“Reading a Book is Like Life: You Live it One
Page at a Time.” (Ron Yates)
About Ronald E. Yates
Author, former foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, and Dean & Professor Emeritus of the College of Media at the University of Illinois, his acclaimed works are now available through this site.
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Latest Books
- The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles
- Finding Billy Battles
- The Kikkoman Chronicles
- The Reporter’s Handbook
- More Books . . .
The Latest From My Blog
Herding Haitians. Lies and More Lies about Our Mounted Border Patrol
Last week border patrol agents on horseback near Del Rio, Texas were seen using their long reins to control their horses as they drove migrants attempting to illegally cross the border back into the Rio Grande River. What we saw WAS NOT a return to slavery, as fatuous California congresswoman … Read more…
YIKES! My Mayor is getting the Hell out of California
I live in a place called Murrieta. It’s a city of about 100,000 in Southern California’s wine country, just about 50 miles north of San Diego. Murrieta is a nice mid-sized town situated in rolling hills about 20 miles from the Pacific Ocean and maybe 30 miles from a couple … Read more…
Washington’s Useful Idiots & the Obliteration of America’s Wealth
I recently received a few emails that dealt with America’s mounting debt crisis and other economic issues. I took a few of those emails and restructured and rewrote them a bit into the following post. It attempts to explain the financial mess our country is in and how it got … Read more…
“The Chair” is a Microcosm of America’s Woke Universities
I just binge-watched Netflix’s six-part mini-series entitled “The Chair,” and brother did it bring back memories of when I was a University of Illinois department head and later, the dean of a college. Unlike my 13-years in academia, The Chair takes place at fictional ultra-liberal Pembroke University, which one faculty … Read more…
All Authors Should be Appalled by This!
I posted this commentary a couple of years ago. Since then, nothing has changed. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books are still banned in many schools today and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name is still excised from the award once named in her honor. This is censorship in … Read more…
Is the American Empire Collapsing? (Part 2)
Here is Part 2 of my original post on the collapse of the American Empire. When former President Obama scrapped the U.S. Manned Space program via Presidential fiat back in 2011, he signaled to the world that the U.S. was ceding its leadership and expertise in space exploration to nations … Read more…
Is the American Empire Collapsing? (Part I)
Now that the United States has slinked out of Afghanistan following yet another ignominious defeat reminiscent of its “lost crusade” in Vietnam, people are asking the question: Is this the end of the American Empire? Is the United States done for? Did we meet our match in the fundamentalist Muslim … Read more…
Author C. S. Lewis Provides Sage Advice From the Past
C.S. Lewis, author of The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, had some sage advice in 1948 as the world was entering the atomic age. Atom bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki three years before and as a result, World War II came to an … Read more…
Lou Grant aka Ed Asner is Gone. RIP
When I learned that actor Ed Asner had passed away at the age of 91 the other day, I couldn’t help thinking about the old “Lou Grant” television series in which Asner played the gruff and curmudgeonly city editor of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune. By the way, in case … Read more…
Respect for the Aged Day: Japan’s Unique National Holiday Honors its Elderly
Today, I am stepping away from the FUBAR disaster that has occurred during the past several weeks in Afghanistan, to something “completely different,” as they used to say on the old Monty Python TV show. Instead of Afghanistan, I am taking you to Japan, where there is a national holiday … Read more…
What We Left Behind in Afghanistan: Billions in U.S. Military Weapons & Material
By now you have heard about the military weapons, vehicles, aircraft, drones, classified technology, and encrypted communications equipment the feckless and incompetent Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff left behind for our new friends the Taliban in Afghanistan. Clearly, the deaths of 12 U.S. … Read more…
Say it Ain’t so, Joe! America’s Liar-in-Chief Paints a Detached Assessment of the Kabul Disaster
Joe Biden is a disgrace. He is feckless. He is a coward. He is a liar. Yesterday, he went on television to talk about the disaster unfolding in Afghanistan. But how did he begin? He started by talking about the Democrat’s Build Back Better plan and all the “free stuff” … Read more…
