Joseph Sabino Mistick Columns category, Page 13
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Shades of 1948 in Joe Biden’s comeback
Last Tuesday night, as many of us watched the Democratic Party primary election returns, we got a taste of how our parents must have felt in November 1948. They remembered President Harry S. Truman, grinning broadly, while holding aloft a copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune with the erroneous headline...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Facts are stubborn things
Americans have become far too familiar with the big lie. It is usually used to cover up a devastating truth or to sell us some public policy that was dreamed up by ideologues or business tycoons. By the time the last Americans were airlifted out of Vietnam in 1975, nearly...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Democrats’ ugly debate forgot about party
No one seems happy with half a loaf anymore. And that was the big takeaway from the Democratic Party’s presidential debate in Nevada last week. Half a loaf for Democrats would be defeating Donald Trump, even if it means that some Democratic candidates have to put their personal glory on...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: A history lesson from Kirk Douglas & ‘Spartacus’
Any time a movie star dies, we tend to remember them for the fictional roles they played, with little time spent on their real lives. When Kirk Douglas died last week at 103, it was easy enough to think of him as he was in the movies. But Douglas did...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Michael Bloomberg could have Trump on the ropes
“Hit him in the labonza!” As we gathered around the tiny black-and-white television for the “Friday Night Fights” in the 1950s, Pap and the uncles shouted at the smaller boxers to go inside and work the bellies of their much bigger opponents. Body punches — focused, repeated, unrelenting — take...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Joltin’ Bolton’s gift to Democrats
If you’re a Democrat, it’s getting hard to figure out who you’re supposed to be rooting for these days. And it’s a safe bet that you never thought you would hear some of your own people chanting, “Go, John Bolton, go!” But that is what’s happening. The New York Times...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Alexander Hamilton’s thoughts on impeachment
If you are one of those people who believes that everything happens for a reason, the popular resurgence of Alexander Hamilton over the past two decades must make perfect sense these days. “Alexander Hamilton,” Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography of one of our nation’s founders and the first secretary of the...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Pittsburgh’s pollution-industry balance
When Dennis Towne, a Google engineer from Pittsburgh’s East End, publicly proclaimed this month that he was leaving Pittsburgh because the air sometimes smelled bad in his neighborhood, he quickly caught the attention of politicians, bureaucrats and average Pittsburghers. A Pittsburgh resident since 2017, Towne acknowledged that Pittsburgh “has made...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Is this the right time for war?
When Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary in Sarajevo in 1914, the Serbian nationalist had no idea that his singular act would eventually consume the world. But sometimes assassinations do not end with the end of one life. If Princip thought that the archduke’s death would simply rid...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Supreme Court justices follow law, not politics
When Christianity Today recently published an editorial calling for the removal of Donald Trump from office either “by the Senate or by popular vote next election,” it showed a first public crack in Trump’s evangelical Christian support. Trump’s detractors have always been astonished that evangelical Christians have embraced and defended...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Political endings & beginnings in 2020
Every now and then a new year seems sure to mark significant change. And 2020 is one of those years — a presidential election year — and it is not without some meaningless controversy straight out of the gate. Astronomer Joe Rao writes in the Farmers’ Almanac that we should...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Don’t mess with the Strip District
It is another wonderful Christmas in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, as thousands of daily shoppers pour into the mecca for ethnic food and sidewalk bargains. Whole families arrive together, as part of their holiday tradition. It should be a time of celebration for the merchants, too, but instead they have been...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Constitution is not a buffet
Sometimes it would be nice to treat the United States Constitution like a buffet. Imagine if you could take the parts you want and leave the rest behind. But that’s just not the nature of our Constitution. Donald Trump always gets cheers at his rallies when he promises to protect...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: George Washington’s warning
There have been some great speeches made by presidents of the United States, and Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is at the top of most lists. On his train ride to the bloodied Civil War battlefield in central Pennsylvania, Lincoln wrote 272 words that continue to inspire and serve us. Franklin...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Thankful for both entrepreneurs & laborers
During a 2012 campaign stop in Virginia, President Barack Obama caused a stir when he told business owners that they owed much of their success to other hardworking Americans who did all the other things necessary for businesses to thrive. “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: The American treasure of impeachment
The impeachment of a president of the United States is serious business, but the fact that it is even an option should make every American proud. It can be gut wrenching, but this ability to call our most powerful leader to task is proof of the even more powerful role...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Remembering the two Kennys of Westinghouse Memorial
It was only natural for me to think about our two Kennys last week. Kenny Rubbo and Kenny Kline were part of the “Class of 1967” of Westinghouse Memorial High School in Wilmerding. Within months of graduation, some of my classmates headed to the factories and mills and some to...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Politicians should listen to what the people want
There have been times when politicians from both parties have listened more than they have talked. Lately it has been the other way around. You know what they sound like. They claim to have all the answers, and they assure you that only they know the way out of whatever...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: The courage of patriot Alexander Vindman
With all the talk out there about making America great again, here’s a happy story that shows that America has never lost its greatness, in spite of what the naysayers and crackpots want us to believe. It comes along just when we all could use a little boost. Identical twin...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Mulvaney, Taylor, Trump & the truth
In the old “cops and robbers” movies of the film noir era, they would usually have to sweat a guy or beat him with a rubber hose to get him to confess the way Mick Mulvaney willingly confessed at a recent White House press briefing. For weeks, Donald Trump had...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Nobody’s fooled by Trump’s ‘hero’ moves
Not unlike the strange phenomenon of a volunteer firefighter who starts fires so he can rush to the scene to put them out — and be seen as a hero — Donald Trump has caused the crisis in Syria, and he is now hoping somehow to show that he saved...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Real value of loyalty lost on Trump
I am not an expert in foreign relations or diplomacy. But I do understand the nature and importance of loyalty. President Trump’s unilateral decision to abandon the Kurdish fighters in Syria is an invitation to Turkey to cross the border and annihilate the Kurds. This seems clueless. The Kurdish fighters...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Not even Trump is above the law
When Donald Trump learned that he was headed for possible impeachment, he launched one of his trademark Twitter storms, filled with misdirection, accusations and threats. He even claimed that if he was impeached, we would face “Civil War,” capitalizing the words, making no mistake what war he had in mind....
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Trump wields power to get his way
Traditionally, there is a fine art to going after political opponents, but Donald Trump is not that kind of an artist. Last June, when Trump was asked if he would accept political dirt about his opponents from a foreign government, he said, “I think you might want to listen, there...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Judge candidates by what’s in their hearts
When Ronald Reagan was nearing the end of his second term in the White House, he wandered into the medical office one day, approached his physician and said, ”I have three things that I want to tell you today. The first is that I seem to be having a little...
