Category Archives: Uncategorized

Press reports this morning indicate that Sen. Ron Johnson will announce his bid for a third term next week. This doesn’t surprise me… though if he had decided to hang it up, that wouldn’t have surprised me either. Truth is, I had no idea what the guy was going to do. Johnson is the oddestContinue reading “Beware Ron Johnson”

Aaron Rodgers will almost certainly win most valuable player honors in the NFL again this season. He will win, but should he? That question was raised by one the 50 sports writers who will vote on that decision at season’s end. Hub Arkush called Rodgers “the biggest jerk in the league” and vowed not toContinue reading “Should Rodgers Be MVP?”

It feels like we’re in the interim, a tense time when we’re waiting to see what happens next. January 6, 2021 was one of those days when people needed to stand up and be counted. It was like December 7, 1941. Leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor there was a robust isolationist movementContinue reading “1/6/21 – 11/5/24”

Well, so much for that. Despite our repeated urgings here at YSDA, few candidates have stepped up to run for Madison School Board. At yesterday’s filing deadline only four candidates had filed to run for three seats. That means two seats will go uncontested. Four other board seats are not up this year. Board PresidentContinue reading “Disappointing School Races”

Last week I listed my 10 favorite books of 2021, but I didn’t count local writers in that list. Over the course of the next month, I’ll look deeper at a handful of books by Wisconsin writers that I enjoyed last year. Let’s start today with Dead Lines by George Hesselberg. One advantage of havingContinue reading “Last Words”

Hey, Matt. Congratulations on securing the top seed in the playoffs, man! Just want you to know that I was confident all along. That stuff you may have seen on social media after that opening game bummer against the Saints? That was just me blowing off steam! Plus, I saw the team needed some motivation.Continue reading “An Open Email to Matt LaFleur”

We all know that mayors are where it’s at. Presidents and governors give speeches, senators hold hearings, Congressmen where nice buttons on their lapels. But mayors do stuff. Even the loftiest of politicians, once they become mayor, quickly transform into the purveyors of nuts and bolts. They might come into office talking about “new urbanism”Continue reading “Radical Practicality”

Last year we pumped out 262,750 words in 395 posts here at YSDA. That’s the equivalent of three or four average length books. Of course, it goes without saying that every one of those words was carefully chosen and absolutely correct. I know you agree. I thought today we’d revisit the most popular (or, atContinue reading “It’s Okay to Reject Critical Race Theory”

Here we are on New Year’s Eve. Or what you might think of as the Eve of Destruction. If you’re a Democrat, or just somebody who happens to like democracy, things are not looking so good. On the world stage the trend is sobering. China has snuffed out democracy and a free press in HongContinue reading “Naive Optimism for 2022”

Good news is rare, not because it doesn’t exist but because “news” is pretty much defined as negative. There are exceptions, of course, but when things go right that’s more or less expected, and when they go wrong that’s notable.  So, for example, when your city plows the streets beautifully after a blizzard, it doesn’tContinue reading “’21 Could Have Been Worse”