IMPORTANT READS

ALT-RIGHT APPROPRIATION-Nazis love Taylor Swift. She is thin, blonde, pale, and rich. She doesn't talk politics much, which might be just a savvy marketing decision, but it also enables wild speculation about her views on Donald Trump, feminism, and whether black lives matter. 

SO, NOW WHAT’S ON THE TABLE?--Calls for restraint and diplomacy emerged on Sunday after North Korea claimed to have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb capable being placed on an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

LABOR WARS--Continuing his war on workers, President Donald Trump on Thursday announced he was slashing the scheduled pay raises for federal workers.

THE COHEN COLUMN--When Trump told America that his tax returns were perpetually under audit as an excuse not to let us see them, unlike every other modern presidential candidate, we easily presumed he was lying about that, just like he lies about everything else.

LIFE OBSERVED--The systematic dumbing down of American public education over the last 40 years – seen in places like the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and their non-functioning equivalents throughout LA County -- is having a profoundly negative effect on the ability of people to act intelligently and understand how to survive as we face an ever-increasing number of ecological disasters. Case in point, Hurricane Harvey. 

As Hurricane Harvey churned toward the Texas Gulf Coast last week, meteorologists, climate scientists and lay weather nerds on Twitter marveled at the crisp, detailed images of the storm sent to earth by a brand-new satellite. The nation’s first Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, (GOES-16), had been launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida 11 days after the November election, and has since transmitted high-resolution pictures of smoke from Canadian wildfires, of the August 21 North American eclipse and of a major fog event that spread out over the Midwest and Eastern U.S. 

LABOR DAY VISIONS--As we approach Labor Day, I'd like you to meet the Neurodiversity Workforce Brigade. The Brigade employs tens of thousands of adults with neurological conditions that often are impediments to mainstream employment, primarily autism, severe ADHD and other serious learning and mental health conditions.

PERSPECTIVE--Republicans: this guy is YOUR fault. You own him. I know, I know: fake news. Russia is fake news. Climate Change is fake news. Charlottesville is fake news… let’s face it: anything Republicans and Trump supporters don’t like is fake news. 

THE COHEN COLUMN--Trump's precipitous pardon of outlaw sheriff Joe Arpaio was such an outrageous blast that it pushed news of one of the biggest hurricanes this decade into a small corner of the cable TV screen.

GUEST WORDS--Editor’s note: A Berkeley, Calif., rally organized by a right-wing group turned violent Sunday after arrival of a group that carried an anarchist banner. 

THE AGE OF TRUMP--Ask not for whom the transgender bell tolls: it tolls for thee. A hideous evil has befallen America -- it is Nazism. A classic Nazi ploy is to take over a nation by singling out a group that is weak and has few, if any, defenders. In Trump’s America of 2017, that is transgender people. 

THE COHEN COLUMN--There is so much wrong with trump's big Afghanistan speech last week, where to begin?

THE MYTH OF SCARCITY-Looking at the most recent examples of our longstanding and endemic confrontations over race, ethnicity, and equal rights, we should examine the ancient and primitive roots of this continuing problem – one that causes the human species to continue underachieving its potential – yet remains intact and unaddressed. 

VOICE FROM THE CENTER--This is a somewhat extreme title. This is also an extreme situation. I've always been an advocate for liberal causes, but have pivoted as of last year. 

THE EPPERHART EXPRESS--The most famous Afghan war veteran is fictional. He is known worldwide through the stories of one of history’s best-selling authors. A former army doctor, John H. Watson was introduced to readers in A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle’s first work featuring detective Sherlock Holmes. 

LAYING ODDS-When I called my Vegas bookie, Vinny Baumstein, this morning to place a bet on whether Trump would finish his term, he laughingly replied, “No one is taking that debt.” The only bets are how he leaves and the date and time that Trump’s outta there. 

PERSPECTIVE--This past Tuesday, well over one hundred and fifty years since the end of the Civil War, a powerful, well-connected, well-to-do Southern white man, Missouri Governor Eric Greitens, exercised his law-given authority to stay the execution of Marcellus Williams (booking photo above), a poor black man. The reprieve was issued hours before the scheduled pumping of caustic chemicals by state officials into Williams’s body. 

OTHER WORDS-I hate to say this, but I’m starting to feel sorry for Donald Trump. He’s only been in office for half a year, and already he’s running out of Americans to attack. 

AT RANDOM-Who would have thought that a Civil War statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee would become the violent focus of hatred and the rallying point for white supremacists and neo-Nazis at this point in American history? Didn’t we bury the last of that conflict decades ago, along with the last living veteran of our bloodiest war? Not really. As William Faulkner wrote, “The past is not dead, it’s not even past.” 

RACISM REVEALED-Donald Trump is trying hard to put a pretty face on racism. But the racists, openly embracing the label, won’t let him. 

PERSPECTIVE--The American Civil War essentially ended with the retreat by General Lee’s Confederate forces from Richmond, Virginia on April 3, 1865.  Lee’s surrender at Appomattox came six days later.  The intervening week was characterized by a series of battles and skirmishes along the 90-mile route of retreat, but it was evident that effective resistance against Union forces would not be possible for much longer once the defenses of the capitol were abandoned.