Harlan Ullman

That fetching song of yesterday, “Up, Up and Away in My Beautiful Balloon,” needs to be modified. Today it could be my not-so-beautiful balloons. With four balloons or objects taken down, the United States needs one more to become a national balloon ace, the first since World War I ace pilot and zeppelin killer Frank […]

The inexplicable murder of Tyre Nichols by five Memphis, Tennessee police officers brought home again the question of why instances of police brutality continue to occur in America. In April 2021, this column ran a piece titled Lessons for the Police from the Military: Focus on Training and Rules of Engagement. Despite all the pleas […]

Americans have much to worry about. The war in Ukraine could escalate. An Air Force general predicts China “will probably invade” Taiwan within two years. Covid could return. Debt is exploding. An economic “hard landing” looms. Environmental disasters occur every day. And the nation has not been as politically divided in decades and possibly since […]

Alliteration is ideal for literature. Is it instructive for politics? Lenin observed that there are contradictions comrade. Indeed! Today, crippling contradictions are joined by diabolical dilemmas and perilous paradoxes. In the US, a primary cause of this terrifying trio is the huge and seemingly irreversible divide between the two political parties making government increasingly ungovernable. […]

America is certainly an exceptional country. That was proven again last week. President Joe Biden, without authority or reason, mishandled classified documents. A small number, probably around twenty, had been found in his offices at the Penn-Biden Centers; in his Delaware home, and in his 1967 Corvette parked in a locked garage. How could or […]

With roughly fifty weeks left in 2023, what can Americans expect about how this year will unfold? To borrow from Dickens, will 2023 be the best or worst of times at home and abroad? Optimists will seize the opportunities that exist to make progress on both fronts no matter the highly divisive and divided character […]

No matter what each party promises, both political parties are desperate to find new ideas that will make a difference. With an even more divided and divisive 118th Congress and the 2024 elections looming, will any ideas matter regardless of worth? Or will even good ideas be politically dead on arrival given the intense polarization […]

Boxing Day, 2022 The final act of the 117th Read Nothing Congress was to provide the American public with a $1.7 trillion Omnibus Spending Bill. That bill was obscene, overstuffed and outrageous, reflecting many of the horrors that pass for governing these days. $858 billion went for defence on the quaint and long-outdated notion that […]

Is Ukraine Vladimir Putin’s Vietnam? Will Putin’s Special Military Operation become a quagmire that eviscerates Russia’s army and ultimately leads to its defeat? Or will Putin continue that war no matter the cost expecting that Russia’s advantages in size and mass will overcome Ukraine’s heroic resistance? Many Americans may be uncomfortable with comparing Putin with […]