Ezra's Essays

Category: Politics

  • FLAGS, FLAGS – EVERYWHERE FLAGS

    In November, 1945 Winter was making its frigid appearance felt in the Mississippi Valley in the general vicinity of St. Louis. Daytime temperatures had trouble in breaking the freezing point. Night time temperatures were somewhat colder. Cold in this region of the Mississippi Valley is made somewhat worse by the presence of high humidity. So…

  • OIL – FROM CRAWFORD, TEXAS AND BROOKLYN?

    Bush and Cheney loudly proclaim that they are oilmen. How could they in one week alienate the Arabs and Venezuela, our third largest supplier of oil? George W. Bush, The Israelis and the Venezuelans As I write this in mid-April, 2002, the crisis in the Mid-East has been going on for some time. Until April…

  • GET IT IN WRITING

    You may find it hard to believe, but late in 1977, a bill was being prepared to be offered to the Assembly of the New Jersey Legislature, that would require men dating women to declare their intentions, in writing, early on in the romantic process. So if a young man saw a nice looking young…

  • ASHCROFT ENDORSES CRISCO, LILLIE CARR AND JACOB’S LADDER

    No essay on Bush would be complete unless it included a thought or two about the Assemblies of God follower in Bush’s cabinet, John Ashcroft. He believes that God’s hand is on his shoulder in every move he makes. Ashcroft – The Ultimate Embarrassment John Ashcroft, Bush’s selection for the United States Attorney General, comes…

  • BUSH RENOUNCES TIME ZONES

    Memo from George W. Bush’s speech writers to viewers and to readers: Finally, we are free to give you the unvarnished George W. Bush, the first cowboy president of the United States. We have read that Mr. Bush was born in Connecticut and attended college at Yale and at Harvard. Mr. Bush has long since…

  • THE GLUMS

    Since September 11, which only happened last week, I have had a fairly bad case of the “glums.” This is a new noun. The dictionary shows glum as an adjective meaning broodingly morose, dreary and gloomy. So I have constructed a neologism, a new word, a noun, the glums, to mean in a funk and…

  • ON GOLF, CIVIL WAR, AND VIRGINS

    -Three Disparate Thoughts Growing up during the great American Depression, it was my view that golf was an elitist sport. There were a few driving ranges around, but public golf courses were few and far between. Jobs also were few and far between and money was a problem at every step of the way. Golf…

  • A NICKEL’S WORTH OF ADVICE FROM THE OLD GEEZER

    My search for a high-paying job with bonuses and stock options is not a magnificent success story. Last year, I thought I had the New York Mets’ manager’s job sewn up, but they gave it to Willie Randolph largely because he is younger and he is a Brooklyn native. When the New York Knickerbockers demoted…

  • NEVER SEND TO KNOW FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

    “NEVER SEND TO KNOW FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS; IT TOLLS FOR THEE” John Donne 1572 – 1631 These lines are being dictated on a gloomy Friday afternoon at the end of December, 2006. Ordinarily my outlook on life is less than exuberant during the period between Christmas and New Year’s. Today’s news has sent…

  • ON FEAR AND DUTY

    When it comes to fear, this might be the first essay you will ever read which does not make an allusion to Franklin Roosevelt’s thought that we have “nothing to fear but fear itself.” In this essay, I propose to comment on three kinds of fear that are prevalent today. Under ordinary circumstances, I avoid…