A dozen midterm reminders

15 Nov 2022. One week after the elections, I am in the plane back from the US to Europe. Time to kill, time to reflect: What’s the upshot? What was learned? Anything to keep in mind? It’s not that the event went unnoticed. The public reckoning is all-encompassing, the...

democracy

3 Nov 2022 A majority of Americans consider their democracy «in danger», «under threat» or «in danger of collapse», but they don’t agree why that is. Republicans demonize Democrats, Democrats demonize Republicans. One remedy (this side of the armed insurrection) is...

“Joe and the Ho gotta go”

A handful of impressions from a trip down South: There, the Ukrainian front is far, far away. Joe Biden is no war hero. What weighs heavily on people’s minds is the ever-rising price of carburants.   In May, the US South is still bearable. The plague of spring...

Out of Fulton

The other week, I drove from New York City to Kansas. With the events in Ukraine the trip became a probe into middle America’s outlook on war. Yes, the accidental encounter with the man and woman in the street does not amount to an opinion poll and most of times it...

Ukraine is a European matter

Actually, I am once again motoring through the US of A, this time focusing on West Virginia, the home state of Senator Joe The Powerful, who is strangling President Biden’s  “Build Back Better” bill, with my antennas out for the odd and the wacky along the road. But...

2 Feb, Punxsutawney PA

On 2 February in Punxsutawney PA, a groundhog named Phil predicted six more weeks of winter by casting a shadow. He had company. The annual tongue-in-cheek ceremony on Groundhog Day has attracted ever larger crowds over the years (the 2020 edition allegedly saw 40 000...