Bits & Pieces
Articles with unfiltered opinions
Latest Politics
Asshole of the Month: Donald Trump
The mop-haired, B-movie monster from Mar-a-Lago is back, terrorizing the nation with the very real prospect of another gut-wrenching four years in the White House. WTF?! In a 2024 survey of scholars and social science experts, the American Political Science Association rated all U.S. Presidents with a 0–100 score, and Donald Trump came in dead...
Asshole of the Month: J.D. Vance
Trump’s pick for running mate, J.D. Vance, has been called the “voice of the Rust Belt” after his 2016 bestseller Hillbilly Elegy was published. The memoir recounted the travails of his dysfunctional family, originating in Kentucky coal mining country. Vance does have a true hillbilly pedigree: His paternal grandfather’s cousin, also named Jim, married into...
Assholes of the Month: The Supreme Court Conservative Justices
Usually, the damage a bad President does can be reversed once he’s gone, except for one crucial factor: The lifetime appointments made to the Supreme Court guarantee an active legacy outliving a President’s term(s) in office—by decades if the appointees live long enough. We knew there was going be a shitstorm after Trump was elected...
Asshole of the Month: Ronna McDaniel
Both the Republican and Democratic parties are governed, at least officially, by a chairperson. And party primaries can be as bruising as the general election, so the party chairperson is supposed to remain neutral, like a courtroom judge, favoring no candidates over others for the various nominations. But that’s not the way it worked with...
Asshole of the Month: Erin Hawley
According to a Gallup poll conducted in May 2023, 85% of Americans believe abortion should be legal to some degree, with 34% favoring no restrictions at all and 51% in favor of abortion with some restrictions. Only 13% believe that abortion should be illegal under any circumstances, mainly Catholics and evangelical Christians. Yet this shrill...
Asshole of the Month: Mitch McConnell
In the heated buildup to November, there has been a lot of chatter about the age of our Presidential candidates: How old is too old? Republicans allege, and even many Democrats worry, that Joe Biden may be coasting along past his expiration date. Donald Trump is certainly no spring chicken, and regardless of his alleged...
Asshole of the Month: Greg Abbott
After its successful war of independence from Mexico in 1836, Texas existed as an independent republic for nine years, until joining the United States in 1845. Then, in 1861, it seceded with the rest of the Confederate states to wage our bloody Civil War in defense of slavery. Ever since, there’s been a virulent suspicion...
Asshole of the Month: Harlan Crow
“Money is the root of all evil,” goes the old saying repeated by theologians and moralists. That might not be the whole story, but in the world of American politics, we can definitely say “dark money” has become the root of evil ever since our conservative-leaning Supreme Court green-lighted unlimited campaign spending with the 2010...
Asshole of the Month: Robert Mercer
In this century, a radical watershed moment in American government occurred in 2010 with the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, allowing unlimited spending on political campaigns. This deplorable decision equated money with free speech, accelerating the transition from democracy to plutocracy (rule by the rich). Trevor Potter, former chairman of the...
Asshole of the Month: Mike Johnson
Choosing the speaker of the House of Representatives in Washington has usually been a routine, undramatic affair: The leadership of the party holding the majority selects a candidate, and the troops normally fall in line, voting almost unanimously to approve the new speaker. But the Republicans have turned this process into a dysfunctional clown circus....
