For years, we have endured shooting after shooting in America. And Congress has done little to reform gun laws, caving to the National Rifle Association.
Today that indifference came full circle as an anti-Trump gunman opened fire on practice for a Congressional charity baseball game to be played tomorrow night, striking pro-gun Congressman Steve Scalise, the Majority Whip, and injuring three others as well. ...
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I’m no Karlie Kloss in the looks or modeling department, but such is my passion for writing and my books that I was willing to take to the runway – OK, the floor of the restaurant La Provence at Bloomingdale’s White Plains – to promote my work. And so I found myself turning and posing in two lovely outfits as part of Tricia Fraser Productions’ “Fashion Food Faire” at Bloomingdale’s White Plains Tuesday night.
It was all in a good cause, too, benefiting Gilda’s Club of Westchester, which provides free support to cancer patients. ...
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Years ago, I had a boss who called me into his office one afternoon to “pick my brain.” As the big bosses in the company rarely acknowledged us bottom feeders, I was surprised and flattered. I shouldn’t have been.
Turns out “picking my brain” meant two hours of haranguing me over an incident involving my colleagues and our immediate superior in the hopes that I would knuckle under and take management’s side – which I didn’t. But the boss putting the squeeze on me left me shaken to my core.
I couldn’t help but think of this as former FBI Director James Comey riveted the nation with his testimony on his relationship with President Donald J. Trump, which was by turns folksy, candid, gutsy, self-deprecating and dramatic. I recognized a fellow traveler, someone caught between doing his job and serving the boss who threatened that job. ...
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President Donald J. Trump seems hell-bent on alienating as many American allies as possible. His presidency was only hours old when he put Australia in his crosshairs. Now working his way through the alphabet, the president has tweeted proudly that he’s the reason many of the Middle East’s Arab countries are freezing out Qatar as a hotbed of terrorism.
Except that Qatar is the site of an American military base from which we launch our airborne stand against ISIS. Meanwhile, buddy-buddy Saudi Arabia is where most of the 9/11 terrorists came from. A complex situation, n’est pas? And complexity is not Trumpet’s strong suit. ...
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“These are the times that try men’s souls,” the great American patriot Thomas Paine wrote. We could use the strength of Paine and people like him at this moment.
Yesterday’s terrorist attack in London – which left seven dead and dozens wounded, including 21 critically – was not merely a momentary victory for the terrorists. It was a win for the strongmen of the world like President Donald J. Trump, whose response to them is more hatred and more irrational violence. Notice I wrote, “irrational violence.” ...
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“LOFT Pride 2017,” held at The LOFT Community Center in suburban New York June 3 to kick off Pride Month, was a thoroughly satisfying experience for me as an author of gay-themed novels and not just because I sold a lot of books and met interested book club leaders. Under breezy, sunny skies amid a rainbow of picnic umbrellas and tents, people of all shapes, sizes, colors and persuasions enjoyed food, shopping, a pet costume parade, a runway strut, performances by drag queen Sutton Lee Seymour, guitarist Ryan Cassata and others and just good old-fashioned conversation. That was the big takeaway for me. ...
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So President Donald J. Trump has pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord – a decision with fewer practical consequences than symbolic ones.
Practically, much if not most of the U.S. – states, cities, corporations, individuals – is committed to the accord. There’s nothing Trump can do about companies or people acting responsibly where the environment is concerned.
But the effect of the pullout is real in the sense that it absents the U.S. as an entity from the moral leadership it has exerted in the past. Into that vacuum sweeps China, Russia, you name it and the question becomes, Having relinquished our position as world leader, can we ever get it back? ...
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