by G. Murphy Donovan A candid book about small wars, for the most part Muslim conflicts, is a rare volume these days. Government sponsored and/or commercial authors are loath to touch anything Islamic, especially fascist religious states like ISIS, in any context tactical, operational, or strategic. Writers ...Read More...

by G. Murphy Donovan “Sin by silence makes cowards of men.” - Lincoln Good people across America are wringing their hands over the 2020 presidential election results. Seventy million voters are a lot of political angst. Worse still, many serious observers are challenging the legitimacy ...Read More...

by G. Murphy Donovan “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought.” - George Orwell (What follows here is the text of a letter sent to the C-Span Politburo in the wake of the Steve Scully affair. Scully, is a Biden foot soldier and erstwhile network moderator ...Read More...

by G. Murphy Donovan I believe that Trump won the other night at the first presidential debate of 2020, an amazing feat as Trump had to take on Biden and a partisan moderator in the same fight.   Albeit, you might not know that Trump won if you didn’t watch and believed the post-fight media ...Read More...

by G. Murphy Donovan Donald Trump might be the most controversial president since Abraham Lincoln. The other day Trump compared himself to Lincoln in a civil rights context and ignited another media tantrum. Surely, Trump is no match for Lincoln’s lawyerly reticence or rhetorical eloquence. ...Read More...

Cooking the Books on Your Dime by G. Murphy Donovan “All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.” - Orwell I am an equal opportunity political observer.  I watched or listened to both the Democrat and Republican national ...Read More...

No Noose Is Good News?               by G. Murphy Donovan Most media outlets attribute civic upheaval in 2020 to historical social injustice or Donald Trump, or maybe both. Before the history of 2020 gets written in stone, let’s suggest an alternative explanation; the self-inflicted, state ...Read More...

by G. Murphy Donovan I have always been more than a little ambiguous about about taking a knee. For me, genuflection or submission is something you do to express humility before an idea or tradition greater than yourself. Kneeling in church captures the idea. You might also hit you knees ...Read More...

by G. Murphy Donovan A quintet of unmasked white tweens, oblivious to Covid social distancing, has been plastering our neighborhood with flyers. One reads “You are contributing to killing black people…do something you racist fucks.” Another reads “A man was lynched by police. What are you doing ...Read More...

by G. Murphy Donovan Donald Trump provoked a controversy mid-way through the 2020 Covid-19 crisis by asserting that he, the president, set national pandemic policy. If the truth be told, he stepped onto a political minefield, the predictable push/pull of state versus national control on any matter. ...Read More...

by G. Murphy Donovan “Most Americans say they do not trust the media.” -  Columbia Journalism Review. Murray Kempton once said that “a critic is someone who enters the battlefield after the war is over and shoots the wounded.” Kempton, earned his spurs at Hopkins and then at the Baltimore ...Read More...

by G. Murphy Donovan “There is no greater misfortune than dying alone.” – Marquez The Corona pandemic has precipitated a behavioral sea change across the land. We all now do things that might have seemed ludicrous just a few short months ago; no handshakes, no hugs, no kisses, and no large ...Read More...

by G. Murphy Donovan “The duty of a true patriot is to protect his country from its government.”-- Thomas Paine A tired American political axiom claims that “money talks and bull s--t walks.” Clichés are, unfortunately, often the most pernicious varieties of bravo sierra. Presidential primary ...Read More...

by G. Murphy Donovan “Believe nothing until it has been officially denied.” - Claude Cockburn Not many things get better with age. Clint Eastwood might be the exception. At age 89, Eastwood still manages to redeem a film industry that usually panders to liberal tropes or adolescent morons. ...Read More...

by G. Murphy Donovan We like to think of military officers as political eunuchs, but that fairy tale, like free lunch, is a smug myth. No American government institutions, including the military services, thrive or survive in Washington without vigorous internal and external political engagement.  Outspoken ...Read More...