Bits & Pieces
Articles with unfiltered opinions
Latest Politics
Start the Steal
A critical battleground state leaves its doors wide open to fraud and doubt in the 2024 presidential election. At this point it seems like the Republicans who run Georgia are begging for disaster. In truth, this story began around 2002, when Georgia and Maryland became the first states to mandate statewide use of 100%-unverifiable touchscreen...
Asshole of the Month: Tim Scott
The GOP clown car of Presidential candidates will have to stretch into a limo soon to accommodate all of the long-shot hopefuls crowding the race, including Tim Scott, one of only three current Black U.S. senators (there have been only 11 total in history) and the only Black person to serve in both chambers of...
Vigilance Trumps Vengeance
After 49 years of HUSTLER’s fight for free speech, our constitutional rights still hang by a thread. It’s early, but later than you think. The 2024 Presidential election is shaping up to be a rerun of 2020, when Democratic candidate Joe Biden narrowly defeated Republican strongman Donald Trump. A lot could change between now and...
90 Seconds to Midnight
Despite apocalyptic dangers, democratic nations must not cower to Putin’s “nuclear coercion” in Ukraine. “The clock is now ticking.” Those ominous words ended my July 2017 column headlined “2½ Minutes to Midnight.” At the time a new, dangerously unpredictable President had just been inaugurated, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced it had ticked...
Asshole of the Month: Asa Hutchinson
As the Great Orange Doofus continued fighting his never-ending legal problems (indicted on 34 felony counts by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg in April), a cavalcade of ambitious Republican hopefuls sniffed blood in the water and entered the race for the 2024 Presidential nomination. It’s a new parade of clown cars, ranging from the ridiculous and...
Fox “News” Has a Dirty Secret
A voting technology company’s defamation lawsuit may be just the beginning of the end for Rupert Murdoch’s GOP propaganda empire. Fox “News” was never either “fair” or “balanced.” That was an ad slogan to hoax you into buying its bullshit. But Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6-billion defamation lawsuit against Fox has laid bare that BS. Filed...
Asshole of the Month: Tucker Carlson
Fox News pioneered the dark art of pandering to the right-wing mob’s baser instincts to boost ratings and profits. But we really had no idea how hypocritical the whole charade had been until the stunning revelations flushed out in March by the Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6-billion lawsuit against Fox. Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity and the...
GOP Tried to Kill the Ethics Cops
House Democrats stopped them…at the very last second. It took nearly a week and 15 rounds of voting before Republicans accomplished their first order of business in the new Congress: electing a Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Their second task was much quicker: devising a tactic to prevent fellow Republicans from facing accountability...
Asshole of the Month: Sarah Hukabee Sanders
This past February, President Biden delivered what most unbiased observers praised as one of the best State of the Union (SOTU) addresses ever—a masterful performance by a veteran politician at the top of his game. His alleged senility was proven to be nothing more than partisan bullshit as he eloquently touted the many accomplishments of...
Sedition, Conspiracy and Insurrection
Brought to you by the former president of the United States and (still) leader of the Republican Party. It’s been a long time coming, but we are finally approaching the Accountability Phase. It’s difficult to keep track of all of the crimes, particularly as some of the statutes involved haven’t been prosecuted since the Civil...
Asshole of the Month: George Santos
Republicans were gleefully predicting a red wave miracle in last year’s midterm elections. Like Moses parting the Red Sea, it would drown Democrats and allow the MAGA tribe to wade into the promised land: domination of the House and Senate in D.C. and state legislatures and gubernatorial offices nationwide. But the big wave turned out...
Party of the Endless Grift
Republicans may not be able to win elections anymore, but they’ve learned how to turn losing into “winning.” Once upon a time, America had two major political parties. They disagreed on some things, mostly domestic matters, while generally concurring on foreign-policy issues. Tending to favor businesses and the wealthy, the Republican Party sought to lower...
Asshole of the Month: Kari Lake
The January 6th committee closed out the year with a big Christmas gift to the country—Donald Trump referred for criminal charges after leading America’s equivalent of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch. So it’s hopeful that we’ll be spared more of this disastrous carnival barker in the future. He may well be legally barred from running for...
Worst (Best?) “Red Wave” Ever
Democracy fights to live another day. Call it Roevember. Even Joevember. What you can’t call it is a “red wave,” much less a “red tsunami,” as hyped by Republicans and their easily hoaxed lackeys in the cowardly corporate media during the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections. “I can’t say for sure where rumors of...
Asshole of the Month: Elon Musk
Those who earn great success and wealth, not from being born with a silver spoon in their mouths but by pulling up on their own bootstraps, are rightly honored in this country, perhaps more so than in any other. Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison sit high in our pantheon of the American Dream;...
Truth Has Been Politicized
The former President and America’s right wing benefit more than ever from our corporate media pulling punches. In early August 2022, federal law enforcement officials executed a search warrant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. A federal judge, based on a sworn affidavit from the FBI, found “probable cause” to believe that the former President violated...
Asshole of the Month: Kanye West (Ye)
One thing history teaches us is that some of the greatest creative geniuses can also be flaming Assholes. The pioneering scientist Sir Isaac Newton was notorious for petty, vicious feuds with rivals, and even professed faith in alchemy. Picasso was a womanizer who used most of the women in his life like cheap doormats. Frank...
Democrats Just Changed Everything
With no help from congressional Republicans. And most Americans have yet to notice. It was not normal. In late summer the U.S. West was slammed by a relentless, record heat wave. For two unforgiving weeks, temperatures topped 110 degrees Fahrenheit in scores of cities. California’s capital, Sacramento, hit a mercury-shattering 116 degrees as more than...
Asshole of the Month: Vladimir Putin
British historian Lord Acton wisely observed that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In modern times, there is no better example of this than Russia’s longtime leader Vladimir Putin, who now threatens to launch a nuclear holocaust with his invasion and annexation of eastern Ukraine. Putin started his career in that notorious...
Democracy Is on Your Ballot
This year you get an extra vote for the 2024 Presidential election. Please vote wisely. I am not a member of the Democratic Party, but I will vote like one this year. The Republican Party has left me (and, I would argue, you) no other option. It has clasped hands, like Thelma and Louise, with...
