Hammonton, N.J., and Novo Mesto, Slovenia are 4,334 miles apart in distance and light-years apart in culture. The new First Lady of the United States, Jill Jacobs Biden, and the current first lady, Melania Knavs (Knauss) Trump, are as different as the places of their birth. They are also 19 years apart in age, 69 […]
EDITOR’S NOTE: Our week in review column, Trumplandia, has been pushed to tomorrow in order to continue uninterrupted coverage of Donald Trump’s disrespect for America’s military. Trumplandia will return to its regular Saturday slot next week. By DEBORAH QUINN HENSEL Americans who died in war are “losers and suckers” according to the commander-in-chief, who never […]
My great-uncle, U.S. Marine Corps Private William L. Brasfield, also known as Lee, died long before I was born, but I heard all the stories. As a young man, he enlisted because he believed that was what a patriot was supposed to do. For a while, he wrote fascinating letters home to rural Alabama about […]
Dear Donald J. Turnip: I just wanted to let you know that my husband and I received our stimulus money today — our tax dollars at work to jump start the economy. I was eternally grateful that it came in the form of a direct deposit so we didn’t have to wait for a paper […]
It wasn’t exactly the level of TV drama that draws droves of people to tune in like “The Bachelorette,” “Survivor,” or the “Dallas” era of “Who shot J.R. Ewing?” Nonetheless, the verbal battles provided by the Democratic candidates for president Tuesday and Wednesday in Detroit were informative, entertaining and definitely “must-see TV” for voters. Nobody […]
A lot of nights lately, I find it hard to sleep. I think about those poor children in the immigration camps huddled together on a concrete floor ––miserable because of inadequate sanitation, no medical care, drinking water from toilets like dogs, and in their fear, having no one but each other to hug and comfort. […]
“No president ever worked harder than me (cleaning up the mess I inherited).” This is what the Prevaricator in Chief tweeted on Monday, Feb. 11, trying to counteract information about his work schedule leaked over the preceding weekend by the news media source Axios. Obtaining his daily work schedule, Axios reported that Trump frequently spends […]
Rules of etiquette are among the first things a child is taught in order to participate in civilized society. Don’t chew with your mouth open. Say “please” and “thank you.” Don’t interrupt when someone else is speaking. Those are among the basics. At the next level, eventually everyone has to learn the rules of etiquette […]
Editor’s Note: Staff writer Deborah Quinn Hensel says she’s been bottling it up for too long, and now there’s such an accumulation that it’s spilling out in chapters. This is the first, but the pressure keeps building, so watch out for more. Looking down the barrel of the midterm elections in November, perhaps the Republican Party […]
My husband and I have a weekend cabin in the Texas Hill Country — in a very rural, red, Republican county where more than 56 percent of the voters in the 2016 general election chose the Turnip. (A friend on a diet once told me potatoes and corn are both vegetables and therefore, healthy. That’s […]
We were sitting in the living room of my daughter’s house in Austin on Friday when I found a headline on my news feed that I wanted my husband to see –– another Trump atrocity. They used to come daily, now they’re coming two and three a day, each one worst than the last. It’s […]
Let’s be blunt. Ripping babies out of their mothers’ arms — even while they’re nursing — and putting toddlers in cages is certainly not the way to make America great again. In fact, it’s a vile criminal act a hundred times worse than merely entering a country illegally. That practice “amounts to arbitrary and unlawful […]
Ask reporters of a certain age –– mostly those now close to retirement age –– why they went into journalism and chances are, the majority will tell you how Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein inspired them with their relentless investigative reporting for The Washington Post on the 1972 burglary of Democratic headquarters in The Watergate […]
When listening to people (sentient adults who actually voted) talk about the evil clown who somehow wormed his way into the Oval Office, I hear them say they’re angry about the way he’s rolled back critical regulations protecting our waterways and our bank accounts. I hear them say they’re disgusted with his Cabinet choices. And […]
Are we living, daily, in the vestibule of Dante’s Inferno, where all hope must be abandoned? Is there no light at the end of this dark, twisting Trumpian tunnel? Is there ever going to come a day with really good news? Cheer up, my friends, for today I bring you more of the usual bad […]
Just like a stack of nesting Matryoshka dolls, the alleged bromance between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin is a complex, multi-layered, often sordid tale. Peel away the outer shell of one breaking news story about the Trump administration’s connection to Russia and you find another. And another. And another. We can’t […]
THE SHINBONE STAR 