I was surprised this weekend when I looked out my window and did not see masked marauders carrying clubs, knives, or guns. My neighbors were not cowering in fear, trying to reach their cars or go to the mailbox. Teens were not armed to the teeth, and adults were not...
A conservative justice on the Supreme Court asserted after the overturning of Roe v. Wade that other rights were safe, including LGBTQIA rights, birth control, and interracial marriage. Chief Justice John Roberts, who has long had a bee in his racial bonnet, started his quest in 2013 by eliminating section...
In less than thirty hours, we saw and heard decisions to fine broadcaster Alex Jones nearly 1 billion dollars in actual damages, with punitive damages to follow soon. A member of Congress (Marjorie Taylor Greene) defended his vile exploitation of the parents and spouses of murdered children and educators, asserting,...
Democrats court trouble when they use metaphors and comparative thinking. Remember when former President Barack Obama used an old idiom. “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” in a June 2008 fundraiser during his run for his first term as President. Republicans like his opponent John...
Saturday, October 8, 2022, not 1952, Alabama Senator and former football coach Tommy Tuberville tossed the hood of racism into the fray with cynical jabs at people he described with the pronoun “they.” According to Tuberville, “They are not soft on crime. They’re pro-crime. They want crime. They want crime...
As a practicing Democrat, I have endured the slings and arrows of the conservative-Christian community for years. I have heard that caring about the poor, taking the stewardship of the planet seriously, and leaving the decision to have a baby to God and the mother were spawns of the devil....
A day after the Queen of England died, the President of the United States traveled to Ohio. Joe Biden announced a manufacturing revitalization plan for the rustiest of the rust belt states. With the federal government’s help, the Intel corporation is building a 20-billion-dollar chip fabrication plant outside Columbus, Ohio....
The last time we buried a President was George Herbert Walker Bush in 2018. The five living Presidents—all—attended his funeral. At Mr. Bush’s funeral, all the pomp and circumstance had been afforded him as it had been for all former presidents, even Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace. As per...
In 2007 when former President Barack Obama announced for the presidency, Republicans immediately labeled him a celebrity candidate. Juxtaposed against shots of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears sauntering through crowds, a 2008 campaign ad for his opponent, John McCain, says of Barack Obama, “He’s the biggest celebrity in the world,”...
When the good ship Cheney sank into the Green River last night, and for a moment, I regretted someone of flexible integrity losing a primary, at the same time, I grinned broadly. Undeniably, history will call Rep. Elizabeth Cheney a patriot. I hope that history and Democrats also do not...
Democrats have wanted to invest in climate control for twenty years and, at the least, take the issue seriously. After weeks of turning their backs on soldiers exposed to human, chemical, and toxic waste from burn pits, GOP politicians finished their ruthlessness by voting, by a majority, to deny children,...
Arizona’s Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema vowed to constituents she would help to lower the cost of prescription drugs. “We need to make health care more affordable, lower prescription drug prices, and fix the problems in the system – not go back to letting insurance companies call all the shots,” she...
Being a black man, I have a perspective that I am sure will match the experience of other races. People of color in America spend a lot of time apologetic to racists. Massa, we sick. I am sure he did not mean it that way, he has never said anything...
If you’re wondering when the Republican Party first took a hard right turn onto Loopy Lane, you need look no further than 2008, when a desperate Sen. John McCain, trying to distance himself from the noxious mound of still-moldering viscera that was the Bush II administration, tapped Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in...
We haven’t yet reached that point where the losses to the Russians are sustainable. Replacements may be on their way to the front. They likely will not see the same troops who have until now resisted any new advances. There have been some Ukrainian counter-attacks. The Russians now settle for longer range...
The war continues with Russian troops hiding among hospital facilities in the south using staff as cover or shields. They exhibit slow progress toward Kiev even as talks continue and the PR offensive remains solid with Zelensky speaking to the Canadian Parliament and the Prime Ministers of Czechia, Poland, and Slovenia....
Bombardment continues with over 900 missiles launched against Ukraine and the notable media appearance was the on-air protest by an editor on Russian State TV. She was arrested and seems to be held incommunicado from her lawyers. “(T)oo many civilian targets have been hit by Russian bombs for them all...
