In last night’s midterm results, deep red states remained blood red, and gerrymandered Democratic districts in Florida and New York turned purple or outright red, like Miami-Dade County in Florida. Now that the red wave has been dashed against the shore, I must write another of the millions of rehashes...
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...
I often use a three-word idiom to explain human behavior; accident, coincidence, and trend. The current anti-Semitic controversy surrounding the demonstrations of ignorance by NBA star Kyrie Irving makes my point. His accidents of language have stopped being funny, are not a coincidence, and have become a trend. In 2017...
In the last days of campaigning, Republicans are narrowing their election focus to the so-called independent voter and conservative Democrats. Pennsylvania GOP Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz told his supporters their job is to talk to independent and conservative Democrat(sic) friends. They are to emphasize only three issues, economy, crime,...
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...
One can only live in fear if one listens to Republicans and watches their campaign ads. Republicans consistently decouple gun control from crime. Criminality is a real problem, but Willie Horton is not waiting around every corner. I have lived in Philadelphia for over 16 years and have not been...
While hyperventilating over imagined affronts such as kitty litter in schools to accommodate kids who believe they are animals or teaching courses that may offend little white kids with history, the hope of the greatest generation is now clouded in fear. When Franklin Roosevelt told America, “We have nothing to...
A part of the nationalistic, anti-immigrant, and rising anti-Semitic hunger in America is the refusal to examine the U.S. side of the border. The last presidential administration wanted to build walls and accused immigrants crossing our southern borders of being rapists and murderers. In 2018 over 30,000 murders were reported...
I may be a little late to the party, but I have just gotten through the first two episodes of Inventing Anna on Netflix. Anna is a self-absorbed faux socialite bent on using her friends, the press, and anyone with a Centurion Amex card for power. Early in their interview...
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....
It ceases to become patriotism. As a child, I remember reading about post-revolution farmers laying down their plowshares to serve a year or two in government. It was understood that serving one’s government was a patriotic, albeit temporary, duty, not a career. Growing beans, potatoes, and corn made you a...
Before I turn many of you off thinking this is some bible-thumping tirade, far from it. Sure biblical scholars and theologians will point out that misquoting the bible is a devilish trick. The often repeated bible verse “money is the root of all evil” is rightfully corrected to “ the...
In the White House Rose Garden yesterday, President Joe Biden read from a twelve-page pamphlet labeled by its author Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) as the “12 Point Plan to Rescue America.” The Republican party’s most fervent dreams are in it, getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Just as...
The split in America is less about politics than—it is—politics becoming our lives. It is more about party alliances and tribal wars. It has reached such a crescendo that in January of 2021, it morphed into an armed insurrection at the nation’s citadel. Many seem incapable of allowing common sense...
Now that Hunter’s laptop has replaced Hillary’s emails as the distraction topic déjouer, I need someone from the right wing to tell me how their transgressions make Donald Trump innocent. Reports of the younger Biden being videoed snorting cocaine or Hillary Clinton bleaching emails are now a part of the...
For over a year, teachers and school boards have fought the myth of Critical Race Theory (CRT) being a bludgeon to batter white kids’ delicate psyche(s). Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has long been an advocate of school choice and privatization and glommed...
The video of the grinning, cackling devotees of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ deliberate cruelty is what we should fear. No signs of empathy or concern, just scornful sarcasm and laughter. The hypocritical enclaves of self-professed Florida and Texas Christians who want to force victims of rape and incest to bear...
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....
When a group of Islamic radicals terrorized the country on September 11, 2001, the resolve of Americans was mobilized, and the GOP doubled down on the hate. Despite the fact former President George W. Bush made it clear that Islam was not the culprit for the actions of a few...
There is an adage that reads ‘tragedy plus time equals comedy; hence the joke, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play? It is always hard to write about a recent death without sounding crass or tasteless, but the truth is essential and enlightening. The death of...
Recently, and not the first or last time, issues involving the black community have been workshopped without input from one of the groups it affects most. On August 4, University of Virginia historian Allida Black, Princeton University history professor Sean Wilentz, journalist Anne Applebaum, presidential historian Michael Beschloss, Vinay Reddy,...
In the mid-1920s, the term ‘Pinko’ reared its accusatory head. Anyone deemed a sympathizer but not a full-on communist was labeled a pinko—dare I say—semi-communist. The word’s resurgence was on display during the Army-McCarthy Hearings of the 1950s. Then Senator Joe McCarthy of Minnesota brought paranoia to new levels. He...
Most of us have lived next door to a man or woman who opens the backdoor to their home, welcomes the morning sun, and tosses out breadcrumbs for the birds. Generally, it is not a piece of freshly baked bread or a slice of that ciabatta one craves dipped in...
