#384 – Dick Bernard: The Multiplier Effect
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Entries by dickbernard
#383 – Dick Bernard: The Quandary for Big (and Small) Business, and its impact on all of us.
This mornings New York Times (NYT) had an interesting article about a St. Paul area business man reluctant to hire workers. A couple of days earlier the Minneapolis Star Tribune had an equally interesting column by a long time very prominent business executive essentially rebutting the oft-repeated and false argument of conservatives that taxes will […]
#382 – Dick Bernard: Lying our way to mediocrity, and perhaps worse….
In two years and 381 blog posts, I can think of only one other posting in which I emphasized a single piece of writing I had seen elsewhere. Today is the second. I’d highly recommend a reading of this lengthy item, “The fascinating story of how shameless right-wing lies came to rule our politics” by […]
#381 – Dick Bernard: Detente, June 3, 1990: the Gorbachevs come to Minnesota for a visit
June 3, 1990, was a chilly, somewhat blustery and threatening rain day in Minnesota. It was also the day that USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, came to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul to visit. It was a ‘coup’ of sorts for we in the hinterlands of the U.S., as outlined in […]
#380 – Dick Bernard: As good as it gets.
This afternoon I happened across a marvelous video made by folks in Grand Rapids MI, supposedly one of the ten most dying cities in America. You can watch and read about it here. It is 10 minutes of sheer in-your-face optimism in the face of being ridiculed as a loser. We can all use a […]
#379 – Dick Bernard: Memorial Day 2011. Confusing Times
Today I will probably attend a Memorial Day observance sponsored by Veterans for Peace near the Minnesota State Capitol; I’ll wear the Buddy Poppy purchased at Hibbing from a VFW member on May 13, and a Forget-me-not purchased from a Disabled American Veteran here in Woodbury a couple of days ago. Yesterday I drove over […]
#378 – Dick Bernard: Words
This morning a friend of mine came in to the coffee shop about the time I was leaving, sat down at the table next to me and opened to the Opinion Page of the Wall Street Journal for May 28-29 weekend edition. The banner headline was “Word of the Decade” ‘Unsustainable’ “ by Peggy Noonan. […]
#377 – Dick Bernard: The Fargo Tornado of June 20, 1957
Two grandsons and I were enjoying a major league baseball game at Minnesota Twins Target Field on May 25. It was a perfect day for a ballgame at this new park, which is at the very edge of downtown Minneapolis. (click on photos to enlarge them) I couldn’t help but think that a few days […]
#376 – Dick Bernard: Listening to Jim Oberstar and Thinking About Our Collective Lack of Political "Wisdom": "shoot first, and ask questions later"?
Among the many magnificent gifts the U.S. Founding Fathers gave us when framing the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the United States ca 1787 was the right to select our representatives. To be sure, the framers initial draft was imperfect: only certain kinds of people could vote, then, and so on…but over time near […]
#375 – Dick Bernard: Dooms Day 2011: Remembering a trip to Israel, January, 1996
It is appropriate that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in the United States on the very day that Harold Camping has determined is Judgment Day: May 21, 2011, at 6 p.m. (As I write at 8 a.m. CDT, it is already 6 p.m. in Kabul, Afghanistan, and later still in Japan and Australia, and […]