Right-wing provocateur and author Ann Coulter, in 2017, told the world, “In 20 years, Russia will be the only country that is recognizably European.” Coulter was not trying to be vague or cute; she pointedly said that white culture, however you define it, is worth accepting authoritarianism, murder, and fascism,...
An “operative lull” seems now ready to end. Bombardment resumes and the messaging about “foreign fighters” increases with the slowing of the Russian advance to take major cities. Smaller cities that have been captured are being repressed by Russians and some proxies with brutal efficiency. The war continues to be...
This feels a little like defending an evil serial-killer clown from a raging, sulfurous hellmouth demon who tries to steal his balloons, but here goes: Sarah Palin didn’t deserve this. And Roger Ailes (may he wallow in peace) is still, with apologies to Arnold Ziffel, a gross pig. Ailes, who was...
There is a funny and oft-repeated line from the standup comedy act of Chris Rock— for some (expletive) they supposed to do! Rock’s punchline was a rebuff to one wanting congratulations for accomplishing their fundamental responsibility. Republican representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are surfing the liberal wave because they chose...
My ancestors—Hans Gruber, Wilhelm Belsnickel, John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, et al.—immigrated to the U.S. in the 1870s. They were part of a major wave of German immigrants who settled in Wisconsin and surrounding states, ensuring that my bloodstream would absorb more alcohol before my 40th birthday than the Milwaukee Summerfest grounds. It’s...
“Slammer Time” may be on the horizon. It won’t be about the DoJ looking backward or forward, but looking inward to do something historical to maintain democracy. Because a malign GOP is going to try it again. The blueprint was there for a while before it was committed to paper...
Here’s the latest news out of Pennsylvania: The TV ad is no-holds-barred. It bluntly attacks a decision of the Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania Supreme Court. And on Saturday, the state Bar Association said the spot went too far. The ad says the Democratic contender, Superior Court Judge Maria McLaughlin, “chose...
This is the sixth set of notes for a reading group on Marx’s Capital, and includes a Volume I refresher for further reading of Volume II. There are links to earlier posts and texts that may be useful. Marx is probably too taken with a kind of scientism by proposing...
CNN’s David Gergen: The Only Thing That Can Stop Donald Trump From Running in 2024 is a Prison Sentence From the Insurrection, we know that conspiring to commit felonies is also a felony. We know with greater certainty that Trump knew what was going to happen, despite Pence’s resistance and...
When Donald Trump inevitably chokes to death while trying to swallow an entire Costco rotisserie chicken, you can pretty much guarantee he’ll still be clinging to his nonsensical claims about the 2020 election. His belief that he was robbed last November is simply impervious to facts. Meanwhile, any meager morsel...
If you have seen the movie Birds of Prey (And the Fabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), you know the underlying theme was her discovering her power amidst a world of insanity, crime, and social degradation; hence her emancipation. That brings me to the current impasse in the Senate, with...
“[The debt limit suspension] ensures our federal government will not approach any kind of short-term debt crisis in the coming weeks or months. It secures our nation’s full faith and credit and ensures that Congress will not throw this kind of unnecessary wrench into the gears of our job growth...
Hours and hours of television was dedicated to a sermon delivered by former Obama preacher Reverend Jeremiah Wright. The public was subjected to months and months, of the media’s fixation on Hillary Clinton’s emails. The revealing upshot of which was that she loved her grandchild and that John Podesta has...
Asking a rhetorical question; Is there an ongoing social experiment in this country that has continually pigeon-holed Black people and left the cage open for white men? If you ask a black man or woman—of mature age, we can point out the historical and verbal gymnastics that subtly brainwash our...
Paraphrasing Pvt. Sam Watkins, 1st Tennessee, Co. H. ‘America has no north, no south, no east, no west,’ those words could apply to the pandemic. Watkins was lamenting brother against brother killing each other in the American Civil War. All of America is watching the unvaccinated kill each other and...
Not since, Tuco, Blondie, and Angel Eyes formed a triangle, within a circle, has greed, corruption, and self-interest intersected so destructively. Politics in America, for nearly 250 years has boiled down to money, policy, and humanitarianism in that order. Now it is strictly a good, bad, or ugly proposition. In...
There is a lot of media hand-wringing over a little mind with tiny thoughts who has been elevated into a big political voice by the liberal press. Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson, a distant heir to the Swanson frozen-food fortune, is as slimy and indigestible as a pile of cream...