I was thrilled to wake up this morning and see the Biden administration hitting back at the critics of the President’s college-loan debt relief program. As the GOP gropes and grinds for an issue to get women and the so-called “woke” to stop caring about women’s rights, this week’s target...
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,”...
Remember when kids online were swallowing spoonfuls of cinnamon and setting their genitals on fire for likes and clicks? Adults like me would shake their heads, sigh, and be thankful to be a boomer because we just licked frogs and ran naked through mud-filled parks on acid trips. Those terror-filled...
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...
Trumpites were fond of saying promises made, promises kept at the end of his disastrous administration. They could not say that the promises made to the middle class and the poor were kept. The public is still awaiting his secret health care plan—promised a week into his presidency. Infrastructure became...
Democrats have an opportunity to simplify the treacherous and near treasonous behavior of Donald Trump. Plain talk is required. I attended a neighborhood improvement meeting, and the local councilman started his address by saying he was there as the “validation marketer.” After a few quizzical looks, he finally said, ‘I...
Since the legal FBI search—not a raid—was revealed to have taken place at the Trump property in Mar-a-Lago, my phone has rung off the hook; what do you think, what did they get, who ratted him out? Since the punditry’s heart-pumping nonreporting began, leaning on former members of Trump’s inner...
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...
Growing up in black America and old enough to remember, pridefully watching many blacks do something for the first time embeds possibilities in one’s historical eye. Two of the icons of my youth passed away over the weekend, William Felton Russell and Grace Dell Nichols. They are better known as...
I am not counting my trees before they are hugged, but with the help of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, Joe Biden is one Democratic party vote away from passing a historic climate bill. The former Build Back Better legislation is now called the Inflation Reduction Act. There are still...
On August 8, 1974, a reflective and less defiant Richard Nixon became the first American President to resign his office. As a member of the black community who had seen friends and fathers of friends leave for Vietnam and never return, most of us were thrilled. The Watergate Hearings continued...
To begin with, the Constitution makes no allowance for the arrest of a lawless current or former President. If that presidential exception existed, a sitting president could stand on Fifth Ave and shoot someone; Oh, wait! Despite the mountain of evidence, Donald Trump is not in jail for inciting a...
With over 250,000 adults living in the United States who routinely use the word “yesterday,” Donald Trump, who once said, “I know words,” apparently wants to eliminate its usage because it is hard for him. x YouTube Video Watching his mind sputter over the innocuous word “yesterday’ in the outtakes...
The GOP keeps dropping their theocratic pants, and America gets mooned. Despite having no platform beyond trolling the Democratic party, and self-serving religious attacks disguised as culture clashes, America is sliding to the bottom of that shining city on the hill Republicans are so fond of talking about. Democrats have...
Anyone who has read my column, stories, blogs, and meanderings is well aware that I am an avowed liberal. I am so anti-gun in the hands of civilians—banning assault rifles would be the beginning for me. Despite the recent assassination of their former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, I am a...
They can at least keep up. The industrial world has moved past the days of child brides, concubines, and selling our female children as brood chattels. The case of a victimized, brutalized, and impregnated ten-year-old in Ohio is a perfect example. The conservative media is losing their minds over a...
As a black American, I can understand the tumult over First Lady Jill Biden associating Latin culture with “bogades”(sic) and ‘breakfast tacos.” Talking in part before the UnidosUS annual conference, she said “ —as distinct as the bogades [bodegas] of the Bronx, as beautiful as the blossoms of Miami, and...
The January sixth committee members are faced with two questions regarding the tentative appearance of Steve Bannon as a witness. Is he trying to use the committee to save his skin and avoid a possible conviction on the contempt of Congress charges he is facing because he refused the committee’s...
At the turn of the century, horse racing was the number one sport in America. By the time Babe Ruth overtook Seabiscuit amidst the Great Depression, baseball had become America’s pastime. There are various iterations of what symbols mean the most to America, but the one I am most familiar...
The panic over 9/11 that led to the Patriot Act is almost understandable. We had seen thousands of our fellow Americans incinerated, and our military and financial invincibility symbols were toppled. So, limiting a few freedoms for revenge seemed reasonable amid anger and fear (at the time). I am baffled...
Speculation has flourished for more than a year about whether Donald Trump wanted to escort the mob that descended on the Capitol in January of 2021, or was it just more of his empty bravado and bluster. In the latest January 6, Committee hearing, Cassidy Hutchinson, former advisor to Donald...
Since around age sixteen, I have had friends and adults in my life who have said to me more than once, ‘no, no, I don’t do politics.’ Well, to those who angrily rebuffed me—I say—you may not do politics, but politics is doing you. From local legislatures and school boards...
