Bits & Pieces
Articles with unfiltered opinions
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...
The “Wicked” Clinton Foundation
Donald Trump and the whole right-wing echo chamber have made a huge fuss over the operation of the Clinton Foundation during the time Hillary was Secretary of State. Yes, some of the Foundation’s donors, including representatives of foreign nations, major corporations and other entities, did also meet with Secretary Clinton to discuss matters of...
Resist!
Trump’s conservative counterrevolution is in deep trouble. In March the GOP bill to repeal and replace Obamacare— one of his top campaign promises—went down in flames. For that we can thank the tens of thousands of angry citizens who stormed town hall meetings across the country, all but tar-and-feathering Republican congressmen who supported Trump’s...
The Race to Armageddon
The mainstream media has given little attention to what could be the single largest, most dangerous government expenditure ever: a staggering $1 trillion to upgrade our nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years, with new nuclear bombers, warheads, missiles, subs, labs and production plants. Last June the Strategic Deterrent Coalition held a symposium in...
Hillary vs. the Dummy: Democrats Must Unite
I know it’s been said before, probably ever since John Adams won the Presidency, but this really is one of the most crucial elections in American politics. It has also become the most volatile election in our history, with two of the most unpopular candidates ever. A whole faction of Republicans vow that they...
Democrats Must Move Wisely
Donald Trump has insulted and alienated so many Americans—women, Hispanics, Muslims, immigrants and even a large faction of his own party—that it’s possible Democrats will control the entire federal government, with Hillary Clinton in the White House and majorities in both the House and Senate. That happened for the first two years of the...
Masters of Disaster: GOP Governors
In 2010 Republican Sam Brownback rode a Tea Party wave into the Kansas governor’s mansion, announcing, “My focus is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, ‘See, we’ve got a different way, and it works.’” With Republicans dominating the legislature, Brownback passed massive tax breaks for the wealthy, eliminated...
Diplomacy Wins!
The nuclear deal with Iran crafted by President Obama and John Kerry has reaped big dividends in the first Iranian election to be held after sanctions were lifted. Reformist President Hassan Rouhani’s allies—moderates and reformers—won all of Tehran’s 30 seats in Parliament, then went on to win 42% of the total seats in April....