Aside from advocating mass killing, Lara Trump agrees with VP Harris that migrants should not undertake a journey to the US southern border even as full consular service has not been restored to all US embassies since the end of the Trump regime. (2020) Former Department of Homeland Security (DHS)...
Florida bans its schools from teaching critical race theory On Thursday, Florida’s State Board of Education unanimously voted in favor of an amendment banning the teaching of critical race theory in schools throughout the state. The theory, according to PolitiFact, is a collection of ideas about systemic bias and privilege...
I don’t know if this statement has been diarized, my apologies, but it bears repeating often, so if anyone missed it. The Threats to American Democracy and the Need for National Voting and Election Administration Standards The Bolding is mine Introduction We, the undersigned, are scholars of democracy who have...
The predictability of the Republican party is as thinly veiled as the Trump presidency, made of tissue paper, and lies. The tissue, because the former President was full of it and flush with lies. At the height of Hillary Clinton’s popularity, flip-flopping Kevin McCarthy, the now House minority leader, said...
The owner of hatWRKS in Nashville did a Star of David with “not vaccinated” to protest the government on vaccinations. They also got $92K in PPP cash from the government and took part in the Jan 6th insurrection where they attacked the government. A Nashville hat seller removed an Instagram post...
Former President Trump ordered the Pentagon to release all of its information on “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAP) within 18 days in his last coronavirus relief bill in December 2020. More inexplicable sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) will be released for public scrutiny in June — including a UFO that broke...
Once Senator Mitch McConnell staked out the politically uncompromising GOP opposition to ‘everything’ Democrats proffered, during the Obama administration, the redline was drawn. Slowly but surely, the so-called moderate Republicans like; Susan Collins, Rob Portman, and John Thune have repeatedly torn their knickers on the fence. Collins, for example, agreed...
These are days fraught with political battles over cultural histories abjuring complexity. Today it’s The Wall Street Journal and the reactionary path to critical race theory, the latest bit of Trumpist ignorance now projected into personnel policies and the larger revisionist history project that would deny the historical relevance of slavery...
If I had to watch this, you do, too. Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, who sounds like Mr. Haney and looks like Arnold Ziffel, shot a video that made the NRA—which is dissolving faster than an Adderall suppository in the pulpy crevasses of Donald John Trump’s bottomless backside—bray about “triggering” the libs....
I’ve spent some time in newsrooms, so I feel like I’m a savvier news consumer than most. While watching the local news, I’ve occasionally said to my wife, in reference to a particularly fawning segment about a product, “Yeah, that’s an ad.” (Yes, I’m married. What, do you think I spend...
Let’s be clear. I don’t condone Rand Paul’s neighbor’s decision to beat the crap out of him, but I do condone (nay, applaud) everyone else’s decision to laugh at it. Rand Paul is a doctor … of sorts. He rather famously accredited himself through his own accrediting agency—an instance of self-gratifying...
Donald John Ignatius Caligulard Trump has had a lot of coffee boys for someone who only drinks Diet Coke. If you’re in the Trump orbit and that orbit begins to decay, well, you might as well be green cruciferous vegetables as far as DJT is concerned. He sure as shit...
Meandering nonsense highlighted by searches for bamboo fibers, and official lies issued from Mar-a Lago, are exactly what Donald Trump expected to be doing in 2016. The 2020 election with Joe Biden as his opponent was what he expected the first time around with Hillary Clinton; a loss. I am...
We need a sane Republican Party if we are to have a real debate of ideas. Former Trump Administration Official Miles Taylor is on the mission. He, along with his cohort of sane Republicans, are making an effort to save their party. We need Miles Taylor to succeed on his...
Some historical terms should not be used lightly. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used the term Apartheid to describe the Israel/Palestine reality, this shocked some people. I hate the word Apartheid as it brings back to too many precise historical racial connotations with respect to South Africa. The term segregation holds similar memories...
Here’s the latest news today out of Pennsylvania: Lou Barletta, the Republican Party’s Donald Trump-endorsed nominee for U.S. Senate in 2018, is running for governor of Pennsylvania. Barletta, 65, becomes the most prominent figure to enter a 2022 governor’s race that Republicans have won every time in the past half-century...
