DonaldTrump

If nothing more than for the brilliant musical score, many of us have watched the biographical movie about the life of Ray Charles more than once. If you are like me, you are familiar with a line uttered by Jamie Foxx, portraying Charles early in the film. When Ray Charles...

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  • January 13, 2023

The parents of Republican politicians must have taught their kids not to make the bed, sweep the dirt under the carpet, and that a little dried egg on the corner of the plate is okay. In the intervening days, since the Republican party was literally at each other’s throats on...

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  • January 9, 2023

Writer, activist, philosopher, and teacher Angela Davis said, “ I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept. Her twist on the 12-step recovery mantra would be good advice for the would-be Speaker of the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy has...

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  • January 4, 2023

Yesterday, the House Ways and Means Committee’s ranking member tried to pull off a well-worn Republican tactic to hide malfeasance and misdeeds. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) wrapped himself in the skirts of MAGA America, defending the former President of the United States. Brady asserted that all Americans should be on...

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  • December 21, 2022

The former chief executive of the United States implored his security not to check people for weapons saying, “I don’t fing care if they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the fing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let...

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  • December 19, 2022

When former child protégé the late Billy Preston, affectionately known as the fifth Beatle, released Nothing from Nothing (leaves nothing) in 1974, it instantly became my theme song. As I have gotten older, my sensitivity, as well as my passion for politics, has grown. As a result, Billy Preston’s composition...

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  • December 16, 2022

Brittney Griner and her wife Cherelle are an American love story. Let us try a thought experiment. Instead of being a 6’9” basketball player and black lesbian, Brittney Griner is a five-foot-two (eyes of blue) white evangelical named Buffy with a business that refuses to serve the LBGTQ+ community. Further,...

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  • December 12, 2022

Most of us have heard the tale of the frog in boiling water. If you try to put a frog in boiling water, it will hop out, but if you place it in the water and heat it slowly, it will sit and cook to death. The Republican party has...

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  • November 30, 2022

Congressman James Comer Jr. (R-KY) is the current ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. In January, when the 118th Congress is seated, he is set to become the Chairman of the committee when Republicans take control of the House. The proposed new Chair of the Oversight Committee has already...

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  • November 28, 2022

The last piece I contributed to this forum was last Wednesday, November 16, 2022. It was entitled Mass Shootings: An American Institution. Admittedly it was a retelling—in part—of the mass shooting at the University of Virginia. Their football coach Tony Elliot said about the three young men who died in...

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  • November 21, 2022

Three young men and football players at the University of Virginia lost their lives in a mass shooting that wounded two others returning from a class excursion. The three young men, Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr., and D’Sean Perry, “These were incredible young men with huge aspirations and extremely bright...

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  • November 16, 2022

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...

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  • November 4, 2022

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,...

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  • November 2, 2022

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,...

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  • October 14, 2022

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...

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  • October 10, 2022

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....

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  • October 7, 2022

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...

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  • October 5, 2022

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...

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  • October 3, 2022

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...

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  • September 26, 2022

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...

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  • September 23, 2022

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...

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  • September 21, 2022

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...

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  • September 19, 2022

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....

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  • September 14, 2022

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...

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  • September 12, 2022

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,...

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  • September 7, 2022

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...

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  • September 2, 2022

I have been a registered Democrat since 1976. Over the years, I have had many verbal—but respectable—battles with Republicans, Libertarians, and the Green Party. Throughout all those sometimes contentious disagreements, the only group that consistently and derisively refers to me as a socialist has been Republicans. I bring that point...

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  • August 31, 2022

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...

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  • August 24, 2022

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...

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  • August 19, 2022

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...

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  • August 15, 2022

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...

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  • August 12, 2022

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...

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  • August 10, 2022

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...

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  • July 27, 2022

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...

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  • July 25, 2022

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...

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  • July 22, 2022

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...

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  • July 13, 2022

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...

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  • June 29, 2022

Russia’s fascist, authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin, accusing the Ukraine president of being a Nazi is unbelievable. Despite Putin’s Hitler-like statement, “I am convinced that this natural and necessary self-cleansing [of society] will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion, and readiness to meet any challenge,” he said. The irony seems...

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  • March 18, 2022

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,...

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  • March 14, 2022

Again, the invasion and war crimes in Ukraine demonstrate how the GOP is habitually wrong. Whether it be something as serious as our southern neighbors trying to escape the same types of violence and death in El Salvador and Honduras—like women and children in Ukraine, or if a green M&M...

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  • March 7, 2022

Projection is pretty much all Republicans do these days, so if anyone on the right accuses President Biden of selling our nuclear launch codes for a bump of Adderall, a McRib with extra pickles and hog scrotums, and a deep-tissue taint massage from the traveling company of the Bolshoi Ballet, you...

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  • March 6, 2022

Projection is pretty much all Republicans do these days, so if anyone on the right accuses President Biden of selling our nuclear launch codes for a bump of Adderall, a McRib with extra pickles and hog scrotums, and a deep-tissue taint massage from the traveling company of the Bolshoi Ballet, you...

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  • March 6, 2022

Melania Trump’s flailing attempts to do good in the world—presumably to fulfill the bare minimum requirements of being a (former) first lady—have always felt a little insincere. While in the White House, she launched a much-ridiculed anti-bullying campaign clumsily dubbed “Be Best,” even though by far her most effective anti-bullying tactic...

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  • March 4, 2022

The nobility commended to war is romanticized as a brave and patriotic encounter when reviewing history. Familiar to Americans, the American Revolution and World War II come to mind as noble causes. America is far from alone in the foggy-headedness of war. Michigan and Ohio once raised militias over the...

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  • February 25, 2022