Bits & Pieces
Articles with unfiltered opinions
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....
Shut Down Our Devil’s Island
Future historians will look back on the Guantanamo prison camp as one of the darkest chapters in American history, along with slavery, lynchings in the South, internment of Japanese-American citizens in WWII and the McCarthy Red Scare. That we have allowed this abomination to exist at all, let alone continue for 14 years, is...
Cruel And Unusual Punishment
In January President Obama announced that federal prisons would no longer use solitary confinement to punish juvenile offenders and adults who have committed minor offenses. The practice leads to “devastating, lasting psychological consequences,” declared the President, after a Justice Department study concluded that the practice reduces the chances of successful rehabilitation upon an inmate’s...
Is Mass Media Choosing Our President?
When backing a candidate for high office, whether you’re a Democrat, Republican or third party, it often comes down to a difficult choice: the candidate who most reflects your values and positions or the candidate who stands the best chance of winning. In the long, drawn-out horse race of the modern American Presidential campaign,...
America: The Killing Field
In the last year we have been horrified by an endless stream of mass murders and questionable police shootings, to the point that it’s almost the new normal—tune in for Shooting Tragedy of the Week. While American homicide rates had been falling steadily since the 1990s, the trend is now starting to reverse. The...
