Bits & Pieces
Articles with unfiltered opinions
Latest Politics
Against the Wall
Most Americans residing along the border with Mexico are not clamoring for a wall, but many are resisting an invasion. Their existential menace is neither cartel drug-runners nor Central American families escaping poverty and crime to start a new life in “The Land of the Free.” The threat to local Texans is the Trump Administration, which has...
Indict Him!
If Donald Trump is lucky—and he usually is—he will only be impeached. He deserves far worse: to be prosecuted as a criminal and sent to prison. If anybody else did what we now know Trump did, he or she would almost certainly face felony charges and the prospect of years in a federal penitentiary. But,...
Asshole of the Month: Jerry Falwell Jr.
If we can hold one man responsible for getting Trump over the hump in the Presidential election, it would be Jerry Falwell Jr., son of the late Jerry Sr., founder of the Moral Majority and scourge of LGBTQ people everywhere. Falwell Sr. actually blamed gays for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Before this, he sued HUSTLER...
The War on Drugs Was a Bust
Sometimes a revolution happens and nobody notices. That’s the case with the widespread legalization of marijuana in this country and the grinding to a halt of the U.S. government’s century-old War on Drugs, which devastated the lives of millions of people around the world. It was a war in the most depressing sense of the...
Asshole of the Month: Heather Nauert
It’s finally dawning on more and more Americans, even die-hard Trump supporters, that the Donald’s administration is nothing more than a nonstop reality-TV show modeled exactly after the big hit that made him famous. The Apprentice Live is now governing the whole nation. In two years Trump has overseen a record-setting 65% White House staff...
Democracy Strikes Back
Well, it wasn’t a blue wave after all. It was, in fact, a blue tsunami last November, although you could be forgiven if you didn’t notice. Some key 2018 midterm election results were initially misreported by many in the corporate media, chomping at the bit to propagate a false narrative of Democratic Party failure. Take...
Outsmarting Capitalism?
Never hustle a hustler” is a street-smart dictum you would think President Donald Trump would have embraced long before launching his trade war with the People’s Republic of China. Maybe he was fooled by the Communist label that the leaders in Beijing still apply to their government, but the head honcho of the Trump franchise...
Major Civil Rights Triumph
Mainstream media has a difficult time covering good news. While there wasn’t much of that in the mixed results of a deeply divided midterm electorate nationwide, one pure bright light of decency and common sense emerged. That is the decision of more than 60% of Florida voters to amend their state constitution, restoring voting rights...
This Number Is No Longer in Service
There are a lot of scams in the Republican Party’s toolbox. One of the most insidious is the notion that cutting regulatory red tape is somehow meant to help you, the little guy, being held back by Big Government bureaucracy. But the Donald Trump/GOP Jedi mind tricks aren’t meant to help you unless you’re one...
Prepare for Impact(s)
It’s not your imagination. Natural disasters are getting worse—and we’re not ready. Roughly—and conservatively—speaking, one inch of rainfall is the equivalent of about one foot of snowfall. That might help you understand the deluge generated by Hurricane Lane, which dumped some 50 inches of rain on parts of Hawaii in August 2018. That’s enough moisture...
Saudi Money Trumps U.S. Morals
Donald Trump has the strangest crushes on questionable countries, ranging from North Korea to Russia to Saudi Arabia, not to mention several other bizarre choices. But the one for which he expressed the purest and earliest of affections as a newly minted President was darkly duplicitous Saudi Arabia, which is more an oil depot than...
Donald Trump Wants to Kill You
Thousands will die under the president’s new plan to “bring back coal.” During Donald Trump’s first tumultuous year in office, Republicans in Congress fought like hell to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. Better known as Obamacare, former President Barack Obama’s landmark legislation gave 20 to 24 million Americans access to affordable medical care...
Stop Corporate Greed!
Bernie Sanders takes aim at thriving companies whose underpaid employees require government assistance to survive. Need further proof of how much better off this sad sack republic of ours would have been if U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders had made it to the White House? Check out the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act,...
Dark Money Is Now Darker
Transparency dies in the murky water of the swamp. Does anybody in the world think there’s too much transparency in American politics? That there isn’t enough secrecy in our electoral system? That millionaires, billionaires and corporations should be able to make it even more difficult for the public to know about their campaign spending? Apparently...
Google’s Black Eye
From the crack of dawn to the darkest hours of night, you are followed. In the most intimate detail, every step of your daily life is being permanently recorded without interruption—from your bed to your fast-food breakfast, your subsequent ride to work or to visit friends, then to lunch and continuing along the pathway of...
Justice Kennedy’s Parting Gifts
If I knew you were leaving, I’d have baked a cake, then refused to sell it to you. One might argue that the Republicans’ stolen majority on the U.S. Supreme Court hit rock bottom with a spate of terrible 5-4 decisions this year. But that was before Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Reagan appointee who served...
America’s Greatness
There is a real danger in thinking that our country is always virtuous when its behavior obviously isn’t. Sometimes you read a passage that stops you in your tracks, and the world never looks quite the same again. That happened to me while reading Seymour Hersh’s latest book, Reporter: A Memoir. He recounts some of...
Asshole of the Month: Kevin McCarthy
California is mostly a liberal, blue state, dotted with a few pockets of deep-red conservatism. One of them is the San Joaquin Valley, dubbed “way west Texas” for its rightwing politics. The district includes Bakersfield, known for its dominant oil industry and god-awful air quality, ranking third worst in the country for yearly particle pollution....
Time for Dems to “Fight Dirty”
The Republican Party is a machine that runs on big ideas. They are terrible, dangerous, racist, heartless and usually self-destructive ideas, but they are big ones. It’s time for Democrats to learn a valuable lesson from their political adversaries. Many progressive candidates have finally found the courage to embrace wildly popular ideas like Medicare for...
Your Right to Privacy
Your cell phone is a temple of liberty. As absurd as that may sound, it is a truth of the Digital Age. Even the ultraconservative U.S. Supreme Court has acknowledged that the government’s access to the personal information on mobile phones must be curtailed. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.—a George W. Bush appointee no...
