…
POSTED BY JOHN K. WILSON Donald Trump announced today that he will be shutting down the Donald J. Trump Foundation. But he won’t be shutting down the investigation by the New York Attorney General’s office, nor should he shut down the scrutiny over his corrupt charity. The Trump Foundation existed for Trump to use for…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In a recent post, Hank Reichman provided a post-election playlist that did a great deal to mitigate my post-election despondency. That playlist could not have included this just released video of Fiona Apple singing a Christmas standard reworked for this particular holiday season: Whether you enjoy the song or not, Fiona…
BY HANK REICHMAN Music can be an indispensable solace, inspiration, and fortification. Over the past several weeks I’ve needed all three, and I suspect others have as well. So I’ve put together this playlist to help us through the next four years. Thirty songs out of many. (Sadly, for a good number of them you’ll…