Numbers are how one keeps score. Those who engage in any competitive endeavor — business, sports, even weight loss — seek numbers to tell them how well they’re doing and how much better than how many other people. Tracking numbers also keeps us occupied and distracts us from the most concerning number of all, the […]

Bernie Sanders is almost certainly not going to be the Democratic nominee. Though he retains a devoted following, the crowds, the attention and the money are no longer what they were — death for a campaign built on momentum. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, holds a virtually insurmountable lead in both delegates and votes. Passion is a […]

The TV ads flash the noble faces of American retirees and urge Washington to help protect their savings. The back story is kept rather vague. It’s that many older people invested in Puerto Rican bonds. The U.S. territory’s economy is in deep crisis, and it has begun defaulting on this debt. The question here: What […]

A few days before Bernie Sanders lost badly in the New York primary, 27,000 souls filled Washington Square Park, many wildly cheering him on. The political media consensus interpreted the scene as evidence of surging support for the senator from Vermont. It did not occur to them that: • The crowd almost certainly included many […]

There’s been much talk on the campaign trail about helping students pay for college and not enough about exactly what they’re buying. It is ludicrous that student debt has passed $1 trillion and that nearly 20 percent of the undergraduates who borrowed for college are in default on their student loans. Where is the money […]

If the polls hold, scoring tickets to “Hamilton” will be as good as it’s going to get for Bernie Sanders in New York. But let us first linger in Wisconsin, where Democrats and independents gave Sanders what looked like a decisive win. It seems that 15 percent of Sanders’ Wisconsin supporters voted only for Bernie, […]

If you’ve been following Hulk Hogan’s successful suit against Gawker or Donald Trump’s rumble with a gossip writer, you may have come across some missing people. Both stories lean on “love” triangles in which one of the sides, the woman, is of so little consequence she’s rarely even named. The men may act with warped […]

It seems strange that so few of my fellow TV binge-watchers have submitted to the fascinating Norwegian political thriller, “Occupied.” Friends, this is eight hours of your life you won’t mind not getting back. In the story, an idealistic Norwegian prime minister stops his country’s huge oil production in the name of confronting climate change. […]