Bits & Pieces
Articles with unfiltered opinions
Latest Politics
Asshole of the Month: Brian Kemp
The rise of Donald Trump inspired a small army of conservative dimwits and grifters to follow in his footsteps. If such an ignorant buffoon could gain the highest office in the land, then any damn fool could run for higher office with a chance of winning. A prime example is the current Republican governor of...
“A Cancer on the DOJ”
Once the coronavirus and Trump administration have passed, the disease infecting the Justice Department will still linger. When this nightmare ends, and it will, there is going to be a lot to restore beyond the death and economic devastation. Cleanup of the Trump Administration’s American carnage should begin with the rotting core of what was...
Apple’s Noble Fight
The telecom company is resisting demands to make its cell phones accessible to government agencies. Let’s give it up for Apple! It’s not easy to commend a hugely profitable company for simply doing what’s right for its customers and bottom line, but the tech giant is doing something much more praiseworthy. With CEO Tim Cook...
Beware the Ratfuckers
As the presidential race hit the starting gate, were GOP dirty-tricksters behind the caucus-night meltdown in Iowa? The initial nominating contest of the critical 2020 Presidential election—America’s last firewall against full-on authoritarianism—began disastrously for Democrats in Iowa. The voting itself went well enough, but the reporting of publicly witnessed precinct results from some 1,700 caucus...
Asshole of the Month: Virginia Thomas
Some of the most influential movers and shakers in politics are not household names. They don’t hold public office, host a talk show or donate millions to candidate campaigns; they operate more or less in the shadows. This profile fits one of D.C.’s most powerful divas, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the big, bad blond wife of...
Asshole of the Month: Marsha Blackburn
The United States Congress is home to some of the most intelligent, educated, principled public servants in the nation, and also some of the dumbest, most ignorant, dishonest twits on the whole planet. In the former category, members of both parties are to be found, although differing on policies, philosophy and solutions to the country’s...
Assassin Nation
Trump pulls the trigger on war crimes after a decades-long ban on U.S.-sanctioned assassinations of foreign leaders. For the past three years the Trump Administration has rolled back or plowed over decades of federal rules, regulations and statutes. On January 3, 2020—when the President ordered a drone strike on a top Iranian general near Baghdad’s...
Global Inequality Worsens
A human rights organization says the world’s billionaires should pony up to alleviate the vast wealth gap. A million bucks or a billion, what’s the difference? World domination! Most of us still think that having a million dollars makes a person very wealthy, but of course the reality is that’s just chump change for some...
Asshole of the Month: Mike Pompeo
The swamp in Washington, D.C., teems with as many Assholes as there are rats in the sewers, but few piss us off more than the slimy warmonger acting as current secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. That Trump appointed this berserker—along with superhawk John Bolton— after promising to wind down our disastrous, costly “War on Terror”...
Let Prisoners Vote
It’s time to end yet another discriminatory stain still lingering from the Civil War. The Republican Party’s War on Voting is on track for appalling new heights (actually depths) in 2020. But the offensive is finally being answered in some jurisdictions. Voting rights advocates have won several key battles of late on behalf of a...
China Outsmarts Trump
The President believed he could dictate trade terms with the Communist nation, but he underestimated its economic clout. Like it or not, the People’s Republic of China will soon have the world’s leading economy, and there isn’t much that any American President, even the dangerously bombastic Donald Trump, can do about it. Or should. During...
Asshole of the Month: John Neely Kennedy
The U.S. Senate gained a new clown in 2016: John Neely Kennedy from Louisiana, who is definitely not related to the Kennedys from Massachusetts, although the bayou boy has exploited the confusion at times. Back when he was a Democrat, his campaign sent out a flyer to predominantly black neighborhoods with this misleading headline: “John...
Lev & Igor’s Influential Misadventure
How a Pair of Mysteriously Funded GOP Hustlers Purchased U.S. Foreign Policy…and How You Can Too! If you’ve been following America’s political nightmare even cursorily, you’ve likely stumbled across the names Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. Few had heard of either of these Soviet-born naturalized U.S. citizens until October 2019, when they were nabbed by...
Torture on the Silver Screen
A New Movie Chronicles a Senate Committee Probe Into the CIA’s Barbaric Interrogation of Suspected Terrorists. Finally Hollywood has offered a devastatingly honest film about the Central Intelligence Agency’s systemic use of torture following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Based on a lengthy investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, The Report...
About Her Emails
How Donald Trump and the media played you for fools…and still do. “This is bigger than Watergate!” 2016 Presidential candidate Donald Trump promised. “We have only seen the tip of the iceberg!” he warned. “She should be in prison!” he bellowed, targeting his opponent Hillary Clinton. “She shouldn’t be allowed to run!” he railed again...
The Endless Insanity of War
Syria is yet another country where an active U.S. military presence violates our constitution. Sending troops to war, to be killed and kill others, ought to be a big deal. That’s why the framers of the U.S. Constitution stipulated that while the President is the commander in chief, America’s armed forces could not be deployed...
Asshole of the Month: Jim Jordan
Whenever Republicans get into trouble, overstep their authority and do end runs around the law—which, ever since Nixon, they seem to think is their privilege—they rely on a few vicious attack dogs to muddy up the scandal and derail the inevitable Congressional hearings. There’s a kennel of such GOP attack dogs in Congress. One of...
The End of the World as We Know it
Do You Feel Fine? What would you do if a doctor told you that you were almost certain to die from cancer unless it was treated immediately? Some might, reasonably, seek a second opinion. If the next doctor said that the first diagnosis was correct and that you could likely have a long and healthy...
Asshole of the Month: Sean Hannity
For a long while at Fox News there was a competition for dung-slinging on the national airwaves between the two fire-breathing Irish potato heads, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Both were masters of propaganda thinly disguised as “fair and balanced” news. They peddled unfounded conspiracy theories and dubious facts, shouted down guests with opposing viewpoints,...
The Insanity of Homelessness
Politicians’ mishandling of mental illness is but one reason that so many Americans are living on our city streets. You don’t have to live in California to grasp that America’s cities are in the grip of a major crisis. A visit to Los Angeles or San Francisco, blighted by more and more depressing encampments of...
