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...
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...
Short, sweet, to the point and, above all, awesome. Today, Russia announced it was sanctioning President Biden and several other current and former U.S. officials—including, for some reason, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Shockingly, Donald Trump was not sanctioned. Possibly because withholding pallet shipments of 12-cheese blinis from noncombatants is...
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,...
Warning, warning! I ventured off the planet for a few days and visited Fox Universe. I was told that President Joe Biden controls gas and petroleum prices. Putin is not really as bad as people say, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a self-hating Jew manufacturing chemical weapons with the help of...
Okay, let’s be fair about this. You could argue that the U.S. had a legitimate interest in propping up global oil prices during the COVID-caused 2020 recession in order to aid domestic producers. I figured I’d be fair at the outset because MAGAs never are, particularly when it comes to this...
President Joe Biden delivered the State of the Union Address last night, and the GOP performed human-pet tricks. The popping up and down like a Whack-A-Mole game may be great exercise for the knees but is more distracting to the rhythm of a speech than helpful. Republicans turned away from...
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...
Vladimir Putin has made his second foray into Ukrainian territory since 2014, first Crimea and now poised to march into Kyiv. Both moves were against Democratic presidents, and both seem retaliatory for personal reasons. Putin’s tension with the Obama administration is well documented, especially with former Secretary of State Hilary...
It was predictable that the Republicans would drive down racist-trope avenue to disparage a mythical black woman. President Biden pledged to pick a black woman for the Supreme Court, and the GOP is using familiar adjectives. What seems to be most at odds with Senator(s)Ted Cruz, Roger Wicker, and Susan Collins, to name...
Blaming Joe Biden for the coronavirus spread is like blaming the surgeon for not saving the victim of a gunshot wound to the head. American conservatives, and a willing press, have conveniently forgotten the former president told the country the virus would simply disappear. He said lights, bacterial spray, and...
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...
A few years ago I started on antidepressants. I dithered for many years about taking meds—for a variety of reasons. I was suspicious of Big Pharma. I was convinced the drugs wouldn’t do much for my mental and emotional health—after all, nothing ever had before. And somewhere, in the back of...
The freshly defeated Democratic nominee for Governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, is a lousy politician. Let me preface the past statement with the admission that if I lived in Virginia, I would have wholeheartedly voted for Mr. McAuliffe over the new incoming Governor Glenn Youngkin. While McAuliffe lived in the past,...
The interminable negotiations over Joe Biden’s Build Back Better human infrastructure plan make me feel a little like I did at this time last year, when I was still wondering if Joe Biden would see his shadow on the White House lawn or we’d get four more years of nuclear winter. It...
I half expected Sen. Kyrsten Sinema to show up on the Senate floor today dressed as Ramses II, arriving on a pink, three-legged Shetland pony before airily plucking imaginary Skittles from Rand Paul’s leonine mane of laissez-faire locks. Turns out I should have bet the over. Watching Sinema “legislate” is a...
With roughly a third of Americans who identify themselves as Republicans, the party bombards us with the term American People at every utterance. With almost 60% of the country fully vaccinated, Republicans say the American People have doubts. Yesterday, Mitch McConnell, in response to questions about the insurrection, said the...
The straight news or punditry often starts with the premise of scaring the American people away with a price tag. From the Biden Build Back Better plan reporting, one would think that its’ only attribute—or detriment, depending on your point of view, is the 3.5 trillion dollar price tag. Even...
Somewhere along the line I got the impression that humans were smart. You know, tool use and written communication and reduced fat Corn Nuts and all that. Unfortunately, just because Grandma can open a can of Chef Boyardee without throwing it against a big tree like an ape or Donald...
Somewhere along the line I got the impression that humans were smart. You know, tool use and written communication and reduced fat Corn Nuts and all that. Unfortunately, just because Grandma can open a can of Chef Boyardee without throwing it against a big tree like an ape or Donald...
For Christmas (and Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa), Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders wants to give working-class West Virginians a child tax credit, child care assistance, free preschool, two free years of community college, lower health insurance premiums, expanded Medicare, home health care assistance for the elderly, an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit...
Tim Burchett is an actual U.S. representative from the state of Tennessee, and he apparently has no idea how unemployment insurance (UI) works. As in, we don’t (very rarely, anyway) pay people who quit their jobs. The people who are quitting are frequently applying early for Social Security and/or living off...
If you haven’t seen Netflix’s Squid Game yet—well, what are you waiting for? If anything is a parable for our time, this is it. Too often meteoric cultural phenomena that purport to capture the zeitgeist fail to capture my interest, but this one is different. If you believe, as I...
You could say Ted Cruz is about as funny as a debilitating brain parasite, but that would be imprecise. He’s as funny as a brain parasite attempting to do prop comedy at 1 a.m on a Wednesday at a Sioux Falls Holiday Inn. In other words, much less funny than your workaday...
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,...
“…wearing a mask while playing was no different from wearing a parachute while skydiving.” The above quote is purportedly from the late Jacques Plante, former goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens Hockey club when his bravery was questioned for wearing a mask. As absurd as it seems now, there was a...
Burned out at the end of the Joy-Ann Reid hour on MSNBC, I am ready for mindless tv. By that time, my intellectual palette is dulled by the talk of the continuous meal foisted on me of tasteless conservative ambrosia. A nice, seared steak of the NBA playoffs or a good...
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...
Stories are and have been written about ninety-four-year-old Ms. Opal Lee and the lead-up to the signing of the bill declaring Juneteenth [June 19th] a holiday. Due partially to her dedication in 2016, the then 89-year-old, committed to walking two and a half miles in each of the states that...
I don’t know about you, but I used to feel pretty on edge whenever Donald Trump left the country. As bad as it was having him here, seeing him take overseas trips felt a bit like that scene in The Silence of the Lambs where Lecter escapes from his cage...
Rube Goldberg was an inventor and cartoonist who satirically depicted complicated machines to perform simple tasks used to show the absurdity of over-thinking. In March of 2016, with eight months to go in former President Obama’s first term, the then-Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell refused to consider the current Attorney...
So now that we have a president who doesn’t pose an existential threat to NATO, respects climate change accords, takes worldwide pandemics seriously and won’t flatter dictators, threaten to nuke hurricanes, or otherwise make the world’s foremost democracy look like King Kong on a four-year Jägermeister-and-bath-salts bender, the rest of the...
So I may be burying the lede on this one—on purpose for once. The buried bit involves a bit of classic Trumpian projection that, sadly and predictably, ventures into the offensive. (Skip ahead if you want to see it. I’ll never know.) But first, let’s take a look at the most...
A couple of days ago, alleged congressperson Marjorie Taylor Greene sent a letter to Joe Biden. I read it; you don’t have to. Unless you read at a third-grade level or worse, it might be hard for you to follow. It essentially boils down to “Wuhan lab … Chinese-made virus...
Ordinarily upon hearing something like this, I’d say Matt Gaetz has gotten in way over his head, but that would be physically impossible. I mean, look at that thing. Archaeologists still wonder how the Rapa Nui’s Easter Island ancestors moved those giant stone heads they’re famous for. I wonder the same thing about...
Not that I give a bloated goat fart in hell what the Republicans think, but does the Washington Post have to help them pass gas? Top left front page: Biden’s America: Democrats see competence, Republicans see chaos President Biden’s administration by the middle of last week was confronted with images...
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...
