Bits & Pieces
Articles with unfiltered opinions
Latest Politics
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...
It’s Worse Than You Think
Fighting for Donald J. Trump’s removal from office (with life imprisonment as a well-deserved parting gift) remains a worthy goal. In the meantime an equally important objective is restoring a Democratic majority to the U.S. House of Representatives and/or Senate in November. While our incompetent President sucks up the nation’s attention and patience each day,...
Vindicating Torture
Appointing a documented torture honcho, Gina Haspel, as director of the Central Intelligence Agency speaks volumes about America’s image in the world. The coronation of “Bloody Gina”—an appropriate nickname coined by those who worked with Haspel—is proof positive that the U.S. government has given the CIA a license to torture, as well as blanket permission...
Asshole of the Month: Kanye West
Repeated failure can drive a person mad, but an excess of success can do the same. Soar too far above the humble crowd, and you risk losing touch with reality. Sadly, such is the case with Kanye West as, over this past year, he’s morphed into a crazed, gungho supporter of Donald Trump. For those...
Shell Game
In the 1944 film noir thriller Gaslight, Charles Boyer’s character psychologically abuses his wife until she’s forced to question her sanity. The much younger woman (portrayed by Ingrid Bergman) has no ink ling she married a killer who’s manipulating her into believing that actual incidents—hearing footsteps in the attic, gaslights flickering—are merely figments of her...
Trump’s a Survivor
Never underestimate Donald Trump. The man has a sixth sense when it comes to his survival in the business and political worlds. Throughout his life, no matter the evidence to the contrary, he has been able to turn the reality of abject failure into a widely accepted image of great success. It’s also true that...
The Great Deregulation Con
Near the end of his first year in the White House, Donald Trump hosted an absurd episode of reality TV. Standing next to enormous stacks of blank paper in the Roosevelt Room, the President snipped a red ribbon symbolizing all the “red tape” he claimed to have cut since his inauguration. “For many decades an...
Big White Lies
While delivering his first speech to Congress as President in February 2017, Donald Trump declared that “the vast majority of individuals convicted of terrorism and terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country.” Like any good propaganda, the new President’s assertion was, strictly speaking, accurate, even if it completely misrepresented the truth....
Racism Equals Injustice
Why did black people riot in “the long, hot summer of 1967,” when deadly civil disorders erupted in Newark, Detroit and many other U.S. cities? The Kerner Commission was tasked with answering that question by President Lyndon B. Johnson. After a seven-month investigation the panel’s report suggested that the main cause of the rampant urban...
The U.S. Is Going to Pot
…And there’s nothing Donald Trump or Jeff Sessions can do about it. A recent national poll funded by Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a leading antilegalization group, found that just 16% of the respondents wanted current federal marijuana laws to remain unchanged. On the other hand, 83% of Americans polled agreed that cannabis should be legalized...
Privacy Is Dead
The internet has made life easier for shoppers, friend seekers and government snoops. Love him or hate him, only a fool could deny the weighty presence of Donald Trump and his capacity to turn our world upside down. Surprisingly, predictions that he would explode like an overinflated hot-air balloon, or be cut to his proper...
Did Trump Really Win?
Donald Trump lost the nationwide count by nearly 3 million popular votes in the 2016 Presidential election. Nobody disputes that part of the puzzle…except for Trump. With no evidence, he has claimed that anywhere from 3 million to 5 million fraudulent ballots were cast by noncitizens and Democrats. But we don’t elect Presidents by popular...
Strangelovian Madmen
Which leader poses a graver threat to humanity, North Korea’s or our very own Donald Trump? On January 2, President Donald Trump tweeted, “North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that...
Don’t Just March. Run!
Since the ascension of a batty, obnoxious and brain-addled Fox “News” watcher to the Presidency of the United States, Americans have hit the streets to protest his dangerous, corrupt policies in record numbers. Take the Women’s March on January 21, 2017, which had a far bigger turnout in Washington, D.C., than Donald Trump’s inauguration the...
Sabotaging Middle East Peace
Perhaps Donald Trump will be driven from office because of the much-ballyhooed claims by the Democrats that he and his cohorts colluded with Russians in stealing the 2016 election. So far the hard evidence is underwhelming, but really, who’s calling the kettle black? Ironically, outrage is emanating from the very nation that has led the...
“This Case Is Everything”
The future of our representative system of government is now at the mercy of the U.S. Supreme Court’s stolen conservative majority. The Court will soon have the opportunity to make a ruling that could help determine which political party controls Congress and state legislatures for decades. According to The New York Times, the outcome of...
