The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
Gonzalo Lira was an American citizen and journalist who died last week in Ukraine’s gulag because the Zelensky regime didn’t treat his pneumonia. It also had tortured him. The Biden State Department knew about this. I saw at least one of its press conferences where Lira’s plight was brought up. Lira’s only “crime” was reporting on the criminal Zelensky dictatorship and the horrors of a war than never should have happened.
Dr. Fleming comments on the (thankfully) only Tom Cruise film in our series, though his thoughts on it as a whole may surprise you. Homework for the next episode in the series is Sicario.
Too busy to find out what’s in the news. Find out everything you need to know in this five minute podcast.
A frothy brouhaha is brewing in Georgia, a political and religious scandal worth following. An Orthodox icon has been uncovered in Tbilisi’s Holy Trinity Cathedral which shows a twentieth-century Saint, St. Matrona of Moscow, in the company of no less unsavory a personage than Joseph Stalin.
have been traveling and taking small groups to Europe for 25 years, and, mistake by painful mistake, I have learned a few practical lessons on how and what to pack, how to plan itineraries and pick hotels, how to choose restaurants and have an enjoyable experience, how to allocate your time.
Ken Rosenburger has sent me the unhappy news that Fred Chappell has died at the age of 87.
The dishonesty of journalists is not only a modern, much less postmodern phenomenon. From the days of Daniel Defoe, spy, propagandist, journalist, British (and later American) journalists have been a breed distinguished by their low character and inveterate dishonesty.
My friend Jeremy Chiaroscuro, political consultant, has changed his mind. He has been saying that nothing could keep him from voting for any Republican presidential candidate against Biden or Harris…..
2024 is looking to be a presidential race dominated by foreign policy. Usually domestic policy trumps foreign. Exceptions were 1980, when the Soviets were on the march, Carter couldn’t get the hostages out of Tehran and Reagan presented a stronger posture to voters. And 2004, when in the wake of 9/11, Bush’s Iraq and Afghanistan wars were seeming to succeed just before they went bad.
New Year’s Eve is always a conundrum wrapped in tinsel dilemmas, still more so for a habitual inebriate prone to superstition. But even when sober, my compatriots believe that “as you meet it, so you’ll spend it,” meaning that the last day in December represents the coming year in miniature, something like one of those presepio Biblical scenes, complete with microscopic sheep and papier-mâché Magi.