Posts by Alex Miller

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Boris Johnson, Britain’s New PM

At 12:05 PM BST on July 23rd, 2019, in London, England, it was announced that former UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had been elected Leader of the Conservative Party, currently in power in Britain. Although the formality of outgoing PM Theresa May’s resignation to the Queen, and Her Majesty’s formal invitation to Johnson to form a government, will not occur until the following day, the vote effectively makes Boris Johnson the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

 

A former journalist, Member of Parliament, Mayor of London and Foreign Secretary, the blonde, mop-headed Johnson has often been compared to Donald Trump, predominantly for their trademark bluster and the incendiary nature of their statements, as well as a similarly anti-immigrant, isolationist, transactional political opportunist bent. A leader in the pro-Brexit movement, Johnson has vowed to fully sever ties with the European Union by the current October 31st deadline, come what may.

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Summer of ’69, Part III: The Moon Landing

What may have been the most important moment in human history occurred 20 July 1969, when Man first set foot upon the moon. NASA’s Apollo space program, designed to accomplish this astounding feat of ingenuity, technology, mathematics and physics, was conceived during the Eisenhower administration, but not constituted until President John F. Kennedy’s stirring address to Congress in 1961, where he proposed a national goal, “before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

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Summer of ’69, Part II: Chappaquiddick

In mid-July of 1969, as all eyes were riveted skyward on the Apollo 11 mission to land a man on the moon, a rather more tawdry drama was playing out here on planet Earth. Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, brother of slain American president John F. Kennedy and slain presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, became embroiled in a personal tragedy that would ultimately set the seal on the demise of his family’s aspirations to become a political dynasty.

 

On the night of July 18-19, 1969, under circumstances still not fully understood to this day, Kennedy was involved in a fatal crash of his car off the Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in Martha’s Vineyard, which took the life of 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne.  

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Jeffrey Epstein’s Legal Deja Vu

On Saturday, July 6th, 2019, as he was returning from Europe, billionaire investor and repeat child molester Jeffrey Epstein was again arrested on charges of sex trafficking minors. Epstein’s prior arrest on similar charges in 2005 had led to a controversial non-prosecution agreement with federal attorneys in Florida, resulting in a light 13-month jail sentence, for which he received a twelve-hour work-release six days a week. After his arrest at Teterboro Airport investigators found a cache of thousands of photos of nude young girls on CDs in his home.

 

Epstein is accused of trafficking dozens, perhaps hundreds, of underage girls, some as young as 14, who were paid initially for massage, then sex acts, and used to recruit others. The alleged crimes were committed both at Epstein’s Pam Beach, Florida estate and his Manhattan home. In 2008 Epstein pled guilty to lesser state prostitution charges after secret meetings with then US Attorney Alexander Acosta, currently serving as Donald Trump’s Secretary of Labor.

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Mom, Revisited

Recently I’ve been diving deep on cleaning out my father’s house, which I inherited on his passing in April. I say “my father’s house”, though obviously it belonged to both my parents, because my mother passed nine years ago, and with his Capricorn fussiness and high sense of duty, dad did a remarkably good job of clearing out most of her effects, within months of her death. He left plenty of his own, but I am ceaselessly thankful for all the work he did then, or my task now would be that much greater.

 

Nevertheless, he did leave some of her personal items, and in going through the remaining contents of her bureau drawers, I came across a baby book for her, in my grandmother’s hand. Whenever I had asked my mother what time she was born, she never had an answer. After sixty years, all my grandmother could say was, “in the morning.” Frustrating comments for an astrologer whose mother was born at home, with no official record, but as I saw that thin pink book before me, I wondered if my question would finally be answered…

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Happy Trump of July!

Donald J. Trump’s hijacking of America’s birthday celebration on July 4th was quite a spectacle, if not the one he intended. Since the Bastille Day parade he was treated to by France’s President Macron two years ago, Trump has been aching to outdo his host in mock military maneuvers; thwarted in his desire last year for a Veterans Day Parade extravaganza, Trump belatedly settled for an Independence Day appearance on the National Mall, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, perhaps the president he least resembles.

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