Bits & Pieces
Articles with unfiltered opinions
Latest Politics
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...
Jeffrey Epstein’s Predictable Demise
The only “conspiracy” involves public officials who don’t give a damn about our country’s inmate suicide epidemic. After convicted pedophile and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein reportedly took his own life at a federal detention facility in New York City, a million conspiracy theories were born. Receiving the most attention was the one advanced by...
Asshole of the Month: Meghan McCain
Americans often swear by beliefs about our nation that may have been true at one time, but are no longer legitimate. One of them is that America is a classless meritocracy, the ultimate “land of opportunity,” with no privileged royalty. Unlike anywhere else, we’re told, the talented and ambitious can always rise from the slums...
Huawei: Bad Apple or Savvy?
The president has singled out a cutting-edge Chinese electronics firm as a threat to national security. President Donald Trump’s trade war with China is nothing more than another despicable chapter in the history of Western imperial powers’ incessant efforts to profit from the exploitation of the Chinese people. In the 19th century, for example, Britain brought tons...
Asshole of the Month: Lou Dobbs
Trump’s downfall—and it is coming—will no doubt be due to his enormous, hypersensitive ego. Like a psychotic pit bull, he turns on everyone eventually, even his closest supporters, if they fail to kiss his bloated ass with enough blind sincerity. From Chris Christie to Rex Tillerson to Jeff Sessions and the long casualty list of...
Harvard’s Despicable Donor
Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s money was too good for a background check. The sordid life of Jeffrey Epstein is one of those national toxic dumps that no litany of government investigations will ever fully cleanse. The fact that numerous ruling-class A-listers unwittingly or otherwise accompanied the billionaire pedophile on a customized jetliner nicknamed the...
Did Trump Actually Win?
Nobody knows if election results were manipulated in 2016 because nobody ever bothered to check. Before and after the 2016 Presidential election, U.S. election officials and private voting system vendors claimed, over and over again, that most voting systems utilized in this country are never connected to the internet. The implication is that they couldn’t...
