John T. Reed’s news blog

I finished Thomas Sowell’s book Discrimination and Disparities. His basic point is that the notion that all differences between black and white in incarceration rates, incomes, net worths, education are caused by white racism against blacks is bull. . One of his main pieces of evidence is all the differences between just blacks in those categories; and between just whites. Those disparities obviously are NOT caused by racism. . One variable that does correlate with disparate results is the number of parents in the home raising children. It ranges from 0 to 1 to 2. Blacks have a higher rate...

Happy New Year. We have now moved closer to the U.S. government being crushed by runaway entitlement promises. Trump just added $1T of debt, a record previously held by Obama. The Dems are almost all pushing the biggest entitlements of all time like Medicare for all, free college for all. The U.S. government is doomed fiscally. . When they can no longer borrow from real people who can buy US bonds with real money, they will “borrow” from the Federal Reserve as they did during Quantitative Easing I, II , and III from 2009 until 2014. The Federal Reserve has...

General Jack Keane and others say leaving Syria is a disaster, vacuum, Russians, Iranians, and Chinese jubilant, American leadership, IS reconstituting, yadda yadda..I see no net gain for America from our involvement in the Middle East which began when the Americans went to the shores of Tripoli in 1801..IS never hurt America. They just did ugly publicity stunts in the Middle East. The nations in that region can take care of the old IS or the new one, and if they can’t, they deserve living with IS. IS was never a threat to us. Neither was Saddam Hussein. He needed...

I recommend reviewing the year just past and the year ahead between Christmas and New Years Day. I used to set goals for the upcoming year. That is a young person’s activity. Young people who just read that are thinking “No, I want to keep striving my whole life.”Take a moment to ponder the question of why. Things to prove Young people have a lot to prove to themselves, to relatives and friends, and enemies. Can I get and keep a good spouse? Be a good parent? Can I earn a living and become economically independent from my parents? Can I...

How do I, as a Vietnam vet, feel about Trump visiting the troops in the war zone? LBJ at Fort Campbell I shrug. When I did a 30-day internship with the 101st Airborne Division in July 1966, President Johnson visited us. We had to go line up on the tarmac at the Fort Campbell, KY Air Force Base—hours early. It rained on us. We just stood there in formation way early and waited. When he arrived on Air Force One, he got out and rode past each of our battalions in a jeep. He wore a transparent raincoat over a...