As I write this, there have been more than 336,000 reported cases of the coronavirus in the United States, and over 9,600 have died from it. Some experts contend that, in the worst possible case scenario, the virus is capable of killing as many as three million Americans. What makes the coronavirus so deadly is […]

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Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has expressed concern that Donald Trump would try to delay the 2020 election. The conservative majority in the Supreme Court recently refused to extend the deadline for absentee ballots in the Wisconsin primary, forcing those wishing to vote to risk their lives in the middle of the pandemic. The battle […]

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California Governor Gavin Newsome made two groundbreaking public apologies in recent years: one in 2019 to the Native American community for the state’s policy of exterminating its people around the time of statehood in 1851, and the other in February of this year to Japanese Americans for the state’s complicity in the U.S. policy of […]

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The view from my condo overlooking the Saigon River includes much of Ho Chi Minh City’s glittery downtown, with its many newly built high rises and the famous Thu Thiem bridge. On a weekday it is crowded with cars and motorcycles. Today, however, that torrent of humanity has, but for a few straggling motorcycles and […]

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It’s too soon to know whether Trump’s slow-motion and deadly response to the coronavirus outbreak will contribute to his political undoing.  But even that enticing prospect offers little consolation, measured against the reality that this rudderless nation has been left flatfooted in the face of an advancing plague. Trump spent months minimizing the known threat. […]

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