Bits & Pieces
Articles with unfiltered opinions
Sexual Awakening
HUSTLER Magazine started in 1974, when the sexual revolution was in full swing. Landmark victories for real personal freedom were won back then—the right to pursue happiness of any flavor without stigma and persecution. Now in our 44th year, I am witnessing a different kind of sexual awakening. It started with comedy icon Bill...
Trump’s Tax-Cut Smoke and Mirrors
Trump and the Republicans are once again proposing massive new tax cuts to solve the nation’s many problems. They cite Reagan’s big tax cuts in 1986 as a model for spurring economic growth, but there’s a problem with that rationale: You see, the decade before Reagan’s tax cuts actually saw higher growth than the...
Trump vs. the Free Press
If there is one single thing that defines the American tradition and the success of our nation, it has to be the First Amendment, with its guarantee of free speech and freedom of the press. Thomas Jefferson expressed it best: “And were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government...
Trump’s Chainsaw Massacre
Donald Trump came into office spouting the usual Republican mantra that government is the source of all of our problems. “If there’s a new regulation, they have to knock out two,” he said. So he’s taken a chainsaw to more than 860 federal regulations since he’s been in office, ground all that paper to...
No Is Not Enough!
If Democrats want to defeat the Republican cabal now in power, they need to be more than the Party of No. It’s not enough to simply bash Trump, who won mainly because he promised to help Main Street over Wall Street. Yes, Democrats need to draw attention to Trump’s repeated broken promises—everything he’s done...
Fight the Real Drug Epidemic!
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is waging federal war on states that have legalized marijuana for recreational consumption. Meanwhile, Trump has declared the opioid crisis to be a national emergency. What’s wrong with this picture? A study funded by the National Institutes of Health shows that legalized medicinal pot actually reduced opioid overdose deaths. Marijuana...
Neuter the Narcissist
As Donald Trump proves daily what an incompetent, self-serving buffoon he is, the mainstream media (MSM) has joined him in lockstep—like a bad comedy duo. The MSM journalists think they have all the answers, but they need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and realize how they’ve enabled the rise and...
The GOP Just Sold Your Porn History
In March Senate Republicans voted to repeal the Federal Communications Commission rules protecting the privacy of your online activity. The House followed suit, and Trump signed off on the stinker in April. Now the telecoms that provide your basic service can sell the records of what you do online to anyone or any company...
Trump Stuffs His Own Pockets
America has one of the largest wealth-inequality gaps in the world, and it’s about to grow even larger under Trump’s proposed tax plan. The king of the loopholes wants to slash the corporate tax rate from 35% to 15% and apply that rate to “pass-throughs,” guaranteeing that his nearly 500 businesses would benefit—to the...
Wake Up, Media!
Americans’ trust of the mainstream media has hit rock bottom after the election of Donald Trump, and deservedly so. All of the major networks pumped up Trump in the primaries, giving him three times the coverage of any other Republican candidate and twice as much coverage as Hillary and Bernie combined. Trump was allowed...
The Foreign Policy Amateur Hour
Many antiwar activists welcomed the Presidency of Donald Trump, since he promised to reverse the neocon interventionist policies of the last four administrations. He agrees with the general consensus among sane people that the Iraq war was a colossal mistake, but lied about his opposition to launching it. He has made complaints about the...
Democrats In Decline?
One year ago Democrats were looking forward with unbridled optimism. America had diversified ethnically, the party’s base had expanded, and it looked like a golden future for progressives. These demographic trends were going to ensure a permanent Democratic majority. But now this has proven as illusory as Karl Rove’s “permanent Republican majority” in the...
Can Democrats Work With Trump?
The day after Trump’s stunning upset victory, Michael Moore wrote this warning: “Any Democratic member of Congress who didn’t wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us...
Election Postmortem
Donald Trump has been declared the 45th President of the United States, with a solid Republican majority in both the House and Senate—a total, shocking disaster for Democrats. No one expected a rout like this. After all the weeping is over, we must learn lessons from this defeat, with an eye to the future....
The Alt-Right Is Not All Right
The Tea Party movement has morphed into what is known as the “alt-right”—the insurgency that nominated their hero, Donald Trump, and upset the ambitions of Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and the rest of the GOP clown car. The alt-right hates the entire Washington establishment—especially beltway conservatives that they call “cuckservatives”—almost as much...
