Restricted Thread

One of my favorite journalists and writers, David Ignatius, had a piece in today's Washington Post listing the ways that Putin loses in his most recent power grab. First, if the Crimea s vote to join the new USSR, and Moscow votes to annex, then Putin loses the Ukraine to resentment; he pushes... Sign in to see full entry.

NBC has a sample of five possible outcomes that may have caused the crash of the missing Boeing 777 jetliner. We are continuing to find acceptable reasons why terrorism should be ruled out. For example the two Iranian who boarded the flight with stolen passports had a reasonable cover story: they... Sign in to see full entry.

Now we know, from Malaysian authorities investigating Boeing 777 disappearance, that the men who traveled under false passports were "...not Asian in appearance." We also know that the man who paid for the tickets -known in spy terms as the "cutout" - was Iranian. They even give his name. Sounding... Sign in to see full entry.

Here's the most ridiculous thought I've had all week. Looking at Putin ' s surreptitious entry into Crimea using shock troops without national insignia, during "war games", the random and idle mind drifts to the search for that Malaysian airliner. In the movie, "Wag the Dog", the president is... Sign in to see full entry.

This an education blog but it also entails the travails of a retiree who falls in that most unwelcome class of people who have at last lived long enough to know what they are talking about from experience, but too experienced to be taken seriously. I recently ran afoul of an old high school... Sign in to see full entry.

When Churchill predicted 600,000 deaths and several million refugees he failed to take into consideration what happens to people who survive near miss bombings? After the war he is quoted as saying that nothing is more exhilarating as being shot at and surviving. This is what he learned. A bombing... Sign in to see full entry.

So stated the prime minister of England in 1939. If Hitler chose to bomb London there was no defense. Brit leaders predicted that hundreds of thousands of London era would die and that between one and two million would stream into the countryside in one hysterical mass. Industrial workers would... Sign in to see full entry.

If you are not allowed to compare anyone to Hitler, as many talking heads have said, then how does one explain the shocking similarity of tactics? Sign in to see full entry.

I hurried through the drive - through at lunchtime, grateful for a half hour to correct my Monday morning mistake of failing to provide myself with a Monday lunch. I don't know if it was on the outside of the cup, but I had the strong scent of perfume when my shake was handed to me through the... Sign in to see full entry.

As I lay awake again last night it dawned on me that there must be as many references to violence and murder, as there are to love. We are used to remembering silly love songs like "Love Me Do", their first number one in America; "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" perhaps their most memorable for its... Sign in to see full entry.