Global

It’s the smallest thing in the world. Does the tennis ball land inside the line or outside? But somehow, as I watched this 60-second YouTube clip of an Australian tennis match last January, and heard an explosion of joyous approval surge from the crowd, I could feel the planet shift.

Or at least it seemed that way for an instant.

In the clip, a tennis player named Jack Sock tells his opponent, Lleyton Hewitt, whose serve has just been declared out, that he should challenge the call. A little humorous disbelief bounces around the court, but eventually Hewitt says, “Sure, I’ll challenge it.” A judge reviews the tape and declares that the serve was in . . . and the crowd lets loose an enormous cheer.

n May 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama released a summary letter of his general health signed by Dr. David Scheiner, who had been Obama’s primary care physician for 21 years. Providing limited detail, the doctor found Obama to be in “excellent health” and “in overall good physical and mental health needed to maintain the resiliency required in the Office of the President.” The Obama campaign indicated at the time that it was not planning to release any further medical records, and it didn’t.

Chicago is one of America’s greatest cities. Yet many of its residents live in terror in what is virtually a war zone. When a demented killer slayed 49 in a gun rampage in Orlando, Fla., there was national attention. Presidential candidates called for escalating the fight against the Islamic State in the Middle East, even though the killer seems to be a homegrown terrorist.

But in Chicago, 404 have died in gun violence this year. According to the Congressional Research Service, the murder rate averaged 16.0 per 100,000 a year from 2010-2014. That is nearly four times the national average of 4.6 per 100,000 and nearly three times the Illinois state average (5.8).

These killings are not randomly distributed. African Americans constitute about one-third of Chicago’s residents, but they account for 80 percent of its murder victims.

The killings are concentrated in endangered communities, communities burdened with abject poverty and deplorable conditions. Desperation and murder are segregated in Chicago.

In the same way that Bronx-born, Brooklyn-raised Woody Allen is the motion picture poet laureate of New York Jews, Mississippi-born playwright Tennessee Williams is the theatrical poet laureate of Southern white trash. The prolific two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for the plays A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof also wrote for the big screen, including the screenplay adaptations of many of his stage productions.

I invite everyone to read Larisa Alexandrovna Horton excellent write up on the 28 pages of the 9/11 report that were finally declassified last week. This ought to be required reading in America. It demonstrates that the Saudi's were very much involved in the plotting and execution of 9/11. Larisa writes in her conclusion “there is concrete proof of Saudi government funding to the handlers of 9/11 hijackers – handlers who also happen to be Saudi intelligence officers. “.

Donald Trump is a reckless fool. But the U.S. defense establishment is M.A.D.

And herein lies one of the darker problems with the Trump candidacy, and the reason why so many establishment conservatives are awkwardly distancing themselves from America’s leading narcissist — if not running screaming into the night in fear for their lives (and everyone else’s).

Trump as commander in chief? Trump with his finger on the button?

When the subject of nukes has come up in interviews, he has come across as creepily naïve. For instance, according to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, Trump allegedly hounded a foreign policy expert with the question: “If we have them, why can’t we use them?”

 Headline: Ukraine claims Russian invasion possible ‘at any minute’