ArcaMax

This is becoming another summer that didn't quite happen. It follows the bum summer of 2020, which was canceled by COVID-19.

In the West this year, summer is literally going up in smoke. Wildfires from Southern California to Washington state are burning out of control and clouding skies as far away as New England. The West Coast is seeing ...Read more

In the summer, boys dress for the warm weather, but girls dress hardly at all. Most high school guys are in baggy shorts, while many of the girls are wearing shorts so short that parts of their rear end remain exposed. The "distressed" versions -- with rips and ragged hems -- are often called Daisy Dukes, after a sexy character who wore them in ...Read more

Many of us spent the pandemic months obsessing over how our mug looked on Zoom and other video-chatting services. Poor lighting was a torment, and the lack of sunshine and exercise produced what's been dubbed "lockdown face."

At in-person meetings, we see only the people we're talking to. Video calls -- be it via Zoom, Skype, Google Meet or ...Read more

Antisocial behavior has reached pandemic levels. Disruptive airline passengers are punching flight attendants. Thugs are attacking Asians, gays and other minority groups. Criminals have grown more brazen in bringing violence to the streets and into American politics as seen in the savage invasion of the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Mental illness clearly...Read more

The CEO of Morgan Stanley wants all the boys and girls back in the financial giant's Times Square office by Labor Day. "If you can go to a restaurant in New York City," James Gorman told them, "you can come into the office. And we want you in the office."

Gorman added: "If you want to get paid New York rates, you work in New York. None of this ...Read more

Saturday night in Branson, Missouri, and Manhattan, New York, was a time of summer celebration. People were jamming in restaurants and out to hear music with few wearing masks. Both places were in a partying mood to celebrate what appeared to be the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But there was a big difference: The virus scourge was winding ...Read more

Tennis superstar Naomi Osaka is the world's best-paid female athlete. She made an estimated $60 million last year. The 23-year-old is on top of the tennis world, but is her refusal to honor the rules set by that world justified?

Osaka recently declined to attend a post-game news conference as required by the French Open. She said it would be ...Read more

A funny thing happened on the way to California's collapse. It didn't happen.

We keep hearing that the Golden State is going down, down, down. Last year, it suffered the first drop in population since records have been kept. And there's that parade of natural plagues -- the droughts, catastrophic wildfires and infernal heat.

A largely hostile ...Read more

How often do African Americans have to save the Democratic Party from its left wing? With Black voters having just thrust a moderate ex-cop to the head of the pack in New York City's mayoral race, it's the second time in just over a year they've done it.

Making Brooklyn Borough President and former police captain Eric Adams the next mayor of ...Read more

Taxes are how we raise the money needed to run government. The rich have the wherewithal to bear most of those costs. These points are especially connected at a time when the rich have gotten so much richer and the government needs to do so much more.

But in making the case to raise taxes on the wealthy, it is counterproductive to portray such ...Read more

They tried. Oh, they tried. Republicans spent a decade bashing and voting to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. And what did they get for all their trouble? A 7-2 ruling by a conservative Supreme Court to uphold the health insurance program also known as "Obamacare."

For that, Republicans should thank their lucky stars. There would have been ...Read more

China is America's economic rival. The way capitalists deal with rivals is to compete. President Joe Biden vows to compete with this rival on the rival's terms. He calls it "extreme competition."

China has built a massive semiconductor industry with massive government spending. It is about to send another $200 billion to its semiconductor ...Read more

Donald Trump is no longer president. COVID-19 is no longer the threat it was. And Dr. Anthony Fauci, America's top infectious disease expert, is back to more routine briefings on vaccination rates and such. So why does Fauci remain so much in the news?

Because the Trump camp can't stop bashing him. And why is that? Why does the right continue ...Read more

As lockdowns sent city dwellers "fleeing" to the suburbs for more space, the prices of homes offering that space took off. To play in the bidding wars, homebuyers had to cough up big money and chain themselves to giant mortgages. This painful scenario led many to choose renting over buying, and that's not a bad thing.

Why can't the American ...Read more

I'm fully vaccinated, and so is just about everyone I know. We feel mostly protected against COVID-19. And so if others don't want to get the shot for political reasons or out of ignorance, must we care?

We read that many Republicans are refusing to get the coronavirus vaccine, while most Democrats are all in. The reasoning on the right seems ...Read more

Not that long ago, American shoppers cleaned store shelves of toilet paper. Pandemic panic had fueled the run on toilet paper, the point of it never clear.

The bicycle shortage, on the other hand, made some sense. With the lockdown forcing millions to stay at home, bikes offered exercise, safe outdoor activity. Many stores used to display every...Read more

Palm Springs, California, has a world-class art museum. And the museum building is itself a world-class example of midcentury modern architecture.

Thus, it was understandable that a group of Palm Springs residents would object to placing a kitschy 26-foot statue of Marilyn Monroe right in the museum sightlines. The "artwork" reproduces the ...Read more

It's been a given that Democrats would benefit from an official probe into the Jan. 6 rampage on the Capitol and Republicans would not. The thinking goes that Democrats would use a commission report to bash Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections. It would certainly detail how former President Donald Trump incited his supporters to commit the ...Read more

The conversation started on a long Uber ride. The driver, originally from Colombia, said he knows a lot of Colombians living in the U.S. "without papers." He argued that they are good people paying taxes and should be left alone. I responded that I believe they are good people paying taxes but our immigration laws should be respected.

He then ...Read more

Tradition tells us that, come the midterms, the president's party loses seats in the House. If this tradition holds in 2022, that could be bad news for Democrats, whose House majority now stands at only nine seats.

But history of late doesn't seem to be commandeering the driver's seat. Right after Joe Biden turned Georgia blue, Politico ...Read more