When director and writer Alfred Hitchcock advised other filmmakers with his filmmaking philosophy of back at the ranch, he envisioned two parallel tracks. We have been forced into watching the repeated defeats of California representative Kevin McCarthy for most of the week in his bid to become the Speaker of...
Border
There is an old saw that goes; there is your side, my side, and the truth is in the middle. The liberal perspective advocates a humanitarian view, finding a way to feed, house, and clothe people fleeing inevitable death by gang violence, drought, and starvation. The more conservative view is...
I am a black man living in an urban city. Being in this skin, one must think about chance encounters with police going horribly wrong and street crime. To my chagrin, it is not unusual to hear gunshots at least once a month, but things are getting better. Homicides are...
What? Forty thousand Brazilian fashionistas are keen to move to Connecticut, and Republicans want to stop them? Why? That’s the best news I’ve heard in months! Where, exactly, are they crossing? I’d like to meet them. Maybe they can help me get into some of the A-list clubs I’d normally have no chance of...
Senator Lindsey Graham once again exposed Republicans as heartless, racist, xenophobes, bent on winning at all costs. He tried injecting heroism into the actions of border patrol agents who, literally, rode herd on desperate Haitian refugees. Despite the scenes of crying, terrified children grasping for the comfort of their mother’s...
When I was a boy and strayed way, way past the rules of behavior set by my great-grandmother, she would say, “ enough is enough, and too much (sic) stinks.” Well, we reached that point in Afghanistan on Sunday. From the time then-National Security Director Zbigniew Brzezinski convinced then-President Carter,...
Most of us saw or heard the campaign ads for the gubernatorial race for Florida. Ron DeSantis, dressing his infant daughter in MAGA motif pajamas, helping her with border wall building blocks, and reading her a faux bedtime story about the fanciful mind of Donald Trump. Unfortunately, the internal xenophobic...
This is not a joke. This is what Texans must live through. A governor and his party that has Texas in a state of disarray. Texas Governor needs electricity, not a wall See full episodes here. It was just a few months ago when Texas suffered one of its worst...
The Republican Party is outraged, outraged—I say—that Rep. Ilhan Omar issued a thoughtful albeit controversial statement. “We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban,” said Omar, “We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity”...
It depresses me to acknowledge this, but the Republicans’ commitment to blatant and serial lying, and Orwellian “make believe” governing, pose a real threat by overwhelming the public debate and individual’s efforts to stay grounded. While a bit well-worn (and of uncertain provenance), this quote is fundamentally true: “A lie can travel halfway around...
Fear of a Red Hat: as much as Liz Cheney is toast, more troubling is Elise Stefanik’s Führereid, because Trump is too stupid to see that he’s blazing an even tighter path to obscurity. As Greg Sargent observes, there is an increased likelihood of another attempt at stealing an election, further...
Trump's DOJ secretly obtained Washington Post reporters’ phone records “The Trump Justice Department secretly obtained Washington Post journalists' phone records and tried to obtain their email records over reporting they did in the early months of the Trump administration on Russia's role in the 2016 election, according to government letters...
Armed with a civil war sword, Bruce Westerman (R-AR) crouched on a commode, ready for a last stand because the lost cause insurrectionists were crashing and trashing Capitol offices. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy abandoned Westerman to an uncertain fate, because McCarthy’s security deemed him not important enough to save. ““Westerman, the only...
Francisco Franco is still in Madrid waiting for his COVID shot, but previous guy seems full of the usual disinformation. He’s drawing attention away from his failure in Georgia and trying the same scam in Arizona, only this time, it’s “a group of conspiracy theorists running a sham audit.” Apparently election audits can be...
Anand Giridharadas wrote a piece for The Atlantic asserting that Biden has been moving leftward. This may only be a short term impression only because the GOP is trying to find its way after the previous guy is gone and before he may be indicted. The real problem lies with...
Received this e-mail yesterday from former Presidential candidate, Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D. TX), on behalf of his organization, Powered by People: Having these conversations now (and not in the weeks just before an election) shows our commitment to work with each other even when there’s not an election on the...
Many times during his reign, Trump could have saved his presidency by taking moderate positions and co-opting the Democrats. He felt, however that he should obey his benefactors like a beta, whether it was the evangelicals and Russia, or Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, and Mike Flynn. Even in the pandemic,...
Caravan with a drum solo, perhaps Trump will go to the border to help frame what is appearing to be deliberate GOP orchestration of migrant issues at the southern border. As if the Trumpian chaos never existed for four years, with declared emergencies, veiled threats of terrorists, and then that...
He’s now posing as his own Walmart greeter. Trump regularly crashed random wedding receptions at his Bedminster NJ golf club, because he simply likes that opening-the-car-dealership shtick, and copping a feel from the bride seems more acceptable as perv-adjacent. Try the attention-seeking veal, and tip your cow. Unfortunately Facebook may allow him back by next...
Remember that the Trump pardon will not protect Steve Bannon from NY prosecution on his multimillion-dollar border wall grift. Investigators employed by the state attorney general were deputized to work as prosecutors with the team led by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (D), whose investigation of Bannon began shortly after...
Ted Cruz continued his “Hey, look! I’m not in Cancun!” tour yesterday, traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border in search of a thatch of reeds that in no way made him look like a serial killer floating freshly harvested bodies down the river on jerry-rigged rafts comprised of peat bog residue and...
Received this e-mail from former presidential candidate, Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s (D. TX) organization, Powered By People: Just this week, our team found out that there were two voter suppression bills — HB6 in the Texas State House, SB7 in the Texas State Senate — that were going to be introduced....
An analysis of what’s been happening at the southern border shows that the current immigrant “surge” is actually just the result of seasonal shifts and the past year’s pandemic—not anything Joe Biden has done or failed to do. When I tuned in to ABC’s This Week on Sunday and saw that...
I’m not in a jovial mood today. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed … because my bed is still in America. If it straddled the U.S.-Canada border, I might have had a puncher’s chance—but no. I had to wake up here—in the land of the mask-free, gun-obsessed asshole....
I could spend a lot of time making statistical comparisons about the influx of immigrants at the border starting with the George W. Bush administration through the Trump administration. If that were the real issue, Joe Biden’s current border dilemma numbers would compare favorably. Now that human decency has become solely...
http://www.wsj.com/… Republican Congressman Tom Reed who represents NY CD-23, the southern tier of counties in upstate New York, has just announced he will not seek re-election nor run for New York State governor. This comes after allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct, according to the Wall Street Journal. The district, which...
The measure passed by 398 to 14, with one voting “present.” All of the “no” and “present” votes came from Republicans. 14 House Republicans voted against a resolution condemning the military coup in Myanmar, per @kristin__wilson:Lauren BoebertAndy BiggsMatt GaetzTom MassieKen BuckMary MillerChip RoyJodey HiceAlex MooneyScott PerryAndy HarrisTed BuddBarry MooreMarjorie Taylor...
The Atlanta spree killings are unfortunately a story with structural similarity to events elsewhere. How do we know that Robert Long wasn’t on his way to Mar-a-Lago when the cops performed a PIT maneuver on him after he killed eight people. Darn hypotheticals of the culture wars. Mar-a-Lago as spa resort...
The GOP hunt for unicorns continues as only the southern border seems to leak Middle Eastern terrorists (not). This fiction was floated during the “caravan” scare pimped during the midterm election and is a continuation of the “Muslim Ban” from the first month of the Trump regime. “Sir Lanka” (whoever...
The sparse number of actual carbon capture and sequestration projects plus weak carbon markets amplify the problems of the climate crisis yet to be revisited, post-Trump. Two heartland examples in North Dakota and Texas show how there are several interlocking problems addressing the climate crisis that must be included in future environmental policy. More specifically...
Likely there will be Daniel Dale or Aaron Rupar to tweet about the Trump blather. As for the insurrection, it was as if it had never happened. It will shock you how much the it never happened. Tom Cotton inveighed against anti-cop mobs—but only in the context of Portland and without seeming to...
Let’s hope he does another two-hour snore-fest speech. “Trump to speak at CPAC conference in Florida next week: he plans to directly attack President Biden’s new immigration plan and will talk about the future of the Republican Party, a source familiar with his speech said.” The usual lies and perhaps...
Apparently Lindsey Graham was none too concerned about the galaxy-sized gap in our nation’s credibility after he voted to acquit Donald John Trump—twice—of eminently impeachable offenses. Moreover, he’s not terribly concerned about gaps in health coverage, or in our previous pr*sident’s response to COVID-19. Though he does appear determined to...
My weary, rheumy eyes have seen a lot of heinous shit over the past five years. I’d like to donate my brain to science when the time comes, but I fear it’s too soiled now. The second they slice into it, ocher apparitions will start swirling around the room catcalling...
Rachel Campos-Duffy is a former reality star … and some other things. Her husband, Sean, is a former GOP congressman from Hayward, Wisconsin, which is way, way up north. I’ve been to northern Wisconsin. I know northern Wisconsin pretty well. And I can tell you with some confidence that most northern Wisconsin...
A glacial landslide scar, all that remained of a previous piece of ice that had collpased, is believed to have triggered a new landslide that slammed into and triggered part of Nanda Devi glacier to collapse. When the rocky debris slammed into the Himalayan glacier’s much larger remnant, it sent rock and ice down a valley...
Of all the depredations Donald Trump has exposed my tender, guileless soul to, making me feel warm fuzzies for a Cheney — however fleeting those feelings may have been — is perhaps the least forgivable. But hey, when the opposition party is overrun by rampaging orcs, I’ll take the steady, resolute...
Received this e-mail today from newly appointed U.S. Senator Alex Padilla’s (D. CA) re-election campaign: Immigration reform is urgent and a matter of life or death for people fleeing violence or persecution. Immigrants needlessly suffered under Donald Trump. It's time to right those wrongs. That's why I stand with President...